The
Easter just past is likely to be one of the last of its kind. Leaders
of various branches of the Christian Church are nearing agreement on
making Easter a permanent, unique fixture instead of a moveable
feast. For more than 1,600 years it has wavered around weekends in
March and April depending on the ecclesiastical full moon and the
type of calendar used. Pope Francis and the leaders of the
Protestant, Coptic and Orthodox churches are all said to be in favour
of global uniformity. With the approval of secular governments, a set
date for Easter Sunday will have important ramifications, particular
for the tourist industry and schools. It ls expected to happen in the
next five to ten years, but don’t count on it. “It may take a
little while,” says the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby,
mindful that church leaders have been working on this for the past
ten centuries.
Summertime
Back
in the 1960s and 1970s, the time set-up meant that the sun in
Portugal was still rising at 9.00 on winter mornings. Children went
to school and adults went to work in the dark. On summer evenings, it
was hard for some to get to sleep because it didn’t get dark until
nearly midnight. Under the present system, getting up an hour early
last Sunday morning was no great hardship for most, and hopefully it
will put the daylight saving debate to bed for a bit.
Bumbling
crumbling
Silves
Castle changed hands several times during the Middle Ages as a result
of furious battles for supremacy between the Crusading Christians and
Muslim Moors. But at any given time it was always pretty clear who
was in charge. The once mighty battlements that still dominate the
skyline of the Algarve’s former capital city are now crumbling and
in danger of collapsing due to neglect. Officials say it is not
clear whether the municipality or the state now owns the castle, who
is responsible for maintaining the walls or who should now foot the
bill to stop them falling down. As ruefully mentioned in a press
report last week, it is generally hoped that the various authorities
can find a solution because “the walls show no signs of righting
themselves on their own”. Without divine intervention, that would
indeed seem to be so.
Feathered
failures
Young
people have been moving out of Portugal in droves while White Storks
have given up migrating. The human population is in decline while the
number of resident storks has been increasing. As revealed in a new
study, the plentiful supply of junk food available in landfill sites
is one of the reasons why storks now resist the temptation to go off
and spend the winter months in Africa. Presumably this also explains
the plummeting birth rate among Portuguese women. The storks are
obviously spending far too much time hanging around landfill sites
instead of getting on with the job of delivering babies.
Lot
of hot air
Another
new study is advocating that humans eat less meat and dairy produce
to help curb global warming. Researchers are concerned about the
quantity of greenhouse gasses emitted by livestock in the form of
flatulence. The world’s cud-chewing inhabitants currently total
about 1.5 billion and that adds up to a lot of pollution because an
average fart contains 9% carbon dioxide and 7% methane. The world’s
human population is nearly 7.5 billion. Humans break wind a lot too,
a habit that is expected to increase exponentially. On the plus side,
Portugal has relatively few cattle per human head of population. This
is negated by the fact that everyone in this country eats beans,
particularly at this time of the year. And we all know what eating
beans means.