Creature Comforts

Creature Comforts

I know that I shouldn't value material things and that people and experiences are far more important, but I can't help it, I miss my STUFF. 

I miss my radio, and my books, and my cooking utensils and my clothes. I miss my hair drier and my garden fork and my wifi and my sofa. And I miss the telly.

There, I said it. 

I know it won't be long, in the overall scheme of things, before we regain our creature comforts, and I'm not complaining, honest, but it does rather seem at the moment that it's more about the creatures and less about the comforts. 

There's not much to be getting on with in our rented cottage, except tending to the tomatoes and peppers in the garden, so most days are spent either walking the dogs, or fretting about not leaving them in the vehicle for too long (fortunately it's not too hot at the moment and the Landrover stays pretty cool with its white roof and vertical windows) whilst we drink coffee and/or beer.  The evenings are spent playing Contract Bridge on a loop (I'm winning).

The dogs are all OK, although Woofta has been showing his age (14) for a while now, and is pretty decrepit. We took him to the vet this week because his breathing has been deteriorating. It wasn't a huge success because as soon as we took him through the door of the pristine, state-of-the-art animal hospital he recognised it immediately for what it was and started trembling from head to toe. 

Woofta DETESTS the vet. Any vet, it seems, even pretty young Portuguese ones he's never met before. The poor vet, who was lovely, couldn't get anywhere near him because he turned into a Devil Dog, snarling and snapping at her if she so much as looked at him. He was so distressed when we attempted to X-ray him that he became cyanosed and we had to abandon the attempt. She prescribed some heart tablets anyway but they're not making a jot of difference. 

He keeps buggering on though, with a sniff sniff here and a widdle widdle there. He's always been Top Dog, despite forever being the smallest in the pack, and he retains his position through sheer force of personality. We love that little dog and it's painful to witness his decline. 

Gwilym, meanwhile, is trying to get us deported. He's attempted to murder at least three cyclists, by going for their pedals (because they whizz round and round provocatively) and then he tried the same trick on an old boy who was phut-phutting along the edge of the lagoon on his moped. On another occasion he ran up to a fisherman who was bending over fiddling with his boat and stole his hat OFF HIS HEAD and sprinted round the beach, killing it, and refusing to give it back. He imagines that life is one huge game, staged for his benefit. Only his cuteness allows him to get away with it. (So far.) 

The cats are cool, as cats are wont to be. Fat Babs and Titty seem to have almost entirely resolved their differences. Odd, because they have wanted to kill each other for five years. 

ME: Fat Babs and Titty have stopped fighting. Have you noticed?

RICH: Yes. They almost seem to be friends. 

ME: I know. I saw them kissing each other in the kitchen just now. ON THE LIPS. 

RICH (slightly shocked): Are you saying they're lesbians?

*rolls eyes*

We've also acquired a couple of extra, unwanted creatures.

There's a mosquito (who I've called Mozzie Marianne). She wakes me up by buzzing right in my face, waiting for me to expose the tiniest bit of vulnerable flesh so she can strike with her venom. Vicious little fecker. She doesn't bother with Rich and it honestly feels like a personal attack. She's had me twice but I don't think she likes Marmite. And Rich has bought a swatter so the big-nosed parasite and her Mozzie Munter clan had better go and find something useful to do with their lives, other than needlessly irritating people and spreading disease. (What is the actual POINT of mosquitoes?)

We went for a walk in the woods the other day, and collected a load of pine cones. And ticks too, it would seem. 

The animals have all been treated against ticks but that didn't stop one from crawling up Richard's trouser leg. Fortunately he felt it creeping up his calf at lunch, and squished it. Ticks are insignificant looking little creatures, like flattened money spiders. But the creepy little perv crawls ever upwards, headed towards some warm, dark, body crease, preferably in the groin region, where he engorges himself on your life blood until he's just a huge fat body with tiny stumpy legs sticking out. Like Violet Beauregard when she turns into a blueberry. Nick the Tick, I call him. Gluttonous little parasite. 

Rich has had prior experience of them, being a forester, and when we were camping in Poland he had one embed itself in his buttock, which the girls and I thought hilarious at the time. I pulled it out and its head came off (and is still there, I presume, in his buttock). One of our friends, Steve, also a forester, discovered one on his foreskin. It was huge and purple and engorged. (The TICK was. *rolls eyes again*)

Anyway, I started to itch, imagining I had a tick crawling on me somewhere. Kept checking. As I wandered through AKI, (the Portuguese equivalent of B&Q) scratching, I gave myself a good talking to about psychosomatic itching. Then I spotted something crawling up the side of my nose. MY NOSE ON MY FACE. 

