Singing for my tea

So, out of the blue, just like that, on a sunny afternoon at the end of March, he calls, and says, the council is interested in doing lessons at the local school for English. Great, I say. It’s about time I learned to speak better Portuguese, and how considerate that the council is putting on lessons for the steadily increasing numbers of English people living here these days. Good thinking. I'm in.


Oh, but you’re mistaken, says he, you’ve misunderstood me (I hear that a lot). We want, nay, we need, a part time English teacher for the 3 primary schools in Oleiros for the summer term, cos the last one left kind a sharpish like for South Africa. So I thought of you. Why? I’m not a teacher. Ah, but you are more than qualified my dear Andre, you actually speak English. No denying that, I thought. Quick nip in to town to look up on the internet what teaching English as a foreign language in a primary school might involve, loved what I saw, knocked up a quick CV from scratch (most bizarre having to remember all that education, experience stuff that once I held as having a resemblance of importance, a bit like I was taking a sneaky peak at someone else’s life, as I said, simply bizarre) handed it in that same day with a cover letter to the President of Oleiros as my application and waited 3 weeks to hear back from the powers that be in Coimbra and then Lisbon to decide my fate.

I called in last Monday morning, for the news so I thought. Here’s the contract to sign, says he, then I’ll take you over to the school in town (where Josh and Eli go) to meet the head, and then you’re off to Estreito (20 mins drive from Oleiros) to teach the 3.30pm class and after that to Orvalho (25 mins from Estreito) to teach the 4.45 class there. Righty-O then. No induction? No right. Of course not. Any materials? Ah the internet, of course, silly me.

And so it came to be, armed only with echoes of rhymes sung to the kids when they were wee, that this little old foolish useless nobody, began to sing for his tea.

4 classes, 2 hours each day, in 3 different schools, five days a week, for the next 8 weeks and maybe beyond into next year, and the years to come.

My ten year plan written at 29, included setting up an advertising agency for charities and other good causes I liked, selling it after 5 years to someone nice, retraining to be a teacher in a year (the teaching bit so I could get my life more in synch with the kids), 4 years of experience and then off round Europe and the world teaching as we went. But, that urge to get my life more in synch with the sprogs, took over from the teaching bit, and after selling the agency, bought a motorhome, rented our house, took the kids out of school, and went looking for an altogether different life in southern Europe (see the 1st blog, Poop in Europe Tour, for a refresher on how that worked out). And now I am actually doing the teaching bit too. And it’s wicked. Here’s why.

One. Kids are fun. And here in rural central Portugal, they are not only fun but also really open and well keen to learn English.

Two. For a couple hours a day, in the heat of the afternoon when we wouldn’t normally be doing much restoration work or gardening outside anyway, I drive through some stunning, curvy, perfect-to-drive-on roads through mountain forests and valleys, to go sing nursery rhymes and play games.

Three. After all the kindness and generosity we’ve been shown by our Portuguese neighbours and by those we’ve got to know in the wider community of Oleiros, shop keepers, café owners, engineers, accountants, teachers etc, it is a real privilege to be able to give something back. To teach, to impart the joy of learning a new language to their kids and grandkids.

Four. Someone is paying me for it. Not much. But it all helps and somehow it has taken the worry off about whether or not our yoga, acupuncture, massage, arts, self-sufficiency, honeymoon cottage type retreat will work or not.

It feels like something shifted in us too. We are now not even talking about things finishing. When we finish the houses up there, when we finish the yoga sala, when we finish the moon gate terrace, when we finish the almond blossom terrace etc etc. Our conversation has drifted this last fortnight more along the lines of maybe we should give people a chance to be here while we’re building all this stuff. Maybe there is more value to the process, the journey, than the end result. Maybe the reality TV deluge that’s all over airtime in the States and Europe is somehow symptomatic of a deeper desire to partake in the process of the real, even, perversely, if it’s vicariously through other people’s experience. (Thanks to Paula & Alfie and their delightful 2 year old Elwood for helping us in this shifting process too. Seeing Paula early one morning with outstretched arms tingling from the magic of the place and watching Alfie ecstatic as he chopped up fire wood with a big axe, were real wake up calls for us in remembering the power of the beauty of this place as it is now.)

