One year finishing and another starting

On the news i have just been watching the fireworks on Sydney Harbour bridge in Australia. A whole year has passed by and it's been another good year for me and i hope so for all the people who take the time to read my Blog.

It's not just been Christmas and New Year but also the 1st January would have been my Dad's birthday. We lost after a long illness in 1998 but he is and will never be forgotten.

Yesterday the 30th was the birthday of my eldest son  and on the second of January it's the birthday of my youngest son. As children you can't imagine how they would grow up and what they would be doing now at 34 and 30 years of age. Both are doing well and i am so very proud of them both.

Then there is my daughter who is 32 in July. She found herself a single parent to my favourite grand daughter this last year. Things have been difficult for her but she has done a wonderful job but she is lucky to have such a wonderful daughter.

I have only one wish for the coming year and it's that at some point i would like to see my children and grand children come over to see me. But not now in the winter i can wait for the summer.

The best thing would be to see Sean and Chelsee and have them stay with me.

For now It's time to say Happy New Year to you all.

I have just re read this the last entry of 2013 and found something that may not sound right. Chelsee is not just my favourite Grand Daughter she is my only Grand Daughter. As Sean is my Favourite Grandson, he is my only Grandson.

Well it's Christmas and dinner

Well it's Christmas and i hope that all who read my Blog are having as good a Christmas as i intend to have. Christmas dinner is this year something i have paid a lot of attention to. The first year i was asked out to friends and last year i just had a ready nice dinner. This year i have really made an effort
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First was my cake that had been well prepared. I first soaked the cake in so much alcohol that it would taste great but then after cooking it i put another 20ml Remy Martin VSOP into the cake and left it to soak in. As the cake is for me and i am a Remy Martin drinker why not indulge myself after all it's Christmas.

Then the meat. As an ex butcher still with my skills intact i got myself a Turkey Thigh and drumstick. First i skinned the thigh and drumstick and froze he skin to use later. Then the drumstick was cut up for curry and that leaves the thigh. I carefully removed the bone and all of the veins and froze the meat till it was needed today. After i had prepared my turkey thigh i weighed it and it was over two and a half pound in weight just a nice weight for me and my dinner.

I had kept back one pack of bacon from when a friend came back from the UK to wrap my sausages in for Christmas dinner. You can't get little chipolatas like you can in the UK supermarkets here just normal size sausages. The sausage her will have to do but as the skins have been filled a little to much you can't twist them to make little chipolatas so i just wrapped a normal size sausage in bacon easy and then it was done.

I have never made Yorkshire pudding before and i know it's beef you have Yorkshire pudding with but as it's my Christmas i will have what i want. I made a sample pudding mix to give it a try but like Beer batter i made Cognac Yorkshire pudding mix and it was good.

18th December a sad day

Tomorrow the 18th December is for me a sad day. My best friends son has passed away and is being cremated. I got the news two weeks late because my friend couldn't get in touch as i had deleted e-mail addresses that i was getting junk mail from. The reason that the cremation is over two weeks since he passed away is probably down to a post Morten i couldn't ask why it had taken so long since he passed.

The first time i saw Neil he was in a plaster cast and that was about twenty five years ago or more. During that time Neil never enjoyed perfect health and now he is gone. I am sad because i couldn't get there to show my respect at this sad time. The last time i saw Neil when i asked how he was as always he would say Fine. He always let you think he was OK when he was not, now he can't say fine but he will not suffer again, he won't be forgotten.

R.I.P. Neil

Now under the stairs has been cleaned out at last.

I arrived on the 1st August 2011 and for the first few weeks i was sorting out all the belonging that had been left in the house. To me it was all junk but looking back i was giving away lots of stuff that i could have made good use of. As i was moving things out of the house i put then outside by the front door. August is a time when lots of people come back to houses that they own in our village for a months holiday.

Lots of people seeing what i had put outside asked if they could take things and i just said yes. Looking back i should have put things in the cellar until i knew what i had and what i could use and then dump what was left.

Today i had a clean out in the one spot i had not touched since i moved in. I had used under the stairs to store buckets, mops and lots of other cleaning stuff.

I found in the very corner three oil lights one battered and damaged and that one went in the bin. The other two i cleaned up and the top two pictures are the cleaned up lamps. The strange thing is i took the wicks out when i cleaned the lamps and one i had to take a picture of.  As the picture shows this is two bits of wick joined together with a bit of black cotton. I know that people are not well off but to tie two bits of wick together is a bit much.

