Yesterday the Portuguese prime minister was asking for good ideas from the people, for the good of the country. He’s not specific about saving the economy, but obviously that’s where we should start.

“We are making important changes in Portugal and it is important that during this period, we can broaden and deepen the democratic debate and this can not happen without the participation of all citizens,” said the prime minister in a video of 90 seconds published today on the Facebook page “o meu movimento”.

Zombie Europe

Portugal’s problem, in short, is that it cannot afford the repayments on its IMF debt. The EU policy of demanding growth and increasing employment while balancing the budget is simply more than the government can handle. The failure of this policy is being called “Zombification” by this economics blogger, in which nations “can’t grow out of their debts yet aren’t being allowed to fail on them either.”

Portugal is on life support, fed artificially by the IMF but kept in a coma by the EU conditions. Is the solution to let Portugal’s euro-based economy die and rebuild “from the ashes”? Do we return to the escudo?

The prognosis looks bleak.

Greece lines up Portugal

“This year Portugal enters its third year under a bailout and this year is expected to be the toughest with more tax hikes and the elimination of two months of pay for civil servants. The government is already calling for a economic contraction of 3%, but a look at the latest stats from the central bank suggest much worse.”

and

Portugal’s economic mess worsens

As Portugal’s economy deteriorates, a second bailout, Greek-style debt restructuring or even exodus from the euro zone loom as possibilities. “Not only will a second aid package be required, but the recognition that a debt restructuring may be necessary is increasing,” Marc Chandler, chief currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, said in a Jan. 24 report.

Almost all of Portugal’s key economic indicators are going in the wrong direction. Unemployment is climbing relentlessly. The national jobless rate is 13.2 per cent and the youth unemployment rate, at almost 31 per cent, is the euro zone’s fourth highest.”

Commentators are not just worried for Portugal per se, but concerned about the complete collapse of the euro and the shockwaves that would cause in their own economies.

Portugal’s borrowing rates rise to record 19.4%

New high arrives amid fears that bailed-out country will not be able to break free of financial crisis

The worsening crisis in the eurozone has hit the British economy, and analysts fear that the contagion from Greece may spread throughout the eurozone and drag Britain and the rest of the world into a prolonged recession.

Although this article suggests that Portugal may not be able to avoid defaulting on its loan, it recognises that there is an effort being made to restore fiscal health and therefore it may not be so difficult for Portugal to renegotiate the bailout deal. The government so far has denied it would try. The government is in denial.

The same point of view, this time from the American perspective:

Portugal Suffers as Loss of Confidence in Bonds Sends Yields Higher

Investors fled out of bonds of weaker European countries on Monday, sending yields on Portuguese government bonds to a record high over concerns that the euro zone debt troubles were spreading beyond Greece.

The higher yields means that the Portuguese government has to pay significantly more interest than, for instance, Spain, whose yields on 10-year bonds were around 4.98 percent on Monday.

Portugal, which is in a recession and has been lowered to junk grade by ratings agencies, has less debt than Greece but there was still a growing belief that the country would have to ask for a bigger bailout than initially expected.

But other analysts noted that Portugal was in far better shape economically than Greece. It has 100 percent debt-to-gross domestic product ratio compared with a ratio of about 160 percent for Greece, said Charles Diebel, head of market strategy at Lloyds Banking in London.

“To a degree, yes, Portugal’s in trouble,” Mr. Diebel said. “But the problems there are nothing like in Greece.”

So things are not all that bad, compared to Greece. Why, exactly?

A Bluffing Game

The Greek economy is not productive enough to generate growth. Aside from olive oil, textiles and a few chemicals, there are hardly any Greek products suitable for export. On the contrary, Greece is dependent on food imports to feed its population.

According to a study by the German Institute for Economic Research, a key cause of the problem is the relatively poor price/performance ratio. In Mediterranean tourism, (for example) Greece has to compete with non-euro countries like Croatia, Tunisia, Morocco, Bulgaria and Turkey, which can offer their services at significantly lower prices. The per-hour wage in the hospitality industry was recently measured at €11.39 in Greece, as compared with only €8.49 in Portugal, €4 in Turkey and as little as €1.55 in Bulgaria. The study arrives at grim conclusions, noting that the drastic austerity programs will not only remain ineffective, but will also stigmatize the country as “Europe’s problem child” for a long time to come.

Portugal’s problem is not that it is uncompetitive or unproductive. Portugal’s problem is its lack of growth. It is stifled by an internal fiscal policy that cripples medium sized business with beaurocracy,  punishes entrepreneurship and small business with taxes and allows corruption and cronyism in big business to run rife. The mother stymie of them all is 23% IVA, a tax which keeps mums and dads from spending and fails as substantial government revenue.

Here’s why. I encourage you to follow the link and read the whole article. It describes the reality of the failure of the Portuguese economy. The Portuguese will not riot on the streets as the Greeks have. Theirs is a quiet revolution, another carnation revolution, through civil disobedience and non-compliance.

Portugal: Going Underground in Hard Times

The underground economy in Portugal is booming thanks to the steep increases in taxation and prices demanded by a ‘troika’ of international creditors to address the country’s economic crisis. 

Sheer survival instinct among those most affected by the austerity measures is driving them further into the parallel economy, which according to recent official figures amounted to 24.8 percent of GDP in 2010.And it is continuing to grow, owing to the severe economic crisis from which there seems to be no way out, a study from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto concludes. There are still no statistics for 2011, but economists who have analysed the situation and made their findings public concur that the informal economy grew last year, and is expected to grow again in 2012.

The rise of the informal economy mirrors the ongoing decline of the formal economy, amid rumours of a probable new tax hike that has still not been confirmed or denied by the right wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho.Rising prices, taxes, social security contributions and unemployment, along with cuts in social benefits and health care, are the main drivers behind the flight to the underground economy.

Activities in the parallel economy are not registered in the statistics tracking the country’s wealth. One-quarter of economic production is left out of Portugal’s GDP, which is nominally 223.7 billion dollars a year, says the University of Porto study, released this month.

