The Library

February 5, 2016 | Mairead

(I’m at the Library)

So today, on the lookout for a Portuguese venue to rival McDonalds, I’ve come to the library. And I can report that the chairs are comfy, there is indeed wifi and I can sit here for as long as I like! There’s no coffee though… Perfect otherwise.

(Books, books, everywhere)

So I’m in the Municipal Library of Beja surrounded by books that I cannot read! There might be an English language shelf but I’m between the Geography shelf (if Geografia means geography) and the History shelf (Historia?) I am tempted to look for the craft shelf but what if there were some great looking books? It might be too upsetting not to be able to read the descriptions or the instructions. Oh maybe it’ll be worth it, I’m off to look for the craft section….

(Balconies)

You will never guess what I found! No, not a craft section, still haven’t found that! I found a coffee shop! In the library! What a great place.The library is now officially the perfect Portuguese place to write. Or draw. Or drink coffee. Or read. Or search for craft books. Oh there’s a magazine area with even “comfier”seats and I can see a National Geographic and it’s in English.

(There are lots of places to sit in Beja)

Some students just came into the coffee shop, two guys and a girl. I don’t actually know if they’re students…. but they do seem to be working on something together and the girl just took out what looks like a text-book. She has green hair. In the magazine area there’s an older man taking notes as he reads a newspaper, maybe he’s writing to the editor. He’s really concentrating, maybe he’s writing to someone else, an old girlfriend, an estranged daughter a friend he met in the army. It seems like he’s finding it a really hard letter to write. Oh hang on it’s a crossword…

(Narrow streets, where pedestrians squeeze into doorways when they hear a car)

Now there’s a lady collecting a huge hard backed book from the librarian. By huge I mean it’s about three feet by two feet. I‘m trying to sneak a peek but she keeps catching me so I look away. She’s taking pictures of some of the pages with her phone… it might be very old newspapers. The colour of the pages is the same colour as newspaper left out in the sun. Or painted with coffee… as you do!

It’s all happening in the library, Mairead.

Shuush! We’ve found a McDonalds! 2 of 2

February 2, 2016February 1, 2016 | Mairead

So to continue from yesterday’s post… So if I realise the doing of a craft makes the difference how come here in Portugal I’m not doing any crafting?

(The street names are tiles)

Most people I know who love to create sometimes stop creating. For no good reason and lots of good reasons: They’re too busy. They’re too tired. They don’t know what they want to create. They don’t realise they have stopped. Whatever the reason the longer they stop the harder it seems to get started again. But starting again has it’s own momentum. Once you’ve started again some kind of creative magic energy kicks in and it’s like you never stopped.

(Ceiling of corridor at convent)

A bit like when I meet my friend, Helena. I have known Helena a long time, we went to the same school and were best friends from the age of twelve. She lived in the country and had to take the bus home so we would say goodbye after school and not be able to see or talk to each other until nine the next day. There were no mobile phones, the one phone in the house was in the hall so everyone could hear what we were saying… so we invented an early version of Facebook and used to write letters to each other each day. (Ok so it was nothing like Facebook, maybe it was like iMessage or.. never mind I’m just trying to say it was hard back then!)

(Clock on…)

I think that’s why I love to write, writing was a way to communicate my best and worst times without judgement, with encouragement. In school writing essays was very difficult for me, so much so my mother used to write them for me! I always had trouble with spelling and stopping to consider the correct way to spell something would mess with my flow and make the whole thing so frustrating. but in those letters I would write my best guess at a spelling and write (spelling!) after my attempt and Helena always seemed to recognise the words. Each morning we’d pass each other our letters and head into our first class reading.

(…Clock tower)

Anyway, time passed, I got married she was one of my bridesmaids and then she went to Australia. She met a lovely man, Henry and had four children. We wrote infrequently. It’s a long way to Australia, I’ve never been but Helena comes home regularly. There’s a lot of people in her Irish family so we don’t always get a chance to meet but we met last year.

(Tiles on the outside of a house)

On a cold and wet July Monday in the Horse and Jockey Hotel we hugged and squealed our “oh my God you look so good”s. Henry found something to do and we set to chat. And it was like we had never been apart, so comfortable and warm. So easy and familiar. How did we ever stop the writing? When Henry arrived back after an hour Helena sent him off again, after the second hour he just sat down nearby and read a newspaper.

