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My Easter egg

Hello again and let me preface this week’s effort by saying I love Portugal and the Portuguese. The necessity for this preface will become clear later.

This Easter has been hard for me, I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic a few weeks ago and sugar is now off the menu totally. In the shop we have mountains of creme eggs and I am struggling to ignore them. I am craving chocolate so badly.

There are many benefits that come with being married to a Portugeezer, mainly, it’s like having my very own Babelfish with me. I do try and sometimes fail miserably but on the whole I can manage quite well. My Mother speaks her own version of Portuguese, she just speaks louder and adds an “o” to the end of every word. “Two-o cuppo’s of coffee-o please-o.” Strangely enough she learnt the Portuguese for thank you and was using it quite happily until I pointed out that she was using the male version and this threw her completely. She is now back to “Thank you-o.”

My father gets on quite well with miming and pointing. When he goes for cigarettes, the guy behind the counter invites him around to get his own.

Now for some of the downsides and I have to point out that these are only for me, some of you will tell me to stop whining. I am just back from visiting Sylvie’s family in Chaves in the far, far North of Portugal, and they are quite traditional about most things. Christmas eve is fish only, I don’t do fish, well not much anyway and especially not shellfish, yuk! So Chrimbo eve, Sylvie’s Mum, the lovely and ever patient Celeste, makes me about 100 fish fingers. This Easter though, it was Sylvie’s sister’s turn to make the grub and they either forgot I was attending or didn’t care. There was Bacalhau and clams and prawns and all things scaly. As I sat there with an empty plate, the murmurs began. “Isn’t he eating?” was the gist. A bowl of fried potatoes that hadn’t been used in the Bacalhau was quickly placed in front of me and that was my main meal. In the evening, they hadn’t learnt a thing and placed more prawns/clams etc in front of me. I just sat in front of the tv this time, fried eggs and toast was my reward for my petulance.

So at least I got an egg for Easter after all.

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