The underground economy generates more than 52.6 billion dollars a year – half the amount of the international troika’s bailout plan.

Portugal has the third largest underground economy relative to GDP in the EU, after Italy and Greece. What all three countries have in common, and helps to explain the state of their economies, is high indirect taxation, high direct taxes on consumption and high unemployment, the study says. 

In 1970, when the first studies were done on the black economy, its activities had a value of 9.3 percent of GDP. By 2010 it had grown to 24.8 percent of GDP.

My message to you, Peter Rabbit.

First, reduce the debt. Renegotiate the bailout deal. Sell the submarines (€500 million) and freeze defence spending (€2 billion-ish - all governments in recession should do it). Install 1000 speed cameras on the roads (cost €20 million, annual revenue €20 million)

Then reduce IVA by 10% and introduce mandatory tax compliance and auditing by a new centralised finanças body: start with big business. Legislate to make hearings and penalties for tax avoidance immediate and severe. Create incentives & tax breaks for the self employed and small business. Create a grant scheme for medium business to take on employees.

Fundamentally, what this country needs is an active Ombudsman and an ongoing war against corruption and conflicts of interest. Royal Commission/Committee style investigations into the Police force, the Judiciary and local government should result in a cleanout of the protectionist, unethical and ultimately obsolete modus operandi which binds Portugal to its past and to a development stalemate.

When I finally made the trip visiting the Agua de Prata workshop it was the highlight of my visit to Evora. Roman era temple? For what we came. Pre-history Cromeleques? Saw them. But Nossa Senhora Da Graça Do Divor… Conquer me!

The studio is situated on an enviably pretty hill, next to a notable church on a gently undulating Alentejan plain, dotted with the ancient water wells that supplied Roman Evora its silver water, agua de prata.

The wool producing town of Arraiolos is about 15kms away, and supplies the artist, João Videira, with the wool with which he reinvents and revives old furniture frames and other objects. There’s a magic fusion that happens between the old framework and the intensely coloured wool that creates an altogether new and beautiful design piece. The warmth of the recollected meets the tactile wool in a way that makes this furniture irresistible; it’s at once modern and antique, designer and personal, precious and cuddly.

And the recycled and recreated philosophy fits perfectly with the concept for my house. By taking what has heritage and soul and stripping back the parts that have deteriorated. Then restructuring and repairing those bones for a modern use, adapting outdated living concepts for today’s needs and integrating modern desires for comfort and pleasure. The result is honestly beautiful, luxurious and unique furniture of character and simplicity.

Collecting designer furniture is all very well, but I can’t see the point if the pieces are not useable and personal to you. You see so many houses in magazines with the standard Eames chair, as ubiquitous as a Warhol print rip off and equally unoriginal. Agua de Prata is the antithesis of this. It’s even easier to fill your house with cheap mass produced furniture, which looks OK for a month and in a year is downright awful. I’d prefer to buy one quality piece I adore, and have an empty house, or even use furniture hire temporarily until I can afford to buy something else.

My favourite things from Agua de Prata are, naturally,  the Pedras de Lã, Wool Rocks. At first glance their organic shape made me curious about the support around which the wool is carefully wrapped. Their weight gives nothing away, except that inside they couldn’t be hollow. Nor are the stones hard; they have a sponginess that adds to the organic characteristic of their shape. The answer is, that the Pedras are solid wool, a ball so carefully and tightly bound that it has taken on its own natural form, and like all the Agua de Prata works, is individual and unique.

And if you’re passing the town through at lunchtime, as we were, wondering where all the folk could be, tuck your head into the first café on the left, which will be packed and dishing out delicious local plates with atmosphere and conviviality. Happiness all round.

http://aguadeprata.blogspot.com/

So here it is. The Papo Seco, or white roll, is the family staple of Portuguese bread. It is breakfast to the suburbs and not called dry throat for nothing. It is ordinary. And stale the next day. I prefer the smaller, cuter, Bico, or beak. Straight from the oven with butter and vegemite. Yum.

The bread truck’s horn is our alarm clock. I’ve given strict instructions to Bruno the Bread Man to start honking as soon as the village is in sight as waking up, getting up, pulling on coat, finding money, finding shoes and running down to the road takes much longer than the brief window of opportunity he normally allows on a stop. If I was organised then I’d hang out a bag with the next day’s order but I have an ingrained habit of breakfast spontaneity. I can’t decide the night before what I’ll want the next morning. And unlike the bread truck at our previous village, this one has more than the usual to choose from. It has cakes.

After the white rolls, the next most popular bread in our village is the Cacete. It too is white and no different in recipe than the rolls, but that’s like saying there’s no difference between spaghetti and spirale. They have different functions. The Cacete’s job is to make a good sandwich. The One is a sandwich enthusiast and he rates the Cacete for this purpose. It’s light and fluffy with a crunchy crust. Excellent with just tuna or ham, also good with jam. But rubbish as toast.

Other whites include the baguette, which can be the same shape as the French but not the same, and pão forma – a square loaf, sometimes twice as long as a loaf of sliced white death. It’s used in cafes for tosta mista, (ham and cheese toasted sandwich) and torradas (toast) cut an inch thick with lashings of butter. Bring your own home made jam and order up a galão and breakfast bliss is yours.

Moving on to where there are more variables and opportunity for baker’s creativity. The Mistura is the Portuguese light brown bread, it also comes in rolls and loaves. At about 37% wholemeal, it is as I say, light brown, not brown. Pão de Mistura is mostly ordinary, but if you shop around you can find exceptional loaves in this class. Anyone near Vila Facaia (Pedrogão Grande territory) should try their mistura, now available from the small supermarket rather than from a bearded woman in a shoe in the wall shop with “depósito de pão” handwritten above the door. I always wondered if she was the baker too and I suspect so, if only to drawn a line between a curious old woman and a curiously delicious kind of bread. Ultra spongey, moist and elastic. I have been known to eat an entire loaf in one sitting. And it seems bakers around here have started copying the Vila Facaia style… I suspect it’s doubling the yeast or something. The bread truck’s mistura is pretty good.

