GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL….YEAH, WOOOOO! By Von

This is a long one guys as I could not take many photos of this time in our lives and I just don´t want to forget it.

Those of you who have known me in the last five years would not have known that it has been a personal little inscription on my bucket list to go to Glastonbury festival. Well you might think, `that’s not hard to arrange Von, buy a ticket and go’. But for me not so.

Not too long off the boat from Barbados, I first heard of the festival at the tender age of 18 sitting in a room in London watching in consternation as this older girl hauled on her metallic purple Doctor Martin boots and pack an unimaginable assortment of summer, winter, dry and wet clothes as she set off for the festival. Laden down, hot and sweaty but grinning from ear to ear off she went. “Maybe next year, eh Von.” Yes I thought, maybe next year but not with you (another story).

The following year I was asked by my soon to be at the time ex-boyfriend (yes Josh and Ellie, I had a life before daddy), “fancy going to Glastonbury this year with me Von?”, his eyes shifting from my face to the floor. “Yes” I thought, “would like to go, but not with you” and a few days after, an ex he became. Few years later, no can’t go this year pregnant, next year, broke and knackered next year, uh pregnant, and so on and so forth. Every time the timing or the something just wasn’t right and then there were jobs and other jobs and businesses and selling businesses and touring Europe and buying ruins and then finally, when I least expected and when I certainly had thought “oh well, don’t think will be doing that”, along came the right time and the right people.

One sunny afternoon in Lisbon Merle looked at me and said in that crisp musical voice, “Von, do you think you might like to go to a festival and help us this year?” “Yeah sure Merle. I have never been to a festival, I would like that.” Ian’s head snapped around, “What, you have never been to a festival?” “Uh! No.”, and once again I felt 18 and just off the boat. “Well,” said Merle smiling sweetly, “How about Glastonbury?”. Ian at this point sitting forward looked at Merle and me and laughed loudly, quite loudly in fact, “ Straight in there, in the belly of the beast, better think about that, would be great, but it’s the belly of the beast.” ‘Belly of the beast?’, I thought, ‘sounds perfect’. (The guy in the photo here who put in our new telephone line had one of those too by the way!)

How did I know this was the right time and these were the right people? In the same way one truly knows anything. 1. A little help from synchronicity (a theme that kept coming up in conversations at the festival). The night before I dreamt that someone was going to ask me if I wanted to do something and I said yes. The next afternoon Merle was the first person to ask and I said yes. At the time of saying yes I didn’t know that her next sentence was going to tick off a long standing date with myself.

2. I had been experiencing something new on the land. The more I worked on the land the more energy I seemed to have. Yeah physical tiredness would come but another kind of life enriching substance was making itself known and I needed to expend it somewhere else. I think Andy started feeling it first and then his teaching kids English came up. So the opportunity to go to the Festival and work was perfect. It also meant that I could be there before and after the festival, a marvellous opportunity to see the breadth of the festival and not just its length at the weekend. And what work, not cleaning toilets or picking up rubbish but working with the most beautiful simple and elegant shelter, the tipi. Fab! Another date with self, ticked.

3. I was going to be going with Ian and Merle and to avoid the risk of being gushing and school girly, we are big fans. I think I would have gone and cleaned toilets if they had asked me but tipis, yes classy Glastonbury, the only way to go.

So after planting my last sunflower (lost count of how many planted this year), off my Memphis took me to Porto airport. It’s funny how you prepare for something, and you talk about something and you decide something and then when that something is actually happening, you think, shit what am I doing? Walking around the airport with my Memphis it started to sink in that we would be separated for almost three weeks, something that hadn’t happened for a while and I didn’t feel quite so brave anymore. The moment he left the airport I stood in the checking-in queue shamefully dragging Eloise’s pink suitcase (long story) and even more shamefully, crying (yes Michelle I cried in PUBLIC), not sure Glastonbury sounded like such a good idea, belly of the beast, being away from the land, from the kids at the end of term, from Andy, going to be with All Those People, the rain, the mud, the toilets, the the the. But I hate going back on a decision made so, determined to have a good time, checked my bag and boarded the plane.

Merle met me that night at Bristol airport to and while driving back to their home another thing sunk in. I was in England, I am a bit slow, in the summer. England the green and pleasant land. So, before the fun of the festival started I had a few beautiful days walking in the fields and hills of England with (what could be better?), with Ian and Merle’s fabulous dog at my side: Good-Times Perry. Within a couple of days of arriving at their lovely home and seeing Ian, Anna, Eve, Ollie and finally the fabulous Uncle Roger again, I knew this part of my trip was going to be great. New times with new friends, with only one reoccurring shadow being that my old friend Memphis (that’s Andy for those who are new to this blog) was back home in Portugal and not with me.

I had some much appreciated time to warm up to the tipis and get too know them. The morning after getting there Merle and I set off in her enormous British Racing Green Bedford truck, ‘Freddie’, to take down tipis and their hybrid of a yurt the humbly named ‘Squirt’. Driving in that Bedford with that amazing woman, listening to music, staring out the window watching the English countryside roll by. Aah, delicious. I grin even now just thinking about it. Crawling around on in a cool green field taking tipis apart onloading, offloading, onloading, I couldn’t fail to miss the irony that I spent all those years studying and this was the kind of work I most enjoy, physical work. And then it was time to set off for the big one. Glastonbury.

