Holidays are a time to recharge, relax, reinvent, explore places and ideas; time to think. We are not all the same and for some they want Action! Action! Action! This poem by Rose Milligan is quite apposite; it was first published in The Lady magazine in September 1998.

Dust if You Must

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better

To paint a picture or write a letter,

Bake a cake or plant a seed,

Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must but there’s not much time,

With rivers to swim and mountains to climb,

Music to hear and books to read,

Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must but the world’s out there,

With the sun in your eyes and the wind in your hair,

A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,

This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must but bear in mind,

Old age will come and it’s not kind

And when you go (and go you must),

You, yourself, will make more dust.

Buggy jumping off bridges in New Zealand, white-water rafting down the Colorado River, climbing in the Alps or in the Highlands of Scotland, running marathons in far flung places, whatever floats their boat – well, for me sailing of course! You may remember that wonderful quote from WH Davies: “What is this life if full of care, we don’t have time to stand and stare?” For those who like to ‘stand and stare’, or even to sit on the beach and stare at the horizon, letting one’s mind wander, that too is OK!

I am not a fan of motor racing but obviously, by a process of osmosis if nothing else, am aware of Formula One and the Grand Prix races that are staged all over the world; aware also of the UK’s current star Sir Lewis Hamilton. Just five kilometres north of here is the Autódromo do Estoril, a racing track that hosted the Portuguese Grand Prix from 1984 to 1996. Difficulties in maintaining the track to current safety standards meant that Formula One is now raced on the Algarve International Circuit in the south of Portugal and Estoril’s now used for other motorsport events.

A house on Rua Lisboa, on the north side of the Casino Estoril, used to house the Estoril Racing Team. No longer, although delightfully on the pavement outside is a more permanent reminder:

On Wednesday I thought I should work on this postcard as, at that stage, it was only in draft. Always good to write …… then reflect! By the afternoon I thought ‘tomorrow’s Friday so I must add the photographs and finish it’. Then I noticed that the date on my watch seemed a day out (17th), so changed that to 18th. It was only much later that it dawned on me that ‘tomorrow’ was in fact Thursday ….. so I was very pleased with myself, as I had gained a day! My daughter, commenting from somewhere deep in rural France, suggested it might have been the first sign of ‘old age’: perish the thought! 

The Times, commenting about some of the jokes being told at The Edinburgh Fringe, acknowledged it’s been a warm summer but doubted whether the hens are laying hard boiled eggs? (Note 1) Other jokes that caught my eye:

“My dad always said you only get out what you put in. Which was a lovely sentiment but ultimately led to the collapse of his vending machine business.” Ali Brice

“I can’t even be bothered to be apathetic these days.” Will Duggan

“My attempts to combined Nitrous Oxide and Oxo cubes made me a laughing stock.” Olaf Falafel

“Today I sent a food parcel to my first wife. Fed Ex.” Richard Pulsford

A week or so ago, in the setting sun, we joined Carlos & Camila on their patio as they entertained some friends, Dido and Anna, who had just flown in from Rio de Janeiro. Camila was providing succulent slivers of beef cooked to perfection on their BBQ. I had never met the other couple so there was that brief exchange of hello, who are you, where do you live, what do you do, how long are you here, I love your T-shirt/hat/earrings and all that sort of stuff, wanting in some subconscious way to put a metaphysical boundary around them. As I tucked into some of the wonderful beef, I openly admitted I rarely ate much meat these days; an occasional steak and the odd piece of chicken (not to suggest that all cuts of chicken are odd) sort of cover it. I added that I never cook a leg of lamb now as it’s got such a strong smell. “Ah! You have to remove the gland!” says Anna. The what? I was a little sceptical; how didn’t I know that the leg had some gland that smelt when it was being cooked? So I YouTube’d (that’s a verb, right?) it and sure enough a butcher gave a demonstration of how to remove it. This new-found knowledge makes me want to roast a leg of lamb, without the gland!    

Being on holiday allows some of us to read more; last year I finished 51 novels, discarded another one after just three pages and struggled with The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell on and off for weeks before giving up! The obituary of Derlva Murphy (1931-2022) had me ordering Full Tilt from my local Waterstones. (Note 2) It’s the story of her riding a bicycle from Ireland to India in 1963. A woman, on her own, riding a bicycle to India, in 1963? (Note 3) I was not disappointed!

And finally that wonderful Australian response ‘No Worries’ translates to Hakuna Matata in Swahili!

Richard 19^th August 2022

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Did you know that white-feathered hens lay white shelled eggs and brown-feathered ones brown eggs?

Note 2 If a book has explanatory maps and other stuff you want to refer back to, for me a physical book is so much better than an e-book.

Note 3 When her bicycle needed some repair in Iran, she was intrigued to find that the Iranians didn’t use screwdrivers!!!!! Anybody verify that?