Sunshine and Breeze in the Countryside

April 17, 2018April 17, 2018 | Mairead

2018 4

(Sunset by the lake near the mining town)

We’ve moved on again, just 90 minutes south of the mining town to the middle of the countryside. There’s no town nearby just sheep, although they could be goats, they are very far away. Our neighbours have a binoculars but we don’t know them well enough yet and we don’t speak dutch… But I am incentivised.

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(Our view today)

Because in the distance I can see Spain again. It’s probably about twenty kilometres away but without the binoculars I won’t be able to patrol the border. I can just make out a line of small trees, possibly olive trees, very close to the Spanish side of the river bank so there may well be a Spanish man doing some gardening. How would I know for sure though without those binoculars?

2018 2

(That’s Spain way, way over on the left.You might be able to make out the river)

Our view from the door is just lovely again so I may just keep my attention on what’s right in front of me. I’ve been making more cards and painting the pages of a book to make it an art journal. It’s a tricky process because you can only paint two pages at a time and then you go off and do something else until they dry and then turn the next page over and start again. It takes days, weeks or months to cover even a small book. But here the pages dry really fast because of the combination of sun and heat.

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(The sheep (or goats) are out there somewhere)

That’s probably what put the washing into my head. I was on my fifth page of paint/dry/turn when a thought struck me – we are running out of clean clothes. Now I’m third in the queue behind two french ladies for the washing machine. I only hope I can get the unmentionables on the line before the sun sets… If we didn’t need to fill up our gas tank, I’d be happy to stay here for a long time. Unfortunately the nearest petrol station that sells gas (for cooking and heating water and the fridge when we’re not connected to electricity) is close to the coast. We will leave in the morning.

They’ve left the binoculars on the table outside their motorhome… Mairead.

The Mining Town

April 16, 2018April 16, 2018 | Mairead

2018 9

(The lake near our car park)

It’s sunny! In fact it might be a little too sunny…. just joking! It’s just perfect, perfect. We have moved to a new location beside a very peaceful lake, it’s also near an old gold mine. Well, the gold mining was back in the day when the Romans were here. The most recent mining for copper ore ended in the 1960’s.

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(The resident stork at the old mine)

What we didn’t realise, when we were at the border post (watching my man from Spain) was that we were parked on the docks beside the site of the old mine train. The copper ore was transported from this town to the border town by train. Then it was loaded onto huge sailing ships bound for England.

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(Can you see the copper coloured water?)

We went for a walk to see some of the old buildings. The buildings are just walls and chimneys. The only occupants now are the storks. The earth has a deep red colour and weirdly so do the trees piled on the side of the road. As we got closer to the open mine we could also see other colours, yellows, white and even blue. This is our second day without electricity so we’ll have to move on tomorrow which is a pity because there’s a little museum in the town that’s closed on Mondays. Today is Monday.

2018 1

(The trees look red)

You know I suppose it’s obvious but no two towns are the same, they don’t look the same of course but they also don’t feel the same. It’s like the combination of all the people who live here, combined with all the actions and intentions of all the people who ever lived here, add up to a place. This place is very interesting.

From a lovely lakeside in south-east Portugal, Mairead.

Inner Wellbeing

April 13, 2018April 13, 2018 | Mairead

2018 1 5

(Flower seen on the indirect route)

The rain has stopped! I see the light! Well… not sunlight but light nonetheless. It’s time to get more input (I mean take more photos). So when I woke up this morning instead of turning over in the bed, I got up, had breakfast and did my meditation. It’s still fleece, hat and raincoat weather so I shoved everything on and waddled out the door. Then I took a different route to the old town. Made me realise it takes time to get familiar with a new place. A similar thing happened in Beja.

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(Can’t have too many flowers…)

Here in Serpa the old part of the town is very easy to navigate and it’s not really possible to get lost in there because if you keep walking very soon you’ll arrive at the wall. When you find the wall you won’t be lost anymore. We are parked in the campsite and the campsite is situated outside the wall, so normally I take the direct route to the old town and wander around safely inside the wall. Today I took an indirect route and found some pretty input (you know, pictures) outside the wall.

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(I think this is an orange flower bud! It was on a tree that looks like an orange tree)

There was a park getting a makeover, a little flower garden outside someone’s house, very, very old olive trees and a place to sit down for coffee. I was surprised to realise that it was warm enough to sit outside which is my very favourite thing to do at the moment. While I was sitting outside I wrote in my notebook. Writing always helps me understand what’s going on in my inner world and since this has been a frustrating week I was definitely looking forward to finding out what was going on in there.

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(Huge urns seen on the indirect route)

What was going on was craft related. I know how important crafting is to my general wellbeing but usually when I need it the most I don’t choose it. It’s like meditation is most useful when you’re feeling stressed or upset but that’s the one time you couldn’t be bothered doing it. Or going for a walk is great for clearing your head but it’s the last thing you want to do when your head is full of junk thoughts. We are our own worst enemies.

