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.
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