house of happy

Start with a Pod

2012-01-16T02:14:00.000-08:00

It's sunny, warm, the air still and blue. Bizarre, how this makes people get up and start gardening. Even more bizarre, I find myself joining these people I once used to watch with a smirk... Look, I had no idea I'd get anywhere near a shovel and a bucket of glorified chicken poo mixed with old potato peel ('high quality compost'!) I'm in my good clothes. Good boots for crying out loud, brushed

Ross

2011-11-20T01:36:00.000-08:00

Ross was my brother's dog, a beautiful collie. Kind, strong, playful, protective, a big softie. Ross died last week of old age, they say. In his life, Rossfound Mihai and Cristina he was as small as a fox cub then, with a pointed nose and a coatwhite and gold and warm and richwith ripples of muscle underneathand deeper, a heart like a billowing saileager to carry us all across our oceans.In his

Inside the Shower, Inside the Rain

2011-11-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

The Shower Key word: outside. The shower is outside. It leans against a rock wall, on the 'bathroom' terrace – next to an old bath tub, a sink, the composting loo. 27 steps from yurt, 55 steps from alambique. The structure is bamboo, walls clad in planks, shower curtain for a door. Ample room inside, drainage to blue barrel and cherry tree next to the loo. The route from shower to alambique

Warehouse Golf

2011-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

I'm standing just inside a large warehouse full of building materials. There should be a man in green overalls here, to help navigate through the endless shelves of Stuff. No sign of him. Instead, more customers arrive and stand politely behind me. A green employee comes to the rescue when he notices the growing queue. He strides in and hollers CHICO, CHEEE-COOOW until the warehouse man appears,

Sonnet In-Sanity

2011-11-11T02:40:00.000-08:00

I started to write a story about showers (I say 'story' because I've become allergic to the word 'blog'). I remembered something: while in the shower, I had thought about a man who wrote all his letters in verse. So instead I wrote a sonnet. I'll write about showers later. And about the man who wrote in verse. Later.So now the sonnet, about a waitress watching people in a café.WAITRESS AWAITSI

There, but for the Grace

2011-11-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

In search of chocolate and bananas at Coca Hipermercado, we see Bruno the Builder. He walks with a limp, looks frail, two-days' growth of beard on a drawn face.'Bruno, hey! How's it going?''Mmh. Haven't been too well.' In place of his usual booming voice, a whisper. 'Oh…?'In true Portuguese style, a plethora of medical information follows, dramatic in content, meek in delivery.'I'm so sorry.'I'm

Lolita, 70

2011-11-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

First we started to wave at each other whenever I passed her in the car. Big smiles. Then I had a vague impression that she appeared at the side of the road when she knew I would be passing. Naturally, I began to stop for a moment to talk to her. I'd roll down the window, she'd lean in with a big smile. Everything about her denies the smile. She is dressed in mourning (for her husband, whom she

Nerve, Neutral

2011-10-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

'What's that man got?' Kira asks.'Back problems.' Conversation closed.'Something to do with his SPINE?' New word, new knowledge. Beams with pride.'Something like that.' Conversation concluded once again.'What? What?' Conversation re-opened.Sigh. Small silence. Sigh. 'You know how your spine is made up of vertebrae?''?...?''You know, those disc-like things, like beads on a string, that make up

The Curtain and the Sky

2011-10-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

An acquaintance pops by and is duly shown around the alambique – our little home. This usually takes about 28 seconds: stand in THE room, look up, look around, you're done. The more adventurous climb up to have a peek at our beds and bookcases (another 20 seconds max).Then we have the usual comments (ranging from 'oh how nice' to 'where's the loo') – and that concludes the tour. This lady had

The Pumpkin Plot and the Squash Squad

2011-10-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Harvest day at the quinta. The garden I watered all summer looks sad and spent. There are pumpkins in the brown leaves, a few dry beans, corn, some late tomatoes. Close by, horror: the pumpkins have deep cuts and grazes, one old courgette is chopped into bits and scattered to rot in the leaves. Gardening detectives arriving at the scene neeee-naaw neee-naaw. We find the crime weapon: a

How I Live Now

2011-10-13T04:37:00.000-07:00

The summer came and went and not a line, not a quip, not a rhyme. Not a blog. No spam have I added to other people's lives, no digital DNA of mine leaked into the worldwide web. Fine, you may say, so what do you want now? Read the title people (and by the way, it's the title of a wonderful book by Meg Rosoff, read that too if you've got a rainy day)! Things have changed and changed until 'how I