Better though is the Pão de Agua. Note the irregular shape of the loaf, signalling its slightly rustic and artesenal character. I think it’s made with white flour but it’s not especially white in colour. The best way to describe the flavour is watery. I’ve no idea why it’s better than the mistura but it is. The bread’s texture however can be very holey and therefore renders it unacceptable for sandwiches according to The One (who goes a little overboard with mayonnaise). I don’t mind a bit of oozing with toast, and toasted, the Pão de Agua is unreal.

The same can be said for a Pão da Avó, which has a similarly rustic and home made personality: grandmother-style to be sure. It’s made from a stronger dough with more wholemeal flour. Then there’s something called Pão Rustico, which I’d say is the name given to something that is not a Mistura, Agua or Avó.

This here is a Broa de Milho. I suppose one might say this is the traditional Portuguese bread. Very dense, with a tightly woven texture, quite dry. Has a much longer shelf life than the others. Makes excellent toast. It is not corn bread as the name suggests, but half cornflour (maizena, cornstarch) and half wheat flour. Always keep your eye our for a real Broa de Milho which looks just the same except yellow because it’s made with corn meal. Quite special.

That’s it for the basic range, all you can expect really from a bread truck. Next stop is your local pastelaria or dedicated padaria where you’ll find more interesting shapes and flavours, of infinite regional variety. My favourite regional bread is Pão de Alentejana, a cojoined-twin looking white loaf that a local café makes even though we are not in the Alentejo. Portuguese will argue it’s not authentic – if you want to be sure it’s the genuine article, you’ll have to go to the very region to find out. I’m not so pendantic about the names, just grateful that the baker is doing something slightly different.

Darker wholewheat and black breads are hard to find in Portugal. Try organic markets where expat Germans and Dutch supply genuine home made artesanal breads, made with love and good health.

Surprisingly a good place to look for bread is in the freshly baked bread bread department of chain supermarkets. Maybe high turnover raises the quality, but perhaps breakmaking is an art and it’s all up to the individual baker and their oven. In Lousã, if you’re passing, the Lidl has great fresh bread and the baguettes and croissants at the Intermarché are an excellent imitation of the real thing. Really, nothing much beats the white stick of France, or for that matter, the black breads of Germany. And who doesn’t miss sourdough? If you have major longing for the bread of your origin you can of course, bake your own, or even buy a breadmaker and bread mixes from better supermarkets.

There are many sweet breads too if we are not being too precious about what is bread and what is not. Pão de Leite is like brioche. Pão de Deus is not like anything but is good with ham and cheese. Pão de Ló is like a sponge cake, so, not bread. Broainhos cannot be found on the internet so maybe they are an invention of Figueiró Dos Vinhos. They appear at Christmas and Easter and are small dark fruit breads which I insist on being toasted and buttered despite it being against Portuguese law. Broa Doce is a generic name given to another sweet bread but not Little Sweet Corn Bread.

Also to consider is this. The Bolo de Berlim. Not a bread. A cake. But not to be ignored.

Please, dear reader, if you can shed any light on this Portuguese insurance malarky, please don’t restrain yourself. I am, once again, off to hunt down satisfaction from somewhere .co.uk, where they understand this Anglo Saxon peculiarity to be prepared.

In one last post about the house building, until “phase one” is ready for photography and housewarming, let’s take a look at the good and the bad decisions made so far.

This is not an invitation for any lurking troll to lay shit on me – as does happen once in a while and always by another amateur with barely formed half ideas supposed on unfinished photos and the scraps of information divulged here on these pages. You see ladies, anyone with a dick is an expert builder, and a erstwhile blondish chick is the most easy post for the least competent of these to cock a leg. Here’s some advice for you, little boys, in return for all the “careful that wall doesn’t fall on you” type comments I’ve endured:  Expert builders do not give out unsolicited advice. They do not condescend. They work with you, not against. Real builders, just like real men, have balls, and they do not need to piss on women to prove it. They don’t need to prove anything.

As if the condition of my self esteem isn’t already quite plain, I see no shame in sharing with you where I think I wasted money or time or made things way much harder than they needed to be. I know what I am: I am a perfectionist, and I take on very ambitious projects. Arguably too big for someone who might be more comfortable with a drama-less life. I am a paradox just like any decent human being.

Let’s start with booby number one: the windows. For those who don’t recall, I bought for a bargain, a few thousand old timber windows and doors that were ripped out of Versailles or somewhere. We discussed the best way to restore them and then the financial crisis came and they shelved, quite literally, for two years which did nothing to improve their deteriorated condition. Now, for “phase one” of the renovation we only needed four windows and three doors. And just this small number drove us all crazy with the amount of work they needed and the tediousness and discomfort of the work required. And I’m sorry to say, the results aren’t impressive. Sure, they are kinda cute, but they are also warped, uneven and don’t fit into frames that were straight and built around them. They have been a total pain in the arse from start to finish. And they are still not finished.

I don’t have a solution here, because as The One said, he too would have bought the windows at the price I was offered. New windows, double glazed, are at least €350 each, so you can very easily dispense with a few thousand bucks. I can’t recommend saving money by installing them yourself either, unless you’ve had a lifetime of practice. It’s a fiddly, skill-requiring task. And I’ll stand up and say this level of carpentry is out of my league.

Scheduling. Don’t bother. Waste of time. Building is, surprising to me, an organic beast. And you are in Portugal on Portuguese time. Your timber will not be ready when you want it. You will not be able to get products you want that day from the local shop. Delay, delay and more delay. Don’t set a deadline. Just let it happen. Even when your builder is on a contract with a penalty if they run late, they will still run late.

