Portuguese Geography

PeterMac wrote:

Clay Regazzoni wrote:
Finally! A subject to which I can bring some genuine expertise...

Clearly right footed. Excellent body shape and good follow through. .

They both claim to be Left footers.

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

Tony Bennett wrote:

Bend it like Beckham?

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Quite.

secrets and lies wrote:The picture of The McCanns leaving the Prai De Luz church is another one that sends chills. It has the look of two lotto winners suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Still wearing cheap summer clothes but on their way to bigger and better. One loving being spotted by the cameras the other looking a bit stressed about what to do with the upcoming windfall.

Joking aside, I must say again that I have NEVER EVER seen such a carefree looking couple who have just had their eldest child stolen. It really is phantasmagorical. If such a word exists. Hard to find the correct word to sum up the lack of regard in their eyes.

missbeetle wrote:I've been thinking about Kate's 'rocks' - first mentioned in her book here, in July 2007 :

And there would be several visits to ‘my rocks’ – a quiet part of the beach away from the promenade. As swimmers and sunbathers preferred the sandy stretches, this area, where the rocks reached down to the water, was usually deserted, and afforded me some shelter and privacy. I still go back there on my visits to Praia da Luz to be on my own.

...and then again in December 2009 :

Gerry and I were able to seek solace at Nossa Senhora da Luz, I spent time at my rocks on the beach and we caught up with friends. To this day I still return quietly to Luz from time to time to feel Madeleine close to me.
McCann, Kate (2011-05-12). Madeleine: Our daughter's disappearance and the continuing search for her (Kindle Locations 5163-5164). Transworld. Kindle Edition.

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(aerial view of Praia da Luz snipped from coloradonewsday.com)

I take it the rocky promontory to the left of the photograph is the place she means...

...and the rows of black dots are palm trees along the promenade.


Some different views :
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(snipped from algarveluzbay.com, with thanks)

Below left Kate is pictured on the rocks with whom I believe is Linda McQueen and her daughter (Kate's goddaughter)  :
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...and on the right, with Gerry in September 2007 - I think that's Cuddle Cat on her lap.

These rocks seem to be of some emotional significance to Kate, but why that is, I don't know...

missbeetle wrote:Thanks all for pointing out Kate knows how to kick a ball properly - interesting!

I thought she looked all manner of clumsy - I know nothing of soccer.

I hope she thrashes Gerry out in the Rothley garden pitch...

...given half the chance.


Thanks also, Monty Heck for clarifying their photoshoot location.

Gerry and Kate at around the same place in early June, 2007 :

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Whatever Gerry's trying to talk her in to -

- Kate's not at all convinced...!


My thoughts only.

Monty Heck wrote:

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No prolem missb.  The building behind the McCs in the above is the Fortaleza da Luz, whereas the other photo was taken at the Vila Luz on the Urbanacao Ponta da Gaviota, about 10 mins walk further west.  It probably matters not, other than to illustrate that another similar rocky location was favoured with a photoshoot,  It also probably matters not but in the above image, KMcC appears deathly pale, thin and almost ethereal, quite a contrast to the tanned athleticism of the soccer ball beach shot, and yes, she does appear almost to shudder at whatever G has to say here!

Clay Regazzoni wrote:
She looks incredibly like the mother from The Missing in this photo - or perhaps it's the other way around?

