Nott'mForest 5 (that's five) v Derby Sheep******** 2

Don't know if anyone has noticed back how quite its gone across the interweb since Forest stuffed Derby 5-2 at the City Ground on Wednesday night, not heard from a sheep sha**er for ages.

Here's one for all the locals and if you arn't local or don't know the roads between the 2 cities it will be lost on you, but anyway, I can't resist it.
What is the quickest way from Nottingham to Derby, down the the A5-2, get it, oh, oh, oh.

Happy New Year

You just can't get the staff............

Now when I was a postman, many moons ago, we took pride in our work to ensure the mail got to its rightful destination.

Earlier this year, I bought some Christmas cards which were on offer at my local Costco in Derby. I love Costco. if you haven't shopped there, you should give it a go.
Anyway, I bought a box quantity of cards to send out to Portugal, journey by road 1600 miles through France, Spain & Portugal on the back of a truck.
Then 2 weeks ago, I went back to the UK for a quick visit before Christmas to see family, friends and take back the Christmas cards, now written expressing Christmas greetings for those not fortunate like me to live in the sun(mostly, anyway), RyanAir route 1200 miles.
I posted the cards in the UK and being a proper postal user, put the senders address on the back of the envelope.However, one week later three of the said cards arrived back in my post box in Portugal, as the the blind postie didn't realize the side with the stamp on, is the side that you send the bloody mail to, third trip 1400 miles via Lisbon and eventually the Algarve.

Next week my friend Glynis is going back to the UK for Christmas and she has kindly agreed to take the travelling Christmas cards to the UK for another go, this time by easyJet, say 1400 miles plus all the to'in and fro'in in the UK.
Given the fact that the bloody cards probably came from China in the first place, the carbon emissions for these Christmas cards must be through the roof, I only hope my Auntie Sylvia appreciates it when her card finally arrives, priceless.

Recycling pays off

I have just taken the weekly recycling to the local centre and I have found some "booty" at the side of the bins left by the previous caller. Not wishing to waste anything, I have brought it home to make good use of it. Now that's what I call recycling.
I can't tell you what it is in case you want it back.

Looks like I am becoming more and more Portuguese everyday.

Trip to the UK, not a good idea.

I have been in the UK for the past few days at the very time when everywhere is under a cover of snow. If it's not snow then it's the biggest frost that I have ever seen, with temperatures at minus 14 degs. in Loughborough, I sure know when to visit my family.

For those of you not best blessed geographically, Loughborough is in the Midlands, strangely in the middle of the country, which for a southerner is just below Scotland.

Today I have driven from Loughborough, where the temperature was -14degs, 125 miles south to Andover in Hampshire, where the thermometer was reading a blistering +2 degs, I even thought about stopping at Boots to get some sun screen. No wonder you "s u v v e n e r s" are a bunch of softies.

Anne's big birthday

My good friend and everybodies Nanny, Anne Woodworth, had a big birthday celebration this week and she has asked me not to mention that she was 70 on November 27th, so I'm not going to.

On Saturday evening we enjoyed some ear splitting music from a local band when Anne was joined by her 3 daughters and numerous grandchildren who flew over for the occassion from the UK. Husband Bob's amily also flew over from Liverpool, sorry, "The Wirrall", they get upset if you say they are from Liverpool. There was so many of them here, Liverpool must have been empty.

Either way, they are obviously all from the better end of town, as my car still had tyres and was not on bricks when I went out to collect it after the party.

Happy Birthday Nanny Annie.

Kama Sutra

Just been reading the Kama Sutra about sexual positions, especially like the one called the "plumbers position", apparently you are in all day but nobody comes.

Weather warning

According to the local weather forecast, the temperature in the Algarve could drop as low as zero this week.
Bloody hell, I didn't come here for this kind of treatment, I want my money back.

Read all about it

Never thought of myself as much of a fashion icon, but we at Whittaker Towers are included in the December issues of Vogue and also some other top magazines including, GQ, House & Garden and Tatler, all obviously part of the same magazine group.
If you can allocate the £4 that some of them cost or are a cheapskate and can't afford to splash out on one of these, you could always pretend you are thinking of buying one at WH Smiths and just check it out with the rest of the dirty raincoat brigade.
Failing that you could always hope that your personal gynecologist has it available the next time you pay a visit to his consulting rooms in Harley Street.

