This week we signed up to a site that will promote our holiday home on several platforms. Although they said that it will take up to ten days to be on all of their participating platforms, we have been getting informed when a platform is showing our property online already. So far we are going live on Travel Nest and Holidu. Here’s a link to Holidu…
We are still working and developing the interior and exterior, so the photos aren’t perfect, but we just needed to get the property up and running. We will be updating our pics as we keep putting stuff in place (I never knew how much brain power it would take to decide on where to put a coffee machine).
And when I say several platforms, we are literally going to be shown everywhere. So much so that I expect the Mashco Piro tribe in Peru to get an alert once our pics are updated.
We still have a massage therapy and shop to reconstruct, plus a possibility of a second holiday home on the property but, for now, for the sake of our sanity, our first job is complete.
A few from our latest Festa at Cumeada. We’re finding one a week at the moment and each one is unique to their community. A few home brew wines, but I’ll be fine tomorrow!
We’re having to get extra stuff done today. We have declared next Wednesday ‘photo day’, where we will take photographs of our Alojamento Local rental property and put it onto booking sites.
But there’s still a bit to do such as varnish and put up the furniture, sort out the decorative side of it and touch up any scuffs and scratches. There’s a stack of paperwork that needs doing too.
But tomorrow we aren’t able to do any of this due to A New Life In The Sun arriving for the ‘lifestyle’ shoot. This is the day Lou and I get to hold hands and skip along the beach while the kids splash in the river surrounded by a picturesque mountainous backdrop while being filmed for TV.
So far they’ve just filmed us clearing the forest, doing building work and generally getting stressed about timelines and budgets. So tomorrow will be nice to see a different side to us and the meaning of our move to Portugal. We want to work hard and be successful, but our family and quality of life is important to us and getting a reminder of that with occasions by a river beach or at a lively festa is integral to that.
But we’re obsessed with making this whole move work. Which means working harder than we’ve ever had to work, mostly done in heat I’ve never encountered before. If we want to enjoy more days at the river beach, then making the business a success is vital. The master plan unravels without it. And Ralph Waldo Emerson was spot on when he said,”Always do what you are afraid to do.”
Being afraid keeps me hungry. Less complacent.
So anyway, I’ll leave you with a few pics from today. It’s not the finished photos for the booking sites, of course, but it is starting to take shape!
Yesterday was a productive day. We got stuff done. And it was important that we did as the kids were at the coast with a holiday club which meant that we had more hours in the day to complete tasks. But it did come at a price.
When the evening came and the kids were in bed we simply had nothing else to give to each other. We worked through very hot temperatures and met appointments in town to get relevant licences filed which meant that we were knackered both physically and mentally. At one point Lou mentioned that we were like Challenge Aneka as she put a coat of paint on here, spreading compost there and signing documents to be emailed.
The Challenge Aneka analogy is very accurate. We have a deadline, we are being followed by a camera person and I look good in lycra and a blonde wig.
Ok, forget the last one. But the others are true.
Anika Rice
The last couple of hours of the day, however, was a case of us silently watching Superstore on Netflix and not communicating with each other. Talking, it seemed, had become too difficult to do. One after the other the episodes of Superstore turned into seasons. Each one becoming not as good as the previous series. ‘No wonder they cancelled it’, I thought to myself. I wanted to say that to Lou, but the words didn’t come out.
Me in lycra
We’re not unique. This is a trap that we sometimes fall into just like many of my trainees. We can lose track of the important stuff. We try to juggle too much, often worrying about the little things. We forget about prioritising and we end up spinning plates only to see them all crash to the floor.
Our particular plates, albeit wavering rather than spinning at full throttle, haven’t quite crashed. But if we don’t address it quickly, we will find ourselves in a rut of simply existing and not living the life that we want.
So as productive as yesterday was, our relationship and our personal mental health suffered. Today we needed to strike a balance. We decided on a mind map.
We all plan differently. For me, I like to write down what I need to do. Whether it be for the day ahead, for over the weekend or for the full week. It’s the personal trainer in me. I’ve written thousands of training plans that require following a plan. I’ve always remained flexible with my plans, after all, stuff happens. Life happens. But generally, the very fact that I have a written plan of action that I can attempt to execute lowers my anxiety and, most importantly, enables me to methodically work my way through the plan.
