Another disturbed night; this time it was fireworks at 5.30 a.m. – what was that all about? Why would anybody be letting off fireworks at that time of the morning, why weren’t they in bed – it was still dark.
I can’t believe it; my shoes, which are less than a month old and that I paid 35€ for, broke today. And, because it’s so dusty here, they look very worn (they’d probably think I was using the receipt of a newer pair of shoes) so I can’t take them back. Brett says he’s going to try sewing them for me – I’m very fed up!
I spent the day re-sowing vegetable and herb seeds; this time into containers. They are up on a table, the legs of which are in cut off bottles filled with water – hopefully this should stop the ants from stealing the seeds.
Brett has put bent re-bar in his footings; when filled with concrete they should be very strong. He constructed a magpie trap this afternoon; which he has baited with egg shells (displayed to look whole in an egg box). The magpies are becoming a real pest; they eat all our fruit before it ripens, which means that we have to pick it unripe (or lose it).
Pam and Mark were hoping to complete today; but apparently their solicitor and Remax are involved in some kind of power struggle so it didn’t happen, we don’t have the details. We’ve invited them round for dinner on Thursday evening.
Joao, Ilda and their grandson, Johny, turned up this evening; they stayed for about an hour and a half. It’s really awkward trying to converse with them, most of the time we don’t understand what they’re trying to say and vice versa. They came bearing gifts; pounds and pounds of of tomatoes (they are very generous) and a huge bunch of parsley (salsa in Portuguese); at first they gave us the top few tomatoes (about 2-3lbs), and we thought that was what they were giving us, but then they gave us the rest –we didn’t understood the significance of the first offering.
What are we going to do with all these tomatoes?
We showed them our vegetable garden; Joao exclaimed and started digging holes between our plants, initially he said we had rats!!! but it turned out (with sign language and a dictionary) that we have a mole – he spent ages digging along it’s tunnel and telling us how to deal with it. Next he told us it was rabbits eating our seedlings – even I know it’s not, the bite sizes are far too small. As they left they invited us for dinner tomorrow evening; we declined as we have Mark, Glen and Nick coming. So how about Thursday? No, we have Pam and Mark coming. So we’re going to them Friday between 8.00 – 9.00 (they eat very late) and we’re not looking forward to it at all; it’ll be really embarrassing not being able to have a proper conversation and another thing is we don’t know whether to take gifts, in the guide book it says the Portuguese don’t do that.
Our social life is going a bit crazy at the moment.
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