bevsmith

[bevsmith]

Rather try something you really want to do than regret not even trying

I have had many people tell me how ‘brave’ I am at many stages of my life and I have never understood how being labelled ‘brave’ had anything at all to do with whatever I happened to be doing at the time. Really, in my opinion being ‘brave’ involves doing something life threatening from which you could DIE. The things I have done have always been just things that I wanted to do. Things that involved me deciding that now was the time and seizing, or creating my own, opportunities to do them. Nothing life threatening about that.

I think the first time I made a stupid decision was when I turned 21 and announced at the party that I was going to start smoking. I acquired a cigarette from someone and proceeded to cough and splutter my way to being a smoker for the next 15 odd years. I wanted to try smoking. Simple as that.

Next I decided to move from Durban to Johannesburg, also at 21. Announced this decision, packed my suitcase and caught an overnight train up to Joburg with not an idea of where I was going to stay. On arriving in the big city I caught a taxi to Hillbrow, then the centre of all that was exciting and cool in the whole country, walked around till I found a residential hotel and booked in. One night was enough for me to decide this particular hotel was not for me, mostly because the plug in my room had live wires sticking out of the wall. So I wandered around the corner, found a much nicer looking residential hotel and moved in there. This hotel turned out to be a charming find. There were lots of young people in similar positions to myself and I made friends and stayed there happily for months.

The next big decision was at the end of my 20’s when I was in a great job with a company car, expense account, comfortable salary but I felt suffocated in the conventional corporate world. So I resigned, bought an old industrial sewing machine and started a clothing factory with the proceeds from my corporate pension. I had no idea how to use an industrial machine but was sure the future machinist that I would find could solve that problem as she would know how to use it. So I did just that. Maria was the most fantastic lady who came to work for me for the whole time I had the factory and became a close friend. I sold the factory when the Unions started organised strikes and a car bomb went off in the underground parking of a Union owned building which happened to be across the road from my factory premises. Those were scary times.

During my period of being a clothing factory owner I bought my first property. It was brought about by my flatmate of that time moving back to Durban from Joburg and leaving me to either pay the whole rent of our flat or find somewhere else to live. In browsing the newspaper for a flat (no Google in those days) I came across an advert of a studio flat for sale. I thought, why not buy instead of rent? After a meeting with my bank manager during which I asked for the money needed to pay a deposit for the flat as an overdraft, he agreed and I bought a flat. Those were the days.

I had for years wanted to move to Portugal and try living there but was older now with children and the luxury of just doing whatever I wanted had to be shelved in order to wait for the time to be right. The right time came around directly after the Covid lockdown in 2021. My daughter had already left to work and live in London and my son was about to leave to live and work in Denmark. So I sold my house and left for Portugal with the proceeds of everything I had ever owned in South Africa. I had a short list of properties I had found online and an estate agent waiting for me to arrive in Portugal to show me the listings. As a side note, the area I had chosen was in Central Portugal due to the affordability of the houses, the climate and the fact that there was a Lidl supermarket in the area. I had never been to Portugal so had no other personal criteria from which to make a decision. A South African friend who had been living in Austria for many years was a huge help in choosing a place to start my search for a new home. It was he who noticed from Google Earth the presence of a Lidl and suggested that I draw my search using that as the centre point. Such a random but sensible starting point that decision turned out to be.

My first house was in Penacova which is an incredibly beautiful large village on the side of a mountain overlooking the valley of the Mondego River. The most spectacular views are common here. My route to the local Lidl provided views over the surrounding mountains and was breathtaking. I stayed there very happily for 3 years and only recently moved to a more level house in a small town nearby. Reason being that the Penacova house was on four levels and stairs are not my friends any longer.

And that brings me to the title of this current essay. I had a comment from a friend saying how ‘brave’ I was to have moved houses. What is brave about moving house? Really? I don’t understand this at all. If the house you live in no longer suits your lifestyle or stage in life what else is there to do? Stay and suffer? Maybe being masochistic seems more acceptable to her version of living than just doing what is necessary. I was unreasonably annoyed at that comment. I freely admit my annoyance was unreasonable as I am certain she meant the comment to be semi-admiring. And that brought me to the realisation of how many people are too scared or cowed by social norms to just do whatever they really want to do. And that makes me sad.

