I thought I knew most of the writers in the Algarve. I once scoured both the mountains and the beaches for writers who would be prepared to write a short story for the anthology, Summer Times in the Algarve, and finally excavated eighteen – writers tend to be well hidden. Very well hidden in fact.  At the Algarve writers’ lunch and general get-together at Parque das Minas organised by Nuno Campos Inácio from Arandis Editora, out of the thirty odd writers present, I knew no one – other than my German friend, fellow writer and cultural entrepreneur to the Algarve, Catrin George, and Uwe Heitkampf, editor of the new Eco 123.

Language is partly to blame. This was a Portuguese affair and I was the only English person there. I speak the language almost fluently and yet still that barrier is there. Language is another country.

The idea of the meeting was to get all the writers together, show off our wares, moan about the state of publishing and have (in true Portuguese style) a big lunch. I’m not big on lunches and certainly not big lunches as I’m a vegetarian and the Algarve – particularly Monchique – doesn’t do vegetarian. Other than omelettes and salads, the only other vaguely vegetarian food is migas. Migas is a type of bread crumbs, which sounds vegetarian except it is usually cooked in ‘banha’ – pork fat. I ate it once in the Alentejo, thinking it was vegetarian and I was sick for the next twenty-four hours. But an omelette a week is fine and Catrin and I wanted to be social and meet all the other writers. So after a couple of minutes of showing off books, moaning about the fact that Amazon has no amazon.pt and ebooks are almost unheard of (a Portuguese moan) and the difficulties of distribution and general dishonesty amongst certain English book sellers who have packed up, pleaded bankruptcy and not paid for books sold (my moan) and an hour’s tour around Parque da Mina (an old private and house that used to belong to a wealthy Monchique family), we were bused up to the restaurant Luar de Fóia, one of the many restaurants on the road up the mountain to Fóia (the highest point in the Algarve) and seated at the three long tables reserved for us. The three male writers to the left were not interested in talking so I began a conversation with a delightful woman called Fatima Peres, a presenter for Radio Fóia, who is described as ‘the highest voice in the south of Portugal’ Rádio Fóia (97.1 FM). Opposite her was the founder of Radio Fóia, Antonia Ventura, who also had an electrical shop in Monchique. It turns out that Fatima is almost a vegetarian and began telling me how to make the most delicious smoothies – using celery, ginger… A waiter interrupted to tell me that there would be a vegetarian lunch for me. Excited, I asked what it would be.  ‘Vegetable migas,’ the waiter said, but assured me it would be cooked in olive oil and not ‘banha’.

Meanwhile, Fatima was still rolling out the vegetarian recipes with a passion for vegetarian food that I could only dream of. She began talking about soya milk smoothies and, at that, Antonio protested that soya could not be milk and drew a little design on a napkin that read – animal – milk, plant – vegetable. The male writers on the left were becoming more animated after guzzling the carafes of red wine. Antonio was making a joke about how if God had found the perfect woman he would only have created one (not sure where that came from). And so, the lunch went on and on. Needless to say by the time we got back on the bus I began to feel queasy and so I missed the President of Monchique’s speech and failed miserably to meet any of the writers. But I had met some enchanting people from Radio Fóia, and learned a lot about vegetarian food and I now know that there are many more writers in the Algarve – see Arandis Editora