One of the first things Bernice and Tao did after our arrival was to make a large calendar, on which Tao is marking off with stickers each day of our stay. Looking at it today (Monday), I see that we have already been here more than a week! This, of course, means that we have now known Ollie for most of his life, which is, in a sense, a bizarre thought. At the same time, he has changed considerably over the eight days we have been here, gaining weight very nicely and appearing more and more aware of, and interested in, these strange giant faces that loom over him and make strange noises at him. He no longer seems quite so fragile, or vulnerable, or lost, and Tslil, Micha’el, Tao and Ollie are already very definitely a family unit. As always, it is amazing how quickly human beings can move from being unable to imagine what life with another child will be like to being unable to imagine life without that other child.

Tao has adapted very well to his role as older brother and genuinely understands how Tslil in particular needs to share her time between Ollie’s needs and his. It is, of course, a tremendous benefit that Micha’el has, so far, been available 24/7. From tomorrow, he is planning to resume his online English teaching. Fortunately, Tao is more than happy to spend time in the company of his nana, who has a seemingly bottomless pit of stories, songs, art projects and other activities to share with him, and, failing all else, his grandpa, who has a far more limited range of age-appropriate skills. If I can only hang in there, I’m planning to come into my own around 2032, when he wants to discuss the finer points of the pluperfect subjunctive. Actually, judging by the speed with which his language is developing, he may even be ready before then.

For example, yesterday I was reading to Tao the book Queenie, a tale of a bantam hen who is saved from drowning and taken in by a family who own a dog, Bruno. Queenie sleeps in the dog’s basket until the family return her to her home farm. When I scanned the next sentence in the book, I decided it was probably too advanced for Tao, and so I said: ‘Bruno got his basket back,’ to which Tao instantly and indignantly responded: ‘Reclaimed, Grandpa!’ Silly me.

Tao’s Hebrew is keeping pace with his English, and his Portuguese is also developing. While the family were on holiday in May, Tao started watching Portuguese children’s TV, and now, every day, he is allowed a short Portuguese video. The other day, I watched Noddy with him, which was interesting for two reasons. First, it appears that, in the last 66 years, Big Ears has been declared a non-person. Presumably, any reference to him is now considered aurist. Secondly, in the course of watching for 15 minutes, the only words I could distinguish were ‘Noddy’, ‘hola’ and ‘obrigado’. When I mentioned this to Micha’el, he agreed that spoken Portuguese is incredibly difficult to distinguish; it is a language of much elision, and considerable inconsistency and counter-intuitivity in the pronunciation of certain letters and combinations of letters, depending on their position in the word. He was kind enough to say that he understood very little of Noddy. (Tslil, on the other hand, claims to understand a good half of Noddy, but then she’s not a blood relative and feels less obligation to be kind to me.)

Last week, I reported a temperature of 33 in Penamacor. Almost immediately, the temperature rose to 39, and stayed there for the rest of last week. This led me, before shabbat, to go out to buy another fan, for the kitchen. Since the air conditioner there does not have a timer, we would have had to keep the AC on for 25 hours. So I visited one of the small Aladdin’s caves that Penamacor boasts: a tiny hardware store that stocks an incredibly wide range of kitchen, camping, and home electrical equipment. As always, I had done my Google Translate homework, so I was able to ask for a ventilador. One of the boons of shopping in Portuguese in Penamacor is that the shops tend to offer no choice, and, indeed, this shop had one floor-standing fan and one table-top model. This meant that we avoided any fruitless attempts at discussing the relative merits of different models: kilowattage, number of speeds, size of sweep arc, and so forth. My only choice was white or black. ‘White’, I knew, was ‘branco’, because the regional capital is Castello Branco (white castle, so named for the obvious reason). ‘Black’, I hazarded, was ‘negro’. I decided that black would suit the house’s general decor better, and so I stuck my neck out. I now know that the correct word is ‘preto’.

As the shopkeeper took my money, we had a lively conversation on one of the few subjects that an Englishman feels comfortable discussing with strangers – the weather. ‘Muito calor’. ‘Sim, muito calor’. ‘Madrid – mais calor – quarenta e três’. By the way, please don’t be deceived. What I actually said bore little more than a passing resemblance to this correct (I hope) written Portuguese. However, the shopkeeper seemed to understand me, and we parted good friends.

Once back at the house, I explored the etymology of preto, which I was unable to link to any related word in French or Latin, which are my two Romance languages. (Please don’t be deceived, again; what that means is that I have absolutely no Spanish or Italian, and so the tiny smattering of French and Latin that I remember makes them my Romance languages.) I soon discovered that the etymology of preto is disputed, with two rival, and, to me, equally tenuous theories.

Some claim it derives ultimately from the Latin pressus, meaning ‘tight’ or ‘compressed’, because when it is dark we have to squint – pressing our eyes almost closed – in order to see anything. Do you buy that? I thought not.

Others believe it derives from pectus, the Lain for ‘chest’. The explanation here may be that when you keep something close to your chest, it is under your toga. What do you reckon? Me neither. OK, then, how about this, which is the last possible explanation I found? A man’s chest is hairy and therefore dark. I reckon these are getting more and more desperate.

Anyway, interestingly, in Portuguese negro is used to describe skin colour. Preto is, in Portuguese, a more pejorative term than negro, in the reverse of what is currently true in English. In the kind of linguistic complexity that makes anyone trying to learn a language despair, several football teams in Portugal that play in black and white are known not as the brancopreto (as you would expect, if you have been paying attention), but as the alvinegro. Go figure!

I’m pleased to report that this week is expected to be cooler than last, and, certainly, at 7:30 this morning, when Lua the dog and I went out for our walk, it was pleasantly warm, with a lovely breeze that stirred the wind turbines on the next ridge over. As I write this, at 6pm, it is just starting to cool again, after a 4pm high of about 34.

Not unrelated to the sweltering heat is, of course, the constant threat of forest fires. I was quite apprehensive about the drive from Madrid, because I had been unable to find online any map indicating the current state of affairs in Iberia, by area. On the motorway from Madrid, we passed signs warning ‘Significant fire hazard’, but giving no indication of what we should do with this information. I was reminded of Michael Flanders` remark regarding the similar road warning: ‘Beware low-flying aircraft’. ‘What am I supposed to do? Apart, I suppose, from taking off my hat.’ I kept one hand close to the windscreen washer lever, but I didn’t really believe that would help much in a genuine emergency.

In the event, our journey passed without incident. However, it really is no laughing matter. In fact, the day we arrived, friends of the kids, who live about 45 minutes away, in a house in the middle of a large piece of land that they have been working for two years, were resting at home. The husband and older child were sleeping; the wife and younger child were awake, when she became aware of a noise and looked outside to discover that the house was completely surrounded by fire. They managed to escape, safe and sound, in their car, and their house and other vehicle are, thankfully, intact. However, the mature orchard they bought and the market garden they have cultivated over the last two years have all been lost, and they now face the prospect of starting again from nothing.

Unfortunately, it seems that many Portuguese who own land either do not take the threat of fire seriously, or remain stoical about it. Regulations about regularly clearing brush, and leaving empty space around dwellings, are often ignored by landowners and not enforced by the authorities. I read this week that 90% of those who staff Portugal’s severely under-funded and poorly equipped fire service are volunteers. Perhaps the fires that have been raging in recent weeks throughout Mediterranean Europe will trigger some action at the level of the EU.

On a happier note, all three of our grandsons, each in his own way, have made significant progress this week. Tao, for example, mastered the roly-poly, or forward somersault. Another momentous milestone!