WAGS 21.04.2021: At the Oriq, or Can you squeeze me in?

 

I shall start this blog from the Silves perspective since it seems that Paul is taking a short rest from the blogging treadmill. I must confess that, having become used in these past few weeks to writing about everything under the sun except walking, it is difficult to break the habit of inconsequential waffling. As it is I seem to have spent the past week in thinking about words because somewhere ( I cannot now remember where or how) I came across an article which was musing on the strange fact that English does not have a single word for “the day before yesterday” but yet it does have a single word for the act of throwing somebody out of a preferably upstairs window, lower floor windows not being  generally used for this particular exercise. That word is “defenestration”. There is even a poem on the subject of defenestration written by a rather interesting chap called R.P. Lister. Here it is:-

DEFENESTRATION

I once had the honour of meeting a philosopher called McIndoe

Who had once had the honour of being flung out of an upstairs window.

During his flight, he said, he commenced an interesting train of speculation
On why there happened to be such a word as defenestration.
There is not a special word for being rolled down a roof into a gutter;
There is no verb to describe the action of beating a man to death with a putter;
No adjective exists to qualify a man bound to the buffer of the 12.10 to Ealing,
No abstract noun to mollify a man hung upside down by his ankles from the ceiling.
Why, then, of all the possible offences so distressing to humanitarians,
Should this one alone have caught the attention of the verbarians?
I concluded (said McIndoe) that the incidence of logodaedaly was purely adventitious.
About a thirtieth of a second later, I landed in a bush that my great-aunt brought back from Mauritius.
I am aware (he said) that defenestration is not limited to the flinging of men through the window.
On this occasion, however, it was limited, the object defenestrated being, I, the philosopher, McIndoe.

(R. P. Lister (23 November 1914 – 1 May 2014), was an English author, poet, artist and metallurgist.). He is worth looking up in Google.

Logodaedaly is the invention of words, Daedalus having been a mythical Greek inventor.

We do not know if there is or ever was a real philosopher called McIndoe.

German has a word for “the day before yesterday” -  vorgestern. So does French – avant-hier – if one can allow a double-barrelled construction such as that to count as a word. So why doesn´t modern English? We need not go into Old or Middle English usageshere.

Talking of words, I was asked recently if I knew what the Japanese for hallo was. I didn´t. I could recall the Japanese word sayonara, but that means good-bye.

So, of course, later I looked it up. Apparently, there are about 19 different ways of saying hallo in Japanese, depending on who you are saying it to, e.g. their social rank relative to yours, and the time of day you are saying it.

That last bit about the time of day in relation to greetings is quite understandable to us in Portugal. We have all of us been in the situation where you walk into a restaurant here in the early evening and greet the staff with a cheery “Boa Noite” only to be answered with a firm “Boa Tarde”; so the next week when you go in, you greet the same staff with a confident “Boa Tarde”, only to be answered with a didactic “Boa Noite”. You can´t win, it seems.

But back to Japan, there is one common modern way of saying hallo “Moshi-moshi” but apparently that is only to be used when you´re having a conversation by mobile phone.

Foreigners in Japan are best advised to stick to saying “haro” and “bi-bi”.

Anyway, enough of the preliminary waffle.

It is now time for Rod´s report on the Silves WAGS Bubble´s recommencement walk. Initially, there was to be a group of six, but Maria managed at the last minute to SQUEEZE IN. Over now to Rod.

Having detected not a little «ennui» in the tenor of Paul´s blog last week, I cast about, looking for something reasonably original to enliven proceedings. And yes, then I came up with it...I could write about a walk, something not done almost since last year!

Admittedly it wasn't a very long walk in the event but after such a lengthy lay-off it was probably better to start slowly.  There had been some pre-discussion about how many were permitted to walk under lockdown rules, and whether westerly WAGS, or WWAGS, could traverse forbidden Portimão territory to rendezvous with easterly WAGS, or EWAGS..they decided not! 

  Well, 7 diehard ( perhaps not quite sure that is the right word these days) EWAGS, gathered at the unearthly hour of about 8.45 at the inevitably closed Oriq café. That it was such an unearthly hour was entirely the fault of the leader who must have still been dreaming of days long gone by when it was commonplace to set off at such an hour. So it was with surprisingly muted grumbles that John & Hazel, Terry & Jill, Maria, Yves and  yours truly set off  up the hills south of the café towards the big Portimão REN substation.