I am really quite old now and have certainly done many stupid things in my life but there are only a few that I regret. They have all made me who I am today and I would have so many more regrets had I not at least tried to go out and give things a go. And that is the point I hope to have made here. If you really want to try something, and it won’t have a life-threatening effect on you or anyone else, then please just go and give it a try. Why not? If you fail you won’t die. You will have learnt something and will have fewer regrets in your old age.

Sometimes it is worth trying something which everyone but you thinks is stupid. Stay true to yourself.

[bevsmith]

Time Flies

It’s astonishing how fast linear time flies. Makes me wonder how liberating it would be to be able to experience non-linear time like the implied time in the movie Arrival. The ability to be in the past, present and future all at once, and to just be.

According to my very limited knowledge of linear time, and all things spiritual relating to the universe, we humans on Earth are living the 3rd dimension and experience linear time. This means that we have memories of the past, live in the present and have no idea what awaits us in the future. Should we ever manage to grow and evolve enough to make it into the 5th dimension it is my understanding that linear time will no longer apply. I then imagine life would be something like the movie Arrival with lots of gentle stringed instrumental uplifting music and vague wafting around whilst exuding love, understanding and no judging (uproarious laughter has to meet this statement as even TRYING to apply this image to the majority of the human race is hilarious!)

Anyway, it is still nice to dream…

[bevsmith]

Wuthering House

The experience of selling my current house and buying another house has been absolutely awful. Every aspect of this nightmare has been just horrible. Well possibly some aspects of selling my current house were pleasant in the beginning but then everything turned to shit.

Initially I had fantastic responses from viewers and prospective buyers about my current house. Really great. Which made me feel very positive about selling at a good price in order to buy the really cheap little house I had lined up. Well, by the time I was ready to make an offer on the cheap house, it had sold. Thereafter the real nightmare began.

By then I had only a few weeks to find and buy a house in my very limited price range with as few stairs as possible and as level as possible. May I add in here that I have been looking for just such a house in Central Portugal for the past approximately 5 years. It is not an easy thing to find. I was sent a link by a friend to a house which I had tried to view before I left South Africa, with no success as the agent never responded to any and all attempts to arrange this.

I tried harder this time to view the house as, now being in Portugal in person, I could phone as well as email. After around 10 days of trying to get a response from the agent, her Team leader contacted me as she had noticed my numerous calls and emails. I finally viewed the house.

It had truly enormous potential but was hard to see properly due to there being no electricity and the shutters being half drawn which made the house very dark. The biggest problem appeared to be a large leak in the main bedroom which had made the ceiling sag and collapse. Otherwise it has a wonderful view and is really well situated.

After getting early access to the house, that is before the transfer process had gone through, in order to start repairs, the problems started. Firstly getting electricity connected at the house turned out to be an impossible task. The house was registered with the electricity providers at a different address from it’s physical position. The technicians kept going to somewhere called Largo Cafe, which I presume is a cafe somewhere near the house. But not that near as I still have no idea where it is. After trying unsuccessfully to get it connected for around a month, I asked the agent to contact the seller to get assistance from them. This was due to the fact that they MUST have known where and how this house had previously been connected to electricity but had chosen to say nothing about this knowledge to me, the soon to be new owner.

The second disaster was trying to get water connected to the house. I had been told various different stories as to why there was no water meter at the house, all of which turned out to be complete fabrications if not outright lies. It turned out that the house had NEVER been connected to the main supply of water at any stage. It had always either used the water from the well on the property or been connected to the owners house which is directly next to the house.

As a matter of interest here are the stories I was told about the lack of a water meter :

1. The tenants at the house STOLE the water meter when they moved out. Let it be known that it is obvious that this house has been uninhabited for at least 5 years. And what would you do with a water meter that belongs to the company who supplies the water anyway??

