Letter from Espargal

Letter from Espargal: 4 of 2012

2012-01-29T13:59:00.000Z

It’s Friday night. (That’s as far as it got - brain clog, all slog, no blog.)

Now it’s Sunday. The question is what to say about walks, work, weather and widows that hasn’t been said umpteen times before. Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen et al would surely have thought of something although no doubt they had their off days as well.

The week, like so many other weeks, has been gobbled up by a thousand lilliputian pursuits. While most of them have been useful pursuits, they amount to very little, certainly very little that’s reportable. Is it my lot, I sometimes wonder, to pursue mini-goals for the rest of my life or is there something that I still want to achieve apart, that is, from winning the Euromillions jackpot.

I guess it’s the kind of rhetorical question we face as we come to terms with looming septuagenarianism, when the probability of heroically rescuing grateful damsels grows remote and our best hope is to assist old ladies across the road.

I may bounce these reflections off our group of emailing ex-monks, Australians and South Africans who trained together in a novitiate west of Sydney in the sixties before falling by the wayside – or, at least, tumbling out of the monastery. Our group has recently expanded to take in a Communist parliamentary candidate in Sydney and an atheist research scientist in Queensland. We are nothing if not a heterogeneous collection of ex-monks.

On Thursday night I dreamed that I was introducing Hitler to a conference that he was about to address. As he entered the hall, I put out my hand to shake his but he gave it a dismissive half clasp before setting about his discourse. In my dream it was clear to me that Hitler did not regard me highly. I can only think that my brain was trying – unsuccessfully – to digest the BBC’s excellent series on Putin’s rise to power, the second part of which I’d watched a few hours before.

Then on Saturday night, after attending a lovely if poorly-attended concert of English music given by the Orchestra of the Algarve, I dreamed that someone gave me a cello as a gift, greatly to my surprise. At least he said it was a cello but it was huge, more like a double-base, and it instantly fell into a pool of water. I give up.

Jonesy has been taking lots more pictures. Please admire them if you’ve got this far and are going any further.

Some time ago I installed a new hit-counter on my blog, the one you can see at the top of the page. It is provided free by an outfit called StatCounter and is far the best that I have come across. There is also the professional version for those who are seriously interested in knowing who is accessing their websites.

Even so, the free version tells me how many hits the site has had, how many are repeats, what city and country they came from, the IP address of the searcher, what search term was used, what browser was used and what kind of computer (ipad or smartphone) – plus a great deal more. It’s not that I want to know all this, it just that I find it a bit scary. Little wonder that Mr Google knows more about you than you know about yourself.

Weather: unbroken sunshine. We are heading for a serious drought unless we get rain soon.

Widows: We found May bruised and shaky from a couple of falls. She lives alone in her cottage and isn’t finding it easy. A neighbour has rented a “walker” that we hope May will use.

SOMBRE ORCHID

Walks: Morning and afternoon. The dogs run free in the bush, chasing rabbits (real and imaginary) to their hearts’ content. Jones and I follow along, admiring the views to the coast and the bloom. The first orchids are out.

And while on dogs – we have taken Bobby’s old kennel around to Joachim Sousa, who was happy to have us install it in the place of the barrel housing Maggie and her puppy, Barry. (Barry is actually a she; her name derives from the barrel. Joachim calls her “borboleta”, little butterfly.) Barry adopted the kennel immediately and Maggie has followed suit. Barry now comes sprinting down the drive in the evenings to greet Jones as she arrives with treats – en route to feeding the stray 100 metres further the road.

From London we have received this picture of Llewellyn and his dogs taking the tube. Edgar, as is his wont, seats his rear on the cushion and stands his front legs on the floor. Awkward as it sounds, he appears to find it a perfectly comfortable position.

Work: Slavic has been doing a great job, using the old tiles from the Casa Nada floor to pave the steps I built some years ago from the house to the upper and lower gardens. Until now, they’ve simply been backfilled with dirt and gravel.

On Saturday Slavic and a friend arrived at the Dutch ladies’ house to prune some of their huge carob trees, one of which was threatening a passing electricity wire. I went down on the tractor to supply chainsaw, rope and ladder. Slavic declined the rope I offered him to secure himself, saying it would simply get in the way. He vanished up into the upper branches of the trees with the ease of a primate and branches came tumbling steadily down. The Dutch ladies seemed well pleased.

Natasha spent an afternoon at Barbara’s desk, trying to compose a statement in Russian. This is quite tricky on a Portuguese typewriter – her own – which lacks the letters of the Cyrillic script. But she managed to find a programme that enabled her to do this, albeit with much effort. I was able to help her frame the statement in Open Office org. She’s a quick learner, fluent in Portuguese and competent in English.

WHEN YOU CAN'T FIND A BASKET, USE YOUR INITIATIVE

I have received an assurance from Norwegian Cruise Lines (who continue to bombard us with offers following our cruise last year) that they take every safety precaution and that there is no danger of their ships capsizing. I wonder why!

Letter from Espargal: 3 of 2012

2012-01-20T14:24:00.003Z

The sun is rising a little earlier than it did last week (nibbling away at my sleep-ins) and setting a little later. Not much else has changed. After a flutter of rain at the weekend, the skies have returned to their familiar deep blue and the temperatures to their comfortable January range. On our walk this morning Jonesy tried taking various pictures to illustrate the depth of this blueness, with some success, as you may judge. She’s become quite a dab hand with the camera.

On our return she attempted to snap the dogs catching the biscuits that I tossed to them. This proved more difficult as the catchers are lightning fast and the camera isn’t. Four of the six dogs are adept at such catches. The other two just look at me hopefully as the biscuits bounce off their heads.

As I was saying, the days are sunny and warm. This was noted by the accountant, whom we visited last Tuesday to submit our annual tax returns. He remarked on the (modest) income we now derive from the solar panels and said we weren’t the only clients who’d invested in them. What he couldn’t tell us was whether any tax allowance was made for such income. I somehow doubt that there’ll be any benefit, given the plight of the cash-strapped Portuguese government.

Afterwards we took ourselves a kilometre up the road to the shopping complex at Guia for a mini-raid on the new Iceland supermarket. Just outside the door a young lady was standing beside a table on which a number of items were laid out. It was clear from the badge on her lapel that she was collecting for charity. But she wasn’t the type to pester passers-by and the public was happy to look the other way. Like a statue of the virgin, the poor girl just stood and stood. So we made a contribution, more in sympathy with her plight than her cause.

Another morning we dropped in on the council to try to assist a Portuguese neighbour, old Chico (and his extraordinary partner, Dina). I should interrupt myself to say immediately that the real credit for helping Chico goes to his immediate expat neighbours, whose kindness borders on saintly. My part was just to talk Portuguese to the authorities.

The problem is that Chico’s water has been cut off because he hasn’t paid the huge water bills that he’s run up over the past two years. The trouble, Fintan tells me, is not that Chico uses a lot of water, it’s that he forgets to turn off the tap that’s filling his barrels. Chico has now received a notice threatening him with the seizure of his goods if he doesn’t pay – not that the authorities would find much to seize.

I explained the position to the clerk, who called in his boss, who called in the departmental head. The three of them were sympathetic. The question was how to reconcile the situation with bureaucratic rules. The head said that she would see if she could get the bill reduced to manageable proportions and let us know. In the meanwhile, Chico and Dina lurch 100 metres down the hill to the well with 5-litre plastic bottles and stagger up again, a bottle in each hand.

To celebrate some good news, Olive took us to lunch at the Lemon Tree restaurant in Almancil. It’s rather nice, a notch up from the places that we generally frequent. One sits in the sun-filled courtyard and briefly basks in the illusion of being important and well-cared for. The waiter, mishearing my wine order, returned with a bottle of the house red. So we sent him back to fetch the reserve. One has to set a standard after all.

Just beyond the restaurant, a couple of storks are raising their family on top of a dizzy chimney. I mention this only because it gives me the opportunity to put up this rather pleasing picture. The rest of the pictures are to Barbara’s credit.

Another luncheon was up at the family-run Hamburgo in Benafim, a regular pit-stop.
It was a relief to find a goodly crowd at the tables because the Hamburgo, like so many restaurants, has been hard-hit by the economic crisis – not to speak of the recent rise in VAT, which it’s had to absorb.

MANUEL & DAUGHTER, SELINA

In the good old days, Manuel would easily serve 30 lunches and an equal number of dinners. The previous night, he disclosed, a single diner had turned up. The restaurant was now dependent on its lunch trade and even this was much reduced by the disappearance of the building crews who had previously been a mainstay. Times are really hard.

I popped into Honda one afternoon for the replacement of the troublesome relay that has been playing silly buggers with the air conditioning. I wasn’t sure exactly what a relay looked like. Rui showed me the little plug-like object before he removed the lid of a mysterious plastic box under the bonnet and replaced the faulty unit. I confessed in embarrassment that while I had once serviced my own cars, these days I hardly knew which part of the engine was which.

On Wednesday Natalia and I worked on her phrasal verbs (which she at first pronounced “frazzle” verbs, much to my puzzlement). I had to look up phrasal verbs on Wikipedia to remind myself of their nature and variety because, like fishes and dogs, they come in many shapes and sizes.

One thing I have learned with Natalia is how impossibly unpredictable English pronunciation is. I frequently have to peer at a word in her book to make out what she is trying to say. The spelling gives little clue to the sound. Nor can one easily tell where the stress falls in a word. Portuguese is so much more consistent in these respects.

Nature is in its spring glory and so is our garden. The shoulder-high rosemary bushes lining the paths are in bloom and humming with bees. And closer to home, the purple irises compete in the beauty stakes with the white roses. What a lovely place to live!

Letter from Espargal: 2 of 2012

2012-01-14T00:33:00.003Z

I know that this has been an exceedingly busy week, if only because I’m nodding off over my keyboard; when I perk up I may be able to remember some of the things that have made me so sleepy. In the meanwhile you may admire the sky and flower pictures that Jones has been snapping. She finds it hard to let our spectacular dawns pass unphotographed; ditto the blossom as the almond trees come into their January glory. Look at this great shot that she took of Dries's pigeons on a flypast.

Let me work backwards. Today, Friday, Slavic arrived at 08.30 to continue his wall-building efforts about the garden, which is starting to look ever so spruce as a result. Having set him up with sand and cement, we went walking. I whistle as we pick our way along the stony paths through the bush to keep the circling pack aware of our position. It’s so nice to let the pups run free instead of being dragged every which way.

At 11.00 Natalia turned up for the English lesson she missed on Wednesday when she stayed home to look after her daughter. Her Business English text book was on about different kinds of performance matrixes. (I'm told I should prefer "matrices") I warned her that I didn’t have the faintest idea of what a performance matrix was and that she might have to find a better qualified teacher.

Thursday evening we went up to the local for one of Graça's roast lamb specials to celebrate Anita Massey’s birthday. Anita, down from Dublin, is the eligible daughter of neighbours, Fintan and Pauline. Either side of her are her brother, David, and his fiancée, Nicole. The left-over lamb bones from the feast go into a pot of rice that Jones cooks up for the dogs, upon which they absolutely fall.

Thursday morning I took my car into Honda for the third time to see if they could sort out the air-conditioning. They’d warned me after their previous attempts that they might have to keep the car in for a couple of days while they ran tests on the electronic systems. In the interim, I rented a Seat run-around. If there’s one thing to be said for renting a run around, it’s the appreciation it brings one of the merits of one’s own vehicle.

ALMOND BLOSSOM

I was delighted to receive a call mid-afternoon saying that the problem had been traced to a faulty relay and that I could fetch the car as soon as I liked; it would take several days for the new relay to arrive from Spain. I fetched it within the hour and felt as though I’d just been upgraded from tourist to business class.

BUSY BEE

Apropos of nothing, I was collared by Honda’s expert salesman, Jorge Silva, who has already sold me two cars. I’d be excited to learn, he confided, that the new CRV model was due out in October. Was my mobile number still the same as he was sure I would like a test drive? He’s got style, Jorge Silva has!

I was warned by the car hire firm that if I used the east-west Algarve toll-road, I would be obliged to visit a post office or agency within 5 days to pay the toll arising. The car’s licence plates would be recorded on overhead cameras and in the event that the toll was not paid, the bill plus fine would be forwarded to the car hire firm, to be debited to me.

As it happens, drivers of foreign registered cars are meant to pay tolls in similar fashion. Some hope! How they are supposed to learn about the system is another matter altogether as there are no booths at on & off ramps and it’s only the overhead gantries that suggest that traffic is being monitored.

MAKE WITH THE BISCUITS

Also Thursday we called on Olive where I was able to extract a damaged plastic rocker from a broken light switch in her hall and exchange it with the rocker from a new unit. The hard bit was easing the rockers out without cracking the plastic casing. How pleasing it was to see the light go on again! That was the cleverest thing I did the whole week.

PUPS AFTER THE WALK

Another clever thing I did was to order Mark Forsyth’s Etymologicon from Amazon, whose UK deliveries are free. Jonesy brought it back from London. It’s a real treat for anyone who delights in the oddities and origins of the English language. Who would have guessed that avocado derives from the Aztec word for a testicle or partridge from the Greek for passing wind? I put the Etymologicon down on top of my German grammar book each night before I switch off the light, promising myself that I’ll come back to it in due course – when I’m feeling stronger.

