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.
Seeing as I am writing a post all about a lemon, you could be forgiven for thinking that I would take this opportunity to bring up the ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ quote.
But you would be wrong.
You might think, seeing as I entitled this blog Lemon, that I will draw similarities with how squeezing a lemon is like squeezing the most out of each day, giving you that zest for life.
And again you would be wrong.
You could, however, be entitled to believe that I am going to give you a string of health benefits from eating this versatile fruit such as helping your body absorb more iron, it is rich in vitamin C and the citric acid can help to prevent the formation of kidney stones.
But, no, your incline would be wrong.
So it is totally feasible for you to think, then, that this article must be about how lemons are also very useful as a natural cleaner, as the citric acid can kill bacteria.
But, guess what? You’d be wrong again.
No. This post is simply dedicated to the biggest, kick ass beast of a lemon that I have ever seen! Thanks to the lemon tree in our garden, we are growing some mahoosive lemons to try to cram into our gin and tonic glasses.
A visit to a restaurant is an event for me. I save myself from over indulgence throughout the day in order to savour the dishes that I might order at the restaurant. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. From pub grub to michelen star, I want to eat my meal all to myself.
As I sit in the sunshine waiting for a menu at a modest pizza place with a couple of friends, the dreaded question was said by one of them…
“Shall we get a family size pizza to share?”
Dude. Do you even know me?! I thought. Are you my friend?
Those who know me would know that I can eat a family sized pizza to myself. And no fish toppings or pineapple, no half and half or thick crust. I want a sloppy Bolognese with lots of cheese and a side order of fries and I don’t want to share it. Do you want a straw my friend? You can slurp on my coke while you’re at it!
I might be in the minority here. It seems increasingly popular to share food at a restaurant. And if I were to try to add fairness to the debate, I could say that my friends were paying equally. It’s not like they were stealing what is mine. It’s just that I want my own and I will pay for my own. I’m happy for the waiter to be frustratingly hovering over our table at the end of a meal while we try to work out who ordered the extra dough balls.
But splitting the bill down the middle is never fair. I pay for my third but I’m still left hungry. Throughout the whole meal I am trying to nibble on my slice of pizza so that I don’t race off and eat what is meant for somebody else. The problem is they’re so bloody slow! I’m Hank Marvin guys! I’m not interested in your visit to Porto. Keep up and eat your fucking bit of the pizza!
But they don’t. By the end I look at the table and all that remains is one slice of pizza and a few fries. They’re not mine. It belongs to Porto guy but does he actually want it? He’s been talking about the architecture of some library for the past fifteen minutes and his slice remains untouched. Untouched by humans anyway, but the flies have had a good investigation of it and the ants crawling up the table leg seem interested.
When is it acceptable to ask if he wants it? Will I have to pay extra if I just slide in there and eat it? Would they even notice? Maybe they haven’t been counting their slices. I wouldn’t want to have to pay extra or be called out for eating more than anyone else. But there’s no way that slice of pizza is being taken away by the waiter. Even the five skinny fries have given up on being eaten by him. They look cold and hard. But if I could dip them into a bit of mayo I could spruce them up again. Fluff them up to their former, delicious glory. I’d save them.
You see, ordering my own food allows me to eat what I like. There are no social rules. I order it, it arrives, I eat it and I pay for it. No awkwardness. It makes me happier. My wife has figured out eventually that, on takeaway nights, I order three chapatis for my curry. Not three chapatis with a bite taken out, not two and a half. Three whole chapatis. This ensures that I can be generous with the chapati dipping of my curry. And any chapati that is left over can ‘mop’ the sides of the dish to avoid wastage. And if I run out of chapati then I can wipe my chips through the sauce to do the same job. Yes, chips. My chips. Not once have I asked my wife for a spoonful of her basmati rice and I never will.
However, some good news on the restaurant visit! The slice of pizza was eventually offered to me and our other friend. I held out my hand towards the slice to invite our friend to have it. He thought about it for a split second and then said no. Result! I’m not sure what reaction I would have given if the greedy bastard had reached over for it.