The mess. Somehow you’ve got to get everyone who works on the site to clean up after themselves. Obviously, this is anathema to tradespeople – even the gentlemanly PT guys leave crap everywhere. If I did not have to ferret about with a plastic bag collecting flotsam almost constantly I could’ve got a lot more done – and there is always more on my job list than anyone else’s. Make it part of the work, in that half hour before downing tools there is a cleanup session. And the tools! How much gets destroyed & money wasted by inadequately cleaned tools and equipment. I neglected checking on the cement mixer for a while and now it’s irreparable. And no matter how much I laid down the law, or the ashtrays, I could still spend an entire day now picking up cigarette butts. Why am I still cleaning mortar off floors, roof tiles, window sills, when one sweep of a sponge at the end of the day would have spared me these hours?! Grrrrrr!

Let’s change the subject lest the poor reader loses the will to live. Let’s instead talk about the glory of the wood burner. I checked out makes and models and prices for a few years before this day, and so I had a fair idea of what I needed. I needed to spend more than I wanted to, that was clear, but when choosing a wood burner you can exchange kilowatts for quality. I went for a Portuguese made brand called Solzaima, which smacked of quality – it’s easy to spot: environmentally mindful, good supply of information about the product, trained sales staff. I thought I’d spend €500, I spent €800. And then I handed it over to penfold the builder who has installed his own and for others and knew exactly what I had to achieve: central heating.

Thus I spent another €1400 on installation, including a secondary fan to boost the traffic of hot air to other rooms, (in addition to the recuperador’s own fan which generally serves as radiant heat) a chimney, a major amount of floor support and a whole lot of unseen tubing.

It is worth every cent. It is as warm as socks in here, even with single glazing and drafts blowing in through every unfinished door and window. It is efficient and low maintenance and it looks sensational. It unmistakably adds value to the house. We love it.

In the same vein – the double insulation, with all the pain it took, has paid off. I already knew it would when in mid-August the outside workers were dying, we, rendering inside, were singing along to the radio. Our morning inside temperature (no fire) will be above 15º when outside is under 7º. And we haven’t even insulated downstairs yet and anyone with a rés do chão knows how cold it is down there…

Ilhamdulillah, the bath. It’s big, it’s lovely. I have no regrets on the money spent on the bathroom. Everything is big – the sink, the taps – but it works in the space. I love the floor tiles (expensive) and the wall tiles (cheap). I love the insulated water pipes (my insistence) and the strong water pressure (pure luck). And I’ll love it even more when it’s finished – door, tiling, heated towel rail, cupboard, and a damn inspection hatch door to stop the cats playing chasings under the bath…

It’s tretas anyway. Stressful. I’ll give you stressful.

Emma’s Top Five Stressful Life Experiences:

(and a more sincere note, the death or illness of a close friend is very stressful and working with toxic people or in a toxic workplace is too, but that’s all behind me now)

Moving is just packing stuff, and I do love to parcel. I am a meticulous packer and am very good at chucking stuff out, like my mother. Like my father, The One is a bit of a hoarder and packs haphazardly… in that Get it Done way that I aspire to.

The reason I’m such a careful packer is that I once lost three bottles of good french wine in a move. The wine was bought in acutely sentimental circumstances; the last good moments at the end of a relationship, wine tasting in France. I had to move in a hurry: my new flatmate’s friends were homicidal maniacs and I had recruited friends to help me escape. When I arrived at my parent’s house and opened the esky that the wine was travelling in, the contents resembled my bloodied and broken heart. One of those scarring symbolic moments you never forget.

I will miss the lovely village where we’ve been living. Wookie will miss it even more. He has run free with his gang of chums for a year, and we now return to Cú de Judas where all the dogs are chained up, except for the one that bites :-/ Oh how I lecture them about the uselessness of a chained dog as security (he can hardly bite the legs off an intruder), and how none of us will jump up and check on the house if their dog is barking because their dog never stops barking day or night and what’s the need for security anyway? Is this New York? Is this Redfern? And what are these criminal gangs going to steal? Around here, it is the dog itself which is most likely to disappear …

In the last week we went to considerable effort installing gates and some fencing so that Wookie could have a piss outside without hurting anyone’s feelings. Day one and he’s already found a way out. I don’t know why I worry so much about upsetting my cruelty-to-animal neighbours anyway. Maybe if my dog actually gets a goat (the dog which had never caught a mouse) they might consider the wild idea of fencing their livestock…? At this stage I still have no real hope that he will catch a goat, as he is too busy wooing them as playmates, parked in my yard as they are.

Enough pontificating. I have somewhat less interesting things to say about logistics. Our belongings have been divided between five different locations. Mattresses on one side of the mountain, sofas and chairs on the other side, in someone’s garage, I know not where exactly. Some cookware in the annexe, some pet food in the ruin. Presently we have a very random selection of stuff in a pile around us, which does not include the electric frypan, bed sheets or towels but does include stuff for the Miranda boot sale sometime in March. By my calculations we have been using the same doona cover since mid October and The One is still devoted to his Qantas pyjamas which in daylight hour-terms means he has been wearing the same clothes for a more than a month. And we don’t care.

We do have a stunning bathroom although there’s still cement stuck to the floor. And the woodburner is worth the very last scrap of money I had to my name, although the fireplace needs another coat of paint. I can work wonders with only a microwave (The One reckoned Christmas Day’s prawn korma was one of the best ever). We have internet for the day and movies for the night. We are broke but we are rich.

We are in at last and the pets are very happy.

But so it was, these last few weeks. I gathered up all the stray workers I could find and set about making the place slightly more hospitable than just a shed with a million dollar fireplace. We were moving in before Christmas and no santa could stop us.