My last clever thing was to phone up the Euromillions helpline to discover how to place bets for several successive weeks. A patient and helpful operator talked me through the process. It’s possible to place a bet for up to 12 weeks. Then all one has to do is sit back and wait for the money to roll in. Regrettably, that won’t be tonight as a glance at the Euromillions website shows that we lost our money yet again.

Rather more worryingly, the TV news informs us that 9 nations in the Eurozone have had their credit ratings downgraded – in Portugal’s case to junk status. That is not good news. In fact it’s somewhat alarming. Sympathetic readers eager to make supportive sterling, rand or dollar donations – even better, the Chinese yuan - can be assured of the utmost discretion.

ALMOND TREE IN BLOOM

Wednesday Natasha, Slavic and I set about a huge clear-up of the mountains of cuttings that I’d been piling up in the park. The day was perfect, with hardly a breath of wind to disturb the smoke arising from the flames. The days before and since have been equally perfect, much to Jones’s discomfiture. The first thing she wants to know in the morning, when she brings in toast and coffee, is whether there’s any sign of rain. I check the 10-day forecast on my smart phone. We’ve been promised showers several times but they’re always due the day after tomorrow.

BJ IN LONDON

Let me skip over Tuesday and Monday since my memory doesn’t extend that far, except to the usual English classes and widow duty. Sunday evening was when Jones came back from the UK. I met her at the airport and took her to a toasted sandwich supper at the Coral before bringing her home to the spotless house that Natasha had spent the whole day cleaning in anticipation. Unfortunately, the results don’t last very long but that’s life. Or, more accurately, that’s six dogs.

Letter from Espargal: 1 of 2012

2012-01-06T22:13:00.001Z

Jones is away for a few days. (This handsome picture of her with Lucia at the Westfield shopping centre in London has just popped up on my screen, courtesy of Llewellyn). I have been working so hard in her absence that today I found it necessary to take two siestas. The first was really just a breath catcher that didn’t qualify; I tip myself over the arm of the leather settee in the lounge and fight off the dogs, who think it’s an invitation for a love-in. The second took account of the numerous buckets of turvena that Slavic had been passing over the fence to me to scatter on the path.

Turvena is a gravel-based road-surfacing compound that compacts to form a hard surface. It’s used on all the dirt roads around here. I’ve been laying it down on the tractor track that runs to the lower fields, as well as surfacing various paths that otherwise tend to become overgrown with weeds. This often involves parking the tractor outside the fence and getting Slavic to heave buckets of turvena over the wire into my waiting arms.

Slavic, ignoring my pensioner status, fills the buckets to the brim; I’m too proud to ask him to do otherwise. The result is aching limbs, wobbly knees, creaking hips and the need for that extra siesta. Even so, we have got a lot done – garden remodelling, wall-building, path construction and the siting of some huge rocks in the rockery outside the front gate. My aches are satisfying aches. And Slavic appears to derive a good deal of creative satisfaction from the work as well.

Also satisfying has been the eventual pay-out to Olive by a UK fund of the benefits accrued by her former husband. The process of extracting the investment has been long, bureaucratic and inefficient – much form filling, phoning and letter-writing. These pains were forgotten as Olive proudly displayed and then banked the cheque this week.

Because Jones is away, I have assumed her responsibilities for a few days. The first of these is to feed the cats in the morning. Dearheart is the grey and white job on the pillow here with her brother, Braveheart. Her enermy and victim, the poor Squinty, along with a lookalike, have adopted the Bijou Ensuite as their permanent lodgings. They come trotting down the stairs to enjoy their nibbles. Then I water the indoor plants and give the lounge a quick vacuum.

In the afternoon, I amble down the path to feed Maggie and her pup, as well as the stray and old Zeferino’s cat. This is a handsome muscular tom that could easily mug you if you forgot the nibbles. Close by, Maggie still shies away from me at the end of her chain although she no longer barks.

Barry, her puppy comes roly-polying out of the barrel and down into my arms. Poor little beast; I hope it faces a better future than its mother. Fifty metres down the road, the stray waits in the bush until I’ve put down a handful of dog biscuits – and then quickly moves in to demolish them. The stray is starting to look quite debonair.

I have taken the plunge and allowed the pups to run free on our walks. So far so good. They rush around madly with the other four, nosing through the bush, and yapping excitedly at the hint of a rabbit or a partridge. We follow a leisurely 40 minute route that they know well. Thus far they haven’t gone astray. Fingers crossed.

We have a new postman; that’s to say, a postwoman. Her name is Patricia (pronounced Pa-TREE-sia). I bumped into her in the parish office where I had gone to fetch a document issuing an invitation to a South African cousin to visit us. I didn’t mention that en route I had discovered a neighbour’s letter erroneously deposited in our postbox; Patricia is new and needs time to settle in.

When I inquired after the previous postman, the parish office ladies explained that posties work on 6-month contracts. After six months on a particular patch, they either move to a new area or seek other work. I was unpleasantly surprised. Not only does the system offer no job security, it means that the postmen are forever having to learn new routes. I don’t know how they manage. Many of the names on the postboxes in the village are all but illegible.

The Portuguese Met Office has sent me an email informing me that December was exceptionally dry. It was hardly necessary. Winter is a joke. Sunny day follows sunny day with no relief in sight. Afternoon temps hover around C20*. The flies are already making a comeback. The tourists have never had it so good.

As you may be aware, I find myself, like Moses, a participant – often unwilling - in some exotic dreams. I’m frequently back at work, generally with no desk or computer to work at or running late for broadcast. Such dreams may be explained easily enough, I’m well aware, but a recent dream was absolutely ridiculous.

This was a potentially romantic interlude with a delightfully seductive young woman whose demeanour made it plain that she found me equally attractive - don’t laugh. As she slid closer with unmistakeable intent, I bid her stop. I thought that we should go no further, I explained, without feeling some commitment to each other, even if that commitment were not to last. But since any such commitment was lacking on my side, I felt we ought to call a halt to proceedings. It was really a fine speech and I woke with the words still loud in my head the following morning. What happened to the young lady I can’t tell you. But I somehow doubt that she'll be back.

Letter from Espargal: 49 of 2011

2011-12-31T00:17:00.001Z

Friday: As we set out on a walk this morning, another Garden of Eden morning, I stopped to take a picture in the park with the sunlight slanting down through the trees. The dogs had gone ahead to the gate at the top, where they wait for a biscuit. Jones had paused to put on the washing and feed the cats in Casa Nada. There was hardly a breath of wind; the day required only the lightest of jumpers and I thought, as often before, that Adam and Eve must have first beheld paradise on such a day as this.

Slavic arrived mid-morning to continue his tasks about the garden. Following his wall building exercises, he has been creating a series of stone steps at awkward spots on the property. Next on his list is raising and paving a small walled terrace in front of the house to create additional visitor’s parking. It was Jones’s suggestion, a good one like many (although not necessarily all) of her suggestions. I shouldn’t want her to quote me.

She has been writing thank-you cards to the neighbours who exchanged Christmas gifts with us. On Christmas Day itself we were guests of Marie and Olly, who did us proud. They always decorate their living room to match the occasion. This pleases Jones greatly as it gives her a feel of the Christmas spirit that I fear I fail to inspire at home.

BENAFIM - ACROSS THE VALLEY

We’ve been up to Benafim to recycle the tins and plastic, take morning coffee with Celso and Brigitte at the Coral, nip into the pharmacist to top up on pills, pause at the cash machine to withdraw funds and stop at the grocer for a few odds and ends. We return via the narrow agricultural road through the valley with Russ peering out of one rear window and Prickles through the other. Little is happening there right now, other than a little pruning of vines. It’s too dry and there’s no sign of rain.

A FASHION-CONSCIOUS MAN

A Christmas gift that I awarded myself was a fine body warmer (gilet) that I had admired at the Cortefiel store in Faro a few weeks back – as reported – but was too small for me. Jones persuaded me to wait until after Christmas before securing a larger size from the Guia branch of the shop in order to benefit from the after-Christmas sales. The sales were well underway when we arrived there but sadly the garment wasn’t on them. So I paid the full price. I’m delighted with my purchase nonetheless. The gilet is reversible, brown on one side and blue on the other, with double sets of pockets – just the thing for the fashion-conscious man.

It’s been a sociable week, one way and another, out with our widows, lunching with friends and taking tea with neighbours. (Neighbours and friends overlap, neighbours being the ones who live closer to us.) Social affairs, the arrangement thereof, fall within Jones’s domain, a gender arrangement which would appear to be common among our acquaintance and which suits me very well. Her duties further include washing, cleaning, the kitchen, the garden, watering, cats and strays, phone conversations and one or two other minor tasks. Needless to say, I have my own responsibilities.

What I am sharing with her is an end-of-year cold. This began as a tickle in my right nostril midweek and rapidly and noisily enveloped the rest of me – and then her. Whereas Jones suffers her colds in silence, mine are of the explosive variety, a sort of malady performance-art that rips holes in the toughest tissue.

My wife suspects that my sneezes are, well, unnecessarily demonstrative, and wonders whether I couldn’t contain them a little. The answer is that I couldn’t. That men suffer worse colds than women is well established. A female friend of ours refers to such afflictions endured by her husband as “man-colds”, seemingly infinitely worse than anything she has ever caught. He has my sympathies. Our wives sometimes fail to understand what we men have to bear.

Barbara is off this coming week to spend several days at the newly-acquired London home of her brother, Llewellyn, and his wife, Lucia. I look forward to hearing more and to seeing the pictures in due course.

A break there to check the Friday night Euromillions results. ….. No, not his week. Never mind, there’ll be another draw next Friday and yet another the week after. Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

There is some good news to report. My mobile phone is talking once again to my router. Llewellyn suggested various restorative actions that I could take to renew their relationship, one of which eventually did the trick. It’s lovely when technology works. It’s especially lovely when it works after a period of not working.

The same is true for the car’s air conditioner. The car is booked into Honda again this coming week after the AC crashed yet again. But it was back on yesterday and functioned again today. Fingers crossed.

I have decided that it was probably a mistake to think that I could learn German, especially from a book (although it does have an accompanying cassette). I now have German verbs drifting insistently through my dreams, looking for their companion nouns. German grammar, I regret to say, doesn’t really make much sense – except possibly to the Germans themselves. Barbara has always said that life is too short to learn German (which she took briefly) and now I know why.

To console myself, I’ve ordered two books from Amazon that she will hopefully bring back from London, a relaxing theological tome ( A Layman’s Theology, recommended by Martin Winter) and Mark Forsyth’s Etymologicon, described as a Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language. I heard readings from the book on the BBC and was instantly won over.

There, my page is done.

Happy New Year!

Letter from Espargal: 48 of 2011

2011-12-23T01:16:00.000Z

We are on the cusp of mid-winter (whatever that is; I always wanted to write that we are on the cusp of something or other). Today marks the solstice. You would never know this were you here for we are basking in balmy sunshine at a temperature of C21*. Fellows were idling around in t-shirts at the Apolonia supermarket in Almancil, where we’ve just taken Olive for a basket of shopping and a cuppa. The met office tells us that this has been the 3rd warmest Portuguese autumn on record. Apart from the implications for Iberia’s climatic future, whatever they may be, it’s quite pleasant.

Slavic and I have been exploiting the fine weather by building rock walls. Slavic is Natasha’s partner and a 20-something Ukrainian. He’s a builder by trade, strong, skilful and hard-working. His Portuguese is sufficient for his needs although nothing like as fluent as Natasha’s. He rides with me on the tractor down into the bushveld beyond the village where we load up rocks. I drive the tractor and Slavic loads the rocks. We choose the holeiest, gnarledest ones for the best effect. Espargal is one of the rockiest places on earth. It’s really just a light scattering of earth and vegetation on a mountain of rock.

Slavic’s first job was to build a series of sloping walls on three sides of the solar-panel base, with lots of gaps for succulents. On the fourth side he built rough stone stairs to enable me to get up and take readings. Once we’ve gathered the materials and I’ve explained what I want, I leave him to get on with the job. The results are even better than I’d hoped for and I’ve spent a couple of hours since filling gaps with suitable plants, ones that can cope with dry conditions and little sunlight as they will live in the shade of the panels.

The next task was to line the bank at the bottom of the property with rocks, both for aesthetic reasons (it looks lovely, as you can see) and to support the bank; the narrow path above it was wearing away. I’ve half a dozen more such ventures in mind. This suits Slavic well; his main employer now requires his services only one or two days a week, a reflection of the hard times that Portugal is enduring.

Have you been following the Leveson inquiry in the UK into the behaviour of the tabloid press, I wonder. It presents one with an excellent opportunity to watch some relatively junior people telling unsavoury truths while their big bosses deny all knowledge of them.

For my part, I have finished Lance Price’s excellent tome on the relationships between Downing Street and the UK media. And I’m up to page 10 or thereabouts on German for Dummies.

The title is a misnomer. It’s clear to me already that no dummy would ever learn a language whose adjectives mutate for number, gender and case. It’s hard to understand how the Germans manage to communicate at all, except in English that is, which most of them seem to speak fluently. That’s judging by the number who have been talking in excellent English on radio and TV about the woes of the euro. The euro’s another story, mind you, and not a suitable subject for a letter on the eve of Christmas.

I shall not tarry on Christmas. It is not my favourite time of year, being neither fish nor fowl. (One hardly knows whether to carol or to carouse.) But the topic gives me an opportunity to say thank you to the many considerate people who have sent us Christmas greetings and who haven’t yet had the same from us. I even received a very kind bottle of something (I hope it’s kindly intended - it’s still wrapped) from the lottery syndicate, along with a note saying how nice it would be if we had a win. If only! My fear is that we’ll win the jackpot when I’m 85 and can’t remember my middle name.