2. The road was widened and the water meter was taken away during this construction.

3. The wall housing the water meter was knocked down and had to be rebuilt. Clearly rebuilt with out the water meter?

4. There used to be a kitchen at the back of the house which was knocked down and the water meter was removed. This is the strangest of all the stories as there is no evidence of there ever being a kitchen in the alledged area.

Anyway because of all of this deliberate non-disclosure by the sellers, it took me two months to get both electricity and water connected to the house. Two months in which I lost time that could have been used to have the house repaired. That is a long time to lose.

I won’t even go into why it was so hard to get water connected but that was also caused by the sellers non-disclosure about the house never having been connected in the past. It wasn’t as simple as having the water turned on. It was a whole new connection at an address which the water supplier had never know existed before. I have a theory about the address of this house as well.

The house is directly next door to the previous owners house and is an old house, probably built before formal addresses were used in the area. The owners house is new. I don’t think this old house ever had a formal address as it was lumped with the owners house as a kind of annex. I think this because the owners house is No 33 and the house the other side of my house is No 31. My house is No 63. I think it was only registered by the previous owners when they battled to sell it due to it’s not being registered as a separate dwelling. When I viewed the house I think it had only recently been registered as a free standing house. Well that is my theory anyway. More non-disclosure on the part of the not very nice previous owners who are soon to be my neighbours.

The one silver lining in this whole horrendous experience is that during the course of the sale the previous owners said that they would be responsible for erecting a fence or wall to separate the gardens of the two houses, which had no separation when I first viewed the house. I was sceptical as to exactly what kind of structure they would build as the levels of trust between us had dwindled to almost nothing at the stage of transfer, when there was still nothing separating the houses.

The good news is that they stepped up and have built what I can best describe as the Berlin wall. It has deep foundations and is built of proper grey building blocks and plaster, is probably 8 feet high and goes the entire way from the boundary at the road to the other side of the garden. It is a thing of beauty. I don’t have to interact with my neighbours at all. I have christened their side East Berlin and my side is West Berlin.

When I first saw photos of the house 5 years ago it reminded me of Wuthering Heights as it had something of the feeling I felt the book had about it. How I felt that about it from the photos I will never know as they didn’t show where it was situated at all. It is in fact on a hill overlooking a vast valley with mountains in the distance and still strongly reminds me of a windswept house facing the world spread out before it. So for better or for worse I am due to move into this Wuthering house next Friday.

It is, of course, not entirely finished but will be liveable. I have also completely run out of funds to repair the house and am having to make innovative decisions to cut costs as I go along but my next home it will be.

Wuthering and I will face the wind together and weather the storms of life.

[bevsmith]

In a weird place

I am in the process, well actually past the process, as the deed is done, but the process was selling my house and buying another one. The problem is that the other house has turned out to require far more repairs and work than I expected and the very real possibility of my not having enough money to fix the house is terrifying and imminent. So the dilemma. What to do?

The other thing is this is the first time in my long life that I find myself physically unable to do the some of the work required to repair the house. I am just too old now. It is really humbling and very frustrating. Having to rely on other stronger younger people (who I have to pay!) is weird.

I have spent the morning Googling where to buy plastic roof sheeting and planned to buy some, go to the house and begin repairs on the roof, which is leaking BADLY, right now. And there the problem of living in an unfamiliar country comes back to bite you in the ass. I don’t know exactly where to buy plastic roof lining and in Googling the terminology is unfamiliar. For example, if you Google ‘plastic roof lining’ an assortment of plastic roof SHEETING appears. I am, or course, using Google Translate so the literal meaning of words is subject to the latest whim of the resident AI.

So I am drinking coffee in my dressing gown feeling frustrated and a bit helpless.

This immobility won’t last, thank god, as something will come up and the resurrection of the leaking falling down house will take place in the end. I really do trust in my angels. Sometimes it is hard though. This is just one of those times.

I do have a plan for the roof. Having it professionally repaired is off the table as I don’t have the money. However, making a plan is what us South Africans are really good at and I have worked out a plan that should solve the leaking problem in the short term. Not a permanent fix but good enough to last till the dry summer season when the plan is to wrap the leaking areas in some sticky roof covering. This application requires a completely dry roof though so waiting till Summer is essential. It is currently Winter and the rainy season.