Trainees didn’t just come to me in the gym to help with their clean and press. There is often an underlying issue in why they seem to struggle in reaching a particular goal.
Likewise, I don’t need help in how to paint, treat wood, mix cement or plaster. But I found that I do need help in how to juggle my time and plan when to do this while simultaneously being a fun loving father and husband.
So this morning we didn’t get stuck into the painting, grouting and fixing. We spent the first hour mind mapping.
We scheduled what needed to be done. We gave timelines to each activity. We organised the day onto paper, ticking off each one as we completed it. We even made sure that one of these activities was to take a trip into Sertá for lunch together. We don’t always want our leisure time to be written into our list of jobs for the day but if life gets a little on top of us now and again then why not?! It is important to recognise these things.
Author Alan Lakein wrote,”Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”
We can’t achieve anything without planning, however one chooses to do it. After all, if you don’t plan which way the wind is blowing, you could end up pissing into it. It gets messy.
Mind planning got us another productive day today, but it also got us some important time together where we could chat and enjoy each other’s company and not just drift through day to day, barely having conversation. After all, we won’t achieve our family goals if we can’t survive as a family. No matter how good I am at painting.
One of my favourite memories as a kid is collecting the football Panini stickers. I never did fill an entire album up, but those in my collection were English football league, which always included the Scottish league as well (I was always disappointed when I got Willie Watters from Kilmarnock instead of Ian Rush) and then there were the World Cup and Euros editions.
The 1988 Euros was my first one but, for anybody my age, the Italia 90 World Cup sticker book was THE collection to have. Panini really stepped up for this particular collection but the event itself was also fantastic as there were so many great teams competing around that time. Brazil, West Germany, Italy, Argentina and the Netherlands all had incredible talent in their squad and, of course, England had Gazza.
Gazza stole the show, but David Platt’s sublime volley against Belgium was a highlight. It was the only match that I missed. For some reason, my school decided to have a parents evening that night. My parents wanted to watch the match too. I remember my mum quickly asking the music teacher if I ‘sang like a bird’ before making a swift exit to get home to see some of the game. We listened to the patrons shouts of anxiety come from the pubs as we walked past each one, so we knew it was a close game. I think, if memory serves, I got to see the goal in extra time.
As it is tradition, I got my two boys their very first sticker album for Russia 2018. Jonas especially has been hooked on football since and I sometimes still see him looking through the pages of his unfinished collection (does anyone ever complete the whole book?!) but as a parent I now realise that these little packets of stickers are an expensive do when your child wants a pack every time they pass a shop.
And the quality isn’t what they used to be. The books aren’t as good somehow, the stickers aren’t as sticky and they don’t include the same facts as the ones I had. I don’t know why I needed to know the height of Toto Schillaci but the information was appreciated.
Jonas and Finlay still ask for Panini sticker albums for major events but they also want to collect Pokémon cards, Brawl Passes, Fortnite Skins and any other tat the shop sells by the tills. Where do we draw the line as parents?!
Anyway, the stickers for the Euro 2024 are also very popular in the Portuguese supermarkets. What information would Panini put on Trent Alexander Arnold’s sticker? Do they put him as a defender, a right back, a midfielder, a DM or an inverted full back? Nobody knows and, more worryingly, neither does Gareth Southgate.
Southgate seems like a great guy. I met him once. Well, I say I met him, but I actually drove past him on the motorway to Middlesbrough. And it might not surprise you that, despite his expensive range rover and my 1.2 Swift, I still managed to overtake him as he hogged the middle lane at 50 mph. True story.
And so then, his conservative approach to his coaching tactics doesn’t surprise me. He is very safe. But to continue the similarities between his motorway driving and his coaching, he might play it a little too safe but he has a knack of getting to his destination. Three years ago he led England to their first major final since 1966. And this year he is trundling along the middle lane in a souped up muscle machine as he gets to his destination. He might be grinding the Bellingham brakes and grinding the Gallagher gears but, I can’t deny, he’s still en route.
Apart from Italia 90, I don’t ever remember really ‘supporting’ an international team in a tournament. Of course I’d like to see England win, but I just don’t get as excited as watching Liverpool in club football. But now I’m living in Portugal, I can just imagine the festas if they were to win it! So England or Portugal for me.
