Porto 3

Into the hills led by Marco our cheery tour guide from Cool Tours for a quite excellent day in the Douro Valley. First to Quinta do Alloto where we sampled their white, rose and red. They are a typically small scale producer on the seemingly unworkable slopes of the Valley. Grapes are gathered by hand and trodden by foot. Fabulous.

precipitous viniculture

After a river trip and an excellent lunch (at Tachinho da Te: black pig for BFP, veal for the Groupie) it was on to the even better port estate, Quinta Marrocos where we were entertained (this is definitely the right word) by the fourth generation proprietor Cesar Sequeira. We downed a white port, a tawny and two reds, culminating in the Late Bottled Vintage 2011. Precious stuff - we left with two bottles - one for me and one for a friend who's feeling down.

We went for our nightly walk down at the waterfront and had one final glass of wine close to the water. A brilliant day in this happy place.

Point of information - I had been misled when I said that Porto have won the league, however Sunday's results did leave them five points clear with two games left. The raucous celebration was to mark rivals Benfica having lost. Sorry sports fans.

Porto 2

Now let's be clear, I'm not one of those ghastly people who photographs his food and then tweets it to world. No, I got the Groupie to photograph it and now I'm letting you share. You lucky people - I believe it was Tommy Trinder who used to say that.

Big Fat Pig hits the seafood

That's right, octopus. Yum yum yum. Groupie had the chicken - also delicious. Bottle of the old vinho verde to wash it down. Total price €37.70. I repeat (partly because I've just discovered how to get the euro sign on this keyboard) €37.70. All of this at the down-to-earth Cais da Tosca in Aveiro. Highly recommended.

Aveiro is, by dint of its network of canals, Portugal's answer to Venice and a fair proportion of Porto had decamped there for today's public holiday, many of them on our train. A small sample I know but the trains on both journeys ran immaculately to time, were crowded but cheerful and were notably clean. It is a trip of just over an hour and the adult fare is €7.00 return. Not Venice perhaps but it knocks Tipton into a cocked hat.

Winery visits in the Douro Vallley tomorrow. Someone's got to do it.

Porto 1

Dateline: Monday. God bless Airbnb. Ensconced in the lap of luxury in an apartment in the old town. They deliver fresh artisanal bread to our door each morning - which is pretty cool. The local supermarket sells red wine by the carton at one euro a litre - which is pretty cool - never mind the quality, feel the width. Besides there are cafes aplenty where you can quaff the good stuff and then use the cheapo as a nightcap.

We arrived in town last night just as Porto won the Portugese league, so we caught the stirrings of some raucous celebration. Flight was fine notwithstanding the fat tosser in front of me who had his phone pinned to his ear and let his seat fully back into my precious space - what is the etiquette on these things? Is physical violence socially permisssible? Anyway I happened across this prize plonker once again in the toilets at baggage collection - he was taking a piss with the phone still clamped to his ear. That can't be right.

Must admit the Groupie and I flew at the front of the plane - I love airport lounges, they feed the soul of my inner parvenu. As someone I have long admired once said to me, 'I may be a snob, but at least I'm good at it.'

Porto is very hilly so quite a footsore day of museums and churches - it's left me feeling vaguely devout. Evening meal and some decent wines at The Wine Box - almost immorally good value at less than sixty euros for the pair of us. Obrigado very much. Tomorrow we're heading to Aveiro for some sea air. Report to follow.

Big Fat Pig And His Gloom

A definite problem with BFP's obsession with Trump is that every piece of news or cultural artefact, every damned thing, becomes a prism through which the villain's rule is observed. Thus the following in Jonathan Bate's (we are not worthy as Wayne's World would have it) The Genius of Shakespeare had the Pig reaching for his highlighter pen:

Righteous dude

Iago is Shakespeare's pre-imagining of a world that is no longer anchored by the moral order made possible by the reflective principles of good and evil. Iago does not commit himself to a contract with the devil in the manner of Dr Faustus. He inhabits a world in which there is no moral principle , there is only the fact of life and death. (p. 292)

Apropos of nothing at all do you know what? I have literally only as I type this made the connection between the Eagles and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (currently being repeated on 4Extra) - the Hitchhiker theme is track 4 on side one of One of These Nights. Which definitely has nothing to do with Trump, so that's good - every day, in every way, I'm getting better.

