I buy everything ready-made!

Here in Beira Interior, the region where I live, the majority of the population is already elderly. In keeping with their age, they have reached the right to retirement and the corresponding pension, which guarantees their survival, for better or worse, depending on the amount they receive and also on other potential income from assets acquired or inherited during their working life. It's very common, when these people are asked what their occupation is, to hear the answer, "I buy everything ready-made!" By this, they mean they've stopped working in the life that filled their time while they struggled to survive. Today, they no longer have these obligations; they simply tinker with small things to pass the time. I'm also part of this great club, but I don't say I buy everything ready-made. I take a different approach and call myself an entrepreneur, providing work for those who need to earn a living, so that what I need to get done can be done. I limit myself to paying what my pocket allows and living within my means. I would like to go further, but I can't bite off more than I can chew. It's all a matter of habit, you have to maintain a balance between the days ahead and the money you have, everything has to be right, without forgetting that you have to give some leeway to the second factor.

Having arrived here, I will relate a conversation that arose by chance, some forty years ago in Gouveia , at the time still a town, with a gentleman I met at lunch in a restaurant that had a certain reputation in that area.

Word after word until the person speaking to me asked me where I was from. Bluntly, he said he was from Celorico, a neighboring municipality, so he was only five leagues away, which allowed me to travel there frequently. My interlocutor smiled and asked me if I knew him. I answered no, partly because of the age difference, as he was about four decades older than me. From then on, he began to describe his past, saying he worked hard but that life had turned out well for him, ensuring a comfortable old age. Out of curiosity, I simply asked him what he did for a living. He then told me he was a market vendor, and with some irony, he added that he bought everything ready-made and sold everything unfinished. To my perplexity, he explained his business: he moved his stall from market to market, selling fabric by the meter for tailors and seamstresses to then transform into clothing. Since the parts he sold were cut from industrially manufactured rolls he had purchased, he stated, without any fear of being contradicted, that he bought everything ready-made and sold everything unfinished. I found this senior's words quite amusing, although I knew that fairs and markets are a great school of life. But the conversation didn't end there; he went on to say that he sold everything, from cotton to velvet and calico to silk. He said he had experienced the evolution of terylene and nylon, but always sold by the meter, as many of his customers already had instructions on the material for their desired project. He also said that he never sold corduroy, clarifying that in his time, it wasn't manufactured in Portugal and that what arrived here was smuggled, as the quality in Spain was quite affordable. He also never sold denim, as that fabric only arrived here through garment factories. He did indeed sell, under that name, incorrectly, a fabric called zuarte or worker's cotton, very suitable for certain professions. I tell you that I learned a few things from this gentleman, because besides being the only one I've ever met who said he sold everything he could make, he also enlightened me on some matters related to textiles that I had never thought I would have knowledge of. It's true that I don't sell anything, but if that were to happen, it would be all he could make. For today I leave you, I'll be here on the twenty-fifth of this month, which is World Dream Day and that means a lot to me because I'm a dreamer.

Until then, may we be healthy and look good!