Mo had sent me a WhatsApp asking if I was back. I am reminded of the difficulties of those who spend a long time in different parts of the world; no one is ever sure where you are, if you’re back. My mother-in-law tries to spend the European winters in Rio de Janeiro, her home city, and vica versa; her friends need to be briefed as to when she’s coming, or indeed when she’s going. I replied I could meet Mo in The Hope Café on Tuesday …. so we catch up over a coffee and a little pastry from Teresa’s Brazilian counter.
“How was Brazil? Read your postcards. (PCs 435 & 436) Sounds as though you had a great time.”
“Actually, very relaxed. Didn’t try to go to hot yoga in Copacabana; just walked along the beach before the sun got too hot, then caught up with friends and family. Two people particularly. Carl von Studnitz, in addition to his surfing and cinematography businesses, runs a charity that provided essential food and clothing to poor families in the municipality of Queimados, to the north of Barra. He lives in the suburb of Jardim Botânico.
A Lily pond within the botanical gardens
The other was Pricilla Goslin, the author of ‘How to be a Carioca’.”
“Sounds like you enjoyed yourself. Wasn’t the main reason of your visit to assist your mother-in-law on her return to Lisbon?”
“Yes. Then she and her partner Toni will come and visit in May. You may recall a couple of PCs I wrote last year after a similar visit. (PCs 388 and 389 Lymington)”
“But you are looking well – always good to have a little tan, makes one look healthy!”
“You should have seen me when I got back – ‘walking death’!”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“We had a late afternoon flight out of Rio, with an arrival time in Lisbon of 0500 on Monday 14th.
Looking south over Guanabara Bay with Pão de Açucar at its western entrance
I always love looking out of aeroplane windows, in the hope I’ll see something interesting. Look at the moon rising:
This was taken late on; we’d left Brazil and were heading to the West African coast.”
“Richard, I am in suspense. Why did you feel awful?”
“Chose the little ‘fish & rice’ starter and chicken ‘main’ for the inflight meal and settled down to watch Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. About two hours out of Lisbon was feeling decidedly funny. Managed to get off the plane and make my way to our connecting flight. I could still taste the meal! Slept on the Gatwick bound flight, although had a sick bag ready (they seemed ridiculously small!), got home by midday … had a couple of hours sleep …… got up and made myself vomit …… had a couple of hours sleep … got up and made myself vomit ….. repeated twice more. The Tuesday and Wednesday are a blur. Had a banana on the Wednesday and another on the Thursday. Haven’t had jelly for years but that was another option, that and dry toast ….. and Lucozade! What I hadn’t experienced before was the ache in my abdomen; sometimes it really was quite severe. Still, by Saturday of the Easter weekend was beginning to feel better, sort of 70%! The only good thing was I had no diarrhoea!”
“You know, Richard, everyone has their personal horror stories of food poisoning; dodgy curries, fish very definitely ‘off’, chicken contaminated with salmonella, funny mushrooms (Note 1). And as soon as someone tells you they have/have had food poisoning, they will tell you about their own experiences, in graphic detail, as if your own weren’t enough, but maybe theirs were worse!”
“Haven’t had any chocolate for ten days!! On the subject of food, I am often late to hear new labels and so it is with ‘Food Noise’; apparently it’s the nagging voice of craving which affects almost 60 % of the population, like ‘chocolate’ which I absolutely identify with. ‘Food Noise’ (Note 2) is the title of a new book by the son of the late Michael Mosley, author of The Fast Diet, whose engaging personality encouraged us to watch many of his television programmes about food and our bodies. Jack is following in his footsteps.
We have a friend who’s 7 months into a year-long trial using Ozempic to lose weight, so there’s a personal interest. Jack sounds several notes of warning about its use, the first about the type of weight that users tend to lose. According to its Danish manufacturer, users lost about 17% of their weight over a 70-week period, but 40% of this was lean body mass ie muscle. And that muscle loss is not regained; most put on fat when they come off the drug.”
“Wow! That’s very disturbing. Like you I have a couple of friends who are on it, but by the sound of it no one really knows its long-term effects on our organs. Incidentally had you left before Heathrow shut down on 20th March?”
“No, and fortunately we weren’t flying until the 26th, so we were unaffected.”
“Seems amazing that one failed component at an electricity sub-station near the airport could cause a fire that shut down the sub-station …… and Heathrow ….. completely. I imagine everyone is asking searching questions, about how can Heathrow, the second busiest airport in the world and important national infrastructure, be brought to a complete stop by the failure of one supply outlet. I suspect a great many organisations and companies are dusting off their Contingency Manuals, the ones which have Plan B and Plan C in the event of a failure of Plan A!”
“Mo. Before I go, do you know when the bookshop is going to open?”
“Yes! By the beginning of June; a little later than Duncan planned. I will help out three days a week ….. and I need to get going too. Always good to chat, See you.”
Richard 2nd May 2025
Hove
Note 1 Poisonous mushrooms are at the centre of a murder investigation in a court case in Australia.
Note 2 ‘Food Noise: How Weight Loss Medications and Smart Nutrition can silence your cravings’ by Dr Jack Mosley.
postcards 