161.
Today all inspiration left me. All that was left was this excerable effort. Imagine! I'm in Lisbon, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and all I can manage to dish up is this piece of miséria absoluta. Car lights on an anonymous street. Pathetic, that's what it is. Now for the excuse! I worked hard and late at the National Library. I spent all day reading 90 year old copies of O Século and Diário de Notícias. I read about riots, and about potatoes, and about presidentialism, and about the war. I slaved over a hot microfilm reader... every now and again glancing out of the window at the heat haze rising from the melting tarmac on the road. Seeing all the young barely dressed meninas and rapazes soaking the sun in their carefree manner, while conducting their important conversations about who's seeing who and why on the mobile phone that seems to be grafted to Portuguese teenagers' heads at birth. While I, a poor researcher from a cold climate - o bárbaro do norte - am stuck inside Lisbon's ugliest building reading projected pages from very old newspapers. I miss my family, my cat and my home.