NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE

I'm still here.  

Six and a half weeks from retirement.  But to be perfectly honest, this is not quite how I envisaged it.  

I am halfway through week 5 of the corona virus lockdown.  It is 10:40 on Wednesday and I am still in my pyjamas.  

This is how it is.   This is how I suspect it will remain, in retirement. 



All those plans and dreams of bursting free of the chains of indentured servitude at Spart Towers, finally liberated to write, sing, dance naked through the daffodils, were nothing more than fantasy.

I am a lazy bitch.   I am kind of enjoying the lockdown.  It takes all the responsibility off me.      


So much for establishing a routine for my retirement:  get up, shower, get dressed.  Get out of the house every day.  Do a museum a week.  Get to know Belgium better.  Learn Dutch.  Pick up where I was so rudely interrupted with Portuguese.   Get a decent camera and do a photography course.  Write at least one day a week.  Work on that epic novel about my Irish grandad in America.   Walk 4 km every day.  


None of it.  NONE OF IT.   It is 10:40 and I am still in my pyjamas.  

When I do get out of the house to go in search of victuals I am invariably wearing the same tracksuit pants, hoodie and soup-stained T-shirt.  We are in Waynetta Slob territory.  You can take the girl out of the caravan, but ....    

Me and Gorbals before the lockdown.  

My hair is growing longer and thicker.  I have taken to enturbanning my head with a scarf.  I made a half hearted attempt to reconnect with my sewing machine to fashion a face mask, but I am to sewing machine as Gorbals is to hoover.  Never going to form that magical human-machine bond.  I am still working on my fabric prototype, now using knicker elastic cut from old holey knickers that I am now saving.  In the meantime I use my collection of under-hijabs as face masks.  I bought them for 1 euro apiece from an Arab shop behind the Gare du Nord.  I keep one in every coat pocket in case of rain.  If I pull it down around my neck and back up again, hey presto, call me Fatima.  Who's laughing now, eh?

Not much has changed for Gorbals, in truth.  He didn't go out much anyway, dresses in rags, sleeps most of the day and bathes once a week.  He's got more conspiracies to read about on Reddit.  He learned many street survival skills when he was channelling George Orwell on the streets of Brussels (except he hadn't got the gumption to get a washing up job).  He  once showed me how you could clean silver using fag ash and spit, and I always said, when the Apocalypse comes, I'm sticking with him.  At least my best cutlery will look nice.

THE LAST POST

Onward and upward

It may not have escaped your attention that this blog fell silent in June 2016.  Yes, that's right.  JUNE 2016.   Three weeks, more or less, before what I like to call the British Naqba.  After that, there was nothing more to say.  

As of Friday, last day of January 2020, the die is cast.  Alea iacta est.  UK has left the building.  And, coincidentally or not, in 17 weeks' time I will leave Spart Towers and the world of work.  I may or may not have become a Belgian in the meantime.   A new era is starting in many ways.  And so I think it is time for a new blog.  

Chocs Away!  Old Girl  has served to document my time in Brussels, allbeit with a good deal of embellishment.  Fifteen years, one job, four different apartments.    My ex sneered at me in 2005 when I said I was going to Brussels, and implied I would have no friends there.  I had one, as it happened, at the time.  And now I have dozens.  Good ones, too. 

But I feel the Brussels era is nearly over.  It was always about the job.  I have never felt any deep love for Brussels as a place.  It has to be said my view of the city has improved since I bought a car two years ago and can now get out to places like leafy Genval more easily.  But it's never been part of my retirement plan.   I always wanted to go back to France.  For a while I flirted with Portugal, but then reverted to the Perigord.   After a few years the prospect of global warming was starting to make me think twice about the comfort level that far south, and I shifted my focus to Brittany.  However, after ten years of visiting various regions of France, nowhere gave me a burning desire to return.   Paris was starting to be a very distant memory and its rose-coloured tinge was fading to sepia.  The France I knew was changing, too.  It was acquiring all the bad characteristics it used to sneer at the British for - populism, consumerism, poor education, bad food (yes! they even invented a word for it, "la malbouffe"), vandalism, knife crime ...  I started to ask myself the question I thought I would never ask - did I really want to go back and live there?