As a result of this shift, Von and I now have some cool emerging ideas about opening the doors to Moses earlier than planned. Watch this space.

Update on the restoration work at Moses

We made a new pergola with old olive tree wood and new eucalyptus beams, up which are now beginning to trail a grape vine, a fragrant jasmine and a sprawling white rose, under which is a (surprisingly solid) deck put together from recycled old wooden floorboards and joists, all of which shaded with thatched bunches of flowering heather, which we had to cut down to clear the overgrown hillside path leading to the Adega round the corner. And surrounding the deck and in front of the house are now some stone and wine vat wood flowerbeds, in which we’re planting in some yummy plants. In between a few exotics, you can find strawberries mingled in with miniature red roses. (Another big shout out at this point to our brethren back in the humming bird tipi world of the UK, Ian and Merle and girls Evie and Anna, for inspiring us so tremendously with their own patch of gorgeousness in Eira do Miguel – “truth is best expressed without words dudes”).

So finally, after just over a year of being here, we have started on what we came here to do. The plants. The flowers. The blossoming fruit trees. The climbers with more flowers. The grasses. Because they don’t need to flower. And those roses. Oh look and more over there too. Then the other flowers you hadn’t noticed yet. And then yet more in the abundant wild heathers, blooms and cystus engulfing the mountain forest in front of you, to the sides of you and behind you. It’s the stuff that simply makes one’s heart stop and then skip a beat as your breath is sharply inhaled and released with the expulsion of an honest “Wow. That’s just beautiful man”. For us, and we think for quite a few others too, witnessing the way that nature sings like that in lovingly tended gardens, so melodiously, so harmoniously, so generously, so effortlessly, is about as good it gets with this little life of ours.

As you can tell, we’re feeling pretty swell to be gardening at last. Of course we know we couldn’t be doing that if we didn’t have a house to stay in, with running water for drinking and watering, all of which took months installing and restoring. Or without the big structural landscaping of five new terraces carved out of the hillside done last summer. Or in the particularly cold and harsh winter we just had. We know we couldn’t be starting this at any time other than now. That feels pretty sweet as well. To be in the flow of it all. And to recognise that we’re flowing. We’re still waiting for stone masons to start on our other 2 houses, but we can wait; if waiting means we get to plant more pretty flowers in the meantime. All the other stuff will happen when it happens.

Lastly, my mobile is lost. Poor thing. Served me well. May it rest in peace wherever it may be. So the hot new contact number for us now is 00351 96 880 9068. Sorry to all those who left any unreturned messages on the other phone. Desculpe. And sorry for no videos this week. Movie camera was on that phone too. I’ll have to sort a new camera phone out. Sometime. Meanwhile, just off to water the veggies and the new gardens as the sun sets down the valley. Oh, and bless you, Eloise just handed me a cup of tea and another slice of her delicious new cake to tuck in to. Top stuff peeps.

I can’t find the words to tell you about this next last thing. So I thought I’d write a poem instead.



Ode to Slinky

You popped into the world
All shiny and new,
Then suckled a dog
When Mum died day two.

We gave you a home
And your shots, jabs and pills,
You weren’t half a cheeky one
Playing your heart out until,

Your fighting with Angel
Came too much to bare
You couldn’t come inside
Causing chaos everywhere.

So we found you a new place
To run around in,
With a grandma and Michelley
Giving their bestest lovin’.

In just over a week
You caught mountains of mice
Then curiosity gripped ya
You didn’t think twice

One night when you should’ve been
In for your tea
You jumped right in the road
“Don’t do it Slinky!”

