21. Surrender
The day came round surprisingly fast in the end.
I’d finally been given an appointment at the ‘Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras’ or SEF (rhymes with deaf) as it is affectionately known to those of us who have had to deal with them. After weeks, which turned into months, of daily calls to the SEF Appointment Line I had eventually reached a live person. For months and months I had tried over and over again with no success. Some days I simply couldn’t face the task, even though it really meant just sitting in my chair on the terrace and continually pressing the redial button when that annoying repetitive tone told me that the line was busy. Then I’d be surprised and a little bit hopeful when it connected to the SEF automated answering system. But even then my call was mostly never answered by a person. Sometimes the line just went dead after I’d listened over and over to the message, first in a disconcertingly upbeat and slightly posh English voice, followed by a more downbeat version of what I assumed was the same message in Portuguese, explaining that I could check the SEF website for details of this and that, none of which applied to me. Then it would play a repeating loop of some jazz that may have been rather good, but which sounded terrible over the phone, and which cut short at just the wrong place in the section, and instead made me listen to those two annoying voices again, and then again. Eventually the English voice would simply tell me, still in that posh, upbeat tone, to call back later. Then the line would go dead.
A few times someone did pick up and I’d quickly hand my phone over to Gabi, since she had to be the one to make the appointment for me under the terms of my application for residency. At first, these were moments of great excitement, but each time we were told that there were ‘no appointments just now’, and that we should call again next week.
Then one day, after just a couple of rings, someone was on the line asking how he could help, and then he told us that yes, he could book us an appointment, but it wouldn’t be until June, and it would be up in Setúbal, near Lisbon.
‘Is that ok?’ he asked, knowing that we were several hours further south… ‘Would you like me to reserve you a meeting?’
‘Yes’, Gabi shouted at him enthusiastically, ‘please, make us an appointment’.
That was February. And June seemed a long way off.
At the end of March we moved into the apartment at the end of our new house (which wasn’t yet ours), then in the middle of April we signed the deed and the house did become ours. Then a couple of weeks after that, the previous owners, Elaine and Andy moved out, and we had the place to ourselves.
There was a lot to do all at once when we’d moved into the main house. Setting up the hi-fi of course, deciding on the best place for the speakers, the turntable, CD player, and amplifier, then where to store the vinyl and the CD collections. It’s all about priorities. Then the organising of the kitchen so it worked for our needs. Putting up beds, arranging furniture, deciding where to store all the many things we’d brought with us, realising that we didn’t have quite enough space for them all, and wondering why we’d actually brought so much stuff. Then unpacking more and more boxes, and wondering why there were some things that we just couldn’t find, things that we were pretty sure we’d packed. It became obvious that all this was going to take many more months to complete.
But the weeks moved on, and at some point we realised that a few of the documents that we needed for the SEF appointment were going to be out of date. They required a marriage certificate issued no more than three months ago — I suppose they think a lot could happen to a marriage in three months. So we ordered a new certificate and arranged for it to brought from the UK by the next friend coming out this way. And the same was true for my Police Record certificate. Thankfully nothing had changed on that either. Then there were the last few months of bank statements to show that I have enough income to support myself, the deeds of the house to show I have somewhere to live, our passports to prove who we are and where we’re from, Gabi’s residency papers to show she has the right to remain here, which would be the reason why I could remain here too. All of these we carefully stored in a folder which we would take with us when the day arrived.
We booked a little apartment in Setúbal for a few nights on AirB&B, a place close to the harbour and a short walk to the SEF offices. We would arrive the night before, have a leisurely morning, eating brunch and drinking coffee in a vegan café in town which had rave reviews, then we’d go to the appointment. We’d stay overnight and then drive home the next day.
The week before we were to leave, our friend Kutira came down from Aljezur to house-sit for us, so William and Misty would be taken care of while we were away. But after a couple of days, she told us that there had been an emergency back home and she had to leave.
Gabi asked a dog-sitter she knew who might be able to look after William (Misty could take care of herself for a couple of nights). But it was too late notice. There was nothing else for it — William would have to stay in a kennel. And we were delighted when we found Leslie and her ‘Bed and Biscuit Doggie Hotel’.
‘I only take small dogs’ she said as she showed us around, first the outdoor play areas, then the luxury rooms, each equipped with low, comfortable furniture that any little dog would love to be up on.
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‘I’ll need an emergency number’ she said. ‘Just in case there’s a problem of some kind. There probably won’t be, but you never know’.
So on the morning of our departure Gabi drove William to his hotel while I packed a few last things.
While I was waiting for her to return I picked a card from my pack of ‘Angel Cards.’ Spreading them all face down on the table, I closed my eyes and thought about our trip, the appointment at SEF and the purpose of it all.
I picked one at random from the spread, turned it over and opened my eyes.
‘Surrender’ it said.
I thought about the last year, all those months of uncertainty about when the house would be ours, or if it ever would, the horrible feeling that I was just ‘waiting around’ for everything, the frustration of the hours spent calling the SEF help line to try and get an appointment, and the discomfort of knowing that I couldn’t leave the country in case they didn’t let me back in again, since I had been here beyond my allowed 90 days. It had been a very uncomfortable time. And I had eventually been forced into surrendering to it all. Or at least, I had come to realise that surrendering to the way things were was the least painful way to deal with it all. And so I had.
Yes, this card meant something to me. But that was over now. From now on things were going the way I wanted. The house was ours and we were settling in. We were were meeting people who we knew would become good friends, and it wouldn’t be long before I’d have my residency card in my hand and I’d be free to come and go if I wanted to.
Surrender. Yes, this was an appropriate card. But really the need for that was over now.
I put it back into the pack.
When Gabi got home we packed up the car and headed north for the three hour drive to Setúbal.
But fifteen minutes into the journey we realised we didn’t have our Portuguese mobile phone with us, the phone with the 351 number that SEF would call if they needed to contact us. So after a little debate, we turned around, deciding that the phone was important, and since we had plenty of time, we’d stop and have a nice cup of tea on the terrace before heading off again.
No sooner had we pulled up at the house when Gabi’s phone rang. It was Sue. Sue was our emergency person. At the very last minute as she handed William over to Leslie at The Doggie Hotel, Gabi had decided that Sue would be the best person to have as our emergency person should the need arise.
‘I’ve just had a call from Leslie’ said Sue. ‘She says that William is bothering all her little female dogs, so she put him in his kennel but he screamed to get out, and just wouldn’t stop. She says he’s driving them all crazy and it isn’t going to work. Why don’t you bring him over to me for a couple of days?’
William knew Sue. So did we of course. Sue had been one of our friends in Shaftesbury and was now living most of the year not far away from us in Portugal. And William knew Will, Sue’s little dog, who had stayed with us just a few weeks earlier when Sue had to rush back to the UK for a family emergency. So when we arrived at her house in Lagos, Will and William excitedly greeted each other with mutual sniffs and wagging tails, while we hugged Sue, thanked her for her generosity, and then stayed for that cup of tea, but on her terrace instead of ours, before heading north again, a couple of hours behind schedule.
But what did that matter? We had plenty of time, the day was sunny and warm, but not too hot, and William was now in good hands. From now on everything would go smoothly.
