APAPS 19.4: Grande Finale at Casa Esperança, or Gratification Deferred

I often find it tricky  finding the just right bit of music to fit a blog, having self-imposed that requirement some years back but, on this occasion, the problem was solved for me almost immediately we had started walking when I heard Diane and Maria talking about kissing the bottom. So I said to them “Fats Waller” only to receive totally uncomprehending stares.  It turned out that they were talking about corrupt politicians and the practice of brown nosing. (The Urban Dictionary will provide a definition or two of this phrase for the curious.) So I explained who Fats Waller had been (Diane said that she had never heard of Fats Waller (which I found quite extra-ordinary for an American, but there you go.) and that they had just reminded me of his great song “I´m gonna to sit right down and write myself a letter” which includes the couplet
“A lotta kisses on the bottom
I´ll be glad I got´em.”
Problem solved. Music clip to follow at the end of this edition- Now back to the beginning.
The reason for holding our traditional grande finale breakfast in the early part of the APAPS season is that Hazel and Maria, on whom we depend to do the bulk of the cooking, are to be off on a two-month South East Asian Safari from August, so we have to catch them while we still can. Fifteen were expected for the meal, but Janet and the Whittles´guest Andy had both succumbed to the lurgi, while two other regulars couldn´t make  it. Rod away doing an inspection of medical facilities in Lisbon, and Yves, our own home-grown philosopher ´aristurtle, still pursuing domestic affairs.

Coffee was on offer from 7 am onwards but Paul and Myriam were early arrivals, just  to be sure. 

Hazel, of course, had issued her food requirements list the week before and now the kitchen began to fill up with piles of goodies as people arrived - bacon sausages, eggs, cold boxes of orange juice,  jams, breads  etc, etc. What with all that food to sort out, and  coffees and teas to serve, and with some late comers challenging the clock, it was a close run thing but somehow or other we got the Starters marshalled for the photo, some still gulping their coffees

Antje, Maria, Jill ,Hazel, Ingrid, Myriam, Diane, Dina,
JohnH, TerryA, Chris and Paul. 
plus Sascha and in the rear, Becky.

and we set off dead on time, i.e. at 7.30 a.m plus the usual 7 minutes leeway.

The walk itself was uneventful along familiar tracks. One new vista was of a newly cleared avocado plantation  - goodness knows how many olive and carob trees had been scrapped to make way for that.

On the way up a small hill, Chris passed some innocent remark about women´s place in the universal hierarchy, which led to him being belaboured by a couple of suffragettes. 

Shortly after this episode, our two cooks left us at the halfway stage to head back home to attend to domestic matters, as did Chris, wanting no doubt to escape from his assailants. 

He looked happy enough on the way back. I gather that back at the ranch, he was told that his services weren´t needed in the kitchen whereupon he retired to the gazebo in the garden to enjoy a pre-prandial snooze, lucky guy.

The rest of us plodded on, seeking shade where we could because the sun was heating things up to a degree. We passed the potential WAGS clubhouse site, in the Middle of Nowhere, last seen in May this year.

Then

Now

Paul persisted in continuing his research into the validity of the Bechdel-Wallace theorem (vide last blog). Since all his enquiries of the ladies “had  they been talking about him?” invariably received a negative answer, I am sure that he now has sufficient material to write a debunking thesis; a PhD from the University of Utah beckons,for sure.

Myriam got up to strange contortions trying to get the dogs to drink a little bit of water out of a plastic bag.
Dina met an old friend en route which required some minutes conversation and so the group spread out. 

As the heat increased, so the very ground beneath our feet appeared to warp and what had in previous years been gentle rises now reared up ahead of us as hills to be conquered. The thought of the breakfast to come did not, could not, add extra speed to our steps; we didn´t have the energy. But could it be possible, we wondered, that by having our gratification delayed in this way, the breakfast, when eventually we did get to sit down for it, would actually taste better for the delay?  A university in America (where else?) conducted a series of experiments in the 1960s and 1970s in which they presented four-year olds with a marshmallow and told the children that they had two options: 1) to ring a bell at any point to summon the experimenter and then to eat the marshmallow, or 2) wait until the experimenter returned after 15 minutes, and thus earn two marshmallows. Various conclusions were then reached when the poor kids were evaluated as teenagers and adults. Apparently, those who were able to delay their gratification emerged as altogether better citizens. (Only in America!)

Interestingly enough, in view of our group´s  later conversation about fatness, these researchers claim to have established that, each minute that the four-year old was able to delay munching his marshmallow translated into a 0.2% reduction in Body Mass Index 30 years later. Wow!  Of course, philosophizing about self-control goes back as far as Aristotle (the real one, not our local  version) and can be read up on in Psychology Today, etc.
 These pleasant thoughts of anticipatory eating were then followed, as I have said, by a debate about what the word “fat”, as applied to the human corporation, actually signifies. No names, no pack drill , but we were assured that to be fat in traditional Chinese culture is to be rich and content. Does that mean that a rich content Chinese cannot be allowed lose weight, and if he does lose weight, does he thereby also lose face? Discuss.
 All this rumination about eating is  all extremely relevant because this is, as you dear Reader well know, the Year of the Pig, the last year in the Chinese 12 year zodiac cycle.  Traditionally, the pig is last because in mythical times the Jade Emperor invited all the animals to a grand feast but being fat and lazy the pig overslept and arrived late and last. 

