Fado and Castle and Packing

Niki's friend Jane from England is visiting for a few days. Last night we went into Lisbon, to the harbour, where we attended a Fado concert. Fado is the traditional music from Portugal, and is delivered straight from the heart with passion and intensity. Lyrics are mostly about sadness, lost love, yearning and melancholy. Quite uplifting, really...  From where I was sitting I didn´t have the best of view, hence the somewhat  grainy video clip, but the hour of music was extremely enjoyable and much appreciated by the largely Portuguese audience.

Today, Sunday, we climbed the hills of Sintra (just half an hour away from Povoa de St Adriaõ, to visit the Moorish Castle, offering beautiful views of Lisbon. It´s always a pleasure to go there. I reminded Tess, Yarrow and Anjès of the time we climbed the steep hill to the top of the castle. New excavations have taken place since we were last there, unearthing, among other things, a graveyard and remains of people who were buried there in the 12th and 14th centuries.

Also, The Packing Has Begun today - boxes of non-descript brownish hue have appeared in our flat and are slowly being filled with Stuff To Go To Sarzedo, Stuff To Go To Australia, Stuff To Go To Anybody Who Wants It, and Stuff To Be Thrown Away. There's a lot of stuff, I can tell you...

Images from the walk (part 2)

On the Alentejo walk we came across animals small (not many big animals here in Portugal), such as green spiders, pollinating beetles, and migrating caterpillars on their way to become butterflies. Oh and then there were the sheep. The warbling , murmuring sound of the bells around the sheeps´ necks, almost like the sound of water frolicking down a small mountain stream, was just wonderful and so fitting to the surroundings. The cork trees are magnificent, too, and the photos show what happens to the trees once the cork is harvested (it grows back!). When seen in a group these trees look almost like ballet dancers in attitude en pointe...

Flowers, animals and other pretty things

Images from the walk (part 1)

The commemorative walk through part of the Alentejo (see one of the previous posts) has been captured in some beautiful photographs of this sun-filled day. It was a lovely event!  

A day in the countryside...
You can pause the photos: if you mouse over the slidescreen you´ll see a pause and play button. You can also enlarge when you click on the full screen button at the bottom right of the screen - but you have to move your mouse over it first.

Do you have an inkling?

Do you have an inkling? Well, Yarrow does - as tis pretty cat is called ... Inkling. Through the spyhole...

The family complete

Anjès´ arrival date in Australia has now been set! On 16 September 2011, at 19:30, she will arrive in Brisbane, via Singapore, to spend the next 6 months or so with us. Hurray! We are all mightily pleased and happy that it´s really going to happen. You will be so welcome Anjès! Your revamped room, still and aptly called ´Anjès´room´, will now finally be occupied by its ´rightful owner´. Oh, and someone will need to tell Promise that her owner is coming back!

Picnic

On the weekend we drove down to the Alentejo (meaning beyond -alem- the Tagus -the river), which is a beautiful area between Portugal and Spain, to the east. Stork country – storks are nesting everywhere (in trees, on roofs, on electricity pylons) and all over you can see these majestic birds swooping over the endless vineyards. During summer the Alantejo is yellow and dry; but during spring a lush green hue covers the fields and hills. With Niki´s friend Susanna (Susie) we drove down to a village called Mosteiros - Arronches where we met with a group of about 15 people who were there to commemorate the passing of a dear friend, colleague and father of theirs, Joaõ Neves, who died a year ago. Working for the national park in that area he had planned and prepared a number of beautiful walking tracks. We walked one of them, the Percurso Pedestre dos Mosteiros, and at the end gathered on the side of the river to have a Piquenique, where a most delicious spread of cakes, quiches, biscuits, breads, meats, cheeses, wines, beers and other drinks came out of coats, bags and boots of cars. A cute Golden Retriever called Riscas kept us company (Riscas means Stripes in Portuguese ... OK, the name was chosen by the youngest daughter of the family who insisted...).  There was also another dog called ... Chicco. Nothing like the ´real thing ´though ... Photos of the weekend to follow.

Packing

Lots of things are happening in preparation for Niki´s return to Australia. We can´t wait...! Eliseu, a friend of Niki´s, who also happens to be a real estate agent, is bringing potential tenants over so we can rent out the apartment. Maybe at some stage we´ll look into selling, but for now, and not until Niki´s visa application has been approved, we´re not thinking that far ahead. Some of the furniture will stay in the apartment; other things will go to the (as yet unfinished) house in Sarzedo for future use; and a selection of personal objects (such as books, ornaments, clothes and other special things) will be sent to Down Under. It´s all happening...  

