We are leaning over the back deck watching the UK disappear into a dreary grey winter cloud.

"So where are you going?"

"I'm off to the Algarve."

"Holiday?."

"No, I'm having a house built there."

"That sounds interesting. Are you actually going to live there, or just spend the winters there?."

"I'm thinking of moving there permanently. It's nicer and cheaper than the UK."

"What about work?"

"No problem, I write pornography for a Swedish magazine," he said; which rather stopped me in my tracks.

I was going to Casablanca, but the ferry stopped at Lisbon as well.

Nice town. Old and crumbly, with narrow streets, and tenaments looking as tho they were going to fall down after lunch. We get off the ship to have a look around. The town gives the impression of having closed for business sometime last week.

We stay two hours, then return to the ship, and Casablanca.

I never saw my pornographic friend again, and I've forgotten the lessons he gave me in how to write the stuff. Indeed, I forgot all about Lisbon, and the Algarve, and the profits of pornography.

Two years later I bought a property in Spain. That was thirty years ago.