Reasons to be Cheerful

I'm feeling a bit 'blah' tonight. A bit 'meh' about everything. It's probably work-related: I've been really heads-down on a couple of features this week and I'm pretty much fully booked with work until well into June.

This, as I constantly remind myself, is a Good Thing: more money means more work done on Casa Cecilia, although not necessarily in less time. (I refer my loyal readers back to the '3 T's Principle' blog of last Spring, the general gist of it being that, in Portugal, Things Take Time.)

The weather today (and yesterday) probably hasn't helped. Very moody, very hot, very overcast and with the occasional lightning show, but no real rain, which would at least have the benefit of Tim not having to spend over an hour watering the vegetable patch each evening (pictured above in its fully glory.)

So I thought it might be a good idea to list my current Reasons to be Cheerful, an idea lifted entirely from the Ian Dury and The Blockheads song, Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3 - a song that I loved as a 9-year old, even if many of Ian's Reasons somewhat passed me by at the time. Certainly, I didn't understand the reference to "lighting up a chalice" (ahem) or know who "Bantu Stephen Biko" was - but we all live and learn, eh?

These days, there's a couple of lines in the song that remind me of Portugal and our Portuguese friends:

"A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it,

You're welcome, we can spare it, yellow socks."

(Well, maybe not the bit about yellow socks, but you get my drift.)

Anyway, I digress. In no particular order, these are my Reasons to be Cheerful on this stormy Tuesday night:

1. I wrote a feature on Monday that was delivered way past deadline and caused me no end of anxiety (and, arguably, an unwarranted degree of procrastination), but my editor loved the finished product. (I know this, because he emailed me: "I love it.") And reading it back now, I think a bit more of my Natural Voice, and not just my Journalist Voice, is starting to come through, which is EXACTLY why it's important for me to blog.

2. We went for a quiet drink and game of pool at the village bar on Sunday night, and were quite unexpectedly whisked upstairs to an Impromptu Private Party, for the simple reason that Vitor had won a whole suckling pig in a raffle at a local football match in Travanca do Mondego. And I got to see my friend Ana there, and her delicious baby Mariana, and talk about plants and gardening with Joao and Artur, and it was FUN. For example, there's this tree that I love out here and Joao was able to tell me that, although it's a Callistemon in Latin, it's known as an Escova-de-Garrafa (Bottle Brush) here in Portugal - if you click on this link, you'll see why. I want one.

3. Although the pace of work is currently quite horrendous (unless you've got a Proper Job, like a paramedic or a social worker or something), this frantic working week stops at around midday on Friday. I'm travelling to Porto that afternoon, to get a plane to London and then a taxi to my sister's place. On Saturday, we fly together Stansted-Belfast to attend our nephew's christening. It's actually a treat for me to fly anywhere with anyone else. Usually, it's for work and I'm alone. Our nephew will be about 10 weeks old and his safe arrival is the best thing that's happened for our family in a long while. And I get to see my brother, my sister and my sister-in-law, plus all my brother's in-laws, none of whom I get to see often enough.

4. This lovely advert, for the Battersea Dogs Home, with voiceover by the wonderful Bill Nye - just because it's so, so true. Especially the tagline at the end: "The most interesting people aren't people. Adopt a dog, make a friend." It makes me have a little cry, every time.

I feel better already, just thinking about these things - and, would you believe it, I think the weather is breaking, because the first drops of rain are just starting to splash on the gravel in our courtyard. No, I never thought I could be so cheerful about the arrival of rain, either.