In the meantime I found myself in Scotland more and more often.  In 2009, and again in 2014, then in 2018 my cousin moved to the Highlands and I visited four times in two years.  It felt strangely right.  Particularly Glasgow.  It ticked many boxes.  I started to wonder, was this The Place?  OK I wouldn't be able to afford the lovely detached house with garden which I would have if I moved to some remote corner of Brittany.  But those old sandstone tenement apartments were very attractive, and there are some fabulous parks, not to mention the breathtaking scenery a short train ride away.  And a garden is a lot of work ...    The weather is not exactly tropical, but with my skin and aversion to taking my clothes off in public, would it really matter?  Weather isn't everything.   What appealed to me was the natural humour of the Glaswegians, their friendly nature, even towards the English, and 24-hour shopping.  Also, in terms of getting the lodger straightened out administratively, it would seem to be the logical, if not the only, choice. 

I'm still thinking about it.  But I must say it's creeping up on France as a retirement option.   It may even be a way of turning Brexit to my advantage - with two-thirds of my pension paid in euros, if the pounds slumps my strong euros could prop up my income.  And if I can persuade Gorbals that it is worth his while, certain sectors will be desperate for workers with British passports.   Always look on the bright side of life ...

The irony being, that if I do get the Belgian nationality, it may turn out to be unnecessary.  But hey, two birds in the hand are worth one in the bush.  Or something. 

RIP Gary Rhodes

1960-2019

MUCH FADO ABOUT NOTHING: PARTE DOIS

FARO FROM THE MADDING CROWD








Finally in the Algarve, we found ourselves with an evening to kill in Faro, and explored the town. It wasn't exactly kicking. Apart from a quite agreeable restaurant which Dr Gorbals turned up on his magic app, and a pleasant little bar where I had a cheeky ginginha, not much to report (although I quietly clocked the modern shopping centre near our hotel).  We were due to pick up one of our guests at Faro airport the next morning, but after he changed his flight times we found ourselves with the best part of Saturday to kill so pootled off to Olhao, a market town recommended by Lucy Pepper, and bought provisions for the villa.

On the motorway towards Carvoeiro, where our villa was situated, the skies darkened and it started to rain slightly.  There were flood warnings in place for Faro and Albufeira. The villa was straight out of 'Sexy Beast' or 'Mad Dogs', a real gangster's hideaway.  We dashed off to the local supermarket to stock up on basics.  The local Intermarché was a shopper's dream, with wide aisles, good lighting, floors clean enough to eat off, and a vast array of British, French, German, and Scandinavian products as well as Spanish and Portuguese brands.  The wine section was rather how I imagine Heaven.  Who knew there was such a vast range of wine in Portugal?  Vinho verde, branco, tinto, vinhos from the Alentejo, the Minho, the Dao, the Douro, the Algarve ...   The ultimate Euro supermarket.   We had to stock up with litres and kilos of stuff, which would no doubt end up with the cleaner - someone should design a Villa Pack of small quantities of condiments and toiletries to last a week.  We returned to the villa with a week's basics, to find The Blonde and Chef waiting outside the gates.

The Blonde used to be a Paris boiler room queen in the 1980s, a kind of Ladyfingers for the overheated financial derivatives sector.  Now retired on her ill-gotten gains, she had acquired a mortgage-default hacienda up in the spaghetti-western lunar landscape of Andalucia, and lived there alone, except for three dogs, two cats and an irascible French chef called, er, Chef.  Chef had some shady history involving Algeria and some missing gold.   He acted as her driver, bodyguard, cook and wine merchant.

As they settled in, I had to return to Faro to pick up our remaining guest, Metro.  Metro was a suave, urbane, metrosexual (hence his nickname) confirmed bachelor and ladykiller from London. He decanted from the plane with a suitcase the size of a house.  "Supplies," he whispered conspiratorially.   It took us half an hour to get out of the airport car park, due to minibusloads of tourists loading up their golf clubs and blocking us in.  Eventually we were on the road back to Carvoeiro, by this time the heavens had opened and I could barely see in front of me on the unlit motorway.  The windscreen wipers were going faster than the car.   We finally made it back to the villa around 9 p.m. to find Chef three sheets to the wind and nothing on the table.  Metro decanted his "supplies" which consisted of several bottles of high-end gin and mixers.  Dinner was served Andalucian style, i.e. around midnight.  Made mental note to remind Chef about the hour's time difference.