The article is about the Villa Works, which is a new front for the company that built Whittaker Towers, Pedro Costa e Costa. The website; http://www.thevillaworks.com/index.php/case_studies/#
includes a nice picture of me and my dearest and is just grainy enough not the show the 4 days of stubble that I have, scruffy bugger.

Wine Tasting

On Friday evening, I along with a few friends went to a wine tasting with a difference.
The wines were very varied, all of which were Portuguese & excellent, ranging from some very nice quoffable whites to Special Reserva reds, allegedly selling for 37 euros a bottle. Portugal has invested millions of euros over the recent years and are really are getting their act together when it comes to wine making.
Along with the wines we had a dinner of at least 7 courses, I lost count after that. Every course was superb, maybe the almond tarty thingy sweet was a bit dry but above all, excellent.

Another difference was that the meal was served by smiling happy staff, sometimes a rarity in itself, hot in all the right places (the meal not the staff), very tasty and very well presented.
The biggest difference was that the cost for this gourmet extravaganza was only 25 euros, including welcome gin & tonics, and after dinner 12 year old whisky, fantasticly amazing value.

Strangely my own golf club, apparently struggles to make a profit from charging 25 euros for serving a very poor buffet of chicken curry (from a jar) & chips without any wine, priceless.

Well done BoaVista Golf Club, put me down for the next one.

In the Hazard

As you will know if you have read a few of my ramblings, I like a spot of golf. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it goes horribly wrong. I have had days when my ball always seems to find the hazard but I have never managed to put a buggy in the hazard as this person did at my golf club last week.
To save the person's blushes I will not name them, I will also refrain from making chauvinistic jokes about what sex they were, however needless to say, a bloke surely would have hit the brake pedal before parking the buggy in the hazard, f-o-r-e, woman driver coming through.

Recycling, the Portuguese way

Sometimes the Portuguese really do have some good ideas, this one being a recycling stations. All over Portugal I assume, certainly in the Algarve they are scattered all over the place in populated areas, some only a few hundred metres apart. In fact within a 3 kilometre radius of my house there must be over a 100 such collection points, the one in the picture nicely positioned outside someone's bedroom, not sure I would be too keen on that though, especially when Carlos comes along to dispose of his glass bottles at 6 in the morning.

They are very neat and tidy, most of the new ones are below ground level. Not at all like the ones that you have to drive 5 miles to in the UK, usually outside your local Asda, which defeats the point in my book. After you have used all that fuel, you arrive only to get there and find someone's old pram, cardboard boxes all over the place, broken glass on the floor, or the local divvy rifling through what someone chucked out yesterday.

Here at Whittaker Towers we like to do our bit to save the planet so we recycle anything we can, religiously separating items for the respective containers at the recycling centre.

Then every week along comes the big collection lorry and empties all the bins into the same space in the back of the truck and probably takes it to the local landfill, priceless, why do I bother.

Ace Reporting Update

If you read the blog entry about the English geezer that got had his ear cut off, toes & fingers removed, legs broken and got tortured a few blogs back, just thought that I would let you know that a man and a woman have been arrested in connection with the crime, both were British.
I have no idea how the Portuguese police manged to track them down and arrest them, usually they are not that asute, guess the said Brits must have walked in to the police station to give themselves up.

Cry Baby Fernando Alonso

Can you here the drums Fernando, they are saying that you are not the Formula 1 champion this year, what a shame.

I was glued to the TV on Sunday watching the final race of the Formula 1 Grand Prix season, hoping that the whinging, moaning, toys out of the pram, cry baby Fernando Alonso would not win the drivers World Championship.

Earlier in the season at the German Grand Prix, the dummy spitting Spaniard instigated team orders so that the driver in front of him, who just happened to be his team mate, Fellipe Massa would be ordered to pull over so that Alonso could get past him and so win the Grand Prix.

