On the forty seventh day of March my friends from Tuscany invited me to stay at their farm<\/p>\n
Naturally I refused and caught the next train to Lisbon<\/p>\n
To fund my trip I robbed a couple of pawnbrokers in the southwest of the city<\/p>\n
I apologised to the old men and left copies of my latest travel book for them to read as I am not a philosopher<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lisbon 1755<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \n Lisbon was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake and a tidal wave on Saturday the 1st<\/sup>\u00a0of November 1755<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It happened during the morning of the Feast of All Saints<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Between ten thousand and one hundred people lost their lives<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The actual epicentre of the earthquake was about one hundred and twenty miles west-southwest of Cape St Vincent (where I was born to English parents)<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n This was the third earthquake to hit the city which had previously suffered in 1321 and 1531<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The disaster caused political tensions in Portugal and harmed the countries colonial ambitions<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It was much discussed by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and inspired major developments in theodicy and butterfly collecting \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I collect butterflies and the clouded yellow is my prize exhibit<\/p>\n \n This was also the title of a 1950 movie starring Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons<\/p>\n \n I have not seen the movie but I suspected it to be a decent thriller<\/p>\n \n Common sulphur<\/p>\n Clouded sulphur<\/p>\n \n is a North American butterfly in the\u00a0Pieridae<\/em>\u00a0family (sub family\u00a0Coliadinae<\/em>)<\/p>\n \n My name is David Somers<\/p>\n \n I catalogue butterflies for Nicholas and Jess Fenton who are spies but are best known for their twice weekly cookery programmes<\/p>\n \n They know nothing about butterflies<\/p>\n \n Until recently I worked for the British Secret Service<\/p>\n \n But I was exposed by my friends at Cambridge<\/p>\n \n Who guessed where my true sympathies were to be found<\/p>\n \n I knew that I was being pursued by people who were only interested in my abduction<\/p>\n \n They needed to know what I knew about what I knew and why I knew it<\/p>\n \n I changed trains at a small rural station in Northern Portugal<\/p>\n \n Would they expect my deception I thought not as I was heading back into the southerly winds which can be insufferably hot during the butterfly months<\/p>\n \n A classic trick but to take it further I left the railway station completely and then walked the ten or so kilometres to the station of the pink butterflies<\/p>\n \n I knew that I would be safe there as only butterfly enthusiasts could see these beautiful creatures<\/p>\n \n The station when I found it was covered in small pale pink butterflies with butterflies of a slightly deeper shade gathering in the bushes that overlooked the line<\/p>\n \n Green butterflies could also be seen hovering overhead and the crimson ones lent a deep and satisfying hue to the nearby hills<\/p>\n \n Trains passed through the station without disturbing these beautiful creatures and it was here in the stationmaster\u2019s house that I began writing my memoirs which are said to have changed the methods of thinking in many western liberal democracies that did not have indigenous species of butterflies common to their winds<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the forty seventh day of March my friends from Tuscany invited me to stay at their farm Naturally I refused and caught the next train to Lisbon To fund my trip I robbed a couple of pawnbrokers in the southwest of the city I apologised to the old men and left copies of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}