How Leighton Gage recalled "Celebrting NewYears in Brazil."

I thought it might be nice on this final Sunday of 2014 to take a look back at how our buddy and driving force founder of Murder is Everywhere, Leighton Gage, celebrated New Years in his beloved Brazil.  Here's Leighton's post from January 3, 2011...and here's looking at you, kid. ––Jeff

While most of you folks are dealing with the cold, and many are still up to your…ahh…knees in snow, 

 we’re basking in the warmth of a Southern Hemisphere summer.

And here, a stone’s throw from the Tropic of Capricorn, it isn’t only our weather that’s different. Our customs are as well.

 I’d like to share a few of them with you.

On New Year’s Eve we:

Dress ourselves in white. (Brings luck.)

Eat lentils. (Also brings luck. My wife firmly believes in this one, and makes sure I comply. It is a matter of indifference to her that I am not fond of lentils.)

Suck the pulp from seven pomegranate seeds, wrap them in paper and put them in our wallets  (To ensure that, throughout the New Year, those wallets will always contain money.) Alternatively, you can use a single bay leaf.

Eat three grapes at midnight. (For wish fulfillment. You make a wish as you consume each one.)

 Stand outside and fling coins into your house. (Brings cash to the household.)

Avoid eating crab. (Crabs move backward, symbolic of regression, not progression.)

Avoid eating fowl, like chicken and turkey. (Fowl have wings, which can cause your luck to fly away.)

Hold glasses of champagne in our hands and jump up and down three times. (This ensures that everything bad that ever happened to you will be left in the past. It only works, however, if you manage to do it without spilling a single drop of the bubbly. After which, you empty the entire glass over your shoulder. For obvious reasons, this is best done outside.)

Get up on chairs, or benches, and stay there as the clock strikes twelve times at midnight. Then get down, stepping first with the right foot. (This should not be attempted after consuming too much champagne.)

Enter the New Year with money in our pockets. (In the hope we’ll always have some there in the twelve months to come.)

Put banknotes in our shoes. (This is said to attract even more money.)

Only use clean handkerchiefs after midnight. (God knows why.)

Make sure that the first person we embrace to wish a Happy New Year is a member of the opposite sex. (This is supposed to bring luck in love. I’m not sure which sex you’re supposed to embrace if you’re gay. I shall have to ask one of my gay friends about that.)

Run around the house carrying an empty suitcase. (This only applies to those of us who plan to travel in the course of the coming year. Caution must be exercised not to bump into people jumping up and down with glasses in their hands, thereby causing them to spill champagne.)

Light candles and throw roses into the sea. (This is done to please Iemanjá, Queen of the Waters and mother of the Orixás. Most Brazilians are, to some degree, spiritualists, and this custom is taken very seriously.)

On the beaches of Copacabana and  Ipanema  hundreds of thousands of people make their offerings at midnight. Some of them also give The Lady perfume, money even jewelry.

Step into the ocean and jump over seven waves in succession. (To help us to overcome physical and spiritual difficulties in the year to come. ) Many family members join hands as they do this, symbolic of the family overcoming those difficulties as a unit.

Make a lot of noise. You can use whistles, drums, beat on pots and pans, whatever it takes – but it has to be exactly at midnight. After which you start shooting off your fireworks. (This, of course, harks back to the ancient peoples who did it to frighten away evil spirits.)

Brazilians are very big on fireworks on New Year’s Eve. This year, there were eleven barges anchored four hundred meters off the beach at Copacabana. Each barge fired off 1,200 huge skyrockets and the pyrotechnics went on for twenty minutes. More than a million people stood on the beach and watched the show.

Sing Adeus Ano Velho, Feliz Ano Novo. It’s our equivalent of your Auld Lang Syne.

 

Brazil’s biggest New Year’s party takes place in Brazil’s largest city. This year, as last, a huge stage was erected on São Paulo’s major thoroughfare, Avenida Paulista.

Big names from the world of Brazilian popular music performed and a huge amount of fireworks lit up the sky. The party started at eight PM, was still going on at 3:00 AM.
More than 2.5 million people attended.