(And more tiles)

I know why I stopped writing to Helena. I had started to think it had to be a big production. A long and perfectly structured letter with news about everything and details about the things that had happened. A letter that would take hours to write and never be quite perfect enough…. Doesn’t that sound like what starting a new project feels like? It does to me. Now I email Helena whenever I see something that reminds me of her or when I’m doing something I think she will enjoy. The emails are short, they usually take about two minutes but if I find myself rambling on I don’’t worry because I know Helena won’t mind my imperfect email. She never stopped being encouraging and non-judgemental.

(My small imperfect start…)

So if there’s something you’ve loved doing (creative or not) and you’ve stopped, can we encourage each other to make a little start? It doesn’t have to be a big project. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to take a long time. It could be as quick as it takes to write a two-line email and if we start to ramble that’ll be fine too. There’s no judgement, only encouragement.

Just like Helena, Mairead.

Shuush! We’ve found a McDonalds! 1 of 2

February 1, 2016February 1, 2016 | Mairead

(Beja is on a hill)

Don’t tell anyone but… we’ve come to McDonald’s this morning! Yes I know, how could we? Well… there’s a certain thing that McDonalds do and Starbucks do too that we haven’t found elsewhere here. I promise we will start looking for a Portuguese version soon though, because I am embarrassed to be resorting to something familiar and comforting.

(Stone stairs in the Convent of Nossa Senhora de Conceição)

The things that McDonald’s and Starbucks do? Well there’s the free wifi (actually I don’t know if Starbucks do.) Then there’s the comfy seats – we’re getting fussy about seating as we get older… Then there’s the stay-as-long-as-you-like attitude. If you haven’t darkened the door of a McDonalds for a while you might not be familiar with their less plastic look. It’s more brown and cream now (well it is here) with a modern pretend-wood-kitchen feel. Perfectly fine for an hour or two, plus the staff seem fine with us staying an hour or two with just a couple of coffees (@€1 each!)

(An old street in Beja)

From time to time we both like a change from Ruby when we’re working. I would prefer a shaded spot outdoors with a nice view but it’s a bit too cold to sit outside for long so this is a good second choice. It’s shaded, the sun is shining outside and I can see some green bushes in the play area and of course a big sky full of blue – nice. I’m working on my next ebook! This one will be about Creative Calm and how I think using creativity can nourish our lives. Funny thing is that although I brought lots of creative things with me (embroidery, crochet, paints, pens, glue and scissors) I didn’t even unpack them until I started listening to what I was writing!

(Decorative doorway in the chapel at the convent)

As always, everything I write is for me but sometimes I don’t pay attention to what I write, that’s why I started writing to you. Somehow sharing it makes me pay more attention. I think that’s probably why I started the Monday morning Creative Calm sessions. Sharing the making part made me pay attention and realise that thinking about being creative is not enough, the doing of it makes the difference.

So if I realise the doing of it makes the difference how come here in Portugal I’m not doing it?

To be continued… Mairead.

Beja: The Promised Land

January 29, 2016January 28, 2016 | Mairead

Mapa

(We got a map, Lar!)

We’ve been in a bit of a wilderness. Still on our journey south, in search of warm air and bright skies. From time to time we find them. Then we can’t find a place to stay… We found both in Beja, a very old town in the Alentejo region of Portugal. That (very big) region stretches between the Atlantic sea and Spain and from above the north-east of Lisbon to the Algarve.

Portugal Mine Village

(Oranges growing by the path in the mine village!)

Being in the wilderness has had some surprising bonuses, but first some surprising downsides… We found a great camper van parking area in Grandola (it’s west of Beja, if you’re plotting our journey, Sally – btw in primary school we used to plot the routes of huge cargo ships travelling the world) within walking distance of a big supermarket (where they sold Kerrygold cheese… we didn’t even know there was such a thing) on one side and a small town on the other. All was well until six am when the truck drivers arrived to start their day. Trucks make a very loud noise when they start up. They were all gone by the time we were having breakfast.

Beja Street

(Street in Beja)

The following night we thought we had the perfect spot, a camper van car park near an old mine museum, closed when we arrived but would be open in the morning. To add to its attractiveness there were two other campers parked when we arrived. It was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farmland, roads too potholed for big trucks, perfect. Well… it had just got dark when Jimmy (name changed) arrived, I thought he was from one of the other campers but it turned out he was a down on his luck Dutchman needing the train fare to Lisbon… He didn’t like Anchovies but he had some ham and cheese instead.

