The colour green

School’s out. The kids and I finished term on Friday. Our final week was spent here all by ourselves as Von has popped over to the UK to build tipis with Ian and Merle at Glastonbury. Missing her terribly. But surviving. She is the air we breathe.

In that final week, apart from all the pining obviously, Josh and Eli got their marks from their exams. Both got A’s. National Exams are only in Portuguese and Maths for their years, but twas still an absolutely awesome achievement (note the alliteration in A’s) for the first year in Portugal. Only 1 other pupil in each of their year groups got 2 A’s, so they weren’t easy papers. How proud? Academic achievement isn’t everything in life but they love it and are flying. Both looking forward to being in new parts of their school next year. Eli in the second ciclo (Year 5) and Josh in the third (Year 7). But for now, we have begun the 3 month summer holiday til the middle of September and are busying ourselves pottering around the house and garden, beginning my Portuguese lessons from the kids and swimming as often as possible in various rivers to cool off from the 40 degree sun. Boy it’s been hot.

Today we took Moses for a dip in the River Zezere and the kids swam to the other side and back all by themselves. It’s a big full wide river at the moment and although we have swum it a few times together it took a fair bit of courage to do it on their own. Nice one kids. Anyway, while we were there today, I noticed, probably for the first time, how utterly green the surrounding landscape is. Not just one green either. A myriad of greens. The mass of emerald of the deep slow moving wind rippled river. The dark established, near silhouettes, of the pines and eucalyptus against that perfect blue Portuguese sky. The occasional olive trees with their silvery leaves sprinkled sporadically on the higher parts of the steep folding hills nearer the villages. The golden yellowy mottled foliage of the mato or bush of the forest shrubs. And where the forest stops and the river banks begin, there’s a series of clearly demarked variations aligned in stripes of pea green with vivid bright, almost lime green of young meadow like growth on the banks.

Words just don’t do justice to the spectacle I'm afraid. Nor do photos or videos. It could be painted I guess. Although the experience is one of being surrounded on all sides, above you and below. Yet the most surprising thing for me is that I discerned the greenness of it all in the first place. Remarkable actually. Seeing as I’m colour blind. Mainly in the spectrum of greens oddly enough. So for those of you with non dysfunctional sight, it must be an even more impressive breath-taking display from good old mother nature. Gawd bless her.

On the way back from our afternoon splash, we stopped off at our favourite café. Laurinda’s.

Laurinda’s Café in Abitureira

As you know, many of our neighbours are getting on a bit. And as such, they carry a wealth of knowledge and insight that they are gladly passing on to us, green as we are (sorry, had to keep the topic alive somehow) when we need it. But more interesting than what they can teach us, are the people themselves. Real characters. They’ve seen a thing or two. Sometimes, in our chats over a coffee in their houses, or in a stop off for a quick chinwag in the villages, or longer ones over wine in their adegas, or even longer ones like on our fishing trip to Proenca yesterday (where by the way, Eloise caught over 30 fish, more than a kilo, single handedly – Josh would point out here that he’d have caught more but for the fact that he was at a sleep over at a mate’s house) it feels like there would be some pretty interesting books or screenplays that could be written about the drama of their lives over the years.

The variety of interconnectedness in their families, their work at home and abroad, all lived through the changing Portuguese political dictatorships, revolutions, and wider European, African and other historical conflicts, evoke a mysterious realm outside of our own inculcated cultural understanding and experience.

Our arrival here in the midst of them is just another saga to add to their own rich heritage of existence. We are a phenomenon. The English family choosing to move into their neighbourhood (or more accurately, their forest), while their own offspring have chosen to live far, often very far away. To us they are fascinating, intriguing and alluring. And nice. As I expect we might be to them. Although it is not our differences that warrant any specific mention. Our similarities seem to be the underlying force at play here. Our desire to learn from their ways, learn their language and customs. Our predisposition to converse and to help whenever we’re asked, whenever we can. Our passion (well Von’s actually) for growing vegetables and flowers and all things green (sorry couldn’t resist, won’t mention it again, carry on).

