Week25.
Saturday 11th January 2014
Although it will be a long process, reports are that Pam is going from strength to strength. She is sitting up, her speech is much improved and she is working hard with the physiotherapist to get strength back in her left side.
We are getting up an hour earlier (the same time really, it’s the clock that has changed) so were early enough to visit Olhao market this morning. Nothing grabbed us on the street stalls where the clothes (looking like a giant jumble sale) and the fruit and vegetables were and inside the fish market was bedlam with hundreds of people all pushing and shoving trying to get a bargain. Just as we were about to leave we spotted some sardines so bought a kilo of them. The bill was just €1.50 - how cheap is that? We saw some in a supermarket later in the day at €4.99/kilo. We checked the ones we had bought so cheaply, they were all bright eyed, fresh as a daisy and, as we discovered at dinner time, delicious.
Sunday 12th January 2014
A lazy day today, a few emails and thats about it. We are going to try to contact Frank and Rosemary as I replied to an email from them but have had no reply. It must have been a senior moment as when I looked back over my emails the last communication I sent to F & R was in fact addressed to me. Our tag line is “Adventure before Dementia”, it looks like the dementia is catching up.
Wednesday 15th January 2014
We went to lunch today with Rosemary and Frank in a restaurant called “O Americo" that specialise in fish. There was no menu as the choice is fish or go hungry. A waitress brought salad, olives, bread etc., then a barbi cook/waiter came round with a tray of barbecued fish which he picked up by the tail and put one on each of our plates. We started eating. A few minutes later he came and put another fish on each plate with similar finesse, naming the fish type as he put it on the plate. This was repeated until we were forced to first ask the waiter to slow down and then to stop. I don’t know exactly how many fish I ate but they included a dorado, a sea bass, a salmon steak, a sardine, and at least three others that I didn’t know. Lunch time drinking is not something we do, Frank was driving and Rosemary didn’t fancy wine so we drank water through the meal and had coffee afterwards. The bill arrived. A total of €45.00 (£38.00) for the lot, less than ten quid each each.
Friday 17th January 2014
Just the day you wish never to have when you are on holiday, so its a good job this is a lifestyle. The rain rained most of the night and other campers reported thunder and lightening although we did not hear or see any. The sky was black as black when we did stick our noses out of the covers and the rain continued for much of the day.
Week 26.
Saturday 18th January 10.00 am
Got a new toy!! A Mede8er MED500X2 and if you are no wiser as to what a Mede8er MED500X2 is then join the club I didn’t know what is was either but I really, really needed one - honest!
In reality it is a media centre on which I can put all our movies (I’ve already “ripped” - thats technical talk for getting them from the DVD and onto my computer - the 150 odd DVD’s we carry) , all our music and pictures in the one place and play them direct through the TV. Magic!
Steve K (one half of Chris and Steve) arrived on site today, unfortunately without his better half Chris, who is staying in UK to help their daughter for a few more weeks before she flies out to join him.
4.30 pm
If this bloody Mede8er does not allow me to install something on it’s hard drive it will very soon be in the dustbin. Frank, who I bought it from, formatted the hard drive via his computer all I had to do was to re-format within Mede8er and (in theory) get on with it - in a pigs ear.
5.30 pm
I tried re formatting the Mede8er hard disc in my computer and then formatting it in Mede8er itself - nothing. I tried reformatting again in my computer then NOT formatting again in Mede8er but just trying to load files. It worked.
7.30 pm
I think I have cracked it. Loaded over 150 DVD’s, my entire music collection and a few images and although the menu system seems strange (the instruction book did say if you did not format the drive in the Mede8er you might not get full functionality) but as we get used to it we will probably understand it better. The main problem is the way iTunes files music, I will have to refile everything if it is to be as I want it. Being a naive sort of person I always assumed iTunes did a good job of filing all my music and home video. In a pigs ear. Although it files everything in a folder labeled “music” within that folder it seems to have filed bits of CD’s in all sorts of places particularly the compilation albums of which we have many. It’s going to take weeks perhaps months to sort it all - Oh well!!
Monday 20th January 2014
Had a very lazy couple of days, been know-where and done nothing (except play with the mede8er). We did however go out to dinner tonight, to a place in Moncarapachio where Sue had roast duck breast, and Steve K and I had “steak on a stone”. This was served on a wooden tray, one end had a dinner plate with chips, salad, etc., the other end had a flat stone 6 inches or so square the stone was very hot and on this was the steak. You cut pieces of your 4”square by 2” thick steak which you cooked to your liking on the hot stone. Delicious and with wine and coffee just €13 (£10.80) a head.
Tuesday 21st January 2014
We went to Rosemary and Frank's home for lunch today. We ate like kings and had a most enjoyable afternoon. Rosemary is a great cook and they are both excellent hosts.
The TV’s gone on the blink. It’s been playing up for a while now, seems to be the on/off switch. Frank and Rosemary have lent us one while we see about trying to get ours sent back to UK for repair under guarantee.
Thursday 23rd January 2014
Up at the crack of sparrow f**t today. Needed to get up at 7.00am (well that is very early for us) to get to Faro for a flight back to UK. We are off to visit Pam in hospital. Although desperate to go we have put it off for nearly a month so that when we did visit she would know we were there and be strong enough to be able to communicate.
At the hospital although we had been fully briefed beforehand it was still a shock to see someone who had always been a bouncy live wire laying unmoving with no expression in either face or voice, however the voice was Pam’s own and the words she spoke as easily understood as before.
Week 27.
Monday 27th January 2014
The last five days have passed like a whirlwind of visits to the hospital interspersed with visits to other members of both our families. This included a visit to my Bro and his family where I was given a fabulous birthday cake (the first for very many years) and a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pap.
Pam seemed to be improving each time we visited, her swallow reflex has improved sufficiently to be put on a normal diet, she has stood (with assistance) a couple of times and she has been told that she will soon be transferred to a Brentwood rehab unit.
All good news. We hope the improvements continue.
Tuesday 28th January 2014
Up at the real crack of sparrow today had to leave Auntie Brenda and Uncle David’s at 5:30am to go to Southend airport to fly back to Portugal. Fortunately the plane arrived in Faro five minutes early and we arrived at the rendezvous point at the same time as our taxi.
Friday 31st January 2014
Not achieved very much this week since we got back from UK we have felt very tired and have flopped in the van and let the world pass us by, hopefully we will feel energised next week.