Beja House Tiles

(Lots of houses have tiles on the outside)

Then we arrived in Beja. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, the reviews of the site were not glowing. But I needn’t have worried. There are toilets with toilet paper and soap and paper towels. There’s electricity. There are no trucks. There is no sign of Jimmy. The main bonus of travelling through the wilderness is that on the other side you are so happy when the basics are covered. The wilderness has lowered our expectations. I was wondering why that was a good thing and I think it’s because our expectations force us to fulfil them. If we don’t fill them then we are dissatisfied….

Even if we already have enough of everything, Mairead.

Portugal: Day 1 Part 3

January 25, 2016January 24, 2016 | Mairead

(Love this! And it’s exactly the right size for the roads)

So…We found a campsite in a forest full of birdsong, the wi-fi wasn’t great, we set off in search of mobile wi-fi, drive on little roads. me I’m nervous, the perfect Phone Shop is closed…Denis has another idea… we drive up and down the steepest roads in the world (might be slight exaggeration.) Eventually we find a place to park and another shop but still no wi-fi sim thingy and as we stand in front of a McDonalds sign Denis has another idea…

(Scary bridge… into Lisboa)

Let me pause here to tell you something I understood at that precise moment… Before we left Greystones one of my friends asked how could I spend so much time with my husband in a small camper van without wanting to kill him. I didn’t have an answer, because sometimes he is very annoying and I am often very annoyed with him and I think of ways I could hurt him (just kidding… kinda). I mean if it were up to me we would never have left the bird filled glade. I would be smelling lovely after my shower and I might even have a book in my hand. But funny thing, he doesn’t stay very annoying for long and on some occasions, like that moment as we were looking at the “lying” McDonalds-one-minute-away sign and thinking about the long list of things that went wrong today, he’s not fazed he’s still coming up with new ideas and I think… I’d like to be like that, maybe he’s not so bad…

(Sure it is, right here… Seen in Lisboa)

His idea didn’t work but weirdly it didn’t matter anymore. His idea? The lovely assistant at the last shop had said there was another shop, at the train station, they would definitely have the wi-fi sim thingy. We thanked her but having experience of the cobbled stoned streets we knew we were never going there. Until Denis has his latest idea… Denis thought the hospital would definitely have a taxi rank. We could easily make the sign of a train to the driver and there would be a taxi rank at the station to return to the hospital (whose name was amazingly easy to remember and pronounce – Padre Americano!)

(We’re finally here!)

With the help of two (very friendly, very helpful) taxi drivers we explained where we wanted to go (yes I said Choo, Choo and made train wheel movements with my hands!) But when we arrived at the train station we couldn’t see any shops. Immediately (seriously, within seconds of arriving!) a man waiting for his train called to us in perfect English “Are you lost?”

(Lisboa during the day)

Let me pause again to say… you might be a little suspicious of a stranger at the train station offering help (no? just me then…) but remember, all day long we experienced very friendly, very helpful strangers in this strange land. So I choose trust instead of fear and said, yes we are lost. He directed us to the Phone Shop. Of course he did.

(Lisboa at night)

Inside a very friendly, very helpful assistant (I am not kidding, she went out of her way to help us, to apologise for her English and to tell us about another shop) gave us the bad news… although she did indeed have the particular sim, in fact three of them, they were all out of date and she couldn’t reactivate them. We thanked her (in Portuguese, our pronunciation getting better with all the practice we get to thank people here!) and left to get our taxi to the Padre Americano hospital.

(Table for two at a balcony in Belém, Lisboa)

Ok that was it, Denis was all out of ideas, we’d failed again but we were surprisingly upbeat…. there really was nothing more we could do, we’d done our best and now it was time to stop. Back at the car park in warm and cosy Ruby we broke open a bottle of Spanish wine and had tinned salmon sandwiches (one slice of bread each, almost carbohydrate-free) for dinner. We could start again in the morning but for now it was time to sleep.

(Can you see that red bridge in the background? That’s how we left Lisboa… do these people have no fear?)

The next day was different. Travelling by big wide motorway we arrived in Lisbon (called Lisboa) after lunch. Our campsite is situated right beside a motorway exit in a big park. There are lots of birds here too. We went into Lisboa on the bus and queued in the mobile phone shop for an hour. They had the mobile wi-fi sim thingy.

