SANTOS POPULARES, AND MORE SAINTS YOU MAY NOT KNOW

when the cock of barcelos would have crowed two in the morning had he been awake, we decided finally to stop to eat sardines -- and not so much because we were hungry for sardines (although we were hungry) as because we decided that we should probably do what they do for the feast of saint anthony of padua (or of lisbon...if that's where you're from) while we were ostensibly out to celebrate it, and much sooner than later (if later at all), there weren't going to be any sardines left for eating. and because they weren't very good, the surly, buxom blonde who had clipped my arm with her tongs when i tried to take a napkin from her grilling accessories table told us we'd be getting a free chouriço, which turned out to be two bifanas instead, and which we nonetheless happily ate after finishing the bread on top of which we'd cleaned the skeletons of the sardines on a hill somewhere in between bica and bairro alto when the cock of barcelos would have been crowing about three. unfortunately, the party was all downhill from there, although we still had to walk uphill to get us to the cab that would deliver us to dessert at galeto. and although what we had was good (and would have been described as better if it had been described that same night at the end of the night), it's a good thing that we didn't try the chocolate mousse, because it's impossible that it could have been better than what we had the next afternoon after lunch. there's a factory across the tagus where they work with metal, and they work with metal exclusively for set designs and other, well, art and stuff, and we were there in the late morning of the day after the feast of saint anthony picking up a secret piece of custom craftsmanship for a living statue project (which is big business right now in the crisis countries). maybe the factory is used to dealing with artists (or just with stuffers) and that's why the staff gives the five star reception that it does, but i don't think that any of us -- even the commissioner of the project herself -- thought that we'd end up being taken to lunch at the restaurant to which we were taken to lunch in alcochete. of course, the owners of the factory and the restaurant probably knew each other (or were each other themselves), and the free lunch might not have been the first in the history of either endeavor's business. still, the sardines to which we were treated were in a different world altogether from the ones we'd been served the night before (even with the sweetener of the bifanas). and when our host pulled the back of that spoon over the top of the first chocolate mousse to arrive at the table and then filled the hollow he'd made with a long pour of brandy (from a bottle that he'd pulled from somewhere out of the other world of the sardines we'd just finished), it wasn't so hard to forget that saint anthony the matchmaker hadn't done all that much for us the night before when we were dancing his glory to all those polkas. this, they said, was portugal. and portugal tasted good as a steamed cheese cake too. then, after we'd had the brandy that our host used to rinse our coffee cups, portugal was the place where we remembered that what we'd been drinking with our sardines at lunch was wine. we either did or did not need the further round of espresso we had back at the factory when we returned to pick up what it was for which we'd crossed the river in the first place -- which had been modified and painted while we were at lunch. there's no such thing as a free one, though, and you can be sure that the same adage exists in portuguese. the trip to the factory unfortunately wasn't our only errand. after the effects of the five star treatment had worn off, we were still at ikea; and there was nothing in hell, padua or lisbon that saint anthony could have done to reconcile the couples there.