You may have gathered Celina and I returned to Rio de Janeiro in the second week of January, three years since our last visit. The way Brazil coped with the Covid pandemic was not helped by its then president’s declaration that Covid-19 was no worse than influenza; some 693,000 people died. But globally we have learned to live with this virus and it was only on the beach the other day that I was reminded of slight uncertainties in our post-covid world.

In one of my very first postcards, ‘Beach Life in Brazil’ (PC 08 2014) I wrote about how Brazilians love to spend time on the beach. I added a little postscript (PC 09) about bums and cellulite. Here’s an extract of PC 08:

“Sanwhitches Natooral, Sanwhitches Natooral!” In Portuguese this is actually ‘Sanduiche Natural’, but this is how my untrained ear hears it. For me it epitomises this beach life in Brazil. The elderly chap carries a cool-box over one shoulder, but his body is bent by the uneven weight, his head bowed and he seems to drag his feet through the hot sand, forever crying “Sanduiches Natural” with great enthusiasm! Honestly, would you ever want a sandwich when it’s 36°C? He’s become so familiar me that when I don’t hear him, I wonder whether he’s OK!!”

And now that’s a serious consideration. I don’t see him, don’t hear him except in my memory, and I wonder whether he became a statistic, one of those 693,000. Uncertainty can create sadness. (Note 1)

When I first came to Rio de Janeiro in April 2012 the country’s booming economic cycle, driven by exports of raw materials, was coming to an end: the exchange rate was some Rs 3.25 to the pound. It was one of the BRIC countries, the others being Russia, India, China and South Africa, and this group’s aims were to promote ‘peace, security, development and cooperation.’ Reading those aims in 2023 the word ‘high-falutin’ comes to mind, worthy and idealistic. Maybe the odd disappointment here? Over ten years later the exchange rate is Rs 6.25 to the pound and people here are complaining about the price of basic foodstuffs – just like everywhere else! (Note 2)

One morning we grabbed a cup of coffee in a café in one of the many shopping malls in Leblon, the Rio suburb next to Iponema and Copacabana. The owner was Portuguese and had stencilled some quotes from one of his country’s most famous poets, Fernando Pessoa, on the walls. This one caught my eye: “É preciso tempo para acalmar e recomeçar”

‘I need time to calm down and start again.’

Perfect to think about, sipping a double espresso ……..

Do you cook? I do and I’m thankful that the little chaps in the design centre for Anchor butter, amongst others, ensure the paper has lines dividing the 250g pack into 50g segments.

In Brazil the pack is different, slightly smaller at 200g and the measurements go up in 25g increments; not sure whether this makes it easier for the innumerate or not – just an observation!  

In my postcard PC 235 Generosity in Government (June 2021) I wrote about the investigation into the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, when 72 individuals died as fire swept upwards through the 24 story building. Five years on and the UK Government’s  Housing Minister Michael Gove had admitted there had been an “active willingness” on the part of developers to endanger lives for profit and blamed collective government failures “over many years”. (Note 3) On 30^th January he announced a six-week deadline for developers to sign a government contract to fix their unsafe tower-blocks – or be banned from the market!

Some of you may have watched a recent drama on British television called ‘Tokyo Vice; an American Reporter on the Vice beat in Japan’? It intrigued me enough to read Jake Adelstein’s account of his 12 years in Japan as the first non-Japanese reporter on the newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun. Lots of interesting stuff in this book, some apparently open to criticism as to its voracity, but often demonstrating how nations have developed differently and how what appears normal in one is abnormal in another. For instance Jake wrote many articles about the seedier side of Japanese life, in particular the goings-on in the red light district of Tokyo, Kabukichō. And you know what? In the west we talk about the moment of sexual ejaculation as ‘coming’: in Japan it’s known as ‘going’! Who knew? I guess it depends on your viewpoint? But now I am really confused, not sure whether I am coming or going.

What started as a little joke on Twitter for Lev Parikian, to find the most popular random English word, resulted in over a million votes for 4096 words, whittled down over a year to the winning word Shenanigans; Codswallop came second. You can imagine the scope of this fun idea when the third-place play-off was between Bollocks and Higgledy-piggledy. I scribbled about long words and stuff in PC 275 Kerfuffle et al March 2022.

