Tag Archives: travel

Bored Of The Flies

We haven’t spent many days indoors whilst we have been in Portugal. Since arriving in central Portugal 3 weeks ago the temperature has been a seductive 21° and the evening sky with it’s stars and the milky way has been far more interesting than Question Time.

But with the warmth comes the flies. Loads of flies. Bluebottle, midge, hover, drone, bristle and my nemesis, the mosquito.

The typical fly in the UK (I’ll call it the ‘house fly’) is like a fly on steroids here in Portugal. And it brings all of its mates to land on me at any opportunity to feed, crap and groom on my skin. Performing a bench press has a whole new difficulty. Controlling 100k of steel and breeze blocks above my head with flies crawling on my face was a test. More attractive to them was I, seemingly, by my salty, sweaty, warm chassis.

But still, these little blighters I can cope with. What the real problem is, however, are the mozzies. They love eating me. Through the night, as I slide a warm foot outside of the duvet, they feast on me. My head, always exposed, is a full English breakfast for them.

And once these bites settle, they itch and sting to the point where I want to scratch at my skin. I can refrain from this throughout the day, but when I’m half asleep I wake up finding myself scratching at the bites.

This is, of course, a small price to pay. We’re in the countryside of Portugal. We did enough research back in England to know that this was always going to happen. Especially as I only needed to watch Carry On Abroad and the mosquitoes would find me.

Our latest trip to the supermarket had made us equipped with repellent sprays, wrist bands, nets and incense sticks. We are getting prepared. And it sounds like we need to be. After all, this is winter. By the summertime I need to be fully tooled up for them!

Remote Control

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.

What did you say George?!

Houndgate Cafe

An image from the local Dine magazine

In a small bistro in the centre of Darlington, big ideas were being refined by its two managers.

Louise and I were to open this new dining establishment back in 2008. I know the date well. As we opened the doors, the news came out that a worldwide economic crash had begun.

It seemed like we were going to be up against it straight away!

It is true that we had no experience in managing such a big project within this industry. And we certainly had no experience of the massive impact the economic crash would have on an industry such as a restaurant. But we created something special for our loyal customers.

Lou would create the menu and design the serving styles of each dish whilst managing the kitchen. I became the wine and coffee ‘specialist’ while managing front of house.

Saturdays were especially busy and people would often be queuing out of the door to get a seat where, regrettably, once I had to turn down ex England manager Steve McClaren and his family as the waiting time for a table went well into extra time.

But in those down times, where people would call in for a cuppa, we made sure that we had time for a chat.

I love cafe culture. Some of my most memorable moments on my travels were just sitting outside the cafe at places like Piazza Della Signora in Florence and the quaint cimbalimo in Tomar drinking an americano.

Somehow, it allows the world to stand still for a moment. Sure, I see the people mulling about and going about their business, but it all seems calm. Peaceful.

So that’s what I wanted to create a little bit of for the customers of Houndgate Cafe.

Fast forward fifteen years and it is still what I want to create for my customers. And since Houndgate I’ve added to my people skills with working in the fitness industry.

Roll my experience up into a ball and you kind of get what we will create in Portugal. A wellbeing centre and glamping site. Or Centro de bem estar é glamping, as it will be known.

For the past twelve months I’ve been dreaming of seeing our visitors sitting outside their accommodation, cooking BBQ food and enjoying the Portuguese summer evenings. Well, that and dreaming of Liverpool winning the Premier League, but you get what I mean.

I can only create what I know that I would want in a service. That’s what I’ve always done. As a support worker, I wanted to treat people like I would want to be supported. At Houndgate, I wanted to give the customer the experience that I look for in a bistro. And as a personal trainer, I wanted to make the client feel positive about themselves both mentally and physically.

Our youthful optimism from when we began our journey at Houndgate has since taken some beatings. After all, we need to experience the lows for us to know where to improve and embrace the highs! It’s just a part of the process.

But our ideas are now ready to be rolled out onto new beginnings. We’re ready to create something new again.

The Road To Tranquility Portugal

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094707496611

Click, like and follow the link above to see our journey to finding and creating our tranquility in Portugal.

We have a VISA process to wrestle first so the page is still very much in its infancy, even if our process has been through years of planning.

Obrigado!