The WhatsthePoint Day

2011-06-05T14:37:00.000-07:00

So called because that's what it was, the kind of day when you just want to give up. There's no energy. Everything is just too sad. The future, too far away.'You look as if someone's died!' - from a forward acquaintance met in the market. In fact someone has, a kind and gentle soul vanished from the fabric of our family. The news arrived at dawn. I don't tell my friend, for both of our sakes,

The Day I Went Viral

2011-05-11T03:15:00.000-07:00

I'm looking at Nikita, he's looking at me. For a while, we don't see each other. Then he blinks and discovers I'm there. He says Hi, I say Hi. We're at the kitchen table, he's deep in his study of pure mathematics, I'm thinking of a good beginning for this blog (call it the Study of Pure Blab). I'm writing again after a long, long time and what a good time too: we traveled across borders and

Census 2011

2011-04-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

Monica's running very late, again. She dashes out the door to get Kira from her friend's house. At the gate, a pretty young thing, clutching reams of paper and struggling with the latch. Monica helps then tries to slip by, avoiding the fact that the woman is probably looking for her. She's too late to stop.She stops. What else can she do when a bunch of A4 forms and a sealed envelope are shoved

Old House, New House

2011-03-04T04:29:00.000-08:00

We moved to North Portugal almost three years ago, to an old farmhouse and a green shoulder of terraced land facing the sun. 'Let's renovate the old house' we said, in the first flurry of ideas. 'We'll move in it by winter.' People laughed.Two winters later, they're still laughing. 'Renovating is much harder / lengthy / more expensive than building from scratch'. If I had a penny every time I had

The Patient Patient

2011-02-05T05:01:00.001-08:00

Surprising news: 'The English Patient' will be re-published in Romania this spring. I translated it fourteen years ago. It took me months - slow, careful, lovely, low-paid work. Fitting words together, reciting aloud, cutting, changing, editing until a sort of music became apparent beyond each sentence. I longed for this languid rhythm, because I had found it in the original prose, and wanted to

The Privilege is Mine

2011-01-26T13:21:00.000-08:00

I saw the word 'privilege' spelled 'privaledge'. Beyond the initial shock (yes I am one of those people who gasp over a misplaced apostrophe. Sorry.) I thought 'wait a minute': 'privaledge' is a spelling crime, but a semantic golden nugget.Think about it: what is a 'privilege'? An advantage, a special right, a benefit granted to a person above the others... a PRIVATE LEDGE, right? A

Time after Time

2011-01-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

To: Inquiries and Claims Dept. Lost-Time Recovery Services Time after Time Division AllTime International Dear Sir / Madam,Client No: xxxxxxxI am writing in the hope that several significant portions of time belonging to me have been found and put into your temporary care. Let me specify:The Lost Time belongs to Last Week (10-16 January 2011), and amounts to 20

Out of a Cloud and Wanting Back

2011-01-07T14:38:00.001-08:00

I've started to notice something. Call me naive, but I had no idea this kind of stuff could be any fun to anyone.Friend 1: "So. Is the house ready yet? How long did you say you've been building it? Two years? Wow, and still not ready, huh? O dear. We built ours in four months. Two months really, I couldn't wait to have it all finished so I moved in early... you know how it is, don't you?..."

A Christmas Dinner

2011-01-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

Almost Christmas and – for the first time EVER – I go to a Christmas dinner. It's with a group I teach, as part of the Senior University of Monção. These are retired people attending a municipal programme of various classes: Current Events, Literature, Health Issues, IT, English, Aquafit, Manual Skills. Most are retired teachers who simply can't stay away from school. A bunch of really nice

The Straw House

2010-11-29T01:28:00.000-08:00

Subtitle: A) What they tell you and B) what you find out yourself, afterwards.A) Straw is a natural, renewable material. B) Being natural, naturally, it wants to keep growing. Green shoots may sprout out of your straw bales, the ones in the wall and the ones stored in the back garden, for later. Some will see this as an added bonus, with a good wheat crop harvested before the first coat of

Harry Potter and the Cursed Weekend

2010-11-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

Of course they wanted to go to the new Harry Potter. Such is the hype that they'll watch “the boy who lived” sleeping in the woods for three hours, if that's what the film will show them.Three things were in the way of a trip to the cinema: Kira's dance lesson (the local equivalent of Dumbledore's Army); the NATO summit in Lisbon, which has been to the police force what rain is to mushrooms:

Down the River

2010-11-16T07:17:00.001-08:00

Two old men go for their usual Sunday afternoon walk, to the Minho and back. They take their umbrellas and, between them, three small dogs. This is what they see:A foreign car rolls round the corner and stops at the old mill.Doors open and out spill: a drab woman in rubber boots, talking in fast question marks; two youngsters looking like futuristic creatures in black wetsuits, helmets and vests;

