For those who thought that the little silver car was actually ours, sorry to disappoint you but it wasn’t – my little joke. But it has been such an eventful couple of weeks there has been hardly any time to add anything to the blog.

There is an old Chinese curse, apparently, ‘May you live in interesting times’ – although I believe Terry Pratchett has also used it – and for us the interesting times are certainly beginning…

A day after the car entry, Renault really did call to say the car was ready. This was a bit of a shock as the last we’d heard it was on a boat from ‘Czechoslovakia’ (I know there’s no such country but something I’ve found is that Portuguese geography is not good. There’s Portugal, and Spain and Brazil and after that it’s all a bit fuzzy.) To begin with there was some confusion over the insurance, we’re expected to provide cover to €50 million! But that was quickly sorted and we picked up our new car. As you can see, it’s lovely. A white Renault Modus, brand new, 8km on the clock.

Of course the first day we drove into Aveiro, and parked in the free area, a car decided to park behind us and block us in. I guess they were really impressed and wanted to see who owned such a lovely car… And I have been driving – left hand drive on the wrong side of the road. It’s not that bad, and certainly not as bad as I had expected… I’ve not even tried to drive on the left (though my Portuguese teacher, Paula, told me of a horror story of an Australian teacher, new in Portugal who tried just that.)

We’ve also signed the contracts on the shop! Hurrah!! After weeks of draft contracts going back and forth between Portugal and South Africa (where the landlord lives), and being double checked by our solicitor, we came to an agreement. Of course it was never plain sailing as the post office lost the first contracts so we had to sign another set.

So we had the shop and the car, and at the end of January we arranged for a builder to repair the office, as people were starting to visit and it did not look good. The builder did a magnificent job, check out the photo’s, and all we have to do is let the cement dry completely before laying down a wooden floor.

So things are really beginning to happen now, with the shop, car, office and even the website taking shape (check out www.ohub.pt to see where we are.) We even created a MySpace profile, which can be found on www.myspace.com/ohub, as an additional marketing tool (although we’ve only got two friends so far, excluding Tom.)