The Best and The Worst of the Week!

Why hello. I thought it was about time I showed you some pictures of our new place, and while I'm here I think I'd like to have a little rant about something that happened to us today!

First things first, here are some pictures of our wonderful new garden, complete with hammocks and barbecue. I must say, I am absolutely loving having this amount of open space outside, especially after having been confined to an apartment for three years, with only a balcony for fresh air! Now, we have space enough to exercise in the garden, and for the dog to run around (he's thrilled, by the way, as is the cat), and I can go out there any time I want to to sunbathe or just to lie in my hammock, reading, which I have to say is one of my favourite things to do when I'm having a lazy day.

I don't know if you can see from the pictures, but the yellow building behind the big table is the house. The pink building you can see at the end of the garden in some of the pictures is a shed.

Last weekend, my husband's parents came to visit us as it was Mothers' Day, so his brother and wife also came over and we had our first barbecue in the new garden! The Mr's father decided to take charge, which unfortunately resulted in a lot of overdone meat (!). He also thought it a good idea to take the skins of the plantains we had bought in order to barbecue them...and then promptly forgot about them. Cue, a lot of black bananas. Oops! Having said that, he did manage to do some pretty good picanha and calabresa before any of this, and we were all full by the time anything was burnt anyway, so all was well!

So, what did I want to have a rant about today? Well, I'll tell you.

The Mr and I had left the house and driven into town to attend an appointment. To help you picture the scene, there are no multi-storey carparks here, or carparks at all, for that matter,  as it's a small town, but that means that it is always chocca with cars trying to hunt down spaces, and sometimes it can take a while to find one, which can be quite stressful. Today, we were in a little bit of a hurry, as we had to get to our appointment by 10am, and it was already quarter to. 

So anyway, we drove around for a while, but as it was a Saturday, town was even busier than usual, and there were even fewer spaces available, so we found ourselves in a queue of cars down this particular little road. It took a while, but eventually, the cars ahead of us moved on, and I spotted a space to our left. "Look, there!" I said to the Mr, but he frowned and said "Err, I think that lady is saving the space". Wondering what on earth he was on about and thinking how ridiculous the concept of anyone saving a parking space was, I looked over and saw that there was, indeed, a lady standing in the middle of the parking space, but I was sure that if we actually started manoeuvering the car into the space then she would move. But no, she looked at us, shook both her head and her finger at us and tutted, which in English seems like you are being told off, but in Brazil basically means "No, no, no". I immediately got angry and sat seething in the passenger seat while the Mr asked her what on earth she thought she was doing, and she responded that her friend/boyfriend was coming to meet her in the car, and that she was saving the space for him. The Mr said to her, "But you're a person, you're not a car. You can't do that", and started driving the car into the space again, but this woman just stood there and folded her arms, refusing to move!!!! I mean, can you actually believe this??? How ridiculous can you get!? The stupidest thing was that she was causing a right old scene in front of everyone (everyone knows everyone in this town), and didn't even seem to be embarrassed about her behaviour, and the fact that what she was trying to do was totally stupid! In fact, if anything, she was acting as if we were in the wrong for asking her to move! Even more ridiculously, the Mr gave up and drove off, letting this poor excuse for a person win, and I'm fairly sure that she'd already done it to a few cars in front of us, too! I was fuming, and wished I had been able to tell the woman (she couldn't hear we from where I was sitting) how pathetic I thought this was. Everyone wanted a parking space. Everyone had to queue and wait. IN THEIR CARS. Why did this woman think that she was something special and that she was entitled to have her boyfriend completely jump the queue, leaving other people without anywhere to park and maybe making them late for important appointments!?

Seriously, it literally took me about an hour to calm down after that, I was so annoyed! The Mr was annoyed that he hadn't said more, too, but because he runs a restaurant here, and, as I mentioned before, everyone knows everyone, he has to be careful about the way he treats people as he can't run the risk of alienating customers. Not that he would have cared if he had alienated this particular woman, but people talk.

While we are on the subject of ridiculous queue-jumping, I have two more good examples of how some people seem to have no idea about rules, manners and social etiquette.

I was queueing for lottery tickets the other day, and I was at the back of the line. This girl came up behind me and said, "If anyone comes along to queue, can you tell them that I'm behind you and save my place? I've got to go and do some other things first". Errrr, NO!? She hadn't even been in the queue at all, and she thought that I, a complete stranger, was going to do her dirty work for her, not to mention advocate the kind of behaviour I am completely against. To be honest, I just gave her a funny look and said "Err..yeah, ok", but I had no intention of doing it, and by the time I got to the front, I had 'let' at least five people in behind me, and she was nowhere to be seen. Ha.

I mean, what goes on in peoples' heads!?