The girls

Two or three times we´ve chatted with Yarrow and Tess this week.  Now it´s their turn, unfortunately, to experience what it is like to be on the other side of the spyhole ... But we manage to chat animatedly anyway, and soon we will all be reunited in the same time zone again! They´re both going strong (at school, at work and at home), but poor Yarrow is in a bit of a pickle because she has somewhat seriously hurt her knee at Circus school. We´re not sure whether she has strained or torn a ligament, but for now she moves about with crutches. Let´s hope it´s not as serious as it looked initially. Tess has now officially been hired by the Eltham pub as slave labour, and is enjoying her shifts and the earnings coming with that. Oh, and she celebrated her 6-month anniversary with Lachlan!

Apologia

Apologies, avid reader! A week has gone by since I´ve arrived on the Iberian Peninsula, and not a word has come your way. Shame on me, I say. Blame it on the jetlag, I´d say too... It seems as if, with the passing of time, each flight is more of an onslaught on the body and mind. A week after arrival I finally feel human again, can sleep normally again (without having to get up 6 times a night) and can function again like, well, silly old me. Back into the routine of writing, I spend my days sitting in the Marquise of my love´s house, penning away on our English Grammar for Teens for China while Niki does the same, teaches at the University and observes teachers who teach at or for her school. Spring has sprung here in Portugal, so the days are generally sunny. It takes time to get used to the city again, the concrete, the masses of people, the limited space, but being with my love helps endlessly! We often nip across the street for breakfast, lunch or dinner, when the mood takes us.

Peter...

I talked to my friend and music partner Peter today. For those who are in the know, Trix is doing as well as can be hoped - undergoing intensive treatment in a private clinic in Germany. Both are keeping their heads high   but it´s taxing and difficult. Despite all their worries and challenges Peter found some time to buy himself another instrument, which he´d of course never played before, and then managed to play within half an hour or so ... I look forward to a few musical meetings again with Peter at the end of April when we hope to finalize our third CD... Here´s Peter playing the theme of the Muppet Show on Skype...

Tour of Lisbon by Tess

I received a text message from Tess telling us that she was awarded 47 our of 50 for her recent presentation, A tour of Lisbon, during which she took her class on a tour of the city´s historical sites. Well-done, Tess!

To sleep, or not to sleep

Here we go, again. Woke up at 00:30, managed to get back to sleep again. Then woke up again and thought I saw some light in an early morning sky ... 04:15. Sigh ... getting quite sick of this jet-lag business, I must say ... In the meantime, my love is snoozing away ....

For those who have also suffered jet-lag, or those who don´t believe in it, read this and this.

Apparently, eating cherries helps ... check this ´apartment therapy´ out...

Fly, baby, fly

Writing this 35,000 feet above sea level, I am dancing on the clouds cloaking and draping the Siberian landscape, as if we are surfing waves of white light, towards an invisible shore – on the way to Portugal, to my love, on my way to Anjès, in Holland, but – there is always a but - away from Tess and Yarrow, in Australia.  Off again on the now oh so familiar to-ing and fro-ing between continents. I´ve seen, photographed, noted and drawn magnificent shapes and colours which will need to find their way to canvas – the contours of drops of water, leaves, roots and waves in tundra, frozen rivers, mountains and lakes. 

It´s been a challenging week or two, what with an almost total lack of Internet (hence radio silence on the blog) so Niki and I have had to resort to the good old medium of the telephone and text messages and´, even though we´ve had contact at least once daily, we didn´t actually physically ´see´ each other that much. We´ll both be so glad when this ´communication lark´, as my love called it at one stage, is behind us and we no longer have to be in two time-zones and speak to each other through impersonal social media.

This flight, from Tapei to London, is taking the longest route I´ve ever had a plane to Europe take: 15 hours... first backtracking northeast from Tapei, across the whole length of Japan, to then turn west and arch over Siberia. A beautiful day flight, though – even though I´ve had to challenge the authority of the cabin staff by keeping my window blind open while the other passengers ´rest´. Admittedly just one of these throws a lot of light into the cabin but, hey, this IS a day flight people, not a night flight.

I´ve left the farm in the capable hands of Darren, who lives in the Bails and will take care of the cats, and Red, the handyman who will do jobs around the place while I am away; and Chicco in the loving embrace of Tess, Yarrow, Mieke, John and Bryony.

Keys

Keys Bridge, between the villages of Federal and Clunes is a lovely swimming hole with exciting swings in trees. Tess, Yarrow, Chicco, Lochlan and myself trekked there Sunday afternoon, when it was Very, Very Hot! And very refreshing it was, indeed - and I managed to spend an hour ... reading!

