Monday, January 30, 2012

A22 Update (Part 123) - May the farce be with you

 
This just happens to be my 100 blog and I have chosen an except from the, letters to editor page of the  local newspaper, The Portugal News,where one reader has taken the trouble to vent his feelings on the A22 toll road situation which I thought he summed  up quite nicely.

The reader writes;
"A22 Tolls and foreign visitors SIR, Although this topic must be coming wearisome for many,as a visitor to Lagos for many years now, I should like to make the following observations: I drive from the UK to Lagos
each year via Spain, spending the entire winter here.I arrived in November prior to the imposition of tolls. Last week, my son and his wife came to spend a few days with us, and, because of the arrival and departure times of their flights,to brave the EN125 was a very risky business.
Having made the journey to Faro and back (which the boards on the A22 informed me cost a total of 13.20 euros return I went to my local Pay Shop to pay after the 48 hours had elapsed.I was told that my plate did not appear on the computer and that I must go to Lagos Post Office to pay.
There I was told that not only couldn’t I pay there either, but that I had to ring a number in Portimão to sort out payment. Portimão gave me an email address, to which I explained what had occurred and stated my desire to pay the requisite amount, asking if I could do so by debit or credit card.The response referred to my ‘Complaint’(sic) and told me that ‘every vehicle with a foreign registration plate should only travel on Electronic Toll motorways with a temporary Nº1 device.This device can be obtained at a local Post Office’.
Not only is it impossible to obtain one in Lagos, I believe there may now be a possibility of acquiring one in Aljezur,although the only definite outlet is in FARO.
However,the cost is €27.50 euros rental, plus €6 for the first week and €1.50 for every week thereafter, up to a maximum of 90 days, when the whole process has to be repeated again. As someone who stays here longer than that period, the ramifications become ever more absurd.

Also, although theoretically the initial deposit can be recouped, to do so, one has to return it to the Post Office from which it was purchased.
Additionally, the charges, as far as one can gather, will eventually surface at one’s home address in the UK,where, as the payment will not have been made within the 5 days allowed, fines and ‘administrative charges’ will be levied.

To summarise, I have either to incur lengthy and expensive journeys to rent ‘temporary devices’ and then return same, pay extortionate rental levies whilst in possession of something which I am unlikely to use more than a couple of times at the most throughout my stay here, and make a journey to leave Portugal without the device if I have returned it, thereby incurring further charges and fines,or make every journey into and out of Portugal, plus all those whilst here, using only the EN125, causing further congestion to those who use it on a daily basis as local residents and increased danger to myself.
Small wonder that the decline in tourist revenue which is referred to in just about every article in your paper is gathering pace.

When foreign visitors, whose own countries’ economies are not exactly healthy, are faced with such idiotic and ill-thoughtout schemes, they are likely to think twice about further visits  to a country that seems unwilling or unable to bring any form of rational planning to such impositions. All I wish to do is to pay the actual toll which my journey(s) warrant.I happily pay the tolls on the Bilbao- Burgos Motorway, which reduces the time and stress of my journey down towards Portugal. I would happily pay the 11 or more euros for the journey from Lagos to Vila Real. What I need is a simple way of doing so without being
‘ripped off’ for unnecessary rentals and time consuming journeys to places miles from where I am residing."

The farce continues...............

Friday, January 27, 2012

Toast and mamalade anyone???

Just been back to the UK for a few days, gosh it was cold, but it was nice to see the grandchildren again.
The last time we went back to the UK was before Christmas and on our return, we found that the gardeners had got a bit too excited with the secateurs and had scalped my oleander plants down to ground level.
Before we left this time, I thought it safer to be more explicit and go around the garden with the head gardener, (sounds rather grand doesn't it, he's only the head gardener because he owns the garden company), and make a list of what plants needed pruning and by how much, just stick to the garden and keep out of the orchard I told him. That's idiot proof I thought, couldn't be clearer.

When we returned, it just so happened that the gardeners were in the garden beavering away and I had a wander around to see how much they had managed to do, not expecting them to have done all on the list. When I got to the orchard, which they were told to keep out of, the fruit trees were bare and all the fruit lay on the ground, grapefruits, oranges, lemons and limes had been pruned and taken off the trees.
Seville Oranges

I thought it best to fetch the local kommandant who I knew wouldn't be pleased to see for herself, and to save her going berserk at me sometime later.
To say her indoors went ape sh*t would be a bit of an understatement, and according to plan she wasn't going ape sh*t at me for a change. Joáo the head gardener quickly called over and was getting both barrels. I am not sure if he had been told off by a woman before as the Portuguese still believe in male dominance.
However, he was under no illusions that he was getting a rollicking and he was most apologetic explaining that he didn't know that the understudies were in the orchard as he was in the top half of the garden, but they were his men and he did take full responsibility.

Lemons
We couldn't help thinking that as they knew we were away and as it was Friday, just maybe the fruit was headed for the Saturday market in Lagos, which just so happened to be the next day.
However, as they had been caught at it, we quickly gathered up the fruit and for the past 7 days we have been frantically making marmalade a month before we intended to.
As we were a bit short of jars and with only a small crop of lemons we had to put out a local APB in search of a supply of more jam jars and lemons. Within 24 hours the local supply chain came to out aid with a plentifull supply jam jars and lemons.
So far we have made over a 100 jars and there are still more than 20 kilo's and grapefruits and 50 kilo's of oranges still to do.
Anyone for toast & marmalade.