Brrrrr it was cold Sunday morning

The mornings have been cold the land is white with frost and when the sun comes up the frost is gone and the day gets better. Once the sun goes down so does the temperature down to freezing until the next day when the sun comes up again.

I prepared for the cold with 3 pairs of socks on, jeans and track suit bottoms, 2 tea shirts and 2 jumpers and a coat and hat. Even with all that i was cold, my feet felt like they had hypothermia. Someone said to have cardboard on the floor and stand on that to try and not get my feet cold. Well i am open to ideas and yes a flask for a warm drink. 

Sunday was no exception at 4.30am in the morning it was cold as it has been for a few weeks with frost everywhere. I was going to the market in Miranda do Corvo. Over night the Portuguese get to the market i am told at midnight and mark out there spot where they will trade from then they sleep in there vans.

I arrived at about 5.30am only to find all the best spots had gone but i squeezed in where i normal park myself. It seems that with Christmas close by the market almost doubles in size something i didn't know anything about. The downside was a number of stock items that i had hoped would last me till the new year sold out. That was bad enough but there is also another market on the 22nd December and then 5th January. Now i need to get restocked before it's to late or i will be letting people down and that's something i don't want to do.

Due to the amount of people trying to get a spot to sell from i will have to be at the market even earlier than normal. Maybe a 3am start but normally once a month so it's not to bad.

What a stroke of bad luck

What a stroke of bad luck sums it all up. I got my car back today after a short time in a great garage for repairs. during the last week i have had 30kilo of spices delivered and they all need repackaging into smaller sizes.

All packages have to have the rear label in Portuguese and that's not really a problem once designed i keep them for another time. But a bad but. The new labels delivered a little while ago were a different size. The problem being ever label had to be redesigned to fit the new label size. After a couple of hours work all was done now time for dinner and then get started printing. I always print in back as it's cheaper if mistakes are made and they do get made. I had three new print cartridges sent so i had spares ready for when i run out. Page one done great only another 59 pages to print Oh no my printer stopped working and it was the blue cartridge was the one at fault and i can't explain why.

The local internet cafe is open at 10am in the morning so i will have to go there to get my printing done. It's a fifty mile round trip to get a new print cartridge or a refill for my printer. Oh well what will can i do now with my time. Mmm

Quickest parcel delivery yet

For a long time i have used a company called http://www.pharosparcel.com/ Pharosparcel's use UPS for there delivery. On Monday at 5.11pm a parcel was collected in Liverpool  and at 5.36pm a parcel was collected from Manchester bound for me in Portugal.

Normally it's 5 days for delivery but this time UPS did a fine job at 11.45am this morning much less than 3 days i had both parcels delivered. Now it's that's not good i don't know what is.

There is another parcel waiting for a couple of other bits waiting to make up a Red cross food parcel. My next parcel will have, Router bits, Cam belt a parcel from my Mum oxo cubes, cheese, tea bags and more. Red cross parcel is a nickname that is used by use Brits here in Sunny Portugal for any parcel that has food in it. No disrespect to the Red Cross.

Tree felling is now almost done.

Work is going on very well picking my Olives and here are a few pictures of progress. Progress is slow as getting up a ladder and cutting branches of a tall tree at my age is not a speedy task to undertake.

This tree has had it's branches removed and all it needs now is for the what is left to be cut down to about 2 metre's tall. All the branches will be cut up and get used for firewood when it's had time to dry.

My ladder is in front of the tree i am cutting down to get the olives from. To the right you can see my cherry tree, the olive tree was as tall as the cherry but not any more.

Here you can see the branches stacked up ready to be cut down for fire wood. All the thin bits will just be put on a bonfire along with the leaves.

I'm not old really I'm not

For the last few weeks we have been getting language lessons from the local primary teacher. The teacher also teaches English to a group of elderly woman who when we met them they seem to be getting on very well in learning English.

If only we and i mean the local Brit community could make progress as well as the local Portuguese women are. We recently went on a walk for Breast Cancer along with the local school children and the local Elderly people from the local old folks home and our fellow language pupils.

We along with our language pupils where invited to a Chestnut festival in a village 32k away and the local Camara " Council " paid or the event and supplied a coach to take use there. When we arrived or the coach meeting use where all the people who live in the old folks home across the road from where to coach was  waiting.

The band played on.














When we arrived at Alvares where we were being taken it turns out to be the old folks home and infant school. Something tells me i have been taken on an old folks outing. Now OK i am soon to be 65 years old in coming  March but i am not old or i don't feel old enough to be going on old peoples days out.

