How Was Your Week?

If we were having coffee, I’d mention it has been another busy week, which included a chance meeting with a dear friend whom we’d lost touch with. Our misinterpretation of the potentially complicated reason for their silence meant we had not reached out again. However, their apparent silence was not due to a lack of interest but due to major heart surgery followed by another round of operations, and they did not want to trouble us for help. Life is complicated, and signals can be misread, yes? How do you judge when people need headspace or support? IT just goes to show never ASS-U-ME

CHARITY SHOP

Monday brought another busy morning in the shop, providing a great opportunity to practice speaking Portuguese with the locals. I gabbled away, asking people to repeat words when I could not catch the pronunciation, meaning or what an item was in Portuguese. They seemed genuinely pleased to oblige. We not only discussed clothes but also family, although I did have a moment when asking about one woman’s family, and I got stuck when she mentioned the word morreu. I dug deep into the memory vaults. What was the verb to die? Sort of remembered. Conjugated the verb into the past tense. The woman looked sad. Oh, my God, she was telling me her husband (marido) was dead! I gave her a hug.

COVID AND FLU INJECTIONS

Ouch! I am a coward. I didn’t want them, but at 70 years old, it would be just my luck to be struck down with the flu if I refused to have them. Pre-flu jab take-up I’d suffered several years in succession with flu and was ill for weeks. So… last year, yes, I caught something, but I was only ill for a few days and not weeks. I did feel spaced out the day following the injection–maybe a reaction?

What are your thoughts on having ongoing COVID jabs?

APERITIVO ON THE BEACH

Mid Friday afternoon Mr. Piglet offered to take me to the beach for our aperitif. It was a beautiful, still afternoon, and I’d not been on the beach since the beginning of August when the family were staying so I jumped at the opportunity. I will add that Mr P hates the beach with a passion. ‘They should all be covered in concrete‘ he complains…. so I knew it was a huge sacrifice for him to offer. While I finished my chores, he packed a backpack with what I assumed were the normal: plastic glasses a bottle of wine and nibbles. I was only half listening to his reply when I queried why he was pouring gin into our small, metal water bottles and then trying to ram in an ice cube….

When we arrived at the beach, just a two-minute drive away, luck was on our side, and we found a parking space. We set up our chairs, hoping no one would camp in front of us and obscure the view of the sea. Yep, it happens. Even when the beach is empty. So far, so good. I closed my eyes and breathed in the ambience. The sounds of waves crashing on the shoreline. The seagulls squawkin overhead. The smell of salt air and the feel of sand between my toes. BLISS…

Mr. P passed me my water bottle and a can of tonic. I waited expectantly for the plastic gin glass.

‘Drink out of the bottle,’ he said in reply to my unspoken question.

My reply: unrepeatable. My look: I wanted to eat you alive. I mean. Who drinks gin and tonic from a water bottle? Sacrilege.

I replaced the lid on my bottle, closed my eyes, and thought of Buddha.

‘I should have brought a bottle of wine’, he said.

‘Yes, but you didn’t.‘

Ten minutes later, Mr. piglet redeemed himself when he returned with a bottle of wine and two paper coffee cups from the local cafe.

Men are full of surprises!

What are your coffee share highlights?

For more coffee shares, do pop over to natalie’s blog.