Al-Shabaab chic
And buying a bit more valley
I’m not sure what was more exciting this week: ordering a brand spanking new truck; successfully negotiating to buy an extra two hectares of land; or the moment when the new bright yellow scaffolding was delivered.
We’ve not heard any news yet from the bank about our project funding, but we have finally decided on a logo – thanks so much for all your help with that…the result is below.
Meanwhile our spending curve – which had started levelling off and even began to drop at one point – is steepening back up to peak pandemic levels…and it sometimes feels exponential.
Most mid-life crises expressed through outrageous vehicular acquisition end up on a Porsche forecourt, but we’re different.
Yes it’s red, yes its beautiful, but yes we can also load logs into it, tow pretty much anything under 3.5 tonnes, and we don’t have to worry about it breaking down or getting stuck in the mud.
All those Land Rover naysayers out there will be pleased to hear that for our company car we have gone the Toyota route.
Al-Shabaab, the Taleban and ISIS can’t all be wrong: after all, the Hilux is the must-have utility vehicle for today’s mobile militant.
“Need to follow maps while avoiding incoming rockets? Navigate in safety without taking your eyes off your enemy with the Toyota Touch 2 multimedia phone pairing multimedia system (for iPhone or Android).”
In all the war zones I have visited over the years across Africa and the Middle East it’s the Hilux and its fellow Toyotans that are as ubiquitous among the militants as they are favoured by United Nations peacekeepers.
My former BBC colleague David Loyn is credited with describing the Taleban’s use of the Hilux as a game-changer, the US government investigated how ISIS got hold of so many, and check out this amazing clip of Top Gear trying to kill one.
And while we won’t be mounting a machine gun on the back and getting too technical with our Toyota 4x4, the piece of mind that comes with a warranty and a service contract is certainly showing our age.
And that’s going to matter just as much in Vale das Estrelas as it would do in Somalia, South Sudan, Spin Boldak or the Sahara Desert.
It’s taken me almost 50 years on earth to reach the point of buying a new car – a brand new, straight from the box beauty with no dodgy service record or “one careless owner.”
They’ve all been at least second hand – mostly third or fourth hand – and I’ve usually chosen extremely badly ending up with massive maintenance bills.
With the insanely high cost of second-hand cars in Portugal, our demand for reliability and the need for a commercial vehicle for our business led us to go the extra kilometre.
The salesman didn’t even have to go for the hard sell, he just smiled and slid the glossy 56-page brochure across the table.
I was hooked. Fifty-six heavy pages with that special new-plastic smell. The 4x4 on the front was parked next to an erupting volcano. I mean, wow.
While it was great to dive into the truck porn of checklists, fact boxes and detailed specifications, we did notice that every single person featured was white and male (come on Toyota, it’s 2021).
But it was red, very nice to drive and the salesman told us graphic stories about slaughtering pigs as a child…so the deal was on.
If only we didn’t have to wait six months for it to be delivered.
(And yes I have Googled delivery routes, and it appears the blocking of the Suez Canal will not affect our timeline).
Hopefully Millicent will keep us going until then – I felt her stutter slightly on the way back from the Toyota garage, but we put that down to jealousy.
I feel a little…guilty…for not sticking with a Land Rover, but at the end of the day the stress is real when you break down in our little part of the Portuguese countryside.
We ordered the car during a couple of trips south to the Algarve this week for hospital appointments and to get a carload of paint for the guesthouse renovation which we start next week.
That explains the arrival of the beautiful bright yellow scaffolding.
A year ago I would have scoffed at the idea of buying scaffolding…let alone describing it as beautiful.
We’re doing the work ourselves and not planning anything too dramatic – it’s in really good shape – but we’ll do a full paint job inside and out, make a few little repairs and put in some better beds.
Ana is choosing a colour for the wide skirtings around the base of the house and the doors and windows – a famous characteristic of houses in the Alentejo.
We’re leaning towards a blue, but have a few other testers to see what works best, and are hoping to be open for guests from May 1st – even if travel restrictions mean it will mostly be Portuguese visitors to start with.
Come and see us if you can…apparently Ryanair thinks there’s still hope for a holiday in Portugal despite the pandemic.
And finally, on to the big challenge of the week…buying an extra two hectares or so of overgrown land and creating 22,000m2 of extra work for myself…more bloody silves brambles to clear!
When the neighbours put their place up for sale, they’d mentioned the weird strip of land which divides us in a rectangle across the valley from one hilltop to the other.
We’d never quite worked out why it was there or who owned it, but it turns out it was left over from a complicated family inheritance.
We thought it would be a good chance to increase the size and value of our property and as such would be worth more to us than the current owner.
Our neighbours gave us a number for a guy called Daniel who had dropped by around Christmas saying he might be interested in selling.
I immediately started panicking about how to successfully negotiate a land deal with a Portuguese farmer – given my experience with car salesmen – and so asked our laywer what to do.
“Just call him,” she said. So I did, and we pretty quickly started talking about a price.
My negotiation class at Stanford had taught me the basics.
When Daniel and his brother João, who owned the title, explained they had planted hundreds of medronho bushes used for making booze I thought about the value of offering “a package.”
Perhaps I could give them a few years of access to harvest the fruit as part of the deal?
It turned out the plants weren’t that valuable and the price we settled on was nearer their figure than mine.
I was worried we’d agreed to pay too much, but the Cow King told us it was a bargain and so we immediately put our lawyer in touch with theirs.
Daniel couldn’t remember her surname and I thought that might be tricky.
“Tânia – the solicitor – you know, married to the photographer near the police station?”
Oh, that Tânia (!)
I spoke to our lawyer Ana and repeated the description. She knew immediately who I was talking about.
It’s wonderful to discover the connection between people outside of the city – a world where everyone knows each other, people help each other and how communities are so close-knit.
A week, the agreed price and a bit more in taxes and fees later…and we are the proud owners of a scraggy piece of land, desperate for strimming, with a load more cork oaks and a few hundred baby medronho trees.
What a week.
And the winning logo is…
We were so pleased to receive hundreds of responses. Thanks so much for your thoughtful and valuable comments: we read them all.
In short there were two main arguments: for yellow vibrant colours reminiscent of sun, fun and beach; and luscious green rural Alentejo with the beauty of sunrise and sunset.
The winning vote for the image was the green with 30% followed by the yellow with 25%.
But we read through all your responses, added some stars, played with the valley took a little of each and this is the final logo. We love it.
Thank you…and I hope that if this isn’t what you wanted, you’ll still come and visit us!
Love the logo. Fully sympathise with your bramble comment. Many s torn leg and clothing on our mini estate of 7500m up here in the Oeste. A fellow sufferer recommended a certain type of blade for my rocadora that has downward pointing wings. Totally destroys the beggars. Good luck and we would love to visit.
Brill choice for logo, guys!!!! Yup, that’s the one I went for! RIP Millicent😢 but Toyota deffo good choice for land bashing! Will you have a naming competition for your new acquisition? Here’s my suggestion - A FERA ..... ??? Really glad to see your Portuguese dream coming together - best of luck for your continued success!