I did a River Dance amongst the lighting section, slapping myself repeatedly on the face, threw the little bastard on the floor in disgust, and jumped up and down on it.  I don't think I can ever go in AKI again.

Not really mentioning the house purchasing thing, for superstitious reasons (not that I'm superstitious), but things are progressing, I think, and hopefully we shall soon once more have somewhere we can call home. 

Touch wood. Fingers crossed. *checks knickers for ticks*

PS. Weather = sunshiny with mental spells (like you, haha). 

I am an Ass.

I got up for a wee in the middle of the night last night, and as I sat there in the dark, bleary eyed and half asleep, I noticed a small bright blue light shining on the floor between the loo and the wall.  I stared at it, blinking, before I realised there were two small dots of light, close together and glowing like an LED.

Brain-muddled by sleepiness I thought:

'That's odd I didn't notice an electric socket down there and why is it glowing it must be a power point of some sort why is there an electrical power point in the bathroom by the loo but I cleaned in here the other day and didn't notice one oh hang on it must be a mobile phone but my phone's on my bedside table and anyway it doesn't have two small blue lights on it it must be Richard's phone or some other electronic device oh hang on IT'S MOVING!'

Turned out to be a black, slow-moving, larvae about 2 cm long, like an elongated wood louse or a squat centipede - a glow worm of some sort, glowing from its head or tail, not sure which.  It was fricking AMAZING. Or at least I assume it was a glow-worm. Either that or I'm off my rocker.

I've never seen a glow worm before, but my parents used to talk about how they could often be spotted, glowing away, in the grass verges at night time. This would be in the days before we poisoned everything with weed-killers and insecticides. But I'd always imagined a sort of yellowy light-bulb glow, rather than a pale blue neon high-tech LED type of thing. Just as well I'm not on drugs or I may have imagined it was a NSA tracking device and freaked.

However, glow worms and biting spiders aside, the flora and fauna of this part of Portugal are similar in many ways to that of the UK, but there's just more of it. The weeds in my little patch of rented garden are very familiar (But no dandelions! Hoorah!), and I was thrilled to see wild foxgloves on the road side the other day, amongst the cow parsley and poppies -  because my garden in Wales was full of them, and I would've missed them. Sparrows, goldfinches, herons and red kites abound. And there was a gorgeous crested red bird with striped wings in the garden the other day. I'd love to know what it was.  I need a book. For Christmas please. Thanks.

And roses! Amazing roses everywhere.  Front gardens are bursting with them, billowing over balustrades and clambering up columns. I've no idea why England has associated itself with the rose  - seems they do far better in Portugal. I've never seen so many beautiful roses.

We've settled into a sort of happy routine as we wait patiently for the red tape involved in buying a property to untangle itself.  The weather, initially sunny but with a chill in the wind, and then all kinds of variable, has suddenly become very hot, with a warm breeze. The floor tiles remain cool though and the animals all seem quite contented and have come to view this little farm cottage as their own.

Titty the Maine Coon is causing a bit of a stir - the local cats are all quite tiny and runty (google 'Maine Coon images') and she's been spotted strolling the orchards (Pierre: 'My father say he see a 'UGE, beeeeautiful cat, ees your cat? I want to see thees cat!'), and at night-time the local boy cats come to the garden and howl for her, while she growls at them scathingly through the window like Ertha Kit, keeping us all bloody awake.

This morning she lunged at a fly and managed to attach herself to the sticky fly strip we'd hung on the window frame. She panicked and flew around the house with the sticky strip and dead flies ever more firmly entwined around her long limbs and flowing locks. That stuff is like black treacle - it won't wash or comb out - and poor Titty has had to undergo a humiliating hatchet-job hair cut. She's mortified. And Fat Babs keeps sniggering.

Misty disgraced herself by biting Pierre on the calf when he came round to fix the kitchen tap.  It was a sheepdog herding 'nip' rather than an aggressive attack and she didn't hurt him, or even leave a mark, but biting is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE, and she got a good telling off.
Pierre was completely mystified.
'But ees GOOD dog, ees GOOD she bite strange man in house! Why you shout at her?'
I guess he had a point.

Gwilym has substituted fish-herding for squirrel-chasing. He herds shoals of small silvery sea bass through the shallows of the lagoon at high tide - hilarious to watch. And Wooly has moved on from gate-crashing picnics, in his never-ending quest for food, to actually jumping into German motor homes and helping himself to a bit of brockwurst. Embarrassing.