For a couple of years now I’ve been part of an emailing group of ex-Marist Brothers, the religious order with which I spent a decade of my life. For the last few weeks we’ve been discussing the epidemic of child abuse that has emerged in recent times. Some of the personal revelations have been deep and touching. Most of us were too innocent for our own good. Not all, mind you; several of our company went to jail for their failings in this regard. I reflect often on that period in my life. It’s as though it was lived by a twin rather than myself.

My smart-phone is giving me grief. (Barbara doubts there’s any such thing as a smart-phone and I can understand why.) It’s refusing to communicate with the router. The only recent change it’s undergone is being mated via blue-tooth with the car’s comms although I had no problems for a couple of days thereafter. I suspect that it will have to go back to the workshop as it did once before. On that occasion, it underwent a major transplant. I’ll wait till the New Year as I’d hate to be without it over the holiday doldrums. It’s still picking up my emails and will link to the internet via the masts albeit much more slowly.

An insect has come to live with us. At least I think it’s an insect – a stick insect of some kind; I’ve never seen the likes. (Last time I wrote about a bug, someone pointed out to me that it was an arachnid and not an insect.) This little fellow – just over an inch in length - has attached himself to a gate post for most of the month.

Barbara cleverly adjusted the camera to take these fine close-up shots. We’ve done our best not to disturb him as we pass through the gate, not that he’s got a great future there.

Raymond is jogging my elbow to indicate that it’s time to go walking. He’s right. Half an hour to sundown. Happy Christmas.

Letter from Espargal: 47 of 2011

2011-12-16T23:13:00.002Z

This week we did something that we haven’t done for some time. We took a bus. In fact, we took three buses, reflecting as we did that this was how the other half lives. We found the experience quite tolerable. The hard bit was the waiting – and even that we bore well enough.

The occasion was the return of our car to Honda for further exploration of the problems afflicting the air-conditioning. I had the car in last month, when Honda topped up the gas in the AC and said all was well. Well, it wasn’t, not for more than a day or two. This time they managed to get the unit working again but without discerning what was upsetting it. Fortunately, it’s nigh on mid-winter and we don’t need to be air conditioned, except occasionally in the bedroom at night to discourage the odd remaining mosquito – I’m not joking. Mid December and the little buggers are still about.

So, having dropped the car with Honda on Thursday morning, we were delivered to the Algarve Forum by the courtesy bus to wile away the hours. In one of the smarter stores I found a waistcoat that I really liked but I couldn’t make it fit, even after trying it a second time and then fetching Jones to for confirmation. No, she said, it’s definitely too small. The store said their sister branch half an hour away had a larger size in stock; Jones says we should wait until New Year when it’s bound to be on sale. Stay tuned!

With time to kill we had to choose between Mission Impossible at the cinema upstairs and Faro Beach. Jones opted for the Beach and that was fine by me. Thus we found ourselves waiting at the bus-stop with a bunch of students and cleaning ladies. Our bus took an age. From the terminus we made our way across the bridge to the “Electrico” (tram) café, a favourite, where we dined al fresco in the gentle sunshine on red wine and ham & cheese sandwiches.

Across the road were parked two of the hundreds of motoring homes that migrate south from northern Europe to over-winter in Portugal. We wondered what it would be like to live in one. To be honest, it didn’t really appeal. They’re nothing like the vast American RVs.

Then back by bus to the Algarve Forum, whence yet another bus took us on to Honda. There, Leila, the charming young receptionist, explained the position with the AC, and asked me to keep an eye on it. I will.

Her colleague, Paulo, then assisted me to reconnect my mobile phone to the “hands off” telecoms equipment in the car. The female Honda computer, with her cut-glass English, struggled to understand his accent. (She barely understands mine.) None the less, he got the job done – and very timely too. En route home we had a call from Olive to say that the trenchant complaint letter that I’d written on her behalf to M&G Securities had brought an immediate and pleasing response.

Speaking of Olive, we took her along on Wednesday to Guia, a superstore complex 30 minutes away where the UK grocery chain, Iceland, has recently opened a shop to great fanfare. It specialises in the treats - most of them in English packages with their sterling prices still visible - that British expats don’t find in Portuguese supermarkets. To our surprise, virtually all the staff appeared to be English. We returned with a goodly supply of English beers and mince pies. Portugal doesn’t lack for outlets and shopping centres of every complexion. What it lacks is citizens earning money to spend in them.

On Tuesday evening we went along to see “The Debt”, a film that had been well-written up. I usually take my lead from the “Rotten Tomatoes” site that gives one a taste of multiple reviews. The film concerns three Mossad operatives involved in a mission to kidnap a Nazi war criminal. I don’t think that for those who haven’t seen it, I’m giving anything away. What I would say is that it’s worth doing more research than we did. This is not one for the squeamish. Jones, who likes happy endings, was in two minds at the interval about whether to stay. She did – to see how it turned out, she said. It certainly wasn’t predictable.

Let me talk for a moment about our weather, if only because we’ve taken so many spectacular pictures. Most mornings we’ve woken either to mist or cloud seeping through the valley. It’s almost been like looking down on a vast lake, lapping at the feet of the houses in lower Espargal and submerging the nether fringes of Benafim on the far side of the valley.

With the mist has come heavy dew that’s rendered morning walks hazardous, especially behind those two tugging pups of ours. Several times we’ve waited until midday, when the hill has dried somewhat, before setting out on our daily walk. Even so, the hounds insist on being entertained in the park for at least half an hour morning and evening.

After much endeavour we managed to register ourselves with an online UK grocery chain with a view to sending a welcome pack to (Barbara’s brother) Llewellyn and Lucia, who spent Friday moving into their new London home. The problem was our foreign address and phone numbers, which took some getting around. We were pleased to hear that the pack arrived safely and promptly.

JONESY IN THE PARK

Also just moved is Chris Jones (& co), Barbara’s nephew, who has taken possession of a palatial house in Squamish, north of Vancouver, or so it seems from the pictures. We spent a couple of hours in the town three years ago during a visit to the nearby Whistler resort. Nice part of the world.

I have decided to learn a little German, with the emphasis on “little”. For years we’ve been visiting our family in Germany without being able to say more than hello and "another beer please". For this I blame our relatives, who coddle us. In fact we just trail along in their wake. Uncomfortable with the depths of my ignorance, I have invested in German for Dummies. Wiedersehen!

Letter from Espargal: 46 of 2011

2011-12-09T16:18:00.000Z

This week nothing has happened. That’s to say, nothing has happened that springs to mind. So let me justify my existence with a few pictures while I think. Here’s one of Maggie, a neighbour’s unfortunate bitch - “unfortunate” because, like her son on the other side of the property, she spends her life at the end of a chain, with a barrel for a home. We tell ourselves that Maggie knows nothing else and, expecting nothing better, may be content. But we’re not really convinced.

And here’s her fat little pup, whom Jones has christened Barry (because he lives in a barrel). He’s doing okay, probably because he has all Maggie’s teats to himself, along with a corner of the barrel and a bit of the old car-seat cover and sack that Jones has thrust into it. The owner is actually a pleasant old fellow. He presented Jonesy with a small bottle of baggy the other day, as she passed by. It’s just that, like much of the older Portuguese generation, he doesn’t share our views on keeping dogs.

We’ve been thinking lots about where to go next spring when our house-sitters will be down again. I’ve spent long hours on the computer researching possibilities. We quite fancied a voyage up the Norwegian coast (with Hurtigruten) on a ferry serving coastal communities until we realised that the reasonable-looking fares doubled when passengers opted for full board.

Twelve meals - six lunches and suppers - cost an additional $1500 dollars per person, would you believe it? – and that’s before drinks. Reviews from previous ferry passengers warned readers to be ready for to pay £8 for a glass of wine. I should be driven to sobriety!

Equally attractive (and nearly as pricey) was a canal and lake cruise across Sweden (see the “Gota Canal”). We were tempted until we noted that none of the cabins on the old boats plying the route offered toilets en suite. Nipping along the deck to a communal loo at 02.00 in freezing temps somehow doesn’t appeal, especially as neither of us is wild about pyjamas.

Last weekend we visited the annual Loule Christmas fair, an event we always enjoy even though it’s always much the same. We like to arrive early to beat the crowds to the kiosks serving supper. Ham and cheese sandwiches, a bottle of wine and the usual (bread, olive and cheese) hors d’oeuvres served us well.

When we came to pay, the delightful and disorganised young lady who was serving us hauled out her pencil to tot up the bill; she made it to be just over 11 euros. Given that the wine alone cost 10 euros, I raised my doubts. She tried again; was it 19 euros she wondered. (No, it was closer to 22, which we happily paid.) A child of the electronic age, she didn’t have her calculator and had never been drilled in mental arithmetic and “times tables”. (I can still do them up to 13 x 13 – well, most days.)

LOTS OF JONES SKIES

Monday I nipped into the Land Registry in Loule to fetch our updated title-deeds. The clerk declined to give them to me, saying she needed the receipt which, it emerged from a phone call, was with our lawyer. The latter emailed it to me overnight, assuring me that I didn’t require the original (as the clerk had insisted).

Tuesday we tried again. The clerk at first rejected my print-out but - when I relayed the lawyer’s advice - went to consult her boss and finally delivered the goods with good grace. In the new Portugal, one doesn’t actually get the title-deeds. One gets a code to key into the Registry website, from which one can then print out document. This code, the lawyer’s secretary informed me, holds for a year. Thereafter, one has to pay €15 for another year’s access. The bottom line is that the Portuguese government is desperate to raise cash by any means it can.

DRIES'S PIGEONS CIRCLING

One of those means is imposing tolls on various formerly free-to-use highways including East-West Algarve highway linking us to Spain, the A22. After months of controversy and confusion, the government announced that the tolls would come into force this week. Because the A22 was constructed without toll booths at on- and off-ramps, cameras have been erected on overhead gantries to record the passage of vehicles.

ZEFERINO'S CAT - ANOTHER JONES ASSIST

Motorists using the new toll-roads are required to register their vehicles with the central toll authorities and to install a small transponder. We got ours months ago, fortunately, because last minute demand has ensured that these devices are currently unobtainable. The implications for those lacking transponders, as well as for foreign-registered cars and the hire-car industry, have yet to be spelled out.

Wednesday afternoon, Natasha joined me in the park, clearing up and burning off the prunings. From there we set out for Vitor’s workshop in the hope of finding Natasha’s car serviceable. The good news was that the faulty starter motor had been replaced with a reconditioned unit. The bad news was that Vitor couldn’t trace the fault that was rendering the car so lackadaisical. Computer tests showed that there was an electronic problem, he said, but he lacked the equipment to be more specific.

He suggested that Natasha take the car into Nissan but advised her to get a quote before requesting any work. For if the problem lay with the central computer, as it might, she was likely to face a 4-figure bill.

If my train of thought appears a little jumpy, it may be because of the enormous bowl of pumpkin soup that Jones gave me for lunch; as a result I keep on having to hop up from my desk. So full was the bowl that she had to tiptoe through from the kitchen with the soup lapping at her fingers on the brim. I’m not complaining; it was excellent soup. The pumpkins/squashes – a whole box of them – came from an ever-generous farmer neighbour.

THE BAKER ARRIVES

Thursday was a public holiday, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. (I find this one of the church’s more puzzling dogmas but that’s another story.) It is likely to be scrapped next year, the holiday that is, as one of the sacrifices that the government is demanding to boost productivity. The church in Portugal has acknowledged that this is an instance when the affairs of mammon might legitimately take precedence over those of heaven.

LIFE IS GOOD

Friday: We’re just back from banking and widow duty. On the way home we got pulled over by traffic police doing routine checks. They were happy with our documents and after a cursory inspection, sent us on our way. What we didn’t mention and what they didn’t notice through the darkened rear door windows, were three dogs stretched out on the back seat. This was lucky as there are painful fines for carrying unsecured objects – including one’s pets – in the back of the car.

Letter from Espargal: 45 of 2011

2011-12-02T14:09:00.002Z

The week has run away with us. When I looked up, it was December, which has come as a bit of a shock. It means that 2012 is just around the corner and I’m still coming to terms to 2011.

Mondays brings English class and widows. Here you see me seated among my pupils. You will understand why it’s called the Senior University although, in truth, it’s rather more senior than university. That’s by the by. The atmosphere is very pleasant, I learn a lot of Portuguese and there are no exams. What more could you ask?

On Tuesday we went to the ballet. This is not something that we do very often – about once a decade I guess. But since the Russian Ballet was coming to Faro, and with notions of the Bolshoi and Nureyev, I thought we ought to go, especially as the ballet concerned was Swan Lake and the music is heavenly. Tickets were a reasonable €25 euros each, although this is considered expensive in these parts. I managed to secure two from the half dozen that were left.

As it happened, Jonesy had taken a black dress into the Russian dressmaker in Loule to be shortened. Her plan was to wear it with some black tights that she recently acquired in Berlin and tall boots. It was, she understood, the latest fashion. Very smart she looked too; but so different to the Jones I knew that I started laughing. My amusement so unnerved her that she put on a long black coat that entirely hid her fashionable attire.

