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.