The Story of our Days

Can you see the three window cleaners on the Vasco da Gama tower? I have always maintained that, if pushed to it, would rather earn my living as a sex worker than cleaning high-rise windows... The thought of dangling that high up fills me with horror, so all credit to these three.

Poem today is the one sentence: "Epitaph", by Sir Walter Raleigh, said to have been written on the eve of his execution. Prior to the mid 20th C, and in many places still, mortality was a fairly constant presence in most people's lives - it certainly was in the Sertão, where we lived... and would seem pertinent to contemplate something we'll all face...

Even such is Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
And from which earth, and grave, and dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

This 145 metre tower (highest building in Portugal), like the bridge behind it, are both named after Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer who was the first European to discover a seaway to India, in 1498. The extra is looking up the inside of the tower. His name lives on, but what about him??

In Lisbon again, bringing my sister and husband to the airport. Not feeling great - can't wait to get home to bed...