As to the ballet (not the Bolshoi), it was – like the curate’s egg – good in parts; in fact, very good in parts. The lead ballerina was excellent but her leading man (?) was a bit in awe of his own (admittedly spectacular) physique and jealous of the thunderous applause that went to the lady. This spurred him on to leap ever higher – to little avail. The corps de ballet could probably have done with a bit more practice. We reflected that it’s a long way from adequate to excellent.

ANOTHER JONES SKY

On a Wednesday, Natasha comes to clean. For months she has struggled with a severely underperforming car. Vitor, the local mechanic, thought he could do something about it; we had arranged for Natasha to leave the car at his workshop, where I would fetch her. That was the plan.

No sooner had I arrived at the workshop than Natasha called from Loule to say that the car wouldn’t start. While she waited for a tow-truck, I returned home to give Natalia (another Russian) her usual Wednesday morning English lesson. Then I went to fetch Natasha from the workshop. There, Vitor reported that the starter motor needed repairing or replacing and that (since Thursday was a public holiday) the car wouldn’t be ready until Friday at the earliest.

NOT THE UPRIGHT ONE - THE OTHER ONE
Wednesday evening we took ourselves to supper at the local, where our group included commuting Irish neighbours who are having an upper floor added to their house in the village. The house is located at the top of a steep property. The builders had been unloading materials from a tractor parked on the driveway when the vehicle suddenly took off.

One of the workers tried – and failed – to stop it. He was lucky not to injure himself. Fortunately, instead of heading down the drive (to career across the road and into the neighbours’ kitchen) the tractor had veered off, crashed through a fence and come to rest against a tree where, at the time of writing, it awaits rescue. It will have to be lifted out – no easy task, as the angle is acute and the ground is soft.

Vitor was telling me that another neighbour had an even luckier escape when his tractor slid off a steep, muddy track and hurtled down a rocky bank into the field below.

Thursday was May’s 81st birthday, an occasion that we celebrated at the Calypso in Loule with May, David and Dagmar.

May, a former neighbour in Cruz da Assumada, lost her husband just over a year ago. We see her each week for a meal and Barbara often takes her shopping while I’m giving my English lesson. As it happens, she had fallen over her cat a day or two earlier and was feeling very tender; but not so tender that she didn’t enjoy her lunch.

We noted with pleasure that the restaurant was doing good business and that most of the customers were Portuguese. Restaurants have been hard hit by the financial crisis and are going to be harder hit in the New Year when the VAT on meals rises from 6% to 23%. The VAT on electricity has already been raised by the same amount and it hurts. My only consolation is that the EDP is now paying me more for the electricity it buys from me than vice versa.

The photos that I took last week of the cobbler and his wife, I delivered this week to their little shop, along with a leather cushion that Mary had chewed a hole in. The cobbler seemed pleased. He’s a man of few words though and, after telling me that the cushion would be ready the following day, returned to the boot he was repairing on his last.

THE LUCKY ONES

Jones has been much concerned with the bitch of a Portuguese neighbour who (the bitch) lives in a barrel, attached to a long chain. She has recently had pups, one of which remains with her. (We have not asked what happened to the rest.) As a gesture to her state, her owner thrust some old jeans into the barrel as bedding. But these get dragged out again by the chain.

Barbara, who passes the bitch each evening (en route to feed a stray at the bottom of the village) has long been tossing her a few biscuits and has won her confidence. After seeing the poor dog shivering one cold evening, she took an old sack down to try to provide the animal with better bedding. It’s an awkward situation as one doesn’t want to upset the neighbour.

For most of the week we have been bathed in gentle sunshine, with barely a zephyr to rustle the branches. Such times as we have not been walking the dogs, clearing the undergrowth, cutting back the trees or burning off the prunings, we have spent thinking about the possibilities for next May when our regular house-sitters will be coming down once again.

Jones has a wodge of travel cuttings whose suggestions we’ve been exploring. It’s strange that no matter what key words one types into the search engines, the same travel sites come up time and again.(Jones is a great taker of sky pictures - just in case you were wondering.)

POST SCRIPT: The pictures tell their own story

And the tractor still drove away, although not very far as the front right tyre
was a write-off.

Letter from Espargal: 44 of 2011

2011-11-25T13:15:00.007Z

We’ve been running around and spending money. A little went on repairing minor damage to a prized Ecco boot, courtesy of a pup who nicked the boot from a wicker box where I had foolishly left it to dry. (Anything not locked away is fair game.) I took the boot into the little cobbler who crouches over his last in the corner of a Dickensian workshop in Loule.

“Come back in half an hour,” said he, after assessing the damage. This I did, to find the boot neatly repaired. “That’ll be a euro,” the cobbler told his wife, who minds the small counter opposite the door and the cashbox stashed beneath it. I gladly paid the euro and threw in a grateful 50 cent tip.

The next day I went back with the camera to ask the couple if I could take a few pictures, promising to print some out for them. As you see, they were agreeable. She informed me that her husband had occupied the same perch for over 50 years, with her at his side to attend to the cash and customers.

On the other side of town a similarly bent old cobbler occupies an equally dark little room, with a hand-written “shoe repairs” sign slung from the balcony. This old fellow declined to allow me to take a picture last time I used his services, saying the place was too untidy. Sadly, I fear that cobblers are a dying breed, relegated along with milliners, mercers, tinkers and the like, to history and the pages of dusty dictionaries.

SOLANUM & SHED

A lot more money – returning to my theme - went on bureaucracy. We met Felismina, the lawyer’s assistant, in town one day to straighten out anomalies in our property deeds (which she’d been checking at our request). Felismina was on first-name terms with the officials involved, which helped enormously. To sort things out, the lady in the Land Registry Office explained to us, we’d have to get a certified document from the notary’s office and another from the Financas – and then to bring both of these back to the Registry where the title-deeds would be altered accordingly.

So we trekked around from one office to another, whipping out the plastic each time to pay the accompanying charge, before returning to the Registry. The corrected title deeds should be available next week. It’s not that we were illegal before; it was just that several elements that should have matched up, didn’t – discrepancies likely to cause a deal of grief further down the line.

Such anomalies arise from the time when property records were drawn up and kept quite separately in four uncommunicative departments. Notaries oversaw sales, the Land Registry recorded them, the council authorised projects and the Financas taxed them. In this internet age, everything has to gel when you come to sell.

OLIVES

What really struck us was how few people there were in the usually busy offices. Instead of joining the inevitable queues, we were able to go straight to the counter each time. It’s “the crisis”, Felismina remarked; "nobody is buying property and everybody is feeling the pinch".

ALMONDS

That pinch led to countrywide strikes on Thursday that pretty well brought Portugal to a halt – those bits of the nation involved in education, health and transport. But there were happy exceptions. I met Natasha at the workshop of Vitor, the mechanic, who took a look at her lethargic car and thought that he could energise it. While we were there, a postman delivering mail let us know that he for one had no interest in striking.

JONES SKY

Neither did the two Portugal Telecom technicians who arrived at our gate mid-afternoon to try to sort out my internet access problems for once and for all. They spent an hour testing the line (it was fine) replacing anything replaceable and explaining to me how to check whether the fault might lie with the router.

They are also renewing the cable from the house to the phone post in an attempt to eliminate all possible causes of the problem (intermittent internet access). They really pulled out the stops and I readily forgave them their failure to come the previous Friday afternoon, when they were due.

Another outlay – back with spending money – was on a new pair of spectacles from the optician, Mr Rahmani, a German Iranian (married to a Portuguese) who does most of his business with the Algarve’s large German expat community. We’ve been using his services for a number of years and have found him most helpful and attentive. I’m certainly pleased with the new specs. (Jones says there's nothing wrong with her old ones.)

ANOTHER JONES SKY

I note with sadness that the South African parliament is busy passing legislation that will serve to muzzle the news media, which have been exposing so much embarrassing official corruption. A small reminder of such dishonesty arrived with a bulky letter, running to several pages, that Barbara received from a friend in Johannesburg. The South African post office employee who neatly slit one end open with a razor blade must have been disappointed to find nothing of value inside. I guess we should be grateful that the letter arrived at all. Several friends and family members have lost items from luggage undergoing “security checks” at Johburg airport.

SPOT THE CAT

Friday morning – a lovely, sunny one. We are back from a 90 minute trek through the bush, being tugged this way and that by our powerful pups. We noted lots of wild boar prints; we never see the beasts themselves. (We had an encounter with a herd of them once in a German forest and that was enough.) We did see a ginger cat that had taken refuge in a tree and declined to come down and play with the dogs.

The medronho trees (whose berries are collected to make a popular liquor) are in full colour. Jones tried to pose with the pups in front of one but they wouldn’t sit still. She has gone off to deliver a thank-you note to Pauline for a delicious cake. Time for me to upload this to the blogsite and comb through our pictures.

Letter from Espargal: 43 of 2011

2011-11-19T14:21:00.005Z

We planted our bean seeds on Friday afternoon which was fortunate because it rained - as forecast - on Friday night, 35mm of it. Actually, it didn’t just rain, it snapped and crackled and popped all around us and the downpour that followed the initial thunderclap drummed against the glass doors.

After a lightning flash, I count the seconds to the thunder to gauge how close the lightning is and whether I should pull the plugs on sensitive equipment. Last night, the lightning and the thunder were simultaneous – very close and very loud – so after disconnecting the TV and computer, I settled down with the pups in front of the fire to reassure them that it was just a storm.

Jones had already gone to bed, not that she was doing much sleeping. Also not doing much sleeping were Dearheart, the cat, and Ono, the dog, both curled up in the crook of her legs. Talk about three in a bed. Normally Ono won’t let Dearheart on to the bed while he’s there and he certainly wasn’t very happy about her presence. But for once he was more concerned with just hunkering down.

Happily, the storm waited until after the concert we’d attended in Faro and after the supper we enjoyed up at the Coral in Benafim. (The Coral is now officially the France-Portugal but since that’s a mouthful I’ll stick to the old name.) The concert was really just an hour of chamber music presented at the Faro Museum by a quintet from the Algarve Orchestra.

For reasons best known to themselves, the organisers feel compelled always to feature one modern (i.e. tuneless, atonal & discordant) work at such events. Last night it was a “Wind Quintet” by Filipe de Sousa who, fortunately for humanity, died in 2006. Would that it had been sooner!

Anyhow, we survived it. And supper at the Coral, really just tapas, toasted sandwiches and a bottle of wine, was delicious as it always is. (Serious meals await Brigitte’s return from France.) The telly behind the bar showed two soaked football teams kicking a sodden ball on a flooded field in the pouring rain in Lisbon while a huddle of wet fans looked miserably on. Players were sliding around in showers of spray. It was more akin to waterpolo than soccer.

As I was saying, we got our beans planted just in time. That meant my spending the morning on the tractor preparing the ground, which was damp but not muddy. Although the beans occupy just a few square metres, I cleaned up our fields at the same time and Leonhilda’s adjoining property while I was at it. If my furrows are not the straightest in Espargal, I draw your attention to the slope and the trees that dot it. The rain of the last few weeks has turned the countryside green and the new crop of weeds is already ankle-high.

Nightfall now arrives before 18.00. The evenings are long and we’re grateful for good TV to lighten them. Inevitably the best TV is scheduled for 21.00, after the gameshows, quizzes and other corn. We often watch one programme, record a second and, if necessary, discover when a third will be repeated.

I sat up one night to watch – utterly fascinated - a documentary on the construction at a factory in Wales of the wings for the Airbus A380 superjumbo. The scale and complexity of the operation is simply dizzying. On completion, the great wings are floated down a river, shipped across the sea to France, transported by road to Toulouse and there mated to other sections of the aircraft flown in from across Europe.

On the news front it’s hard to get away from speculation on the future of the euro and dismal economic prospects for most of the nations that use it. The hard-pressed Portuguese government continues to squeeze its citizens with new taxes and cutbacks as it struggles to balance its books. The unions, unsurprisingly, are up in arms and have called a national strike for next Thursday. Poor commuters; they’re the ones that really suffer. Even around here folks are feeling the pressure. Two of our Portuguese acquaintances are among the thousands reported to be seeking a livelihood overseas.

We joined friends one evening to see “The Ides of March”, a film that we thoroughly enjoyed in spite of (“because of”, says Jones) a very cynical (many would say realistic) outlook on the mores of politicians. I really liked the script as well as the plot although some would say that the language left much to be desired. (It fascinates us that locals hardly blink at the use of the f-word in the English dialogue although the Portuguese subtitles always resort to a euphemism.) I gave the movie four stars (out of five); Jones thought three was closer to the mark. It wasn’t worth arguing over the difference.

CLEANING UP THE MESS

We got home to find that the pups had done their best to destroy the place in our absence. They’d discovered and dismantled a large bag of garbage as well as ripping apart a sack of soil and two of Jones’s pot plants, the entire contents which lay distributed across the cobbles. The pups were as pleased as Punch with their handiwork. They’ve had Jones close to tears more than once.

It’s hard to know what to do about it (other than making sure that garbage is safely locked away). Mary now scoffs at the fence we erected around the puppy enclosure. I need to raise much of it to render it effective once again. When the dogs are with us they’re fine; trouble comes when they’re bored. Here they are perched on a boulder at the bottom of the garden. One of my better pictures!