No Health and safety, no fire brigade, no safety barrier in fact everything that you wouldn't get in the UK. But this is how you cook chestnuts the Portuguese way.







Enough of my moaning. When we arrived there was a fire on the ground a circle about 10ft round and the chestnuts were on top of the flaming straw. The ladies who work at the home had prepared plenty of food room cheese sandwiches, ham sandwiches two types of sponge cake and as many chestnuts you could eat. Wine, coffee and a local type of spirit called XXXXXXX. name to follow.

What would health and safety make of this i wonder. Naked flames no fire protection or safety boots. It could only happen in Portugal.








Entertainment was from a band of local musicians who played local type music. There where a number of very old people who where dancing with the help of carers

To much spam and junk.

Like everybody reading this Blog i use e-mail. My first e-mail account goes back about 20 years and as it was my name i had given it out a bit to much. Over the years i had a number of times had e-mails that had a virus in them. To this day i don't accept an e-mail if i don't know who it's from for that very reason. While i used windows i would always run a virus checker first. Due to the problems over potential virus attachments i ditched windows a long time ago for a safer operating system called Linux in fact Ubuntu Linux.

Anyway back to e-mails, Due to this problem i opened a number of e-mail accounts for various reasons. But recently Yahoo and Hotmail  accounts i had gave me problems again and in a couple of days i found that on one Yahoo account i had over 157 spam  e-mails. It was a constant problem that had been going on for to long and needed to be dealt with. My simple answer to this was to contact all those who had reason to e-mail me with new e-mail address's.

I have now deleted 5 e-mail address's from Yahoo and Hotmail. My original e-mail with Netscape was reasonably easy to delete. I also found that Hotmail was also easy to delete. Yahoo has been difficult to delete and i still have 2 to close it's no good just not logging in. E-mails from people you know will still arrive but what you need is for the e-mail to be sent back so that they know the e-mail couldn't be delivered.

My advice has always been to have a personal e-mail account for those closest to you then an e-mail for your extended family and then one to use for general use. That normally would be safe but you still can't be sure that those closer to you haven't had there e-mail accounts compromised. 

One way problems arrive is when someone adds your e-mail to an e-mail they send to a group of friends. Each in the group also get your e-mail and it only takes one of them to have a virus of some kind on there machine and that's when problems start.

It's that time of year again a time to Remember

It's that time of year again. Everybody has there It's that time of year again when they remember an event, a loved one. For me it's all about how i have changed over the years.

In my teens every Sunday Dad would always have on the TV World at war. Dad was not glorifying war but was remembering his role in that bloody time in his life. Being a teen growing up to take my part in life didn't want to hear about the past. It was around the time i started work, i had money in my pocket, had a social life, meet girls why did i want to know about a war that as over and had been for about 20 years.

As Dad grew older i began to see that it was pride i could see, pride in that he took part to give me this new life. Going to see the Rolling Stones, meeting the girl who was and still is the love of my life all came at a price. Millions died so i could enjoy this new life as i grow older i now understand what others had done for me.

As the years pasted Dad became active in the various veterans associations always leading being, secretary, treasurer, etc.Dad took pride once again in helping others, some of the veterans needed help others where able to help. To Dad they where all the same they had had an active role like he had all those years ago.

It is with pride that i remember that Dad had three campaign  medals. These medals where only given to those who where on the first day of an invasion for example the Normandy landing. My Dad was on that first day and i am so proud of the part he paid on that bloody day.

Now years later one of my son's joined the Royal Marines. How proud i was to see him pass out and take his part in defending this proud country. As the years have passed i think more and more about Remembrance Day and those who fell and those who survived. The last few years i have made a point of stopping at 11am on the 11th November to pay my respect. This year as i sit here this is the second Remembrance day that my son has retired from the Royal Marines after 13 years of active service. 

This year again i will remember Dad and pay respect to him and those who paid the price that gave me this wonderful life.

Skype and four generations of my family

I use Skype a lot to speak to family mainly and friends. I normally use Skype to take picture of who i am speaking to as i have done today while talking to my daughter in law Margaret. My Mum mentioned that my sister was coming to visit last week and knowing that Mum lives on her own i know how she looks forward to visits. Mum mentioned that my sisters eldest daughter was also calling with her children.

As a family we all live far and wide so this is the first time i have seen four generations of our family. It seems like only a short time ago that we where all at home before we moved on to start our own lives and look at us now. This is one of my favourite family photos and thank you all.

How to pick olives the Scouse way.