One of these cherished neighbours of ours is Laurinda. And as I just mentioned she runs one of the 2 cafés in the nearby village of Abitureira. Laurinda is 72, sprightly with pretty twinkly eyes and an elegant demeanour. Vonnie says, she would be well happy if she could develop even half the gardening skills and energy that Laurinda seems to have. Her husband, 91, is as you’d expect, quite deaf. But instead of shouting to him, she relays the nature of our conversations, when they concern him, by leaning into his vicinity and tenderly whispering into his oversized ears. “Too sweet” as the Bajans say.

Laurinda’s café probably hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years or so. And as such, is a den of quite charming disposition. We visit her weekly, sometimes more often, since she is also our nearest grocery store, where we buy emergency supplies of milk, juice, tinned food, meat or fish from her freezer, or toilet roll to go along with the obligatory coffee and more often than not, a glass of their home made sweet sloe gin beverage known here as Ginginha. But each time we go in, as those who have visited her café with us will remember, the joy of the experience is in the conversations. Each coffee / shopping trip usually lasts at least half an hour, sometimes twice as long, depending on what we find ourselves talking about. She is always so excited and enthusiastic when we take the kids, and when we take our visitors too, especially when they have babies.

There are no babies in her village now. There are no children either. In fact, the youngest resident must be in her late fifties. It’s a shame as she has recalled many fond memories of Abitureira being full of kids and family life. Even had its own school at one time not so long back. Now bereft, she lavishes her affection on our two, and on us as well. It’s an experience to be savoured and one we’ll miss tremendously when the day inevitably comes for her to no longer run it anymore. But while she is, we relish it. And her. Gawd bless her.

Loads else has happened since our last blog entry including another wonderful joint 30th birthday party for Francisco and Raquel (8 months preggers and looking fabulous) at their place down in Gafete, plus the rather posh and extravagant wedding of Pedro and Inês (they own the bar Calado and run the campsite) with 420 people, was a big one. But nothing more on the restoration work on our other houses. Portuguese builders. Gawd bless ‘em.

This week I’m doing teachers’ meetings at the school where I’m having to write reports on each child in Portuguese. It’s stretching me. And that can only be a good thing. Josh is being terrific in making corrections. Looking forward to a summer of improving the lingo with him and Eli.

Von arrives next week and I’ll be able to breathe once again.

Wild Boar and the Parents

You may think these are totally exclusive concepts, wild boar and parents, but maybe not so. My Mum and Dad came out from London last week for a quick 6 day break with us. It was fabulous to have them stay here. Last September they popped over to see what we were doing but unfortunately we didn’t have the space for them with us at the time so they had to stay in the local campsite in Oleiros. This time though, we prepared our place as much as we could for the royal visit so they could both feel safe and comfortable. They helped us too, enormously, by cutting down young mimosa trees to use as bean poles and a grass cutting compost bin. They cleared a couple more parts of the terraces and planted in onions, aubergines, beans and some more sprouting broccoli. And gave Moses lots of attention and early morning walks. Thanks guys, you can come again. Anytime and stay for as long as you want.

In between sessions of helping us about the place my parents both had time to consider what we are doing here and enjoy the pace of life and connectivity to the natural beauty of this place. It was interesting how the experience seemed to stir up their own childhood memories of living in the countryside. For my Dad that was in rural Kent living with his sister, my Aunt Sally, in an orphanage that their mother helped run during and after the second world war. His reflections were interspersed with naming the calls of the abundant bird life here and once or twice mimicking a cuckoo to entice them a little closer. “When I was a boy I once had 6 cuckoos circling around my head doing this.”

For my Mum, she reminisced about her young life in the village of Wrington, Somerset with her family. She said Vonnie regularly reminded her of her own mother. Maybe it was the fags and the early afternoon G & Ts (or the local equivalent called Ginghina made from sloe berries) or perhaps it was because Vonnie had successfully managed to populate our vegetable beds here with pretty scented geraniums that had once started their life as cuttings taken by my Granny for her own garden, from where my Mum took more cuttings for her garden in London, from where we took further cuttings for our garden in Shardeloes Road, and finally emigrated with us to Amieira in central Portugal. It’s amazing how plants can help you to recognise the interconnected nature of all things.

