porto. (september 3rd to the 9th)

the year of the golden glow comes to an end. this is how it began.



‘beneath me lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple’ - edgar allan poe

saturday

horsemouth is at the airport. soon he will indeed ´fly away´(and it won´t be the rapture). "até já porto” it´s been great again (don´t go there. it´s a shithole. terrible place. horsemouth can´t think why he keeps coming here).

saturday morning he made it out of the flat and got lost on his way to the metro and had to retrace his steps. later today the bermondsey folk festival - perhaps not the full thing (but certainly one or two things).
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friday night a hazy scheme to meet up with Ze at palacio crystal fell through - john and horsemouth watched four artists read through a script of a panegyric to their favourite artists (mayakovsky, tarkofsky, cage, hélio oiticica - you know the drill) and two of them played and sang a number of sambas - vamos passear (let´s go for a wander) was their last one (caetano veloso horsemouth thinks). on the way back Mão Morta (black, death - growly sick troll voice business) were playing in the central square with an too-quiet-to-be-worthwhile orchestra.

thursday  horsemouth was mostly wandering round first the campanha district (with john) then round the university district at the other end of the d -line (on his own). in the evening there was a birthday party (with a discussion of gentrification and the novels of jose saramago versus those of antónio lobo antunes).

for his focus group horsemouth had assembled longtime porto residents, an estate agent, an air bnb ‘host’ and former hotel worker, an artist in search of a studio, and people who had moved to the city from other parts of europe in recent years. the discussion was amicable (though not without its tensions). (horsemouth is lying here - it was in fact a birthday party).

there is a shortage of rental property (because there’s was a shortage of it anyway and because the returns on converting your building into air bnb survival pods are much greater - 9 rentals wedged into the building at higher air bnb rent versus 3 at lower local rent). this will soon be resolved because rents are being driven up to match air bnb rents, students (and it’s a big university town) cannot find anywhere to live (‘lodgings’ are predicted to make a return).

an Émigrée couple (who had lived long enough in london to witness the full gentrification horror of hackney, brick lane and columbia road) pronounced the situation worse than london - the estate agent pronounced that there was nowhere to rent, two Émigrées noted that while the locals think some areas are too far out they are less than ______ from the centre (and with decent-ish transport links). (did horsemouth mention he’d been out in campanha and over to gaia).

the city survives because of its old people - they have rights, it is difficult to take away their tenancies, they live in the ilhas the picturesque neighbourhoods of narrow streets and unmodernised housing, the old flats in unrenovated (and thus picturesque) buildings in the centre. but in many ways the landlords are just waiting for them to die

the tourism bubble (as people refer to it) is of course welcome - because it provides work (low paid, seasonal, unregulated work in hotels, restaurants) and because it provides money (from renting out rooms). many people in the city are bumping along at the edge of survival and any additional source of income is welcome. but it is seasonal, not quite enough to live on, and in any case perhaps a bubble. the air bnb money mostly vanishes up out of the local economy or stays in the centre.

ok that’s enough on that.

the conversation moved away from such topics and at a later point saramago was pronounced better than camus (horsemouth doesn’t see it himself). it was noted that for the portuguese themselves the division was between (then? current? PCP member) saramago and the (perceived more socially conservative) antunes. for horsemouth saramago always has a central premise - that blindness is contagious, that your double could be living in your town, that portugal could detach itself from europe and go sailing around the seas of the world, but also a social focus, what would this mean for society, how would people adjust to this. this is probably why the double is less successful than blindness horsemouth feels.





wednesday ok this is the beach that horsemouth and john were on - Praia Fluvial, Rua da Praia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. on the south side of the river (in gaia) down past the old (and new) railway bridges (but before the new motorway bridge) - on the river not on the sea (this makes swimming much easier). but it’s quite a walk out there.

when they got there horsemouth immediately consumed all his provisions. and then alternated snoozing in the sun with swimming. he finished off alexander wolf (creditable but not incredible) and has passed it on to john.

later (having struggled back to the flat) - john and horsemouth struggled back down into town - a beer here, a coffee here, a glass of wine here - in one square the swing dancers battled it out with the skateboarders for the use of public space. the plan had been to go see the local reggae dudes (but it was late starting and ran til 4am and horsemouth was knackered) so they wandered back up the hill instead.

as they left the wine bar horsemouth spotted Rui (one of Ze’s friends - one of the people he’s spent st. joao with the year before - he went over to say hi). Rui was out spotting for a friend who was flyposting some art stuff.

today maybe a (gentle) walk round campanha - this evening john’s birthday dinner - friday a little gentle recovery - saturday early AM the journey to the airport and the flight out.