Rich has started playing golf at the Royal Obidos golf course, which he's ecstatic about because it's everything and more than he'd hoped it would be, what with its views of the lagoon on one side and the ocean on the other and the special man called Andrez who looks after his clubs and keeps his trolley battery charged. I haven't dared to venture into the clubhouse myself yet - just dropped him off and picked him up. It's posh and I'll have to have a make-over and a new wardrobe first, at the very least. Although I was nearly forced to dash in the other day, with mad hair and wearing dungarees, because I had a bit of traveller's tummy and thought I was going to crap myself.   Fortunately for Rich I managed to hold myself together and he was saved from that particular humiliation.

Languages are not Richard's forté, so I've been teaching him one relevant and useful phrase a day. His pronunciation is crap though and the other day he introduced me 'Esta é a minha mulher, Lucy' (this is my wife, Lucy), but mispronounced 'mulher' as 'mula' and so introduced me as his donkey. Oh how they laughed.

Whilst he was playing golf, I had a disaster. I lost my iPhone. My iPhone has my LIFE on it. It's not just a phone, it's my email, my calendar, my diary, my source of all info, my contacts, my very SOUL is on that iPhone. Oh, yeah, and FB.

I was walking the dogs on a vast and empty beach and as I threw the ball for Misty it must have plopped out of the pocket of my hoody. It was in a knitted sock cover thing. I didn't notice until I was almost back at the car and my heart sank as I turned to look at the massive expanse of sand that I'd been randomly wandering along for half an hour. Trying not to panic I decided I'd walk straight to the furthest point that I'd been to, then systematically 'comb' the beach in a zigzag fashion all the way back, even if it took me three days, and I couldn't even phone Rich and tell him. After about ten minutes of rising panic and palpitations, my eye was caught by a piece of paper that was flipping across the sand diagonally towards me from afar.  I chased it and picked it up and realised it was the bit of paper that had been slipped inside the cover with my phone, with a website address on it.  It had come from a part of the beach that I never would have searched because I didn't think I'd been that far. I deduced, because I'm bloody clever, like, innit Sherlock, that if I walked directly into the wind, from the point I found the paper, then I would find my phone. And about fifty yards later there it was, lying naked in the sand, the knitted cover gone forever, I know not where. A miracle.

I've since made a new cover for it. A crocheted affair with drawstring top and a long crocheted 'cord' attachment that I shall pin to my clothes, making it impossible for me to drop it or leave it anywhere. It looks a bit naff but then so do those spectacles on a chain and dummies on a curly cord that people attach to themselves or their offspring. Naff but functional.

It reminds me of a pen I once had. Anyone who's worked in A&E knows that pens are impossible to keep hold of. You may start a shift with three pens and go home with none, six or three entirely different ones. So I got a special pen that had a long chain attached to the end of it and a pin at the end. I'd pin it to my lapel and it transformed my life. I always had a pen. People could borrow it for a second to sign some drug chart or whatever, but they couldn't nick it. I couldn't put it down and walk off without it. Whenever I wasn't actually writing I would sling it around my neck, like a scarf. It became a part of my being.

Then one day, after about two years, the chain broke and there was no fixing it. I had to go back to using an ordinary pen.  But I'd formed a habit. As soon as I finished writing anything I'd sling my pen around my neck. Trouble was, because the pen was no longer attached to a chain I would, for example, go to see a patient, write something down, then as I walked away, randomly chuck my pen over my shoulder, often narrowly missing the bewildered patient and nearly taking his eye out. Went on for weeks. Was like I had some form of Tourette's.

Anyway. Let's hope I don't end up slinging my iPhone around the place. And let's hope we don't have any more disasters, and if we do that they're as short lived as our recent batch.

And let's also hope that the eating of marmite on crackers every evening will continue to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

Number of mozzie bites during 7 days prior to marmite = 2
Number of mozzie bites during 11 days since marmite = 0

Sent from my iPad

Finding Nemo / Looking For Wifi

What a peculiar week. What with 'Tittygate' and 'Tyregate' and trying to remind ourselves that this isn't a holiday; that we don't have to spend every day visiting somewhere new or taking advantage of every ray of sunshine or worrying about tan lines. Yet at the same time, without any of our worldly goods, including a permanent home, a radio or a cheese grater, it's not that easy to settle into a domestic routine. 

The little house we're renting is ideal for the moment, in that it's cheap, perfect for the animals, and has the basic things we need i.e. a bed, a stove, a fridge, a washing machine, a shower, a table and chairs, two small armchairs and a barbecue. 

We have brought with us the remaining life essentials i.e. a few clothes, lots of knickers, bedding, two saucepans, two knives, two forks and a spatula. And a bottle opener obviously. 