Chef was a bad-tempered Gascon who hated everywhere and everyone outside of France, and most of France as well. The only parts of the world he liked was the parts where they play rugby, and even then he bitched about the food in most of them (except in one village in the south-west of France).  He was particularly scathing about Portuguese food. French cuisine was superior to everything else, and was treated with religious devotion.  Thus there was the twice-daily mass, heralded by a short prayer:  "Bon, c'est l'heure de l'apéro,"  followed by the taking of communion, in the form of a cocktail concocted by Metro from one of the many bottles he had brought in his voluminous suitcase.  Then would follow a three-course lunch or dinner, with wine.    As soon as the dishes were cleared away, Chef would start planning the next meal.  He lived from meal to meal.  We started to feel like fatted geese by the end of the week, and didn't get out of the house much. 

Although the villa was perfect and exactly like in the photos, the famed Algarve weather did not live up to expectations.  A weather front was rolling in from the Atlantic, and continued to roll in.  For the rest of the week,  the weather changed from one minute to the next, resulting in Chaplineque scenes around the pool, running sunbed cushions in and out, Metro seizing every opportunity to top up his tan and Chef grumbling that only French weather was reliable.   The barbecue was abandoned by Tuesday, as the charcoal was so damp.   

Cataplana - Algarvian kitchenware

Occasionally the sun did come out and we braved an excursion, to Lagos or up into the hills.  Chef drove us to Monchique, and after a cursory glance in the window of a kichenware shop which was closed, declared the town of no interest and drove us back down.   Food markets and kitchenware shops were the only thing outside the kitchen that interested him, apart from rugby, and if there was no market, he would take a cursory glance inside the church and look at his watch.  He shopped every day at Intermarché, a French-owned chain of supermarkets.  We visited another supermarket, Apolonia, which made Waitrose look like Lidl, but he wrote it off as too expensive, although the real reason was probably that it wasn't French.  

The only thing Chef was not gastrofascist about was coffee. I made a point of preparing fresh cafetière coffee every morning, even though I am a tea drinker, to keep him happy, only to see him return from Intermarché one day with a jar of Nescafé.  He also had a penchant for instant mashed potato, which he admittedly gussied up with cheese, but even so I was shocked. I wondered where he had learned to cook. I believe he was in the Foreign Legion for a number of years. One night he was sulking and went on strike, so I rustled up one of my leftover pasta cheese bakes with powdered cheese sauce. He asked for seconds. 

All in all it was not an unpleasant week, although I have learned a lot about villa holidays and about Portuguese weather.  The pool was used precisely once.  However, my mission to investigate Portugal as the next and final stage of my international wanderings is still ongoing. As Dr Gorbals tactfully put it: Portugal would be a good place to die.  


 
  

MUCH FADO ABOUT NOTHING - PARTE UMA

MUCH FADO ABOUT NOTHING

We were flying over the outskirts of Setubal when Dr Gorbals, my 48-kilo Glaswegian attorney, announced he had just seen Jesus.   This took me slightly by surprise as to my knowledge he had only had one beer prior to takeoff and it usually took at least four before he started talking out of his arse.  I looked up from "Portuguese for Dummies" and followed his finger pointing excitedly to the ground a thousand metres below.   There indeed stood Jesus, Cristo Rei, with arms outstretched, and a "Hello, Lisbon!" bubble coming from his lips (in the cartoon which my attorney, also an amateur illustrator, later drew).   The plane banked over the mighty Tagus and prepared to land at Portela International Airport.  Bom dia, Portugal.


My mission was to scout for a region of Portugal that would allow me to live out my final years after retirement in a manner to which I might like to become accustomed.   Dr Gorbals' mission was to stop me handing over any cash directly to some opportunistic Portuguese peasant trying to offload a pile of crumbling old bricks, by sequestering said cash into his own pocket.  After recent events of 22 March, Brussels was starting to lose whatever charm it may have had and I was looking towards a retirement in the sun in (hopefully) four years with impatience.



Getting out of Brussels had been a long and arduous business,  five weeks after the bombings.  We queued through the car park, through the makeshift security under tents, then made our way up flights of stairs, along miles of corridors, to finally arrive at the proper security control where we were checked again.  



As you may remember, I visted Lisbon last year with the KNOB* and was quite smitten. This time I wanted to explore parts of the city I hadn't had time to see last year.  Dr Gorbals had never been to Portugal and was up for anything.  Affecting a kind of Yorkshire-mafia look with wraparound shades and a cloth cap, he took to Lisbon like a duck to water.  Within 24 hours he had learned that a 'tulipa' was a half pint of draft lager, an 'Imperial' was a pint, and his two new best friends were Sagres and Super Bock.

