“Skip the light fandango, turned cartwheels across the floor”

“Skip the light fandango, turned cartwheels across the floor”.......yup, this (Whiter Shade of Pale) is one the many and numerous songs in the current Music Group Songbook, and each week it grows ever larger. We now have Jazz, Blues, Country, standards and a couple of jigs in the repertoire, struggle a bit with that word. The informal Saturday sessions continue to be very enjoyable and each week we get requests from the hotel guests, some of whom like to take the lead and sing away to their hearts content. Even Louis the hotel  barman has a number he does – Wish You Were Here – for those interested, and has promised to bring his harmonica soon. Excellent – the gang have been asked to sing a few numbers at an International Desert Day (yup, new to us as well) and form the strolling players for a carol walkabout – we’ll see how all that develops.

The Line Dancing is going very well and around 8 or 9 regulars show up on Thursday afternoons for a bit of a workout. We are making less mistakes at Bridge but were confronted by Transfers and special bids this week – brains were a bit addled afterwards. When is 2 Diamonds, not 2 Diamonds and is it a truthful bid or not. And we thought Portuguese was complicated, but we diligently go to   the Friday Portuguese lessons and thoroughly enjoy them, practising on unsuspecting locals now and again with, naturally, mixed results. The hotel staff, marina staff and one or two of the local bar staff smile knowingly and serve us probably what we meant  to say, but didn’t quite as the pronunciation was a bit mangled. Still, great fun and well worth doing. At least we can make a bit more sense of offers and deals in the supermarkets, read menus and some of the newspaper headlines.

We are both a little more active now with Susan’s line dancing, swimming and gym and sauna sessions and Andrews morning (7 days per week, unless the weather is atrocious – twice so far!!!!)  7:30am morning walks. This takes him and one or two others all over Lagos and its surrounds and affords a way of waking up and making sense of things through lively and robust debate. He hasn’t been banned yet from the walks or the forum for his minority of one pro-EU views, though there are some grumblers out there – life is too short to worry, so when he’s banned he may quieten down. Days just fly by and sometimes we do wonder how to fit everything in, and indeed what day it is, when we include fortnightly quiz’s and the occasional supper with other cruisers.

Speaking of which we bumped into Mike from Island Drifter at the market – we met him and Helen the first time we were here in 2009 and then once back in the UK. Their boat is on the hard here and they have nice rented flat in the old town while it’s anti-fouled with Coppercoat. Helen cooked a great meal for us and we returned the favour with a curry – good conversation and more than a few laughs. They’ve recently returned from the Baltic and speak very highly of it, as do Andy and Lesley from Kodiak.

However the boat does need looking after and this time we need to sort out the fridge. It appears the compressor unit developed a leak and filled with sea water, which is not good for its health. So we are in the process of sourcing another unit and getting the folks at Sopromar to fit it. So we are back to the regular ice runs, which given the time of year is not too bad. Had this been in July and August, things would have been a bit more challenging. Of late the weather has been cool, wet and windy, with the occasional thunder and lightning storms, and not too many bright and sunny days – oh well.

More as and when..........

Andrew and Susan

Andromeda of Plymouth

Lagos

Algave

Portugal