Sober or pissed, they bitch about the Labour Party b/c they are convinced, “ the Tories know how to run a country.”

On the 23rd I have a colonoscopy scheduled to check for cancer recurrence. As the date approaches anxiety begins to grip me. It is always the nagging thought of the cancer’s return. Also the logistics of what must be done to get me to Toronto for the procedure, confound me.

I have a new essay on the war in Ukraine and one on how politicians from all neoliberal parties foment hate against migrants. There is also a newly edited chapter from the Green and Pleasant Land where my father describes being caught in an air raid in London.

Those works will come tomorrow and over the weekend. As today, I will work out the details, for my colonoscopy odyssey to get there and back from Toronto.

Instead, I am revealing more from the journals I kept when Harry and I lived in Portugal from 2008-2010.

The journal is 30k words in length and is an interesting document of our time there and how Harry's Last Stand was formed in the years before its creation.

I've included a small excerpt from the beginning of 2009. I do that because that was when my brother Peter was diagnosed with Interstitial Pulmonary Fibrosis and informed my father and me about it. It is a disease similar to the one I now contend with.

We didn't know then that it would kill him ten months later. However, judging from the journal, I had a feeling- the year would bring much sadness to my family. Anyway, here it is.

Your support in keeping my dad’s legacy going, and me alive is greatly appreciated. I depend on your subscriptions to keep the lights on and me housed. So if you can, please subscribe, and if you can’t -it is all good because we are fellow travellers in penury. But always remember to share these posts far and wide.

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Photo by Clifford on Unsplash

January 3, 2009-01-06

Still jittery today. Walked to the old town with Dad and watched the sea. At 10:30 PM Noel showed up at our door with his German girlfriend who was pissed on port. They wanted cigarettes from Dad and beer from me.

Dad obliged. The German presented us with a Stollen..." all the way from Germany," they said. "Via Lidl’s, I replied.

What do you do in Hamburg, I ask the German.

"I don’t like to say...people always get the wrong idea."

She was a debt collector.

Later on, Noel whispers in my ear, "Her dad was a copper."

After that, I realised it's time to get them out of our place because a debt collector with a Nazi cop for a father is going to lead to an argument.

January 6, 2009-01-06

Woke to a low-hanging hemisphere-overhead hung dull-coloured clouds. The weather and my mood feel stuck in an eternal November. The night was so damp my sheets were wet from it. I had bad dreams and for the last week or so have begun night eating in half sleep.

Sun came out in the afternoon. The Ali Super across from my bedroom is where the local women loiter to get their daily dose of street gossip. Yesterday, the other inhabitants discovered a dead scorpion in the back courtyard.

Our landlady seemed to think it was not a problem, " dead is dead."

There are now some goldfinches nesting down below the roundabout. Wildflowers are also beginning to dot the cliffs around us. Mostly yellow flowers delicate and small.

The side of the road we use to walk up to Nuno’s cafe is a sharp vertical cliff of clay-like earth. It is held together by large aloe Vera plants whose giant leaves now touch the top of my head.

Yesterday, when I walked up the street with Dad, a Portuguese woman exited her house puffing away on a cigarette with a stench so pungent that I could smell it 50 feet away.

Finally, I put up a sketch of Pete’s on the wall above my laptop. It was only weeks ago that he told me his lungs were fucked by fibrosis. "I'll be fine."

I've got a bad feeling about all of this.

I looked out at the ocean in the old town and stared out for home. I miss snow and the way it feels on one's skin. The way it crunches and falls so quietly sometimes. The way snow sits on trees. The way it makes one feel totally alone.

Old town Albufeira is deserted and cold. The ice rink erected for Christmas in the old town square was dismantled today. The ice was frozen on top of a wood foundation, which municipal workers hacked off like it was for drinks.

Bath water is tepid tonight because our landlady has been fiddling with the hot water heater again.

January 7, 2009-01-07

Orthodox Christmas, Ukrainian street workers drink in their yuletide at the unheated English-style pub. Amongst them are Ukrainian mafia thugs who Rui told me are loan sharks that enslave their migrant brothers and sisters in chains of high interest rates. Everywhere else the streets are deserted- of both foreigners and Portuguese.

Low clouds again today with drizzle and damp wind. It is like being stuck in a perpetual, hopeless November as there is little sun.

In Canada, there is snow and sleet. Here my bones ache from the dampness.

Fixed the hot water issue the landlady had, in fact, turned down the hot water heater. I discovered the switch to turn it on high, and presto- hot water again for our showers.

Even the stray cats have upped sticks from the old town. Restaurants are empty of customers- but outside is a hired homeless person with leaflets advertising 6-euro English breakfasts and 6.50 euros for fried sardine dinners or sangria 10 Euros per jug.

Even the weasel ball game is gone from the old square.

There seems to be only one English-used bookshop in this town, and their speciality is Clive Cussler and Jack Higgins.

Dad spent most of the night coughing in his sleep.

I don’t know if it is from too many or too few Davidoff’s.

Feoroni’s down the road from us is now shuttered.

I saw them clearing their stuff out of the restaurant, on Monday after New Year’s weekend. The economic tsunami is coming and will sweep everything out to sea.

January 8, 2009-01-08

Deep freeze all across Europe both in climate and economies. Portugal admits they are in a recession like the rest of the world. Today, the clouds hung low in the sky. Now and then, the sun broke through and played on the ocean waves.

Senor Venda tilled his 3x2 patch of earth outside with the same motivation as a prisoner gardening.

I heard him yelling at his wife upstairs, probably at her inefficiency in stealing and replacing our light bulbs with lower-wattage ones.

I emailed pictures to Peter, of our POW Christmas in Malcolm Loweryville. We spent it with men in their 60s or older who read The Daily Mail and, for entertainment, drink cheap Jameson’s in local cafes where they are permitted to be intolerant and racist.

Dad and I walked to Pingo Doce. On the way we saw a handful of English tourists belligerently pissed before 11 in the morning stumbling on the pavement.

January 25, 2009-01-25

Before sunrise- a great clamour of rain and wind outside.

Gales are storming down the coastline to Albufeira.

Today Bill, our neighbour, was in a terrible state. We ran into him waiting at the bus stop. Bill said he had to find a chemist and get medicine for his chest. He had a hacking and sputtering cough. It has been with him since his return from being on the lash in Cork with Rory. (Bill would be diagnosed with lung cancer 18 months later and die in hospice at home in Scotland.)

Bill's 67th birthday is coming up, which is how he justifies drinking double and treble his normal alcoholic pace. His breakfast is a fried egg washed down- with half a bottle of wine.

It holds him over until lunch when he downs six gin and tonics at the Lemon Tree. For dinner, he goes to Nuno's for a sausage roll and half a bottle of brandy before he leaves to watch "Egg Heads," at home. Lower middle-class Britain comes to the Algarve to retire and die in drink. Sober or pissed, they bitch about the Labour Party because they are convinced, “ the Tories know how to run a country.”

Thanks for all your continuing support. You have been great, and I am so pleased my Substack has nearly 2400 subscribers- 228 of which are paid. I am building a community with your help. But it is slow and arduous work.

In August I published over 25k words here, which is a lot of words. To be honest too many words. If I wasn't so short of cash the post would be fewer but more polished. But that isn't happening anytime soon if ever. I still have a bit to cover for my rent. So, if you can and only if you can please subscribe to my Substack or use the Tip Jar. I am reducing a yearly subscription by 20% because it is a fire sale, of sorts. Take care because I know many of you are sharing the same boat with me.