13th August FONTE DOS CLERIGOS

Today we bought a generator and so did Pam and Mark. Everyone we’ve talked to, who’s got generators, has given the same advice:

·         Whatever you do don’t buy a cheap Chinese generator, it’s false economy in a few months you’ll need to buy a new one

·         Make sure to buy a generator with a Honda engine (minimum)

·         or buy a Honda manufactured   generator, they’re reliable

 But it’s so tempting to buy the Chinese ones they’re half the price of the ones with the Honda engine, which are half the price of the Honda manufactured ones. In the end we bought one with a Honda engine and Mark and Pam bought a Chinese one! 

Now we can run a cement mixer and start on our footings and concreting the floors; which is exciting as it means the buildings are getting that much closer to becoming our house, and they’ll look so much more salubrious when they have clean floors. Next job, after the floors, will be to render the walls and then it will start feeling very solid. I’m looking forward to the day when we cut the doors through so that you can gauge the flow of the house and it becomes a homogeneous building rather than individual sheds.

We went to three different places to compare the prices of the generators; the place we were originally going to buy from, the same model, was 90€ more expensive than the one we bought (thank goodness we took the time to compare prices!).

It was so nice being in town with Pam and Mark, it’s completely different shopping with a female (they’re interested in different things to men). We had lunch out at the food hall; wraps and chips (cheap and cheerful). And we took them to my favourite shop ‘A Loja do Gato Preto’ (The Shop of the Black Cat); it’s where I bought my pretty glasses. It sells tasteful kitchen paraphernalia, patchwork quilts and cushions, incredible lamps and lights, candles etc and it’s very reasonably priced. Pam thought it was brilliant, Mark said “Great, now our houses are going to look the same” – you had to be there! One of the places we went to (comparing generators), Maxmart, sells the tiles we have chosen for our house – they’d already been there and chosen the same ones.

Another beautiful sunset:

'Spaceship' cloud

The colours were even better in real life!