We all sat back in our chairs patting our full bellies. And then, as the waiter took our plates and asked if we wanted dessert, my friend stated, “I’m really full but I’d be happy to share one.”
Seeing flyers around the town of Sertá for salsa dancing makes me want Lou and I to book a session for one evening. Unfortunately, with two young children, we aren’t able to get out of an evening just the two of us. And I can just imagine, if we were to take them along and asked them to sit quietly for a couple of hours as they watched their dad shake his hips towards their mum, they would never speak to me again.
But the thought of salsa dancing does bring back memories of our honeymoon in Cuba. We were at a club watching the professionals on the dancefloor. They were all in traditional dress and it was amazing to watch. Little did I know that, during the interval, Lou had asked one of the ladies to whisk me off my feet to join in with their performance.
Perhaps Lou expected me to modestly follow the dancer, embarrassed at the hundreds of watching eyes, and sheepishly tap my feet like a teenager at a school disco. No. I didn’t. The rum and coke was strong that night.
What happened next was a blur. According to my account, I blew them away with my ‘living la Vida loca’ moves. In reality, the bald man with the trucker tattoos probably looked more like Ricky Gervais from the Office than Ricky Martin.
Overnight, in a small corner of Cuba, I had become famous. Other holiday makers and locals would all approach me, shake my hand, and congratulate me on my performance. Maybe the word is infamous. I dunno.
I like dancing. I move uncontrollably rather than have any decent choreography. Growing up listening to Oasis probably didn’t help my dancefloor moves. During the 90’s I would enter the nightclub like Liam Gallagher. Hands clasped behind my back, I would slightly lean forwards as if I were stooping for a microphone. By the end of the night I’d be a backing dancer for Take That, shirt ripped open singing Relight My Fire.
Youth eh? I don’t miss it. But older age certainly has its challenges. Just like my parents will have gasped at the lyrics of Marylin Manson coming from my bedroom we now have the same issue with Doja Cat lyrics. My kids love the Paint The Town Red song and Portuguese radio is very different to UK radio. They don’t blank out any of the swearing. Instead of listening to Paul Gambuccini’s pick of the pops from 1983 we’re listening to Doja Cat effing and jeffing.
Perhaps my biggest memories of dancing are well in the past. Or maybe as the kids get older and Lou and I are able to begin a class, my best dancing memories are yet to come. I just hope, by then, my hips do lie.
Nature had an idea when it decided that it should prepare me for getting older. It made me start receding at 18. Even younger maybe. In fact my jesting mind allows my memory to believe that I looked like Phil Mitchell as a 3 year old.
Nature prepared me well. I became not at all bothered about losing my hair. I embraced it. On a practical level I have saved thousands of pounds on the barbers and my short morning grooming routine meant I had more time for a cuppa and a couple of ciggies while watching Big Breakfast before running for the bus to get to work.
So, at 45 I am now totally accepting of the ageing process. The morning groom has changed and, in a cruel twist laid on by nature, I do have to deal with hair now. It’s just that this hair grows from my nostrils and out of my ears. I first realised that these hairs were noticeable to others when I got a nose hair strimmer for father’s day a few years ago. It made a change from socks, I suppose.
Today our stuff arrived on pallets from the UK. Luckily the builders were on hand to help lift everything off of the lorry with us. One of them, Thiago, commented on all of the gym equipment. I replied that I am a Personal Trainer and I aim to continue here in Portugal.
“Ah ha!” He exclaimed as he looked me up and down. “I thought you looked good.”
My face made that weird look that it always does when I’ve been complimented but trying to play it down as I also sucked my belly in a bit more (the fresh bread is too nice here) before he went on to continue his comment…
“…for your age.”
For my age. What does that even mean? Do I look good or not?!! He doesn’t know my age!
If he thinks I’m 65 then I probably do look pretty good for my age.
Another thing came in the pallets today. A mirror. I’ve enjoyed not having a mirror in the house. I even had to use my phone camera to look at when it came to shaving my follically challenged head. Other than that I’ve not felt the need to check myself out all that much. I was looking at myself in the reflection of a cafe the other day to find a couple weirded out by some bald bloke giving them a blue steel look. But now I have a full length mirror in the bathroom and my gym stuff I’m sure to be doing the thorax pose daily like I’m an extra on Pumping Iron.