2018 8

(There it is! The Wall pops out to tell me I’m not lost! It gets sucked back into that house when I turn my back…)

So my inner world was grateful for the cards I made this week and told me to keep making them. I have often been dismissive of card making, wanting the time I put into making to yield something longer lasting. My inner world told me that it really doesn’t matter how long the thing you make lasts. It does it’s job during the making. (Like a Sand Mandala (google it) that takes a week to make and is then swept away.) What job does making do? It nourishes your inner world.

Nourish your inner world, people! Mairead.

Crafting Sunday

April 8, 2018April 8, 2018 | Mairead

2018 6

(Surely no one would attempt to drive up this lane?)

Today is an indoor day. The rain came back so it’s become Crafting Sunday. I brought a cupboard full of craft materials from Ireland. Not a big cupboard by house standards but we could have fitted a small washing machine in there… Fortunately we don’t need a small washing machine because more and more of the supermarkets have laundry facilities. Lucky.

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(Love these balconies)

But the problem with bringing so much kit is I have to sort through it all to work out what I will make. That’s why Linda’s craft kit was so useful. It had enough but not too much. Too much of a good thing isn’t better… it’s clutter. The great thing about living in the camper is there’s no room for clutter. At home I’m always tempted to leave things hanging around until tomorrow or the next day or next week. After a month of that you can gather a lot of clutter. If we did that here there’d be no room to sleep or eat or cook… or drive away.

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(Walking through Serpa)

So I tidy after each activity. One thing that used to stop me even starting a craft session was that I’d never get it finished before it was time to tidy up. Today I really needed to make something. You know that feeling? The need for colour or paper or glue or scissors? Maybe it’s not being able to take pictures in the rain. Whatever it is I had to unpack the craft cupboard.

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(No idea)

I uncovered some supplies and worked away until it was time to go for a walk. Exercise is important, even in the rain. Then it was time for writing. Writing is important even when there’s glue on your fingers. And soon it’ll be time for dinner. Dinner is important… it just is. Anyway I got about an hour of play and I haven’t tidied it away yet but when I do I’ll have a kit of half-finished cards to work on next time and that will make it easier to get back to crafting even when there is very little time.

Happy Crafting Sunday, Mairead.

Are you feeling me?

April 7, 2018April 7, 2018 | Mairead

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(This feels sort of happy sad with spikes and magic)

The reason I first started taking pictures was because at a workshop once we had to pick something we’d do in the following year. I didn’t know what to pick. I’d seen a programme on television about six months previously where some famous photographer was giving tips on taking better photographs. There was one photograph of railings and their shadow that I was mesmerised by… I was in awe because I didn’t know it was possible to do that. To press a button and out comes magic.

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(This feels wonder curious)

When I had to pick something for that long ago workshop I remembered the magic. Funny enough Denis had a camera he wasn’t using so I started using it. I didn’t care about the switches and dials on the camera, I just wanted to find a railing and press the button that makes me feel magic.

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(This feels sparkly cuddly)

Of all the creative things I’ve done taking photographs is the easiest. It might be because I don’t care how many hundreds I have to take before I feel a magic one. Or it might be because it’s the one area in my life I don’t feel I have to be good. It’s just for me. Or it might be because I don’t even see the pictures.

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(This feels like love)

You would think that taking pictures is a visual thing. For me it’s not just visual. My favourite way of “seeing” the world is kinaesthetically, I mean, my favourite way of seeing the world is feeling the world. That’s why pictures make me feel magic. I’m not interested in seeing magic I want to feel it.

There’s been 2,130 photograph/feelings (so far) on this trip, Mairead.

Spending time with Vera…

April 6, 2018April 6, 2018 | Mairead

2018 2

(Notice the colour for the houses here is white and grey)

I hear there’s more bad weather on it’s way to you. So I won’t mention that it’s been a lovely day here and I’m outside as I write watching the sun go down. There may be rain here tomorrow, may be. Although I was in the tourist office today and the poster was saying that Serpa gets more than 3000 hours of sunshine a year… In one year? Every year? Yes. Yes. It’s going to be very hard to leave now.

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(Look an angel on top of the spire)

I had a great day in other ways too. You’ll remember the day I interviewed the young man about a week ago? Well since then I’ve been a little bit confused about what to do with my interviews. I keep forgetting they’re still gestating and I wake up in a cold sweat thinking I should be feeding them… if you know what I mean. So today I had a talk to myself and went back to meet the parallel universe me, she wasn’t free so I met someone else.

