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This is one of my favourite SPs - I'm in the bar! Once again I am putting up a photo that I took while I was in Portugal. I'm still photo'd out, and lacking any real inspiration after my wonderful time over there. I am slowly but surely going through all the images I captured, and uploading some of them to my Lisbon Story gallery (but note, not all the photos were taken in Lisbon, just in case the title offends - as it seemed to with one anonymous Portuguese 'guest' who left a foul-mouthed message (since deleted) on one of the images. Perhaps s/he didn't think I can read Portuguese. So now you know that I know that Marinha Grande is not in Lisbon). Ignoramuses aside, the Portuguese are, in general, extremely warm and welcoming people. I have spent most of the past 12 years of my life either living in Portugal or travelling to and from there, and I have only ever come across a handful of what the Americans might refer to as 'jerks', but which we in the UK prefer to call 'w*****s'. Enough of this wandering, and back to the story - not that there is one, mind you. I have spent most of the past few days in the house watching Euronews (which I have in Portuguese in order to keep my ears attuned to the language while I'm not over there) and reading the Portuguese newspapers. Why? I hear you not asking. I'll tell you. I like Euronews because it gives the news from a European perspective, and more often than not covers stories that are ignored by most other agencies. I read Portuguese newspapers because I have to keep up with what's going on over there, and events in Portugal very rarely make the news in the UK. By reading the Portuguese papers, I know that temperatures have risen to over 40ºC (104ºF for our non-metric friends) and that forest fires have broken out in the Alentejo, just south of Beja. The authorities are afraid that this year could be even worse than 2003, when half the country was in flames, and the smoke could be seen from space. I also discovered that a German company want to build the world's largest solar power-station, generating 116 Megawatts, near Beja. This would be a welcome development, since this part of Portugal is amongst the hottest and driest in Europe. It is also one of the poorest parts of Europe, where there is a great deal of unemployment and few prospects, resulting in depopulation. Sorry, I didn't mean to bore you! Hey, on an altogether different note, I got the date for my MRI scan - 30 June at 9am. Also, tomorrow is my birthday, when I will be celebrating my 21st for the 22nd time! I am hoping that Linda and Liam might buy me an 18-300mm lens with a macro capability. Fingers crossed!

Last year Liam was running with a foam arrow