Yellow Alert!

I think I jinxed it. The weather I mean. After my last post on Wednesday about the wind and rain, I heard yesterday afternoon that Portugal's meteorological institute had issued a Yellow Alert over the entire length and breadth of Portugal with strong winds and rain to be expected. I didn't quite believe it at the time, since yesterday morning was quite overcast and obviously threatening to rain, by lunchtime the clouds had started to drift away and the sun seemed to be making an appearance. The Portugal News was very clear about it though, forecasting rain from Thursday evening through on to midnight on Friday and (as the picture shows) continuing on into next week. The north would take the brunt of it but everyone should expect stormy weather.

Well, they didn't disappoint. I woke up this morning to thunder and lightning. Our kids were initially oblivious to it all, until prompted to look outside. Our daughter was in the bathroom when a particularly bright flash of lightning lit up the frosted window and she asked if we could count and work out how far away the storm was. There was an urgency about our house this morning, as we dug out raincoats and umbrellas, and talked about how we must leave for work and school a little earlier than we normally would do. And a good job that we did too! The roads were slippy from the rain washing a summer's worth of engine oil onto the surface. In places it was like ice and I could do nothing to stop the wheels from spinning a little on the entrance to one of the busier roundabouts near the motorway. Thankfully, and despite there being an obvious increase in the amount of traffic on the roads, people were tending to drive with great consideration for the conditions and a little more slowly and carefully than usual.

From the forecast it looks like that the end of summer, is as I suspected, here. If we're lucky we might just get one more little blast of left-over summer sunshine, but I doubt it. Even people I know in the Algarve and southern Spain are saying that summer is over and the rain has come. Besides, a little (slightly twisted) part of me wants the weather to get worse, just so that I can find out what colour alert comes after yellow!

By 'Eck, It's Blowy!

I say, it's turned out rather windy of late. Well, it was last week anyway. It's calmed down somewhat this week, but last week it was mighty blowy. The Portuguese weather, to be fair, has had it's ups and downs this summer. In Spring the general consensus was that it was going to be the coldest summer Portugal had ever seen. Back in June a fellow blogger that I follow posted an article about the Portuguese mid-afternoon wind, or "Wind O'clock" as they called it, which gave an excellent snapshot and a colourful insight into Portuguese weather. When I was camping with my family it was mostly cloudy, but then a couple of weeks afterwards the sun was out and it seemed like every day was a beach day. And then this last week the wind has really got up. One morning, I think it was last Tuesday, I woke up and opened the shutter doors to reveal that all the lovely clean clothes that had been hung on our plastic white horse, and that I had neglected to bring inside overnight, had been strewn far and wide across the cobbles of our garden. Yup, last week it was windy.

The summer in England on the other hand has been remarkably good, or so I hear. If I'm completely honest though, I don't really think about the weather in England that much any more. I don't go out of my way to avoid the weather forecast for England or anything like that, but I don't really make a point of waiting around after the news and watching it either. It's not like I don't care about it, but I sort of get an accurate enough picture of the English weather from people posting about it on their Facebook statuses! Oh, yes, us English just love talking about the weather.

But the weather here is not always nice. I know that many people (especially in England?) think of Portugal as being perpetually sunny and hot, but it simply isn't like that. That morning last week, when I was outside picking up the clothes from off the floor, it was cold. Windy and cold. Okay, so it was seven in the morning, but it felt cold. I know I mustn't grumble really, but I think I've become acclimatised to the Portuguese weather now. Well, at least partly. And I know that Winter is coming. The clues are there: The fact that people have started to talk about where they buy their firewood from and how much it costs; My neighbour bringing my family a bowl of grapes freshly harvested from his "farm in the north". All of this, plus the inescapable fact that the "windy season" seems to have arrived with much gusto, are signs that Winter is on it's way.

