Kate and I have arrived safe in Lisbon, to the beautiful Lisbon Dreams Guesthouse. Firstly, I would advise anyone coming to Lisbon to stay here - it's cheap, clean, well located and beautiful. It's abit like if The White Company started doing hostels.
Wow, alot to fill in on. Not having internet is really harsh, and should not be wished onto anyone - I have never in my whole life realished email so fondly as I do now - Oh junk mail, fill my inbox with your offers of cheap hotels and fast women from Madrid!
La Codesera is a small three horse, eleven bar town. It has drunks, farmers and a Spar. It's located on the Spanish/Portugal border, close enough to walk to a whole other country.
We arrived nearly 4 weeks ago, working a 5 day week gardening and cleaning the house of two heavy smokers, who cannot do anything without bringing up a black lung. I weeded, strimmed, cut, hacked and dug my way across the small but tough land, finding the original vegtable gardens that the host Ian had dug 4 years before his two heart attacks, whilst Kate mopped, cleaned, sprayed and scrubbed the nicotine off the walls and floors of the house that smoke built.
I have never in my whole life known people to chain smoke the way they do.
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| button up spazz |
The work lacked anything you could call fun, and was hard - and not that rewarding. As I said, the local towns were purely for locals, and you felt like an outsider no matter what you did or said - both Kate and I can now order Hi, coffee with milk and sugar please in Spanish without worrying about insulting anyone.
Ian was sometimes garcious, and normally helpful; although these good graces were magnified by his wife Maureen's utter lack of manners, politeness and other social skills, with several times coming to quick sharp responses to what she though was "helpful critisism".
We met a granddaugter (20), and a great granddaughter (4) who lived locally to Ian and Maureen. Never in either of mine or Kate's lives have we felt so strongly about the upbringing of someone elses child - Amelia was a beautiful, bright and stunning child who at the age of four can speak 4 languages. Going to school in Spain, she can speak Spanish, but being born in Portugal she has learnt Portugese, but ith her mother being English she is spoken to in English (her father is Moldovan, so she can speak Russian but he isn't around anymore as he hit the mother too many times). We both really felt that if she carried on in this small town, she would just become another kid having kids, like her mum - which is a shame, as she we could imagine that she'd go far.
One Saturday we went to a bullfiight in Portugal.
Now Kate and I had talked over the idea of going when we were in Madrid, and I had got it in my head that in Spain the bull was killed out of eyeshot, and it was Portugal that was the blood thirsty insane lot, baying for an animals blood and the fight for life and death of a champion against evil.
Thankfully, we chose not to go to a Spanish bullfight, and happened to go to a Portugese one where they actually kill the bull off camera. Neither of us were sure what we thought of the sport before hand, so we thought we could go and see what the fuss was about - IT WAS AMAZING. I WILL WRITE A WHOLE ENTRY ON IT LATER.
Besides the whole killing of the bull, it was exciting, thrilling and worth every second. Kate took some pictures, but the zoom isn't that great (I took more, but I haven't uploaded anything yet). Incidentally, we saw a Spanish bullfight on tv before we left, and watched 3 bulls die. It's not that nice, and I didn't like it - the whole thing seemed pretty sad actually, but more on that as I mentioned later.
We are now in Portugal, with better weather, cleaner water, INTERNET, soft sheets, noise, street lights, sirens, people, no hornets as big as your thumb, and thankfully - for this weekend - no working to someone elses schedule.
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