Alongside the main avenue Liberdade runs rua das Portes Sao Antao , a narrow street packed with little shops and restaurants and ginginha shops, tiny little concessions doling out thimble sized glasses of the local cherry brandy.  I usually have a rule that I do not drink until the sun is over the yardarm (although sometimes I mean the Tokyo yardarm) but I broke it on the first day and had a cheeky ginginha at 11:30.  The year of living dangerously!  

The weather was favourable for our time in the capital. We went on the famous Lisbon cable cars, although the historic trams were too packed with tourists, almost exclusively French.  We visited the castle, the Alfama district, which took some finding.  I am not very good at reading maps off phones, but Dr Gorbals infallible nose for a bar homed in on the fado capital of the world.   I have to admit I'm not a big fan, I rather prefer the sturm und drang of flamenco to the maudlin dirge of fado, which is music to slit your wrists by. We avoided restaurants which were hosting fado concerts, where the price of the menu would be bumped up x 5, but it was impossible to avoid it completely, so loud was the man singing in the nearest restaurant.  I would have preferred a bit of light jangly Amalia Rodrigues, but every now and again our meal was interrupted by a loud declamation of how his soul yearned for the old homeland during his enforced exile on a Paris council estate and how he dreamed of his childhood sweetheart waiting for him by the lighthouse even though he knew she had run off with a buff Brazilian pool boy called Nelson and was now working as an exotic dancer in a Rio nightclub.   O misery!  O the pain!  Gorbals said fado was like Portuguese blues, but without the lighthearted element.



In the Bairrio Alto we met up with lovely Luso adoptee Lucy Pepper who took us to a fab restaurant where Dr Gorbals had an emotional reunion with his appetite, AWOL for 20 years. We tasted specialities such as Queijo de Azeitao and Moscatel de Setubal, Bacalhao a Lagareiro and  Lucy kindly brought us a copy of her book "Eat Portugal" which she dedicated right there in the restaurant.  It was so exciting, and much more fun than queueing up in Waterstones.  It was so exciting in fact that I couldn't remember what I had eaten and had to get Lucy to message me later.  See "Daphne's Dinners" for the comestible part of our trip.

Another UNESCO world heritage site ticked off

We made an excursion to Sintra on the efficient and cheap Portuguese train network. Byron called it "Cintra's glorious Eden" and he wasn't far wrong. Last year I drove up to the Quinta da Regaleira and Montserrate gardens to see the follies created by 19th century drug addicted millionaires.  This year we stayed in the town and wandered up, down and through the municipal park, which is every bit as good as the Regaleira, and free to boot.  Sintra is full of new age hippies selling dreamcatchers and crystals, due to its reputation as being a bit spiritual.  If you can imagine Chelsea Flower Show held at Glastonbury. With Eurodisney inspired pavilions.  Quite bonkers, but quite gorgeous. The whole town is overseen by an imposing fortress built by the Arabs when they were in charge.  

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

On the Thursday we checked out of the hotel and went to pick up the rental car at the airport.  Anxious to get value for money I had booked through an outfit called Goldcar, who were suggested by the airline we flew with.  9 euros a day sounded perfectly reasonable to me.  And to everybody else on the recently arrived Vueling plane, it appeared, as there was a throng waiting at the desk, where two staff were taking half an hour to process each customer.  After waiting for fifteen minutes I noticed others clutching small tickets with numbers on, and realized I was supposed to take a number.  45 minutes later I got to the desk, by which time I was ready to sign up for the various extra charges which were explained in fluent and rapid English, but eventually we were behind the wheel of an Opel Corsa bearing only slight traces of damage caused by its previous occupant, and heading south of the river over the 13 km long Vasco da Gama bridge across the Tagus estuary, in driving rain.

Rental cars and me are a long and miserable saga, hence I had brought my attorney for back-up.  Belt and braces, really, as I had also brought a GPS device.  Unfortunately Dr Gorbals took an irrational dislike to the voice of the GPS and argued with it at every turn.  "In 500 metres, bear right," said Bruce, the GPS (I had set it to the Australian English).  "Ye dinnae ken whit ye're talking aboot ye antipodean eejit"  shouted Dr Gorbals.  "Go straight!"  Gorbals was reading from the map on his tablet, which did not indicate one-way streets or traffic holdups.   I eventually switched off Bruce and surreptitiously followed the route indicated on the screen, letting my attorney read off contradictory directions.  However since he cannot tell his left from his right, he did not notice that I was ignoring him.