Thank god for wine and coffee.

[bevsmith]

Moving House

They say moving houses is one of life’s traumas right up there with Divorce, Death etc. Well I am not sure it rates as high as dealing with Divorce and the death of a loved one but it is certainly not easy. The first difficult thing is to actually find a house to buy to replace the one you live in and, of course, that means there are reasons for you to have decided to sell and move in the first place. My reason this time is that my current house is on 4 levels and halfway up a mountain. That means lots and lots of stairs. I no longer have the ability to leap around like a gazelle and stairs are no longer my friends, hence the decision to move to a more level house.

Firstly, finding a house with fewer levels has been a real challenge as the area I live in is a hilly one. Gorgeous and filled with mountains and hills covered with green forests but trees don’t mind growing on steep mountains. Old ladies do mind living on steep mountains. The views are spectacular though.

Luckily I have found a house on a hill, not a mountain, so only slightly angled which has the added benefit of providing a beautiful view across a huge plain with mountains in the distance. Of course it needs lots of work to be liveable but somehow I prefer that to moving into someone else’s vision of comfort. Especially kitchens. There is something slightly distasteful about moving into someone else’s kitchen. Unpacking all your pots and pans into their cupboards. I know it may sound strange but it is the one room I prefer to inherit bare of the previous occupant’s personality. And I really am not a fan of a plethora of built-in cupboards. Being surrounded by all these cupboards just waiting to be filled with mostly junk. And the cupboards are so often ‘beige’. Just so beige. No offence to the colour beige but really? So bland.

Another quirk I have is trying to retain something of the feel of the house I inherit. Well not inherit in the sense that someone died and gave it to me. I mean the way you inherit weird tiles with a border of hibiscus flowers along the top row and they seem to fit the space. So I leave them and incorporate them into my new kitchen. It feels as though I am showing respect to the history of the house. None of this gutting and remodelling for me. That’s seems very disrespectful.

Since living in a house whose kitchen contained just one tiny cupboard under a sink and nothing else, I have discovered the freedom of a flexible kitchen. The freedom to re-arrange my kitchen when a new appliance is bought. Or just re-arrange to have a change. There doesn’t have to be a reason. So I currently have a collection of tables, a small free standing cupboard, a plate rack thing (actually really great and beautiful to look at) which hangs on the wall and that’s about it. By the way, the plate rack thing was a necessity as I had nowhere to store plates due to the sparse kitchen. So I found a picture of what I wanted, showed it to my carpenter neighbour who made this beautiful wall plate thing and a space problem became a feature.

My current house has a really small kitchen and the new one a large kitchen / dining room so the options are now very exciting. Currently I only have a summer dining room as it is on the verandah, which means basically outside. In winter eating outside in 1 degree is not really an option. So I look forward to winter dinner parties now. Which brings me back to my collection of tables. I seem to have a thing about tables. My dining tables were found on Facebook Marketplace and consist of 3 square restaurant tables with 8 chairs bought for the princely sum of €50 for the lot. Apparently the restaurant closed down and these were the remains of it’s furnishings. They are solid wood and very sturdy. I just love them.

Well, I am only scheduled to move in around 2 months so I will be back with more moving moans and plans soon.

[bevsmith]

I miss my old life...

Most of the time I am happy in my new life in Europe. It is safe, everything works and I actually feel valued as a member of this society. As much as I miss so much of my old life, the one thing I can’t miss is the fact that I was not valued as a person in my old life for very many reasons, most of which I can no longer talk about publicly due to the strange woke rules of current society in which you seem not to be permitted to have personal opinions or viewpoints. But that is another subject.

What I want to talk about now are the things I miss of my old life.

I miss my actual house that I sold when I left. The fact that it was a proper A Frame house and I have been intrigued and obsessed with A Frames for most of my life. When I found the house, bought it and moved in, I couldn’t actually believe that I owned an A Frame and lived in one. It felt magical. The steepness of the roof/walls and unusual shape of the rooms. The fact that when it rained really hard you could hardly hear the rain as the angle of the roof was so steep that it glanced off the tiles and ran down straight into the ground.

