I had meant to sit down and write a thoughtful Christmas blog but, as happens in this uncertain world, events have simply overwhelmed us. Most of the week has gone into dealing with the serious illness and sudden death of Olive, one of the two widows whom we’ve been assisting for a couple of years.
As she has no family in Portugal, we have been pretty busy, first visiting her as well as keeping her offspring informed – and then dealing with bureaucracy of mortality. There’s never a particularly good time to die but Christmas has to be the worst. Half the world’s on leave and the other half wishes it was.
So I won't pretend that what follows is anything other than random selection of thoughts and pictures. For some of the latter I must thank (Barbara's brother) Llewellyn and Lucia.
They arrived from London on Wednesday morning to spend Christmas with us.
Both are beach lovers. They rented a car as usual and have exploited our warm sunny days at a favourite resort on the coast.
In truth, you would hardly know that it was winter. Temperatures are in the high teens by day and barely drop into single figures overnight.
When parking the car, I still have to take care to lower the windows sufficiently to allow ample fresh air to reach out two inveterate canine travellers. On the day before the winter solstice, I killed two mosquitoes. One was trying to get out of the bedroom window (she did, but not of her own volition).
ALMOND BLOSSOM
Speaking of Christmas – here’s a BIG thank you to the many kind people who have sent us Yuletide cards and other good wishes. I confess that I have sent out no cards this year and we are no closer to the family picture that I’ve been planning to email – although there’s still time.
Special thanks go to Chris Jones for the pictures from South Africa of the Jones family, both resident and visiting, which we have scrutinised. Llewellyn has recently acquired a fancy Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone which, he says, takes better pictures than his camera does. I’ve drawn this advantage to my wife’s attention – albeit not very productively.
We did manage to get up the Coral to mark the 9th birthday celebrations of young Joey. It gave us the opportunity to talk to a neighbour, who switched effortlessly between Portuguese, French and English and admitted to speaking fluent Spanish as well. In my next life I have decided to be a wealthy polyglot.
For the rest, there’s little to be said that I haven’t said before. We all visited the Alte monthly market, where Llewellyn took lots of pictures and we bought our share of nick-knacks.
Our Christmas lights are twinkling from the patio rails.
There’s heavy dew overnight. We slither around the hill with the dogs in the mornings and tramp around again in the evenings, afterwards scraping the mud off our boots.
Barri appeared proudly one day with her first rabbit.
BEAN SPROUTS
Our beans are shooting up, which is nice. Jones is having the neighbours around to drinks this evening. Most of my efforts will go into distracting the dogs who feel (rightly or otherwise) that they should have a key role to play in such events.
PRICKLES HOSES DOWN THE HIRE CAR WHEELS
We look forward eagerly to illustrated Christmas letters from Canada (as well as from other parts of the world).
And we wish you a happy Christmas.
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