Great news! We had a call yesterday about our new car, which has arrived!! Full of excitement, we rushed off to the dealer, and I am pleased to give you all exclusives of the new company car…

OK, just kidding…

As reported in the Guardian, you could not make this up…

Two pupils who drew a giant penis on a school lawn using weed killer two years ago can still admire their work from satellite photos now posted on the internet.

Despite the school re-seeding the area, the penis has turned up on satellite image search engines because a photo was taken before the new grass could conceal the appendage.

The unnamed pair of year 11 pupils from Bellemoor school for boys in Southampton, burned the 6-metre (20ft) phallus into the grass as an end of term joke.

Staff, parents and pupils who log on can now see the image in all its glory.

A spokeswoman for the school said: “It was just one of those high school jinks.

“This was an act of vandalism that took place during the summer of 2005. Southampton city council re-seeded the area and the grass was re-grown by the beginning of the new school term.”

We caught a news report yesterday about the horrendous storms in London, so I just HAD to share this with you…

Today was such a lovely day, clear blue sky, warm enough for us to take a nap on the river bank in the afternoon, perfect weather to sit outside with a refreshing beer.

I had my first Portuguese lesson since September, and afterwards had planned to meet a chap who is interested in working in our bar. As we had a couple of hours to burn, we decided to sit outside next to the canal. It was SO lovely, and honestly we dozed off for a while. We didn’t even want to move, so had to force ourselves into a café for a coffee. We even caught a bit of sun – in January.

Well, imagine our surprise yesterday when we checked the news to find a report on the UK version of CBB! Apparently (and of course we had to check this out) there have been thousands of complaints of racism lodged with C4 and OFCOM about the conduct of some of the contestants towards Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood actress.

It seems all to have been set off by the arrival of Jade Goody and her family (honestly, who in their right mind would have let them back into the house?) and has just escalated from there. The report on the news showed it was raised in Parliament (by Keith Vaz, always a politician with an eye on the media himself) and I’m sure Tony Blair was happy to be questioned about something other than Iraq.

We checked out the C4 website and noticed that Ken Russell (what was HE thinking of) walked over the affair, and Leo Sayer left because of dirty undies (found that on YouTube) so we are askance as to what is going on. Even the Guardian website got involved, so we could tell how serious it was…

The report on RTP can be seen below, hope that it is fairly self explanatory.

I’ve received several queries (well, one) asking why so many football related entries? Well, I don’t think there are that many, BUT that said, there have been more than when I was in the UK. So, what’s the big interest in football in Portugal?

Well, the first thing is that football seems to be the beginning and the end of existence in Portugal. Below is a video of Aveiro in Euro 2004, I assume that Portugal won a match (probably the match against England, when they cheated to win…) and really the emotion is… does palpabledescribe it?

Most people, as mentioned in a previous post, support either Benfica, Sporting or FC Porto. I have put these into categories: First are the sheep… these support either Sporting or Benfica, normally with a passion. As mentioned, when Oliveira do Biarro played Benfica, over 20 buses went to Lisbon from Oliveira. I am sure that most of these contained Benfica fans, and not Oliveira fans. The rivalry between Benfica and Sporting is immense, and people will argue long and hard about who is the better team. At the moment Sporting is doing better than Benfica, so the Sporting fans are feeling pretty smug. There is no guarantee this will last…

Secondly are those who pick a team just because it is winning. These are the FC Porto fans, who are celebrating at the moment because Porto are top of the Bwin Ligo (equivalent of the Premier League) BUT were horrified when Atletico beat Porto last weekend.

Lastly there are the delusional fans… These are the people, like me, who support teams like Beira Mar because they live in the area and think that the local teams deserve support, rather than picking the easy option like Sporting or Benfica. When we have our own bar, we will invite the local team and avoid getting on the top of the league bandwagon… They will never win, but at least we’ve not sold out.

Anyone in the UK wanting to support a team in Portugal should elect as follows:

If you support Chelsea then choose FC Porto, if you support Arsenal then chose Sporting, and if you support Liverpool or Manchester United then support Benfica (easy to remember as Chelsea and Porto are blue, Liverpool and Manchester United and red. Sporting are green stripes, so I suppose you should pick Celtic, but in the UK, Arsenal is a good alternative.) If you support Charlton or Watford then Beira Mar is a good choice, but hopefully this will change…

On 07 July 2007, voting will close on selection of the new Seven Wonders of the World, ranging from the statues on Easter Island, or the Stutue of Liberty, to Stonehenge. There are no wonders to vote for in Portugal, so the Portuguese have come up with the 7 Maravilhas of Portugal, mainly castles and cathedrals, which will be unveiled on the same day.