We made a one-night stop in Evora, a small and pretty town with a Roman ruin, views over the Upper Alentejo and not much else to speak of. Luckily there was a free concert of Iberian-American music in the town square that evening and the rain had stopped.   In the main square a long-haired Chilean singer was entertaining the crowd with songs by Victor Jarra and sentiments of freedom and democracy, to general approval.  

We witnessed an incident which may well have made the front page of the local paper had there been a journalist present. Three elderly gents, spruced up for the occasion, were occupying a bench with a view of the stage. A chap in a hoodie standing in the arcades kept shouting "Olé!" loudly and clapping enthusiastically. Care in the Community possibly. One of the old chaps took serious umbrage. He'd either had too many cheeky ginginhas or was an old Salazarista who didn't like the Chilean lad's left-wing sentiments. He approached Hoodie quite aggressively, and at one point I'm sure I saw him briefly point a small pistol at him. Could have been a cigarette lighter, I suppose, Hoodie didn't seem perturbed.  Another of the old men tried to restrain his friend, unsuccessfully. It was like a Portuguese version of "Last of the Summer Wine".   Dr Gorbals was enjoying it immensely, especially when the enraged pensioner pulled a large screwdriver out of his pocket and brandished it in the direction of Hoodie, who roared with laughter.  Next thing, Compo is on his mobile phone. Within five minutes the filth were on the scene. Three extremely reasonable cops listened patiently to Compo, then went and listened patiently to Hoodie.  After another intrepid foray by Compo when he got within twenty feet of Hoodie, a young policeman took him by the arm and gently steered him out of the square. A posting to Evora must be the worst thing that can happen to a young ambitious Portuguese cop.

Is this what is meant by Portuguese rock?

Thinking of Bert

Getting out of Evora the next day was tricky. I forgot to switch on Bruce and ended up with a choice of risking a narrow passage between two buildings - with my record on damaging hire cars, not an ideal option - or driving up the main commercial road which was off limits to all vehicles except deliveries.  I was waved at angrily by irate shopkeepers but eventually got onto the road heading south. We spent most of the morning at a megalithic site about 10 km from Evora.  It was drizzling and cold, and the road to the site was a dirt track filled with massive potholes.  I had to recall my rough-terrain driving skills from Umbongoland, and remember that I was not driving a big old Datsun Patrol but an already dented Opel Corsa from a hire company that was willing me to inflict further damage.  The megalithic stones were however pretty impressive, even in the rain.  At one point we caught up with a guided tour, and recognized the participants as the people who'd been sitting at the next table in the Evora restaurant where we had dinner the previous night.   



After a lunch stop in Beja, an underwhelming little town, we headed for Faro the pretty way, over the mountain. And then over another mountain. And another one. And then two more. And one last one. By the time we rolled into Sao Bras de Alportel, in yer actual Algarve, I was exhausted.

Finally in the Algarve, we found ourselves with an evening to kill in Faro, and explored the town. It wasn't exactly kicking. Apart from a quite agreeable restaurant which Dr Gorbals turned up on his magic app, and a pleasant little bar where I had a cheeky ginginha, not much to report (although I quietly clocked the modern shopping centre near our hotel).  We were due to pick up one of our guests at Faro airport the next morning, but after he changed his flight times we found ourselves with the best part of Saturday to kill so pootled off to Olhao, a market town recommended by Lucy Pepper, and bought provisions for the villa.

On the motorway towards Carvoeiro, where our villa was situated, the skies darkened and it started to rain slightly.  There were flood warnings in place for Faro and Albufeira. The villa was straight out of 'Sexy Beast' or 'Mad Dogs', a real gangster's hideaway.  We dashed off to the local supermarket to stock up on basics.  The local Intermarché was a shopper's dream, with wide aisles, good lighting, floors clean enough to eat off, and a vast array of British, French, German, and Scandinavian products as well as Spanish and Portuguese brands.  The wine section was rather how I imagine Heaven.  Who knew there was such a vast range of wine in Portugal?  Vinho verde, branco, tinto, vinhos from the Alentejo, the Minho, the Dao, the Douro, the Algarve ...   The ultimate Euro supermarket.   We had to stock up with litres and kilos of stuff, which would no doubt end up with the cleaner - someone should design a Villa Pack of small quantities of condiments and toiletries to last a week.  We returned to the villa with a week's basics, to find The Blonde and Chef waiting outside the gates.

