Well, it's been a while, and let's face it I haven't been up to date for some time now - so rather than languish behind like a 12 year old on the families Friday supermarket shopping trip I thought I'd at least put some info on here about my movements and activities over the last 4 weeks (already- never!) - I may update this after the War has finished, sorry did I type War, I meant World Cup. Ok, here'yar.....

It’d been a good couple of days in Guincho, despite the occasional symptom’s of ‘Rooney injury’ depression, which flooded back each time football came to mind, even the beach wasn’t a safe haven, where a simple glimpse of boy kicking ball would trigger an attack. The bouts of ‘denial’ and hopelessness that followed had started to fade the following week. Polona and her friend Lemba were in the apartment, working on their art installation thing for the weekend. I wasn’t to know the exact details, as Polona wanted it to be a surprise, but they asked if I’d be willing to help them. I reluctantly agreed, wanting to help out but not too keen on the role of actor which they had in mind for me. I’d been reading a book about the life of a journeyman actor, endlessly going to castings and auditions to scrape by – I remember thinking how uncomfortable I’d feel having to improvise a scene for the camera, funny I normally like these quirky coincidences, if only I knew. The theme was anger and desperation, emotions I’m not over familiar with, I’d have to dig deep and was a bit embarrassed being in front of the camera with little direction. After a few improvised rehearsals, I’d settled for a burst of pounding my fist on the wall with my forehead pressed up against it, stood on the balcony of our apartment turning and screaming random obscenities into the early evening sky before holding my head in my hands and grasping my hair in emotional exhaustion and desperation – good eh! - A deep red sunset or pre-thunder storm brooding skyline would be the perfect backdrop, but we had neither and had to settle for the remains of a bright sunny day. (…for the record, I only mouthed screaming obscenities for fear of causing a ‘scene’...).

 

With my scene filmed and my acting debut under my belt I was off to a Reggae festival with Juan, Nuno and friends. By the number of bottles consumed on route I could have predicted it would get messy, I wasn’t wrong. We’d arrived at Tejo Park, well oiled, but with the rounds that followed we clearly thought we required more lubrication. I was just about maintaining some kind of sanity, until Juan introduced us to a favourite Spanish drinking ritual, biting a small hole out of the bottom of the plastic cup, and holding it up high aiming the stream of beer into his mouth, before a precarious pass to the next guy. Unfortunately, our aim was pretty good and even worse it caught on, as more supplies soon followed. I don’t remember all that much of the concert or the rest of the evening – I do however recall being slightly ‘ill’ and finding it very difficult getting out of bed the next day. Might not come as a surprise that I was late for my one lesson that day, but it didn’t start until 4.30pm! Yeah it’s fair to say I wasn’t feeling at my best. By a huge chunk of luck, my student failed to turn up, so I drank my much-needed coffee and headed home. I decided that the sensible option would be to have an early night, so I slipped out into the night with Barbara and Ricardo for a ‘couple’ of beers in Bairro, met up with Jorge at Clube da Esquina, before a steady amble home.

 

Saturday was the day of Polona’s art installation, and a group of us were heading up to the place at 5pm. I wanted to get out of the house, but had underestimated my level of inertia, particularly as I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I went out. When it came round to the time, the only travelling I’d managed to do had been restricted to the world wide web. I’d been informed that my role had taken on greater significance, as they thought it was good, and decided not to use the others as they were too short, I could feel a few cringes coming on. Wasn’t helped when meeting some of Polona’s friends when we arrived, greeted with ‘It’s the English guy’ – ‘funny I don’t recognise you?!’ I said, in a voice that could only be heard from the inside of my (slightly blushing) head. I’m not sure I was ready for such fame! This was soon replaced by infamy as a number of Nuno’s friends were there who I hadn’t seen since the Reggae night. The installation was set in a converted, but still rather industrial warehouse, and consisted of a large assortment of painted pottery items arranged around one corner of the room, people gathered around and the video started, rather sizably projected on to the back wall, accompanied by a suitably angst ridden soundtrack. Thankfully I managed to keep ‘That’s me that is’ type shouts to myself, as my scene appeared between other clips of things being torn and broken and discarded. A girl in black with black face paint across her eyes appeared and worked her way round the crowd, getting up close and personal to people but not in a pleasant way. Sure enough my turn came and there she was shaking her hands and giving me hard point blank stares in an apparent fit of rage. I know these southern Europeans have different norms, but this was surely personal space violation even by Portuguese standards (“Linesman!! Linesman!! Did you not see that?!!” –not sure why that just popped into my head but it did.) Next up, a number of formally dressed ‘servants’ came round with the same face job and silver trays offering the audience with safety goggles and a selection of hammers to choose from. I have to record my disappointment that they didn’t have enough to go round (hammers that is), and I missed out, but I wasn’t to be denied. It turned out audience participation was required and without any script I couldn’t be sure what had prompted it , but before long, tooled up or not, we were wading into the pottery in a fit of destruction, smashing the pottery – with hammers, throwing it against the walls and floor (my chosen option) and the odd two footed jump challenge from the more adventurous and with nothing but tiny fragments remaining it was all over! Must be time for a drink! So it was back to ours for the aftershow party although it appeared there had been a mix up as the champagne failed to arrive and had been replaced by cheap cans of super-strength beer – sophisticated what, what! We moved onto a few bars in the early hours once the reserves had been drained, and even managed several more beers before calling it quits – all in all it was an impressive team performance - the lack of any casualties was particularly remarkable given the ambitious and gruelling agenda- Good Work!

The following week wasn’t so successful and truth be told twas a bit of a nightmare all in all. I turned up for 3 lessons which had been cancelled in advance (one I forgot about, a non-existent Portuguese lesson and an 8.30am start that had been cancelled the day before, both of which the school forgot to let me know about) and then to top it off I managed to turn up for a class with the wrong file with all my material for the lesson at home on my desk – 5 minutes to spare and some serious improvisation required, I got through it somehow. As things were going so well I decided to try and sort my tax out on the Friday, after an hour of waiting for my number to come up, they announced that there was a problem with the computer system, this actually helped as a number of people who had been before me left and I ‘just’ wanted help with the forms, but first I was told I needed the right forms, I was given the reference number and then had to take a ticket to wait in another queuing system to buy, yes buy the forms before returning to the woman sat behind the desk. Who, incidentally, had spent the last 10 minutes waiting for me, even though the forms were only 10 metres away from her desk in the first place, as both queues continues to build! I couldn’t quite believe it all but eventually I’d got my forms filled in and somewhere to take them next week – surely progress and such efficiency – maybe the end was in sight.

 

The weekend had been set aside for another Guincho trip and with the sun setting. After a quick stop for provisions at the hypermarket, including a military style plan to split up and cover different sections each, we were on our way…well would have been if we could remember which section of the expansive car park we’d left the car in. A slight setback, but we eventually found it, after calling Andy who had located it with much less hassle (we were miles off). Just made it to the campsite and got tents up before darkness had set in. There was a tangible air of satisfaction as the coals in the bbq began to glow. Fortunately the tragedy of our previous attempt had been consigned to memory and there was to be no repeat performance, armed with the right tools we were suddenly bbqing masters. It’s a good job there was plenty of beer to be soaked up. Saturday’s beach session was ended prematurely by a belter of an FA Cup final in Bar Guincho and soon after we were back stoking up the bbq again for a repeat performance. Sunday started out a bit overcast, so we decided to skip the beach and head to a bar called the Windmill, I’d heard about it but never been and it was supposed to have an amazing view over the sea and coast, it does (see photos). I was replenished and ready to resume my quest to pay my tax on the Monday morning (well I thought I was).