Letter from Espargal: 42 of 2011

2011-11-11T19:42:00.006Z

We have been stumbling around in the murk ever since Robbie’s departure last Tuesday morning. The sun left with him as it had arrived with him. A misty shroud enveloped the summit of Espargal hill and has camped there since, occasionally thinning to reveal glimpses of a dull, damp world beyond. The dogs have been confined to minor excursions in the park, two acres of fenced fast-greening hillside beyond the garden.

Robbie is Barbara’s younger brother, recently retired from the cement industry in South Africa and promptly reemployed to continue working part-time in the same. He flew to Portugal to join us for a long weekend following a business meeting in Zurich. You’ll forgive me if I bung up lots of pictures of his visit, as they’re more interesting than pictures of the mist.

We met him at Faro airport – still recovering from its battering by freak winds last month – and, after refreshments at the beach – took him to the Mediterranean Garden Society plant sale on the fringes of Faro, one of those events featuring almost as many 4x4s and received English accents as plants. The German community was also well represented. Robbie could hardly believe he was in Portugal. While the dogs added to the canine graffiti, I invested in a range of home-made jams and chutneys and Jonesy investigated the plants.

I dropped a couple of euros in the box of the man hopefully flogging poppy badges. Today, as it happens, is the 11th of the 11th of the 11th, a coincidence that none is us is likely to see repeated. BBC radio saw fit to interview a “numerologist”, who spoke of the raised energies that would result from such a rare sequence (before I muted the radio, prickling at such nonsense).

The following day, at Jones’s suggestion, we took a leisurely drive to the town of Tavira, wandering along the Gilao river bank,

peering into the fishermen’s boats, admiring the Roman bridge and making our way to the old town, where the St Augustine’s Convent has been converted into a handsome pousada.

The receptionist was pleased to allow us to wander around the courtyard. There was little sign of any guests although, early on a November Sunday afternoon, that came as little surprise.

A great wailing of sirens heralded the arrival of a swarm of racing cyclists. We stood aside as they bounced along the cobbles in the wake of the police motorcycles.

From Tavira we continued to Villa Real de Santo António, situated on the Guadiana river that separates Portugal from Spain. I opted to snooze in the car while Barbara took her brother to see the sights.

They returned with a small processed-cork purse that Barbara intended as a gift for Robbie’s wife, Carol. Sadly, on our return home, this was deposited on the stairs where Mary discovered it. In fairness to Mary, she had made only a single small gash in the purse before Robbie prized it from her jaws. One would hardly have noticed the damage; I didn’t think that Carol would mind. If anything, I suggested, it would add to the purse’s mystique. But Jones rejected my suggestion with a snort. (Or it might have been a cough. She’s still battling the cold I shared with her.) Sorry Carol.

On the Monday I dropped Robbie and Jonesy at Quinta do Lago on the coast for a three hour hike (there and back) to Faro Beach while I took myself to Loule for my English class. They made their way there along a causeway that runs between the Ria Formosa estuary and the golf course – returning along the beach. (A local newspaper reports that the lagoon cum estuary was shaped by the 1755 earthquake/tsunami that devastated southern Portugal.)

It’s a favourite walk of Barbara’s but one we’ve found impossible to manage with all the dogs. Indeed, with the pups now weighing in at some 20kg each, we can no longer fit all six into the car.

Between walks and outings Robbie would seat himself at the dining room table to catch up on his many emails. He became aware as I fiddled with the fire that the flange in our new chimney stack refuses to stay in a horizontal position for more than a few minutes. I have to wedge it shut with a strip of firewood.

Robbie – an accomplished do-it-yourselfer – has since suggested possible ways of securing the flange. When the rain goes away I shall take up his suggestions. In the meanwhile, I have found a pair of grippers that do an admirable job. What a boon the salamandra remains! We keep a small fire glowing in it through-out the afternoon and evening, as much for cheer as for warmth. Our overnight temperatures are barely into single figures.

Marie alerted us one day to a flock of huge birds that were riding a thermal above the village. We peered up in fascination as they whirled effortless above us. Another neighbour, Nicoline, informs me that they were Common Buzzards. Through the binoculars we could see the black and buff detail of their outstretched wings and their distinct primary feathers. Jones counted 40 of them before they floated off across the valley into the distance.

I guess you’ve come to terms with the fact that Rick Perry won’t be the next US president! I tried to feel sorry for him and failed. What a blooper!

Letter from Espargal: 41 of 2011

2011-11-04T15:15:00.002Z

A dull, damp week is drawing to a showery end. The reference is to the weather rather than our spirits, although it’s a real struggle to keep the house clean and the animals happy in the wet. The tiled floor inevitably bears the muddy imprint of the dogs’ paws. I can’t tell you how many times Jones has hauled out the mop to restore the floor’s pristine gleam.

Jones is by nature a clean and tidy person who likes to live in spotless surroundings. She habitually hangs up her clothes and puts her things away (reminding me of the desirability of doing the same). And while she’s a total softy when it comes to animals, she struggles to compromise with the gritty realities of keeping nine of them, especially when they rush indoors after mining the muddy hillside for moles. We dry the dogs off and clean their paws at the front door but they’d rather sneak in the back door, which they nose open if it’s not properly closed.

Not that we mind the rain. It’s a relief to allow the garden to water itself for a change, even if the solar panels get a day off from earning our keep. In-between showers the panels have been working hard. The EDP emailed me with news that three days of October sunshine had brought us the sum of €24.70, by virtue of the energy we had injected into the national grid. That was pleasing news indeed. Generating renewable energy gives one the satisfaction of profiting from a noble cause – a rare example of having one’s cake and eating it.

SORRY - PICS SHORT THIS WEEK

Also welcome was the arrival of a pair of Ecco boots that I had ordered online. They’re identical to a pair I found at an Ecco shop in Copenhagen earlier this year that proved the perfect fit. I have worn them daily since. While in Germany last month I looked for another – to put away for future use – and although I encountered similar lines I couldn’t find the exact thing. Cathy eventually came across them online (where I had searched at length) and tipped me off. It’s a matter of great regret to me that Ecco have closed their factory in Portugal and moved manufacture to the Far East – the story of our times.

What I haven’t got sorted out yet is my wifi connection to the internet, in spite of a visit by a Portugal Telecom technician and numerous calls to the helpline. The connection remains unstable, cutting off Skype calls and banking operations with equal indifference. Very frustrating!

Portugal – for all its financial woes – is relatively high-tech. Most of our banking statements and invoices these days arrive by email as pdf files. City dwellers get high-speed cable connections, generally as part of a satellite TV and telephone package. While broadband is commonly available in country areas as well, it depends on the quality of the landlines, which are far more finicky.

The alternative is to purchase a connect pen that links to the mobile phone masts. I keep a couple for emergencies and for travel. But they are a more expensive option and the connection speed varies hugely.

One of my internet tasks this week has been to apply for temporary exemption from the road tolls that are about to be introduced on the east-west Algarve highway, this amid much public clamour from road users who want to continue travelling free. This road, providing a high-speed connection to Spain, is one of several that the government says it can no longer afford to maintain.

Henceforth, cameras mounted on gantries will note motorists’ registration plates and charge them accordingly. (This raises all kinds of questions about foreign cars that I can’t answer.) Local residents will benefit from a temporary discount – assuming that they’ve registered and submitted an application.

JONES HIDING HER FACE IN EMBARRASSMENT AT A STORY I WAS TELLING

I regret that I have passed on my chest cold to my wife, who insists to neighbours amid her coughs and splutters that she’s fine. We shall do our best not to share our bugs with her brother, Robbie, who is flying in to see us tomorrow from Switzerland, where he’s making a business trip. At least the weather for his visit looks ideal, before the next depression arrives in a few days’ time.

Wednesday evening saw a gathering of the locals at the Hamburgo in Benafim for the celebration of Liz Brown’s 70th birthday. (The Hamburgo is so-called because the proprietors used to live in Hamburg, not because they offer the mincemeat pattie that derives its name from the same.) While you can get a snack or even a light meal at several venues in Benafim, the Hamburgo is the village’s only real restaurant – and an excellent one too. It’s a family affair. Manuel serves; his wife, Graça, cooks. She did us proud with roasted chicken and pork.

Thursday I took the car into Honda to get the air-conditioning attended to. It gave up the ghost last week, reminding us one hot afternoon just how much we had come to take it for granted. (In summer you can tell what cars lack AC in the Algarve because their drivers have their left arm hanging out the open window.) Fortunately, the car is still under its 5-year guarantee. Unfortunately, the air conditioner was out of gas and recharging it was not.

Why, I wondered to the receptionist, had the unit played up after just a couple of years when my previous Honda’s air conditioning had worked fine for 10. She shrugged. It was just one of those things. “Seventy six euros please! Oh, and that includes a new light bulb for an interior light – also not under guarantee.” I’d have changed the latter myself if I’d only known how to get at it. Honda believe in invisible screws and catches.

Friday afternoon: We’re just back from a coffee, baggy and toast snack at the Coral. We managed to give the dogs a leg-lifter between the showers. These days, Russ insists on joining the two usual suspects in the car. The silver tractor is a Swiss-Italian Hurlimann (pronounced: oorlimun). If we win the Euromillions this evening, I shall think about it, although in truth it’s a bit big and I prefer the American McCormick that’s poking out just in front of it.

Letter from Espargal: 40 of 2011

2011-10-28T15:44:00.001+01:00

I write on a fine Friday morning. Through the glass doors of the study, beneath a mild blue autumn sky, the wind is playing in the tree tops. Jones is doing her thing outside (sweeping up the olive pips on the cobbles, she reveals later). I have allowed myself 30 mid-morning minutes on the bed in submission to a cold that I presumably picked up on the flights home from Berlin, this in spite of much careful hand-washing en route.

Life is back to normal – or should that be abnormal? Our house sitters, Ian and Anne, have departed. They enjoyed several balmy days on the west coast before returning here last Sunday. We had warned them of impending bad weather although as we sat down to supper there was no sign of the expected high winds and heavy showers. A doubting Jones, having left the garden unwatered, questioned the accuracy of the forecast.

Her doubts were soon blown away. The storm broke about midnight and rattled around our ears until dawn. There was a welcome 40mms of rain in the gauge in the morning, the first real rains of the season.

IAN'S PICTURES

On Mondays we take May to lunch and I have English lessons. It was at the restaurant that I caught a snatch of a TV report about storm damage to Faro airport – and texted a warning to Ian and Anne, who were flying out that afternoon. But I had no idea just how bad it was until I received urgent inquiries from family in Germany and South Africa.

Ian later emailed me pictures he had taken, showing the gaping holes in the roof of the terminal. Exceptionally high winds – some reports spoke of a tornado – struck around 5am and wrought havoc. Several people inside the terminal were injured by falling debris. The roof at the front of the terminal buckled as well. Anne said that when they arrived that afternoon, the place was chaotic. They were lucky to get away, albeit with some delay.

To add to the misery, electricity supplies to much of the terminal were cut and all the usual shops and snack-bars were shut. For the next two days television reports showed people being bussed around while travellers complained of the chaos, lack of information and absence of facilities. It was a good time not to be going anywhere.
The damage will take months to repair – luckily, at the end of the tourist season.

Wednesday brought another storm and another dump of rain. TV news showed widespread damage as streets were turned into rivers and buildings were flooded. Here in Espargal, I’m relieved to say, apart from the dogs’ muddy footprints on the floor and a scattering of stones that were washed down the road, no harm appears to have been done.

Although the evening temperatures are barely into single figures we have felt ourselves entitled in the circumstances to light the first fires of the season. Our new salamandra has proved an excellent purchase, nursing a few glowing logs for hours and emanating a sense of cosy contentment.

What’s more, after several fires, the glass door remains almost as clean as it was on delivery, much to Jones’s pleasure. She couldn’t abide the little circles that I would clean in the three glass panes of the previous stove (in order to see the flames) and hated the messy business of cleaning them properly.

She and I have spent much of the rest of the week bringing in almonds. We must have 20 almond trees on the property and I feel guilty that most years we have simply left the crop to rot where it fell. The dogs love almonds and spend happy hours crunching the nuts to get at the tasty seeds within, scattering the shell remnants across the patio in the process.

I put down nets and whacked down the nuts while Jones set to collecting them. We were careful to keep the bitter ones separate from the sweet ones. A bucket of almonds is surprisingly heavy and a sack takes the two of us to shift. Some of the locals painstakingly extract the kernels to sell, breaking the shells with a hammer.

Others either sell the nuts whole or keep them for home consumption. We shall have a sack for our farmer neighbour, who arrived at the gate one evening with a generous supply of tomatoes, beans and marrows.

Natasha let us know that she could not work her usual morning as she had to meet a court official concerning the sole custody she is acquiring of her son, Alex. (Nothing has been heard for several years from his Romanian father.) We gathered from the Natasha that the official had visited her apartment to see the conditions in which Alex lived.

ON ROCKS BELOW THE HOUSE

Natasha had asked me beforehand to complete the monthly wage receipts that I’m meant to give her as proof of her continuing employment. The wage book resides in Natasha’s folder in my upper filing drawer. But when I looked it wasn’t there. And it wasn’t misfiled in another folder. Nor was it anywhere else that I looked, upstairs and down. I just about took the house apart, with a growing sense of disbelief. I checked both with Natasha and the accountant in Benafim that neither had their book in their possession.

CHASING MOLES

In the course of this search, I became aware that both of my “mobile connect keys” had also disappeared, which was equally frustrating as my broadband has been playing up for weeks, in spite of several complaints to my provider (who has now promised to fix it).