In the middle of their stay, Angel bought them a present one morning, of a live wild rabbit. Poor scared thing was running around under their bed. Angel regularly catches mice, lizards, snakes and birds, bringing them into the house as gifts. I have no idea why cats do that. Maybe they’re not presents at all. Maybe it’s just that cats like to play with their prey, nay torture them, in the comfort of their on home where escape is an unlikely eventuality. Whatever the motivation, we had a rabbit in the house and didn’t know quite what to do with the poor creature. I picked her up, took her outside and tried to calm her down by sitting down, stroking her and covering over her eyes, while we decided her fate. Option 1, to let her go, might result in recapture by the ever present prowling Angel, unsure why we were being so gentle with her conquest. Option 2, put her out of her misery as she was sporting what looked like an injured, possibly broken, leg. Option 3, keep her and nurture her back to health until we could let her go back to the wild with at least even chances of survival. Option 3 it was. Von ran around clearing out a wooden crate, putting in fresh bedding, food and water. When all was arranged, I carried the little rabbit to her new house cum 5 star recovery clinic. No sooner as I laid her on her new bed, did she have a heart attack and died of fright on the spot. Angel?! Please don’t catch rabbits again. But if you must, definitely don’t bring them back in the house. That was the first wild rabbit I’d ever held. And the first creature to die in my arms. Nature can be harsh. No doubt about that. Life is precious and can go at any time.

This morning, Vonnie and I were taking a stroll passed our Adega (small stone cottage used for storage and particularly pressing and making wine, an ancient and central aspect of Portuguese rural culture – “you do not truly know a man until you have fought him” is a line from The Matrix which I transpose to say …”until you have drunk with him in his adega.”) and along the little river. Suddenly the bushes on the other side of the valley began to shudder and there right in front of us, maybe only 50 yards away, passed a family of wild boar along on old overgrown path. A mum, dad, dark brown, enormous, frightening and powerful, followed dutifully in single file by their 8 smaller, but nevertheless impressive, stripy and incredibly cute youngsters. I’d like to see them again one day. Maybe invite them in for a cup of tea.

Although my parents didn’t get to see the wild boar up close and personal as we did this morning, their presence is a good indication of the wildness of our new home. A wilderness that seemed to inspire and evoke so many memories for Mum and Dad. Our 30,000 square metres here is set in the middle of thousands of hectares of unpopulated pine and eucalyptus forest, home to a vast array of wild creatures and birds, of which the wild boar have the freedom to live without fear. Until that is, the annual barbaric boar hunts, with military type men, not usually from anywhere round here (therefore serves no vested interest for protection of land and the such and is just a cruel brutal sport), their guns and their dogs. We suspect the hunts used to happen on our land in the years when no one was living here. Now we are here, we hope the hunters will now have to choose an area much further away from us. In effect we think we’ve created a little gun free reserve for the boar just by living on the land. Bless. Run free little boars. And by the same token, run free Mum and Dad. Don’t forget what you learned to do here. More time spent doing nothing. The rest is really good for you.

Teaching is still going well. Many of the 6 to 10 year olds are making really good progress with their English. Mainly it appears they are learning to have fun with a new language. There are still a few of them that seem to have written off the possibility of ever speaking English because it is too hard. But more games, more songs, more nursery stories, and very soon, I hope, they will forget they ever thought they couldn’t do it because they will be speaking it. We’ll see. But apart from the occasional shout and now and again having to eject one or two out of the class, they are all lovely. Full of energy and ever so adorable.

It’s hot too. And getting hotter. Yesterday, 40 degrees. So the kids and I took Moses for a swim in the big River Zêzere to cool off. Video below. Which means I have a new phone, but have managed to keep the original number of 00351 96 421 9028. Sorry for the confusion this month. Will try not to lose this one. Promise.

Final video is a quick tour of the work around the house. Quality of videos isn’t as good as last phone. But hope you get an idea of how things are looking now.

Taking another dip in the Zezere...

Quick tour of the grounds...

Just had a call from another stone mason. He’s coming to visit us this afternoon to see the work we need to do to our other 2 houses at the top. Let’s hope he comes. Let’s hope he likes it and wants to help us do it. And can do it soon. Here’s hoping. Although I suspect if he is any good we will have to wait a good long while til he can start. But we're getting used to that. Waiting.