Just a few of the jars of marmalade

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Homes Under the Hammer

 
Had a real De Ja Vu last week when our very first house was on the TV programme Homes Under the Hammer. 
We had been warned that the TV crews were at the house earlier in the year, so for the past 2 months I had set up the programme on series record. Fortunately we didn't have to watch them all as the synopsis always mentions where in the country the houses featured in the programme are located.
Last week the screen info mentioned "a 2 bedroom semi in Derbyshire", and I thought this could be worth a look. Sure enough, there it was the house that we bought for £4,150 back in 1974 was going under the hammer and was sold at auction for £59,000.
When we bought the house, we spent all our savings and didn't have enough money left to buy a kettle. We spent a few years in the house, knocking walls down and putting a nice new staircase between the two downstairs rooms. We also put in a fabulous stone fireplace which was all the rage back then. 
When we moved in the bathroom still had the original cast iron bath, complete with its own watermark half way up the side and a wonderful brown stain in the bottom.
Every week when the family allowance was collected, we went around to the tile shop to buy a box of tiles for the bathroom, which me and my dad put onto the wall. Low and behold, almost 40 years later there on the TV screen were the same tiles on the bathroom wall, with the same new bath well it was then, and bathroom fittings that we put in. The bath ahd cheap plastic taps, all we could afford and I remember fitting them and stripping the threads off. I took them back to the shop for replacement but they were still there also.
The two upstairs bedrooms had a fireplace in each with a Adams cast iron fireplace, I took them out and dumped them at the tip, they are worth a small fortune today.
The whole house looked the pits on the TV programme and the back garden was no better, resembling something like the Amazon jungle, what had happened to all my lovely dahlias and the patch of asparagus that we lovingly planted. It was really strange watching your old house on TV.
However, once the people that bought the house at the auction had finished the renovation, it look fabulous and well worth the new estimated value of £110,000.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Shadow & Ben

I've not mentioned the kittens for a while, we've still got them although they are no longer kittens, they must be coming up to a couple of years old very soon. They are still feral and don't like to be handled although Kibbles is the cute one and she will let you nurse her, while the others you can stroke but not pick up.
Mum cat (Mowgli) will not let you do either, she has a long memory and will not forget the last time we picked her up while she was under the influence of 2 sleeping pills and still fought like crazy to get away. She has never forgiven us for taking her to the vets to take her bits away.
Anyway, the cat in the picture is "Shadow", so called because when he was young he was never far from his mothers side, he has assumed the position of "Top Cat".
The other one, "Stig", wanders through the house and got shut in once without us knowing, when we returned, the alarm people had been out as Stig had set it off while we were out.
Shadow is a scrapper and is always turning up with a new battle scar after the nights hunt.
As you can see, he has found a new playmate, although like most 2 year olds, it hasn't lasted long and he has already broken it. It doesn't go any more and looks like we could be going to "Rats R Us" for a refund. This one called Ben is about 30cm long, nose to tail, that's about 1 foot in old money.

Well done Shadow, that'll stop the little blighter chewing my telephone cables.



Sunday, January 01, 2012

Lexus Hybrid

At the beginning of the year, I blogged about the trouble that I was having with the BMW X5 and even worse, the very poor service that I got from the BMW dealer in Portugal.
I have now returned the said X5 to the UK and being a green planet tree hugging person that I am, I was persuaded to buy a Lexus Hybrid 4x4.
I had read and spoken to a few people, one of whom told me that he had once gotten 54 mpg from his own Lexus of the same type. That'll do for me I thought, we'll have some of that.

I have now had the car a couple of months and not only am I getting nowhere near that, I am lucky to get the dam thing started and when I do, I am having to buy petrol, (as the hybrid doesn't work with diesel), which is about 20cents a litre more than diesel in Portugal, at the very best I am only getting around 30 mpg.

To make matters worse, I am having the same problems with the battery going flat as I did with the X5. No I am not leaving the radio on, the interior light on or anything else for that matter.
The other day I went to the car in the morning and the battery was totally flat, I jump started it and drove 60 kilometres not using the toll road, on a journey which took just over an hour.
When I got there, we did a bit of shopping and came back to the car around 30 minutes later, I started the car, drove a couple of kilometres to my next stop, did some shopping, had lunch, went back to the car about 90 minutes later, battery totally flat.
Fortunately, I still had the jump leads in the car and stopped a fellow Brit who kindly gave me a jump, if you see what I mean.

The following day, I rang Lexus in the UK who were very helpful and admitted to having a similar problem with the Lexus 300 GS model and that she would get someone out within the hour. Yeah right, does he not reaize that it's Christmas.
However, as promised and about 60 minutes later, a breakdown truck was at my door. He was probably in his early 20's, spoke perfect English and I explained the problem. He said that he had be told to take the car away to the local dealership. Unfortunately, the "local" Lexus dealership is in Faro, some 100 kilometres away. I asked if he was going down the toll road, he said that he was not as he was boycotting the motorway.



The good news is, as a by-product of the breakdown, I have found a way of getting a better fuel consumption from the Lexus, ..............................................................put in on the back of a truck.