It was at the end of two days’ searching that I visited the Bijou Ensuite, where Jones and I had spent two nights in May while the Ferretts were house-sitting in the main house. There, in a kitchen cupboard, I found both the book and the missing connect keys. Like the biblical shepherd who returns to the flock with a missing lamb, I felt a great sense of relief.

JONES CLOUD PIC

I am nearing the end of a book - The God Impulse by a neurosurgeon, Kevin Nelson - on the cerebral nature of near-death experiences and similar mystical phenomena. Very interesting, especially as it helps to explain the (auditory hallucination) “voices” I hear as I am falling asleep. (Really just comments, snatches of distant conversations such as: “For thousands of years, this has sufficed”. Indeed, you may wonder!) It apparently all has to do with a misfunctioning Waking-REM sleep switch in the brain stem.

PS. For some time I have been training the dogs to sit while I place a biscuit in front of each of them – and to wait for my command until they eat it. Ian took the following pictures as I went through the exercise. Little Prickles can’t really see the point of either sitting or waiting. The pictures speak for themselves.

Okay, this is nearly the last dog picture. "You have to sit down too!"

PICS FROM IAN - THANK YOU

Letter from Espargal: 39 of 2011

2011-10-20T00:47:00.007+01:00

We have spent a week in Berlin and Dresden, our first visit to the latter. I tried to write about it in retrospect but it didn't work. So here it comes in diary form.

Tuesday 11 October: Out of bed at 0300 with scratchy eyes. Don’t think we slept a wink. Dress as quietly as we can. The dogs pretend to sleep but follow us anxiously to the front door. Sorry fellows, you can’t come! I've booked parking at Faro airport. Thence to Lisbon, Frankfurt and finally Berlin, where Cathy, Rolf and daughter Erica are waiting at Tegel airport.

My case arrives but there’s no sign of Barbara’s. Rolf leads us and a forlorn Greek girl to the lost luggage dept. Delivery tomorrow morning, says an official. Then home in a taxi to a warm welcome.

The newly converted guest apartment is 5-star – large, pristine, comfortable and fully-equipped – including a large bottle of Johnny Walker Double Black. It’s situated just below the Gohdes apartment on the first floor and the wifi connection from upstairs is lightning fast. What more could one ask?

Wednesday 12: We wake to eerie silence. The apartment overlooks a boat basin. No dogs come whining to go out or nosing under the blankets for a walk. We follow Cathy on a minor shopping expedition, looking for my Ecco boots and fancy socks. We find some books instead. Back for lunch.

Barbara’s case has been delivered. The contents are topsy turvy, with dried figs and other sweetmeats scattered amongst the clothes. No doubt the food aroused the suspicions of the customs men who turned the case upside down looking for drugs.

Rolf makes us his special brand of soup, thick enough to stand a spoon in. It’s delicious. To the cinema to see “The Guard”. Great film! The Berlin light festival has just started. Lights play up and down the facades of public buildings. Crowds throng the streets.

Thursday 13: Up at 7 to catch the train to Dresden. There’s a half hour delay due to sabotage of the line, the work of some new anti-establishment group. An oriental traveller opposite us falls into a deep sleep, blasting us with unrelenting snores for the rest of the journey.

Arrive Dresden and stroll a kilometre up the wide pedestrian mall, past hotels and stores, to the old town. We spy a glass edifice where VW assembles its luxury Phaeton model. Our hotel, the QF, which Cathy has booked online, is on the vast main square, much of which is still closed off for restoration.

Centre stage is the Lady Church, Dresden’s most famous attraction. We check in and find our rooms. They are stunning, the stuff of films. This is the life. After lunch a 90-minute bus tour brings us back to the centre just in time for our booked visit to the Green Vault, treasure house of August the Strong.

Like everything else in old Dresden, it has been painstakingly rebuilt following the razing of the city in 1945. After an hour of treasures our eyes start to glitter too. Unpack and try the hotel wifi. No luck. A receptionist gets me online but it’s a struggle. We find a busy restaurant for supper, then desert it for another when waiters ignore us.

Friday 14: Cathy texts me saying that she has booked 12.00 tour of the Phaeton assembly plant. I’m delighted. First to the Lady Church, which has arisen from the ruins to renewed glory. Can’t believe my eyes. I’ve never seen the likes. The interior is overpowering - part church, part Hollywood set and part Escher impossible building – and yet the most beautiful church I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in a lot. For once visitors are hushed rather than engaged in a photographic scrum.

We walk 30 minutes across town to the VW plant, set among gardens, fish ponds and trees. A 16-storey glass tower houses the cars awaiting delivery. A VW guide leads us to a central raised platform overlooking the assembly area. Her English is good and so is her knowledge of Phaetons.

The main market is China, she tells us. 56 are produced a day, each to order and specified to the owner’s taste. The next biggest market is Germany.

The car is hand-made. Nothing is actually manufactured on site. All the parts are delivered to the plant for assembly, the body shells in trucks, the rest in special VW trams.

Beneath us the whole (polished wood) floor of the factory slowly revolves as spotless white-clad workers assemble each car. No pictures please - respecting the rights of the workers and any owners who may be on the floor! Parts arrive on driverless trolleys that whine downstairs for restocking. Every part is barcoded. The light is soft, there’s no noise to speak of.

Afterwards we’re taken down to examine a Phaeton. The car is understated, deliberately so says the guide. There are 18 adjustments possible to the driver’s seat. I try them all. Even so, I’m more comfortable in the luxury Touareg 4x4 beside it. The driver sits higher and there’s more headroom – not that I’m likely to buy either.

Phaetons start in Germany at €68,000, our guide informs us, although you can spend a million if you want to.

Wander back through park. Along the main avenue numerous mobile kiosks are selling produce. I try several shops for the special hiker’s socks that I like (short-cool, sizes 41-42) with some success.

Then to Augustinum gallery to brush up on our art. As ever, there’s lots we like and lots we don’t. Cathy talks knowledgeably about the artists, impressing a supervisor with her expertise. I hunt for a card of a Georg Kolbe painting that has so impressed me. No luck.

Supper in another restaurant leaves Cathy feeling ill. Hurry back to the hotel where she spends an up and down night. I enjoy a couple of fine whiskies in the bar and whistle at the bill! Silly fellow. Trouble is that Rolf has accustomed to me such luxuries.

Saturday 15: Cathy misses breakfast (a pity as the hotel breakfasts are superb). I get a supply of Imodium from a pharmacist to dose her. She spends a recovering morning in her room while I visit the Transport Museum next door and Jones goes for a walk along the river. The great square is occupied by dozens of groups, being lectured in several languages by guides holding flags or brollies. They couldn’t ask for better weather.

We decide on an afternoon boat trip up the Elbe to the summer palace of the ruling Wettin family at Pillnitz. So do hundreds of other people. The boat, the Dresden, is a 100-metre long paddle steamer built in 1926 and revamped after the war. She’s in fine condition.

The engine room is open for all to view the great pistons driving the twin paddles. The banks are lined with cyclists and walkers. A bride and groom pose for photographs. Out of the wind and in the sun I nod off. We stop twice to let passengers off and on. The return journey, downstream, takes half the time.

We rescue our cases from the hotel. I try to revisit the Lady Church briefly but it’s closed for a concert. So it’s back to the station, pulling our cases behind us, clickety clack across the cobbles. We return to Berlin on a Hungarian train with uncomfortable seats. At least no one is snoring.

Cathy leads us expertly up several flights of stairs to the S-Bahn track that will take us home. The wifi connection at the apartment has slowed to a trickle. Rolf explains that he has a limited highspeed download allocation each month, a limitation with which his daughter is still coming to terms.

Sunday 16: Up early to visit the Pergamon special exhibition. Rolf has obtained the last tickets for 09.30 entry. We have previously visited the adjoining Pergamon museum, home to many of the exhibits from the ruins of the ancient city in Turkey. I have no idea what to expect. Up 5 flights of thigh-punishing stairs to a metal platform in the centre of a circular hall.

A vast canvas forms the perimeter of the hall, with fine detail of the city of Pergamon as it must have been at its height. Dogs bark and birds call. There are thousands of figures in the temples, halls, stadia and steps of the city. It’s impossible to know how the gigantic image has been created or cast on to the walls. The lights fade to reflect the scene by night before an artificial sun rises again. This is magic.

Rolf cooks us a splendid Sunday lunch. Since retiring he has taken over the cooking from Cathy, an arrangement that suits them both. And an excellent cook he makes. Younger daughter, Anita, who is moving from Berlin to Mannheim to further her PhD studies, brings us up to date on her life. Afterwards, I go for a walk with Erica and Rolf. Erica is a born-again Christian. We have a lot to talk about.

Monday 17: Sleep in. So nice. One could get used to living like this. We join Rolf on a lazy foot tour of our favourite places in Berlin. Up past the Dom and the great buildings on Museum Island. Then down along Unter den Linden to the chocolate shop, where we retire upstairs to drink rich chocolate coffee.

Then it’s back home via twists and turns that emerge on the boat basin beneath the Gohdes apartment. After lunch and a snooze, we set out on foot to visit the apartment several kilometres away that Anita shares with two friends. It’s four floors up and there’s no lift. On the other hand, the building is set among wide leafy streets, close to a park and a canal. Location, location!

We sit down to cakes that we chose en route from one of Berlin's many cake shops. Jones has a weakness for Mohnkuchen - poppyseed cake - so do I. Anita shows us around the apartment and introduces us to a flatmate. An hour later we emerge to catch the U-Bahn into west Berlin on a shopping cum light-festival viewing expedition.

We gawk at the Meissner porcelain in the smart Ka De We store – Berlin’s Harrods. Statuettes are priced in four figures. Not today, thank you. Down the road, my clothes shopping, jeans and undies, is successful; so is supper in the busy stube overlooking the Sony Plaza. I really like the 1912 special brew. It comes in small (half-litre) and large (one-litre) measures. This is Germany, the waiter reminds us. The light festival doesn’t amount to much. It doesn’t matter.

Tuesday 18: Shower, pack and prepare to catch the bus to Tegel airport after lunch. Cathy prints off our boarding cards. We try to leave the bathroom and apartment in the same immaculate condition that we have found them. Lucky the people who will follow in our footsteps because there is no finer accommodation in Berlin.

Wednesday 19: We're home. The dogs gave us an hysterical welcome. We gave them an early walk. I needed to be back for the electrician who was due to connect the solar panels to the national grid. No sign of him. Natasha arrived to clean and Natalia for her English lesson. Later emerged that the electrician had called while we were out and completed the connection. I was delighted to watch our home grown electricity flowing down into the village. Anne and Ian have taken themselves off for a few days. They did a grand job of looking after hearth, zoo, garden and home. Thank you.

Letter from Espargal: 38 of 2011

2011-10-07T16:20:00.001+01:00

I reflected at the Vilarinhos “lagar”, as bagaçeira gushed into the 5-litre plastic bottles that we’d brought along, just how easy it is to make liquor and how difficult it is to stop people doing so, whether for moral or fiscal reasons.

Some brief explanations:

Bagaçeira, more often referred to in this house as “baggy”, is a liquor distilled from the pomace (bagaço) that remains after grapes have been pressed to make wine or vinegar. Baggy is also Jones’s drink of choice, preferably with diet coke, a couple of ice-cubes and a generous squeeze of lemon. A “lagar” is a “press” or, more generally, a place where olives or other products are processed.

That’s enough explanations.

As is customary in these parts, Leonhilda, a Portuguese neighbour, having picked and pressed her grapes, invited us to deliver the bagaço residue to the lagar, where it could be traded for bagaçeira. Together we heaved two heavy plastic sacks of this residue into the boot and set off with her (and the usual hounds) for Vilharinhos, 30 minutes away.

There the residue was weighed. It entitled us, said the weigher, to 4 litres of bagaçeira, an amount that he scribbled on a scrap of paper before directing us to the office. At the counter we asked to buy 11 litres more - at €2.5 a litre, a quarter of the retail price. No problem.

There’s no bottle store at the lagar. One makes one’s way, clutching another scrap of paper, past the huge boilers into the vat room – just the taps protrude - where 5-litre plastic bottles are filled in a matter of seconds. And so we returned home with enough baggy to see Jones through much of the winter.

That’s if winter ever comes. There’s no sign of it. Sunny day follows sunny day with no prospect of rain and afternoon temps around C30*. We had looked forward to trying out our new salamandra but we haven’t had an evening cool enough to justify even the most modest of fires.

With luck, when we do have that fire, there won’t be the faintest trace of soot around the stove – the bane of Jones’s life. Horacio and two of his workers came around one afternoon to wrestle off the chimney top and seal the gap between the stack and the brickwork with high temperature cement. (Note: Dear Chris, this cement is mixed only with water and therefore probably doesn’t qualify as concrete.) They had the very devil of a job, perched on ladders and needing to remove a bucket of windy soot in the process.

Wednesday was a public holiday – the 5th of October – celebrating the overthrow of the Portuguese monarchy in 1910 and the declaration of a republic. This was unfortunate – not the historical events but their celebration on a Wednesday because, as I learned from the EDP lady who phoned me, the EDP does solar panel connections only on Wednesdays. So we missed being connected up to the grid on the 5th. And since we are going to be visiting family in Germany next week, we shall have to wait until the 19th. That’s equivalent to throwing away €10 a day and it hurts.