The Missing (BBC1) is a new eight-part series about a child abduction.
It borrows shamelessly from Scandi-dramas and the Madeleine McCann case, yet manages to avoid feeling like a ragbag of different influences and was actually quite enjoyable, with tonight's episode offering a mix of anxiety and heartbreak.
Mum, dad and child are on holiday in France and everything is sweet and lovely. It's actually a bit saccharine, as they laugh and frolic in a sunny meadow, then gather to make daisy chains. These twee family scenes felt very forced. I could easily imagine the director waving his hands behind the camera, instructing the actors to pile on more schmaltz, more middle-class familial bliss.
Clearly, no subtlety was allowed. This was to be the tale of a perfect child snatched from a perfect family. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a missing child drama on a grotty council estate? That would certainly call for a deft touch with room for a frosty subtext of whether or not the requisite junkie/single mother/scrounger was a good parent, and perhaps they brought it on themselves? But that might just be too subtle for prime-time BBC1, so we stick with the middle class parents.
Their sunny family holiday turns dark during a World Cup game. Tony (James Nesbitt) and his son, Olly, have been swimming. They're thirsty and push their way into a crowded bar where everyone is watching the football.
Tony kept Olly close to him and a brilliant sense of dread slowly began to build. We saw the bar from little Olly's viewpoint, down low amongst the suffocating crowd, amidst the shoving and the shouting. A place where a child could easily get lost.
He let Olly's hand go, just for a second, so he could pay for the drinks. In that instant, France scored against Brazil and the crowd rose to their feet. In the sudden rush, Tony lost sight of his son.
The subsequent scenes were horribly tense as Tony fought his way through a crowd who were oblivious to his panic. All eyes were fixed on the football, not on him, as he ran through the crowd and out into the summer night shouting for his son, but Olly had vanished.
Placing this scene in a happy crowd was a stroke of brilliance, showing how isolated and afraid Tony was, and how the crowd simply didn't care. This feeling of alienation in a foreign land was also cleverly teased out by the use of subtitles. They were employed when the French detectives were speaking to one another, but whenever Tony was present the subtitles vanished, leaving us frowning at the rapid French and sharing Tony's helplessness.
Because we were so steeped in his anxiety it was hard to see where the storyline might go. The French detective had declared of the missing boy, 'sadly, we find him immediately or not at all' and, of course, they didn't find him immediately. Instead they found clues which suggested he'd been taken to a dimly-lit basement and that doesn't bode well.
So in case the central plotline flops, there were lots of little subplots unfurling: we see from a flash-forward that Tony's wife has left him and is now living with one of the English detectives, whilst one of the French cops is now 'rotting in prison' for an unspecified reason.
The story does borrow heavily from the Madeleine McCann case: a child snatched in a foreign holiday resort; the mother clutching at a favourite cuddly toy; British police parachuted in; accusations the case was mishandled; the locals grow resentful of the media attention and a book is published about it all.
Some may fret over the morality of using the McCann case for simple entertainment but as long as the resultant programme is brilliant then I'm fine with it but, so far, The Missing isn't brilliant. It's good, peppered with some excellent moments, and tugs nicely at the heartstrings, but that doesn't justify plundering the McCann case for some good story tips.

Clay Regazzoni wrote:

She looks incredibly like the mother from The Missing in this photo - or perhaps it's the other way around?

doircann wrote:This is my first post on the forum proper, so hello!  I would just like to say that after not really having taken much notice of this case for years I was totally shocked when I realised that it had polarised people so much.  After I began to read things on the internet and watch the many video clips I was amazed at how much info there was. This has obviously been stoked by the release of the portugese police files.  But the comment that I wanted to make here is that I was struck by how much the personalities of Kate and Gerry had seemed to be at least part of the provocation.  I saw a headline in the Guardian ( but never actually got around to reading the article) that begged precisely the question as to why people had been so divided. 

The late Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing once commented that we have a very extensive vocabulary to describe disturbed people but a very large void for describing disturbing people.  Laing also wrote extensivley about how peoples mental health was very disturbed by mystification, especially when you may feel something to be one thing but are told that it is another.  I feel very much an outsider looking in at this case and the furore that has surrounded it, but I have never come across more obvious attempts to mystify, bamboozle and befuddle people than I have in this case.  I, perhaps wrongly, see The Missing as part of this campaign of mystification.  The frigidly pinched mother and unsympathetically agressive father are understood and forgiven when we see the images of the little boy at the window. Who could fail to be moved and horrified by such an image?  And if the warm and sympathetic detective can bury the morals that have guided him all his life then what right have we to judge - because after all, the gloves are well and truly off when it comes to paedophiles - kill them all! Everything is muddy - what is right? What is wrong? And all the time Madeleine is ever more firmly linked in the public mind with paedophiles. But the truth is noone knows what happened and there is no evidence that Kate and Gerry are guilty of anything but their odd stance and blatant distortions continue to provoke an uncertainty, suspicion and unease that seems to have reached right down into the guts of many people and left them feeling angry and disorientated.

Laing worked for the Tavistock Institute.  We mustn't forget that mental health research may tell us something about how to help people who have psychological difficulties but it can also tell us quite alot about to manipulate people and perhaps even send them mad!

doircann wrote:to aquilo. You seem to misunderstand me. I did not say that this case is a mental health issue. I said that it is being used, for reasons unknown to me, to manipulate people.  For instance there have been certain crazy elements like the whole Victoria Beckham and Barcelona debacle which makes no sense whatsoever.  I made the point only that the people around the McCanns seem to be deliberately trying to wind people up and , if you don't mind me saying, seem to be succeeding. I personally surmise that there are much darker issues at play than money.  People on the margins of both pro and anti Mccann seem to have slid off the ends of rationality and cling on to and battle for their own pet theories as if some part of their own psychological make up was very much in play. I dare say a fair few of them have been banned off this forum.

aiyoyo wrote:Gerry and Kate at around the same place in early June, 2007 :

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missbeetle wrote:More scenery and sensitivity from Gerry :

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(photograph dated 2nd June 2007)

Are they looking out towards Praia da Rocha - or have I got it wrong again?

Many thanks.