For those aspiring writers among you, I think this is worth putting somewhere near your ‘work station’, be it in the back bedroom, in the office at the bottom of the garden or on the downstairs loo. The late author and seafarer Jonathan Raban said: “The word fiction doesn’t come from some imaginary Latin word meaning: ‘I make things up as I go along’. It comes from a real Latin word which means ‘I give shape to things’ and I think that taking the material of an actual journey through life and trying to pattern it and discover plot in it is turning it into fiction in the best sense.” And you may remember me quoting the late Australian Clive James: “All I do is turn a phrase until it catches the light.”

All of us who want to turn our thoughts into words look for that, I guess, wanting them to ‘catch the light’!

Richard 24^th February 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Before we left, Celina went for a last dip. She heard Sanduiche Man in the distance. Phew!

Note 2 You may remember from PC 320 The Atacama (2) that Chile has a GDP per capita of US$24,474 whereas Brazil’s is some 60% of that at US$15,553.

Note 3 It sounds as though the disregard for earthquake building regulations in southern Turkey has caused tens of thousands of individuals to die. 

One of the joys of life is to return to the familiar, to catch up with others, to chew the fat and gossip. So it was this week I managed to push open the Hope Café doors for the first time this year, be washed by the warmth of people and the fug from the heating! I immediately spied Sami and Lisa at a corner table as I expected, as we had exchange texts earlier to ensure we could meet. As I walked in, I saw another lady, sixty-something and blonde, quietly reading Robert Harris’ latest book ‘The Act of Oblivion’.

On my way past, nosey as I am, I ask if she’s enjoying it.

“Only just started it” she says “but I love the idea that it’s kept quite close to the historical facts, that when Oliver Cromwell died and the monarchy was restored, there was a hunt for those who had signed King Charles 1’s death warrant. Have you read it?”

King Charles 1’s Death Warrant, with 59 signatories

“Yes … and, given that I don’t generally like historical novels, I found it brilliant. I’m Richard by the way.” “Hello Richard, I’m Mo.”

Not wanting to intrude further, I hoped she’d enjoy her coffee and moved across to Sami’s table. Lisa offered to get me an espresso and left to talk to Josh behind the counter.

“So pleased to see you Richard. Looking well! Haven’t seen you since before Christmas, so bring me up to date. Didn’t you say you were going to Rio de Janeiro?”

“Yes, we had just over three weeks, living in my brother-in-law’s apartment in Barra da Tijuca; he and his family are in Portugal. Wonderful views of Pedro de Gavea, the granite and gneiss mountain that rises 844m almost straight out of the sea. Normally we see its south eastern side. Look! Here’s a photo from that side

……. and this from somewhere near the top

……. and this the view from Barra by the light of a full moon.

During that time we flew off to The Atacama desert in northern Chile for five nights (see PCs 319 & 320).”

“Wow! How was that?”

“Not like anything we have done before, although we acknowledge that we tend to travel to places where there aren’t many people!! (Other places include Alaska, PCs 44 & 45 July 2015, and The Pantanal PCs 17 & 20 Aug/Sep 2014).” I sensed Sami and Lisa wanted to see some photographs so opened my iPad and tried not to bore them too much!

Part of the Moon Valley, north of San Pedro de Atacama

Sami seems very relaxed and his relationship with Lisa is obviously doing him good. He tells me the Post Office Enquiry is now focusing on the IT systems and Post Office Management response, although he’s fairly sanguine about any compensation for lives destroyed (See my postcard PC 235 Generosity in Government (June 2021)).

“Did you see that nonsense in France about the attempt by Emmanuel Macron to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64? Well, we think it’s nonsense but most people in France don’t. Look, I found this interesting table about retirement ages and life expectancy:

Sami, you and I weren’t around when the UK Government first introduced a state pension; it was in 1908. You could claim it on your 70^th birthday; it seems the treasury didn’t have to put a huge amount into the pension pot, as life expectancy for men was 51!  