On Thursday, after English lessons, widow duty and shopping, we headed over to Messines to see how our German archeologists were getting on with their excavation. The site is large and they’ve made great progress. We found them busy recording and sketching the details of the dig.

On the Friday, they said, they were coming to Espargal to do the same at the site in a field just below the village. We informed neighbours who had expressed an interest. And after breakfast with the gang at the Coral, we made our way to the site. It heaved with activity like a disturbed ants’ nest. All 18 members of the group were busy dusting, brushing, sweeping, cleaning and generally preparing to record their work.

This they do partly with detailed sketches (that are later digitized) and partly using photography. It’s no ordinary photography. A fancy camera is attached to an elaborate tripod whose central metal support rises 18 metres in the air via a series of tubes within tubes in order to take aerial pictures from a near vertical position.

Happily, I’d rung before we arrived to ascertain the number present – 18 – and was able to arrive with a full complement of icecreams for the group.

On these the workers fall like wolves upon lambs, as I said to them, although I’m not sure that they followed the metaphor. Whatever the case I am able to state without fear of contradiction that we are far the most popular visitors to the site.

Dennis Graen, who leads the team, was telling us of the background research that they do, for example analyzing pollen (when they find any) to learn more about the plants and flowers prevalent at the time. They have obtained sufficient financing to return to both sites for the next two years. These are of particular interest because little is known about Roman farms in the hinterland rather than along the coast where much more research has been done.

From Henning, another member of the group, we gathered that the university language experts had thus far failed to identify the writing carved into a stone that the team had discovered at the Messines site. “It’s probably Klingon,” he observed drily. Obviously, the Star Trek series is also shown in Germany.

On the domestic front we have had mixed success bringing the pups inside the house overnight. They like to be with the other dogs (and me) and resent being thrust into exterior darkness. Mary still quivers with excitement each time she sees a cat and is hard put to leave it alone. On the other hand, the pups settle down overnight and are far less inclined to bark, a habit which – at 0200 hours – we find most irritating.

Regrettably their destructive energy shows little sign of abating. Anything they can get their teeth into is ripped apart. Jones has spent more hours than I can recount patching mattresses, covers, quilts and blankets, all to very little avail. She’s says she’s had enough of it. I can’t argue with that.

This is what remains of what was recently quite a good chair. The seats, which had been chewed to destruction, have been replaced with planks that Jones is planning to cover. We are grateful to be leaving the zoo in the hands of house sitters who are experienced dog people. A glance at the Faro airport website tells us that they have just landed. Enough unto the day.

Letter from Espargal: 37 of 2011

2011-09-30T16:04:00.000+01:00

Friday is half done. It began, like most days, with a leisurely walk around the park with the dogs. Jones then stayed behind with Raymond (who is still nursing an infected pad) while I took the rest of the pack on the Pole Path circuit. (All our animals are “who” rather than “which”, I suppose because they are all personalities in their own right – and it doesn’t feel right to refer to a personality as a “which”.) Jones normally comes with me on the walk but she has stayed behind these past few days as she couldn’t abide Raymond’s agonised howls as we left him behind.

The Pole Path, our regular morning walk, is so called because it follows a line of medium tension electricity poles for 30 minutes around the shoulder of Espargal hill. The route is rocky and awkward, the more so on hot, sweaty, fly-tormented mornings when the puppies are pulling madly every which way and their leads are getting tangled up in the bushes. (Our temperatures are still in the high 20s.) So it’s always a relief to bundle the gang back through the gate in the perimeter fence and to return to the house to change my perspiration-soaked shirt and vest.

From there it was up to Benafim to fill up the car (ouch! - diesel is now bumping up against €1.5 a litre – petrol is even more), recycle the bottles, cans and paper and – most important – retire to the Coral for coffee, toast, jam and medronho. Celso is happy to provide such simple fare although he’s not offering meals while Brigitte, who does the cooking, is back in France.

By the time one gets home, not much of the morning is left. In fact, one is lucky to make it back by midday. We have, as I may have noted before, found retirement to be much more demanding than we anticipated.

That’s the point at which I have to pause and reflect on what news, if any, we have to convey – and on what we can dress up as news if we don't.

Well, Thursday we took off to lunch with Olive at Zé-Maria, our favourite fish restaurant on Faro Beach. Patrons seat themselves beneath the awning on a patio that fringes the sand. We have a favourite table in the corner, beneath which the dogs crouch to keep an eye on any other diners’ pets. Impressive waves were breaking on the beach just below us. The restaurateur, who was hard pressed, found time to ask after John, who had dined there with us shortly before he died. We raised our glasses to him anyhow. His birthday would have been this weekend.

Thence to the Algarve Forum to find out why our neighbour, Marie, wasn’t receiving the SMS messages that Barbara sent to her although Barbara was getting Marie’s. (As Jones and Marie communicate quite a lot by SMS, this situation was more serious than it might sound.) First we went along to Vodafone, with whom Jones and I have contracts. It must be, said the young man to whom I spoke, because Marie had somehow blocked Jones’s number on her phone. She needed to check her message filter. “Oh,” we said, and then tried the same question at Optimus, Marie’s operator, just down the corridor. But the bimbo there didn’t have a clue. In the event, the Vodafone man was right and Jones is once again communicating normally with Marie.

On Wednesday a large envelope arrived from the EDP with a five-page contract for the purchase of electricity from us. All that I was required to do was to sign it and return it – which I did the same day. I am anxious that the EDP engineers should come along to connect up the solar array before Jones and I go to Germany to visit Cathy and family on October 11. Portugal is meanwhile shuddering under suggestions that electricity prices will rise by 30% next year, on top of an electricity VAT hike from 6% to the top rate of 23%.

At the same time I went looking for a sheet of acrylic plexiglass with which to seal off the upper section of the kitchen window through which the cats enter and leave the house. I should explain that our large double-glazed sliding doors make it almost impossible to install a cat-flap short of hacking through the double walls of the house. Instead, Jones leaves the sliding kitchen window open wide enough to allow the cats passage. They typically spend the day in the fields and the night in the house – running Mary’s gauntlet as they commute.

With the approach of autumn, we were keen to block off the upper part of the open window in order to minimize the draught. Plexiglass proved to be available only in large, expensive sheets. Instead I acquired a €2 sheet of polystyrene from which I cut a strip, at the bottom of which I carved an arched doorway for the cats. The cats would appear to be perfectly happy with this arrangement. (I recount this project in some detail in the hope of impressing my home-improvement ace brother in law whose own exploits so often impress us.)

I have been in further communication with a firm that supplied me – via Amazon - several weeks late with rubber gaskets of the kind required to seal glass jars. I discover that the reason for their concern with the mega-bungled delivery is the poor feedback they got from me as a result. They are most anxious for me to remove this black mark from their online copybook. I have responded affably, asking them first kindly to explain how the series of bungles came about.

The best time of day is around 7.30 pm, as the sun sets and Jones, having watered the garden, returns from feeding the stray dog and several cats at the bottom of the village. I have by that time walked and fed our dogs, and settled myself on the front patio with a beer (summer) or a glass of wine to the lullaby buzz of the evening insects in the garden. The puppies engage in prolonged play-fighting, thrust and parry, with pauses for visits to the water bowl.

We have, come to mention it, recently discovered a most acceptable boxed red wine produced by an M J Freitas – three litres for 6 euros. While the majority of boxed wines are aimed squarely at the bottom end of the market, Mr Freitas’s product is distinctly middle class and saves a great deal of hauling bottles in and out of the car. I should be very pleased to introduce any visitors to it.

I endeavour not to consume more than a glass or two because I have to settle down after supper and the ten o’clock news (the dogs scattered around my foam mattress on the lounge floor) to the translations that I have undertaken on behalf of the houseboat outfit on the Alqueva dam. You will appreciate the need for such services if you look at their website, which currently offers in its English section such jewels as:

“Dinamizar the candle as tourist product of excellency….“
“Creation of training offers in the area of the fast candle and cruise”

There are times when online translation sites, wondrous as they are, simply do not do the job.

September seems to have slipped away. How strange! It was just the other day that we were welcoming it.

Letter from Espargal: 36 of 2011

2011-09-24T09:56:00.003+01:00

On Friday we were shorn, Jones and I. Here it might be useful to make a gender cultural distinction. While the men I know, those with any hair to speak of, have it cut, women of my acquaintance have theirs “done” – a far more important, demanding and generally expensive process. In Jones’s case, it was cut rather than done – and cut shorter than I can remember it.

Her hair had been getting on her nerves, prompting complaints of “I can’t do anything with it”. As mine was also down around my ears, where I don’t like it, I made an appointment with Fatima in Loule. We’ve been going to Fatima for years.

She’s really a man’s hairdresser but will also attend to women who don’t need perms and all that stuff. Along with her Jones took a picture of what she wanted to look like by the end of the haircut. You may judge the results for yourself. I’m still getting used to them. Her hair certainly shouldn’t bother her again for a while.

In the car at Loule’s parking garage we left Ono and Prickles, the usual travellers, along with Raymond, whom we had just taken to the vet. Raymond has a problem with his paw – an expensive problem. For the next ten days he has to take a course – his second - of anti-flammatories and antibiotics, after which the vet will re-examine him to see whether he needs minor surgery.

On Friday we also quietly celebrated the arrival of the autumnal equinox. Roll on autumn; our new salamandra awaits.

On Thursday we had an artistic and archaeological outing. Our UK friends, Mike and Lyn, who are staying with Idalecio, joined us for a trip that took in a dig near Silves, and two galleries. First stop was the dig, a project that now occupies the whole team from the University of Jena, members of which have also been excavating in the fields just below Espargal.

I should confess that I have managed to make a rod for my own back. On one occasion last year, I took the diggers a box of icecreams, a treat that they greeted like manna from heaven. I’ve done the same thing on hot days once or twice at Espargal. The arrival of these icecreams has brought the dig to a halt and the sweaty students more visible pleasure than I can easily describe. The bottom line is that I now lack the courage to visit the dig without the “magnums” to which they so look forward when they see us coming.

We stopped at a café near the site to arm ourselves with the necessary. As the students saw us making our way down the path towards the site, they actually started clapping. How can one resist such a hero’s welcome? After handing over the icecreams, we chatted to the group leader, whom we’d met last year, as well as to the visiting head of the Archaeology department. The group is excavating a large Roman farm house that might easily, we understand, have had 100 workers.

The most fascinating discovery is a slab with an inscription in a language they have not yet identified. They speculate that it may be Punic – an extinct variety of Phoenician, people who traded along the Iberian coast for centuries before the Romans arrived on the scene. How it came to be at the site is intriguing in itself. The university’s ancient language expert has examined the inscription without being able to identify the language or translate it, a situation – one student confided – that had left him most unsettled.

Our next stop was the gallery of the artist Paula Will in Silves (a city that was for centuries the Moorish capital of the Algarve). Paula greeted us enthusias- tically and showed us around. She’s half Portuguese and half Scottish. We have one of her works and would gladly have one or two more. Jones especially fancied one of her fish paintings.

Then finally – after a spot of lunch – we continued to the Corte Real gallery on the outskirts of Messines, where I snoozed in the car with the dogs while my passengers looked – most satisfactorily they reported – around.

On Wednesday we went to the lawyer to try to sort out our properties. After our bruising experience with unwelcome buildings arising around us at Cruz da Assumada, we have tried to establish a mini green belt here at Espargal. Our initial purchase was of two adjacent properties. In the subsequent years we have acquired another 5 properties, half and acre here and half an acre there until we felt relatively secure.

They don’t amount to very much, perhaps 5 acres in all. But they are sufficient to protect our backs from unwelcome construction. Three different lawyers have been used in the process and several important documents are missing from my files, which means going along to notaries and property registers to secure them.

Tuesday has vanished into oblivion.

On Monday an inspector arrived to check that the satellite tracking station, aka Jodrell Bank, was fit for the purpose. He was led here by members of the firm that had carried out the installation, with whose work he was evidently well acquainted. The firm's MD, who was present, said that problems were rare and we certainly had none.

After ascertaining the potential electricity supply from the panels and checking the wiring of the new boxes in the electricity pillar, the inspector wished us good day and went on his way. Now we await the contract, due in the post in a week or so, and finally connection to the national grid.

On Sunday we went along to the village of Alte, which perches (clearly visible to us) on a hillside 15 minutes away, for a sort of church procession cum harvest festival. At least that’s what one of the stall holders led me to believe that it was.We arrived early to find half a dozen neglected stalls set out in the village square.

Moments later, two fellows in strange dress came trotting down the cobbles on horses, followed by a parade of worthies that included several statues borne aloft and a straggly band. This, with the assistance of Google Translate, is the Alte Parish’s explanation (slightly modified) of the occasion.

“Sunday closest to September 17:

That day, in the churchyard of the Church, the Knights dressed in white turban and starring the head, cite the "Loas," prayer in verses Nossa Senhora das Dores (Our Lady of Suffering). The procession leaves the Church with the images of Nossa Senhora da Assunção (Our Lady of the Assumption), Nossa Senhora das Dores and S. Louis.”

And so it was. The worthies, mainly female and mainly sexagenarian plus, paraded sedately past us while Jones snapped away and Ono, Prickles and I looked on. They followed a 30 minute circuit through the town that took them back to the church where they had started out.

Jones, meanwhile, bought one or two small items from stall holders who were doing no other business and who confessed to her that times were tough. It’s not that we need any telling. Hardly a day passes without news of some new austerity measure or tax to diminish the deficit. We retired to the river to wash down the cake we'd bought with a drop of medronho.