She is back!

Miss Elliot is back in The House! She looks a little bit worse for wear, but quite contented to be back, meowing (ok, a little hoarsely) and purring. 

The fluids from the abscess caused infections on her legs, and hair loss, so the vet decided to boost her dignity (you know what cats are like ...) and shave her front legs and tummy. She´ll come good in time.

She´s on three (!) feeds a day at the moment, as she needs to regain weight and strength. A combination of dry and wet food, and some additional anti-biotics will hopefully get her back to where she was before this mysterious affliction set her back...

For a few days she´ll need to stay in Anjes´room so we can make sure she´s back to normal, in terms of feeding, drinking and toiletting, but then she can will be able to join her friends outside  (an avian prey) again. We´re all very happy she´s back in the fold.

A musical morning

On Saturday morning the living-room of our home was changed into a music studio - when my partner in business crime, Phil Pyne, set up his mobile studio. Tess and Yarrow were lending their voices to the Magic Adventure project, which my love and I have been working on. This morning Phil needed some lead vocals, harmonies, choruses and other supporting vocals for the songs we have written for the second level of this series which aims at 7-year-olds. We´ll soon hear what musical delights Phil and the girls have in store...

What´s in a name...?

Browsing this month´s National Geographic I came across this website, which allows you to find out where your surname occurs most. A fascinating insight into people movement. Not surprisingly my surname, Mol, occurs mostly in Europe - but what I had not expected that, apart from the Netherlands, the name is highly frequent in... Poland! Poland? Try it for your name, it´s fun! Josephs may find that their name occurs with the highest frequency in ... India! (as well as being used a lot in Wales, the US and Canada) And Witsels should seek for their namesakes especially n Holland, Hessen (Germany) and the French-speaking part of Belgium, Wallone.

Where Mols tend to grow roots...

Did you ....?

Today it´s only 14 days till my love and I will be reunited again!

Another trick

Tess and Yarrow, with one of their circus friends, did a performance last night at the Byron Entertainment Centre, where the Big Top circus lives. Great performance, girls! And cool make-up.  I´ve got a video on my phone, but I need to get it off ...

An update on Miss Elliot

I just spoke to the vet looking after Miss Elliot. There is some good news. We´re not out of the woods yet but she´s in there with a fighting chance. She was actually able to use her tongue this morning to groom herself! And she is eating dry food independently, which is a good sign. She´s still on a drip for fluids, but if she shows she can eat wet food and lap up water in the course of today, the catheter might go. So, all paws crossed for Ms Elliot and hope she gets through this difficult period.

Miss Elliot in the vet hospital

Miss Yarrow comforting Miss Elliot

A big box for a small Kittie

Evening update: Yarrow, Tess and I visited Miss Elliot at the Racecourse Veterinary Clinic in Ballina.

Anj ... YES!

This morning at breakfast Tess and Yarrow are expressing their joy and approval of the fact that ... Anjes has decided that she IS going to come to Australia, in August - initially for a period of 6 months. Isn´t that the best news! I had talked with her earlier, when she was still deliberating, about such decisions often  showing themselves in an instant, not unexpectedly but clearly and with conviction, and this is what happened. She was walking to the railway station yesterday morning and decided (not entirely on the spot, but after many talks with her friends and her mum) that, yes, she was going to take the opportunity! Wonderful, Anjes - we think it´s fabulous and we are so looking forward to having you in our midst! And we´ll all be here to make your stay a great experience! And who knows what life has in store for you, once you are here. We can´t plan for such things, so Carpe Diem: pluk de dag, seize the day, and enjoy it to the full.

Animale of the day

I met my friend Pedro, the Praying Mantis, this morning. He seemed to be moving aimlessly through the kitchen, a bit perturbed, or lost perhaps even. It´s rather fascinating to see one of these beautiful creatures turn their head decisively in your direction when they spot you (?), a blob (?), a temperature change (?). They are predatory, after all.. It´s funny how we look upon these creatures with fascination, when they belong to the same family as termites and cockroaches... They are definitely not crickets or grasshoppers. They most remind me of Star Trek´s species 4872...

Web

Whether or not the Internet is ´the biggest ever experiment in anarchy´, as a Mr Eric Schmidt once seems to have said, or ´a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a 'modem', can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo´, it´s been  a hot, very hot, day with endless and frustrating Internet problems, and long, long (and I mean ... LONG) phone conversations with friendly but oh so unhelpful  and either linguistically or technologically challenged Telstra techno people. 