It's getting time to pick the olives that have been growing on my trees. Look on Youtube at how people pick olives what can be more boring than shaking trees or climbing ladders.

My answer was to cut the branches down and then pick the grapes. There was also another reason and it was that the trees had never been pruned for many years. Everything i have been told is that you need to prune back a lot almost to the point where they had been pruned before.

The bonus is that almost all of the branches can be kept and they will go on the log burner over the winter. The second bonus is the olives, i won't get enough to take to the olive press to be pressed into olive oil but i can process them and put them in jars for sale at the market.

The final bonus is that growing all over the trees and branches is Lichen. Lichen is what railway model makers use to put on the backgrounds they make for the railway displays. Lichen is used to make trees and bushes and i can use all i have on my olive trees.

Not bad for a few hours work. Now to salt them and empty the water for the next seven days. 

This is Lichen. People want to buy this so who am i to refuse.

Rains gone washing done

We have had a lot of rain this week and living on a lane that goes down a hill sometimes it's a river not a lane. Our rain normally goes down a gully at the side of the lane but this week it overflowed but that's no problem. A while ago the local Camara " or council " had the lane resurfaced and the camber of the lane now runs away from the house so when it rains the rain drains away from the house.

Getting washing dry at this time is always a problem but so what, today as the sun was shining i put my washing out in the sun to dry. It took less than three hours and it's dry already so it's been a good day up to now.

 At this time of year in the UK i was always coughing very badly with a very bad  chest cough. When i came here to live i found that i didn't cough anymore and it's thanks to the lack of pollution in the air. The air here is clean and pollution free and the picture below shows why. The tree's have something called Lichen growing on them, Lichen only grows in places of very clean air so who's a lucky boy then.

Being without a car

Suddenly the reality of living in another country and way of life makes you think for a moment. My car failed the MOT as i have mentioned before today. My car runs on Autogas and also petrol one thing it failed on for it's annual test was the ABS brake system and that's been fixed but only after getting a part from the UK due to the cost here in Portugal.

My car also failed on the exhaust emissions being high. The test station advised that i switch of the gas when i drive for the retest. This i did as the tester said that the high emission may be from changing from Gas to Petrol. I did as advised but at test the emissions where still very high and the car failed again.

Instead of  going to a garage and have someone changing part after part until they find what's wrong i looked for a specialist who had the right diagnostic equipment. After finding someone i went late one afternoon to ask when i could leave my car for testing. The owner who speaks quite good English said he would have a look there and then. He connected the car to his computer system and quickly ruled out various things and said that i would need to leave the car for further testing.

The day came when i had to leave the car and i was lucky to have a friend to drive me back home. It's only now i feel lost without my car. Now is the first time in 46 years driving that i have not had something to drive or even borrow. Life does get lonely when you suddenly find yourself of the road.

I got a call and the garage confirmed what i found out from calling my cars dealer in the UK , I needed a Catalytic converter wow that's very costly. The garage said the best price he could get was 540€ ouch. Due to competition in the car parts market in the UK you can always get a deal from somewhere. First port of call after getting a part for my brake system was EBay. It didn't take long to find a very good competitive price. £114.02 and delivery to a UK address was free. This was not the cheapest but one i was happy with as the seller has over 50,000 positive feedback so i ordered my part from them.

It's now a waiting game, waiting for the part to be delivered to a UK address and then sent over to me. Wait wait and wait but being without a car will be hard to take. Being out in the country and without a car is not good. There is a bus service from our village each Tuesday morning to go to the market and that's it. OK i have friends but i don't want to put on them as may car is my problem but i should have it back soon

Ok so it's raining but we need it.

For month after month, after month we had sunshine from morning till night. We had temperatures up to 40c and now it's all gone winter is on it's way. It's not all bad it's just got a little colder during the day 20c is still ok by me but for the last few days we have had rain. As i live half way up a lane in a tiny village you get to see views from the windows looking down the valley. Today with the rain we had what looked like a river outside caused by the constant rain.

The rain stopped about noon and now we have blue skies again. The rain of the last few days has got the tinder dry ground growing again. Gone has the brown dry burnt ground and now we have plant life growing again.

This is a picture taken outside of my front door. Even the wild Fennel is growing well, days ago this was a wilderness all burnt and dead.










The effect of the constant rain has been the timber on my veranda has got wet. One strip of the deck timber has distorted badly and it's not the first time this has happened. This will be replaced when i get to go to the shop i got the timber from but the level of rain was extremely heavy. Little dried up streams now have water flowing again, so what should we expect for the coming winter Who knows but i would rather be here not knowing than in the UK.