Hospital Halloween

2010-11-03T00:07:00.000-07:00

Summary: we spent Halloween weekend between health care institutions in Northern Portugal. Epilogue: two tricked, one treated.The longer version: Friday night. I'm beyond tired and look forward to CSI Miami and sleep, in whatever order. But before we settle down, one little thing: Nikita says his eye is sore, it certainly is red and swollen. I look , see nothing, but we're going to the Health

Prison Break

2010-10-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

Kira took herself home from school today, when she judged she wasn't going to get any more information or fun out of them. This, needless to say, was NOT when the school day ended, but during a random break. In other words, she ran away from school. 'You WHAT?' I fumed. 'You RAN AWAY from school?' 'I didn't run' (innocent eyes). 'I Took my Time'. '...xaarrrgglllaaghx.'. Silent, loaded stares,

The World I Give You

2010-09-16T01:10:00.000-07:00

Parents of Monção, pick up your pens and start writing. "Dear ..............(name of child/children),There's something you need to know. In the autumn of 2010, the town of Monção proceeded with the plans of turning the park around the old city walls into a car park. You may/may not remember this strip of land as we had it when you were growing up. Wide weathered alleys in a leafy park, where the

Orange Revolt

2010-07-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

World Cup Final: Spain, the country next door, is playing Holland. I like both, but there's no fun in impartiality. I want to go crazy, to soar on the wave of a demented crowd. For that, I must one: support Spain, two: go to Spain and three: Spain must win. We cross the bridge and stop in a small town close to the border. The town square is overcrowded and buzzing. There's a vast screen at one

Driving Past

2010-07-22T02:38:00.000-07:00

I forgot his name a long time ago and frankly I wouldn't mind forgetting the whole of him. My first driving instructor was built like a Bulgarian wrestler and had the kindness of a rabid dog. He wore dirty jeans that bulged at the knees and pockets; a fake leather jacket; shirts the colour of February mud; white trainers. He arrived unshaven and stinking of bad tobacco. He roared and shook with

Behind the Wall

2010-07-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

On July the 15th, my Facebook status says:'Monica is: home alone, and what timing: immediately had to decide the exact position (width and height and building material) of a wall... how often does that happen? Oh and guess what? Changed a few little things, namely the position, width, height and building material...'Here's the whole story. I am home alone. Everyone's gone to the beach, and this

Back to July

2010-07-13T00:58:00.000-07:00

I'm back and asking: how can a part-time teaching job take so much time and energy? Holidays started three weeks ago and I'm still getting up in the morning like someone recently returned from a war on the moon (yes I did say 'a war on the moon' because I couldn't decide which – a war? The moon? - would sound more crippling... and yes I know I'm just finding excuses. Finally yes, more than any of

Ode em Português

2010-05-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Oops. The rambling poem is back, this time - with Sandra's great help - in Portuguese. One of the many joys of living on a border is this constant waltz between languages (warning: a Spanish version might be posted before long, then there is always Galego.. oh and let's not forget my first language, Romanian)! ..much has been said about what's lost, not nearly enough about what's found, in

Ode aos Companheiros

2010-04-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

To: Bugui, Miriam, Paulo, Ruth, Cesar, Jorge, Ivan, Silvia, Juandra, Ruth, Dani, Noelia, Jamie, Sandra, Federico, Miriam, Cristina, Antonio, Donald, Eleanor, Tita, Elsa.One day in April,when the youngest plum tree - not much more than a stick with a handful of leavesof luminous green - explodes and vanishes into clouds of breathless blossom...You say 'I have this idea.'Oh, your ideas.Larks,

Herds of Hazelnuts (1)

2010-04-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

1. He might need to push the car half way to the Moon when the battery fails, but he never need worry about

Last Warning

2010-02-28T06:18:00.000-08:00

When we bought four chickens last August, it wasn't for their charm, company or meat. It was for the soon-to-appear-eggs. Seven months later we have four mini-raptors that eat non stop, follow us like abandoned dogs and dig up every inch of garden (if and when allowed). Oh and no eggs. Volunteers and family have endlessly occupied themselves building huts and enclosures for the chickens,

Rain

2010-02-25T03:34:00.000-08:00

It's been four months, four months of rain, rain, rain. It went from welcome to quaint, to boring, to annoying, and now to fully spectacular and scary. Is this the grand finale, I ask myself, all hope. In answer the wind howls and snaps trees, sends roof tiles into short awkward flights, drives rain up trouser legs and inside collars, plays on... The air buzzes and crackles and whirls in a

Bread is Back

2010-02-08T06:49:00.000-08:00