True to the last, in Sunday's final Grand Prix when again he could not get past another driver in front of him, this time the Russian Petrov, he finished in a lowley 7th place and therefore losing the World Championship to Sebastien Vettel by 4 points, shame.
After the chequered flag, Alonso drove along side Petrov and berated him for not letting him pass during the race, what a dip shyte, does he not know its called racing, you twonk.

Congratulations Sebastien Vettel on becoming World Champion, he's OK, for a German.

Clocks

I love clocks of all kinds, I think its a Whittaker thing as most of my family does too.

I have just spent the last 7 days getting one particular French pendulum clock to work, it has to be perfectly level else the pendulum won't swing, like most pendulum clocks. So each day I have a fiddle, put another piece of packing under one particular leg, give the pendulum a swing and call back later to see if its still swinging.

The next time I pass the clock, it has stopped so I try again. Then on Thursday evening, eureka! success.

Off to play golf on Friday morning, leaving the house maids to do a spot of cleaning. This week we have new maids and you guessed it, I returned from golf to find the clock has stopped due to the maids dusting and my felt levelling pads all over the place, don't you just love 'em.

The Stig

Just thought that you may be interested to see me in my normal work clothes.

Toll roads in the Algarve

Tourism in the Algarve is allegedly down, airlines have cancelled winter flights and except for August the beaches are relatively empty, which is great for all of us that live here.
So in an effort to totally kill off tourism altogether, the Portuguese government are supposedly introducing Road Tolls early next year on the main A22 dual carriageway that runs the length of the Algarve.

There will be no toll booths as they cannot afford to build them, instead they intend to bill the motorists by having microchips fitted to number plates or building a device into the vehicle. Of course they can only do this to vehicles registered in Portugal, so if you are a foreign traveller in any car, motorhome or whatever, registered in any other part of the world, currently you will be exempt.

According to figures released, the estimated cost of a trip from my house to Faro airport which is approximately 100 kilometres, will to be in the region of 22 euros, EACH WAY. The only other option would be to take the EN125 road, which will add at least an hour on a run to the airport. It is also a traffic clogged death trap of a road at the best of times with an increasing death rate each year and this is only going to increase the situation.
The Portuguese love beaurocracy and red tape, and can be a real pain in the ass and a right bunch of numpties, but most of the time I love them to bits.

Health & Safety Portuguese Style

Surprisingly it is 5 years since the house was finished and due to settlement and earthquakes we have a few cracks in the internal and exterior walls, so it is time to get them repaired and the house painted.
Unfortunately Mrs Lynette managed to get hold of the pantone colour chart that has more colours than Joseph had on his dreamcoat, which in turn most of them managed to find their way onto a section of our walls in a test area to see which colour looked best.
Over a period of 3 weeks we have whittled it down to about 10 colours and finally to the chosen 2, which the painters are now busily applying and at their speed will take the next 4 weeks, I prefer to think that they are doing a thorough job.

Now that we have put the clocks back for winter, they arrive each day at 7am disturbing Mrs. Lynette's sleep and start by moving their tower frame across the calacada making a noise like thunder which doesn't put her in a good mood for the day and of which I always get the backlash.
Having moved the tower to todays chosen spot, they then secure it with a thin piece of wire as you can see if you look very closely at the picture, and that is all that's holding the tower from toppling over.
Now that the tower is secure, they ignore it and choose a ladder instead.


In the second picture, they throw all caution to the wind as they continue to work on the roof without the aid of a safety net, Billy Smart would be very impressed.



And if that wasn't enough, for his finale, he balances a ladder on a couple of pieces of wood on the roof, whilst he paints underside of the roof tiles on the roof above, piece of cake really.





It just gets worse, found this one yesterday, he was hanging onto the pillar with one hand and painting with the other, I hope he doesn't need to scratch his nose.

Engagement

Just thought that you would like to know that, today on Bonfire night November 5th , 39 years ago, Mrs Lynette and I got engaged, aaaaarrrrrr and they said it would never last.

Mind you, we have had a few fireworks along the way.

Nature Watch

What a pain in the arse wasps are, especially if you are unfortunate enough to get stung by one there, and yes I know it's November but we still have shed loads of the little blighters. So far I have been stung 9 times this year, they are everywhere.
I have found a number of nests, this one behind the garden thermometer hanging on the wall.
No more wasps in this one after I sprayed them, tell your friends buzzies, I'll be back.