Our days so far have been spent looking at properties, walking the dogs on the beaches, going for runs around the lagoon, looking for wifi, getting a lawyer, wondering what on earth you do with bacalhau and sorting out a fiscal number.  Also listening to unfamiliar birdsong and effusing over wild flowers and the smell of eucalyptus. And pinching ourselves. 

Our evenings have been spent sitting in little armchairs surrounded by tea-lights, listening to all the music on my iPhone (via the mini speakers and amp that I so cannily packed), trying to pronounce Portuguese words and drinking cheap alcohol. 

The cats have all been allowed to venture into the garden, after being confined to the house for several days. Generally cats are very wary creatures and will gradually get their bearings, bit by bit, and flee back into the house if so much as a rustling leaf should alarm them. 

Not so Fat Babs. As soon as we opened the door she marched straight round the side of the house and pointedly waddled up the garden path without so much as a backward glance, her furry legs swishing around each other like a fat girl in a too-tight velour onesie. She headed straight for a hole in the fence and disappeared into the farm yard as if to say 'I'm not living with you bunch of wankers a moment longer'. She came back of course. She's streetwise that cat. Probably just wanted a crafty cigarette. Proper Valleys girl. 

A few nights later we thought we'd lost Titty. She disappeared for hours and hours. Titty is not like Fat Babs and it was completely out of character for her not to come when called. After several hours of searching (which included Rich wandering the streets of the village with a bottle of beer in his hand shouting 'TITTY! TITTY!' in a girl's voice), we sadly came to the devastating conclusion that she must be dead. There seemed to be no other possible explanation. Trapped or poisoned. Tragic.

Before bed - drunk, tearful and bereft -  we had one last look in the barn next door. And there she was, eyes like saucers and crouched under a vehicle, stalking rats, mice, bats and birds and having the time of her life. Bloody animal. 

(Leia the Dud Bengal hasn't actually noticed that she now lives in a different house in a different country and the dogs care not where they are as long as they are with us. I love dogs.)

For several days, we've noticed a tapping sound coming from one of the front wheels of the Landrover.  You can only hear it when the windows are wound down. May have been going on for weeks for all we know, but definitely at least several days. Rich said it was a stone in the tyre tread and yesterday, trying to locate it, I spotted a metal tack embedded in the tyre. 

Rich: Blimey. That shouldn't be there.

Me: Well, no. Clearly.

Rich: We need to get it out. It'll give us a puncture. 

Me: If it was going to give us a puncture it would've done so by now. Let's leave it. 

Rich: I don't like the look of it. I'm going to pull it out. 

Me: No. Don't do that. It might be plugging the hole. If you pull it out the tyre might go down. Leave it. 

Rich (looking doubtful): I'm not so sure. 

Me: JUST BLOODY LEAVE IT. 

This morning we had an appointment at 10am. As we piled into the Landrover, Rich did that dramatic thing he does.

'OH MY GOD!' he shouted, pointing at the front tyre, which was completely flat.

 

Me (really pissed off): DID YOU PULL THE TACK OUT?!

Rich: (looking sheepish, says nothing)

Biting my lip and without saying 'I bloody told you!' even once, we set about changing the tyre. This isn't that easy in a long wheel-base Landrover Defender. Having eventually worked out how to get the spare unbolted from the back door and how the enormous jack probably worked, it turned out the spare tyre was completely bald. Because when we last needed a new tyre about two years ago Rich had just decided to put the old knackered one on the back and forget all about it. So basically we had just travelled across Europe with no spare tyre. I KNOW. Unbelievable. I wanted to kill him. 

The rôles in our relationship have never been particularly traditional but in our case putting the rubbish out and ENSURING THE VEHICLES ARE ROADWORTHY are HIS jobs. (And cleaning up cat sick, obviously.)

He was saved from the full blast of my fury by a particularly pushy estate agent, but that's another story. 

House hunting has been up and down. When we were here in March we fell in love with a property that we had every intention of buying as soon as we arrived here last week. But when we went to view it again (for the third time) we promptly fell out of love with it. This was mainly because, since our last visit, the owners had nuked the entire 10,000m2 plot with weed killer and it looked positively post-apocalyptic. As a an organic gardener whose intentions are to grow vegetables this fairly broke my heart and the whole place completely lost it's charm. And you can't by a house that has no charm, can you?

So, it was back to square one. The good news is that yesterday we revisited a place we first viewed a year ago - a cute, boxy little place in the middle of a large, flat, virginal plot. A blank canvas, if you will. We think it may be THE ONE. Watch this space.