In less mythical times, a British journalist was being scathing about the craze for jogging when  In a book called “Keeping Fat”, he wrote:-
“The running craze is a symptom of our deplorable age, in particular of our obsession with health, slimness, fitness and, above all, longevity. Jogging is not only undignified but absurd. It is a confession that people feel that they lead displeasingly unhealthy lives, but are not prepared to do anything preventative, rather than remedial, about it. The answer for someone who thinks that he is overweight is to eat less for a while, not to leap around at unseemly exercises. And the way to eat less is, simply, to eat less.”

Not that we, WAGS or APAPS would dream of being unseemly. And, to be sure that we would not be arriving late for our grand feast, it was at this stage I put a call in to Casa Esperança  to say we would be back in15 or so minutes.  And we were.
Then the cooks did their stuff; coffees, teas, orange juices, fortified tomato juices flowed and Bucks Fizzes fizzed. Tables were piled with food. Sausages, baked beans, tomatoes. smoked salmon: scrambled eggs and two kinds of bacon: breads , toasted and untoasted: butters, marmalades and preserves. Plates were loaded, and general gratification followed. TerryW, friend of Diane´s and Maria´s, joined us for the meal.

Let the pictures tell the story.

There was even traditional British Houses of Parliament sauce on the table, fittingly on the day Boris Johnson breezed in. (It´s now made in Holland. Perhaps he can do something to correct that anomaly when he has a spare moment.)

Many thanks were expressed to all who participated and who had contributed food for the table.  A toast was proposed to the convalescent Rod in Lisbon who was awoken from his early morning slumbers by a phone call from Myriam  so that he could hear from our shouts and cheers what jollity he was missing.

Myriam also did a passable imitation of a mendicant Little Sister of the Poor in wheedling donations from the breakfasteers and collected Euros 105 for Hazel´s Mozambique Relief fund raising.

And now for that wee bit of music that I promised you. Click on this link


https://youtu.be/jjYKx3HVErU

or if that doesn´t open, copy and paste it to your Google search window.

Post-script 29/07/2019.

I am surprised that so far no-one has called me out for failing to include a map of our track and the statutory statistic, an omission which I shall now try to rectify.

The Track
 

The Statistics

Total distance: 8.47 kms. Total time: 2 hrs 27 mins.
Moving time: 1 hr 56 mins. Average moving speed: 4.4 kph.
Ascent: 254 metres.
Eggs consumed: 24.

APAPS 19.3 : São Bom Homem, or Janet´s Jaunt

Isn´t it disappointing how, just when one is reasonably confident that some continuity of thought and discussion would flow from one APAPS walk, breakfast and blog through to the succeeding APAPS walk, breakfast and blog, something else crops up, the devoutly- to-be-wished continuity vanishes, and we stagger off to fresh pastures or topics new.
As an example, let´s take one little part of Paul´s world record breaking comment on last week´s blog. (The whole comment came to about 230 words; did anybody apart from your Blogger read it all and, having done so, ponder a while on it?) Here´s what he wrote:-
“As a final comment, perhaps during this season we should strive to note occasions where The Bechdel Test ( or more properly the Bechdel- Wallace Test) is passed. (Look that up in your Funk and Wagnells!). Despite the preponderance of the fairer sex on our walks, I suspect it is a rare thing, not even when Pat and Ella are invoked.”
I ask you. How many of our readers looked into “Bechdel-Wallace” via Google or even know what or who “Funk and Wagnells” are? How many wondered what Paul was on about? How many applauded the skill with which he casually slipped in the solution to the previous week´s cryptic crossword puzzle with his “Pat and Ella” ? How many brought these exciting topics up during today´s walk or at the breakfast?
Not many, I would guess.
Anyway, let´s get that crossword thing out of the way now. The cryptic clue was “Two girls, one on each knee (seven letters)”. The answer “patella” (the medical name for kneecap).
The Walk
What was planned was a fairly straightforward circuit round the Herdade de São Bom Homem. Nine of us gathered at the start.

The Starters from the left: JohnH, Hazel, Paul, Diane (from North Carolina), Myriam, Maria, TerryA (with Becky), Jill and Janet.
We set off at 7.07 am, same timing as the week before.

The first stretch, being steadily uphill, was not one that encouraged serious conversation. Thank goodness for the usual pause at the Rest and Be Thankful bench.

Then it was past the old farmhouse and down a gentle slope. Here we met the same Silves Camara employee who we had met the previous year while he was strimming cane and who had enlightened us as to the glass-recycling function of that strange concrete half- bridge. This year the cane all grown back (natch) but now he was busy planning and digging a trench to bring water via a tube from one of the hillside barragems to irrigate new tree plantings. Signs, certainly, that Silves Camara are intent on maintaining this area of parkland.