The Blonde used to be a Paris boiler room queen in the 1980s, a kind of Ladyfingers for the overheated financial derivatives sector.  Now retired on her ill-gotten gains, she had acquired a mortgage-default hacienda up in the spaghetti-western lunar landscape of Andalucia, and lived there alone, except for three dogs, two cats and an irascible French chef called, er, Chef.  Chef had some shady history involving Algeria and some missing gold.   He acted as her driver, bodyguard, cook and wine merchant.

As they settled in, I had to return to Faro to pick up our remaining guest, Metro.  Metro was a suave, urbane, metrosexual (hence his nickname) confirmed bachelor and ladykiller from London. He decanted from the plane with a suitcase the size of a house.  "Supplies," he whispered conspiratorially.   It took us half an hour to get out of the airport car park, due to minibusloads of tourists loading up their golf clubs and blocking us in.  Eventually we were on the road back to Carvoeiro, by this time the heavens had opened and I could barely see in front of me on the unlit motorway.  The windscreen wipers were going faster than the car.   We finally made it back to the villa around 9 p.m. to find Chef three sheets to the wind and nothing on the table.  Metro decanted his "supplies" which consisted of several bottles of high-end gin and mixers.  Dinner was served Andalucian style, i.e. around midnight.  Made mental note to remind Chef about the hour's time difference.

Chef was a bad-tempered Gascon who hated everywhere and everyone outside of France, and most of France as well. The only parts of the world he liked was the parts where they play rugby, and even then he bitched about the food in most of them (except in one village in the south-west of France).  He was particularly scathing about Portuguese food. French cuisine was superior to everything else, and was treated with religious devotion.  Thus there was the twice-daily mass, heralded by a short prayer:  "Bon, c'est l'heure de l'apéro,"  followed by the taking of communion, in the form of a cocktail concocted by Metro from one of the many bottles he had brought in his voluminous suitcase.  Then would follow a three-course lunch or dinner, with wine.    As soon as the dishes were cleared away, Chef would start planning the next meal.  He lived from meal to meal.  We started to feel like fatted geese by the end of the week, and didn't get out of the house much. 

Although the villa was perfect and exactly like in the photos, the famed Algarve weather did not live up to expectations.  A weather front was rolling in from the Atlantic, and continued to roll in.  For the rest of the week,  the weather changed from one minute to the next, resulting in Chaplineque scenes around the pool, running sunbed cushions in and out, Metro seizing every opportunity to top up his tan and Chef grumbling that only French weather was reliable.   The barbecue was abandoned by Tuesday, as the charcoal was so damp.  

Cataplana - Algarvian kitchenware

Occasionally the sun did come out and we braved an excursion, to Lagos or up into the hills.  Chef drove us to Monchique, and after a cursory glance in the window of a kichenware shop which was closed, declared the town of no interest and drove us back down.   Food markets and kitchenware shops were the only thing outside the kitchen that interested him, apart from rugby, and if there was no market, he would take a cursory glance inside the church and look at his watch.  He shopped every day at Intermarché, a French-owned chain of supermarkets.  We visited another supermarket, Apolonia, which made Waitrose look like Lidl, but he wrote it off as too expensive, although the real reason was probably that it wasn't French.  

The only thing Chef was not gastrofascist about was coffee. I made a point of preparing fresh cafetière coffee every morning, even though I am a tea drinker, to keep him happy, only to see him return from Intermarché one day with a jar of Nescafé.  He also had a penchant for instant mashed potato, which he admittedly gussied up with cheese, but even so I was shocked. I wondered where he had learned to cook. I believe he was in the Foreign Legion for a number of years. One night he was sulking and went on strike, so I rustled up one of my leftover pasta cheese bakes with powdered cheese sauce. He asked for seconds. 

All in all it was not an unpleasant week, although I have learned a lot about villa holidays and about weather fronts. My mission to investigate Portugal as the next and final stage of my international wanderings is still ongoing. As Dr Gorbals tactfully put it: Portugal would be a good place to die.  





* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band