I haven’t lifted anything heavy for months now and I can feel that my body is ready to take on a deadlift or two. Despite all the wonderful bread that keeps finding its way into my mouth I have been sticking to a nutrition plan of sorts. Decades of calorie counting has ensured that I don’t need to sit and work out what every meal adds up to as I can calculate it in my head simply enough and I know I stay within my weight maintenance limits. It means that the jeans I packed last October and arrived today still fit me.
But my joints and muscles have suffered. They’ve not been working as they’re used to. My gym equipment couldn’t come soon enough.
And it won’t be long until some unwitting couple sat by a cafe window will see me strut towards them, pouting and flexing, and say “He looks good….for his age.”
Someone call the fire brigade, this guy is hot! (For his age)
If you say ‘wild boars’ often enough you begin to hear it in Simon Le Bon’s voice and finish the sentence with ‘never lose it’.
And that is what I do now everyday. I have Duran Duran’s The Wild Boys song permanently playing in my head thanks to the wild boar population in central Portugal.
Wild boar
Tonight is a fine example, but first I need to explain our house. Typically in rural Portugal, you have to go outdoors to go down the steps to the other indoor living areas. So our bedrooms, kitchen, dining area and bathroom are upstairs whilst the sitting room/lounge is downstairs.
As Lou and I were leaving the indoor area to go downstairs to watch TV, we heard what sounded like a snuffling sound and scarpering hooves. The creature (what we think was a wild boar) will have been startled, but Lou and I were panicked too! We quickly put on the outside light and used our phone as a torch. We couldn’t see anything.
We decided that we wouldn’t take our chances with a 200 kg wild boar in the vicinity so we went back inside. The Apprentice wasn’t going to be a big enough draw for us to chance making It to the sitting room!
Wild bore
And so that means it leaves me writing this little blog and Lou shouting the occasional wild boar fact at me as she researches wild boar on the Google thingy, hence the weight that I gave earlier.
Interestingly, wild boars never chose this way. Wild boars never close your eyes and wild boars always shine. Who knew?!
I like Christmas. Well, I don’t mind it. The enthusiasm has come back a bit since becoming a dad. But every year when December hits and I hear the first dulcet tones of another festive Bublé effort, I strap myself in for the month ahead and hope I don’t lose my mind.
The week between Christmas and the new year hits me the hardest. It doesn’t even have a name. It’s just known as ‘the week between Christmas and New year.’
“Oh, Shay, when shall we have a catch up?”
“I dunno, should I just contact you the week between Christmas and New year?”
It’s like purgatory.
The day after boxing day is when we restock the alcohol, which is incredible really, seeing as we seem to buy the whole stock of a Wetherspoons pub on Christmas eve. This is a Christmas eve tradition as we always believe that the supermarkets are closed forever after Christmas eve when, in fact, they reopen on boxing day.
I need a stiff drink to get over another play of ‘Santa Baby’, so leading up to Christmas is when I start to drink stuff that I wouldn’t think of drinking at any other time of year. Brandy and Irish cream goes in my coffee. Whisky and dry. Jack Daniels. Snowball. I mean, WTF even is that?!
The week between Christmas and new year takes a similar path. We also discovered that many of the locals in rural Portugal have basements dedicated to brewing their own wine. So by the time Antonio had given me his last drop of rocket fuel on new year’s day I was ready to have some time away from alcohol.
A week has passed and I am still in no way ready to drink anything alcoholic.
But there is usually a strange excuse for me to have a little tipple. A birthday, a weekend, a birth or the sunshine. And I sometimes commiserate with a drink too. All it takes is for a soppy movie about a dying dog and out comes the crate of Sagres.
But, for now, it is a dry January. After all, I’m making up for a very wet December.
