The mother-in-law

I have changed my mind on this article so many times, should I, shouldn't I, but I have decided to go ahead because Gwen deserves a mention.

Sadly in the early hours of Sunday 23rd January 2011, Lynette's Mum passed away, the very day that Lynette was flying back to the UK to look after her after her stay in hospital.

Earlier in the week, it was said that she could possibly be coming out of hospital at the weekend and therefore Lynette arranged the flight to be there to look after her at home.

However, during the week things took a turn for the worse and on Saturday we were told that it was unlikely that she would get through the weekend. Try as we might, we were unable to get out of Portugal back to the UK as flights are not available everyday during the winter months.

Elsie Gwendoline Middleton(Gwen) was 78 and I can honestly say that over the 40 years that I have known her, we never had a cross word. Well, thats a slight fib, there was one, when Lynette and I had locked all the doors in the house because we were doing something that we shouldn't have been doing before we were married and the cleaner couldn’t get in.
The cleaner then telephoned Gwen and bubbled us, spiteful little cleaning lady. Gwen knew exactly what was happening and was not best pleased. I've certainly had more cross words with my wife than I have had with the mother-in-law.

God Bless Mum
Love from Mr Whittaker (that's what she always called me).

Sunny days are here again

This is more like it, the weather has been fantastic for the past week by reaching to low 20's with more sunshine on the way.

It was nice to be outside in the garden in shorts and tee-shirt for the past few days in glorious sunshine doing loads of digging, moving plants and general gardening stuff. We even had time for a round of golf last week, again in glorious sunshine, nicely togged out out in my best Nike polo shirt and shorts that Santa brought for me, bostin'.

Buttons the missing kitten showed up this weekend, she was skulking very gingerly around the edge of the garden, moving from hedge bottom to hedge bottom. She wouldn't come anywhere near us, or the other cats, I think that the rest of her family have sent her to Lisbon.

One of our kittens has gone missing

Buttons, the good looking she cat has not been around for food for the past 4 days and it looks like she could have found a boy friend. Unfortunately, Buttons was the only cat that we never managed to catch and to have neutered. As she is now about 9 months old, she could have been seen to by another method, if you get my drift. She'll probably be back with another brude some time in the next few months.

Happy New Year

Well that's it for another year, as usual I have eaten to much turkey and drunk too much of everything.
I do wish Asda & Tesco's and all the rest of the supermarkets wouldn't put tins of Quality Street on special offer at this time of year, still we are down to the last 3 tins.
I hope you all had as good a New Year as we did here in Portugal, even though all the local councils here have been ordered to cut back there expenditure and therefore the New Years fireworks. Lagos still managed to put on a good show, the night was super clear and we were able to see across the bay and enjoy Alvor's fireworks also.
Mrs Lynette managed to lose her camera at the very restaurant that she lost a bracelet at a few years ago, only this time the camera has turned up and we have to collect it later this week.
I personally managed to break a tooth just before Christmas and then another one between Christmas and New Year, it was those bloody chocolate caramels in the Quality Street. That means they weren’t so cheap after all, now that I'll be getting a 100 Euro dentist bill to fix them, priceless.

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.