While the most obvious thing was getting the doors and windows hung, the scene was a train crash of competing priorities. Putting a finish on the new floor and oh god what colour, keeping mud out of the house and off that newly sealed floor (forget the dark stain I had in mind all along and go for linseed oil, no worries thanks tango). Finishing the never finished ceiling, because, like, when would I next have the chance to erect scaffolding in the living room. The hallway had to be dug up and redone because it ended up being lower than the outside, and that stuffed up the doorway height to the bathroom which I had tried to make tall-husband accessible. Two old leaks had continued to flourish despite the new roof, so we had to seal up and re-render a section of the outside, replace some roof tiles, and add a new strip of tiles to properly drain away the offending water trap. And so on. And on. And on.

So many absurd distractions! Our old furniture wouldn’t fit, but there’s no money left for everything new. Where would we sleep? Living room or office? The stairs, the hatch-door, he says no, I say yes. Skirting boards on curved walls? How will I cook? Instead of getting a good night’s sleep I’m up redesigning the kitchen or looking at oak furniture by the furniture market and fantasising about the perfect solution and not the fast one. Again I find myself chanting: Get it Done. Don’t Make it Perfect, Just Get it Done.

Och aye, there’s the plumbers. Three weeks before going to Australia I hired these two clowns calling themselves plumbers and gave them the benefit of the doubt for their first few appearances. No, they did not want to do the plumbing as previsioned by the builder, no they would not be insulating the pipes as I asked but yes they would be giving me a tap there and a mess there and fiddling about with the electricians work exactly as I had not requested. I should have fired them then but who else was there? In Act Two, with the director off sunning herself down under, instructions with colour diagrams in two languages were left with amply capable and qualified male friend with translating woofer. The bath had to be installed so. Não. This is what the client wants and this is what we do. Não. Não and não. So the bath is not level, the bath is not insulated and the bath has no inspection hatch. And the work is not finished. And still not finished two weeks later, which adds up to 12 days of work on a bathroom of 10m2. Clearly they are pulling my leg, and even more sharply when they try going back on our already extortionist €15/hr agreement by asking for €120 per day, each, same for the guy who did nothing and same for the kid. And that’s being paid for the one-and-three-quarters lunch breaks. And the travel. Ha ha.

Well yes, silly me: one for not wising up on day one, two for paying them way over the going rate, three for letting it go on so long, four for letting them touch someone else’s work (“I’m an electrician too”, they said). Anyway, I’m pretty sure Laurel and Hardy weren’t prepped for negotiating with an ex-producer with a ledger alleging every minute they had spent smoking fags and drinking coffee. Nor a list, long, of complaints about work badly done, not done or done at the expense of other’s people’s work. And how about the taps not being centred at the end of the bath? A mockery!

I love arguing in Portuguese. It’s too easy to ignore everything the other party says and unprovoked, return to the bottom line of the argument: The work was not done as I had instructed. If it had been, I’d be happy and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Pure and simple. Not negotiable.

So they were paid what I had agreed to, with a solatium (word of the day on Thesaurus.com). But the inconvenience didn’t stop with their departure. The toilet leaked. The sink leaked. The drains blocked up. The electrics were so badly mangled that the electrician wasted a day just figuring out what was going on. Much griping between the workers about a lack of respect, lying, cheating non-professionals who brag about beating their wives on site! I wish I’d been there to hear that one, and he would’ve been beaten off site, smartly.

So, people, plumbers from Vilarinho? Run. Away. Run. Far. Away.

After the others had mostly recovered from the plumbing trauma, it was time for me to really lose the plot. I shouted, screamed, cried and abused everyone who came near me. The One copped it the worst. I was horrible. Stress gets me in the guts, and the guts got me good. I made myself very ill indeed. They say that renovating is stressful, y’know. They say it’s hard on marriages, y’know. I recall a dear friend whose husband was building their house right under them. She was fed up with the dust, the dirt, her mate being exhausted, being shut out and left with the kids. How ungrateful, I thought, he’s building you a damn house! But now I know, and she has my sympathy. I am fed up with dust, I am fed up with dirty, sore hands, of the bruises and cuts. I am totally fed up with renovating. I cannot see people’s help for what it is, and I can no longer think straight. It is time to stop.

The windows and doors went in, the switches turned lights on and the preposterously luxurious woodburner got it’s fans going. The place was habitable, and come Christmas Eve, we set about moving in.

Thus somehow we arrived at Coimbra train station with 60 kilos of luggage and The One desperate for a pee. Train arrives, train departs, husband returns from men’s room. We buy new tickets for the next train which might get us to the check-in in the nick of time, with the kind cooperation of a taxi driver on speed. Once this feat was accomplished, Emma discovers she has no passport. Of the hundreds and hundreds of flights I have caught in my little life and it has to be this one: a great gorgeously generous gift from my sister-in-law to surprise my brother on his 50th birthday. This flight could not be missed. This could not be happening.

I’ll spare you the next half hour of head exploding panic in its gruesome detail. The passport was located, a new seat found for me on the next flight (lucky, lucky) and husband sent forward to Frankfurt on the existing ticket. Good friends, who will drive your passport to you two and a half hours away, are the most important thing in the world. And yes, I am your slave for life. Anyway, a couple of valium and several hundred kilometres later and The One and I were boarding our Qantas flight for Sydney only to discover we’d been downgraded.

Two more valium later and we arrived in Old Sydney Town and to husband’s delight we were picked up in a caramel butter-coloured Maserati. Even I had to restrain myself from licking the upholstery. It set the tone really for what would be three weeks of luxy decadent bliss, oh except for the sanding painting cleaning & repairing part. Let’s skip that story for now and start with the champagne-museum-of-contemporary-art-party-overlooking-sydneyharbourbridge-and-opera-house… in full jetlag, it was quite surreal.

The first thing The One did on his holiday was get a new girlfriend. Every time I turned my back they were in bed together. It got a bit embarrassing when our dear hostess would wonder where the hell her cat was and would search all the usual hiding places like sock drawers, lumps of washing and inside the hi-fi speakers, only to find that the guest was bed-hogging her, like, again. The thing with the Burmese is they have a supersonic sense of who is most likely to get horizontal regularly, and The One smells like an immanent lie-down.

