Lisboa

Well, it is safe to say that the past five weeks have been absolutely mental. It has been unbelievably hectic for the both of us. Me trying to get to grips with working in a new school doing a job I have not done before (as a senior school English teacher) and Sonalee trying to cope with looking after four dogs whilst also trying to find us a new home that will accept said mutts.

And all of this whilst navigating the intricate ways of a Byzantium bureaucracy that would not be out of place in Gormenghast, a new city of 4 million people, a new culture, a new language that just sounds like Russian or Romanian and the absolute refusal of Luna to be placid.

Let us start at the beginning…

Sonalee has a Moroccan vaccination certificate that does not quite scan properly when held up to a reader. Officially, no one is allowed inside a bar or restaurant or, indeed, Portugal without their vaccination certificate. She was worried we would be stopped at the border by big police officers toting big guns and then be refused entry into Portugal whilst I sailed on merrily in the van to meet my contractual obligations at the school.

We were a bit stressed. In our fevered imaginations, Sonalee would be hitching back to Fuente Tojar and we would be living apart for another year until she could prove her vaccination was real. And this was after collecting our new Spanish residence visas on the way to Portugal, along with four dogs and one very very pissed off cat in his carrier, in the 40 degree heat of Cordoba.

Anyway, we spend five hours on what is possibly the most boring road in Christendom (It’s an old Roman road) from Cordoba to the border, the tension is rising as we approach the river that traditionally divides the two countries and we are greeted by…

Complete and utter indifference. There’s a tiny sign which says ‘Welcome to Portugal’. That’s it. Nothing else. You want anti-climax, you got it.

So then we made our way to our AirBnB on the other side of Lisbon on the other side of the biggest bridge that I have ever crossed, past legendary football grounds and that we were to stay in for four weeks as Sonalee searched for a place to rent for the remainder of the year.

It was a farm. In the suburbs of Lisbon. A huge place populated by a series of hippies who were astonishingly tolerant of us, four dogs and one pissed off cat. Great Wifi as well. It was brilliant. 20 minutes from work along the motorway where we witnessed at first hand the efforts of Portuguese drivers determined to win the award for biggest dickheads on the roads in Europe. True, they have not reached the Moroccan standards of idiotic driving but they’re giving it a real good go.

The farm is situated in an area that just reminds me of the phrase ‘faded seaside glamour’. There’s obviously a lot of money around there but it is old money that doesn’t want to work too hard to make even more. It made a great contrast to the rapaciousness of property development in the UK that we are always reading about and, indeed, of what we saw in Rabat.

So the farm has a stable, a henhouse and a sheepy place to keep sheep in but it is very much free-range. Basically, on any given day, the animals could be found wandering around the frankly ludicrously large grounds. Which presents a problem. Luna.

Luna has it in her head that wherever she is at any given point denotes land that she has herself conquered and that no other animal is allowed onto. It doesn’t matter if it is a farm, a street, a beach, a car park. It is her land and all other animals are thus banned from it. What this means in practical terms is that she barks like mad at all other creatures who then react in bemusement at this tiny thing challenging them. Several horses came over to investigate this yapping creature during our stay there just as I frantically picked her up and legged it to save her from being smacked aside. We went for a walk in the beautiful forest that surrounds Lisbon one Sunday to be met by a couple of huskies on long leads that she just bombed up to and yapped at. Her surprise when the owner let go of the leads was something to behold, as was the speed at which she legged it downhill as they chased this annoying brat of a creature.

Swiftly followed by me, of course, terrified that I would find her tiny body ripped into pieces by a pair of what looked like seriously intense hunting dogs. About a mile later, gasping for breath, I found the huskies with no blood marks around their mouths and then found Luna walking towards me about half a mile later without any concern whatsoever.

The forest, Sintra, is the only place so far that we have found that we can let Luna off lead. In Andalusia she is off lead and gets to run around each and every day. To see Luna run free is one of life’s great joys. Her look as she runs is one of such happiness and utter ecstasy. She is lucky that she can do that in Fuente Tojar. Here, well, we just can’t. We live in a major European city now and have to keep her close – as we do for all of them. Our Sundays in the forest are now called Luna Days and the one chance during the week that she can be who she was born to be.

Speaking of major European capitals, Lisbon has not disappointed at all. Sure, the cost of living here has been a real shock, the sheer size of it compared to what we have been accustomed to is still something we are processing but it really is a great place to spend a year and spend loads of money in – there is no way in Hell we will be saving any money whilst we are here.

A really weird set of abandoned civic entertainment buildings near the farm. I wish the photos could do justice to how eerie they are

I’ve been living in a mono-cultural village of 750 souls for over a year all by myself and now I find myself in a multi-cultural city of millions where everyone, and I mean everyone, seems to speak English. The wine is amazing. The price of the amazing wine is amazing. The number of Lidls is amazing. The food is amazing. The range of food is amazing. Did I mention the wine? It’s amazing! Lisbon is everything that you would want in a metropolitan centre of culture and commerce including some absolutely incredible beaches.

Yes, we are back on the Atlantic. Surfers and paddleboarders abound here. The local trains even have surfboard carriages. Some beaches are doggie beaches where you can let them off to annoy others and to poo everywhere. Nearly all have some kind of café or restaurant where you can spend even more money and ponder life over an ocean that is still being warmed by the Gulf Stream to bring T-shirt wearing climate each evening.

Sonalee has found us a place to live ten minutes walk from the beach, three minutes from the train station that connects us with the city centre and rented from an eccentric and lovely family of refugees from the African Portuguese colonial escapes of the 1970s. It is five minutes’ walk from a Mozambique restaurant which does amazing curry. It is a 20 minute drive to school where Sonalee drops me off So I can earn those vital crusts that keep us in the style that we are used to.

We are in an old neighbourhood that screams shabby chic but doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. It’s nice. The basement flat was unfurnished which necessitated hours and hours for Sonalee on Facebook Marketplace. We now have a full complement of furniture, including a sofa bed if you wish to stay, and have driven all over Lisbon meeting interesting people to buy the stuff from. We’ve also been to IKEA three times and the less said about that, the better.

Seriously, tell me IKEA stores weren’t designed by Beelzebub himself. Go on, convince me!

School is what it is. I’m coaching again, which I just love so much. I’m also playing again, really badly of course, during a staff only session once a week. Mark and Shanthini have been really great as I try to assimilate into the working life of a teacher again, as have many others. I do not enjoy getting up to go to work each morning. I suspect I am not alone in that.

Life has taken on a busy aspect that I am not sure we were totally prepared for. But I think we have embraced it as best we can. We have been out more in the past five weeks than we have in the past three months. We have moved our pack to their fifth home in three years, their fourth country in three years and their third continent. Our cat is on his fourth home in three months and is still with us, albeit in a really really foul mood.

We are taking on yet another language, yet another culture and yet another challenge and I think we are doing okay thus far. We have met some interesting people, Sonalee has taken up Yoga, she has celebrated her 52^nd birthday by getting absolutely wasted with some of my new colleagues and we have started to explore our new home just as we promised ourselves that we would.