tuesday - fado and a puppet show (and on the way a bottle of beer in the riverside bar)




it was in an ordinary bar (not a fisherman’s shack as horsemouth had been promised) but still horsemouth was mightily impressed - complicated songs, semitone runs up in bass, a mixture of young local amateur and old ex-professional singers (or so it seemed). it was up the road and round the corner from Ze’s (Ze had once taken horsemouth out to a party round there and horsemouth thought he recognised at least one face). two classical guitars and a portuguese guitar (12 string with those strange preston tuning pegs). some ostentatious eye rolling by the musicians when the singers would launch off.

john and horsemouth sidled up to the corner of the bar and parked themselves there - two other non-locals arrived ordered food and parked themselves directly by the band and began to film the whole thing on their phone (and then checked a few texts). poor form thought john and horsemouth.

they were supposed to meet Ze there but then he cancelled (and then arrived with another friend after they’d left)... having walked there (pausing only for a beer at casa mesquite) john and horsemouth walked back for dinner before the puppet show (held in the back garden of a football supporters club) - they were worried it would be a workshop type thing with lots of calls for participation (er. in portuguese) but in the end they were ok .

it began with a ventriloquist (and some audience participation), continued with two old country gentlemen (balefully discussing a dam horsemouth was told later), there was a giant tall friendly orange muppet thing (a puppet chicken emerged from its head), two presentations on stop-motion animation film projects (kindly received by the audience who understood what was being said). it ended with some avenue c type puppets (and their handlers), again of the old, promenading through the space greeting the people and then as the puppets were taken off and laid down to rest the handlers began to sing.

when it ended, as john and horsemouth re-entered the bar, the puppets were back up and on and seemed |briefly) that they were about to start a game of table football.

at the bar horsemouth and john met giancarlo and nunu and some friends of theirs - horsemouth talked for a while about body psychotherapy - apparently here the legacy of wilhelm reich is respected (he’s not viewed as a nutter the way he is in england) and as the factional disputes between the differing schools of psychoanalysis die off people are adopting a much more mix-and-match approach (finding support for his doctrines in neurology for instance).

'that's enough books for today'

this is indeed what he said gentle readers. he was at a bookfair in the grounds of the palacio crystal. horsemouth and john had a coffee (fending off cadging peacocks) and then dived in - at all stages going to the left (as one must in a labyrinth). they were halfway to Ze’s for lunch - eventually (after a few isolated books in the second hand section) horsemouth found an entire two piles of books in english - he was tempted by a henry treece (but in the end resisted - maybe he’ll go back).

thence down to the supermarket continente in masaleros (but salazar the cat was not on guard) then up the hill to Ze’s for a languid afternoon lunch in the garden - eventually the cats stormed the table (like a scene from company of wolves) and the humans were driven down to continente for a coffee (and a pastel nata in Ze and horsemouth’s case). there was a brief scheme for a further beer in the garden but then common sense won out and horsemouth and john retreated up hill and down dale (and then uphill again) - porto (city of hills).

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this morning the banging has just begun next door (8am) about 8.30 the drilling will commence in earnest - they are (at least) now working on the ground floors. in the afternoon?

monday and sunday - no cu de judas (bright phoebus)

there’s banging and thudding from next door (they’ve got the builders in). horsemouth is moving gingerly round the flat trying not to wake the other inhabitants (at least one of whom was working a night shift). he’s up on the hills in the east of porto near campo 24 agosto - the gentrification is moving down the street (arguably it is closer to the nightlife of town than ze’s place - driven up the hill by the botched city of culture revamp of the ribeira historical district).

yesterday himself and john went out for a post-flight wander and orientation round the neighbourhood - their wander took them over to the bangadeshi falafel dudes for a bite to eat then down to the cathedral, down to the river in search of a beer (the sporting club was shut) and back up again (porto -city of hills - god it nearly killed him) via the alamada fontainhas (old city laundy becomes homeless dudes toilet) eventually settling in a local bar on rua san victor (?) for a not-too-swift half to recover. even here were the signs of gentrification aimed specifically at air b-n-b-ing and the tourist boom. of course when these flats are converted into tourist pods they cease to be family homes permanently altering the character of the neighbourhood (and of course hailed by local politicians as evidence that they are doing something to house the local population).

they then returned to the flat and listened to music - to horsemouth and howard’s latest recordings and then a selection of recent things before john seized control of the computer and they listened to the recently re-released mike and lal waterson bright phoebus. they looked through some portuguese verb and phrase cards - the portuguese phrase for in the middle of nowhere is no cu de judas (in the arse of judas ).