A local carpenter says he has not seen this happed before. But once replaced all should be well.












I recently went past a man made lake that i first saw in about May of this year. I didn't have my camera with me but it was clear how much water was in the lake then but now the lake is very low.

Internet who needs internet. ME

For three months i have battled with the phone and internet supplier over my internet speed and a noise on the phone line. Today i went to another house to try my phone in case the fault was on my phone but that was OK.

Four times in the last few weeks engineers have been to our village and worked on teh lines. My friend has no problem with his phone but his internet is slow. Last night an engineer called to work again on the line and also in my house. He changed something in a box on the wall. When he went back to his van i didn't know that he was leaving, i had wanted to get him to test the line and my internet speed but he was gone.

My speed on one day was so slow it didn't even register on the phone companies speed tester. Another day it was faster to upload than download, what crazy times we are having here in my bit of paridise.

It's with a bit of luck that when i can i download loads of stuff so when speed is this bad i have something to watch.

So slow i could walk faster than this.

This is faster to send e-mails that to access the internet.

Still no better.

Better but still can't stream from Filmon.

Autumn is on it's way but still some strawberries

Well Autumn is upon use but that's not stopped the growing process as the pictures below show. Mr favourite is Srawberries, as the picture below shows they are still growing well. I don't expect that they have much longer before they are finished for another year. The Strawberries have started a number of runners and i will cut and pot them on the coming days for next year. Next year i will have a Hydroponics unit up and running. The benefit should be that the strawberries will be hanging down instead of being stuck under leaves and open for the slugs etc to attack.

This year i got from the Miranda Do Corvo market a Scotch Bonnet chilli. For those who don't know they are a very hot chilli. I have a number of Scotch Bonnets hanging up to dry before they get put a way in jars to be used at a later date. 

Here we have a variety of different chilli's outside drying before they will be stored in jars like the Scotch Bonnets.

Good spuds feed on good clean water from the tap and loads of washing up water. Now will they taste of Fairy washing up liquid later after i eat them i will know but i grew them.

Happy days

Reason my website is white

I have just been asked about the fact that my website is shall we say colourless. There is a good reason for that and when i explain you will understand.

For those who have seen my website www.iberianspices.com the background is white and there was a good reason. I first created a Blog as i found it easy to design using a Blog and then giving it to a designer to make the site for me. The one major thing all along was to have the site as easy as i could get it for those who were not very good at using a computer.

The feedback i have had is that it is as i wanted easy to use. Now about the lack of colour.

I came to having to put images for each of the Herbs and Spices so as to let people know what they were buying. I could cut a picture but couldn't find out how to change the background of the picture. A square picture with a round image that was white looked OK on a white background so white it was.

The pictures may look out of focus that's because they are bigger than they should be. I will over time change the whole site when i can cut the image from the background and i can then have a new base colour.

For now the feedback is very good so i hope that you enjoy what you see. If you like it then please click the LIKE on the home page where it says Facebook.

You can even be ripped of in Portugal

Last week I needed a job doing on my car and again i asked the same garage to diagnose the ABS warning light fault as they had a machine to do a test who had previously ripped me off. Now what could go wrong Plenty.

He quoted 169€ for the parts and I said that I could get them from the UK and I did.

Before I left the car I asked if he could do a couple of minor jobs as well I asked carefully how much I needed to get from the bank to pay him. I asked three times and each time he said between 60/ 70€ each time I said is that the final amount.

To my horror on my return he said the bill was 100€, I had taken a friend with me as a witness and I had a Dictaphone with me in case I needed to back up everything I said should I need it.

I said to him five times that he said 60/ 70€ and each time he said he also did the other jobs. Each time I said but I asked what is the amount of money I need to get from the back but he was having none of it he said he was an honest man and the cost was 100€.

I then after five times of trying to get him to see that when he said 60/ 70€ that I asked for the final amount. With not getting anywhere I asked for his Complaints books and he then tried to negotiate at 80€. I then explained that as he didn't give me the complaints book when asked I had to go to the GNR and report him. He soon said OK 70€ but I said no sorry but I had to report him as he didn't give me the Complaints book when asked. After he said 70€ twice I said OK and told him I had recorded the whole conversation and that I will tell all Expats I come into contact with just how dishonest he is. At this point i told him that i had recorded everything in case i needed proof of what had gone.

With this I took the keys and left

Moral of the story. Use the complaints book only when you can back up a complaint