Herman

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13th April

So, up at a decent time & away on time which we needed to be; we had arranged the previous week to meet up with my cousin’s daughter, but we were contemporaries so called each other cousins anyway, on our way North to Ourique. Karen & husband Tony moved to Albufeira last year so we made a small detour to their apartment & were very happy that we did. We sauntered down to a local beach front & had a light lunch at a cafe run by a couple of Brits. We had a fine old chat & reminisce about family & stuff for a couple of hours & Karen gave us some cakes to take away with us. Such a good time, but we had to go & left for Ourique.

Arrived at the site in a beautiful setting; down a dirt track road to a meadow in the hills with cork oaks scattered around & rare little flowers in the grass. There were only another 6 units there. The Dutch lady, who told me she hated Holland, was tall & way too thin; she sorted us out & said listen out for the bell at 5 o’clock for happy hour. Settled in, took a roof-light apart to fix the loose seal & sure enough the bell rang & a dozen people walked over to a large wooden shed. Over we go to be met by Herman (not the German) the husband who made up for his wife’s the skinny look. Can of beer from Aldi, €1. Wine, from a box, €1 but it was served in a tumbler so was a good 1/3 of a bottle. Everyone was Dutch apart from us & one German chap who wasn’t called Herman. He was from Berlin, used to be a baker & was touring with two little dogs. He said that apart from the birth of his children, the wall coming down was the happiest day of his life. As it happens, he was pretty happy in the shed; we think he’d been on the beer all day & had eyes like AA road Maps. The Dutch lady owner had at least 2 maybe even 3 tumblers of wine & a bowl of olives within 30 minutes – maybe that’s all she lived on. We left first to make dinner, the others staying for another round. They all left 45 minutes later with the ladies tottering about which was quite funny, a couple of whom wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Beryl Cooke painting....

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