The Gloom Lifts A Little

Having posted yesterday's gloomy prognostications I sat myself down and watched Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (2012) - this transpired to be a terrific cure for gloominess.

Anderson is not to everyone's taste, the Groupie for example finds his offerings wilfully and distractingly weird. I agree that they are definitely weird but I also find them charming and funny.

Moonrise Kingdom is co-written with Roman Copolla (Hollywood royalty at work) and is the story of a pair of twelve year old star-crossed lovers in 1965 New England. All sorts of allusions are at play - a sort of madcap Romeo and Juliet meets Peter Pan. 7.5/10. 

My Gloomy Silence

Go all the way back to the very first entry on this blog and you will find the First Rule of Marchant - WRITERS WRITE.

So why the strange silence OG? Has the world slipped into a dull quietude such that the proto-satirist has nothing to say? Well, hardly. But that's just the point - the world is as shitty as I've ever known it, and remember I lived through the seventies.

Lest we forget: the president of the United States of America is alleged to have had extramarital sex with a porn star at a time when his improbable wife (herself what I believe is styled a glamour model) was suckling their offspring. He denies this allegation but so far as I can tell nobody seriously doubts that it is true. In the sordid pit that has become American politics, the truth matters not a jot. If you shout a lie loud and long enough it suffocates all assembled truths. This I suppose is the fetid culmination of 'spin'. Truth is merely an abstract constructed by the powerful.

I am not a socialist (bet that caught you off-guard) but I am a longstanding admirer of the Labour Party. But now this steaming collective of unapologetic anti-semites suggests that I must take seriously as execrable an excuse for a public intellectual as Diane sodding Abbott. I mean, really? And as for Corbyn - well congratulations world you have found the only man (or woman) who might make Theresa May seem competent. And this matters because whilst the reckless sideshow of the Syrian bombings plays itself out there is the lamentable tale of the Windrush generation and their betrayal by the country whose labour shortages they came to plug. A tale that shames the United Kingdom.

I called Syria a reckless sideshow. You can't fight half a war and win. If Assad is to be stopped from killing his own people then he will have to be stopped by force, applied and constant force. That won't happen, indeed I strongly doubt there would be any American public appetite for it. So what we have is a 'strong' western alliance (That is to say the vile Trump, the over-confident Macron and the cowed May) saying in, effect, that Assad can carry on killing people but not with chemical weapons. So that's good then.

Do you know the first thing I do every time I turn on the old computer? I go to the newsfeeds and hope that Trump will finally have gone too far and been impeached. Come back Nixon, your country needs you.

That is why I stay silent. It saves me getting all depressed/depressing.    

Understated Epics

Can you have an understated cinematic epic? Yes I think you can and I'll give you two examples I found in the bank holiday weekend that now seems a distant memory.

The Greatest Story Ever Told is a bold title to set before the audience but since this is a telling of the life of the Christ, I think we can forgive the grandiosity. Massive in scale and ambition the film itsef might seem plodding but, you know what, I rather enjoyed it. I particularly liked the almost sympathetic realisation of Judas. One for a rainy day, possibly armed with an impudent little red. 7/10.

As with the gospels, there are rival film tellings of the Dunkirk story - not least last year's effort which I have not yet seen but which reliable witnesses tell me is brilliant. For now I content myself with Leslie Norman's (yes, he was Barry's dad) 1958 black and white offering. I remember that our fourth year teacher at junior school, Mr Lofthouse, tried to convince us that he had been an extra in this film. To this day I am not sure if he was kidding - weird thing to have made up. This Dunkirk may lack modern effects and cacophony but in its studied manner (redolent of a Britain now dead?) it also earns 7/10.