Feeding time as heron taps window

LAST week, in Lisbon, I saw and heard farmers demonstrating against the Government in a demand for higher prices for milk and meat, and the survival of smallholders.

They were a hardy-looking crowd, nothing fancy about them, the men in soft hats, the older women in black. They carried flags and banners spelling out their grievances; in intervals between speeches, they beat drums and tambourines. None of them looked affluent or even especially well-fed.

Elegant city folk stepping off Lisbon’s brightly-painted antique trams paused briefly to listen as the Tannoy speakers boomed out across the square as large as 20 football pitches. On the estuary of the river Tagus just beyond, big, white ferry boats plied the choppy waters to Setúbal and Belém. It was a day of mixed sunshine and cloud, and the vast square itself and the sky above it somehow dwarfed the gathering of farmers, with their little coloured pennants flapping in the breeze.