More sunshine. The difficulty of finding toasting bread. Lunch. Things to avoid doing. Palestine. And Michael Rosen.

 Another fine, sunny day here in northern Portugal. (My daughter tells me they have had thunderstorms and hurricanes in Texas. Well, it is Texas after all - what did they expect? But as there was also a pwoer cut they ended up with the two children in bed with the parents!) 

 

The chestnut trees are already in blossom here in Portugal. I got up and ran, as yesterday, along the river and down the alameda (Avenida de los Plátanos according to one guide book)and home again.

The two Canadian chess players had a game this morning (Phil took a bye as he does not like early morning games) but there was no sign of them when I got back. So I went and commandeered the shower. In fact, they didn’t seem stressed about arriving to play on time and emerged rather later. Indeed it was already time for the games to start when they left here. Fortunately the playing venue is only a couple of hundred yards away.

Showered and dressed in normal clothes, I went out again, this time to look for bread suitable for toasting. All to no avail this is what happens when you have accommodation on the edge of the old quarter! However, I have found a source of acceptable breakfast cereals and milk, so all is not lost.  Now we need a source of good coffee.

Later in the day we went out to lunch at a place called Sabores do Lima - flavours or tastes of the Lima, so now we know what the river tastes like. We had a discount because of being connected to the chess tournament. Unfortunately t did not include dessert, which we had anyway as it did not break the bank. Soup (the usual iberian vegetable soup we get all over Galicia and Portugal), fish with green beans and (rather boring) potatoes), a generous small jug of white wine (water for my chess player!) and coffee, all for €8 apiece because of a chess discount! And some nice views of the river. But the waitress was impossible to understand, much more difficult than the shopkeepers I have tried my Portuguese on! 

Scanning the newspapers I saw this headline:

From procrastination to manually mowing your lawn: 22 things you should stop doing this summer

It’s really advertising for an AI lawnmower, pretending to be an article - a bit sneaky! 

Among the things you should avoid are:

• Wrestling with your lawnmower
  Why should you mow, when a Honda Miimo robotic lawnmower can do it? The robotic lawn-trimming champ Miimo is happy to take over, so get it set up then retire to the terrace to watch (or don’t – the new range has Bluetooth connectivity as standard and the option for 3G/4G too). And if you want to keep things really simple, the HRM 1000 – with its pared-back display – is your friend.

Of course, it may well be that, like Phil, you manually push the lawnmower around in order to get a bit of extra exercise.

• Stressing over gift shopping 
  When you see something you love, buy it, and keep it until you’ve worked out who it’s for. A go-to gift cupboard prevents an afternoon wasted hunting for last-minute panic buys.

Well, yes, I do that. The danger os that you forget where you stowed stuff. And it goes against the de-clutter philosophy.

• Wondering what to wear 
  Have a couple of hangers of trusted outfits on standby, always ready to go. For some reason, picking out clothes the night before takes half as long – perhaps because you’re more awake – and means the befuddled morning version of you has one less fire to fight.

I already do that quite often.

Back into serious mode, a friend of mine posted something about the difficulty of identifying bodies in the ruins of Al Shifa hospital, work currently being done by the WHO. It’s report too distressing to copy in full, with crushed and mangled bodies being identified by the contents of their wallets, for example. Here’s just a little:

“Palestinian nurse Maha Sweylem told AFP that she had not seen her husband, Abdel Aziz Kali, since he was arrested by the Israeli military during the assault. She does not know if he is dead or alive.

According to AFP, the nurse recalled how the Israeli army had quickly surrounded the hospital last month and then used loudspeakers to order that “everyone must surrender. Game over”.

“Then, they started shooting at all the entrances, preventing anyone from moving,” she said. “I spent four days there with my two little daughters, without any food or drink. They cried from hunger. When they arrested my husband, he had not eaten for three days.”

AFP asked the Israeli army if they knew of Kali’s whereabouts, but there was no immediate response.

“Safeguarding dignity, even in death, is an indispensable act of humanity,” the WHO insisted.

A “place where life was given is now a place that now reminds [us] only of death,” said Athanasios Gargavanis, the WHO surgeon leading its mission on Monday."”

Time for it to stop. But I hear that attacks continue, despite possible talks. 

Here’s Michael Rosen again: 

“‘Tutor,' said the King, 'do you think it's possible to create nothing?'

'Good question,' said the tutor, 'I think it's theoretically possible but in reality not possible.'

'Yes,' said the King, 'that's what I thought, but are there times when we should try to create nothing?'

'Indeed,' said the tutor, 'it can be an objective.'

'Interesting,' said the King, 'you mean that on occasions, it might be worth trying to create nothing even though we know that it's not possible?'

'Yes,' said the tutor, 'the process of trying to create nothing will help us achieve our objectives.'

'That's good,' said the King.”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!