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.