At the end of my last post, Bernice and I were standing on the doorstep of our new second home in Penamacor, Portugal, about to be reunited with our son and his family, who had moved into the house from Israel five weeks earlier. I’m going to leave you waiting with us on the doorstep for a little longer, because, as it is always does, something more urgent has come up.

Just in case it is not immediately obvious to you in what way a blog post is like a gas bottle, let me explain.

In the house, we use bottled gas to heat the water, and to fuel the hob. On our second Sunday in the house, the gas ran out. It transpired that the kids did not have any spares, so Bernice and I set off in the car, with two empty bottles, to the hardware store in the centre of Penamacor. We very bravely told Micha’el he did not need to come, calculating that if two customers walk into a gas bottle supplier’s shop carrying two empty gas bottles, the supplier should be able to work out what they are looking for.

All well and good, except that the shop was closed, it being Sunday. In fact, I would have expected all shops in rural Catholic Portugal to be closed on Sunday, but it turns out that several of them open on Sunday afternoon. (Less reprehensible than going to Spurs on shabbat afternoon, I suppose.)

So, we had to wait for gas until Monday morning. This meant no cooking on the hob, no hot water for washing and washing up, and, for Tao, an experience that took Bernice back more than 60 years. The living room in the house is dominated by a large fireplace, in which, at this time of year, a wood fire is usually blazing. So, we built up the fire, put on the kettle, got out the large blue plastic bowl that the kids use as a laundry basket, and filled it with water from the kettle.

Soon, Tao was playing happily in his extemporized bath. Only one thing was missing: his favourite bath toy, the plug. Fortunately, it was easy to detach the plug chain from the bath and bring it in to him. Now, his joy was complete, although I don’t think he was quite able to work out why, when he lifted the plug up, the water level in the bath remained the same.

The following morning, Bernice and I went back to the shop and picked up two gas bottles. When we got back to the house, we suggested to the kids that, the next time a gas bottle ran out, they should change it for the spare in the storeroom, and immediately go down to the shop to buy another one!

And what, I hear you ask, has all this to do with blog posts? Good question. I thought long and hard about starting a blog, but, once I took the decision to start, I rather plunged into it. No sooner had I launched the blog, than people started asking when I was next going to post. Although I had several ideas of what to write in the second post, I had nothing on paper, and, as luck would have it, this was now the last few days of our stay in Portugal, so there was a lot to do. And shabbat in the middle. And group photos with the kids. And dashing off to photograph parts of the town that we had seen on our shabbat walk, and been unable to photograph because of shabbat. And sorting out what clothes to leave and what to bring back to Israel. And doing a final laundry.

Which is why you are reading this second post only a couple of days after we arrived back in Israel. However, I have learnt my lesson. Blog posts are like gas bottles. Write two, and, as soon as you post the first one, write another one. That way, you’ll never be caught out. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and write my next two posts.

For any of you who don’t know, our son Micha’el, daughter-in-law Tslil and grandson Tao (then six months old) moved from Israel to Portugal a couple of months ago, having bought 2.8 hectares of land (that’s about 7 acres in old money). Their plan is to join with others to share the vision of creating a permaculture-based eco-village. (If you want to follow their adventure, visit their YouTube channel here. Subscribing and liking would also not be a bad idea.)

As soon as the kids announced their plans, Bernice and I decided that we weren’t prepared to miss out on being a part of Tao growing up, and that we would aim to visit Portugal for a month at a time, three times a year. Once we sat down with the calendar, and factored in that we wanted to spend the major chagim (festivals) and our parents’ yahrzeits (anniversaries of their passing) in Israel, we decided on, roughly speaking, October-November, February-March and June-July (depending on the Jewish calendar). After a couple of days of reflection, we realised the near-impossibility of spending three months every year in an airbnb or hotel, packing and laundering clothes for a month at a time, keeping kosher in rural Portugal, and staying healthy, sane and married. The obvious solution was to buy a flat or small house in Penamacor, the town just over a mile from the kids’ land. (For reasons that I plan to explain in a later blog, property in the area is cheap, ridiculously cheap in comparison to  property in Israel.)

So, I paid a flying visit in June, and in four days I acquired a NIF (the equivalent of a social security number, and the sine qua non of bureaucratic life in Portugal), gave a lawyer power of attorney, opened a bank account, and viewed a half a dozen properties, one of which I thought ticked as many of our boxes as we were likely to get ticked. Five weeks later, after an experienced builder/renovator checked and approved the house, we exchanged contracts.

This meant that the kids could move straight into the house when they arrived in Portugal and live there while they are building their own home on their land.

And, three months later, we are out here with them on our first stay in our new house in Penamacor. This is certainly not the relaxed, indolent first year of shared retirement that Bernice and I planned, but, as the saying almost goes: Parents propose and children dispose. So far, we are really enjoying the ride, and I hope you will enjoy reading about it.

Content Warning

I am, in many ways, a prisoner of (or rather a voluntary inmate in) my past. The relevance of this to you, the reader, is that I am almost certain to pepper my writing with references to the popular culture of the lost England of the 1950s–1980s. I have no intention of stopping each time to explain these references. If you had the lack of forethought not to be raised in Britain, and/or the lack of consideration to be under 40 years old, then the problem, my friend, is all yours.

Acknowledgements

To our children, Micha’el and Tslil, whose pursuit of their vision started us on this bizarre journey.

To my wife,Bernice, whose diligent writing of her diary every evening has meant that my defective memory does not prevent me writing this blog of our first trip.

But, above all, to our grandson, Tao, whose childhood we have every intention of being a significant part of.