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope you enjoyed your parties as much as we did ours.

Leighton, for all of us – Sunday

A Different Time

Three weeks from tomorrow Greece votes for a new Parliament in an election already overrun with pronouncements, predictions, predilections, prognostications, and prevarications.  In other words, it’s politics as usual—politicians and the press p’ing all over the public.

Enough already.

I have my own sort of P for thee.  It’s an assortment of photographs culled from the archives of my friend Dimitris Koustoukas capturing Mykonos—his birthplace and my heartspace—a couple of generations back.  

Times were different then.  And no doubt will be so again.  Whether times are better or not I suspect shall always be debated, for that is the Greek way…

Jeff––Saturday

Happy New Year To All Our Friends

Happy New Year! For many people in Scotland, this means taking advantage of our two day holiday (yes, two days. As you know we take Hogmanay very seriously here) to recover from a few drams too many or joining family for a traditional steak pie dinner.

So I was thinking about MIE and what a friendly bunch we are, hands across oceans etc. Emails across oceans is more accurate. But less romantic.

                                    

And I got to thinking about friends. If you sit and think about five friends you have, most of them will have similar traits. They will be loyal, they will do things in companionable silence without wittering on like a demented budgie with Tourette's. They will make you laugh and they will be slightly dafter than you. So you can feel a little superior. And of course that is a perfect description of a dog. 

                                    

There will be one friend who is a cat – the friend who only calls when they want something. The friend who orders the most expensive food on the menu when you are paying the bill. The friend who will not tell you exactly what they have been up to but you know from the smile on their face that they enjoyed it. When you finally decide that you have had enough of being used, they do something charming and wonderful, knowing they will be forgiven. And that friend is your cat friend, we all have them.

(A recent survey said that cat owners are more likely to have a university degree but dog owners live longer than cat owners do!)

So thinking about MIE, it is in the area of ‘criminal’ activities that our friends differ. Cats murder things and bring their victims home. Whereas dogs are rather helpful in the pursuit of crime detection. And indeed how often, in fiction and real life do we read ‘the body was found by a passing dog walker’. In truth the body was found by a passing dog.

                                         

                                                      One of the first, digging his new uniform...

The image of the British police dog is iconic, Glasgow was one of the first forces in Britain to recruit police dogs in 1910. Only because the force was getting a little bit desperate. Crime was increasing, violent housebreakings (what we call burglary ) were becoming common. A Lt Colonel Richardson who owned a dog training school at Carnoustie had contacted every chief constable in the UK about training police dogs but there had been no interest – until he contacted Glasgow.

He did not supply one of these though;

                                 

                                      ( this is Nipper, the first police dog of the new Police Scotland)

It was one of these…

                                        

Which I always think of as….

                                    

 Somehow even more scary.

Airedale terriers were originally bred as hunting dogs so they would track their quarry across any terrain. This made them ideal as police dogs, but Richardson went a step further, breeding them with other dogs to develop their intelligence and sense of smell.

 

During the First World War, these dogs went on to become incredibly important to the army, able to carry messages when soldiers wouldn’t make it through or to alert soldiers to approaching enemies.  

But time proved that the German Shepherds were brighter, more trainable and possessed a keener sense of smell than Airdales. And the image of the police dog we know became more familiar.

I have had the pleasure to know Jim and Chet. I have changed their names to protect the guilty. Jim  is a tall strapping police officer from the days when police officers had to be tall and strapping and be able to run after criminals, whereas now I think all they need to be able to do is spreadsheets and sit in McDonalds eating burgers. ( Just a personal observation!)

Chet was a big boned German Shepherd who liked to chase bad people and hold them down. If they annoyed him, he bit them gently. If he was bored he would chase anything that ran away from him.

He was a brave and determined lad, keen in pursuit, fast across the ground – and so was Jim until the day Chet took off down an eight feet drop at the end of a five feet lead and dislocated Jim’s shoulder. Words were said, Chet was cursed by Jim but gave his handler a “there will be time enough for that kind of talk once we’ve caught him” Rin Tin Tin look. And they started running again…..and they caught him.