Ta ta for now.

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.

What do I believe?

It’s a question that’s been bobbing around my head for a couple of months now, and came into sharper focus after I read ‘Elizabeth Costello’ by J.M. Coetzee in which a celebrated writer at the end of her life is forced to petition a panel of old judges in a small literary Italian town square before she is allowed through to the afterlife. I have no idea if one day I will have to endure the same ordeal, but if ever I am, I thought it might be a good opportunity to prepare my answers in advance. So here we go. Heart on sleeve. Feeling as apprehensive about the task as Moses looks in this photo. Think of it as work in progress if you will.

The first thing to say, as only the West Wing’s Press department could have taught me, is it’s normally prudent in today’s politically sensitive environments, never to accept the premise of any question. And the premises behind this old chestnut run to a long list. In the last few years I have more or less come to the conclusion that the nature of stating one’s believes, moreover, even the nature of belief itself, has been such a conflict-ridden and troublesome affair for mankind since our inception, that at best it has served to separate brother from brother and at worst to rationalize and justify brother killing brother on such an horrendous disastrous magnitude that it surprises me how we still, en masse, knowing the probable consequences, continue to desire to classify each other simply by what we believe. You’d think we’d have learnt a thing or two by now.

Just pick any one of the multitude of regional or global conflicts taking place on planet earth at this very hour, and you will, without doubt, find their roots in some kind of historical difference, disagreement, dissimilarity over belief of one type or another. Often the most vicious, the most malignant of these disputes originate between people groups whose belief systems are actually quite similar, in the same relative ball park as it were, they’re merely now only a deviation from, or a variance of, exactly the same original shared philosophy. Often it is actually the same original guy and the problems arising from the interpretations, or as each side would have it, misinterpretations of what he was reported to have said or believed himself. Abraham, Gautam Buddha, Lao Tsu, Jesus, Mohammed, Elvis.

Throw in a few other ingredients such as current, or for that matter ancient, incidences of vast inequalities in power or wealth between people groups and you create the perfect conditions for vindicated, hideous, self-perpetuating and utterly destructive warfare. Yet, at its roots, all our wounded history appears to have arisen at some level or other from our differences in belief.

Consequently, the premise behind the question of “what do I believe?” is so inextricably linked to those notions of religious, socio-cultural delineations and differentiations leading ultimately and inevitably to various stages of separation, segregation, oppression and violence, that I have tended in recent years to avoid answering it at dinner parties, but more particularly, avoided answering it for myself. Until now, that is.

I suppose one could argue that my reluctance to be drawn into a statement of belief is in itself a belief. “I believe it would be best not to say what I believe.” But I couldn’t honestly sign my name to that one. A bit of a cop out. So what are the other options out there?

“I believe in fairies. (I do, I do).” And, as an unavoidable corollary, in their tales. Fairytales. I could sign up to that one I think. The world, well at least my world and that of my children’s, has been the better for the existence of fairies and their tales, proven or otherwise. The joint realms of religion and science have systematically robbed us of the right to believe in fairies and therefore, I feel quite predisposed to undersigning for that very reason alone. Or maybe because we just watched ‘Neverwas’ on DVD last week, which if you have not seen, is a must. Although I have to say, Eloise sporadically chastises me for telling her when she was “only 6 Dad!”, at a time when I had felt she should know the truth, that both Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy were, in fact, actually only her mother and I conspiring in secrecy to perpetuate their myths. Rightly, Eloise is letting me know in her own special perturbed way that, “I, not you Daddy, will be the one who decides when or if I want to be enlightened thank you very much!” She has a point. Fairies stay. I believe in fairies.

“I believe in man.” This is a statement that would need a deal of unpacking. After a few volumes, you might not even succeed in explaining it. So, for the blogness of it all, and because it’s more fun to be trite, I would have to sign a “Yes”, but with the postscript “Rarely”. As touched on above, man does not have a great track record overall. ‘Selfish oppressive polluting exterminators’ is probably how we will be remembered by the aliens (or the evolved ants or the artificial intelligent machines) who will browse through the summation of our annals in future. Although we do sometimes get it right. Eloise, Josh, Vonnie. They are 3 examples I would cite. I believe in them. That will do. That’s enough.