The fact that I had my own swimming pool was also a dream that became real in that house. A really big proper swimming pool that was mine. Wow. Then it became infested with frogs and strings of frog-spawn and the dream became something of a nightmare reality but the initial euphoria is still clear in my mind. Dreams are fantastic but take hard work to maintain when you are lucky enough for them to come true.

Underneath this magical A Frame were two cottages which I rented out and this provided the necessary financial cushion for me to be able to live as a full-time Artist and Art teacher. Finding this house was such a blessing in so many ways.

The house is also opposite a green area forest which meant that there are lots of birds in the area. A pair of Fish Eagles lived close by and were often to be seen soaring high over the neighbourhood crying their unmistakeable cry whilst hunting for food. A Kingfisher had babies somewhere nearby and they were always around in the trees in my garden. Sunbirds, sparrows and weavers in abundance. And of course Hadidahs. Can’t leave them out because, as noisy and messy as they are, they are a part of Durban and South African life.

I don’t miss the troupe of monkeys. Not at all. They swept through the suburbs daily on the hunt for anything edible. Open windows were an invitation for the troupe to boldly enter your house and raid the kitchen, leaving behind an enormous mess. I kept a hose on my sundeck to spray the troupe with water to keep them away from my house. They didn’t like getting sprayed with water at all and my labrador dogs did their bit by galloping all over the property trying to catch a monkey. It was hilarious. They had absolutely no chance at all but it was great exercise and fun for them. The monkeys watched their frantic jumps and sprints from the safety of the trees.

I miss meeting friends whom I have known for most of my life for coffee and breakfast. This is possible when you live in the same country. Not so much when you don’t. It is wonderful to meet new people from different countries with different backgrounds and cultures but there is something comforting about being with people who know everything there is to know about you. People who are like comfortable warm old jerseys that you want to wrap around yourself and just be with. That is what I miss the most.

The comfort of old friends.

[bevsmith]

End of Winter is here

Well, I have survived my second Winter in a house in Europe and live to thrive in the coming Summer of central Portugal which is wondrously hot and dry and just lovely. I will never understand how people get warm in the European winter by just putting on layers of clothing. How does that work? If I am cold, and I mean bone deep cold that I have never experienced before in my previous little warm South African life, how does wearing more clothes warm you up? All that happens to me is that I remain bone deep cold with lots of clothes on top of the bone deep cold. I require artificial heating to warm me up, ie. a scalding hot shower, hot water bottle, heaters of various means (electric, gas, wood, anything hot). Without artificial means of heating me up I would die. Just die of cold.

Actually one really important lesson I learnt this winter was the importance of eating in winter. Through hard experience I found that a light meal when you are cold and your surroundings are cold does not work. No amount of hot showers, heating, etc. will work in this instance. Your body needs fuel from the inside to burn and warm you up. It seems I really am learning how to survive in the North.

I recently found the first person I have ever met who is like me. She is from Canada, strangely, as that is a seriously cold country to live in. That said, she struggles with the cold as I do. Nothing will do but some artificial heat to warm up.

But on a positive note, I lived through winter whilst being on a steep learning curve about lighting fires, keeping them stoked, getting the right level of red hot burning coals without wastefully burning up the wood too fast. This is a serious business. Knowing how to keep a fire burning constantly at just the right temperature. Adding the right amount of logs at the right time to maintain the optimum temperature. Not an easy task. But I surmounted this obstacle and have come out the other side of winter as a fire stoker of note and some experience. Still a comparative novice but on a learning curve.

The thing is that, in my opinion, it is a relatively easy thing to get cool when it is hot. You wet your head, spray a little water on your arms and sit in the shade with a breeze, natural or electric fan. Aircon is not even necessary (be kind to the planet people). Or jump in the swimming pool and wander around with a towel. But getting warm is really hard work. It involves acquiring wood, carrying said wood up to wherever your fireplace/wood burner is, lighting said wood, keeping it going through the cold, cleaning out the fireplace/wood burner the next day and repeating the procedure each day during the whole cold winter. Wow!

