swine flu. gripe A. H1N1. etc, etc.

Breaking news in Portugal… de de de dedede… Guess what? Gripe A isn’t fatal! You wouldn’t know it from watching Portuguses news. My Aussie Visitors brought me the real news from the Antipodes, where tens of thousands are infected because someone forgot the check the cruise ships. Oops. But nobody cares. They’ve stopped counting. They’ve stopped reporting. Because they’ve discovered it’s not the virus that’s killing people neccessarily, it’s old age, cancer, AIDS, pneumonia, asthma, diabetes and whatever other nasty things people have before they catch the pig-bug. The virus itself is a bit piss-weak actually when you compare it to other viral epidemics. Not as contagious as spanish flu, not as powerful as bird flu. So there you are, Portugal. Panic over.

Visitors. Can’t stop them coming, can’t eat them. Filth-making, freeloading, floppers. Still, they do bring quality teas. And chocolate. And they teach the dog tricks. That’s good. And they build compost heaps. They make cups of tea. That’s good too. Oh, alright then. Visitors are ok. But they make you FAT. All those bolos de berlim I had to have! All those pasteis de nata!

Anyway, now that they’ve gone back to where they came from, I’m back to work on the house. OMG. It’s been months now, enough time for the trenches I’ve dug to have filled in again and grown weeds. Let’s see how my vertigo likes hard sweaty work…