It was over in a heartbeat
Your life cut short to nil
And now we’re all in mourning
Missing the Slinkster, we always will.

Thanks for the pranks
The company, and laughs,
We’re honoured that we knew you.
You captured our hearts.

Green for Grey - by Josh

Olá, it’s been a while, but I'm finally writing another blog. I don’t really remember the last time I wrote a blog so I won’t write about everything but at least some of the many highlights.

I'm going to start where anyone reading this will have most questions. School. School is going really well for me (actually now I think about it I should probably say really, really, really well). I'm “classified” by my friends as one of the top three students depending on the lesson: maths 1st; sciences 1st; and of course, Portuguese 3rd (although I got the equivalent of an “A” in my grammar test which was the best mark in the class). The other top two students are Anatoly and Andreia.

My three best friends Anatoly, Fábio & Rodrigo are really cool. Anatoly (or Anatoli as he likes to write it) is from the Ukraine and he’s the only other person in my class apart from me that has authorization to leave the school during school hours, so we tend to do a lot together like walk around the town or go to the Internet Café. Fábio, who is Portuguese is literally like my Portuguese double, he loves taking photos (yay!!!), loves graffiti (not those stupid little squiggles but the really big designs that take like 4 hours to do and 5 people so I said that he should go to London just to admire the “art” of the city), and thinks that bikes, computers and cameras are the best things invented so far. My other friend is Rodrigo who is French, and won’t let me stop thinking about it. He talks about Cristiano Ronaldo so much that I almost think he’s got a crush on him. He also thinks that the world revolves around football and that he’s a “babe-magnet”. He makes me laugh at him more than with him and I'm not the only one.

I’ve got 11 subjects at school and I participate in two clubs: ICT and football it would be nice if I could get a Cricket club going and the student will be teaching the teachers this time.

Right now I'm on Easter holidays but I can’t manage to sleep past 7am at the latest. School really gets you into a rhythm and I think I’ll go mad if I don’t get out of it so I tend to lie in bed until 10am just because I can. But waking up at 6 in the morning has its upsides (they are few but there are some), but before I get to them here are some funny sides leading up to the up ones. Every morning I fall out of bed and whack my head on the ground. Then I stand up straight and whack my head on the central beam. I then pull on my clothes while holding my throbbing head and afterwards I tumble down my super steep stairs but as I look out the window to see the morning world, I forget about my head (maybe that’s half because my ankle’s hurting now). At 6:30 in the morning you can see the first rays of the morning sun shining on the facing hill and the undergrowth makes the world look all fuzzy (or maybe that’s the tears falling down my face from my hurting head, ankle and now leg because Slinky is using it as a scratch pole). Seeing this dawn marvel, I remember my concrete birth place. Looking out your window in New Cross you see the sun rays shining on a drunk by the side of the estate begging for money because his wife has kicked him out the house at 3 in the morning without letting him get any breakfast (don’t worry, that wasn’t you Keith). If you could combine these two views, London and Amieira, you might get green flats (aka: eco-flats, which apparently exist according to Dad) and concrete trees (that I’ve seen in front of the Tate Modern and said “wow”). Just thinking about the dramatic change that we have made makes me shiver with shock.

Life here is different in many ways in comparison with the city in which I was born and grew up in (mummy says that I give London a hard time which is a little true considering the people, memories and places that are good there). At school in the big cities the teachers say that everything comes in different seasons of the year at different dates but you can never see it. Here suddenly 50 flocks of mallards fly in on the same day or 15 lines of processional pine caterpillars each 2 meters long march in. One day the pumpkins are still tiny vulnerable little things then suddenly they are the size of a couple of bowling balls. The Portuguese culture isn’t much different either. I’ll give an example: last weekend I went to stay over at Fábio’s house and in the morning they had killed the pig (to give him a name he will be called Bert). The whole day while Fábio and I were playing his family was working. In the evening we ate pork. I said that the meat was very sweet for pork and Fábio’s mum said that was because the pig was killed that day aka: Bert. I asked if they had already sorted out all the eatable bits (which in Portugal is everything) and she said no, all that was left was the right front leg. So they had basically killed, gutted, cut up and sorted out Berty in less than 12 hours which is quite an accomplishment. Sadly it’s the same with the forests. One day they’re here the next they could be gone.

