WAGS 23.02.2022: Cotifo Once More and The Nickname

Just before sitting down to put this Blog together (conscious as always of my obligations as a deputy Blogger), I had been watching the Ireland - Italy rugby match which provided a real life example of Murphy´s Law, which funnily had been the subject of a family conversation in our nearby Casinhas Café just the previous Friday evening.

 The basic and simplest Murphy´s Law states that " if anything can go wrong, it will." There are many elaborations on Murphy´s Law which Paul will no doubt go into at a future date but here for starters is Murphy´s Law no 5:

 "if anything simply cannot go wrong, it will." 

Then there is the ultimate proof: "if Murphy´s Law can go wrong, it will." 

Of course, there is some doubt if anyone can ever prove Murphy´s Law because, by definition, the proof will not work.

Our conversation in Casinhas that Friday also went on to consider the Buttered Toast Phenomenon. This is the observation that buttered toast, when dropped, tends to land butter-side down after it falls. There have been several experiments to try to prove or disprove the theory. The BBC studied it in 1991 and found that when buttered toast is tossed in the air, it land butter-side down just one-half of the time (as would be predicted by chance.) But that is surely a rather artificial scenario: when one is trying to make one´s breakfast as quickly as possible, one doesn´t go round tossing the toast in the air. It is when one is in a hurry that the blessed thing slips from one´s fingers, misses the plate, and falls groundwards.

A certain scientist called Robert Matthews won the Ig Nobel Prize for physics in 1996 for his study of the topic in which he proved that, when toast is dropped from a table (as opposed to being deliberately thrown into the air), it more often falls butter-side down.

His explanation was that, when toast falls out of one´s hand, it does so at an angle, by nature of it having slipped from its previous position, and then the toast rotates. Given that tables are usually about two and a half feet high, there is only enough time for the toast to rotate about one-half of a turn before it hits the ground, and thus it lands upside down relative to its original position. Since the original position is usually butter-side up, so the toast lands butter-side down.

If, however, the table is higher, say three or four feet high, the toast will have enough time to rotate a full 360 degrees during its fall and land butter-side up.

Robert Matthew also found that it has nothing to do with the weight of the butter, the extent to which the butter had melted into the toast, or if margarine was used instead of butter, or indeed if marmalade was spread on the top of the butter. The phenomenon is caused by fundamental physical constants.

None of this will have been of much comfort to the Italian Rugby Team who came up against the Luck of the Irish and to whom the concept of buttered toast with marmalade would be totally foreign. And so to this week´s walk and Rod´s report thereon.

Tapas ! The café seems to advertise more than it can deliver

Myriam, Yves, Peter, Maria, John, Hazel, Geraldine and Rod met up at the never-before-visited Café by the Odeáxere windmill.  For sure the coffee was adequate but then.... see later. 

Thus refreshed we drove to Cotifo to start the walk after John and Yves had conjured up some tricks with the camera to produce a Starter Photo.

One !

Two !

Three !

 An early short diversion caused us to visit some chap´s market garden  fed by a well and heavily defended against marauding javali by a stout electric fence...not indeed at the time connected. 

 A short while after the normal track was resumed, JohnH called a halt as his Achilles heel was once again giving him trouble...tiens! tiens! M.Paris still at it!! .... so he felt  it wise to return. 

JohnH takes his leave

 On went the depleted party along a footpath following the valley leading up to the tarmac road. We followed this north for a short stretch before turning left up the track leading to Palm Tree Farm from the east.

I wasn´t there so I don´t know what they are looking at

 Before reaching the farm buildings we turned off to the north along what once was a narrow ridgeway path through shrubs, gorse and cistus but was now scrubbed bare earth being prepared for what indeed. After a while it became obvious that to complete the originally intended route not only would we exceed WAGS distance guidelines, but crucially, we were going to be seriously late for lunch. This was not only going to upset John who had been patiently (??) awaiting our return in his car, but also Paul who had been busy negotiating lunch at most of Odeáxere dining establishments...the original establishment having balked at the thought of feeding all of us. After a short discussion, the decision was taken to retrace our steps for a while and then descend to the Bensafrim river valley past the Palm Tree Farm and thus back to our start point. 

What John had been up to all the while history doesn´t relate...maybe he will!. (my lips are sealed)...but at any rate, he had at least turned the car round!  

(Eventually, I saw the group returning the same way they had gone. By the wonders of photoshopping, it looks as if they all came back in one close-knit group. Who knows?)

When Paul finally made contact with us, he announced that he had negotiated terms and installed himself at what was the one café in Odeáxere square that we had never visited before... The Alkunha...the rather quaintly entitled Nickname Café. 

Geraldine grabbed a quick smoothie

Bit of a one-man band and a minute kitchen, but a friendly enough cove running it. Everything seemed to come with chips, requested or not, which added to the calories and the cost. 

This week, it was Rod´s turn to get his food served first.  

"No 6 Please !" (Myriam´s caption)

Paul´s elegantly served three piece bifana

JohnH had to do with a  two-piece one 

Maria´s mega pizza

Hazel´s omelette mista

Not a bad spot and surely in future  there should be at least one café open in the square...but the original one when renovated and open again surely remains No.1 !

The Track and the Statistics

There is also two additional statistics which should not be overlooked and that is the  6.19 kms that Paul put, walking from his Lagos apartment to the Odiáxere café, in 1 hour 20 minutes. I would load the video track into the Blog if I knew how, but I don´t.

 And to close, it seems appropriate to talk a little about Sex on the Beach which is that cocktail available at Alkunas Café that Rod managed to resist ordering. There was a song called that as well in 1997 by a group going by the oh so witty name of T-Spoon. But as this is a family publication I will not post the rather poorly produced video of the song but instead I will provide you with the recipe for the cocktail.