A Life in a Year – 13th February, Portugal isn’t Spain

On 13th February 1668 Spain finally recognised Portugal as a separate and independent state. I have visited Portugal a number of times, in 1986 and 1994 to the Algarve, twice in 2008 to Viano de Castelo in the far north and twice again in 2009 to Porto. Only on the final visit did it really occur to me that although it shares the Iberian peninsula with its larger neighbour, Portugal really isn’t Spain and on the flight home I was ashamed of my previous ignorance about the place. I had always assumed that because of its geography that it must be a lot like Spain with a few minor differences but I had come to understand that Portugal, its people and its culture and heritage is very, very different indeed. So what are the differences? Observers point out that the Portuguese national character is more sentimental, ironic, mild, and even more melancholic and these characteristics are often held up as the opposite of Castilian culture. Two scholars who have dealt with this question at length find both cultural and geographical factors at work. Pierre Birot put it this way: ‘Thus, the typical characteristics that so gracefully distinguish the Portuguese soul from its peninsular neighbours, were able to ripen in the shelter of frontiers which are the oldest in Europe. On one side, a proud and exalted people (the Spaniards), ready for all kinds of sacrifice and for all the violent acts that inspire them to be concerned with their dignity; on the other hand a more melancholy and indecisive people (the Portuguese), more sensitive to the charm of women and children, possessing a real humanity in which one can recognize one of the most precious treasures of our old Europe.’ (Le Portugal; Etude de Geographie Regionale, 1950). Oliveira Martins, the dean of Portuguese historians assessed the difference like this: ‘There is in the Portuguese genius something of the vague and fugitive that contrasts with the Castilian categorical affirmative; there is in the Lusitanian heroism, a nobility that differs from the fury of our neighbours; there is in our writing and our thought a profound or sentimental ironic or meek note…. Always tragic and ardent, Spanish history differs from the Portuguese which is more authentically epic and the differences of history are translated into difference in character.’ (Historia da Civilizacão Ibérica, 1897) Intense Spanish pressure and forced dynastic marriage compelled the Portuguese to follow the Spanish example of expelling the Jews in 1497, a step that deprived Portugal of many of its best merchants, diplomats, mathematicians, geographers, astronomers and cartographers. Feelings of resentment were aggravated by Spanish attempts to absorb Portugal, which temporarily succeeded from 1580-1640 (a period known as ‘The Spanish Captivity’). It was a political mistake that only encouraged a strong and proud reaction that cemented the identity of an independent Portuguese nation, a separate state and culture. One major thing that separates them is sherry and port. Sherry is from Spain and Port is from Portugal as we discovered on a visit to a Port Lodge in 2008. We thought we were going to enjoy a personal tour and this looked most likely until just as it started a coach full of Australian holiday makers gate crashed our tour and we were caught up in an antipodean Saga adventure through the cellars. We learned that under European Union guidelines, only the product from Portugal may be labeled as Port and it is produced from grapes grown and processed in the Douro region. The wine produced is fortified with the addition of a Brandy in order to stop the fermentation, leaving residual sugar in the wine, and to boost the alcohol content. The wine is then aged in barrels and stored in caves, or cellars, before being bottled. The wine received its name Port in the latter half of the seventeenth century from the city of Porto where the product was brought to market or for export to other countries in Europe from the Leixões docks. Actually there are no port lodges in Porto but an after dinner Vila Nova de Gaia doesn’t have the same ring to it. The Douro valley where Port wine is produced was defined and established as a protected region or appellation in 1756, making it the third oldest defined and protected wine region in the world after Tokaji in Hungary and Chianti in Italy.

A Life in a Year – 12th February, Charles Darwin and the end of Bible Stories

On 12th February 1809 Charles Darwin was born and if hadn’t been for Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution I might well have become a Vicar or even a Bishop!

When I was a young boy I used to like bible stories and when I was quite young my parents gave me an impressively substantial ‘Children’s Picture Book of Bible Stories’. It had a burgundy cover with its title in gold letters and inside it contained water colour comic strip style stories of the scriptures. God was depicted as a booming voice from heaven, angels would swoop about in the sky and occasionally descend to earth to give helpful advice and the stories were full of sagely old men with kind faces, white beards and flowing robes.

