Well we are in…

It’s been an epic move which took six men, Suzy Starlite and I 14 hours of hard work.

The guys who moved us from Beleza Transport were brilliant, more than can be said for the management who were very troublesome to deal with. I know how much stuff we have and how to move it but no one listens.

The house is on a steep hillside and the 60m driveway is straight with a canopy of trees. We had to use the Van Of Rock (VOR) to move the piano—our ramp from the back of their truck into the VOR.

Everything else had to be hand balled—an epic job.

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Installing the Security system and fibre broadband connection is top priority and both Securitas Direct and MEO were there to greet us when we arrived. The MEO guy said he needed two guys to install the fibre as it’s all underground and as of today we have no broadband connection. Shit.

Samuel from Securitas however had the alarm system connected and running in less than an hour: very impressive. It’s a great system, all connected to a monitoring station and the police with cameras and sensors everywhere.

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Our new home is in a fabulous location and on Sunday we went to Pingo Doce— our favourite Supermarket chain here in Portugal—and then took the hounds swimming in the lagoon.

It’s only 400m walk, but we are a little ways from the Ocean and the water is brackish so we decided to drive and take them to fresher water.

It was VERY windy and the kite surfers were out in force and the squeakers—the two newest additions to our family of hounds—were piling down the beach trying to catch them.

It never ceases to amaze me how natural they swim. Edith has a great action: legs underwater and snout parallel to the surface. Françoise however is a splasher, trying to keep her head as high above the water as possible to see what’s going on.

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We returned home to disarray, but rather than spending time unpacking and reassembling all that needed reassembling we ended up cleaning as the house was filthy. We share the cleaning with me dealing with kitchen, bathrooms and the studio gear. It’s was so bad we both got stuck in to the kitchen and dining area. Domestos, K2 degreaser, Isopropyl alcohol and turpentine substitute plus meters of industrial kitchen roll and j-cloths.

Starlite emailed the owners agent. If you know anything about my wife, you can imagine the tone and contents of that communication.

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We have moved a lot and have a system honed by experience, always setting up basecamp in the kitchen, then the bedroom and simultaneously at least one working space.

My first job however is to install Wolfgang the washing machine. Starlite is a washing fiend!

Due to the state of the place we attacked the kitchen first which took the best part of two days.

Cooking is very much a part of our lives and we have lots of stuff to organise and put away, mindful of the fact our new home will double as a residential recording studio so has to be client friendly.

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We needed energy and baked potatoes with cheese, beans and the remainder of the home-made egg mayonnaise was on the menu. Egg mayonnaise on baked potatoes you ask? Yes, it works. Try it.

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As we were going to bed it started raining. Not standard rain but tropical rain—you know the type—big droplets and lots of them. The wind was coming from the SSE so not hitting our home straight on. Spectacular.

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The house hasn’t been lived in for four years and during that time things stop working and we have been compiling a list. It’s a big list.

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Yesterday, Norberto, the agent, and his sidekick turned up to see the situation. He was very sympathetic to our cause and we are relatively confident that, over time, things will get sorted.

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Fortunately we have more bedrooms than our previous residence and have been camping in one of them as we were focused on organising the kitchen.

Reassembling our bed wasn’t a first priority, but yesterday I managed to achieve an erection. We love IKEA stuff. Stylish, very easy to put together and generally well thought out.

The vintage dressing table that we bought in Germany was also easy to put back together. What would we do without electric screwdrivers and Allen keys eh.

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I managed to make lunch in an organised and clean kitchen with a wonderful view. See you tomorrow.