As a part of this, the national TV broadcaster SIC commissioned it’s own poll of the best places to live, work, best tourist desinations, nightspots, etc. Naturally Lisbon won for the best night life, and Braga for the best place to work, but the best place to live in Portugal was AVEIRO!! For the news, SIC sent reporters to the winning cities, and below is an amended version of the report from Aveiro.

Obviously the translation is very rough, thanks to Lina for this as I can still only recognise a few words (‘canais’=canal, ‘ria’=river, ‘categoria’ = er… category), but I hope that you get the idea. We were also delighted to see that the entry to our bar appeared on the screen, that had to be pointed out…

Saturday was a day of mourning, for all fans of Oliveira Do Biarro as they crashed out of the Taça de Portugal to a 5-0 defeat by Benfica. Obviously, I was hoping for an upset of the David versus Goliath standard, but unfortunately it was more like Chelsea versus Macclesfield (this made the Portuguese news, too).

Around twenty buses of fans headed from Oliveira to the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon, but since the buses probably contained more Benfica fans than Oliveira fans, the visiting team could not quite raise their game enough to beat the Premier League team. Aside from one near miss, the game was a pretty one-sided affair.

Attached is a YouTube video of the news report of the match. Those of a sensitive nature may find this distressing…

However, there was a major upset in the Taça de Portugal when Atlético, a minor league team from Lisbon beat the Premier League champions, FC Porto. The papers were crowing about the humilation of ‘The Dragons’, as FC Porto are known, and Atlético fans were partying into the night – some of them might not yet have stopped…

A bit of good news for all Beira Mar fans, they beat Santana, a division 3 team, 6-0. Now all they need to do is carry this form into the remainder of the bWin League games for this season and get themselves off the bottom of the table.

Let’s not forget that on 06 January, Benfica take on the mighty Oliveira do Bairro football club. Let’s all wish Oliveira all the best for their game, and I hope that I will be able to report back a stunning victory next week… Please take a moment to visit the site and wish them well…

FORÇA OLIVEIRA!!!

I cobbled together a short guide to how Bolo rei is made, and uploaded it to YouTube. However, for some reason, the video won’t run on WordPress. If you would like to see it, go to YouTube and earch for ‘Guide to Bolo Rei’, which is the title of the video. If you’d like to rate it, so much the better. The holiday season is over in a couple of days, all will be returning to normal and, all being well, we will be starting to work on the business.

Service may therefore be a litle more erratic than usual… bear with me.

This was our first Christmas and New Year holiday in Portugal. Ideally, of course, we would have been working, but with the house sale taking it’s own merry time, we were able to relax a little and enjoy ourselves.

Traditionally, presents are exchanged on Christmas Eve, rather than on the 25 December (although that didn’t stop PT, the national phone company, advertising free calls on Christmas Day), which was a bit off-putting. I got some nice presents, champagne and port wine, and a lovely scarf, but the day was really about eating and drinking, mainly eating…

Rather than Turkey, Christmas dinner is a mixture of things, this year we had gambas (BIG prawns) with lobster and followed by leitão, which is suckling pig… For dessert we had a rich sponge cake, as it is Lina’s cousins birthday on 25 December. Being an FC Porto fan her cake had the Porto logo on it. Personally I wanted to amend this to Beira Mar, but nobody was having that.

In Portugal, the equivalent of Christmas cake is called Bolo Rei (which I think translates as ‘King of Cakes’) and certainly lives up to it’s name. Bolo Rei is more like a rich bread than a cake, but heavier, filled with fruit and nuts and topped with dried fruit. Wherever you go the coffee shops, markets and supermarkets are selling Bolo Rei, and it really is a treat.

Like in the UK, Bolo Rei contains a treat, but rather than a coin, this is normally a gift. This year, in the Bolo Rei that we bought, the gift was a little ‘wise man’, and of course if you get this it means good luck. FOrtunately, I got the gift in one cake that we bought, and Lina got the gift in another. Let’s hope this is an omen.

However, Bolo Rei also includes a second gift, which is a fava (a bried bean). What this normally means is that whoever gets the fava has to buy the next Bolo Rei…

Between Christmas and New Year, much like in the UK, the country is in hibernation, the sales don’t start until the new year, but the weather is fantastic. While it is cold, the sun is out, so as blogged before everyone is wearing sunglasses all year around. The shops are open except for Christmas Day and New Years Day, but businesses are open on Boxing Day, unlike the UK. In fact, New Years Day seems to be more of a holiday, when everything is closed. This year we went to a New Years Eve party which finished at 6am. I was expecting the party to fold at around 1am, but people kept on going.

All over Portugal there were celebrations, and it must really have been a collective hangover. Naturally we missed all of the celebrations around the world, so were left with picking up the evening news on New Years Day. In fact we ended up sleeping until 3pm… but have recovered now.