Goodbyes and Bons Dias: Changing direction in a changing country...

By R Silverthorne

A very human tale of love, friendship and sometimes frustration, told to the backdrop of enchantingly described seasonal changes: On the doorstep of the Enchanted Wood cities spring from the earth, their white-washed 'villas' with domed roofs are hurriedly constructed in the shade of broad tree trunks and surrounding lush lawns; the elves are wintering in our neighbourhood.Through a changing landscape and relationship, the author invites you to discover Portugal. A personal account of Ray's and his husband's move away from London to a small rural village enlists the help of the Seasons to provide structure to a frenetic year of welcoming old friends and making new ones. "If we like it now when the weather is like this, I guess we'll like it more when it's not raining." As water cascaded down the windscreen of their hired car, the two men inside followed twisting mountain roads through a landscape which bore no resemblance to the beaches that people generally associated with Portugal, but this was NOT the Algarve. In the neighbourhoods which sat between the country's main cities of Porto and Lisbon, the inhabitants had been largely ignored by the prosperity that the end of dictatorship and joining of the European Union had brought to many. More damagingly than being overlooked was the fact that the region's rural economy had gone into decline, leaving an increasing number of small villages where tiny stone houses that had once housed families of eight or more, now lie abandoned and crumbling. It was in one such village where the two Londoners bought a house, moving there a few months after their wedding, and their small triumphs, coupled with the kindness and friendship they encountered amongst the modest, hardworking villagers and town's people, helped them to start truly living.I wrote this account of my first year in Portugal way back in 2015, but this came from even earlier 'diary entries'; sometimes no more than notes on old scraps of paper. Having just re-read Goodbyes and Bons Dias, I am struck by how much Stephen and I achieved during that first year, but I was also unexpectedly struck by how the world has moved on in the last decade. I wrote about Portugal at a time when neither of us had 'smart phones', and I wonder if we would have been quite as communicative with people if we could have got much of the information we needed by swiping a screen? And if we had not learnt some things the hard way, would our language have developed as quickly as it did, and would we have learnt the lessons that helped us grow? Many friends say that we are the type of people who 'fit in and make friends whatever the situation', and we are inclined to believe it is true, but by reading the story of how we made a home in Central Portugal, I feel confident that you will draw your own conclusions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1508444889
• ISBN13: 9781508444886
• Release Date: April 2015
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"