So as not to leave you on that sad note I shall write my about my hilarious school trip. We went to Lisbon last Thursday to go see the planetarium and the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. We left our little town at 9am and set off on a 3 hour journey. We got to Lisbon with time to spare so we ate lunch and another of my friends Paulo & I took a bath in the sprinklers (when it’s 30 degrees and you’ve got nothing else to do what would you do?). We then walked to the planetarium and after a 20 minute talk about what we were going to see we saw exactly what I see every evening out my front door basically whole constellations and galaxies. We then proceeded to the monastery that I had already seen when we still had the MosieMobile. With time to spare we went to a café that is the only place in the world that sells pasteis de Belém which are little tarts with cream, cinnamon and sugar. While we were eating them Anatoly & I saw a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, 5 Porches of which two were Locusts and a Formula1. Seeing the last we both looked at each other and then at the sports car with our mouths open and saliva hanging from them. Maybe the trip was worth it after all.

This is my last paragraph. Everything is rushing through my head so fast that I can’t actually focus on any one thing and most of my thoughts are in Portuguese so now I'm going to get my well earned beauty sleep and I shall do my homework in the morning (when dad reads this he will say “ha” and frown and mummy will tell me to go and do it there and then to which I will complain).

Tchau. Josh.

Ice creams in Sertã...

A Foolish, Unlearned, Nobody in Peasantville.

Hey ho. Hope all is well in the lands across the seas and beyond or from wherever you maybe reading this today. Welcome.

Here in the land called Moses, deep in the heart of the forgotten Portuguese interior, it has been a most fascinating season. After the rush and madness that was the end of 2008, the joy of Arlene and Annie’s Christmas visit, the reflections that followed in the stillness of those long cold, wet, winter evenings, Spring is now emerging all around us. Bright pink cherry blossoms nudging through here and there, white and yellow daisies devouring the roadside verges, heathers under the pine and eucalyptus forests bursting into purpleness, warm sunny afternoons, all revealing the promise of much much hotter and longer days ahead and the full glory of nature that we know is about to explode just round the corner.

It should now, you’d think, be the perfect temperate weather and, after our long winter’s rest, the perfect moment in time for Von and I to now be in top gear with the restoration of our other 2 houses. But au contraire.

I am not exactly sure why, but we’re not too concerned. It feels like we are riding the flow of natural rhythms in this most enchanted of places and consequently we’re in no hurry to push things along at the hectic pace of 2008. Slowly, slowly and all things shall come to pass. Não é, Shanti? We have though, managed to clear both the other houses ready to start the first part of renovation – raising the old stone walls by a metre or so in height (in stone, not straw bales, cos we’ve found an old local guy who can do it brilliantly and quickly, prepared to also teach us how in the process, and we haven’t been able to find a decent straw baler near here for love nor money) and then installing new wooden roofs on top with a carpenter roofer who happens to be the boss of Michelle’s gorgeous young Brazilian boyfriend, Warley (captured here squatting down by one of the granite pools in the river that flows round Moses).