“I believe in love.” Yeah baby. No doubt. Makes the world go round. Unashamedly, I am a true believer in love. Not only the romantic stuff, but the full gritty real total acceptance of another, type of love. Love love love. I love love!

“I believe in God.” Now here’s the biggy, is it not? Who is this God to be believed in? Or whose God are you thinking of? Depending on what or who you think he or she is (or not as the case maybe), might influence my answer. Yet for the sake of this brief distillation of my own beliefs, it is who I think God is, which will have to suffice. Of my own limited understanding, of my own limited experience to date, I believe in God. I believe she made all that I see, all that I cannot see, and she made me. I believe she waited a mind boggling amount of time after initiating the entire universe (even though most eminent scientists concur that the majority of stuff in existence took form in a breathtakingly short space of time – measured in parts of one solitary second no less) before experimenting with creating living things on Earth, and then a vast more imaginable, yet still ginormous, length of time before facilitating the emergence of humans. Whether she used the processes of evolution to achieve this or took some dirt and made an Adam, I’m not that bothered, but the scant evidence that demonstrates we evolved from Apes let alone air breathing fish is hardly a compelling argument. As such, I also have to believe she had to have an intention for creating Man and one that is probably, because I love it so much, is bound up with the notion of love. Love for the whole of what exists, for ourselves, for our fellow human beings, and at varying degrees of blindness and intimacy, love for her herself. I will never know for certain all this mystery, but I have an inkling that it is indeed possible to believe and even to love the creative force behind the entire cosmos.

In the miniscule chapter of life on earth that includes mankind, I tend to believe, probably because I feel the same as well, that God became and becomes utterly frustrated with us. And that a couple of thousand years ago she sent herself in our own form, in the miracle moment of a life that is Jesus. He had some pretty awesome things to share (as have a very few precious others from other cultures and other histories), but it was in his life, death and resurrection that I see the ultimate vision of love that grips me today as firmly as it did the first time I properly saw it, understood it, felt it in my teens. What an example. What an inspiration. What a magical, compelling, irresistible fairy tale. It is enough to sustain me until the end of my days and in all probability for a good while longer than that. Jesus is enough. His father is enough. His spirit is enough. For me. For you? Well, that’s your question, not mine.

So there you have it. I have my answer. I believe in fairies. I believe in man, rarely. I believe in love, always. I believe in Vonetta, Joshua and Eloise (and Moses, sorry me ol' china, almost forgot you there). I believe in God and in her son Jesus.

Hardly an original or imaginative response to that incommodious question but one that must be, as far as it possible to be, a true reflection and one under which I would be more than happy to pen my autograph one day, if it is ever required, in that Italian purgatory town square. Whether it would be enough to let me through the old Pearly Gates, would be to completely miss the point of what it enables me to appreciate this side of them. As the evangelicals like to say “Cake on the plate while you wait rather than pie in the sky when you die.” Or as John Banville in ‘The Sea’ more eloquently writes, “Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.”

It is the Easter holidays at the moment and the kids are ever present with us once again. We popped over to the coast the day before yesterday to discover a completely deserted beach just south of Figaro de Foz and savoured the refreshing power of the Atlantic surf for a couple of days, camping overnight 300 metres behind the dunes. The vid below provides a sneaky peak of the uninhabited bliss of it all.

On the beach near Figaro de Foz...

Today, back at Moses, on the terrace in front of the bathroom, Von built a little stone wall to border a flat patioesque area under a white rose and another white flowering bush (an Easter something) growing in the slate walls, and on which we have placed a garden table and chairs for our forthcoming al fresco delights. Eli duly responded by baking another fabulous lemon sponge for the occasion, we supped gratefully on real English tea sent Airmail by Arlene and Sally, then before sharing this blog aloud with them, I undertook a quick vox pop family poll. “Fill in the following sentence for yourself.” I said. “I believe in….?”

“Cake”, declared Eloise instantly.

“Life”, proposed Joshua definitively.

“Blossoms”, giggled Vonetta cheekily.

“Walkies”, thought Moses hopefully.

Me too, folks. Me too.

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...