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