Deciding vote

I could get addicted to lazy weekends in Rio – well, once in a while, anyway. Hard to beat being up in the hills, but the packing and unpacking and the drive there and back get a bit tedious. The newspaper is only delivered at weekends, and in Rio, so we normally have to catch up with it during the week. Reading it over and after breakfast felt like a luxury –there’s very good coverage of Brazil’s political situation and some excellent columnists.
 
Many people who participated in the last pro-impeachment demonstration gave it a miss today, as it’s no longer likely to influence anything, and anyway, the voting on the move to impeach the President was due to start an hour before the demonstration. I nearly gave it a miss, but found one friend who was going with some of her family and joined them. They didn’t stay for long, but I lingered on, and bumped into an independent British correspondent, George Powell, who was collecting material for a Swiss outfit. He wanted to get a few more shots before heading downtown to check out the pro-government demonstration there. We walked back along the beach road and came up to one of the three big screens just as the first votes were cast in Congress. A circle of people had settled themselves on the ground in front of the screen, obviously intending to stay for the duration, and a fair sized crowd was gathered behind them, cheering every pro-impeachment vote and booing the nays.
 
Then George went downtown and I went home for a quick shower and to get some food in the oven. We had a chicken pie left over after Thursday’s dinner – intentional over-catering – so I’d asked our new young vicar and his wife round to help us ‘bury the bones’, as they say here. They are such a fun couple and seem happy to consort with us even though we’re so much older, and not churchgoers. They brought a lovely bottle of sparkling wine, but there was drama disaster when the cork exploded out of it and it slipped out of Mark’s hands – not sure which came first. There was wine everywhere, on the ceiling, the table, the floor, the plates, and poor Mark was initially most embarrassed – hope the embarrassment didn’t last, it was really very funny.
 
After supper we went down to the beach, intending to be there when the deciding vote was cast,

but the noise level was too high so we came home and saw on the box when the count reached 342, after which our guests cycled off home.