I was going to apologise for the lameness of the subject but I’ve just seen ‘primavera’ as the title for Miguel Esteves Cardoso’s column in Público today. Now I have to apologise for being so unoriginal.
But the thing is, the arrival of spring is indeed worth noting. As Sr Cardoso points out, the season of spring in Portugal is a true season, not just summer light. The charm of spring is that it definitively marks the end of the winter. OK that’s obvious, but its psychological effect is really significant. Quite suddenly this year, the sun has come out, I’m not wearing a coat and insects are everywhere. And the flowers! Spring has sprung!
That the malady named SAD (seasonal affective disorder) actually has been given a name (and what a dumb name) seems ridiculous to me. Of course winter makes you unhappy. Winter is miserable. Winter is bad for you. It’s cold, wet and dark. Winter should be renamed depressing. I concede that some things about winter can be nice, like a roaring fire, woollen scarves and hot chocolate or a warming whisky. And I do like snow, for an hour. But the rest of it totally sucks. I could tolerate winter in Sydney, because it’s not really winter, just summer again, watered down. We don’t need beanies or gloves, for instance. I hate beanies. If there are laws against wearing headscarves I think there should be laws against wearing beanies too. To me beanies represent something dangerous, oppressive and separatist. Beanies are a political statement.
And this winter has been the worst winter ever, according to my neighbours. Tia Maria says she has never seen a winter as long and cold and despicable as this one. You know it’s a bad winter when matches won’t light. This year the firelighters won’t light either. The vet told me we have had five days of sunshine since October. And not just a bad winter in Portugal either. Even the Swedes were complaining about the snow, still falling in April (just for me and the film crew). And Swedes are pretty tough.
So thank god that some buds have appeared on the bare trees at last, confirming what we were all quietly suspecting, that it’s not quite so cold as the week before. Like the trees, I’m relieved to have survived the hibernation. I’ve run out of firewood, because it’s been longer and more fierce than expected, but now I don’t have to run around after twigs like my life depended on it. The panic of basic survival is over. And that’s what the little flowers are saying: it’s not something twee or quaint or puerile: it’s time to get on living, which is not what I’ve been doing this winter.
I look around the still soggy, green-with-moss-house, and my ruin looks more ruined than ever. It seems years since I did any building work. I have watched while others continued to point and pour in the hours between showers, but up here in the mountains I just can’t see building in winter as a feasible proposition. During the multiple trips back and forth from the Tomar plains I calculated there must be five degrees difference in temperature, and if it’s cloudy down there, it’s raining up here. And it never seems to be just raining here; it’s either gusty & rainy or bucketing. Or it is just that I’ve lost my nerve? A financial beating is psychologically crushing as anyone knows: it’s an dark and omnipresent worry. Being sick is humiliating and boring, and both of these things are tangible obstacles to building work. But the winter has smothered me, like my eyes are still full of dirt from the burrow and my mind is foggy from the deep sleep of internment. My stores of incentive are as empty as my garden.
And I confess: I can see the projection that some weaker wills judge me to be. A dreamer. A procrastinator. An ingenue. HEY! STOP RIGHT THERE CAPTAIN! I only have to write those words to see how wrong there are. Moi, ingenue? Given the choice between the crotchety, tired and disappointed old woman of the winter, and a blithe virgin-of-life: I’ll take the wrinkles thanks. Young I was once, but naive I’ve never been.
If there’s SAD for winter, is there a diagnosis for spring? Is it contagious?
Goodbye winter. Good riddance. Shower me with spring rain, let me walk in compost and estrume and adubo and the sun:- shine, warm and colour me… and watch me grow a house with my hands.
1. you don’t have to be at the office at 9.
(To be honest I think ‘you don’t have to be at the office at all, ever’ but some people do like work. sick. freaks.)
2. you can eat out of your own garden
4. you have a hammock and you use it
5. your pancakes come out with smilies on them
6. you spend very little money and create very little garbage
7. you drink champagne on wednesdays
8. you make stuff, with your hands, just for fun, just ‘cos you can
9. the chickens roam free on the streets (wookie suggested this one)
10. there are no queues, no traffic jams, and no parking tickets
So, what are your signs? 
Many of you will have forgotten that I am building a house. I understand how you feel. I tried to forget it myself, but as anyone who has built a house knows, you are reminded of how much there is to do EVERY TIME YOU STEP OUT THE DOOR.
This is probably just the right moment to remind the doubters out there (not you, dear reader, I’m sure you’re all with me… oh.. I see…ok, maybe some of you are with me) that this is not a RACE and I have had a MIGRAINE for the last six months, not to mention there’s been a GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS, which has forced some of us to take it SLOWLY OR DIE FROM STARVATION. OH-KAY-EY?
