Today there were thirty men in the Marquês square, eight playing cards and twenty-two standing around them. If they weren’t playing they were talking to each other or just watching – I counted them. One player was having some kind of angry exchange with another player but I couldn’t tell if that was his general demeanour or whether he was actually mad about something. The other thing I’ve noticed each time I pass them is that they are all really serious, this card game in the park is not to be taken lightly, empires have fallen over such things.

Two hours in the pool today, trying different strokes, trying to get my body back, trying to stretch through that pain in my right arm. By the time I’d done forty lengths of different strokes, it was my left arm that ached and my right arm was fine, we’ll see how that translates in the gym tomorrow. During the dilapidated moth today I got a cramp in my right leg – “potassium,” said Thiago, the lifeguard. I suppose two hours, third day back swimming is quite a lot but I had to stay in because the naked firemen were back.

I went to the psychedelic psupermarket although I didn’t think we needed anything, so how did I end up with two bags of shopping? In the queue, there was ‘another’ man who didn’t have enough money for his purchases. He had two pizzas and a red bull. The check-out girl was on the phone for a supervisor to come and sort out the cash register because she’d already punched everything in. I asked how short he was (it couldn’t be much). She said a euro, I had some cash in my pocket and gave her a euro. He was very grateful. The odd thing was that there was some change out of that euro and she gave it to him, not me, haha. He looked at me, it could only have been cents, I told him to keep it, he was grateful again but not having enough for a cheap dinner and a drink whilst queuing up in the busy early evening to get to the register and be short, is a pretty bad state of affairs. Also, he had two pizzas so I imagine one was for a family member.

T-shirt watch today was two Rolling Stones shirts which I’d mistakenly left out of the top ten popular T-shirts in Portugal yesterday. It looks like this:

Ramones
The Dark Side Of The Moon
The Rolling Stones
Nirvana
Metallica
AC/DC
Iron Maiden
Guns N’ Roses
Joy Division
TBC

It’s interesting that they are all bands but one is an album and the overall top T-shirt seems to be about not just the band’s music, but also the image and the T-shirt design.

I spoke to Boydy in Bristol and then watched as Liverpool got hammered at Napoli tonight 4-1, deservedly so. Tuchel got fired by Chelsea and the money barons are trying to headhunt Potter from Brighton, tragic. The corner shop has been doing well, now they want some for the supermarket.

Music today has been a regular favourite, Pretty Things – S.F. Sorrow (1968). This from Wikipedia:

“S.F. Sorrow is the fourth album by the English rock band Pretty Things. Released in 1968, it is known as one of the first rock operas ever released. Based on a short story by singer Phil May, the album is structured as a song cycle telling the story of a main character “Sebastian F. Sorrow”, from his birth, through love, war, tragedy, madness, and his disillusionment with old age”.

I saw them once live in Australia in a much later incarnation, but they were still really great. I spoke to guitarist Dick Taylor who was originally the bassist in the Stones. Singer Phil May sadly died aged 75 in 2020. He famously had the longest hair. R.I.P.

Music Of The Daze

Pretty Things

Phil May – vocals
Dick Taylor – lead guitar, vocals
Wally Waller – bass, guitar, vocals, wind instruments, piano
Jon Povey – organ, sitar, Mellotron, percussion, vocals
Skip Alan – drums (on some tracks, quit during recording)
Twink – drums (on some tracks, replaced Alan), vocals

Norman Smith – producer
Peter Mew – engineer
Ken Scott – engineer on “Bracelets of Fingers”
Phil May – sleeve design
Dick Taylor – photography