Today, this very morning, another portent, another sign that Winter is well and truly winging it's inevitable way towards us; the first rain. The last time I remember it raining was maybe back in May or possibly June. And yet today the clouds arrived, the sky became overcast and dull, and then, the rain started. Down it came. Suddenly, after months of dry dusty (but possibly not as hot as it could have been) weather, the air was filled with the long awaited fresh green scent of rain. So this morning as I looked out over the gardens at work and watched the rain splashing down on the lawn and creating ripples in the fountain, with a cup of coffee in my hand and a smile on my face, I breathed deeply in the sight, sound and smell of the rain. With my acclimatisation to Portuguese weather comes he understanding that the first rain after the summer is always something to be seen as a magical moment, almost as if the weather itself has held it's breath over the summer and finally can hold it no longer, suddenly letting go and flinging it's shoulders back as the pressure is finally released. And relax...

And so it may well be time to try and pick a dry day to get some firewood delivered.

Motivated Into Action

I've been messing around now for a couple of weeks trying to think of something vaguely interesting to blog about, with very little success. I've started a few Portuguese Culture posts and also added to and amended a few older drafts that have been sitting around, but that doesn't detract from the simple unequivocal fact that I have not finished a publishable post this last fortnight. The problem is that the summer holidays are over and I am now back at work and therefore back into the normal daily routine. Nothing interesting has actually happened, and therefore I have nothing interesting and new to say in a blog post.

Then yesterday morning, I needed to get some bread and a few other bits and bobs from the shop. If I had just needed bread I would probably have turned out of my garden gate, gone to the bar around the corner, bought half a dozen rolls and had a quick coffee while I was it at. But like I said, I needed a few other things so I didn't. Instead, I walked down towards the main road, heading for the mini-mercado about 15 minutes walk away towards the centre of Estoril. And on the way I saw lots of things that inspired me to write...

On the way out of my village, as the housing stops and the high rise flats start, there is a piece of what has for a long time been simply "waste ground" with some steps adjacent to it that lead up to the back end of the first apartment block. Well, it is waste ground no more! Clearly someone has had some money to spare and have spent it developing the area into a children's play park. It's by no means finished as yet, being little more than a mound of earth with no grass or plants, but there is already a swing, a climbing frame and what looks like a large pipe for the little ones to clamber through. My kids are understandably very excited about this, since currently the nearest play park is quite some distance away from our house, a good 25 minute walk up and over a steep hill, down in Monte Estoril. This new park will only be around the corner, and we all look forward eagerly to it being completed.

Further along the road I came to Estoril Praia's stadium. I'd heard from a friend and through facebook that they had been doing some maintenance and improvements to the ground to make it suitable for the up and coming Group phase matches in the Europa League, the first of which is this Thursday, against Seville. I'd heard that the once present, since broken and removed scoreboard is now back. I've seen pictures through the team's Facebook page of the nice blue and yellow paint that has obviously been liberally splashed around inside the ground. As I walked past today, I saw a gentleman climbing up one of the lighting towers that hold the floodlights, presumably to perform some kind of maintenance to the lights up there. (Rather him than me!) Lastly though, the biggest change has to be to the small building that I'd seen being erected and painted about a month ago. Nothing seems to have happened to it since, but today, as I walked past it was very difficult not to notice the huge Estoril Praia team logos emblazoning the sides. The blinds on the inside of the windows were drawn closed, whereas last week, if you got up close to the glass you could see through the slits to the emptiness inside. The fact that they are now fully closed would hint that there is now more than nothing inside, and I have heard rumours that this new Estoril Praia Shop will be opening on Monday. It would be rude to not go and have a look, now wouldn't it?