 The last time we covered that area, towards the end of last year, we had postponed our walk to a Thursday and paid for such a misdemeanour by running into the Algarve Division of the Portuguese Army engaging in mock (perhaps) warfare against the luckless avian dissidents.  This time we believed we  were to have the field to ourselves...but how wrong can you be. Instead of warfare the battlefields had been scrubbed clean of  shrub and scrub leaving no cover for the avian community, who had fled to more agreeable pastures.

  In their place were row upon row, hillside upon hillside of steel frames backed up by earth flattening bulldozers and JCB's with lines of Maersk containers disgorging hectares of solar panels stretching from Porto de Lagos all the way to the Arade River. Ah well one has to believe that is the price of tourism development...assuming it does start again one day.

All this was firmly barricaded by impenetrable fencing which put paid to continuing south and in the event obliged us to truncate the intended walk somewhat. Indeed the distance covered was but a miserable 5k, but perhaps partly made up for by most of it being either up or down, 

Three pioneers lead the way up to the trig

and included a visit to a rarely reached trig point with the inevitable benefits of  splendid views of not only the surrounding countryside but of Maria atop of it.  

Hey ´oop!

The old traditions must be maintained

There were of course flowers to be picked

and some sucker had to be picked to carry them home

From there we descended with little alternative other than returning to the Café Oriq...and it wasn't even midday! This was indeed too early for Terry, Jill, Yves and Maria to contemplate comestibles but John, Hazel and yours truly were unable to resist a tomato laden tosta mista which certainly proved to be amongst the best.

 It was great to get together again and to find that despite occasional gravity of the Blog the general content of WAGS conversation was reassuringly undimmed.

And we can leave the closing words and music to Fats Waller

Well not quite as John foolishly handed over to me to finish and publish. nevertheless Fats was a bit of class to end on penultimately.  As you would expect, the Lagos Bubble had not grasped the nettle and squeezed it with the same alacrity as the Silves Massif (Bubble 6 or less; Massif - 7 or more). Antje and Chris had done their Daily walks with Sasha, who had not been well, and M and I had also been sauntering, mostly separately as M has developed a penchant for a pre-dinner stroll, when the Chef is clearly going to be occupied. I prefer a morning bracer to get the metabolism flowing, Nevertheless I achieved, according to Withings, 42082 steps last week, a distance of 50.9 km and burned 16,077 kcal, but still weighed the same this Monday as I did last Monday! Cf. the paltry 4.83 km the Silves Massif racked up on Wednesday, despite tackling a few undulations.

   Anyway to complement, or underline John's Fats Waller Classic, I started to research the innocent word  used by Maria when applying to join this week's walk. I started with my 'Go To' source the Urban Dictionary - and quickly backed off as there were far too many NSFW connotations. I decided we all knew what she really meant, but the subsequent deluge of innuendo, was all based on fantasy and wishful thinking, - although the photo of Rod assisting Maria to climb the trig point, had some rather unfortunate metaphorical meaning.

 Like John I then went for songs, hoping that the great musicians might assist. Alas a search for songs about 'Squeeze in' not only focused on a group that somehow passed me by, called The Squeeze, but quickly progressed to squeezing fruit - and not just grapes.

One of the results was finding an inventory of 23 songs that use fruit for a sexual metaphor!

Stop reading now if this may affect your mental health.

One of the most influential Blues guitarists of all time, sold his soul for the lyrics ' You can squeeze my lemon 'til the juice runs down my legs. ' 

  This was covered by the magnificent Led Zeppelin who stressed those lyrics and renamed it 'The Lemon Song'

    Sonny Boy Williamson, a legendary Chicago Harmonica Player again went for lemons, but of the female persuasion with his piece, Until My Love Comes Down.

He goes on to mention his lady's other fruity assets too. In his period there doesn't seem to be much mention of mangos or papayas, nor on the other side - 'tomatos'.(sic)

Nevertheless it all seems to culminate with peaches and two songs thus entitled. An ambitiously named group called The Presidents of the USA starts off innocuously enough, but gets fairly dark later when he dreams in the song. I won't publish this song' in a family blog, - look it up yourself!

  Finally The Stranglers, who are not renowned for subtlety, sing Peaches and descend into a chasm of innuendo, double-entendre and profanity. Who would have thought the French word 'clitares' meant bathing suit! Well Google Translate can't cope with it, so we will have to resort to our resident linguist to confirm or deny!

    Again for the sensitive, I will refrain from posting it.  If you can't resist try YouTube Music.

     I hope we have the opportunity to get together , both E and W after the next review. Until then,, I hope everything is peachy for you, and you get your 5 a day regularly.