Well I'll be Bloggered !!

A little over eight years ago Di and me landed in Abu Dhabi embarking on an adventure that was both exciting and a little bit scary. For both of us it was the first time to live abroad and despite the presence of a large expat community it was a huge cultural change.

Back then, we never imagined what we would be able to achieve, the places we would visit and the people we would meet. We certainly never thought that we would find ourselves spending our retirement in Portugal.

For a few years (until normality set in) I published, periodically, a blog – The Abu Dhabi Chronicle - http://abudhabichronicle.blogspot.com/ and I thought it might be nice to post a similar blog for those who are interested enough to know how we are doing.

So here goes …..

What day is it ?

For the last 37 years of military life I’ve been used to a regime that invariably meant waking up by 0700 at the latest and the working week ensured I knew which day it was. For the past 5 years Di and me have usually been up and at ‘em by 0530.

How would we cope with the transition to Civvy street and no work commitments ? Thank heavens for medication !

Desculpe !! Não falo Portuguese.

Despite best intentions and best endeavours, we struggle to get by in Portuguese. Modern software applications make it relatively easy to translate the written word but listening, speaking and understanding are very difficult.

Most young Portuguese have learned some English at school but the older generation have little or no knowledge of English. We are learning very quickly to become good actors.

Every now and then a gem of a person appears. Like Olga, who runs a Pizzeria in the nearby town of Monte Real. Faminto (hungry), we went in, phrase book at the ready, mumbling apologies for our linguistic inadequacies to be greeted by “Don’t worry luv, ah’ve lived in Leeds for’t last 15 yeers. Me ‘usband’s still theer workin’. What can ah get yer ?” She’s also fluent in French and Spanish (and, I suspect, Serbo-Croat, Latvian and Tswana).

As an aside. It's either quaint or disconcerting to realise that the Prime Minister of the country we now call home is one Pedro Coelho - Peter Rabbit

So much wine

Our Portuguese (Madeira) born friend Lewis pointed out that we should be able to buy perfectly good local red wine for less than 2 Euros a bottle. I had been paying around 4.30€ for a rather delicious Alentejo called Monte Velho (Old Hill) which is Portugal's equivalent of Jacob's Creek.

Imagine my delight at finding a seriously good “chucking” boxed Alentejo that comes in at 1.58€ a bottle only for aforementioned Olga t'Pizza woman to serve a decent boxed Red blend as her house wine which works out at …. wait for it …...... 0.97€ a bottle. Result !!!!

A lemon tree my dear Watson

The more mature readers will recognise the lyrics of a 60s Peter, Paul and Mary song – 
"Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat".  The one tree in our garden has given us about 14 kilos of fruit.

So what do you do if you can't eat it ? Answer – drink it !! 

 Di knocked up our first batch of Limoncello about a month ago and it's scarily delicious. I've experimented with a white rum variant which I call Rumoncello. It has a bit more of a kick to it but is equally dangerous.

Another use is to freeze the juice into lemon ice-cubes and lob one into a G & T – delicious !

Building work

Today the builders arrived and as I write they are ripping out the better of our two bathrooms and hopefully by Friday we will have the state of the art minimalist bathroom we've dreamed of.

STOP PRESS: the fittings don't arrive until Friday - bugger !!

Dune bashing in Portugal

 You'd think that eight years of living in or on the edge of a desert would make you savvy as to when and where to drive your car (We had a Ford Explorer that never left the tarmac).

Why then did we choose to take our 3 cylinder 1.0l eco-friendly SEAT Mii down to the beach front in nearby Pedrogao on the second windiest day of the year ?

Result – stuck in a sand-drift that covered the road about a foot deep. Luckily our embarrassment was spared because we were the only fools out in those conditions.

Is this Miramar ?

The property agent who sold us the house lives in the village. One of the questions we asked him before deciding to buy was about the proximity of the air force base near Monte Real and whether or not there was much noise.

“I've never really noticed any” said Vincent the Dutchman. Well excuse me for being a bit of a Harry Potter but those aircraft that fly directly over our house on finals nearly every day look suspiciously like F-16s to me !!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Air_Station_Miramar

They are though far less noisy than the howling mutts that live two doors away. I shall trawl e-Bay to see if I can find a cheap Taser.