Nations treat the elderly differently. In Latin America we are recognised in a number of different ways; I have experienced a few. Many years ago we had taken the bus from Rio de Janeiro to Petropolis (See PC 6 2014), about a two hour trip. On arrival in the bus terminal I needed to pop to the loo and, after showing proof of age (!), was waved through the turnstile by the attendant. On this trip both entering Chile at Santiago airport and entering Brazil when we returned, we had our own ‘passport control queue’. In Rio this was very fortunate as five aeroplanes had landed within a few minutes of each other (1000 passengers?) and the queue snaked forwards, around, backwards, around and would have taken hours! In Brazil the local supermarket chain Zona Sul has a check-out queue for those with walking sticks and the elderly; I am not proud when it comes to using it and Celina’s in my wake!”

Sami, Lisa and I caught up with other news.

“You know”, says Sami,” the war in Ukraine has, for obvious reasons, stayed in our consciousness since the invasion in February last year but not necessarily now at the top. Today the horrific earthquake in south eastern Turkey and Syria has our attention, for this loss of life is not the result of someone’s misguided ambitions and hunger for attention, Putin The Pigheaded, ……”

“Hey That’s my name for him, Sami!

“I know! I pinched it!  …. but the earth’s crust doing a little adjustment. In its scale, just a minor itch, but the reality for those buried under collapsed buildings is final.”

Rahmi my local newsagent is Turkish and has many relatives living there, but fortunately just to the north of the earthquake zone; one aunt has a broken leg. In his shop by the till is a plastic container used as a donation box and it’s already very full of folding money.”

Before I leave I go and have a chat with Susie, as the last time I saw her she told me her cousin had been knocked over by an electric scooter in Clapham and was in St George’s Hospital’s ICU. (See PC 312 December 2023)

“They performed miracles, Richard; seriously! There was a neurosurgeon Henry Marsh who managed to stop the brain bleed and the long term outlook is very positive. It’s over two months ago and he should be discharged next week.”

I couldn’t tell her that about the same time my sister-in-law, living in Portugal, had choked on some bread, suffered a blockage of her airways and had subsequently died. All too raw: maybe next time.

I nod to Mo as I leave, mouth ‘maybe see you next time’, and go out into the fresh air.

Richard 17^th February 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Sunrise is often an enchanting time, the promise of a day of one’s life. Wednesday’s was stunning!

I know it’s February already but other topics got priority for my scribbles! Even taking a succinct look at what I want for 2023 (see PC 318) resulted in the need to have a second postcard. Could of course go on and on!!

If two individuals are having a conversation about the price of eggs, or Aunt Jemima’s pancakes, or why they should lose weight, or simply catching up with the relevant or irrelevant gossip, and a mobile, ‘cell’ if you’re American, rings, I want its owner not to say “Sorry! I have to take this”, sometimes not even looking down to see who’s calling them. If you are talking to someone, it’s nice to have their full attention and vica versa. It may be convenient for the person calling to make the call, but may not be for those having a chat. Yet there seems to be a compulsion to answer it and I want it to stop for it’s such bad manners and downright rude.

I want us to repeat to ourselves, every day, that there are no guarantees in life and the time we are given is precious; we need to make the most of every day. A cliché? So what!

We all hate plastic and it’s become the environmental bogyman! But the plastic has become stronger and you can no longer rip it. I want this to change!

I had to cut this plastic bag of potatoes with some scissors!

I know that many other countries are grappling with the same issues as the United Kingdom, different in some nationalistic ways but the real nub the same. One particular one, put briefly: how do you provide affordable health and social care for a population where the proportion of those needing care is growing and that cost has to be paid for by the working population which is shrinking. I want the current government to scope a solution.

The NHS in the United Kingdom is a money pit that suffers from a hugely inefficient bureaucracy. Currently it’s struggling to cope with huge numbers of Covid and winter influenza cases and something needs to change. Too many vested interests have resisted change and more public money is poured after public money, for no identifiable difference. There are lots of good suggestions floating around and not one of them says throw more money at it. If I need to see a health specialist, a dermatologist for instance, I need to go through my GP to get a referral. Why? Why can’t I ring a dermatologist?  