We have the internet! But I’m just listening to the birds, Mairead.

Portugal: Day 1 Part 1

January 23, 2016 | Mairead

We have arrived in Portugal!

(1 Km to Portugal)

Since last we spoke we’ve been travelling long days and sleeping short nights in car parks! There’s been rain and sun and a tiny bit of snow. We’ve had lovely experiences. In France walking at night by the river Vendee in a small town called Fontenay-le-Comte. In Spain we met a lovely barman in the town of Borio in the north west who gave us free food and talked about the great time he had at the Cliffs of Moher and how bad the Irish drivers were! Borio reminded us of Greystones and of the camper vans parked at the harbour, that inspired us to go on an adventure.

(Some snow in Brittany)

Once we crossed the border into Portugal we decided we would take things a little easier. We would travel only two hours a day instead of eight… We would stay in campsites. We would take it easy and go slowly. It was not to be…

(Very good price!)

On Thursday we set off from our car park home in Borio as soon as first light and plotted a course for a small campsite in the north of Portugal. It was in the middle of nowhere, birds sang, trees grew, somewhere close by water babbled. We paid the fees for one night and I was looking forward to my first hot shower since the boat. There was one small problem – the wi-fi was less than ideal and Denis needed to get some work done. No problem, he had researched the possibility of our own mobile wi-fi system so we left the lovely birds and the idea of a hot shower and drove off the short distance to the nearest small town.

(There are very few pictures of this first day…)

Things got weird after that… To set the scene, we no longer had internet access which meant we were back to basics. Ask directions – we had two words of Portuguese, hello and thank you… Read a map – we didn’t have a map but we did have sat nav so not completely without hope. The the first sign of weirdness: we could not find parking in the small town. Really! There was nothing wide enough to take Ruby without blocking the street. Sure, no problem at all, we’ll go on to a bigger town. Now, at this point without a map we didn’t know the geography of this new land. But we soon found out by experience that it was mountainous. To navigate the mountain the Portuguese road builders had built winding roads. I am grateful to them, of course I am… but I would love it they had made their roads a little wider, actually, twice as wide would be best.

(My favourite roads are WIDE roads)

Each time we met a HUGE truck I would need to rock and hum gently (Ruby’s steering wheel is on the right hand side, the Portuguese drive on the right hand side, meaning I, as the passenger, am closest to the HUGE trucks…) By the time we arrived at the bigger town I was rocking frenetically and humming loudly but like an oasis in the desert there appeared a supermarket with loads of parking. (We know it’s a supermarket because it’s the French chain Intermarche) I take a moment to unclench and Denis takes a moment to enjoy the silence before getting quite excited to see a sign for The Phone Shop – the place his research indicated would provide a sim to give us mobile wi-fi. Ok this was going to be fine, I’m fine. So in we go. It’s not as big as it looks on the outside but big enough for our needs – we spot the shop.

The shop is closed….

To be continued, this post is getting too long, I’ll finish the story tomorrow, Mairead

First Steps to Portugal

January 17, 2016 | Mairead

(From a lovely little book called One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Robert Maurer)

We’re travelling again. This time, Portugal. We’ve never been to Portugal. It’s a long way, the sat nav says it will take 17 hours from our landing in France. It’s a bit difficult for me to imagine a journey of 17 hours, I think driving for two hours is long. Happily we won’t be travelling the entire 17 hours in one go. We’ll stop and go a few times.

(Travelling along the M11 towards the port of Rosslare)

We’ve known since we returned from the last trip that we would be going again in January. I have never liked January – it’s cold, it’s dark, there are grey skies and lots of rain. This year there was even more rain. What’s to like about that? Leaving it behind is a good thing, right? Right, but a funny thing happened this January.

(Our cabin, leaving Rosslare for our sailing to France)

This January everything seemed better… Yes there was rain. Yes there were grey skies. Yes it was cold (not as cold as usual.) But there were also blue skies and dry days, there was even sunshine! Was there sunshine last January? How come I’m noticing sunshine this January? I don’t know for sure but I have some thoughts…..

For now, we are about to dock at Cherbourg and do something we’ve never done before – experience France in January. I’ll be aiming to send you a couple of posts a week, so, talk to you soon, Mairead.

It’s over… for now

October 9, 2015October 8, 2015 | Mairead

(A wedding in Surgeres… Thinking of you, Linda and Paul!)