We’ve also been able to do a few cool odd jobs around the place: like carving a drain out of the lime floors to transport the sudden emergence of an underground stream that ran through the house after all that rain fell in January (the most for 20 years in Portugal); pruning a dozen or so of our 40 silver leafed olive trees (like this one in the photo); building a neat tri-chamber compost structure from old floorboards; making the house feel even more like a home with simple bookshelves of long sweet chestnut planks on red fire brick pillars and some much needed kitchen storage space; a chimney in the bathroom so we could fire up the elegant old wood burning stove that we’d found abandoned in the ironmonger’s car park in Oleiros; new fascias for the bath and toilet from sawn off pieces of old broken wine barrels; vegetable beds edged with boulders fallen when the new terraces were carved out last Autumn; and new graduated steps along the path that connects the houses at the top (Cabeco) with the house at the bottom (Moses) heaving chunky trunks of felled pine trees up the hill and then back filling them with rubble and clay. That actually sounds like quite a lot of work now I have written it, but it really has only taken us a couple of hours a day and nothing approaching the generally accepted notion of ‘strenuous’.

Meanwhile, the kids have both had their birthdays, Eli’s 10th & Joshua’s 12th, and continue to fly at their lovely school in Oleiros, making great grades and even better friends. They are fantastic little creatures and we love them lots. The very sweet little Brazilian lass in the photo is Ju Ju, Eloise’s best mate here, (Hatti will forever be her bestest mate in the whole wide world) and she’s spending the weekend with us at the mo’ making cookies and cakes every few hours. Josh will be entering another photo competition this week called Splash Flash 09 featuring the best of the waters in Oleiros. He won the prize for the most original photo in the council’s last competition, so he’s keen to do well again this year. Here’s just one of his amazing shots. If he ever finds the time between his full-on studies to write another blog, you might get to see some more of his talent. Last weekend we nipped over to Coimbra to buy them new clothes and shoes cos they were looking a tad dishevelled. The clips below are from that trip to Portugal’s University City.


Coffee and bike rides alongside the Montego river in Coimbra…







Anyway, enough of the catch-up, let me explain the title of this blog entry as well as the reference to peasantville in the skits above.

Our closest neighbours are old. Joao and Eugenia (not the ones in the village but the other ones round the corner in Vale da Figueira) and José & Eugenia (whose Father built our houses over 80 years ago) have lived in these parts, in their current houses in fact, all their lives. They, like so many people round here, are kind, generous and expert stewards of their lands. We can’t help but admire the way they live, so simply yet enjoying the rich abundance of the fruit and cultivation of their toils. Not much cash and as such, together with their rustic lifestyles would be thought of by townsfolk and city folk as mere peasants. In the next 20 years or so, if we are able to learn even half of what they know how to do, we will be gloriously content.

In contrast, the so called civilised learned sophistication of the London we left behind and in the shopping malls and universities of Lisbon or Coimbra, doesn’t really seem to make much sense to us out here in the sticks. On so many levels, we have been unlearning, deconstructing, dropping much of what we thought we knew and in response are in the process of seeking the authenticity of a more firsthand physical and, in particular, spiritual existence. We have no idea if anyone will ever pay to stay here and therefore whether we will have ‘enough’ cash to live. But, strangely, we’re really not that bothered, most of the time. This place, the potential of the land, in itself, in ourselves, is more than enough. To some we know this will appear like pure irresponsible foolishness. Maybe it is.

Moreover, we were previously surrounded by a world where people, including us, were seeking, often with all our might, to become important, or at the very least useful to our employers and/or to society at large. Here, however, we’re slowly recognising that we’re moving towards a lifestyle where most of those people would consider us useless nobodies. And boy, let me tell you, it feels just great.

When I grow up, I want to be a foolish, unlearned, nobody.

Ironically, this label for my new found self awareness makes for quite an apt acronym. F.U.N. So much fun in fact, that if ever our kids tell us one day they are off to the mountains to renounce the world and become foolish, useless, nobodies like us, it will be a delight. (As would be the case if they said they’re off to become doctors or actors, scientists or artists – just in case the grandparents get too worried by all this new fangled babble.)