So then we spent a week of surveying the damage to my other property asset abroad. Tenants, mate. Can’t pay mortgage without them, can’t kill ‘em. Broken leg on coffee table, sofa, and dining table, filth smeared from aft to fore, damage to this and that and a charming hole punched into a wardrobe door. So we filled sanded painted repaired and cleaned in sensational 37º heat, when we should have been at the beach, hanging out with friends, visiting mom, or lying around with the cat. Sorry darling. Nice holiday. Not.

Fortunately our hosts (oh let’s be frank. You remember tinyartdirector? Well she’s my sister and we are staying with her) had some sense and whisked us away for an enviable long weekend which looked like this:

Some whales dropped by for our appreciation. And hung around for three days smashing their tails on the water and mucking about. Priceless. I know it sounds coy but whales really are something special. They are so damn big and out of our league, you can’t help but gobblesmacked by them. We certainly were. Better than tele.

The One insisted on seeing kangaroos in the wild. We got dressed, packed our hats and sunscreen and even locked the door of the timber shack holiday house such was the anticipation of the hunt. An extremely short drive later, there were half a dozen roos posing for our photos, racing the Volvo and just staring us out as if to say yeah, take the pictures and bugger off, would ya?

There’s no doubt about it, kangaroos are funny animals. Firstly they look funny. And like camels, they have attitude. A sort of, what do you want, yeah come as close as you want I couldn’t give a toss and now I’m bored of you, type attitude. They are one of those rare animals who is firmly in control of the situation. Piss me off and I’ll kick your arse. They are cool.

So. Whales, tick. Kangaroos, tick. Savage sunburn on pommy skin, tick. Prawns on the barbie, naturally.

But then as some people have to work, we returned to Sydney and yet another week of culinary sensations. Thai, Japanese, quality beef, real lamb, Pacific Ocean fish and even bacon and eggs on damper breakfast at 3pm. My superfluous sister-in-law had also remembered our wedding anniversary (who is this woman and why can’t we all marry her) and sent us off to The Best Restaurant in The World, Tetsuyas. Extraordinary. Unforgettable. Quite difficult to find the words for its awesomeness, other than, say, perfect.

Somewhat staggered by everyone’s generosity towards us we loaded up our trunks and headed, sadly, for the airport. We did not want to come home, not one little bit. Not to winter, not to house building, not to the pressing need to make a living out of an oily rag.

And we wouldn’t be flying if they wasn’t some sort of industrial action impeding our trip. Qantas on the way over (CEO of which is a dipshit) and now a Portuguese general strike on the return trip. I am a card carrying socialist but I reckon the strike cost me way more than it cost Paulo Passos Coelho. Not to mention my sister-in-law. I’m sure the general strike in Portugal really changed her mind on a few policies.

Thus a day or two were endured in the most boring city on Earth, Frankfurt. And jetlag and minus 1º centigrade do not agree with me. Christmas Markets still do not charm me. The German language does not charm me. Sausages and Gluhwein make me puke. Just get me home, oh god, where there are some little fur-people waiting for me.

I am walking the path of many idealistic owner-builders.  You want to use environmentally kind products, you do not want to create waste, you do not want to destroy the landscape and in the end you want to build a healthy, sustainable, carbon neutral home that either creates its own energy or uses very little.

It’s not only about the Earth, as low impact living has an enormous economic advantage. You spend less (or even nothing) on electricity, gas & water; your heating requirements are greatly reduced and your organically grown vegetables are free & healthier. That’s all great, except when it comes to paying the initial outlay. My green dreams began to fade once the global financial crisis had eaten my self invested personal pension. Suddenly solar power, central heating, double glazing and superinsulation are luxuries I can no longer fit into the budget. But why should it be so?

WHY IS SOLAR HOT WATER SO EXPENSIVE IN THIS COUNTRY? Why the hell is solar, and photovoltaic systems in particular, in any country, priced to prohibit them being a standard installation? We have the technology, it’s just that the government does not want to give it to us. Looking at solar in Portugal for a moment: the most prominant products are the same ugly things Australians were putting on their rooves 40 years ago, and yet Germany, that partner in the European Union, has state of the art systems and the highest implementation of them in Europe (or is that the world, I can’t remember).  AND IT’S NOT EVEN VERY SUNNY THERE.

And Portugal’s attempt at a grant scheme for solar hot water installation was so flawed, supplying only particular products through selected suppliers and running the rebates through the banks – what a comedy of corruption, and what an abysmal failure.

SO I ASK – WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? Isn’t it about time governments realised that it is good business to be green? That there is an enormous demand for the science community to improve the technology for a demanding marketplace and a dying planet? Why not think a little Chinese for a second and work out how many millions are to be made by the manufacturer and distributor of the cheapest domestic sustainable energy supplier, say something under $1000 with a lifetime warranty?

Where is the regulation of distributors? The products themselves do not, as is widely believed, cost a lot to manufacture. It’s the distributors who are responsible firstly for the inadequate supply of quality products and the ramping of prices. Again, slack governments failing to prioritise an area of industry: a lack of ethics on part of government and of the distributors themselves. Haven’t we seen this all before with the pharmaceutical industry?

Everyone says “it’s because governments make so much money from fuel taxes” or “it’s because the oil companies are the most powerful beings in the universe”. Bullshit. Oil is an endangered species. Coal is an endangered species. Finding solutions for alternative energy is the most pressing problem facing all governments – unless of course they are so weak that their only focus is the next election.

WELL WE CAN SEE FARTHER THAN THAT. And most of us reading this live in democracies. I say OUT with any government who does not have strong environmental policies that cast into the future, fund scientific development, engage manufacturers and distributors and deliver real incentives, as in govt or tax rebates, to convert the masses to alternative energy. In return we will consume less, save more, live longer, healthier and more productive lives and not send same government running to the IMF for handouts.