And what about this little beauty for all you arachnophobes;




............found this one just as I was about to remove a few dead plants, think I leave it for a while.

The kittens are no longer kittens and we have managed to catch one of them last week ("Kibbles" named by granddaughter Alice) and took her to the vets to be spayed (the kitten not Alice), she was OK and strangely still wanted attention and a stroke when we returned so she must have forgiven us. She was the easy one, catching the other 3 will be a different matter, their Mum certainly wasn't impressed, she gave us a real throaty rumble.
Meanwhile "Shadow" kitten, so christened because he was never more than 12 inches behind his Mum when we first saw him, has grown up and is already catching rats, I saw him playing with one last week and went to fetch the camera, when I returned he was gone, so was the rat. Shadow is on the right having just been woken up by someone with a camera, along with Buttons (button nose) on the left and Kibbles. The only one missing is Stig named by Morgan, he was probably snoozing in a quieter place.

And this is "Monty" the mongoose, he calls late afternoon and if I am in the garden, he takes one look at me, ignores me and carries on, on his hunt to keep the snakes down to a minimum.
I have only seen 2 snakes in the garden while we have been here, one was about 18 inches and the other was over a metre, they could have been the same one for all I know and had just grown up. Perhaps I should set a trap and tag them, then again perhaps not.


Finally, we have the Partridge family, I think the big one is David, (think about it, if you are younger than 25 years old you may have to do some research) taking the rest of the family for a walk. They ground feed and just walk across the land most days, exactly like the picture although I had to borrow this one from Google.

Swan Lake

I'm not one for sending circular emails, especially when they are about ballet of all things, but I received this one last week which I thought was absolutely fantastic and at 4 minutes long was just about the length of ballet that I could stand.
It really is amazing, give a go and click on the link below;

http://www.nzwide.com/swanlake.htm

Portugal's Ace Reporter

Whilst the local English newspaper, the Portugal News is not the bestest writ, like wot my blog is, news offering in the world, it does offer us expats a modicum of an insight as to what is happening in Portugal, especially if you want to know about the weekly diary of Milo the dog, or about the many dogs and kittens are waiting to be re-homed or in this case, the increasing crime that is sweeping across the Algarve. This latest story caught my eye;

A British citizen who until Tuesday morning this week had been presumed dead by the police has emerged alive but reportedly mutilated and tortured after managing to escape from a house in the Algarve where he had been held captive for the past two weeks over an unpaid drug debt.

The British national, who has been identified as James Ross, 26, reportedly a married father-of-two from Wicks, Caithness, was kidnapped by a group of fellow Brits immediately after he landed at Faro Airport on October 5th.

Prior to his escape the case was being investigated by PJ police and all indications pointed to the man having been kidnapped and murdered.

After managing to flee from his place of captivity (a house near Boliqueime, Loulé), with the help of a passer-by who found him stumbling throughout the streets of Alfontes village, he was taken to an undisclosed hospital for treatment. The man is believed to have been kept “tied up and very mistreated.”

National newspaper Correio da Manhã (CM) claims Ross was held captive after being lured to the Algarve to pay off a £10,000 unpaid drug-deal debt owed to a man identified as John Mclean.

He was allegedly told he could pay off the debt by working on a cannabis farm, but was subjected to the horrific ordeal practically straight after touching down in Faro.

Police will question him about the circumstances surrounding the incident during his stay in hospital.

According to a PJ source the man was partially mutilated on one ear, Lusa News Agency reported.

A different source told Lusa that a Scottish man was being treated in a regional hospital for a partly-cut ear and a wound to a finger, and that the man had been escorted to the hospital by GNR officers.

Regional newspaper Observ-atório do Algarve reported the man, who they identified as a 26-year-old Scotsman, had had an ear, finger and 3 toes amputated, two broken legs and that he has been tortured.

...... "and that he had been tortured", bloody hell, I think that was a bit of an understatement.

Sorry about the glitch in the best joke of all time, I've fixed it now, keep scrolling down for joke.