During the pandemic all doctor’s appointments went online; many have stayed on line. But if you can’t get a GP appointment and are so minded to present yourself at A&E for your in-growing toenail or other minor ailment, the ‘cost’ of the A&E appointment is about £360 whereas your GP’s about £40. Makes no sense!

The shadow health secretary has suggested working to phase out smoking, highlighting the damage to individuals’ and the nation’s health and the costs incurred as a result. I could say the same about drinking; on a conservative estimate some 50% of the paramedic’s call-outs are to someone where alcohol is the cause. I want the message to be starker, more understood. I want us all to take more personal responsibility for what we do and how we do it. Recently during a strike by paramedics, attendance at A&E was down 60%. There must have been a proportion of these who didn’t bother to go the following day, having solved the issues themselves?   

I take some medications as a result of having a heart bypass ten years ago. Do I need to take them for ever? So often GPs simply add a new medication for a patient and never review the whole list. Some 80 year olds are apparently taking over 8 different medications. This could be costly for the NHS and I want someone to do a review.

          We sadly too often read of a case where, for whatever reason, a man, and it’s usually a man, has had enough of his family; he decides that the only way to gain personal satisfaction is to kill them, and then commit suicide. Even in this moment of madness, I want him to spare his children. (Note 1)

In the United Kingdom the maximum length of our Parliament is five years. So the political party spends 18 months trying to implement its election campaign commitments, soft peddling for a year or so before thinking how it’s going to win the next general election. I want a new apolitical body to help define some form of National Strategy that has a 10 – 20 year view.

I want us all to accept others for whom and what they are, but we seem to have got our knickers in a complete twist when it comes to gender identity and sexual orientation. I understand that for a small section of our society these are weighty matters and deserve attention, discussion, advice and debate, but when teachers are asked to ‘identify’ with a personal pronoun, I am afraid I roll my eyes skywards. And on the subject of acceptance, we have a number of religions on the planet and there is a degree of ‘If you don’t agree with our beliefs, you must be against us.’ No! I am not; I just want you to accept I am not.

I remember, many years ago, reading of the planned renovation of a tall brick/stone tower that had steps to the top, giving those who made the climb a wonderful view of the surrounding countryside. The grant making the renovation possible required that it had access for wheelchair users. This would have meant the installation of a lift and there wasn’t room in the tower for a lift-shaft. So the renovation didn’t go ahead and the tower was closed, depriving the huge majority the experience to climb up. I want more common sense please!

Mind you, if the predictions about extinction (see PC 318) are to be believed future generations will not have to worry about these ‘wants’ or anything else for that matter!

Richard 10^th February 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Last weekend we had another case. George Pattison, 39, murdered his forty-five year old wife, Epsom College’s head teacher Emma, and their daughter Lettie (7) and then committed suicide. He spared the Labrador puppy ….. but not his daughter.

We continue …. (see PC 319) ……

In my first postcard about The Atacama I mentioned San Pedro being known locally as the ‘Clay Town’. A few kilometres to the south east lies the little town of Toconao, known as the ‘Brick Town’. Unlike San Pedro’s red clay rendering, the houses here are faced with bricks and stone from a nearby quarry.

Toconao church; its door is made from cactus wood

Such is the height of the extinct volcanoes that make up the Andes range, running some 8900kms from the southern tip of Chile to the Caribbean Sea, on the Atacama plateau they are always there, on the horizon, out of the corner of your eye. (Note 1)   

One lagoon worth visiting is Tebinquinche, for it had enough water for a swim, although the salt content was so high floating was the only option! The local tourism organisation had built a changing and showering block, both essential with the heat and the need to rid oneself of the covering of salt.

We were joined on this outing by a German couple and another from France. The elderly German was conspicuous as he was 2.02m (6ft 8”) tall and naturally had played basketball!! I asked the Frenchman Pierre where he came from and he said Lyon. After the normal pleasantries I said I had recently watched the film ‘Resistance’ on British television, about Marcel Mangel (aka Marceau) and how he aided the escape of hundreds of Jewish children out of the sadistic clutches of Klaus Barbie during the Nazi occupation of Lyon. Interestingly his wife immediately said that no one talked about that time, reflecting the difficulties any population has living under foreign occupation, how whole families were torn apart by shifting loyalties and how the repercussions echo down the decades to this day.