For the past couple of years my boys, aged 7 and 10, have been asking me if I know who Rick Astley is. As a child of the 80’s, I certainly do know of Rick Astley. Well, now my kids know of him too. Apparently he has a ‘Rick roll’ dance on the game Fortnite. But Rick seems to be yesterday’s news (or dance) and it is now a craze of Eminem.
Last week Jonas asked me if I knew of Eminem. With a ‘Pffft!’ I answered ‘yes of course!’
You see, back in the early 00’s, I dusted off my old Brian Harvey baggy jeans that I wore during the ‘Stay Now’ days, out came the basketball vests and bubble jacket, I bleached my thinning hair blonde and tried to capture the Marshall Mathers look. There’s nothing that my kids can tell me about Eminem.
Well, they can. Worryingly so.
Jonas is now walking around the house like Harry Enfield’s Kevin from Kevin and Perry quoting songs from Eminem.
It seems like everything that those of a certain age did back in the day to worry their parents is coming back to bite us in the arse. Rick Astley aside, it seems that my kids are beginning to dredge back up all of my most unfortunate memories from being young.
I vaguely remember getting stoned to Family Guy. I could easily get through four seasons without moving from my pit. Low and behold, Peter the ‘Family Guy’ has become a video game character that my kids are obsessed with.
If Mr Tumble brings out a hit song with Marylin Manson then I’ll start to think that the universe has it in for me.
Recently, I’ve begun to realise just how hard it was for my parents. It’s difficult to keep your children away from the latest craze if all of their mates are into it. Doing the right thing is tough. What is the right thing?
Today we bought them both smartphones for Christmas. They’re both too young, I know, but their friends all communicate on WhatsApp and seeing as our boys can no longer see their friends in person, a phone seemed like our only option.
I’m not sure you can ever get it right as a parent. Jonas is obsessed with Eminem now, but how can I allow Jonas to listen to his sweary lyrics?!
Well, luckily there are a few YouTube sites with ‘clean’ versions, but I’m putting a lot of trust in Jonas in keeping to those sites that I have found for him. If he comes out of his bedroom with a hockey mask and a chainsaw, I will know that he has detoured from them.
I was slightly insulted when Jonas asked me if I knew of Eminem. I used to be cool. I could spit some bars with the best of them…
…or maybe not.
But I still know of Eminem!
Truth be told if I had a choice I would much rather listen to Rick Astley’s songs than Eminem these days. I’m more Go West than Kanye. You get what I mean.
But either way, It looks like I’ll have to get to know these rappers all over again.
We’ve stayed in a few different hotels/apartments/caravans over the past ten days and I have found that one of the biggest things I take for granted is the ability to pause and rewind the TV. And because we’re not recording our usual programmes, we can’t fast forward the adverts. First world problems eh?
Last night we missed a bit of dialogue between George Shuttleworth and Todd Grimshaw in Coranation Street. It almost ruined my day.
Ah, the day. VISA appointment day. The missed dialogue on Coranation Street, as disappointed as I was, cannot compare to the trauma of VISA appointment day. It is fair to say that it didn’t go entirely to plan. We realized that, if they eventually accept our application to live and work in Portugal, they won’t be making it easy for us.
By the evening all I wanted to do was watch a bit of TV and hear what the characters had said so that we could follow the story line.
I like soap operas. No matter what sort of day you’ve had you can bet that some poor sod in soap land is going through something worse.
Or are they? I don’t know. I didn’t hear what George and Todd had said. And I couldn’t rewind to find out!
Imagine being able to pause, rewind or fast forward real life. Sometimes I want to pause time so that the kids stop growing up so fast. But then I’m wishing time along at the moment to fast forward past our house sale completion date. And if I could rewind I’d probably go back to our VISA appointment with the correct documents.
But, alas, I can’t.
All I can do is press the play button and try to write the script as I go along. There are some great scenes that I’m creating but I must acknowledge the poor ones too. Even the very best of movies have scenes that aren’t as good, although I struggle to find one in Pulp Fiction. But we can’t all live in a masterpiece. Sometimes, things don’t go to plan.
And when I don’t have the remote control to rewind a vital piece of dialogue in Coranation Street, plans have definitely taken a turn for the worst.
Never Give Up PT 