Time is just so funny. It is truly the only constant we have. Never changing, always going at the same pace and yet to us mere mortals, it always gives the illusion of moving faster or slower than it actually is. To say that today is crawling round to our 3.00pm appointment at the camara would be an understatement.
This is one of the great challenges that can come about, when you are trying to practice the skill of letting go of the result. Kimberley and I know that we do not have to worry about the result, we just have to keep on taking baby steps towards the goal and let the universe hit the ball out of the park.
We go for a nice lunch in one of the cafes in Idanha a Nova and right on time we present ourselves at the camara. Kimberley is already recognised as Kim by the receptionist on the front desk which is a great start, and we are told to wait on the chairs in front of the little cubicles. A man behind the glass shouts something but we are unsure if that is to us or somebody else. He shouts again. The lovely receptionist on the other side of the large foyer says we should go forward. We go forward.
This guy has a master’s degree in scowling. He scowls at us. Then he scowls at the computer screen. Then he grunts. Then Kimberley, in her best Portugese, asks if he speaks English. More scowling and a no. Now we know this is our failing for not speaking Portugese, and not his, but he is disinclined to help. So, we type what we want into Google translate, asking which fire zone this land is in and show him the map.
He goes off on one, and judging by the look he gives us and the arm waving, it suggests the upshot is that this is not his responsibility. So we very politely ask whose responsibility it is. He is reluctant to say but we aren’t moving and eventually he writes a name. So we ask for the address for this person or the email. He writes an address down. Then we ask if we can book an appointment there, and we nearly fall off our chairs when he says no, but we can just go along there now.
The address we have been furnished with is just a short distance away from where we are right now. Into TUT and off we go. Parking at the end of a narrow residential, cobbled street, it doesn’t look very hopeful. We walk down the street and turn into an alley and there is a building with no obvious sign outside. We walk up a flight of stairs to two very large, very intimidating and very closed sets of doors. We knock on one and wait. We are about to go when a lovely lady says we want the office next door. She strides across and hammers on the door and a few seconds later a really pleasant chap comes across and opens the door. Over the next twenty minutes he helps to answer all our questions and prints out an official document that shows exactly where we can and can’t build.
To say we are incredulous would be an understatement. We are completely bowled over, so we go back to the camara to thank them all, and we also book another meeting for Friday at 10.30am when we would love to meet somebody who deals with planning. The thing we now know is that from a fire zone perspective, we would be able to build on the land as there is a limited fire risk, but that does not mean we can build a house on it. This is just one of the hoops to jump through. There will be others, but we are in high spirits at our minor and very unexpected victory.
Then we decide we want to do something a bit cheeky. We buy the ingredients for a tuna salad and drive to CasaBo (the name we’ve given our dream home) to eat supper in the land plot of our dreams as the sun sets over the mountains. It was a truly special day and the most fantastic of sunsets. Just keep stepping baby, keep stepping.