Be cynical as you may, but I still believe in personal responsibility, in human rights, in the fundamental knowledge we all possess of what is just, for all of us and for the Earth we live on. I believe in people having ethical integrity whose wealth and power can rise above the rationalisation of economy, of political process, and of personal greed. A worldwide movement exists which is propelled not by consumption but by sustainability. It is not just about pollution and carbon emissions and beaching whales. It is about the burgeoning realisation that capitalism is a failure, that democracy needs a kick up the arse, and the only way forward economically for the world is to halt consumption, build community and for each person to live self sufficiently, collaboratively and ultimately, peacefully.

I have not given up on my pursuit of green. I’ve used lime instead of cement wherever its engineeringly viable. I’ve recycled clay, stone and timber, I have double insulated the house. I’ve put in a grey water system which diverts everything except toilet and bidet deep into the lawn and I’ve got a sensationally massive 1000L rainwater tank for the horta. The house has passive solar conditions, is cross ventilated, and I’ll have one woodburner and A+ only appliances eventually. Two shopping bags of waste a day are sent to the bin (chiefly full of jaffa cake biscuit wrappings, the site’s favourite) but other than that no construction waste has left my place for landfill. I’m quite proud of that bit.

But to the future. I am steadfast on minimising electric and gas and yet there’s no way I’ve got the money for a solar-plus-recuperador-de-calor set up. The solar part is so tragic, that despite being “sunny Portugal” you cannot rely on it all year round – six months perhaps, because the cheaper systems available here are reliant on sunshine and not light.

Hence, my solution has been brought to me by the excellent people of Raiz Verde, one of the very few alternative energy companies in Portugal with a palpable level of integrity, and not one of those who want to sell you overpriced obsolete technology and a whole lot of bullshit. I remember a funny conversation with a guy in such an alternative energy shop who had no faith in reflective foil insulation because “the light can’t get into the air space between the bricks”… if you can’t differentiate between light and heat then perhaps you’re in the wrong business?

Anyway Raiz Verde has offered me the Sunpack heat exchanger system at a drastically generously reduced price and it would be criminal of me not to go for it. It is such a sexy system, so simple, and slightly beyond my comprehension. This is what it’s all about (straight from their website I confess):

A simple principle and an efficient way of using energy from the sun, the wind and the rain. The SunPack Heat Pump works on a thermodynamic principle and is based on the use of an evaporator panel. This panel captures the free energy which exists in direct and diffuse solar radiation, the rain and the wind. The energy is then transferred to a heat exchanger in the storage tank, heating the water inside at a cost approximately a fifth that of conventional systems.

The evaporator panel is fixed on the outside, capturing energy in the form of direct solar and / or diffuse solar, wind, rain and air. The panel extracts the available energy in the environment, the refrigerant in the panel boils and returns to the compressor as gas, where the heat is extracted and passed to the body of stored water via a high efficiency heat exchanger. Once the heat from the gas has been extracted, the gas returns to its liquid form as it cools and the process repeats, bringing the body of stored water to the desired temperature. With a power consumption of only 390W, the system can provide water at between 55ºC and 60ºC all year round, 24 hours per day, even on rainy days in the winter. Given that most of the energy is harnessed from nature, up to 80% of all the hot water obtained is free, which will significantly reduce your energy bill.

From me all it requires is the space for the cylinder, as in a new small enclosure attached to an existing shed and a space above the vines for the panel. It’s a beautiful thing. But even at the wonderful price of $1750 plus tax and transport and stuff, it is still outside my budget. So I’m appealing to you all who visit emmashouseinportugal.com, who’ve enjoyed the story and the journey, to make a little donation, and to do what is good and what is right, and to help me to fulfill my promises.

There’s a supportbutton to the right and below.

With huge thanks to Simon Sharp for his expertise and input.

One of the first things a foreigner notices about Portugal is just how bad the drivers are, and how many accidents you see. It’s a talking point amongst us, and if you think this is just a bit of Portugal bashing, you’re wrong. It is a deadly serious issue.

Driver behaviour and in turn, road fatalities, shape the reputation of a country. Do we think of Greeks and Italians as hotheaded, Germans as aggressive and volvo drivers (or Scandinavians) as boring and safe? The individual who drives dangerously endangers the lives of others. In the main the victims are men: 75% of road deaths are male and under 35. Road fatalities are a meter of a “civilisation”. Responsible governments improve roads and have campaigns to reduce road deaths.

2009 data - blue is the EU average

So what’s wrong with Portuguese driving?

1. Extremes of speed – it seems half the country is driving way too fast and the other half way too slow.

2. Tailgating.

3. Failing to indicate.

4. Failing to Give Way.

5. Lack of understanding of how to use a roundabout. It doesn’t help that the country is built on roundabouts of multiple lanes, totally superfluous given the size of the population. Whatever happened to good old fashioned traffic lights? Even a three year old knows that green is for go and red is for stop.

I’ll bury the lead right now and say that statistically speaking, the Portuguese are definitely not the worst drivers in the world. You are far more likely to be killed on the roads of Africa and the Middle East, no where more so than in Libya, Niger and the United Arab Emirates. Not even within the EU does Portugal look bad. Almost all the Eastern European EU newcomers have more fatalities.

Of course not just driving skills are responsible for road deaths. The quality of the roads and the age and safety of cars obviously have a part to play. However, neither of these factors explains why Portugal does fair badly compared to Spain, France or Western Europe generally. Here’s a rough summary, including a few other places for interest’s sake:

2010 data

Only Greece lives up to its reputation – I’d never have guessed that the Belgians or the Poles were raging petrol heads, but there you are. As for the US, well that’ll be just another shame.

Now to Portugal. Actually Portugal is doing very well to reduce what used to be a truly horrific record. It has the greatest reduction in deaths in the EU over the last 10 years. Still, every life is worth saving and it does give a country something to be proud of. Given the economic disaster Portugal finds itself in right now, I can’t imagine that road deaths are really on the government’s mind. But it should be, because as other countries have discovered, traffic policing not only brings down fatalities but it is a nice little revenue earner. Here’s how it works:

Road accidents cost about 1 -3% of a country’s GDP. So in Portugal’s case a mere 1% equal €1.8 BILLION euros. Oh yeah. As I said, let’s reduce traffic accidents.