Myriam went in search of glass shards beneath the graffiti.

Now, by way of background for what comes next, the previous evening Janet had emailed me a request for an easier option on the walk, and I had replied “no problem” and had prepared a little map for her so that she could take it easy for a short distance, while the rest of us did a somewhat harder circuit, with all due to rendezvous at the next main junction. “No problem ”  - huh! little did I know.
So, when we reached a convenient junction, I gave Janet the wee map and asked her to wait at the next junction or, if she preferred, to go right at that next junction and come round to meet us. It was also suggested to her that she could find welcome shade under a big tree. And so we parted.
The next bit for the rest of us was up a modest hill, past the house on the hill with dogs, and we then swung left on a path which I did not know but which could be seen on Google Maps. It was at this stage that Paul tried to revive the topic of the Bechdel-Wallace Test. As you probably know by now (having done your research), the Bechdel test (or more properly the Bechdel–Wallace test), is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. If the two women are talking about a man, the piece of fiction fails the test. The topic, if not the test itself, is something to do with Virginia Woolf.
To be honest, I was concentrating too much on ensuring we were on the right track to follow fully Paul´s gist but I think what he is getting at is trying to find out how often on walks, such as the WAGS or the APAPS, when two women are talking together, what proportion of the time they are talking about a man or men. I gather that most films and most books now-a-days fail the test, i.e. the girl talk  more often than not is about men.
This may be true, of course, but if so it probably follows from the fact that most books and most film scripts are written by men who know that they are obviously the most interesting topic on earth and therefore naturally write dialogue for women which has men as the central topic. They can´t imagine that women could possibly have anything else to talk about. I haven´t read any Virginia Woolf – Janet can probably fill us in on her –but I have a sneaking suspicion that Virginia´s favourite subject was women , more specifically herself, not men, and I don´t think she wrote many film scripts, but if she wrote dialogue for men in her books, I bet that all her men would talk about would be women.

Be that as it may, when we did successfully make it to the rendezvous spot, Janet, like Macavity, was not there. Consternation. Some were worried for Janet, all alone, lost in the wilderness. Others were more concerned about missing their breakfast if we had to launch a search and rescue operation; perhaps they could have the breakfast first and then come back to look for her. As for me, I was more worried about the effect of her disappearance on my bank balance. Paul, as a senior AWW (retired), had threatened to invoke AWW guideline 3.2, which is even more complicated than Rule of Cricket 19.8 on the subject of overthrows. (Interestingly, I heard little discussion during the walk about the cricket. Maybe when Antje returns, there will be more cricket talk now that she has a grasp of the essentials of the game. If they play cricket in Holland, which they do, then surely they must play it in Belgium as well, and then Ingrid can join in too.) 
Anyway, back to AWW guideline 3.2:- if this rule does indeed apply to APAPS walks, a point on which I have yet to adjudicate, said rule being that if the leader loses more than 10 per cent of his group, he pays for all the post walk refreshments, and if Janet had become irretrievably lost, the loss percentage would have been 11.11, hence my concern about the financial implications.
There we were, searching to and fro, and shouting a bit; we even blew whistles for a few minutes, to no avail. We were also in a mobile phone black spot. So we then carried on down the main track. Eventually, we met two lady dog walkers who told us that a solitary female walker was sitting “like Patience on a Monument” by the side of the road some distance further on; just at the same time, mobile phone reception resumed, contact was established, and Janet rejoined us, much to the relief of my bank manager and me.

This map shows what had gone wrong.

We had left Janet on her own at point 1. She was to follow the red line to point 2, and either wait there to rendezvous or continue veering right to meet us coming round the circle on the yellow line; but instead she turned left and continued in search of the mythical big shady tree going along the green line. Finally she saw some big houses and, having realised  that there were no big houses to be seen on the map I had given her, very sensibly indeed decided to stop at point 3. If she had not stopped where she did, I fear that she would have ended up in Silves Prison,  - let´s rephrase that as “outside Silves Prison”.

All that sorted out, it was then just a simple walk back home, past the Rest and Be Thankful bench and down to the cars.

Guess what they are talking about

And them

 We were 15 minutes late for breakfast for which the Leader duly received a telling-off from the formidable Ana.

It was good to see Rod joining us for coffee. Neither cricket nor the Bechdel-Wallace test had much of a chance to figure in the breakfast conversation because most of the ladies were greatly occupied with looking at and modelling an exciting range of neckerchiefs or head scarves.

Myriam, who was going to go to a Hong Kong protest meeting, or going to go to a Hong Kong meeting to protest – I am not sure which -  showed off a striking Chinese T-shirt she is to wear for the occasion.

The food was up to the best Para e Fica standards, particularly the tomatoes; bacon not bad either.

Grapes from Casa Esperança seemed to go down well. If we are  lucky, there will still be some next week.

The Track

And a plethora of statistics

So many variations on our little walk. How did they manage to get to the moon 50 years ago, and back?
If they did.