I’m going to say this once, just so we are all clear. YOU CANNOT BUILD A HOUSE BY YOURSELF. That’s right, YES, I know that. And YES, I will be getting the crew in sometime soon. As soon as this headache goes away and the winter is over and I find that last 50 grand I left somewhere. So BACK OFF, or I’ll get the chainsaw out again.
Along with the billions of common frustrations that come with building a house there is the less famous annoyance called not building a house. I had my hands on some stones the other day (was covering the ruin walls to stop them from ruining some more) and felt that dotted line of joy just to be near them again. The craving just to get on with it is driving me loco.
But – there is some news – I did have the angle grinder out. Eons ago I went on a hunt for gates (actually I can look up the blog to when the great search for gates began… it was August. As I said – Eons ago). One gate was needed for the last garden stone wall to be finished and the other for the bathroom stone wall. Couldn’t build the walls without knowing the width of the gates, you see. And unlike new stuff, you can’t rely on a standard size with an antique, or an old-piece-of-crap velharia anyway.
Long story short, found gates in next village, great colour excellent price. Going to be gorgeous. Trust me.
Needed to remove the old hinges and bits before handing them over to the serralheiro to fix new ones, so out came the angle grinder. Just as I was thinking that I really don’t like metalwork much, nor do I like the blunt and rather vicious instrument that is the angle grinder, I became hypnotized. Rather than just saw off the hinges, I cleaned them up like you’d never know the hinges had existed, then I moved onto the rust and old paint. It must have been the extreme noise that ushered me into the 8th state of consciousness you can only get with power tools. It’s not entirely unlike an MRI scan at 3am in a foreign hospital with a migraine. You can really lose yourself in there.
YES earplugs, YES I WAS thankyou, doubter. Now piss off or I’ll GRIND you.
Now that the gates are sitting somewhere waiting for new hinges, I might actually be planning some wall building. Now that it’s sub-15 degrees. And raining. Oh hang on, there’s snow forecast for tonight. Brilliant. Er, I doubt it.
Injuries: 0. Houses Built: 0
I’m a subscriber to John Irving‘s idea that if you’ve had a crap day, cooking dinner is your last opportunity to accomplish something worthwhile, and redeem yourself.
For an overacheiver, it’s inevitable that most days are a disappointment, unless you’ve managed to get Warren Buffet on the phone discussing your plan for relieving world poverty. Even when I’ve suceeded in laying a few stones in a new wall, I usually arrive at dinnertime with more than a just a hunger in my stomach. I have a hunger of the soul as well.
I thought I’d be wacking up a couple of thick stone walls this week, but I need to find two old gorgeous gates before I start them. I’ve been searching for months for the gates and now it’s really holding me up. The delay has given me the time to have three days of migraines, and a whole lot more to complain about. So instead of writing about how the building is going, I’m writing, again, about cooking, and complaining. There it is.
Anyway… dinner. Half the battle for some people is in deciding what to make. It’s not just that you want the result to be delicious and satisfying. Dinner should also should pay lip service (at least) to healthiness AND be new and thrilling, either because you have an audience to please, or just because when things are new, life brightens up a bit.
I’m writing about it because I have just made another great dinner that met the three essential criteria; Yummy, Healthy and New. And I’ve had a mild revelation.
It was basically a pile of blanched green beans with a bunch of small tomatoes, a small tin of emblemic portuguese tuna, olives, a poached egg and a mean lemony herby mayonnaise. The recipe is not the revelation – it’s about where the meal originated from.
Most of it came from my garden. The beans, tomatoes, the herbs, and the olives were mine, the lemon & egg was from my neighbour and the tuna was from… a tin.
Home grown. Food that has come from your own garden almost automatically satifies all the soul food requirements. You’re relieved of the decision of what to make, because you have to make whatever is ready to eat.
Food from you own garden is different from the boring paid for-kind. Garden direct vegies have the power to convert you to food you always hated. Cabbage for example. I never voluntarily ate cabbage until picking it myself. After all, if you’ve gone to the trouble of watering it for months, you do feel obliged to try it at least once. Trying = New. And now I’m addicted.
And fresher is certainly yummier, and healthier. But there’s something of an added cosmic extra about a great meal made with your own gear. It’s an accomplishment of the human animal’s positive interaction with nature. It’s redeeming. It’s soulful.
Growing your own is of course an essential component in the “dump your job and get a life” program. Simplify. Skip the supermarket bullshit. Skip the packaging and the petrol and the spending. Just like a vista of olive trees and the sound of silence, home grown food makes us happier humans.
But because I’m just a city girl in recovery, I want to ride the high higher. I’m going out for dessert. Yay for that other non-farma antidepressant. Cake.
All my love to Anthony. We learn as we go.
