Monday, September 6

We will leave tomorrow at 7am and so we have decided to spend today making sure we have everything we want packed neatly away. Before that though we both have work to do.

I spend the whole morning in a Zoom meeting with Christa, Micke and Elena discussing our progress to date and making a detailed plan for the VAKEN meeting in Reykjavik in two and a bit weeks time. We decide what we need to do before the meeting and where we need to get to by the time we all fly home. By lunchtime my time, or mid-afternoon in Helsinki, we have a neat three day schedule, tuned to fit in with everyone’s arrival and departire dates.

We both finish work at approximately the same time and head out into the afternoon sun: 28 or 29 degrees, fact fans.

We walk down to Padhua junction, at the end of our road, where we sometimes sit outside a little coffee shop for a morning coffee, and then onto the Continente supermarket that we came across a few days ago. This stands close to the Campo 24 de Agosto metro station.

Just as we come to the end of the road, and before we enter Continente, I stop to photograph a piece of graffiti I meant to photograph some days ago.

We will buy cheeses and a few more Portuegese delicacies. We will stop at a tiny restaurant run by an old couple who seem to double as its only customers. We catch them eating dinner at the otherwise empty tables and stop for a final beer.