Ticking along... in Juggling with Hedgehogs

I don’t really have a lot to add in, but haven’t written in a while, so thought a catch up fill-in may be needed.

Christmas in Portugal was peaceful. Just the two of us, and the challenge of cooking our usual Christmas dinner with a very dodgy oven. Paul did a remarkable job of getting the old cooker working - when we moved into the house, the home-owner proudly showed it to me, warned me the handle was only fixed on one side on the oven door, but otherwise said it was working - it wasn’t. Only one burner on the hob was working. One. None of the other three would light, and we couldn’t figure out the oven at all. Eventually, we discovered there was a little flap at the bottom of it that you lift up and you can light it in there. But there was no means of figuring out the temperature. So Paul bought a gadget that did that, and put it in, and what basically happens is the oven just keeps on getting hotter. There is no shut off point, no thermostat, no control at all. So if you want to cook anything in the oven, you switch it on and light it, wait for it to get to almost the temperature you want, and then put your item in, and fiddle with the dial, constantly turning it up and down to try to keep the sodding oven at a steady tempature for your meal to cook.

He managed to cook our turkey and roast potatoes that way, which I think is miraculous. Other things were cooked on the hob the day before and microwaved on the day. We did OK.

There were fireworks through the night on Christmas Eve (Christ is Born, apparently) and the same on New Year’s Eve - fireworks everywhere. We didn’t go out - we didn’t know where to go anyway, but this year we’ll try to be more organised about socialising with the locals etc.

We’ve been trying to learn Portuguese using apps and website tutorials etc, but I felt we needed practice with speaking, so I found us a tutor. We’re now going for lessons with him every Tuesday evening. We pay 17.50 Euros for the 2 of us for an hour, which I think is excellent, and the teacher is really nice. You have to learn to speak Portuguese with a Portuguese person, I think. You get all the nuances, and the colloquialisms that way. We can barely manage hello, how are you and thank you at the moment. Dealing with bureaucrats is tricky.

We have our 5 year residency certificates now, and we have an appointment to register at the local medical centre.

On Monday we’re going to the British Embassy in Lisbon where I will make a declaration that I now live here permanently, pay them a wad of cash, and they will give me a piece of paper that I can then use to start the matriculation process for my car. I’m dreading doing this, but I have to if I want to keep my lovely Mazda MX5 in this country.

Work is going OK. Things are getting busier, which we prefer anyway. We sit at opposite ends of the lounge, currently (our downstairs office isn’t fit for habitation yet), which helps us to stay warm. We take a stroll around the garden at lunchtime, and it’s very handy being here all the time for deliveries and so on.

We took delivery of 600 roof tiles and 25 square metres of floor tiles this week. The roof tiles are for the annexe. The roof is leaking and generally hasn’t been maintained, so Paul is completely re-doing the whole thing. God knows when…but at least we have the tiles.

The kitchen tiles will be installed by a local builder who is coming to remove 2 walls and a fireplace and chimney, fit a new (lower) ceiling, and concrete the floor, lay the tiles and paint the walls in advance of us fitting a new kitchen. We’ve had 2 designs done, but no prices from either of the companies that did them, so it’s looking more and more likely that we’ll buy our kitchen from IKEA and Paul will fit it himself. Thankfully, marble and granite are very cheap here. And the tiles? Unbelievable. We only paid 6 Euro a square metre for them. And delivery was included in the price.

As I may have mentioned previously, some things here are ridiculously cheap, and some things are very expensive indeed. So it all kind of balances - if you’re cautious about things.

Paul is still waiting for his safety gear to arrive and is getting extremely frustrated about not being able to use his chainsaw. We had several trees felled and pruned recently and there is wood all over the property. It needs to be cut into manageable pieces, then split for firewood and stored so it can season. There’s a great deal of pine, and some cork oak. Cork oak trees here are protected, so you have to get written permission to cut them down. We didn’t cut them down, we had them professionally pruned, which is apparently allowed. Cork oak burns slow and hot, so I’m hoping we’ll get a decent amount of wood from the branches we had removed yesterday.

We still haven’t planted our fruit trees - mainly because the poplar trees we had felled are sitting in piles in the orchard at the moment and until that wood is moved, there’s no room for the oranges, limes, plums, figs, cherries and nectarines we currently have sitting on the veranda. We keep them watered, and they’re sheltered there. We also bought a rhododendron to plant on one of the property borders (haven’t decided where yet).

My son is coming to visit us for 2 weeks at the beginning of February. It’ll be his birthday while he’s here. He has to leave where he lives for that 2 weeks anyway (he stays on a holiday caravan park, and for 2 weeks out of the year the site closes for maintenance and legal reasons - it can’t be classed as a permanent residence - so I decided it would make sense for him to be here rather than having to ask friends for a sofa or whatever).

He’s still struggling a lot with his mental health, his drinking and holding down a job. He’s nearly 34 and still not adulting. He’s very much aware of this himself and is very hard on himself about it, and I help him all I can, but it would be great if he could find a steady job and get on his feet.

I think a couple of weeks here in the peace and quiet will do him a world of good. The only noise we have to deal with is the neighbour’s dog yapping at cars all day long. As I’m typing this, it’s absolutely silent, so maybe the dog is having a kip…

I’ll try to post some more photos as we get things done to the house. Work on the pool starts early March - and I cannot wait. There will be lots of photos of the progress of that, I’m sure.