Meet Edison & Cristiano

Edison, on the left, is the step-father to Cristiano and has brought him up since he was 8yrs old. Edison's 30 now and has three other children at 14, 4 and 2......ok, I can almost hear your brain ticking away. I'll help. Edison had his first child with his current wife when he was 17 and at the same time started bringing Cristiano up too, who was 8 at the time!! They're the two guys who are working in our flat today and a fine team they seem to make.

Edison's the right hand man of Francisco on our project and is now working full-time in our flat, much to our relief! Francisco, the big boss, is the brother of Gina, who works for the estate agency which had our flat on its books and she was our main contact there. She introduced us to Francisco. Gina's boss, Alexandre, is the owner of the estate agency and was also our power of attorney when we needed to appoint one at short notice to sign everything in our absence. Marcius, who we sometimes find in the flat working away, is another of Francisco's 'confidantes' and is his brother-in-law. I'll leave you to work that one our for yourself! Welcome to Brasil. Sometimes we struggle to get all this in Portuguese!

Oh, I almost forgot! Yesterday, Cristiano said his 'pae' (father) was coming in this morning to take away all the debris with a wheelbarrow. We were a bit confused and thought we'd misunderstood the relationship between him and Edison and expected to see Edison brandishing a wheelbarrow this morning. It all became clear when Edison's real father turned up with the wheelbarrow!