Madeira: 1

We wake up in paradise

I woke up on my 30th birthday to the balcony doors being opened, exposing a view of the mountain side village, all red roofs and banana palms and the hazy ocean below.

Madeira was somewhere we’d talked of going but had never got to for one reason or another, one of those places you keep on the back burner, on a little list of possible escapes, and somehow it stays there for years, cropping up for reassessment occasionally. Finally we committed to it after a long English winter, the wettest January on record, and it felt like we were finally alive again.

We wore shorts, the novelty of warmth a huge joy we didn’t take for granted, and off we went in our little rental car, him navigating the hair pins and me saying ‘ooh wow’ every bend we turned.

We went without a plan, much better than strict itinerary’s, the scenery and our senses guiding us. When we came to a Miradouro we stopped.

As a photographer he was always stopping and noticing, and I would look where his camera was pointed to find the object of interest. I had use of one of his cameras too, a small Olympus that I kept slung across my body, which despite his disapproval I mostly used on auto. After a while I walked on ahead knowing he’d catch me. We were perfect travel companions; we’d had much practice.

A waterfall appeared, falling hundreds of metres to its death, and then the edge of the cliff came into view, parts of it shrouded in cloud.

Around the coast road we drove, through the clouds and out the other side to a town on the water. Hungry, we chose a local place where the waitresses were dancing together and we ordered sandwiches and handmade oregano crisps overlooking the waves which were crashing against a rock and creating immense backwash on their way back out which entertained us and made us unreasonably gleeful.

Around a little further was another town formed on the spill of a volcano, a crop of land into run the sea. We cam across a sunny balcony serving beers. I hadn’t had a drink for half a year. It was a decision made after a wedding the previous summer where I had made myself feel so terrible with the free bar and I realised the joy of drinking was heavily outweighed by the terrible anxiety and physical misery the next day, and the next. I was happy to have had this stint of sobriety yet wanted to give myself the freedom to have a drink or two when it felt good. And so the small cervesa on my birthday in the afternoon sun was relaxation and celebration in liquid form.

On the way home we ate custard apples, him down to the stalk, core and all. He always ate the unconventional parts of fruit.

In the evening it was cloudy but the sea was perfect so we swam, a few locals looking at us as if we’d lost our minds. They were lovely, the locals, mostly an old population of smiley, weather worn folk who spent their days propping up the walls of their local cafes, alternating between strong coffee and small beers. We knew Portugal well, having spent eight months living there on the mainland, and so were delighted to once again be amongst Portuguese people and their architecture, sunny climate and tomato and onion flavoured crisps. We felt so leisurely and free then, like we’d remembered how life was supposed to feel.

Over pizza at dinner he said he felt so calm. I felt the same. The self imposed business of home was a distant memory. We watched the sun set in paradise.