Meeting Evie’s neighbours
I confess I was quite nervous driving to meet Evie’s nearby neighbours. They apparently knew her quite well, helped her at the end, and so on, so I hoped to hear lots of stories. The mother was around our age, so early 60s, whereas Evie would have been 90 by now so I suspect they didn’t socialise as much as I had hoped. Consequently, there weren’t too many stories, especially as she didn’t speak English and we don’t (yet) speak Portuguese. Luckily, her son Marcelo was there to translate. He explained that Evie had talked about me but said that I had passed away, much easier to explain than the circumstances surrounding my birth and subsequent adoption. Marcelo said my birth-mother had felt he was like a son to her, often helping her out! I can imagine as he seemed very nice, kind and helpful. It was sweet to meet Bambi, Evie’s elderly dog who amazingly enough was still alive, albeit covered in lumps & bumps.
We pondered knocking on the door of Evie’s old house but felt that was an imposition and we could be anyone! Marcelo had to go back to work, so couldn’t hang around to act as a go-between to verify that Evie had indeed been the owner of the property, so we could have been just ‘casing the joint’! I still had a cheeky pic taken by the house….
Evie’s friends
Evie’s neighbour gave me a batch of photos, which I’ve shared with the family. A woman called Barb (Clements?) is pictured quite often and seems talented as photos of her paintings are very nice. A close friend I would imagine.
One of the pics is of a work group I believe, so they may have been Evie’s former colleagues. My next challenge to so track them down. Might be challenging after 25-30 years or more since they may have worked together!
We found out that a chap who is an actor was a good friend of Evie’s when she lived in London. He was very helpful and phoned me with some background information on my birth-mother. They had a shared love of theatre and a similar sense of humour. He sounded quite cautious and voiced his concerns over Evie’s more que sera sera attitude to life. He worried that she didn’t save much, did things on a whim, moved countries without much research, flitting from Portugal to Spain, finding she didn’t love it and moving back to Portugal, losing money in the process. Interestingly for me, Eve (my wife not my birth-mum, Evie!) and I lived part-time in Spain for 5 years but decided against buying a forever retirement home there too! Portugal also ‘spoke to us’ more than Spain. Genes will out perhaps?!
We also met another person for lunch from whom Evie adopted a cat. Sadly, another lady who said she was good friends with Evie had to postpone meeting or chatting with us as she was diagnosed with cancer. Hope to catch up with her once she’s feeling up to it.
So, in summary, it seems that Evie was a sociable, warm-hearted, kind person who loved dogs, cats, flowers, wine & sunshine! I see so many similarities between me and my birth-mum!