The thought of the warm summer sun on my skin keeps me going...

[bevsmith]

Life after an exhibition

I was tempted to type ‘Life after a FAILED exhibition’ but did a bit of self censoring to distance myself from all the loud woke whining that is such a ridiculous part of life these days. It was only a FAIL due to there being no sales of paintings. Receipt of the actual work was good. Just no-one bought anything. So you decide on the failed part of the event. I am still of a mind that it was a fail but...

it has been a few months now and I am finally getting past the absence of wanting to paint. I just couldn’t face picking up a paintbrush and creating more STUFF that probably wouldn’t ever grace some stranger’s wall. I know I should have got past this disappointment much faster but it was hard. Coming to terms with any kind of reaction to something as personal as a selection of paintings that you choose to expose to the public at large is hard. Even a small section of the public at large.

Anyway I am back. About to start a new painting and embarking on a marketing campaign to encourage new Art students and to continue with my creative life in the marvelous land of Portugal.

[bevsmith]

Two and a bit years since leaving the old country

It is just over 2 years since I left South Africa and how my emotions towards that country have changed. The raw anger has been dispersed by daily life in a place where I feel safe. It is still quite a novel emotion. When you have lived for about 15 years being hyper aware of everyone and everything around you in order to immediately take action to protect yourself, it takes time to adjust to not having to do that. In fact not having to give a single thought to danger and protecting yourself. You are much more likely to have someone smile and greet you in my new life than have them attack you.

Two years ago I felt desperately relieved to have gotten out in time. Anger at having my belongings destroyed, resentment that I actually had to leave and a need to distance myself from everything South African. With time that has changed. I now embrace being South African, although with the understanding that the country I grew up in and have such fond memories of doesn’t exist any longer. I am now a human without a country. Moving countries and starting a life somewhere else is not easy.

It is a natural human need to want to belong somewhere but as a migratory human that doesn’t always work. I am surrounded by wonderful, friendly, warm people in Portugal who invite me to festivals and events that take place in the small town I live in and make me feel very welcome. But I don’t feel any sense of belonging as the culture and traditions are not familiar to me. They are strange and foreign. Interesting and mostly wonderful but not familiar. There are a lot of us migratory South Africans around the world.

I have a lot of SA friends now living in England who all feel a similar sense of not quite fitting in so over Easter this year we started a new annual tradition. On Easter Sunday we held a virtual braai during which we shared videos, pictures and chats of our separate Easter braai’s. All of us in different countries and connected only by our shared longing for the familiar. It was a spectacular success and one which we plan to repeat often. Nothing can quite replace the feeling of connecting with an old friend with shared memories and a similar background. Silly jokes are immediately understood and require no explanation.

New friends are great but are sometimes friends by proximity. Forgive how cruel that sounds but it is sometimes the truth. Of course I have met wonderful people here with whom I would be friends wherever I was, but others are by proximity. And that is also just fine. Old friends are sometimes friends for exactly that reason also. You have known one another for so long that it is not worth changing anything.

But then there are the special wonderful old friends. You know who you are and will always be treasured in my heart even though we mostly have to interact virtually now...

[bevsmith]

Being an Artist

It is really hard to be an artist. To be responsible for your own earnings with which you buy food, pay rent or utilities and generally support yourself. By yourself. It is hard.

Sometimes the mountain seems steeper than other times.

I held an exhibition a month or two ago which was the first formal exhibition, in a proper gallery, that I have ever held. I have had little exhibitions from my studio in South Africa where mostly friends came and wandered around, being supportive. I did make a few sales during these little soirees though. So this mainline exhibition was a big deal for me and also a first exposure in Europe. Well, whilst the reception of my work was really good with lots of positive feedback, there were no sales. Not even one.

And now I am at a bit of a loss. Where do I go from here? I have no desire or motivation to paint as I have a studio FULL of paintings brought back from the exhibition. So marketing for more students and teaching Art seems to be the way to go.

And I watch my bank balance go down...

In a strange country...

It is hard being an artist.

