29th January 2011 – Tavira

We had a bit of time this morning before our man was due to come round at 1pm to fix the safe properly so we walked along the main road to the small supermarket to get some food for a barbeque that we decided that we would have later on in the day. At 1pm the man came along with our new lock and was soon at work fitting it. He did quite a bit of huffing and puffing (in Portuguese obviously) and finally managed to get the new lock fitted and working, he was trying to tell us that it needed a bit of force to get it to open. Lorna tried to open it and couldn’t so he disassembled it all again and refitted it, this time it worked perfectly, what a star. When we asked him how much we should pay him he looked quite shy and wrote €15 on a piece of paper which we thought was a ridiculous price to charge for the amount of time and work he had put in over two days, not to mention the new lock, so we paid him €25 and told him to buy himself a drink or two.

Mid-afternoon I got the barbeque out and it promptly started to rain so we had to wait a bit for the sun to come out again before I could light it, it gave the pork more time to marinade in the garlic and salt so it was no bad thing. Sun out again, pork on the barbeque and a beer in my hand we chatting to two people who had walked on to the site for a look around. How did they hear about it? My blog. The first people I have met (other than friends etc) who read this, and find it useful. I was most chuffed and it was a pleasure to meet you both Val and Oeds. I will have a read of your blog when I get chance but for others the link is http://www.odolphie.com

A very pleasant afternoon was followed by a most relaxing evening when we watched Shutter Island which was a great film.