Lastly, on the way back up towards home I passed a tree. A tree that I have passed many times before on the road in and out of my village. You can't miss it you see, because it's right in the centre of the road, planted in a large white "pot" made of stone, making a sort of mini-roundabout, which people of the village often like to sit on, under the shade of the tree, to ponder life and pet their dogs. Well, for some reason, the trunk has been covered in a sewn together patchwork of knitted fragments of cloth, forming a sort of tree trunk scarf. It's red and bears the initials A.I.R. in small black letters on one side and in larger darker red on the other. My wife tells me that she saw some teenagers sewing the pieces together and wrapping them around the trunk last night. This is not the first time that I have seen tree trunks adorned with cloth in this fashion. In Monte Estoril last year, surrounding the Bird Park, the trees there had been clothed in a sort of fluffy white cloth, spiralling up from the base to the leaves. I had assumed that it was the remnants from some kind of Festa or party and that after the festivities the decorations had remained there because no one could be bothered to removed them. But that doesn't explain the recent clothing of the Roundabout Tree in my village. Right now, I'm stumped. (No pun intended!) I have no idea what it's about. I asked my neighbour today, and he didn't seem to know either. "I think it's just some artist doing it. They do it all over the place." And so the mystery of the decorated trees, at least for the time being, goes unsolved.

Once More Around The Ride

That time of year has come again when it seems that Summer is drawing to a close. All the signs are there...

My children start back to school next week, and even though some Portuguese schools have another week (or two?) of holiday to go yet, the shops are full of "Back to School" offers on books, stationary and cartoon branded rucksacks. We're all set though, right down to new ankle socks and fresh haircuts all round!

The football season is well underway, with of course Estoril Praia playing their third match tomorrow evening with no losses so far! The stats suggest that Estoril have a 56% chance of winning and a 25% chance of a draw, which means that Academica have only a 19% chance of winning. But that's just the statistics and in reality anything could happen. The numbers for the following match next weekend against Braga are the reverse of those though, giving Estoril only a 20% chance of winning. And of course the European Campaign continues as Estoril find themselves in Group H with Seville, Freiburg and Liberec. It seems that a gratuitous trip to the UK for an Estoril v Tottenham/Swansea/Wigan tie, is at least for the time being, not on the cards.

My neighbour and his family, like many other Portuguese families, have now returned from their traditional August holiday in the Algarve. And it is definitely quite a tradition for Portuguese families to head south on the 1st of August and not return until the 31st. When camping with my family in Milfontes this July I noticed that a decent proportion of the site was crammed with caravans that had obviously not been moved in some time. Most had awnings that had been pegged down to cope with the winter weather. Some had fake green lawns with a tarpaulin covered bbq in the corner. A few even had small picket fences around the pitch with pot plants in the corners. On the Friday night of our stay the site suddenly became much busier than it had been as families arrived, un-pegged, removed tarps, lit their bbq's, and settled in for the weekend, only to pack up and disappear again on Sunday evening. But that was in July. In August, when presumably, families go for the long haul and camp out for the entire month, adjacent to the same families that they've been pitching up next to every August since, well a long time ago, well that, that must be quite an experience.

Of course our own seasonal summer visitors have also come and now gone. It's always really nice to have our family come and visit us of course, and for my wife, children and I to join in the holiday spirit with trips to beaches and museums. But it cannot last, and when the airport runs are done it's time to slip back into the daily routine once again, leaving a strange empty quiet kind of hole.

So that's it. Summer is over. All the signs are there. Well, I suppose it is, and yet it isn't. The weather report for tomorrow says that it's still going to hit 36 degrees, which is far from what anyone in or from the UK would call cold! And yet, on social media streams from England I already hear people telling tales of Christmas hitting the supermarket shelves and counting down the number of shopping days! Ridiculous! Yet on those same channels I have some very good friends who quite openly tell me how lucky I am to live here in the sun, where the summer holiday never ends. Well, yes, I am lucky to live here. But no, summer, even here, does not go on forever. It just lasts a bit longer than it does in England. Maybe tomorrow, I'll take a few minutes out from work to take a leisurely walk along the seafront, have a coffee and grab a huge handful of summer before it disappears? No rush though, eh? I'll take my time, thank you very much, because Summer in Portugal kind of fades away gradually with an air of stereotypical Iberian tardiness.