A retreat

So after almost eight months (longer for P) we finally said goodbye to Bom Retiro, whose name means "pleasant retreat". All sorts of ironies there of course. Minimising our luggage, we had hoped to hire a man with a van but, once again, the locals priced themselves out of our market. Instead we booked two large taxis for 7pm but in classic Brazilian style they simply decided not to turn up.

While waiting for alternative taxis, we spoke with a kippa-wearing Jewish chap who has lived more than fifty years in a neighbouring apartment block (the same as your family's, Betti). As we had taken a final stroll around the neighbourhood today, it was sod's law that there seemed to be an unusually high number of charming, neighbourly interactions. P seems to know a great many people in the shops and cafes, some of whom she met while still pregnant.

Bom Retiro coulda-woulda-shoulda been a homely old-time sort of place in which to live and raise a child. Sometimes it did feel that way, a pleasant retreat from the anonymity of atomised modern life. I will miss my small but significant interactions with the pharmacy people, the hairdressers, the fruit and veg man, the Korean cafe owners, the Jewish estate agents, the local padaria (bakery) and the man with the blue-rinsed hair. And all manner of other assorted characters. How much I will miss them and their locale (90 per cent of my Sao Paulo experience) is hard to say and I suppose I should be on guard for any unwarranted nostalgia.

We waited for our taxis to whisk us away to posh Jardins and a new life of comparative - if temporary - luxury, thanks to the timely intervention of Sam's indefatigable UK grandparents and a wealthy distant relative in Brazil. Despite all the problems living where we were, and especially the "not fit for purpose" apartment, I felt some last-minute confusion about our retreat from the Pleasant Retreat. Our elegantly dressed orthoox Jewish interlocutor, warm and friendly, seemed perfectly at ease with his environment, as did many others here. I'm sure the majority of our neighbours were wealthier than me, an unemployed "rich foreigner", living without a car or an elevator.

Yet I was the one retreating from Bom Retiro and from my attempt at normality, in favour of a sequestered and closeted existence in an uptown serviced apartment, costing maybe five times more than our previous abode. It's not as if I was fleeing a favella forgodsake. As they used to say in wartime Britain, "Is your journey really necessary?"

Well, necessary or not, it's a done deal now. I certainly won't miss those evil mosquitoes or that insanely cold microclimate in our former flat.

I'm writing this post from our new, elegantly furnished apartment, with cable TV, daily cleaning and a gym just a short elevator-ride away. I guess I'll be umbilically attached to this place within a few short days and will shudder at the memory of our previous shack.

But for now it remains a sudden and strange retreat from our sometime, and sometimes, "pleasant retreat".