So how does one sum up the biggest party in Britain? Well you can’t. It was brilliant! I loved it! I loved the Hummingbird Crew which actually felt like a family. Despite all the work and time pressures there was always time to stop and have a conversation with anyone who wanted to come by and have a conversation. Despite the few episodes of heavy rain, the sun shone and was appreciated as only the British public can do. Despite the heavy aggressive force of army fighters flying low overhead and police dogs and heavy security there was the softness of the hippees in the tipifield, who at the end of the festival left virtually no rubbish, planted a garden, drank loads of tea and appeared to spend a lot of time talking about how to make the world a better, peaceful more loving place.

Despite the crush of soo many people there were many moments of kind and intimate conversations with a few people or sightings of young lovers cuddling or sleeping it off under the trees or other brief but unforgettable experiences with completely strangers: the young black woman on her way to see the Prodigy; the young guy sitting miserably in the ditch; the two older English women that danced with me to Steel Pulse; the ZZ top look alike who liked jazz; the young Eastender dressed from head to toe in shocking pink, having breakfast and worried about her first time out without her toddler; the crazy dude who asked a 1,000 people if they were awake (only one out of the 1000 said yes!); the young teenager who said what he wanted most in life was to one day be a Father.

Despite the poor music line up on the main stages there were wonderfully sincere generous performances in the smaller tents. To counter the commercialism around the main stage there was the opportunity to experience the work of craftsman and artisans in the Greenfields. There was something for everyone, something that Britain does beautifully, an intricate balance of inclusion and exclusion defined by invisible boundaries but felt strongly all the same. Despite the hedonistic ‘I am just here to have a good time of the weekend’ there was the work with the crew and drinks and chats with all the other stressed out but still smiling 30,000 people who work to make the Glastonbury party happen. In contrast to the trash and chaos that would be left at the end, I was lucky to witness the green and verdant English fields before the weekend started, a reminder that the land would heal quickly helped on by the young people picking up rubbish at the end, working in return for their tickets.

My most memorable night would have to be the Saturday night Hummingbird gang outing (except Uncle Roger but we knew you were with us). It seemed that all night we would be walking against the current of the crowd, always a good sign. Ian, ahead in his Technicolor neon coat and bull hat, walked with Merle in her long black dress overlaid with neon pink velvet patterns, feet protectively clad in mountain boots, together we all cut a path through the masses heading in our own direction. Walking in the dark hedgerows, in the mud, with the people all around, and the security presence and sniffer dogs, we descended from the heights of the tipi fields into the valley of the belly of the beast. I felt us swimming against the current and the most unusual thing occurred, my heart opened to it. Opened to all of these people: all of us, here, doing what? Looking for what? Looking for more of what? I felt firstly a strange compassion for how lost we all are and secondly a total and complete joyous acceptance of all of it, the filth and the beauty, the isolation and the togetherness, the disappointment and the faithful hope. Right there in the thoroughfare for me the party began. I danced and walked and talked to strangers all night long.

In the wee hours of the morning I sat alone on the high hills and watched the sun and the mist rise over those beautiful tipis standing as centuries guarding the battlefields and could feel nothing other than gratitude. Thankful that life, with all its mess, could still be willing to provide me the opportunity to experience this trivial little point on my bucket list. We just never know how new threads will impact the tapestry of our lives. This thread will glow brightly for sometime. Thank you. I went to Glastonbury festival and I had a great time.

Totally prepared to be feeling completely exhausted after the British tour, I returned home feeling completely the opposite, full, full, full of energy and fully expecting a new season for us on the land. So, excited to see the kids and hear all about their amazing successes at school and of course… my Memphis… I arrived to find that after a civilised breakfast in dramatic Porto we would be taking a slow and rebalancing 2 day journey along the coast to home. My hubby really knows how to say welcome home, thanks hon.

In the silence of this place I turned 36 this week. I have been waiting to become 36 for a very long time. I remember my Mum and her friends when they were that age, powerful and energetic, beautiful women. I first met my friend Anna when she was 36 and over the years have watched her grow stronger and more beautiful every year. An ex-boyfriend of mine (yes kids that is the sum total before Dad) once said to me as we were breaking up “I wish I could see you at 36 you are going to be amazing.” I was 17 at the time and thought , “What?” But his comment clearly stayed with me and now here I am. I decided to spend my 36^th Birthday in complete contrast to my 35^th, I spent it quietly alone with my family on the land at Moses and I guess it is a sign that I am getting on but it was a reflective birthday, looking at the difficulties and disappointments of the last year and the healing, loving time we have had here so far. Sitting on our seeing seat looking on the violet to apricot sunset I made a wish and you know what, it came true like 5 days later.

