TO WHERE I AM NOW

So today is Portugal Day and when we put our heads out into the street it was quiet but that’s because we live in town and offices and lots of the shops were closed. The ladies of the day were still there despite the lack of traffic. We called an Uber and headed to the beach at Foz (pronounced ‘foh-sh’). It’s the first time we’ve headed to the sea since Christmas Day. In Penzance, we went almost every day but that 15-minute journey or half an hour on the train to Matosinhos makes it just that little bit harder – you can’t just amble down there. We didn’t arrive till around 5 PM which was probably perfect as the families and the kids were already heading home, the people who had been there since the morning would have got their fill and ready to do something else so there were fewer people than at midday. There were still lots of people around though, sitting in beach cafes and bars, lying on the beach in their G-strings, the girls too. Lots of people walking the promenade, bikes and roller skates, skateboards and runners. People with yapping dogs, people with docile dogs, young people, old people, lots of masks, it’s Portugal, people here really try and err on the side of caution and do their best with the pandemic – whatever people say is the truth.

The Uber driver was nice, he asked if we were musicians. Haha, it’s obvious apparently, that glowing neon light flashing above our heads. He asked for our names and proceeded to type our names into his phone to find videos. He told me I had a good voice and thought I sounded like Peter Murphy!!! Haha, what? He was a big fan of The Cult and I told him in the ex-band that we had toured with both Peter Murphy and The Cult. There was a moment there when I wished he’d kept his eye on the road but he managed to avoid crashing into the back of the bus and not swerving into the parked car we passed as he swayed a little to and fro. If I’d have been driving and he’d have said that about Peter Murphy I certainly would have crashed, luckily I don’t drive.

We walked along the promenade and then down onto the path beside the sea, stopping here and there to just sit and stare out at the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. This is not the most beautiful part of Portugal as far as beaches go, although there’s plenty of sand, there’s also plenty of rocks and there’s something of the feeling of a city beach. There are piers and off in the distance, you can see the cranes and industrialisation of Matosinhos. We decided to walk the full stretch from Foz to Matosinhos and ended up walking almost 5 km, passing by the full cafes to the right and the sea and the rocks on the left. We spotted the same birds we see in Penzance, the invisible sandpipers and actually not too many gulls. The sea is still very cold and there were not many people braving it. At one little break in the rocks, a family were screaming joyfully as they paddled and were hit by waves. We passed the Castelo do Queijo (Cheese Castle), an ancient fort from the 6th century. There were cannons and towers added in the 15th century but there didn’t seem to be any way to get in for a closer look but you could see the cannons hanging over the walls. As we got closer to Matosinhos we could see that we were actually hitting another town. Rows and rows of apartment buildings and in the water by the beach lots of surfers, struggling to find decent waves.

We haven’t been to Matosinhos before but it’s a place where a lot of people live, it might be a little cheaper than in the town even though it’s by the sea. It’s somehow modern and rundown at the same time as if in the sixties and seventies they decided to build more modern housing as the ancient city of Porto was beginning to fall into disrepair. We managed to find a Thai restaurant two blocks from the beach and I had the weirdest Pad Thai Tofu even though the owners were a Portuguese man and his Thai wife. She was thrilled when I said khaawp khun khap to her (thank you in Thai). The waiter was cool and from Rio de Janeiro and his wife was from Chorley (a town 20 miles northwest of Manchester). He said that her father was from Liverpool and he didn’t understand anything he said. Talking of Liverpool, on the way back whilst waiting for the metro there was a kid in a Liverpool shirt who was uncertain how to react when I told him where I was from. I think it was possibly a language thing although he seemed to understand when I brought up this year’s performance and TAA’s injury – football talk. On the metro we stared at a mosquito on the window all the way home, it didn’t move. A wonderful day.

Music today is the last track from Noctorum’s Sparks Lane as the weekend’s Record Store Day approaches. The track Qu’est-ce Que C’est? sounds like some kind of French Hawkwind with a frantic German woman wandering onto the stage to answer the question with Ich weiss nicht! How could you resist those breezy international days before Brexit?

QU’EST-CE QUE C’EST?

Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça?

Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça?
Ich weiß (weiss) nicht
Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça?
Ich weiß nicht

Hurt your feelings

Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça?

Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça?
Warum fragen Sie mich das? Ich weiß nicht.
Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça?
Warum fragst du mich das? Ich weiß nicht.

Qu’est-ce que c’est, ça?