I knew I was running out of ideas when even the ugly factory failed to excite our two youngest children who were bored beyond tolerance after a long time on the road.
We had used the promise of its hideous ugliness, smoking chimneys and hell-fires glowing from within to keep them entertained for the previous 50 kilometres. But I think we oversold it. When the power stations of Alenquer finally appeared they were unimpressed. My daughter even went so far as to say she thought it was beautiful because, she said, nothing in this world is truly ugly.
So we fell back on the classic – the ice cream promise – to get us through the last hour of the drive home from holiday. ‘Any ice cream you want’, I said. I really should have known better. I rummaged through the barren ice cream chests of the next four roadside service stations without finding anything remotely close to their wish list before they graciously accepted a Shrek Twister each.
This is a strange cylindrical thing entwined with coils that looks like a day-glo medusa on a bad hair day. But they held the sticks and licked them gamely as they looked out of the windows at the signs pointing towards nuclear power stations A, B and C. A silence descended in the back of the car as if they knew things could only go downhill from there.
It had gone much better on the drive down the previous weekend. Then we were full of songs and early morning excitement, fresh picnic stuff packed around us, sunlight in the air and a holiday ahead. The mangiest cow in a field was a wonderful thing to see and windsocks were just about the most exciting thing one could ask for.
But somehow things are never quite as appealing on the way back from holiday as they are on the way there. The silence and emptiness of the Alentejo south of Lisbon is normally a liberating thing, but driving through at noon with the dregs of a holiday stacked around us it felt oppressive and even vaguely sinister.
I imagined small towns hidden in the folds of the dry, golden fields; quiet places where doors slam and the wind is heard as it stirs the dust. They are peopled by men of few words and strangely silent women who don’t so much walk as glide as they pass you by.
It is a place that reminds me of the Karoo in South Africa, a semi desert where farms are huge and people’s eyes unfathomable. A guy I knew once made the mistake of getting drunk in a bar there and mouthing off a little. Next morning he woke up on the side of the road outside town with his genitals tarred and feathered and his motorbike in pieces around him. Back then the Karoo was a place to keep well clear of if you had long hair and spoke English.
But this association is unfair on the Alentejo – it is the fault of my end-of-holiday eyes. The Alentejo is a glorious place to see no matter what time of day it is. It has fine wines and stunning landscapes and I am sure the people who live there would be warm and generous if you were lucky enough to find anybody there. But next time I drive through it with tired children in the back seat I’m going to make sure I have a whole lot more than an ugly power station to offer in the way of entertainment.