I read the stories over and over again, for me some of the best were David and the slaying of Goliath, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea and then, there was Samson who used his tremendous strength to defeat his enemies and perform other heroic feats such as wrestling a lion, killing an entire army with nothing more than a donkey’s jawbone, and tearing down an entire building with his bare hands. At the time my favourite was always the story of Noah and his Ark and I can remember being slightly sceptical to read that he allegedly lived until he was nine hundred and fifty years old which even at seven years old seemed a bit farfetched to me. Adam, the first man, did nearly as well but only lived until he was nine hundred and thirty. My favourite story about Noah now however, is not the Ark, but the fact that after the great flood he settled down and became a farmer, experimented by planting some vines and invented wine. We should all be eternally grateful to him for that!

At school too I always enjoyed bible stories and to illustrate this I have come across an old drawing that dad kept for many years in his scrapbook. This was my early attempt to create a pictorial record of the feeding of the five thousand and it always amused him because he always wondered where the other four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine people were! Please try and remember that I drew this picture nearly fifty years ago so I have absolutely no explanation to offer as to why it has failed so miserably to capture the scale of the event and why there is only one person in it. Actually, as it happens, there were a lot more than five thousand because this didn’t include the women and the children. Possibly the person in the picture is Jesus himself and the crowd is behind me listening attentively, or perhaps I was just being meticulous and concentrating on producing a perfect picture, or maybe it was the end of the day, the school bell rang and I simply ran out of time but I’m afraid I will just never know.

The feeding of the five thousand was always one of my favourite bible stories and it is also one of the most important and the only one of the miracle stories, apart from the resurrection that is (which is the most important of all), that is recorded in all of the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These days there is obviously a lot of scientific and theological debate about the miracles and I don’t know if they were true or not but as a child I recall that these were ripping good yarns.

This one goes something like this. It had been a difficult week. Jesus had been having a bad hair day, and I think I have captured that nicely in my picture. He had been pretty annoyed when he learned the bad news that his friend and spiritual mentor John the Baptist had been executed by King Herod the day before for criticizing him for his wedding arrangements (thank goodness we live in more enlightened times) and he felt the need to have some time alone, so he wandered out of the town of Bethsaida, which was near the Sea of Galilee and went to a quiet place he knew next to the River Jordon. A real problem for Jesus was that he was very popular because he was known as a great prophet and deliverer of miracles so people pestered him a lot and followed him wherever he went and it was hard for him to get quality time to himself. On this occasion, as usual, the crowd followed him out of town and in their rush they forgot to stop by at the corner shop on the way out and pick up a sandwich or whatever for later on.

Jesus stayed out all day moping around and as it was getting dark the disciples started to get concerned and came to him and suggested that he send the people back home because they didn’t have enough food to feed them if they all spent the night out in the wilderness. It’s quite likely that they didn’t want to be stuck out here all night themselves in the wilderness and probably had thoughts about a glass of wine or two at the local inn. Jesus had other ideas and gave the disciples a challenge and said ‘they need not depart, give ye them to eat’. I can imagine that the disciples thought this was a huge joke but Jesus just told them to see what food was available. Luckily they came across a boy who for some reason had a basket containing five loaves of bread and two fishes, he was probably planning on having a b-b-q later or something and making a shekel or two, but the disciples quickly confiscated it and gave it to Jesus. No one knows how the boy felt about this, it’s quiet possible that he wasn’t especially pleased to have his groceries appropriated in this way.

The disciples gave the food to Jesus who must have felt like a contestant on Ready Steady Cook. Imagine him looking expectantly through the bag of today’s ingredients and trying to figure out what on earth he was going to do to feed all the hungry mouths. What are you going to cook for us today chef? They might have asked. What can you do with bread and fish? Unless you are Rick Stein of course! What Jesus did, and this is where he is brilliant, is that he took the food, probably added a bit of wild asparagus or whatever else was available, blessed it and broke it up and multiplied it many times so that there was more than enough to go round. It was a miracle on a grand scale. Even without a b-b-q he managed to feed everyone, the five thousand men and all the women and children and afterwards he had twelve baskets full of leftovers for the beggars and the birds.

Brilliant! I’m afraid that my humble picture has really failed quite miserably to capture the huge scale of the event …

A Life in a Year – 11th February, Thatcher becomes Leader of the Tory Party and I become a Dustman

On 11th February 1975 the Conservative Party choose Margaret Thatcher as their new leader and when she eventually became the first woman Prime Minister the country was engulfed in a wave of neo-Nazism that as usual picked on local government for a real good kicking.

In the 1980s and 1990s because Margaret Thatcher thought that the private sector was, by definition, much more competent and efficient in these matters than the public sector and local authorities were required to offer certain services for open competition under what was called ‘Compulsory Competitive Tendering’.