The Man Who Never Was

I was surprised to hear whilst on our recent trip to Spain, a number of our friends had never heard of "The Man Who Never Was" or Glyndwyr Martin to give him his proper name.
It is a World War II story, code named "Operation Mincemeat", that has always fascinated me about how the Brits launched a man from a submarine carrying Top Secret information about invasion plans, in an effort to deceive the Germans.
Glwndwyr's body was eventually washed ashore near Huelva Spain, where he was subsequently buried after much investigating and meddling from the Spanish and of course Herman the German.
I had wanted to find the gravestone for many years, so on the way back from Spain and very close to Huelva, I set out in search of the cemetery and then the gravestone.
Finding the cemetery was easy, the gravestone was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The cemetery was pristine with row after row of headstones and crypts all kept in wonderful condition.


Obviously looking like a tourist and standing out like a sore thumb from those tending the graves of loved one's, we were about to give up and was approached by a fellow Brit who knew exactly what we were looking for as he had spent the last hour do exactly the same thing. He in turn had been spotted by yet another Brit who knew exactly where the gravestone was. So he escorted my new friend who in turn escorted me, result, the gravestone of Glyndwyr Martin, "The Man Who Never Was".





The full story can be found @ http://www.themanwhoneverwas.com/

Best joke of all time

Best Joke of All Time

As reported in the Daily Mail the other day, this joke was voted the best of all time;

A woman gets on a bus with her baby.

The bus driver says: 'Ugh, that's the ugliest baby I've ever seen!'

The woman walks to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: 'The driver just insulted me!'

The man says: 'You go up there and tell him off. Go on, I'll hold your monkey for you.'

Gonzalez Byass

During the trip to Spain, Jerez to be more precise, I thought it was important that we should sample some of the local vinho. So all 20 of us enjoyed a trip to Gonzalez Byass, the home of Tio Pepe and now also Croft Original Sherry.
It appears that some of the crowd are secret sherry drinkers, and I thought it was a drink that only grannies had.
Do you remember going to the local Berni Inn for a treat on someones birthday, "What would you like to drink granny, oooh, I'll have a schooner of sherry please and make sure its a large one young man", would I dare do any other.

Our tour guide fancied himself as a bit of a comedian, he had a sense of humour that was dryer than the Tio Pepe he was talking about. He told us about the little Spanish mouse who comes out each night from behind the sherry casks to sample the latest brew of which they leave him a glass to drink from and a ladder to make it easier for him to reach the top of the glass, and of course a few peanuts to help it down, sad buggers.

More interesting was that when they had a famous person visit the bodega, they dedicated a cask of their recently brewed beverage and got them to sign the barrel, there were hundreds of them, here are just a few, the first one is the famous dummy spitting Spaniard, Fernando Alonso, the second is my hero and a far better racing driver, Ayrton Senna and the third one is everyone's hero, unless you are a German that is, Winston Churchill.

We enjoyed a nice trip around the vineyard on the Gonzalez Byass Express, finishing off with some sampling of their finest, which their were very tight with, we needed more samples.

Monetcastillo, Spain

Sometime back in July we decided, we would like to go to Spain to play some golf at the end of the holiday season. That being the case, we asked a couple of friends if they would like to join us and they said that they thought it was a great idea and would love to come.
So we searched the interweb and found what we thought was a fantastic deal, which turned out to be around 50 euros a night, full board and unlimited golf in a 5 Star hotel in Jerez, Spain, brilliant.
With such a great deal on offer, the word spread and our couple of friends turned into a dozen and a dozen soon turned into 20, that was when we had to close the door and say no more.

Unfortunately the time we chose to go away was about the time that the golf club captain has his golfing trip away, and we were being dubbed by some as the "Alternative Captain's Away
Weekend", but the original 6 were never joining that party anyway and it was never meant as an alternative, my apologies to Mr Captain if it was ever seen that way.


