Quite why the Pope gets the red carpet treatment onto a TAP flight, one that actually gets airborne, while I don’t even get a sniff of the cabin is beyond me. He even got three fully licensed airline captains to fly his plane. When I tried I didn’t even get one, though I suppose there might be a connection. Perhaps, just let’s suppose, that the pilot who was supposed to fly my plane last Monday was resting, just in case, ready for the Papal flight to Rome so he was refreshed and alert. That must be it.
The city wasn’t clamped down in a huge security operation in spite of all the warnings that it would be so. Why, even our street – which the Pope wasn’t going to come anywhere near (most probably because I rather spitefully didn’t invite him for tea and His Holiness was no doubt sulking) – had red lines all through it. On the map at least. That was supposed to mean that traffic would be banned. It wasn’t. We’d been told that the Metro would stop. It didn’t. The buses were going to be rerouted. They weren’t. It was all very confusing. Nevertheless around about 9 this morning the air was all a clatter with the sound of papish helicopters chop chop chopping their way over the city centre and up and down the river. Just about everyone’s access to the internet went down at about the same time. Was this merely a coincidence? Of course it was. Being a bit stymied at work due to lack of connectivity I wandered off down town to see what was what and to try and tick the page in my Eye Spy book with pictures of men in white dresses. Of course I didn’t get anywhere near His Whiteness because of the crowds being funnelled down narrow streets by very large numbers of police though I’m sure he was looking out for me in the crowd, if only to chastise me in a monkish way for not providing tea and biscuits. The crowds were far more interesting than an old German muttering his way through mass in the town square, though, and apart from the many groups of scrubbed, red faced scouts who had been bussed in to make up the numbers, there were women of a certain age clutching little ‘Bem-vindo’ flags, accompanied by similar aged but differently motivated men also clutching little flags. The difference between them was that the women were merrily waving the flags and looking like they were having a good time while the men were holding their flags tightly curled, pointing timidly downwards, and looking very sheepish about the whole affair, and occasionally absorbing an elbow nudge from their flag waving women folk.
The Pope-mobile chugged up the other side of the square from where the faithful were being shepherded, though I do want to know how the Pope-mobile got to Porto in the first place. An hour earlier it had been in Fátima and I know this because we’d see it on TV. Is there a second Pope-mobile? I think we have a right to know. Or perhaps it had been hoisted military style into a Chinook helicopter, but I didn’t think the Portuguese airforce had any. Regardless of how it got there, we didn’t see it, tucked away on the far side of the square, except on the giant screens thoughtfully scattered around the city centre. In which case we all might as well have stayed at home and watched it from the comfort of our respective sofas and without the discomfort of small ‘bem-vindo’ flags being shoved up noses by very stout women.
He’s gone now, so perhaps we can get our city back. They’ll be talking about it for ages, though, and the only regret I have is that, perhaps, after all, I should have put the kettle on. It might be the only way to catch a flight these days.
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