If only she had known the truth! Rubbish collection was one of these services and so that the waste management companies could cope with all the new work and local authorities couldn’t cheat, the Government set out a phased three year programme and one by one local authority services were thrown into a private sector pond full of hungry piranha ready to strip the flesh off of public services, cynically reduce service standards and hopefully get fat at the council tax payer’s expense. As soon as the waste management companies spotted a contract they took a liking to they would express an interest, obtain the tender documents and specifications and go to work sharpening their pencils.

This was never a scientific process and the first thing the tendering manager did was to get up early one Monday morning and sit outside the council depot and count the dustcarts and the number of men in them as they left to go to work. And that was about all there was to it and half an hour later over a bacon butty and a cup of tea he would write this down on the back of a fag packet and by mid morning he would have a price in his head. Nothing else in his head, just the price! Sometimes, if he was being especially thorough, he would go back on Tuesday morning just to check his calculations but this would be quite unusual.

The tendering manager at Cory Environmental was called Tony Palmer and for Tony arriving at the tender price was gloriously simple. If the Council had ten refuse collection rounds, the company would do it with nine, and just in case the Council could do it for nine then they would do it with eight so that would immediately undercut the Council price by 20%. Just to make absolutely certain they would find out how much a refuse collector was paid each week and then they would reduce that by 20% as well. If the Council had three mechanics to keep the fleet running they would do it with two and so on and so on. There was no way these boys could fail to win tenders!

I worked for the private sector waste management companies for ten years between 1990 and 2000 and then thankfully was able to return to local government where services are provided properly through direct delivery so imagine my horror when ‘son of Thatcher’ David Cameron became Conservative Prime Minister in 2010 and has embarked on a similar dismantling of public services and twenty years after my first painful experience in the incompetent world of the private sector I find myself facing the same prospect all over again.

A Life in a Year – 10th February, Robots are officially cleverer than Humans

Deep Blue was a chess-playing computer developed by IBM and on February 10th 1996 it defeated Garry Kimovich Kasparov a Russian chess grandmaster and a player many consider to be the greatest World champion chess player of all time. Here finally was proof that robots were cleverer than humans.

I had grown up with robots of course and throughout my childhood and adolescence it was in the certain knowledge that one day robots would take over and mankind would be declared redundant. Every week from 1965 the BBC television programme ‘Tomorrow’s world’ presented new technology and inventions and made extravagant predictions (usually wrong) about what life would be like in the future and this generally involved a robot or a computer or both.

So who were my favourite robots? First of all it has to be Robert from Fireball XL5. Set between the years 2062 and 2063, the series featured the missions of a spaceship commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol. The crew included glamorous Doctor Venus, a doctor of space medicine; navigator, egg-head and all-round know-it-all Professor Matthew Matic; and co-pilot Robert, a transparent anthropomorphic robot and Earth’s most advanced mechanical man. Despite being completely see through Robert was really smart and made a full contribution to the space missions and every week he ended the show with his catchphrase ‘On our way home, on our way home’ in his irritating electronic buzzing voice.

Like most boys I was always fond of comics of course, Victor, Eagle, Wizard, Tiger and Lion, and a weekly feature in the Lion was Robot Archie who was built by Professor C.R. Ritchie to be the world’s most powerful mechanical man. Originally he was called The Jungle Robot (due to his early adventures taking place in the jungles of Africa and South America) and was remote controlled by Professor Ritchie and his nephew Ted Ritchie and his best friend Ken Dale.

Not all robots were good though and my favourite villain is the android gunslinger played by Yul Brynner in the film West World. The story is set sometime in the future, in Delos, a high-tech, highly realistic fictional adult amusement park featuring androids that are almost indistinguishable from human beings. One of the main attractions is the Gunslinger - a robot programmed to pick fights. Thanks to its programming, humans can always outdraw the Gunslinger and kill it but naturally things go spectacularly wrong and the robot cannot be controlled and goes on a killing spree throughout the holiday resort.

Now, Deep Blue might have been clever but it wasn’t the first clever dick robot because that was the Magic Robot which was a children’s general knowledge game would magically give the correct answers when asked a set of questions. As kids we were amazed at just how clever this thing was as it never failed to answer correctly. The robot figure went into a socket circled by questions and was turned it until the rod held by the robot pointed to the question that you wanted answering. The robot was then transferred to a circle of mirrored foil surrounded by the answers to the questions from around the socket and “by magic” the robot spun until the rod pointed at the correct answer!