An overcast sky meant the ‘Stars & Fire’ tour was cancelled so we missed the opportunity to lie on our backs at midnight and gaze into the heavens. By reputation the skies in the deserts of the world are wonderful. Naturally volcanoes have hot springs and geysers. Andrea and Andreas, our Berlin friends from our first excursion, went out to one, the early hotel departure time dictated by when the geysers normally gush. When they arrived it was about 0615 and -8C, but fortunately soon warmed up!

Our third venture into the dry landscape was to Rainbow Valley (Valle del Arcoiris), lying in the Rio Grande basin about 90kms from San Pedro. Our Trekana guide this time was an ebullient Argentinian called Nicholas, who had married and settled in San Pedro. Joel, who runs a leather fashion-ware company in Boulder, Colorado and his wife Elke who has an online leather bags business (www.byelke.com) were our companions.

The Rainbow Valley landscape was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. We went from: “Wow!”

……to “blimey!”

….. to an unspoken: “I really can’t believe this!”

The valley obviously owes its name to the various colours of the rock formations – red, beige, green, white, yellow and blue, overlaid with white salt and under a deep blue sky. We have all seen the results of a copper roof oxidising over some years, the roof developing a blue/green patina. Here it was in nature!

On the day of our flight back to Santiago, we had breakfast overlooking the Valle de Luna, before driving down into it for a 45 minute walk. It’s not often you can have some fruit, yogurt and coffee with this sort of view:

Our companions on this trip were eight Chileans up from Conceptión, just south of Santiago, for a long weekend; four of them were surgeons. Leonardo was married to a surgeon but was actually a real estate/property developer and thinking of emigrating to New Zealand. Being British my thoughts go east and around the world to ‘Down Under’. If you’re Chilean you simply look west! 

Conspiracy theorists and other nutters have often claimed that the moon landing of 1969 was faked! Well, they could easily have been somewhere here in Luna Valle, such was its dramatic mixture of craters and cliffs and dunes and aridness.

And how do you get to the Atacama? Unless you’re rich enough to fly your private jet into Calama, us mortals fly via Chile’s capital Santiago. We bookended our Atacama trip with two nights in the Ismail 312 hotel, just on the north side of Barrio Lastarria. Our first night was disturbed by a loud party across the river and shortened by the airlines requiring one to be at the airport three hours before our departure time! Drifting around Barrio Lastarria before our flight back to Rio, we recognised the restaurant that Franco took us to in February 2017 on our first trip to Santiago (PC 89)

The more I travel, the more I need to understand what makes a country tick, at least understand how they got to be what they are today and their place on the world’s stage. So having established that copper is Chile’s major export, it was interesting on this trip to learn that Lithium is being extracted from deep beneath the salt flats of The Atacama. Lithium (Li) is the least dense metal and the least dense solid element and has been used to treat depression and mania for centuries. More recently it’s become the star of modern battery development, so important in the burgeoning Electric Car industry. And by the way, it’s unlikely you’ve eaten Chilean cherries recently, as almost 9/10^th of the country’s total production, for instance some 352,000 tonnes in 2021, is exported to China.

As far as Chile is concerned, its small population of 19.5 million gives it a GDP per capita US$24,474. Compare this with its continental neighbour Brazil, with its population of 214 million and GDP per capita US$15,553, some 60% of that of Chile. (Note 2 & 3)

So pleased we now have some experience of The Atacama; a beautiful, wild, unearthly and fascinating place. I urge you to go and see it!

Richard 3^rd February 2023

Rio de Janeiro

www.postcardscribbles .co.uk

Note 1 The highest mountain, Aconcagua and 6961m high, lies in the Mendoza Province of Argentina, just to the north east of Chile’s capital Santiago.

Note 2 The United Kingdom has a population 67 million and GDP per capita US$44,920.

Note 3 Chile is ranked 58, Brazil 82 and the UK 26 in a comparative list of the GDP per capita of 190 countries.