08/05/2023
✨🔥🎪WEEK THREE UPDATE!! 🎪🔥✨
Well it surely has been an adventure, arriving to this lonely, slowly crumbling but regal building, on the edge of a tiny Portugese Village in the sunshine. Sitting amid tealight candles and dining on crackers, grapes and cheese, I explored this gorgeous 'Casa Brasileira' I had bought, breathed her in. Hugged her walls and kissed the wooden trimmings.
And then, Frazer Lund arrived three days, later, a good friend and absolutely brilliant builder and qualified electrician. Frazer loves helping people achieve dreams and projects. He promised me two years ago that if I did manage to find the perfect house for my Circus School/Theatre plan, he would provide a helping hand. And bless him, true to his word he arrived, only to be slightly horrified by the scale of my plans and the state of this incredible old Palacette I have bought.
So beginning work on this house has been more complicated than one might think. The title of the house belonged to people long dead, and the elderly ancestors who sold it to me had some dispute with another group of people who thought they should inherit the house. This second group protested by gluing up all the locks so I had to originally view the house with a chair propping open the door, as if it closed it was not possible to open again with a key. The driveway gate was glued shut too, and Frazer and I were wondering if we needed to take it off the hinges to get his caravan through.... but one evening it just mysteriously opened by itself..!
The first thing Frazer set to sorting was the internal water supply. I'd managed to arrange the city connection via emails from Thailand, it was all go from the local council, but inside the house all the taps had been smashed off the walls. It took Frazer two days to figure out the pipework maze and a lot of trips to various hardware stores... a minor nightmare. Then the council came back and turned the water off again because I don't have a meter. It's their responsibility to install one, but a, plumber needs to assemble the meter connection box, and they are all busy for the next two weeks. Yes, well, Frazer turned it back on by hand...
Then the issue arose with the electric board which was some kind of surviving fossil from the dark ages.
So the sellers of the house, perhaps in their eighties, had told me they never lived in the house, they visited it in childhood and it had been empty 20 or 30 years, occasionally rented to tourists for the summer. A visit to the local bar shed new light on n the subject.
"Well", said José the Barman at Genesis (named after the Phil Collins band) "I'm 60 and in all my lifetime I've never known of anyone to live in that house."
I told him the Estate Agents said the year of build was 1947 and he disagreed with that also. He produced a photograph of a young girl being held by her mother. She looks about 4 I would guess, as I look at the pair standing on the street with my house in the background. "She's 73 now, so this photo was taken about 70 years ago.. maybe 1953“. The house was old even then, and the people called it 'Casa De Palmeira' - the house of the palm tree. No wonder the electricity board was a fossil, and the house was full of old wedding photos and ancient furniture. She had been built with so much love and care to every detail, , lived in... but then abandoned with some kind of speed as the rooms were still set for tiny occupants who slept on beds, that like Goldilocks I can barely fit on to lie down!!
Not to mention the Palace also has her own ghost. Lizzie, the Portugese woman across the road immediately became a fast friend. She has made us lunches, offered use of her shower, washed my clothes and drank tea and wine with Frazer and I at all the appropriate moments.
"There is a ghost in the house", she said. "The people of the town talk about it".
"Yes, about ten years ago I was with a gang of friends", her son Joao pipped up "and we all saw her through the window on the right, above the balcony. An old lady".
Frazer and I looked at each other. We thought we had found photos of the ghost downstairs, a woman getting married in the 60s and aging in the following pictures. I still couldn't believe all the incredible land and this romantic house I bought, for €115,000. And now a ghost too!! Priceless!!
So over the last three weeks there have been incredibly good things and some quite bad things as well. Firstly there have been lots of magical coincidences. I'd only been there for a few days when Helia brought snacks from over the road and stood by Frazer's caravan chatting. The only problem is I couldn't understand a word of it, and I did try to say but she was determined to tell me many MANY things in Portugese. I felt so bad for not being able to uphold my end of the conversation I asked Lizzie to call her and explain. So Helia and I started writting each other wee notes and we chatted that way. She's such a kind lady!! She wanted to give gifts and said something about having the perfect curtains for 'your Palace'. I rang my dear friend Lynette and told her.
"Oh no! “ said Lynette." If they are not red what are you going to do? The Palace curtains have to be red obviously".
"Well I guess I could use for them a wee while, as they were a gift? “
The curtains were forgotten amid very busy days. Cleaning rooms that have been abandoned for 50 years is very dirty work and exhausting. The chemicals cracked my hands and the gloves tore with the effects of bleach. Trying to set up a kitchen in the dark (its a very dark room) and cook in there with only a torch, quite difficult. Every morning researching for new kinds of shops to get needed things from and driving there to find it was a random public holiday (often a problem) or whatever we needed was the one thing some giant hardware store didn't stock. Constant messages trying to organise my workaway helpers, electricity and WiFi connection, using Google translate a lot. I forgot about the curtains completely.
Then one afternoon Frazer popped up the stairs with a rubbish bag. “Helia across the road sends you this! “
Inside was a beautiful little wooden display Cabnet. Also some Christmas themed table napkins. And the curtains. Beautiful heavy blood red velveteen curtains!! My God I love them!! I haven't told the neighbours too much about my plans for Circus Palace just yet, but maybe they already know!! 🎪
Helia has also appeared with plants, soil, china (for the wooden box) and a bedside lamp!!
I'm living in a little universe full of blessings everyday... ✨🔥🎪
But then I haven't yet mentioned the woodworm...