2018 3

(I like number 26)

I decided to fit in a few pictures of the castle first, then on my way back I spotted a shop called Serpa Lovers. I didn’t know what kind of shop it was but it looked very inviting so I went in. There was a lady behind the counter and all I can say is my Portuguese must be improving because after I said Ola (Hello) and Bom Dia (Good morning. Yes I know… it was afternoon!) she started talking to me in Portuguese. She reverted to English when she saw my face.

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(They love Serpa… and so do I)

Serpa Lovers is her shop and it supports local produce like the cheese, olive oil, wine, crafts, art and activities. (When I looked at the website there’s loads of other stuff, like music lessons, romantic dinners, hot air ballooning, walking tours, tile painting… Their website has an English translation) I had missed lunch and she said she could make me some tapas. Tapas is my new favourite word so… of course I had tapas. The local cheese had been calling to me for a couple of days now so that’s what I choose and it was lovely. Also, there was herbal tea, not tea bag herbs but dried-and-still-looks-like-herbs herbal tea. I didn’t know which one I wanted so the lady (later I discovered her name is Vera) let me smell all the herbal tea containers and I choose a mix of three, mint, verbena and anise. It was lovely.

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(I do love the weathered effect)

Then halfway through my sandwich her two sons arrived. How did I know who they were? Sometimes language doesn’t get in the way and you just understand. Not the details but the gist of a scenario. Anyway, somehow we got talking after they left, Vera and I. It turns out she and her husband and the boys used to live in Lisboa. I was thinking, “brave woman to move to a new town with young children” but she talked about the hectic lifestyle, the expensive private school and something being missing so I started to lean in for a story. I wasn’t recording but some words stuck in my head, “the children were growing up between the hours of 8am and 7pm and that’s when they were in school.”

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(Here’s Vera (on the left) she was smiling all the time not just in the photo! That’s her friend on the right (forgot to ask her friend’s name!) And that’s Serpa Lovers. Look at the cute lampshade!)

An opportunity came up here in this place, Serpa, to do interesting work and also to start a business, so they moved but first they asked their then ten-year-old son’s opinion. And he replied with a question, “will this mean we four will spend more time together?” And that’s when tears came to my eyes because that was such a beautiful, wise thing for a child to ask. Of course the answer was YES from the parents and YES from the wise old soul. And although they work very hard they do spend more time together because they now live in this beautiful town where life is lived at a slower pace. Their children spend less time being driven places or collected from places, they walk to friends houses, they walk to school. At the end of the story both of us had tears in our eyes and I’m welling up again now.

Imagine living in a world where the most important thing is your presence. Mairead.

Yum, Yum, Yum!

April 1, 2018 | Mairead

2018 2

(The restaurant was closed this morning when I went to take a photo so you won’t see how lovely it looked when the lights were shining, but remember the Portuguese Cafe God? The architecture is Art Deco)

We had a lovely restaurant experience last night. I forgot to bring my camera and I forgot to take pictures of the food with my phone. It was just lovely and now there’s no proof. I found the restaurant on the internet and even though it had a strange name I got a good feeling from the reviews. It’s called Art Deco Cafe and the reason became clear when I went back to the a picture of it today. But back to the reviews, they weren’t all good in fact one was very critical but the owner replied to the reviewer in English and in a quirky way. So I was in.

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(This is a different cafe celebrating 125 years in business!)

I’m reading another book called Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination for Teachers, Trainers, Coaches and Mentors (long name!) by Kim Hermanson. It’s really interesting and it talks about becoming more aware of how you feel when you’re reading something or talking to someone because that’s feedback of your experience and that’s where your wisdom lies. So for instance, when I was reading the review for the restaurant, I could be wondering if the critical reviewer was a better judge of food than me. But what’s more useful is to notice what I’m feeling as I read the review (and the reply). I was feeling even more curious about the restaurant than I had been. I felt it might be worth visiting.

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(Spring is here)

It was worth visiting. It was a tapas restaurant and as we can’t read Portuguese and we didn’t recognise any of the options we asked for suggestions and they were great suggestions. We started with a sheep’s cheese from northern Portugal that was melted with olive oil and some herbs and the top of it was crusty – yum. Then we had a baked sausage that was soft like a pie with toasted flaked almonds on top served with an apple sauce – yum, yum. And finally we had brochette with sardines and tomatoes on top – yum, yum, yum. I hope I’m getting across that I loved it and Denis did too.

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(Love the streets)

It wasn’t just a food experience there was music too. One wall was covered with LP covers and there was a mixture of jazz and Leonard Cohen playing in the background. The furniture was also interesting, I’m guessing it was from whenever Art Deco is from but it could have been from the 70’s. There was also a little entertainment. The only other diners, a young couple were having a heated discussion and as luck would have it their language in common was English. The music volume was little too high and Denis was talking non stop about a Mars expedition so the details of their discussion escaped me. They did leave hand in hand, though.

I will definitely trust my feelings when I read a review from now on. Mairead.

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