On the 13^th of July early morning when the mist was giving up its moisture in the face of the sun here in Portugal, Memphis and River walked up the hill and decided it was time to rebuild our house. A year almost to the day since we first took off the roof and some internal stone walls, we felt the tide change in our attentions and knew it was time to start rebuilding. We had taken out all we wanted and tidied all we could and there was just nothing left to do. In silent trepidation we walked up the hill. I don’t know what Memphis was thinking but I was certainly thinking, ”We are about to build a house in stone and clay and we don’t have a clue. We are out of our depth, on our own but determined. Then grace came as I looked up to the sound of “Bom Dia” and there, waiting for us, actually waiting for us, was our well loved neighbours Joao and Filipe.

Over the last year we had talked to so many people about rebuilding this house and looked at so many different materials we could use, but eventually we came home to the simple materials of stone and clay which we have in abundance and the desire to work with someone who will have the patience to teach us and who is connected to the land in some way. In essence we’ve always wanted to link into our local community, made up as much out of a respect for the ancestors of our neighbours who carved this landscape before us and our neighbours themselves who remember their childhoods here and have welcomed us at each and every opportunity. Andy had spoken with Joao when I was away but we didn’t know if he would be able to help us. So to see them standing there waiting for us was an incredible feeling.

We have done our first week now and let me tell you it is heavy work. We are working all day in the sun and these guys born and bred on this land and accustomed to its heat, work at a pace. There has been no electrical machinery used so far and our tools consist of a hoe, a wheelbarrow, a few hammers and an endless supply of buckets. Add some clay and water and countless trips up and down the hill gathering clay and hand mixing it, driving around the land and scrambling up the slopes for the best stones ‘with pretty faces’ as Joao puts it and infilling with stones that came out of the house and you pretty much can get the picture of the simple by hand and foot nature in which we are rebuilding.

Once again we are experiencing that comradeship with our Portuguese neighbours, once again they have come to our rescue and they have been so relaxing to work with. Memphis is largely responsible for the inner face of the wall and Filipe, his brother George when he can come and I take turns making the mixes and working on the innerface, none of us would dare touch the outerface as that is clearly Joao’s territory, without a word being said. Andy and I have a private goal running to ensure Joao never has to step away from the wall to get clay or stones and so far we have managed well. The best bit though is that after a wonderful time before Christmas ofrebuilding one house together, we then had a great time gardening together for the first 6months of 2009 and now we get to rebuild another house with the kids.

I always wanted the kids to be there at the beginning of the laying of the first stone and to be involved in the process. Little did I know that they would be fanstastic invaluable members of the team. Josh has been amazing constantly lugging stones and not insubstantial buckets of clay back and forth between us. I am particularly grateful to Joshy for the first two days where I made most of the mixes myself and worked in the sun for the first time from sun up to sun down. At every mix Joshy was there saying well done Mummy, that’s great and such like. You’re a beautiful boy Josh. Our little princess Ellie has been in charge of the smaller stones, tiring work as we need thousands of them in a constant stream. She has been doing the most marvellous job hanging out washing, clearing up the kitchen after breakfast and everyday baking us something yummy to eat and share onsite with Joao and Filipe, the only way we can get them to stop and then only for 5 minutes.

I have thoroughly enjoyed being out there in the sun and the heat sweating and tugging and climbing and carrying and laughing and speaking Portuguese all day and being with the kids and Memphis. But this weekend I have been alone. My beautiful family have been away playing Cricket (a 150 year old 2 day cup match between Lisbon and Porto with my boys playing for Lisbon) and I have had my first weekend alone here ever, cleaning, gardening, reading and generally catching up with all that has happened this summer so far and then doing nothing. It is strange being alone after having such a full time, in England, in the village, and then at home. This weekend no phone calls have been made, no music played except for an hour of reggae, well it is Sunday after all and then a little writing, giving thanks I guess you could call that praise. Being alone on this land is deeply enriching. It is time to rest, to be in the solitude and the silence of this place. It is a time where no projection of personality is required and I can just be and watch and marvel at the miracle of it all and the Life who gives it so generously and abundantly.

I don’t know what next week brings but for this week past, yet again I find myself saying, Thank you we are finally rebuilding our house at the right time and with the people we hoped would teach us, our neighbours people in our community and I am loving it.

I am 36 years old now and for the first birthday ever I do feel, well, different.

P.S. I am not an enthusiastic blogger, in fact I am a little ashamed that I even bother to write a blog because sometimes when I read over it sounds like I am just saying look isn’t life wonderful for me. That is not why I am writing it. I write it because I can’t believe life. I don’t really understand how life works or even what is happening most of the time. Even with all this writing I still find myself here and say, “How did I get here?” I am not special. I have no special gifts or particular insight or brilliance and yet beautiful life is unfolding itself and I am a part of it. So if you want to change something in your life big or small I would say, think about what it is you want for sure, but then just take the next available step towards or on your path and be prepared to dance with life and let it take you down paths you hadn’t expected more than likely these new paths are heading in the same direction as the path you would have chosen.

Paz e amor

River

A few videos for you to see...

While Mummy was away...

River waits for her clay....

The clay arrives...

The work begins. On the way to being stonemasons...

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.