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 30th 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 24th February 2023
Hove
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.
postcards 