Watching the games with Portuguese commentary has really helped me in learning the language. I’m not sure where phrases like ‘goal kick’, ‘two minutes to go’ or ‘they’ll have to check if that was ball to hand or hand to ball’ will get me in life, but it’s a start.
It’s the quarter finals next. The event has been a nice distraction from the work we have to do here so I’m really enjoying it. But I hope to see two things happen…for Ronaldo to start scoring and for Southgate to risk leaving the middle lane. It’s the only way either of them will see the final.
My two boys are very different. This is something that has always been apparent to me, but now they are developing their own unique personalities at ages 8 and 10, it is wonderful to see how brilliant yet very different they are to each other.
I was concerned when it came to Finlay’s interests. I just wasn’t sure what he wanted to do as an activity outside of school. Jonas was easy. He showed great running ability and ball control skills from when he could stand up! His love of football came during the 2018 World Cup when he was 4 and he seems to have a great knack of understanding most sports quite easily.
But, although Finlay played football, it almost seemed like he wanted to do it to please me or Jonas. As the younger sibling seeing the accolades that his older brother was getting, maybe he just wanted to do the same. I knew though that his heart wasn’t in it and I knew that he could find his own talents and interests elsewhere.
Finlay has got footballing talent, but it is very different to Jonas’. Jonas can take it past a few defenders with either foot and plant a goal in the top corner, but I never fancied him in a 50/50 challenge. After most games I would have to bite my tongue in asking him why it looked like he had bottled a tackle.
Finlay, however, I’d back against anyone in a 50/50. So much so, I’ve heard that Roy Keane has nightmares about coming up against Finlay. Legend has it that Vinnie Jones retired from football after hearing that Finlay was a twinkle in my eye all those years ago. And it just so happens that Diego Someone cancelled Finlay’s trials for Athletico Madrid because he didn’t want his players getting hurt. Even Chuck Norris refused an arm wrestle with Finlay.
Finlay is fearless in competition. I worried about the other kids when he did play football. If they dribbled past him they’d be on the floor, usually from a rugby tackle type bear hug. It didn’t matter how big the other kids were. My ankles would be bruised after a 30 minute kick about in the garden. The last time my ankles looked like that was after marking Dealer Dave from the Swan’s Head in 2002. Finlay is ruthless.
Finlay has shown excellent gymnastics ability. He can cartwheel, hold himself on the rings, balance beam and, probably after watching me, can plank and press up without cheating. In fact, his press ups are super impressive with perfect form. And this discipline has led him to another interest in martial arts.
When Jonas was a toddler it was pretty easy to play ‘tickle monster’ and play fight with him. He would just giggle and roll about. Finlay, however, would fight back. I mean ‘go for the knackers’ fight back. Headbutts, chops to the throat, anything to gain the upper hand on his old dad. Martial arts might just be his thing.
Finding a birthday present was made much easier then. We got him a punch bag and gloves. Lou was apprehensive at first but I have always believed that punch bags and being taught a martial art discipline is good for young people. Well, at any age! It teaches control, technique, following instructions and respect. It can channel anger and create self esteem in its participants.
Indeed, having worked with children in sports I know that, taught correctly and with the right message from a coach, any sport can have this impact and, knowing how a gym environment impacted my young self, once a person finds their happy place in a sporting environment it can be life changing. I knew it was time for Finlay to have a punch bag.
He is extremely happy with his birthday present and in the future we will be looking at him joining a dojo if it is what he wants. But for now he’ll have to settle for me teaching him, as I am Jonas with football. We’re still settling into our new life in Portugal and eager to set up our business to make an income. I can’t do the trips into town each evening until that is sorted. The boys are being patient.
So, happy birthday Finlay. You and Jonas are both wonderful boys. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Having already experienced two popped tyres and a mechanical breakdown with our cars in central Portugal, it occurred to me how heavily I relied on the AA in the UK. Sure, there’s breakdown services where I live but in the mountainous countryside of the interior of Portugal it is something that you could be waiting a while for. It isn’t a ‘fourth emergency service’ here.
Seemingly, cars are older than in the uk and in part this is because they are looked after rather well due to just about everyone knowing car maintenance. Everyone is a mechanic, everyone is a farmer, everyone is a builder and everyone can drive a tractor.
So, I need to change. I need to know these things too. And not only for me, but I need to teach my kids.
