BBC Panorama I

1. Introduction

When I was young, while living in Portugal, going to the movies, or to the cinema as it was called then, was a big social event for us toddlers.

Then the age limits to be able to see a movie were strictly enforced. I remember that the movies were classified into the following categories: for all, over 6, over 12, over 16 and over 18.

My earliest cinema memories are from when I was between 6 and 12.

When we walked into the theatre the curtains would be open showing an enormous cloth panel, on which publicity was printed just like an enormous newspaper page filled with small adverts.

New knight in town

1. Introduction

“A man [or anybody for that matter] is known by the company he keeps” – Aesop

We have waited to see who Ian Horrocks was associated with before giving an opinion on his latest opining about what happened to Maddie in a post called exactly “What happened to Madeleine McCann?” on a website called BGP-Global services.

If dung was truffles, Horrocks’ production would be auctioned at Sothebys for an absurd amount of money such would be the competition to get the hands on such a rare, exquisite and refined piece of crap.

Woman-in-Purple

1. Introduction

One of our blog readers in Nov 2013 aptly defined Praia da Luz as the VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, due to the many negative peculiarities that have been attributed to this village because of the Maddie affair – the latest being a nanny saying that it was also a rape-haven location – it has, or so it seems to have, a very positive peculiarity related to the case: the elderly who live there, their memory improves with time.

But only the elderly.

Why?

(pictures from the Sun)

Do not ask why the stone has fallen to the ground

But rather why it is that on it is nowhere to be found

Nor ask why this journey of thousands or even millions of miles

Over mountains so high they say they can touch the moon and she smiles

Sailing, they say, rivers of lava and seas with waves of rock and foam of steel

One huge tale weaved by so many tales told by liars of thieves who forget to steal

But do ask why such a short journey needed deceit of its distance in tireless try

And why do they think we will ever believe that pigs and elephants crisscross the sky



The ground did not move that night and all know the stone on it fell

Together they gathered and swore that it was a breeze that whooshed it far and long

Cowards who today sing the tale of the missing stone will one day be ashamed to tell

That the bedtime story they have told their children for a decade they knew it so wrong

As we all know they know where the stone fell and why it hasn’t been found as well