About half of all fatal accidents involve drunk drivers. Let’s start there. In a google search about effective policing to reduce road fatalities the state of Victoria in Australia got a mention in several places.

In 1977, 49% of all drivers killed in Victoria were found to be in excess of 0.05% (alcohol in the blood in a blunt sense). By 1992 that figure had been reduced to 21%. What the government did was set up an independent body called the Transport Accident Commission, which took over the governance of compulsory third party insurance, paid by drivers. They raised the levies on third party which helped to pay for some of the most exceptional TV commercials of the time. Then they programmed the random breath testing units run by police on the streets. It rested on the principles that it be highly visible; rigorously enforced so as to ensure credibility; was sustained; and well publicised. The success of the programme to reduce drink driving in that state spread to other states. These days, if you drink and drive you can expect to be caught.

2009 stats

TAC´s second agenda was to reduce speeding, which they believe was accountable for about 40% of fatal crashes (in the UK it is apparently believed to be about 5% and elsewhere on the internet about 30% – but obviously you’re better off hitting something doing 15kms/hr than 150kms/hr if it’s survival you have in mind). Along with their blanket quality advertising campaigns, the widespread implementation of speed cameras, red light cameras and police radar got them profound results.

a little message from the netherlands

Victoria achieved record low road tolls in both 2008 and 2009, some of the most impressive reductions in the world at that time. Newspaper reports credited a co-ordinated and well-funded campaign that focused on higher risk young drivers, more aggressive policing, increased police activity, random breath testing, and in 2009, a 50% increase in the use of mobile speed cameras.

The Victoria government forecasts that a revenue of A$245 million (about €176.5 million euros, from a population of 5.5 million) will be raised from fines levied on drivers breaking Victorian road rules, a large proportion being from speed limit enforcement, in 2011.

I’m not advocating a police state, and there’s been quite a bit of argument against the use of speed cameras, especially in the UK. But for a country where speeding is obviously a major issue, I can only see speed cameras doing some good. As for government revenue, in New South Wales, Australia (pop. 7.2 million) the government were reported to have raised $350 million (€252 million euros) over the previous five years from speed cameras.

If you’ve got an ethical issue with cameras then why not go the way of France who in some areas prosecute drivers for speeding using an average speed calculated from timestamps on toll road tickets.

2009 data

Like Victoria, there’s room for revenue raising in Portugal from compulsory third party insurance, which is comparatively low in Portugal. Larger vehicles especially seem to get a disproportionately easy run. If you’ve happened to look at caravan insurance quotes over summer you’ll know what I mean. I’m a firm believer in penalising commercial trucks too, for their carbon emissions as well as being a greater danger on the roads than other vehicles.

So there you are. If you think the Portuguese are really bad drivers then you should get out more. After all, they are bloody patient and polite when they’re not in their cars. It’s just a matter of perspective, and a matter of time until their fatalities toll competes with the best of Europe. Congratulations Britarians, you do have one of the very best driving records on the planet, but possibly the also the best record for whingeing as well. And you Australians too, pompous little asses.  It could be worse, you could be in Greece.

Driving in Portugal? If you need a rental car… click!

And a fine week of touring it was, not for the Portuguese in the same train carriage as mother and two daughters wept with laughter while mother played the The One’s hand of our seminal game of tricks and trumps. An impossible-to-explain-rooted-in-family-history moment that all reunions should be made of.

the living lounge hostel, lisbon and santa clara a velha, coimbra

Nothing hurts quite like going back to work after a break. The One and I failed to turn up on Monday and then spent Tuesday and Wednesday giving ourselves a collective hernia with things that were too hard and we did not have the energy nor strength to do. By Thursday we were both practically sick and stayed away. The next week though, with one woofer back on board, I managed to get a few things done: how excellent it is to have someone around who does everything in half the time I do.

pinhal do urso, central coast

And so to the subject of amateurs and expectations. Sometime I’ll draw up a list for the first time owner-builder-Portugal and probably beside the first number they’ll be don’t get disheartened when you find you can do only half the things you thought you could/would. Or make that a tenth. I am all bravo and força, sure, and if left alone I’ll do practically anything, but send in a few more experienced persons and watch my violet shrink. Not out of lack of guts you see, more out of the intelligence that they’ll be doing a better job and a good house is not a place for amateur crapola. Hear me humbled.

osso da baleia, whale bone beach, central portugal

Humbled again am I by the scale of tasks still ahead. We were meant to be moving in yesterday and there’s more to do than I can make a list of. This week I’m chucking everything I’ve got at it: we are camping out with the woofers and hitting it hard.

moreton bay fig in quinta das lagrimas, coimbra

Meanwhile I’ve still got what seems extremely trivial stuff to be organised. As soon as the family were on the plane The One dropped me off at the shops, finding sofas and tiles and salamandras. Really I’d rather be sanding the windows.

alfama, lisboa

Indeed, the windows… loyal readers might remember a nicely popular post about the windows I bought and was/still am restoring. The update, two or what years later is that despite the project being lost some delicious windows and doors remain in the plan. The favourite Pombaline ones haven’t found a place yet, but the French ones that have been chosen for size are coming up a treat. Did anyone suggest using an angle grinder to strip them? Yes, like using a combine harvester to trim roses, but with a delicate feminine hand it is possible to achieve a brutal but satisfactory result. Mindblowingly quickly. Another thing about having 20 year old workers around: they don’t care for petty perfectionism, they just get on with one job to make way for the next. Once my attitude to getting a short film made: Don’t Make it Perfect – Just Get it Done. As for all that double glazing palaver: timber shutters and velvet curtains.

the toys going posh at the palacio de lousã

Anyway, I have about 37 windows and doors left over – if nothing else I’ll have the best greenhouse in the country.