There’s a reason why the people in our community can do these things and it’s because they have to. They need to know how to fix their cars because of the time and money involved in them not knowing. The nearest garage is miles away and there’s a price to pay if you need a car towed and fixed by someone else. Same with building work and farming. From being youngsters the people in my community have acquired this knowledge through having to do it for themselves.
I learnt to drive at a fairly older age. I was around 30. That’s because a bus would drive along my road every ten minutes to practically anywhere in Leeds that I wanted. Why did I need the cost of a car? A weekly bus pass was about £10 back then! I was also conscious of the amount of cars already on the road. But then I kept moving to more remote areas of the UK. I had to drive.
I began a Building and Construction NVQ when I was 18 in the government’s attempt to get young people gaining practical skills, experience and qualifications in work places. I passed the course but I hated it. Not so much the work, I liked working outdoors, but I didn’t like who I had to work with. I didn’t fit in with the wolf whistling men who would talk mostly about the pictures in The Daily Sport.
And, on a side note, it’s interesting how many men get offended by a rainbow in Pride month and say ‘why do they have to shout about their sexuality?!’ when men have literally been able to intimidate women on the street for decades in their attempts to show how much of a manly heterosexual they are.
Anyway, back to the point!
Since leaving the building trade I haven’t laid a brick. To say that I’m a little rusty would be an understatement! However, just like the locals, I’m now in a situation where I have to wind back the years (25 years to be exact) and do things for myself.
We employed builders to renovate our AL rental accommodation, but we’ve blown the budget on a number of unforeseen expenditures with drainage and a bore hole being the biggest expense. So now it’s down to us!
Lou has a good understanding of building work. From the preparation, materials needed and the technique, she has obviously watched and listened to her dad, who is an expert. So, together we are continuing our project. Learning new things and doing it as a team.
But we won’t miss the opportunity to show our kids how to do it. At 18 I want them to be driving and starting building projects around the property even younger. It’s one of the reasons for the move. So that the kids could learn more about life and the skills required to survive. They’re already learning the Portuguese language at school, so having a second language is a tick in the box. Forest cleaning is another one, something that they will get very used to in order to stay safe from wild fires.
We are still in the early stages, but I think Lou and I are managing to show them that there’s life after Fortnite after all.
Preparing to repair the old wall of the property Repairing the area that will, for the time being, be my outdoor PT areaMe with the smallest paint roller in the world. (The bigger roller didn’t cover some of the dimples!)Finlay jet washing the wall
The filming for A New Life In The Sun has ended for this week. It’s a relief. The intensity of managing the final stages of phase one of the project (the AL house) and the forest cleaning in 35° heat while being filmed becomes a little too much.
And there’s only so many ways I can say ‘Wow! This looks great!’ when the camera person asks me what I think of the taps as I turn them on and off or what I think of the lid for the septic tank.
Sometimes, I go for the ‘just walked into the room to see the work of the DIY SOS team’ look. This means waving at my eyes to dry the tears as I tell the camera how thrilled I am with the splashback tiles.
The occasional Nicolas Cage from Face/Off look comes out when I have to describe how pleased I am with the skylight while paying the 500euros to the man who delivered it.
And then there are days where I forget to ‘be myself’ in front of the camera as I go around the property like Del Boy, trying to raise a laugh or be the clown. “What do you think of the grouting, Shay?” The camera person asks. “Luvvly Jubbly!” I reply. “Mange Tout, mange tout!”
As I reflect on my day, sometimes I just think to myself ”What a bleedin’ plonker I am”.
The bread in Portugal is unbelievably good. Since arriving it has been something that, despite trying to stick within calorie goals, I have eaten almost every day.
Chorizo bread, salted bread, sweet bread, cheesy bread, crusty bread, soft bread, it is all delicious.
And I thought that I had mastered how to order it in cafés too! Pão com queijo (cheesy bread) is a particular favourite of mine. But here’s the problem.
The other day as I was in conversation with our Brazilian builders I happened to mention ‘pão’. The builders looked at each other and laughed. Puzzled, I asked them what they were all laughing at. Their answer made me consider all of those times I’d ordered ‘pão’ in the cafes, many of which have Brazilian servers, and made me blush.
Pão, when said without the squiggly accent which makes it a nasal sound, becomes pau (like pow). Pau is Brazilian slang for a penis, or more accurately, a c*ck.