It wasn’t magic at all of course because It was done with a simple magnet. The robot was fastened into a swivelling base and that, when fitted into the socket, was held fast so that when you turned the robot to your question it was turning it within its own base. This meant that the polarity of the magnet in the robot was positioned so that when it aligned with the magnet beneath the mirror, the robot would swivel to the correct answer every time! A real cheat really!

Clever but, let’s face it, cheating and when Kasparov was beaten by the computer at chess he accused IBM of cheating as well and we will never know if he was right because shortly afterwards they dismantled the machine for good.

A Life in a Year – 9th February, Jim “Spud” Murphy investigates the disappearance of Shergar

Shergar was a champion Irish racehorse and winner of the 1981 Epsom Derby by a record ten lengths the longest winning margin in the race’s 226-year history. A bay colt with a distinctive white blaze, Shergar was named European Horse of the Year in 1981 and was retired from racing that September and was looking forward to a life of stud.

Two years later, on 8th February 1983, a foggy winter’s evening in Ireland, a group of men wearing balaclavas and armed with guns turned up at the Ballymany Stud Farm in Co Kildare and kidnapped Shergar with the intention of holding him to ransom. Shergar was arguably the greatest racehorse to have ever lived but twenty-five years after he was kidnapped from the mystery of exactly what happened to him after he was snatched that night still persists. Then, as now, the story was one that gripped the world. From racing enthusiasts to ordinary members of the public, everyone wanted to know who had taken Shergar, why they had done so and what became of him and then, as now, no definite answers were forthcoming.

What happened next set the tone for a police operation that has been called “a caricature of police bungling”. Shergar’s groom James Fitzgerald called the stud farm manager, who for some reason called Shergar’s vet. The vet then called a racing associate, Sean Berry, who in turn called Alan Dukes, the Irish Finance Minister. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone to call the police and it wasn’t until eight hours had elapsed did anyone call the Gardaí on the next day.

Leaving aside the tragedy and the almost certain undignified death of Shergar the police investigation was the best bit of the story when on 9th February the investigation into one of sport’s greatest whodunnits began. The first problem for the police was the kidnapping’s timing because Shergar was taken the day before Ireland’s biggest racehorse sale – a day on which horseboxes were driven on roads across the country, making an impossible task to find the box containing the kidnapped horse.

The investigation was further complicated because officers from both Dublin and County Kildare were put on the case. The two forces reportedly refused to share information and believed that they were in direct competition with each other.

Leading the investigation into the theft was trilby-wearing Chief Superintendent Jim “Spud” Murphy, who immediately became a media hero because of his Inspector Clousseau appearance and tactics. His detection techniques were unconventional and a variety of clairvoyants, psychics and diviners were called in to help. During one famous interview Mr Murphy told reporters: “A clue?… that is what we haven’t got.”

Jim “Spud” Murphy became a regular on television news bulletins and he did the reputation of the Irish police enormous damage. My dad would watch all of the news programmes just to watch Murphy continue to make a clown of himself and by the end of the latest interview he would be in fits of laughter and I am sure that if he had had a video recorder he would have taped them all.

Despite numerous reported sightings and rumours of secret negotiations in the days following the theft there was little new information and a news hungry press pack began to focus their attention on Spud Murphy, ridiculing his inept investigation and his unconventional approach. During one press conference six photographers turned up wearing trilbies, identical to the police chief, after which, although he continued to lead the investigation, he was given a much lower public profile.

A Life in a Year – 8th February, The Devil Walks in Devon

On the night of the 8th of February 1855 heavy snow fell on the countryside and small villages of South Devon. The last snow is thought to have fallen around midnight, and between this time and around six o’clock the following morning, something (or some things) left a trail of tracks in the snow, stretching for a hundred miles or more, from the River Exe, to Totnes on the River Dart.

The mysterious footprints have never been adequately explained. According to contemporary reports, they went through solid walls and haystacks, appearing on the other side as though there was no barrier. The extent of the footprints may have been exaggerated at the time, and they may have been the result of freak atmospheric conditions but in truth the ‘footprints’, if that is what they were, still remain a complete mystery. Some clergymen suggested that the prints belonged to the Devil, who was roaming the countryside in search of sinners (a great advertising stunt to fill the churches), while others rejected the idea as superstition. It is true that a feeling of unease had spread through some of the population, who watched carefully to see if the strange footprints would return. They didn’t and after a couple of days the news spread out of Devon and made the national press and sparked correspondence in some of the leading papers including the Times.

