This morning, I bought a tiny pepper mill

for the big OUTSIDE

I’ve always been rather good at staying at home.I don’t suffer from wanderlust, and I’m rarely to be heard saying “oo, let’s go for a walk!”.

If I’m at home, with all my endless ways to entertain myself, which mostly involve pencils, computers and kitchen implements, I never really feel an urge to leave. This is a bad thing, I know, I should go outside more.

Once I am outside, I’m happy as Larry. In fact, put me in most places, and I’ll find something entertaining or refreshing or even, god forbid for this old cynic, life-affirming. It is very likely that I will be inspired to make something. I am always glad that I have been outside, but I don’t have the impulse to go there.

I grew up on a farm. Sometimes, I’d climb a tree, or play hide and seek with my sister in the “dangerous” barn, or stand in the stream in my wellies, staring at tadpoles embedded between the reeds. I knew every inch of the farm and its barns. I liked the outside, but I also liked the inside, very much, where I watched all the television, including the test card, and did a lot of drawing, and burning things in the grate, and thinking while staring at the hallucination-inducing Laura Ashley wallpaper.

I’ve only recently decided that my not needing to go out is not a moral failing. All my friends have always been the outdoors kind. “Let’s go for a walk/hike/camping/on holiday/clubbing/drinking/exploring!” and I would/do go with them… sometimes. They’d say “I have to get out of here, get some air! Don’t you feel hemmed in???” and I always felt like I was in the wrong, like I was missing a transistor in my brain, like I was not a good human for not feeling hemmed in. Now I’m old and I’m fed up with feeling wrong. I decided that it’s just how I am, and nobody’s going to make me feel bad about it any more.

BUT

The lockdown part of the pandemic was a breeze for me. I understand how it was hellish for many people, but for a few months, I didn’t have to justify my not going out to anyone. I was also incredibly lucky to have Luís, and enough work.

But I got used to not going out at all. After five years of being too comfortable at home, I need to get out of here more, out of my comfort zone, outside. The meno-fucking-pause has hit me like a ton of bricks, and I need to do triple the activity to counteract my virtually non-existent metabolism and to disperse my brain fog.

For the first few years in Portugal, when my babies were babies, we used to travel around the country a lot. Before moving to Portugal, in ‘99, I knew only Lisboa and Porto (my love for Porto being the reason I readily agreed to move with then-husband to his homeland, Portugal). He wanted me to see the whole country. Every other week, we’d be out up north, down south, out east, in the middle, driving about in my lovely little Citroen Saxo (Saxos were such good little workhorses, and mine got me out of terrible backroads, big surprise puddles, and hairy situations with angry male drivers). I fell in love with the whole of this country and everyone and everything in it.

It’s been too long since I could do that (life), but now I can go travelling around Portugal again. I am my own boss, and I can usually work anywhere. Last year, CP (Portugal Trains) started a new scheme, the Passe Ferroviário Verde, for citizens and residents, with which you can travel on almost any train¹, anywhere in the country, for €20 a month. Mine arrived in the post this week. I’ve been badgering everyone to get one because I want friends to come too. I will work and draw and write and record stuff (in Portuguese and English) on trains, and off. I have my rail map with stations crossed off where I won’t go, because they’re 5km outside of ANYWHERE (there’s A LOT of those), and circles on the ones I’m going to go to sooner than later.

This morning, we went out to buy some conquilhas and corn meal so I could make some xerém, I got an impromptu and unexpectedly brilliant hair cut which has lifted my spirits and my face, some elastic for a hat I knitted that’s a bit baggy, and a new pan. On the counter of the pan shop were some adorable mini pepper mills. I bought one for my travels, for the many boiled eggs and sandwiches I will take in my bag, along with my mac, my audio recorder, my camera, a huge bag of pencils and a bloco of good paper.

Portugal, my beloved, beautiful, mad country, I coming outside to see you again.

Xerém - coarse cornmeal porridge.

thoughts welcome

I’m thinking of opening paid subscriptions, but without putting up a general paywall. I would be more than thrilled if people want to subscribe to support my substack (and thank you to my lovely pledgers, K, J, B & B!) but a girl’s realistic, with many years of experience in how this all works and how I work. What I do is too random for me to hide a lot of stuff behind paywalls. One day, I write about something Portuguese, one day I write about my work, another I’ll write a story about a whale in England. I mean, if you want to surprise me and prove me wrong… but…I’m realistic. I’m hoping that substack introduces its own tip jar/buy me a coffee system, so that people can pay a little something for articles they appreciate. I wish I could subscribe to more than a handful of publications… I could easily spend about 500€ a month with publications I like and want to support. So, until they do (go on, substack, we’d love you even more if you did that) for now, I’ll use my trusty old ko.fi account that I haven’t used in 4 years, in case anyone wants to drop me a coffee.

If I do go paid subs, I will do early previews of big new stuff and premiere my film behind the paywall. That does sound grand, doesn’t it?

If you have thoughts about that, please tell me.

1. I love to drive… but I can’t work while I’m driving, and it’s SO BLOODY EXPENSIVE these days, anyway.