The Lazy Approach To Blogging

I have lost all track of time. By yesterday at the latest I should have penned the blog entry for today. No, I allowed events to entice me into spending far too much time with friends, selfishly ignoring my readers. Even now, I'm rushing into this because I'm about to exit the computer for another Algarvean lunch.

So, I'm taking the easy way out. Having had a look at what archived Algarvean Daze blogs get read the most, I thought I'd re-introduce some of them here for the benefit of those of you who may not have been following me from the start. Hopefully these articles will be of some interest to you.

Forced To Drink By The Police

The Return Of The Mosquito In Moccasins

TGIF - Algarve Style

Corn Flaked

Dem Ol' Airline Trashed My Luggage Again Blues

Cul-de-Sac

OK, that's my easy way out. I'm now off to meet friends for that lunch I mentioned. Até logo!

Weekender

When we first moved to the Algarve a decade ago, weekends were frequently taken up with long drives through the mountains or to western coastal areas not so popular with visitors. My significant other half, a quite accomplished photographer, would punctuate what I desired to be non-stop travel with request after request to stop, go back, park and wait while a diminutive wildflower or a vista disappearing into infinity was (as if nature needed this) immortalised.

VKB 2011

Then fuel became more expensive, our circle of friends grew and weekends ceased to be cause to venture into the hinterlands. The time reserved for exploration had become time utilised in socialising, in partaking and imbibing, often in amounts far greater than those deemed sensible. Nature had to take a back seat, and that in a car that wasn't going anywhere.

Things are going to change. Our plan is to get back into discovering much more of the country we have adopted, and sharing some of those discoveries here. The car is fuelled and ready to depart for roads never travelled under our stewardship. Autumn awaits us, and it would be churlish not to heed its call. So, we're off, returning hopefully with new stories, images and insights.

That's assuming the social secretary has nothing else planned for the weekend!

Summer Departs, Autumn Leaves

Less traffic, parking spaces closer to our destination, shorter queues in the supermarkets. Favourite waiters at frequented restaurants missing in action, off finally on their well deserved breaks. 'Stock Out' end of season sales where merchants get that final seasonal burst of income required to keep them ticking over until the next influx of visitors. All indications that summer is drawing to a close.

Temperatures moderating, less of a gap between the highs and lows, a bit less light, a few cloudy hours creeping into some of the days - Autumn is approaching.

I enjoy the changing of the seasons, but there is something I find lacking in the Algarvean cycle. With the exception of our almond trees, there is little indication of senescence, of leaves dying and trees going into dormancy. The colour, the reds, yellows and browns, the harbinger of the colder (OK, in Algarve, cooler) weather that will eventually become winter is noticeable in it's absence. And this displeases my sense of what Autumn is - or rather should be. Would I, however, live anywhere else just in order to experience that which I find missing, would I abandon the Algarve for the Perthsire highlands of Scotland or leafy Vermont, both resplendent in Autumn?

Not for all the leaves in the forest.

Câmara Antiga

As some of you know (as ALL of you should know) Algarvean Daze publishes current Algarve events under the auspices of it's sister site, Algarvean Daze on Facebook. Hint: If you didn't already know, you do now, and there's no excuse not to regularly visit!

A lot of the information that we publish has it's source in the official websites of the various councils which govern the Algarve, websites which cater for the social and cultural needs of the population as well as the daily administrative bureaucracy. And herein lies the problem. We at Algarvean Daze use social networking sites to collect the council information that we ultimately dispense, but some of the Algarve Concelhos do not - in 2011 - link to social networking sites. This means that the events they support are only known to those who visit the individual, official site of each council - at times quite a time-consuming task.

So, to the Presidents of Albufeira, Castro Marim, Lagos, Lagoa, Monchique, Olhão, São Brás de Alportel and Vila do Bispo Concelhos - get your act together. You spend time and scarce money to put on events for the people, then hide this information away from the wider population. Wake up!

We can't help you if you don't/won't help yourselves! And we would really like to help you.

Why-Fi?

Believe me, I had absolutely no intention of setting up another blog/website any time in the near future. Then some friends with an iPad rented a villa nearby and although they had enquired about internet access before making the booking, found themselves with a landlord-provided dongle and no USB port on the iPad which would have allowed the consummation of machine and web. To compound matters, the only solution I could suggest involved my home WiFi network and one bar I occasionally frequent.

Even a quick search online didn't resolve the problem. Local information was a bit rough and decidedly sketchy, and sites that provided slicker presentation didn't really cater too much for the Algarve region of Portugal. So I decided to do it myself.

I have no idea what the finished product will look like, but for the time being, information which is being collected is being presented simply at AlgarveWiFi.info.

But, it's not just about me providing information. You can help me help you. If you have an Algarvean business that offers free WiFi, or if you use a business in the Algarve that offers free WiFi, contact us HERE. Share the information with me, and I'll share the information with the Algarve. That's what the web is all about!