I went fishing early this morning with Josh by the Rio Zezere (not in the pretty little stream in the photo which runs at the bottom of our place, but the big river just over the hill). Didn’t catch a thing. Obviously, hapless fisherman that I am. But to spend a couple of hours with my boy, appreciating the awesome tranquil beauty of a thick cold March mist being dispelled by the heat of a rising Springtime sun, chitchatting philosophical nonsense together about life’s existential quirky dilemmas, while waiting with not so rock solid faith for the trout to bite, is one treasure I would not swap for all the treasures of this world. Well, maybe I would to land an actual fish one day. (Just for the record I should note that what we were doing probably shouldn't be called fishing until I catch a fish, so if you wouldn't mind please re-read that para to begin 'I went sitting this morning...)

I will leave you with this video clip of Von and Slinky sharing a quiet moment on the yoga terrace yesterday. For the more discerning of you, you will note that Slinky begins to move into a very familiar yoga position, which I, unsurprisingly, misname, and which Von, the yoga teacher, even more surprisingly, can’t remember. Correct answers on a postcard to Moses, Amieira, Oleiros, Portugal, 6160-052. Previous experience of yoga, or of anything else for that matter, is not a requirement for entry. Prize winners will be chosen next month. By Moses the dog. Of course.

Cheerio.

Slinky

So this is how the story goes. There was this cat, who lived with a sweet family in Oleiros, together with their dog. The cat and the dog become pregnant at the same time. The cat produces her kittens a little while before the dog gives birth, but disastrously suddenly dies in a road accident a few days later. The dog, while still pregnant, (hope you are still with me) heroically takes it upon herself to nurse the motherless kittens from her own teats, otherwise they would surely not have made it through their first 6 weeks. Raquel gets wind of the valiant tale and leaps into immediate action, galvanising the support of friends and family to provide as many good homes for the kittens as she can find. And so it came to pass, that Slinky, with the milk of her adopted canine mother still warm in her belly, found her way into the home and hearts of this crazy gang of English people in the village of Amieira. Although Angel is taking a little longer to get used to the idea than the rest of us. Bless.

That’s the top news story of the month. Below is a video of the wee thing in action in the garden which Von and "Tom" created outside Harry’s house last week after our stuff and plants finally arrived from London.

Second news item is that Josh and I made contact with the emerging cricket scene in Portugal. And we both actually managed to play a game last weekend together for the first time, on a sweet ground on a converted field, bought 2 years ago by a nice South African guy called Sandy. The pitch is only 90 minutes drive south of here in the village of Albegeria near Santarem. The teams seem to be a mixture of Portuguese, Sri Lankans and other South Africans but I will let you know more about the other teams when the league (yes apparently so) starts later in the summer. Before the big event we obviously had to have a knock about practice, that as you can see from the picture was on a makeshift strip outside Kahn cottage. Didn’t do us much good as we lost the first game of the season. But at least there is a season here. We both can't wait til the next game.

For the last few weeks, Von has been sifting soil to create the optimum conditions for veggies in the ‘horta’ , and I have been working hard with "Tom" restoring Harry’s house. Which, I am glad to tell you is now complete. Well, the building work is done. Now we just need to paint the insides and make it our home for the next year or so. We’ve had so much fun doing this restoration work that Von and I have decided we will restore our houses down at Moses by ourselves as well, with a lot of help from "Tom" and a little help from local builders and carpenters when we need them. So watch this space.

"Tom" just went back to England at the weekend to kiss his mrs and bring her back with him in a couple of weeks. It will be so nice to have "Jerry" here with us all. It’s not been the same without her here. Kind of like watching “To The Manor Born” without Penelope Keith. Anyway, comeback soon guys, we don’t like squatting here without you.

Finally, some friends of Ian and Merle (the tipi people), Elisabeth and her friend Oriel, popped over to see us in the week, and stayed with Eugenia and Joao for a couple of nights. We really enjoyed their company. Elisabeth is a Emotional Freedom Technique practitioner from Hereford with a 12 year old daughter called Tara and they are considering moving to these parts as well - or at the very least spending their summers here until Tara leaves school. More lovely people. And English too. Soon we will simply have to raise a union jack somewhere. Or maybe not.