His most (in) famous exploit happened on an outfield of the airport. On a dark, dark night two suspects had got in past the perimeter fence. Two officers within the perimeter were send to chase them and Chet was sent in to assist. They were to chase the thieves up to the corner of the fence where a police car was waiting on the other side. If they made it over the fence (8 feet high ) they would be apprehended on the outside. If they didn’t, they would be caught by their pursuers…and Chet.

The thieves took one look at Chet and ran for the fence, as did the two officers. Chet was running free, and unbeknown to them - was very good at getting over fences. There was a self-satisfied smile for thirty seconds when the thieves got over the fence only to be handcuffed by the two cops from the squad car, plus the two cops that Chet had been assisting.  Then they realised that Chet was clawing his way slowly up the wire.

                                                

Jim was too far behind to call Chet off. ( and confesses that he  wouldn’t have.)

Chet was in outraged pursuit. With nowhere to go police and thieves piled into the police car, six in all, arms and legs everywhere. The doors banged closed just in time and Chet bounced from window to window, barking furiously that he had run all that way and was entitled to bite someone.

Jim (still on the inside), took one look at the fence, felt his shoulder and decided against the climb. He  walked all the way back to the dog van, leaving Chet in charge of the situation. Chet was found on top of the squad car with the four cops and two thieves trembling inside.

We shall draw a veil over the time he chased an assistant police commissioner up a tree. I think that was in front of some Norwegian policemen who were keen to see a demonstration. They thought Chet was great. They disliked their commissioners as much as Chet disliked his.

                              

                                     Barney retired after ten years of loyal drug sniffing.

And then we think of the cadaver dogs- scenting the decomposing body twenty minutes after death. The drug sniffing dogs, the search dogs,  the mountain rescue dogs. The guide dogs for the blind, the hearing dogs for the deaf, diabetic and epileptic sensing dogs that really can change the lives of very young kids. And the cancer detecting dogs. The assistance dogs for disabled. Rumours are that they can be better than the average husband at putting the washing machine on.

And not forgetting the dogs in military service, used in bomb detection and disposal. And I have no doubt, keeping up moral in the most horrific of circumstances.

                                        

And then we have pet dogs who wouldn't even wear the comedy reindeer antlers for a photograph...

                                                      

So a great new year to all our friends, no matter where in the world. No matter how many legs they have. Or whose antlers.

Caro Ramsay  02 01 2015

Happy New Year!

So what’s the big deal? Midnight strikes (at different times in different places, of course) and everyone goes wild. The year moves up by one, the month reverts to January, and the day back to the first. Just a counting mechanism like when you flip up to 10 from 9. Yes, but it also means that this is now another year where everyone gets one year older.  So maybe a bit of reflection - looking back - and then a bit of contemplation – looking forward – and then a great excuse for a party!

Most African countries seem to join the traditional model – fireworks, parties, dancing – but there are some special celebrations. Here are a few:

In Luanda, Angola, you might like to celebrate with a traditional bolo-rei.

In Cape Town there is the annual Minstrel Carnival. Going back 200 years to celebrate the one day of the year when slaves didn’t have to work – actually it happened on the second of January

then – there are floats, parades, dances, food and of course wine. In Cape Town the morning after is the best part!

For new year’s eve, a concert with Mango Groove at the wonderful National Botanical Gardens (Kirstenbosch) in Cape Town, would be a good start.

Maputu in Mozambique. Some different fireworks.

Nigeria. Here the big feature is masquerades. People dress up in costumes – often as animals, some real, some mythical – and get on with the party!

As for new year’s resolutions, I don’t remember ever keeping one. For what it’s worth, I try to think about what I’d like to see happen in the year – achieve sounds pretentious and too much like a resolution – and think of a few things that might help that to take place. If this contemplation gets too serious, a glass of good wine is an excellent antidote.

All the best for 2015 everyone!

Michael – New Year’s Thursday