And all I wanted to do was to install a new modem. That´s not asking much, is it? After all, The Lady had said: ´It´s better, faster, and has more coverage.´ Not. It seems to have no coverage at all.  It seems to have less coverage than a pole dancer in a seedy night club. (Not that I know anything about pole dancing. Or night clubs. Or seedy ones.) Anyway, won´t tire faithful readers with the boring details and the fact I lost at least five liters of  precious fluids due to excessive frustration-leveraged, erm, sweating.  

Were it not for the fact that I simply cannot be without Internet for my work, I would not have worried. But, I have the old system up and running again and will patiently await the coming of a Telstra Technician who Will No Doubt Sort It All Out. Suffice it to say that this was not how I had envisaged spending my warm, summery Sunday! 

Fortunately the day started and ended with wonderful  and calming chats with my love in Lisbon who is, likewise, buried - but in her case in her work. We are both REALLY looking forward to the time when we don´t need  slow, sluggish or sedentary Internet because we are permanently (!) in the same time zone. Also, at the end of the day Tess and Yarrow arrived back (thanks, Mieke for the Towel Of Wet Comfort  (or was it the Wet Towel of Comfort?) during what was, unfortunately, not to be the last phonecall of the day). 

As the American writer and humourist Dave Barry said: “While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting drivel on TV, we on the Internet are exchanging, freely and openly, the most uninhibited, intimate and, yes, shocking details about our "CONFIG.SYS" settings.” Oh, let´s get a life...

Yarrow & Tess @ Work

Yarrow started her first job today! She was working with / for our friend Peter Higgs, who has started a popcorn business, selling scrumptious popcorn from locally grown corn (in, wait for it, the nearby village of ... Corndale. Yurp.) He´s popping them in kettles which, apparently, is the ´Old´ way of doing things. Yarrow really enjoyed the opportunity. Peter set up his stall today at the Lismore Car Boot market - so every fortnight Yarrow will get the opportunity to earn a bit of cash (and save...). Tess, in the meantime, is on the lookout for a new job. Her work at the Eltham Pantry has sort of dwindled down (what with staff changes, cutbacks and bad weather) and she has been advised that if she can get another job to take it. Wonderful experiences for both gals!

Miss Elliot

Our lovely Miss Elliot (top left in photo) is in a bit of a pickle. The other night she came in, looking all bedraggled, dirty, ponging and unhappy. She was drooling and seemed to have difficulty eating and drinking. I imagined she´d been in a fight with another animale, perhaps, and decided to wait till the next morning to see, after she would have had a chance to clean herself up. Imagine my surprise,  when next morning she had not groomed herself at all, and was constantly sitting at the drinking bowl, inert and forlorn, frequently lapping water up with difficulty and spilling it all on the floor outside the bowl. She looked decidedly unhappy, poor thing. 

So, I decided veterinary attention was required, and called Yarrow (whose cat Miss Elliot is), and we trekked off to Willa,  our friend the vet,  in Ballina, who quickly diagnosed quite a serious condition, perhaps beyond remedy. We braced ourselves, uncomfortably recalling that last time we had a cat with a very serious (and expensive) condition, we agreed that in future we would not spend large sums of money to keep them alive. 

On first inspection, it looked as if Miss Elliot´s tongue was curled back against her esophagus, which would make it impossible for her to eat (swallow) or drink (lap up water). She was dehydrated and undernourished. Mind you, here is a cat who looked perfectly fine and fit as a fiddle until the day before. Just goes to show how quickly things can take a turn for the worst. The only ´unusual´ activity I could remember was that the day before she had slept on our bed all day, in exactly the same position, and that when I ´caught´ her in distress the night before she had been drooling. quite badly.  

A few hours later Willa had been able to ´put her under´ and take a closer look. She was quite confident that what had happened that Ms Elliot had had a pharyngeal abscess in her throat which had burst and had caused her tongue to get ´adhered´ to her pharynx.  The drooling must have been the abscess spilling out. Poor diddums.  Knowing how concerned cats are about personal hygiene, she must have been very aware of being unwell. 

Why the abscess was there, is anybody´s guess. Ms Elliot has been put on a drip to rehydrate and anti-biotics. If all goes well, she should be OK but we will know more by tomorrow. Her beautiful long hair has been shaved on her belly and inside legs, just to make her less conscious of her condition...

DD, Big Boy and ´Come on!´ say hi...

Just before dusk today I said hi to them horsies ... and they a special hi to Niki!

 

 

Mittens

Jumpered up...

Mitttened up...