[bevsmith]

Status update by bevbam

[bevsmith]

Green Hills of Natal small by bevbam

[bevsmith]

Too Much Time on my Hands

One of the joys of growing older and no longer having to work is supposed to be having more time to do whatever you want. Well, I have found that this is both a blessing and a burden. It is fabulous to have time to decide that you are going to do each day, but the other side is that you feel somewhat left by the roadside when all the younger, still employed people living around you, are busy going to work, looking forward to the weekend and rushing to get things done when they get home from work. Whilst you have the luxury of taking your time doing whatever takes your fancy, the downside is that it can make you feel left out.

I feel that I am watching other people’s lives from the outside these days. My kids have busy lives working every day and doing what young people do in their leisure time whilst I amble along on the sidelines. Half of the time I love it and treasure the fact that I am able to live in a fantastic country where I can take time to appreciate the beauty of my surroundings and count my blessings. The other half of the time I feel a bit adrift. As though my anchor has come loose. I don’t have a certain direction in which to travel. My ship is not in a current any longer, it is drifting wherever the tide takes it and blown about by stray breezes. It is a strange feeling after spending a lifetime in a current always working towards goals.

This feeling of drifting is causing me to try things I have never thought of doing before. Like gardening. Well, I say “gardening” meaning that I potter around planting various things in recycled hanging plastic bottles that are within easy reach of my house. Grubbing around in the soil with worms and insects will never be my thing. I may be on the older side of life but I still find most insects scary and choose to have as little to do with them as possible. I have never understood why you are expected to stop being scared of insects just because you have grown up. Why? What happens to take away the fear? I understand pretending to be brave and unafraid in front of your children in order to attempt to provide an example of mature adult behaviour but once they have left the nest why keep up the pretense? Because pretense is all it ever is. So ”gardening” is all I am ever going to be doing.

[bevsmith]

Day Drinking

A few words of advice to anyone thinking of, or in the process of, moving countries and who finds themselves living in an idyllic place knowing almost no-one and surrounded by lovely people who speak a different language which you find really hard to master. The thing to realise early on is that Day Drinking is the answer.

Especially when one of those public holiday long weekends rolls around and all the lovely people around have family & friends visiting and you can hear kids screaming, adults shouting (I am certainly not suggesting that having compulsory long weekend family lunches is a goal to aspire to – that may actually be one of the perks of moving countries) and you wonder what you are going to do over the 3 days holiday. Well, this is where my advice comes in.

Whenever you reach a stage during the first or second day of the long weekend when you think what should I do now? Immediately head for the fridge and grab your drink of choice. Mine is white wine (which, luckily, is cheap and plentiful in this wonderful country that I find myself in).

Proceed to sip delicately on your drink of choice for as long or short a time as feels right.

This is the crucial part of my advice – there must be no guilt involved at all. The object of the Day Drinking is to make you feel happy and loved – loved by yourself mostly. It is an activity which should make you feel mellow, relaxed and at peace with the world. It is the exact time to indulge yourself. Free yourself of all the guilt and stupid restraints that society has burdened us with about drinking during the day and just go for it. What else is there to do? Also who cares what you do? You are actually free to do whatever you want, probably for the very first time in your whole life.

There are no limits.

Invariably I find that after 2 or 3 beverages I fall asleep on the couch and wake up an hour or so later feeling wonderfully relaxed and rested – sometimes starving (which of course means that you now need to head for the kitchen and find something delicious to eat and that takes time which is sort of the purpose of my advice on how to navigate a long weekend in a foreign country alone).

So just DO IT.

[bevsmith]

Almost a year now...

It is almost a year that I have been living in my little house in Portugal and things are starting to renew. Like my car insurance and licence. Having to pay these renewals makes my life here seem more real somehow. Just going through the process of making the annual payment, finding a cheaper electricity supplier and doing all the little routine things that everyone does to live, makes me feel a part of Portugal now.

This morning I accidentally tripped the electricity supply to my house, thought it was an outage in the area then discovered that it was only my house that was powerless. After spending an hour on the phone (well my neighbour’s son spent an hour on my behalf, speaking Portuguese to the helpdesk personnel) I discovered that the fault was with my attempting to plug my US electricity transformer in so that I could start using my US rice cooker again. It tripped the whole house. This had never happened before.