Just 2 days before we were due to leave, the tour operator Golf da la Luz, emailed us to inform us that the hotel had doubled booked and we would not be staying in a 5 star hotel but in the 4 star hotel, part of the Montecastillo resort next door. This turned out to be a total rouse, I later found out from the hotel manager, that we were never intended to stay in the 5 star hotel, we were always staying in the 4 star one and Golf da la Luz knew this all the time. Strangely, Golf da la Luz did this to us 2 years ago at a different resort, again using the same ploy. So if you choose the same company to organise any trip for you, beware, Dan the man at Golf da la Luz is about as much use as a bike in San Francisco and not to be trusted.
However, away we went, all 20 of us to Montecastillo near Jerez, Spain. I had been there twice previously about 10 years ago and at the time the course was on the European Tour as part of the Volvo Masters series and obviously was in fantastic condition. Today, perhaps due to the economic climate, the course and the whole area is a shadow of its former self.







Allan Pooley offering Lynette some advice, yeah right

Having said that, everyone played some good golf, some better than others, some found the course very long, which it is. The greens were lightening quick, which suited me, but obviously didn't suit me enough as I could only manage second place in the better ball with my partner, Gloria Pooley.

This is me with Gloria, can you spot the village idiot.

Winners of the pairs better ball competition,

Linda Anthony & Dave Bredo

...............and if all else fails, try table tennis.


David Haddon & Steve Collingwood closely watched by the net cord judge and umpire, Glynis Bredo.

Parrot Sitters UK Branch

Meet Paul (little Jimmy) & Alison, who flew in from the UK to parrot sit while we went on a jolly to play some golf in Spain.
We have known little Jimmy, literally from the day he was born 30 years ago when he came into the world as our next door neighbour. As he grew up Paul would inevitably get in to trouble and his mum would tell him off. We always knew when this happened as we would see this little blond head bobbing up and down across our bay window and one of us would comment, "Jimmy's in trouble again, he's on his way round", where he would find comfort in a few custard creams and a bag of whotsits.
As soon as he was big enough, I enrolled him along with my boys in the (Nottingham Forest) Junior Reds. Paul never grew in height until much, much later on and I was still shoving him through the Junior Reds gateway at half price when he was 18, happy days, Forest even won a few games as well, how times change.

Pink Ribbon

It's October, that can mean only one thing, it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month across the world and Portugal is no different.
For the past 10 years, we have been raising money for Breast Cancer Awareness in the Algarve and this year very poignantly, the Pink Ribbon Golf Tournament at Parque da Floresta was held on 10th of the 10th of the 10th and if you are reading this too early in the morning, I mean 10th October 2010.
Over the years, in conjunction with the Parque da Floresta Charity fund, we have managed to raise over 80,000 euros which has all gone to Mamamaratona, Associacao Oncologica do Algarve.
Checking the weather forecast 7 days before the competition, it didn't look good. However just as at Celtic Manor last week, for the Ryder Cup, there is nothing that we could do, we just had to get on with it. Checking the forecast every day didn't help as it never changed one bit and sure enough on the Friday before the Sunday competition, it bucketed it down followed by the same on Saturday.
On the Sunday we began with sunshine followed by several sharp bust's but nearly 80 golfers were supportive enough to brave the conditions, after all its only water and you can only get soooooooooooo wet.
At around 11am in glorious Algarve sunshine, the golf got underway, with the format being a better ball stableford competition. Finally at around 6pm and several downpours later, the final group came in, the scores could be checked and the results announced.
Yours truly and the chief organiser of the Pink Ribbon, Mrs Lynette, managed to follow up last years second place with third place, winning a fabulous set of lead crystal glasses, probably the same set that we won for second place last year. My good friend Bob Kelly suggested that if we put the glasses as a 1st place prize, we could finally get rid of them as we had no chance of winning, well he used to be a good friend.





In second place this year, with a score of 44 points was Pete & Debbie Lanario who was over the moon at winning her first golf prize.
The winners with a fantastic score of 45 points was the formidable Portuguese pairing of Julio Marcela & Chico Borges, I think they both looked pleased as well.
Along with raffles, auctions and name the Doggie, which spookily was won by the same person as last year Louise Gemmell, (who kindly donated the Doggie back for auction), the total money raised on the day was just short of 3,000 euros, another fantastic result for Breast Cancer Awareness in the Algarve.

Thank you to everyone for taking part and very generously supporting the day.