thought #1

In the absense of anything poetic to say, please can I try out a few thoughts on you?

- Portugese readers. Help me here, because I fear I am about to say something horribly insensitive. I've had a lovely few days in Cascais and am enjoying myself enormously, in between long, hypnotic lectures on agent technology, but I've noticed something I feel quite sure is an abherration, but noticeable nonetheless.

I've now counted three people - lovely, all - who have looked askance at me in conversation. What I mean is emphatically not that they have been judgemental or suspicious, but literally that they have failed to make eye contact with me while talking. Am I that freakishly odd-looking? So handsome they can't bring themselves to look? (Shut up).

There's one chap at the desk of my hotel who keeps throwing me off by looking directly over my right shoulder while he talks to me. Does he have a glass eye? Is this a recognised phenonemon? Some kind of Portugese tic? I don't believe for a moment that it is, but I like recording these oddities, so thought it worth mentioning.

Portugese readers who have taken offence: I'm sorry. I'd like to make it clear that I like you very much, much more than the awful Italians, let alone the French.