The thing is that these little mishaps need to happen in order for us to learn what to do when they happen. Each house, flat or country has it’s own characteristics as to how these things are handled. In this case the main trip box is situated high up on the wall and I had been told never to touch it as it was secured with a wire that you are not supposed to tamper with. What I was never told was that there is a master trip switch on it which turns around when tripped and which needs to be turned back to get the power back on.

So now I am a permanent Portugal resident and KNOW how to check whether I have tripped the power or whether it is a supplier problem. Such a feeling of belonging.

I feel quite smug actually.

[bevsmith]

Back again...

The human heart is a strange thing. I think there should be a stronger link between emotion and intellect. Really. To stop us silly humans repeating the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Well that is exactly what this silly human does (me).

My heart fixates on someone and won’t let go. No matter how compelling the intellectual argument is to do this. It just hangs on and lives in hopes. Such a silly heart.

And then the same catastrophe builds and waits for the opportunity to happen again.

If my heart had a brain it wouldn’t do this...

And I can’t really say that I even want this fixation to become reality. Not categorically. Not even close. The fantasy is intriguing and even wonderful but the reality would be far different. And I absolutely can’t say I would really want that.

But my heart clings on to this silly fantasy.

And then there is the age issue. It is assumed that as one gets older the yearning for love and affection fades. But it doesn’t. One’s body may be chronologically ancient but one’s emotions stay the same. There is the same yearning for love. A meeting of two souls with a bond. A special connection with another who accepts and values us as we are. This is of course a fantasy also but age doesn’t fade this yearning in the slightest. It abides. Being bound in a human body doesn’t constrain the soul from wanting what it knows exists. But not here. Not on this plane.

Sometimes it is hard to live here. Achingly beautiful and filled with joy and sadness but hard.

Oh well, such is life.

[bevsmith]

Coming up to 8 months in Portugal

I arrived in Portugal almost 8 months ago now and have been living in my house here for that amount of time. For the most part I am deliriously happy and delighted to be here. It is a spectacularly beautiful place and I have been made to feel very welcome by the local people. But there always comes a time when you feel like a stranger in a strange place.

Now is the first time that I have felt that way.

Probably because I have been relying heavily on my old friends from South Africa and living from phone call to phone call for my social interaction. And probably also because I upset one of my old friends the other day and she is not happy with me currently. I feel so bad. But not because of what I said – mostly because I shouldn’t have said it. Just kept it to myself. Shit...

But what is done is done.

So here we are.

Also a HUGE spider appeared on my bedroom ceiling this morning and I have been told that there are huge spiders which appear in Portuguese houses when it gets cold and that they are harmless and should be left alone. BUT sitting on my bed watching this HUGE creature start moving towards my clothes was something I couldn’t leave alone. So the spider is deceased and I also feel bad about that. Relieved but bad.

So that is two counts of bad behaviour.

And it is also starting to get really cold. I don’t cope well with cold. All those clothes that you have to wear. Just layers and layers until you feel like a sausage in a casing. Exhausting to get dressed in the morning.

But enough negativity.

I live in the most spectacular place. My house overlooks a huge river which is currently flowing so strongly that the pedestrian bridge that I face is in danger of being washed away by the current. Every morning there is mist rising from the surrounding forests and drifting around the valley. Just so beautiful. When the wind blows from a certain direction I can hear the trees sighing. They bend and sway in the wind and speak to each other. Also they are evergreen so remain bright green throughout the year. Endless hills and mountains covered in green forest are to be found in Central Portugal. Just gorgeous.

Sometimes Rachel (my English friend who lives nearby) and I just drive around marvelling at the countryside. We pick a direction and just drive. The views and countryside are breathtaking from any direction you choose. Incredible. And safe. After enduring what South Africa has become and losing the freedom to do anything like driving randomly around that country, it is liberating to be able to do that here in Portugal.

Thank you Portugal for being the refuge that I needed so badly. Just thank you.