I know Joana says I’m obsessed with the house-staff, but I haven’t had any before, and they are fascinating. Also they are the only people we see apart from each other all day, so they have to deal with me trying to amuse them. Hence wearing stupid hats and seeing if they react. I have an Australian beachguard’s skullcap, red and yellow quartered, with long white strings which hang down either side. No reaction when I wore that. An excellent response to the African trousers I brought however. First Ignacio made some private comment to Antonio – must have been, ‘what are those trousers’. And then their curiosity overcame their normal reluctance to start a conversation with someone who speaks neither of their languages (and seems quite strange anyway). But strangely later I tried on the hat of the same material as the trousers and received no response, which is odd given that it is a little Islamic in style, and Antonio even wears one. I just can’t work it out.

So the current fascination with the guards is their commute. Amade walks to work for 45 minutes from his home on the mainland. That means a walk along the coast. Crossing the sea on the single lane bridge which always has a howling gale blowing over it. And then walking the length of the island. Simao lives in Lungo, which I think is a 1.5 hour walk according to some students who were hassling me for money. But Antonio is the best of them all. He cycles for 3 hours from a town neither of us has heard of. He stays somewhere we don’t know in between shifts and then cycles home, 3 days after leaving. It makes the Hammersmith & City seem like going to work by ticker tape parade.