I was happily talking to my loveliest of loves this morning,  as we do every day during our usually twice-daily cyber ritual. Sleep was slowly creeping up her eyelids in the shuttered Lisbon night, and then she showed me how cold it is there ... I mean: mittens, a jumper! It was raining quite voluptuously here today, ponds and rivulets forming all around and the pool topping itself up again, but cold it was not. Poor Niki!

Anniversary picture

The happy couple on 26 January 2011

Faithful readers of this blog will have noticed a change of the image heading these ramblings - this is my love and me at our 2-year anniversary dinner on 26 January... a lovely dinner at Byron Bay´s Balcony.

Valetine

Tomorrow is St Valentine´s Day, and in Days of Yonder, as witnessed by a few memorable lines from the Bard, this was perhaps not as innocent a day as it nowadays is - certainly anonnimity could not be maintained as a result of these lines:

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5

You can find an interesting article, with lots of historical background, about Valetine´s Day here.

Heartbeat

The CD which my friend Peter and I have been producing over the past three or for years is nearing completion. At the moment, though, things have come to a standstill as Peter and his lovely wife Trix are going to very taxing times. Hang in there, my dear friends. I just came across these photos, taken by Trix, of when Peter and I had another of our musical nights, and they bring back good memories to hold on to.

A quiet drink before an inspired recording session

A toast to Trix - still toasting, Trix - hang in there!

Home alone

Not wanting to whinge (...), but having dropped the girls off at Mieke and John´s, for the week and Niki (as I type) flying from the UK to Portugal, Home feels big and, erm, empty ...  Not that anybody is happy with the situation, as the photos with this post prove beyond doubt...

Not happy, Jan

It´s a hot evening tonight, but suddenly a dip in the pool doesn´t seem that attractive if it´s just me in there (oh, and the resident native frogs who, uncannily, seem to exactly know where they are heading ... my shoulder, or the skimmer box). 

Not happy, Jan either

When you read this, my love, you will be back on your other home ground for a while, but I´ll be sure to join you there soonest! (In order to lady-nap you - well, you are no longer a kid, after all, so I can´t kidnap you) back to our home here....

Tess, Yarrow and I (me, myself) are sending you lots of love and hugs; and others say hi, too. (For instance, I ran into Maxine the other day, who was on horseback galloping down Pearces Creek Hall road and sorry she had missed you to wish you a good trip.)

Parting is indeed sweet sorrow, as the Bard had it, because sorrowful though it is, it also by its nature implies reunion - and, as the clock to the right (top) indicates, reunion is imminent!

Oh, and I cannot find a photo of myself looking as silly as these three girls do / did...

Certainly not happy, Jan...

Best Practise

In good and thorough Niki fashion, Tess, Yarrow and I confronted The House on Saturday morning and cleaned and tidied from top to bottom and back. A thorough bathrooms cleaning; vacuuming and mopping all floors and general selecting, moving and throwing away of Stuff did the job! Homely shopping in Lismore ensued (well, after the NRMA had come and gone to put a new battery in the car, that is...) 

Early evening, Tess was picked up by Lochlan´s parents (and said Lochlan) to be taken out for an early Valentine´s dinner in a French restaurant nearby. Apparently, Lochlan´s parents were going to have dinner in the same restaurant but at a different table. How cute is that! Tess was very excited. Yarrow and I spent a pleasant evening having a scrumptious dinner of ´aardappelkoekjes´ with snowpeas and watching an excellent episode of Midsomer Murders

So now, sitting in bed, looking out over a misty valley on what promises to be a rainy day, I miss my love who has, in all likelihood, fallen into a jetlagged sleep on the sofa in Polebrook...

Going

Today I took my love to the airport, for the next stage in our journey. Niki is flying to Taipei as we speak, and then on to London, for a short visit to her parents. On Sunday she will then fly to Lisbon., to  start work at the school and the uni. immediately. 

It is, to say the least, curious, to be separate after such a long time - neither of us were very happy possums today. But we also know that it can´t be otherwise for now. In a few weeks we´ll be together again. My love - me Tess and Yarrow are sending our deepest of love to you. Bon Voyage, and find out about the Chinese sense of humour on the long flights. I know you have been looking for English joke books written by Chinese writers, but I doubt whether they exist...

Change

A few days down the week, and my love will travel back to Portugal to embark on her teaching at the Nova university. We´re not enjoying the prospect of this separation, brief though it may be (4 weeks), but we both realise that it has to be this way. I can´t be away too long from Tess and Yarrow; and Niki has to get back to her school, fulfill her contractual obligations at the university, and monitor her properties in Portugal. I will follow her soon but in the meantime we´ll familiarize ourselves again with the ways and whiles of Skype, email and telephones. Despite all of this, all is good, very good: after all, we´re healthy, together and happy!