Hi Everyone
You can probably guess by the title of this week's blog that we have escaped from our English winter at least for a few days. We left home in a flurry of snowflakes to emerge a few hours later into an almost guaranteed 20C daytime temperature with overnight frost unheard of. I remember years ago a flight captain announcing that we had now completed the safest part of our holiday in his aircraft when we landed at our destination. This again proved to be true as we contemplated another end of life experience in the taxi from the airport. From previous experience of Madeira, we knew that you are lucky to walk more than one hundred yards on the flat and that everything is up on this extinct volcanic island. Now this is important as you approach middle age so it was probably predictable when we found that it was 45 steps from street level to the entrance to our apartment, something we now had to negotiate at least three times each day. It is about six or seven years since we were last in Madeira but it is a 'staggering' reminder that what we easily did then in negotiating the hills and steps we cannot do now without being very conscious about where we put our feet. Anyone who has been to Madeira knows that there can be difficult landings at the airport. We had an absolutely trouble free flight and landing, unlike a flight two days earlier that took 61 hours to fly from Manchester to Madeira with the passengers spending one night on the nearby island of Poto Santos, and a second night in the Canary Islands before finally being able to land in Madeira the same day as ourselves due to bad weather.
One evening, we went to a Beatles concert. We arrived at the English church, I have no idea why it is called the English church but at least the Portuguese had not stolen it back from us, to find a young man staggering round the corner with a pile of plastic chairs for what was to be an outdoor concert. He repeated this another three times before standing behind a dodgy table selling tickets and serving wine from a stack of wine glasses that threatened to crash from the table at any time. To add to his problems he kept disappearing to get more bottles of wine to meet a greater demand than he had anticipated. Just as concert time arrived, although the weather was fine and sunny, he announced that the concert would now take place in the church. Now, of course, we were not expecting four long haired lads from Liverpool or even four long haired Madeiran lads looking like four long haired lads from Liverpool . What we got was two violins and a cello with surprise surprise the young man staggering with the chairs, selling the tickets, and serving the wine, the leader of the trio. Having put all that chaos behind, they then treated us to a wonderful hour plus of Beatles music finishing of course with Hey Jude which we hummed quietly to although there were obviously a few ladies there who had fainted at the Beatles concerts in the 60s. Back outside in the church gardens the chairs, the dodgy table, and the wine glasses had all disappeared probably with a lot more efficiency than before. The young man played some amazing violin and piano so, as they say, "Stick to the day job son".
I got in trouble with a waiter one evening this week when I asked for three Americano coffees and a small jug of hot milk. She went off muttering that she always served hot milk with coffee and cold milk with tea. I later explained to her that we almost always get hot milk when abroad but that, for some reason, back home we have to make sure to ask for hot milk with coffee otherwise ............... I think that she forgave me, but looking at the expression on her face I am not so sure.
Just a Thought :
Your wings already exist, all you have to do is fly.
What did fans say when the Beatles broke up? Ono
My friend had his coffee stolen at work last week. He went down to the police station to look at a few mug shots.
Brian
Comments