We’re sitting on the ferry hearing Irish voices for the first time in a long time. Mostly they sound kinda nice, friendly, sing-songy, ordinary, gentle too. I was getting used to missing eavesdropping. Now that’s back I’m overwhelmed by the input. I had forgotten there was so much more information than just the words. Consider the eyebrow movement your mother used when she said, “How much?” If she added a certain head tilt you knew you were in big trouble. (Did you hear the tone when you read that two-word question?)

(Narrow street in Nantes)

Every day we make additions to the meaning of the words we hear depending on tone and body language. The people talking to us make additions to the words they hear us say. If we’re really lucky we make the right additions and they make the right additions and we understand each other. Communication is something we take for granted and we usually think the words we say are clear and that of course the person we’re talking to will understand exactly what we mean… but what if they don’t? If they don’t it gets a bit messy.

(Passageway in Chateau Comtel, Carcassonne)

Spending time in a country where I assume I will not understand the people has made me more aware of the possibility that I don’t understand the people in my own country, speaking the language I’m fluent in…. One day last week in Nantes Denis needed to visit the mobile phone shop, Orange. If you’ve ever had to go into a mobile phone shop in any country you’ll have had a similar experience. It’s very slow, there’s lots of queuing. The handshake when the assistant brings you to his workstation is particularly French (and lovely) but the rest is very similar.

(My favourite dishwasher!)

Anyway, I was sitting on an orange (kid you not!) sofa in the Orange shop waiting for him when an older, very well dressed lady sat down beside me. We did the bonjour/bonjour and she said a few more words and I… smiled and nodded (probably appropriate?) but then she said something else and I just knew it was a question. She was looking at me and waiting. For a very short moment I considered more smiling and more nodding but for the first time in France (with a French person) I recognised connection. You know the moment when you trust that the person (whom you don’t know) in front of you is safe? Is worth taking the time to communicate with. Not a huge communication, not deep and meaningful words… yet you somehow connect.

(Sunset in Asserac)

So, I didn’t just smile and nod, Instead I searched deep into my faulty French and said I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I speak only a little French. Her eyes lit up, she laughed, she took my hand, she gently patted my arm and she said something. I have no idea what she said, yet I know exactly what she said…. she told me it was ok, she told me I was ok, she told me everything was fine. Then she asked me what language I spoke and she told me she didn’t know any of that either. All the time she held my hand and patted my arm and we both smiled. Then the assistant called her name and she left to get her phone fixed.

Maybe we say too many words when all we really need to do is connect, Mairead.

Feeling some madness…

October 7, 2015October 6, 2015 | Mairead

(Can you see this kite surfing guy’s feet and surfboard are out of the water?)

It rained a lot last night. Lots of rain, lots of wind. Teeny tiny bit of sleep. Not feeling too bubbly today. So I’m reminded of something Eckhart Tolle wrote “When you complain you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation or accept it. All else is madness.” It’s kinda nice to find patterns in the things you see and experience and relate them to the way you feel inside, isn’t it? I think so. I think it helps to understand the feelings inside.

(This boat was just sitting on the beach this morning… could someone look up French salvage laws, please – we might own a boat)

So, here’s us having a nice old-time wandering around France, minding our own business. Loving the sun and the pleasant temperatures at this time of year. Then, the storms arrive. From nowhere they come…. And one might be tempted to whine and grumble. At home we might say “desperate weather, isn’t it?” to the postman or the assistant in the bank or the next door neighbour.

(More doodling today)

In France I haven’t a clue how to say anything about the weather and when I consider looking it up (or asking Thierry) there’s no incentive to do so. There’s no good that can come out of telling the French people in the camper van next door that it’s raining… They already know. Sometimes it rains. Get over it. There’s at least four guys out on the water doing their kite surfing thing. They’re already wet so a bit of rain doesn’t bug them and the wind is very useful when you have a big huge kite.

(Fence post with organic decoration)

So how’s this relate to feelings? Sometimes we feel down, maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s an insensitive friend, maybe it’s a disappointment – life can be very disappointing. So we talk to ourselves or others with words something like “desperate feeling, I’m having”. Maybe we whine a bit, grumble a bit and complain some. What if we had to translate our complaints into French (or Swahili if you’re fluent in French) would we bother? Like the rain, the feelings will be gone soon and like the wind for the kite surfers, they are useful – they remind us we’re alive!

Sure isn’t it great to be alive? Mairead.