I mention this because when I was about fifteen I was bought a fascinating book called ‘The Reader’s Digest Book of Strange Stories and Amazing Facts’ and the story of the Devil’s Footprints was included and quickly became one of my favourite articles. The book was an almanac of random stories with tales of the supernatural, mythical beasts, feats of improbable strength, a glimpse into the future and was divided into chapters such as “Strange customs and superstitions”, “Hoaxes, frauds and forgeries” and “Eccentrics and prophecies.” There were photographs of the Loch Ness Monster, Sri Lankan fire walkers and “O-Kee-Pa, the Torture Test,” where young men of the Mandan tribe of Indians endured a brutal and horrific rite of passage that culminated in chopping off their own little fingers.

I learned that people sometimes spontaneously combust, and that an Italian monk named Padre Pio suffered Christlike wounds in his hands called stigmata that never healed. There were weird facts such as pigs being flogged in medieval France for breaking the law, and that the entire crew of the Mary Celeste disappeared one day, leaving the ship to float empty around the Atlantic. I became acquainted with Anastasia, the supposed Romanov survivor; and Spring-Heeled Jack, a demon who leapt about London in the nineteenth century, spitting blue fames in the faces of young women.

I acquired this book during my Ouija board occult dabbling days and the chapter on the supernatural I read over and over again. I was interested in the paranormal and here now was a book bearing evidence that ghosts were real and to prove it there were photographs of writings they’d scrawled on walls. You can’t dispute evidence like that. There was an article on the most haunted house in England and in another a photograph even showed how some ghosts could actually present their reflection on tiled kitchen floors I used to love this book, much to the despair of my dad who considered it to be a collection of useless false drivel that was distracting me from studying for my ‘o’ levels and he was right I should have been concentrating on Shakespeare and Chaucer but for some reason Henry V and the Canterbury Tales were just not as interesting as ‘The night the Devil walked through Devon’!

A Life in a Year – 7th February, Monopoly and other Board (or Bored) Games

In 1935 Parker Brothers bought the rights to Monopoly from the ‘inventor’, Charles Darrow. Monopoly is a board game named after the capitalist economic concept of owning everything and the domination of a market by a single entity. It is said to be the most popular board game in the World and it is estimated that since the game was created, more than one billion people have played it and Games Magazine has included Monopoly into its Hall of Fame.

When I was young we used to play Monopoly quite often but I quickly learned what a tedious and pointless game it is. Sometimes a game could go on for hours without anyone ever winning as it became a mind numbing procession of Scottie dogs and racing cars around and around the board with the only real excitement being when a piece started to approach Mayfair and Park Lane (depending on whether you owned it or not) which after three or four hours would have a couple of red hotels sitting on it and a slavering landlord waiting to demand a rental charge.

Dad always looked after his possessions so even in the 1960s we were still using his own school boy edition which had real wooden houses and the eight classic pieces to move around the board; a Scottie dog, an iron, racing car, thimble, wheelbarrow, top hat, a train engine and a boot. I have never begun to understand what sort of a mind would have come up with that rather absurd selection of items and I doubt if anyone could ever satisfactorily explain the randomness of it. My favourite was the train, my sister liked the Scottie dog and we always gave mum the old boot but I don’t think she ever grasped the significance of this.

Games would generally start with a great deal of enthusiasm but after an hour or so without any real progress the horse trading used to start with the selling and swapping of real estate. When everyone had a piece of the action and had assembled a land portfolio then there would be a flurry of property purchasing activity and little green houses would start to spring up all around the board. Someone would start accumulating a pile of money, someone else would begin to run short and start to rely on passing go as often as possible and someone would just get tired of the whole thing, go deliberately bankrupt and simply give up.

Sometimes we had the sense to put a time limit on the game and just see who had the most money after say, three days, and then declare them the winner. Curiously the banker more often than not seemed to win and I think this was because as everyone around the board slipped into a coma then it was possible to sneak a note or two from the bank into their own personal account! I know I did! In fact the only time these games became anywhere near exciting was if someone got really pissed off and trashed the board in the middle of the game but usually it just petered out, no one really cared who won or lost because they were just glad that the whole thing had come to an end.

We used to play other games as well, when I was old enough dad taught me how to play chess but I could never beat him and years later I taught my own son how to play and now I can’t beat him either. A game of chess could take a while as well sometimes but draughts was alright because that could be over quite quickly. When I was really young snakes and ladders was always good fun and so was ludo before it was modernised and spoilt with the pop-o-matic dice in the perspex bubble. Later we liked to play Cluedo and then I remember becoming obsessed with Scrabble and later Trivial Pursuits. These days we don’t play many board games anymore because most people seem to prefer a games console or a Wii board.