This, I thought, made my orders of cheesy, long and crusty, sweet or spicy much more amusing to the staff serving me!
The last couple of days has meant that Lou is constantly hearing me working on my nasally Portuguese sounds so that I can safely order my bread in the cafés.
But at the moment my confidence in the language has been lost, so today I ordered ice cream instead. There are no squiggly lines to pronounce with gelado.
When you want to begin a personal fitness journey it is a totally natural thought process to consider what the person next to you is doing.
For the past few months, you might have heard Janice in the office talk about how much weight she’s lost at Slimming World and, naturally, you become intrigued about what recipes she is using and you peek over her shoulder at lunch break to see what’s in her lunch box.
In the gym you notice that the guy who usually trains when you’re there has bulked up a bit and he is filling in his T with some decent looking pecs these days. You’re only on nodding terms so you don’t ask outright how he has managed it, but you keep glancing over to see what he is pushing on the bench press or see what protein shake he’s drinking.
It becomes a slight obsession. I’ve driven myself insane before by observing the Hulk Hogan of the gym bicep curl a couple of 8k dumbbells while I’m trying to squeeze out the 20k’s to look like him and I’ve seen a guy much slender than me deadlift 200k without breaking sweat.
That’s when it doesn’t become my race anymore. And, whilst running this race, in watching how everyone else is running I’m tripping up.
I begin to change my pace and my breathing technique. I’m not looking at my own path, instead I’m trying to keep up with somebody on their path. I am not running my own race.
It was a quote from a football manager that inspired me to write this article. Without boring those who do not follow the English Premier League, I will keep this background story short.
Ange Postecoglou is the manager of Spurs. He was employed by them to at least qualify for the Champions League this season. However, in the penultimate game of the season, a number of Spurs fans wanted to lose a game and celebrated once they had lost. This is because it meant that the winning team, Manchester City, could overtake Spurs’ bitter rival Arsenal to have a greater chance of winning the league, resulting in Arsenal missing out! City ended up as Champions, Arsenal came runners up and Spurs missed out on a Champions League place, meaning that they only qualify for the less attractive Europa League competition.
Postecoglou was pissed off as he saw pockets of supporters in the stadium celebrate their own team conceding goals. And he even eluded to Spurs staff members being desperate enough to see Spurs lose and Arsenal miss out on the title. How far down the chain did it go?! Did the players on the pitch really want to lose also?!
After the game an angry Postecoglou said,”…we have got to worry about ourselves. Don’t worry about anyone else. If you run your own race then when you get to the finish line, have a look around and see where you finish…. don’t be obsessed with what anyone else is doing…you want to stop another club winning the trophy? Then win it yourselves!”
As human beings we can often get distracted by ‘keeping up with the Jones’. With their neatly mowed lawn, new 4×4 that they take their exceptionally behaved children to school in and their exotic holidays that they go on a few times a year.
But maybe we’re not seeing the debts that they’re in, how Mr and Mrs Jones hardly speak to each other and how their son is about to get expelled from school for selling weed to his mates.
But people will rarely let you see that side to them. Do you think that Janice in the office will share her most vulnerable side on Facebook such as moments before a ‘weigh in’ or when she can’t enjoy a meal out with friends because it doesn’t fit in with her ‘points’ for the day?
And the Hulk Hogan of the gym wants to show Instagram his changing room flex after a workout, but he’ll never film himself injecting steroids or standing in front of the mirror feeling ‘bloated’.
My eldest boy, Jonas, is facing exams this year. He is understandably nervous about this but his teachers and my wife and I are telling him not to worry. It’s his first exams in Portugal and it will be in Portuguese. This in itself is a massive thing to overcome but also he didn’t face exams in England. Apart from a spelling test perhaps, this is his first experience of being graded on what he has learnt. His classmates are more advanced. Not only are most of them older, but their first language is Portuguese. He cannot allow himself to be compared to what they might achieve in their exam results. Jonas, simply, has to run his own race.
So ‘running your own race’ isn’t just something to remember when embarking on a fitness journey. It can be a good reminder of how to be in other aspects of our lives too. After all, it’s the difference between a glitzy Tuesday night at the Bernabeu or a drizzly Thursday night in Aberdeen.
Never Give Up PT 