In Inefficienza

Thursday, February 11th., Leixoes, Portugal.

With Swinnerton in Portugal. He is an excellent travelling companion. He tells me, rather guardedly, that the whole trip was 'cooked-up' between him and Knoblock. They have become aware of the growing tension between myself and Marguerite, and Knoblock apparently was of the sincere conviction that if I was not 'got away' for a complete rest I would break down. He may be right. I certainly begin to feel more myself. But of course it will still be there to go back to.

Oporto

Anyway we arrived from Havre yesterday and are off to Lisbon tomorrow. Swinnerton, myself and a Brazilian gent motored into Oporto yesterday afternoon. It is about 6 miles up the River Douro, but big ships can't get up the Douro, or even into it at all. So this port has been built just north of the mouth. Oporto is a great place, on about 40 hills, with towers on top thereof. The principal street is certainly steeper than the Sytch in Burslem. The life of a car here must be about as long as a horse at the Front - the roads are simply appalling, even in fine dry weather as now. I never thought such roads existed, at least near a big city.

It takes two men to do one man's work in Portugal. Thus we had two chauffeurs, the second's duty being solely to wind up when necessary. We had a Fiat - very noisy.

The name of Oporto should be Inefficienza. Still it is very amusing. We had a perfectly smooth passage through the Bay of Biscay, with bright moonlit nights etc. Very pleasant. Today we loaded up a lot of steerage passengers and about a million barrels of wine. The monetary system here is continuously funny. Three of us had a magnificent lunch at a great restaurant called the Crystal Palace. It cost fiftenn thousand three hundred reis. Still, after paying for it I had money left as the equivalent in English is about £1.1.10. We saw rings in jewellers shops marked at three million reis. The Portuguese Dollar has fallen dramatically relative to the Pound, which is very advantageous to us but makes the Portuguese very cross.

Telegrams are terribly expensive. I had to send one of only twenty six words and it cost me nearly as much as the meal! It was interesting to see over what the wireless operators call their Marconi House. They explained the wireless system to me at great length but I am embarrassed to say I understood nothing. Still one of them had a copy of "The Roll Call" and asked me to sign it, so he was pleased. He wanted to know if George Cannon survived the war. I was evasive.