The Dearest Banana

When your family can't persuade you to move somewhere more comfortable, but you're 88, and you've always scratched a living beside the high Levada do Norte in the Serra D'Agua, it seems fair enough to charge two euros for one small banana. That's what tourists are for!

Today I joined fellow blipper Orchid99 in walking a 5km stretch of this beautifully situated long levada. We passed two men and a little girl planting potatos, a goat (that has to be tethered by law), and - if you think that's bamboo behind the goat - you'd be wrong: it's a very tall-growing reed. (And it looks like bamboo!)

Shortly, Mr PP and I are off to listen to five members of the Classical Orchestra of Madeira - a wind quintet - perform at the Legislative Assembly of Madeira.

PS

Back at our apartment, sipping Madeira - having very much enjoyed the musical event. We learned that the five musicians' day job is their teaching at the Conservatoire. We also heard the world premiere of a piece called Elegie etude, that was introduced by its British composer, Melvin Bird (b. 1955).

The first part of this piece was deliberately discordant and must have been a very tricky piece to play. Although I love classical music, I'm no connoisseur. Part of me wants to say the composition was a cacophany - "all the right notes but not neccessarily in the right order" - but that's like saying "Picasso couldn't draw" when, clearly, he could. So I tried to make the music tell as story: I decided someone was trying to untangle a very tangled ball of string. This involved much swearing and discord. Next, the person made some progress in the untangling ... and the music became gradually more harmonious, then - right at the end, when s/he thought s/he'd succeeded a fresh bit of entanglement revealed itself causing a denouement of 'feckarsethisfeckinballostring'!

Hope my review isn't too technical. But it was interesting to hear, and hats off to the players!

Tchau!