Some other things happened at other times that I will probably remember later and stick up in due course. But, for the moment, that’s it.

Letter from Espargal: 35 of 2011

2011-09-17T13:46:00.006+01:00

Friday is when it happened, mostly. We were setting out on our weekly widow-assistance and shopping expedition when the electric gate people rang to say that a technician would be calling by that afternoon to follow up our problems. (Sometimes the gates won’t open, at others they stop halfway, which allows the dogs out but not the car.)

Shortly afterwards Rosana rang from the salamandra suppliers to say that they could install our new salamandra (wood-burning stove) after lunch – if that would suit. It certainly would.

And in response to my email appeal, Ana at the appliance repair shop replied they were doing their best to have our digibox ready for collection after three. For the past fortnight we have relied on the computer and my smartphone for our rising and setting radio programmes. And as useful as they’ve been, it’s not the same thing.

True to her word Ana had the digibox waiting when the shop opened its doors at three. (You will be aware that most Portuguese shops close for lunch from one till three. The exceptions are the proliferating Chinese stores that hardly seem to shut at all.) I plugged it back in as soon as we got home and joy! – we had all our radio and TV channels back again. Radio arrives digitally via the TV monitors although it’s also available via the bedside mini-speakers and cordless headphones.

Barely had I got the digibox up and running when the salamandra arrived. Clients have the option of installing the stove themselves or having the suppliers do it. We opted for the latter because, with seven metres plus of flue, it’s quite challenging. The job took the two installers a good hour of lining up, sealing the flue-joints, blocking off the ceiling aperture with glass wool collars and finally gluing a metal collar to the ceiling. They advised us to allow the high-temperature silicone seals to set overnight before lighting any fires.

From the electric gate technician we heard nary a word. But scoring two hits out of three is pretty good for this part of the world and we’re not complaining. Speaking of which, if you have an idle moment, try yourself on the 10-minute “11-plus” exam that all school children in the UK were once required to write in order to separate grammar school material from the rest. I was taken aback by the difficulty of the questions and, if I passed the test, it wasn’t with flying colours. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7773974.stm

At last I’ve removed the firewood that was unloaded beside the driveway a week ago. It took nine tractor loads to clear the area. Each load was conveyed up to the old shed beside the crumbling bread oven and laid carefully in a pile. I was quite proud of the result which, I feel, would compare well with the immaculate piles that Olly, our neighbour, likes to create just down the road.

Another task has been clearing the forest of suckers that spring up beside the olive and carob trees. The carob suckers make excellent mulch. The olives tend to wrap themselves around the blades of the shredder, which means that I have to open up the machine and clear it every few minutes. So most of them also go for burning.

Our existing piles of mulch have been distributed across the remains of the huge solar-panel cardboard box, which we have laid flat beside the concrete block in order to create a weed-free approach. (We await inspection and approval of the installation early this coming week.)

You see the box here pre- dismemb- erment, along with neighbours who came around for drinks. This gives me an excuse to raise the difficult subject of socialising – difficult because we do it a lot and Jones often points out that I have not mentioned various get-togethers. I respond that there’s nothing to be said about them. That’s to say that I haven’t the knack of elevating canapes and conversation to the blog, as much as we enjoy them.

Jones has spent long hours clearing a carpet of ivy from various corners of the garden. Some of the strands were easily six metres long, inter- twined and reluctant to move. Getting rid of them meant crouching on her haunches while patiently snipping and pulling.

She then rolled the strands into piles that she carried up to the cobbles or down to the fence, where I loaded the same on to the tractor for conveyance to the field. It took several tractor loads to remove them. An ivy mountain now lies mid-field, awaiting burning once the rains come. As yet there’s no sign of them.

At least our temperatures are moderating at last. The autumn crocuses that are now springing up give promise of the changing season. We became particularly aware of the crocuses after hearing about a substance derived from the flowers that appears to be highly effective in tackling cancer tumours without harming healthy tissue.

As ever, we’ve been doing a lot of walking. We take it in turns to manage the pups, which we still keep on the lead as they’re not yet very responsive. Jones, who is both fleeter and surer of foot than I, takes charge on the trickier sections. The paths are often narrow, steep and very stony and unless I proceed with care, I am liable to fall down, which I really hate doing (as it’s both painful and most undignified). I sometimes feel like Melanion chasing after Atalanta, without the advantage of golden apples.

Russ (in brown) has declared his domestic bent. He loves settling down inside the house and is eager to accompany our regular canine travellers in the car. His sister, Mary, continues to be a free spirit. Unlike her brother she has yet to reach an accommo- dation with the cats. We had a fascinating half hour in the lounge as Mary (secure on a lead) and Braveheart (keeping his distance) faced up to each other.

Braveheart is easily the most confident of our three cats and the most relaxed with the other dogs. He lay down and went through various feline (this is my house) stretching exercises, all the while keeping a sharp eye on her. Then, to her surprise and mine, he skipped over and gave her an intimate chin-rub, something he often does to the other dogs. Mary was too taken aback to react – fortunately!

One morning, faced with a slightly awkward toe-nail and difficulty in bending down to tend it, I took myself to a podiatrist in Loule. Lying back to have my toe-nails cut was an entirely new experience for me. Not only did the gentleman cut them with great care, he then rounded them off with an electric drill, so that my toes now slide into my socks instead of hooking into them as before.

I begin to understand why clients pay beauticians lots of money for the privilege of being tended in this manner. It could be catching.

May I wind up with a picture of Vitor’s nearly completed rock wall, easily the most handsome (and probably the most expensive) wall in the village.

Close by, our German student archeologists are still excavating their Roman ruin. I popped around with icecreams early in the week to admire their latest finds – another coin, a bead and the handle from a jug or amphora. If these are very modest finds, I guess that’s the name of the game. It would be wonderful if they stumbled on some ancient treasure trove but I doubt that that’s going to happen.

Letter from Espargal: 34 of 2011

2011-09-10T11:35:00.005+01:00

This week doesn’t have a starting place; it has simply dribbled away into cracks and crevices. I have nothing to show for it, nor anything new to tell you about collecting carobs, waiting on widows, walking the dogs or watering the garden. You have had every jot and tittle.

(Pause here for thought and inspiration while you admire Jones's fine picture of an Espargalian sunset!)

It’s not that this state of affairs otherwise troubles us. We learned a few days ago that my brother in South Africa had narrowly escaped being car-jacked. As he was about to get into his pick-up in downtown Witbank, he was confronted by three men wielding knives. He has no doubt that he would have lost his vehicle and possibly worse had he not been able to draw the pistol that he always carries with him. On seeing the firearm, the intending hijackers fled. Although by South African standards the episode was trivial, it left my brother badly shaken.

I too was somewhat shaken last weekend although for different reasons. One of the dogs jumped up at me for a hug as I was collecting carobs. I stumbled backwards, wrenching my back. So it’s been a tender few days.

Jones has been walking the puppies while I trail along behind. (Although we call them puppies still, they’re anything but.) She’s also spent several hours each day picking up the last of the carobs. We had half a dozen sacks to present to our farmer friends, who were very pleased to receive them and regaled us with melons, tomatoes and peppers in return.

En route to deliver the carobs I diverted to visit the German student archaeological team that has returned to the site of the Roman remains on the farmer’s lands. The team is here in double strength this year with half its members excavating in Espargal and the rest working on the site of other Roman ruins near Silves. They’re not finding it easy going as we’re enduring what I hope will be the last heat-wave of the summer.

They showed me the few tile and amphora shards they’d collected, along with several fragments of glass and a 2nd century AD coin. They have also uncovered a hard smooth floor that seems to have been used for olive oil production. Another find was the skeleton of a pig. This however the farmer recollected (as he unloaded my carobs) he’d buried there himself years earlier after it had died of some disease. I popped around to the dig later in the week with a box of icecreams that the students fell upon.

Close by, two machines are working away building a handsome wall from huge rectangular rocks to support the bank overlooking Vitor’s driveway. The diggers work in tandem to lift and place the rocks. Each is trimmed to size by a worker with a sledgehammer and then carefully lined up and levelled. I was equally impressed by the care taken and the harmonious result.

These rocks are often employed to support steep banks in expensive locations. The advantage I learned from Horacio the builder when he dropped around to collect payment for the base of the tracking station. Apart from good looks and strength of the resulting structure, such construction does not require the licence that is otherwise obligatory for walls much over a metre high.

Our solar array meanwhile faithfully and fruitlessly tracks the sun each day across the sky, as yet without contributing anything to the national grid or the Benson purse. The firm involved informs us that the installation is due to be inspected on Monday the 19th. We have fingers crossed that it will be approved and that a contract will follow hot on the inspectors’ heels.

To further impress them I have painted the extended pillar holding the new electricity boxes, which were installed as part of the project.

Natasha joined us for a day to hack back the ivy that had overtaken parts of the garden. Jones insisted that this exercise was necessary, assuring me that the ivy would soon grow again. I do hope so for the walls are now painfully bare. Natasha has lost one of her regular clients to what’s known in Portugal as the “crise” and is keen to find additional employment where she can.

Midweek a man arrived from the company that is due to deliver our new wood-burning stove, known here as a salamandra. He inspected the premises and measured the six metres from the lounge floor to the hole in the inclined ceiling that leads into the chimney above. We talked about the best way to seal the flue so that neither soot or sooty water – the bane of Jonesy’s life – comes drifting/dripping down the chimney.

Another caller was the firewood supplier, who arrived with a load that should see us through the winter. I've been shifting it with the tractor. The deliverer wasn’t particularly happy, telling me in vivid language of an attack he had suffered at home a few weeks earlier from a Bulgarian burglar. According to his account, the burglar had set about him with a weapon of some kind, breaking four of his victim’s ribs before fleeing the scene.

A son had chased after the assailant, caught him and apparently exacted revenge. In court the man was convicted but released under orders to leave the country. Whether he did so is another question. The bottom line is that Portugal cannot bear the cost of jailing foreign criminals nor has it any effective means of expelling them.

With such unfortunate events in mind, we are pursuing with Olive the security options that a couple of companies have submitted to her. Typically, an alarm installation costs 1,000 euros plus, with monthly fees of 30-50 euros, depending on the services required. While en route to see her, we dropped in on the electronics shop to inquire about our ailing digibox. Terribly sorry (or something similar) said the man behind the counter but our technician is on leave this week. We wish he’d told us that when we arranged to take it in because the TV channels were still working perfectly well.

I’m also chasing a small parcel that DHL was meant to have delivered to me some time this past week. The tracking number doesn’t register on their site and the central DHL phone number asks clients politely to call back on Monday when the office reopens! Tom Hanks, where are you?

Letter from Espargal: 33 of 2011

2011-09-03T14:24:00.003+01:00

On Monday we bade farewell to our wood- burning stove as it went to its new owners, Rob and Helen; not that it went easily. Firstly the stove was immensely heavy and secondly, it had to be ripped out. The flue was seven metres high, the uppermost two metres inside the chimney, which was where it wanted to stay. Every attempt to shift it brought down a cascade of soot on the workers and the floor, much to Jones’s alarm and distress.

The workers were myself, Rob and his mate, Leon. The latter pair are firemen, fit and strong, while I compliment myself that I can still lift a crate of beers. First we climbed on to the roof to see whether the top of the stack had to be freed from a concrete collar inside the chimney. Happily it didn’t. Then, under a shower of soot, we wrestled the flue down, section by section, all seven of them. It was hard and dirty work I can tell you. (The firemen were grateful for a real shower afterwards.)

I brought the tractor around to ferry the stove down to the recipients’ trailer, where Rob and Leon heaved it on board. With mixed feelings we saw it depart; for it has done good and faithful service down the years. However, for various reasons, we have long promised ourselves a new stove and we set out to find one. We visited four establishments in all. None of them had the perfect stove but we settled on a model that satisfied most of our requirements. It has yet to be delivered.

Also on Monday the solar panel people phoned up to say that because their big truck was being repaired, they wouldn’t be coming on Tuesday as scheduled. Instead they came on Wednesday, a team of three with a load of steel beams, spars and what have you, plus a huge cardboard box of solar panels. We asked them for the box – it took two of us to carry it – as a temporary kennel for the pups.

It was with some fascination that I watched the team go to work. The hardest bit was getting the main beam into place. All three workers were required to carry it. Jones has several times expressed fears that the Espargal winds will tear the solar installation from its mount. But seeing the size and strength of the underlying framework, I think that she can rest easy.

Once the beam was up, the spars were attached and then the panels. A worker scaled the beam and crawled out on to the spars to bolt the panels into place. The whole process was swift and smooth. The boys knew their stuff. Little wonder! - the team leader said that they typically did two installations a week. There’s been a huge public take-up of the scheme – which costs about €20,000 to install – and applications have now closed for the year. We got in just in time.

So now we have a solar voltaic installation – christened “the NASA tracking station” by our neighbours - sitting right in the middle of our field. It’s not obvious from afar although it is very obvious from nearby. Secured above the panels is a mini-panel to energise the machinery that changes the angle of the array 13 times a day in order to follow the sun around the sky.

Although the installation is complete, it has to be inspected, approved and linked into the grid before it starts to earn our living. That should happen within the next week or two. In the meanwhile we have patched up the damage done to the bank by the concrete pump truck and Jones has planted flowers in the spaces it created.

As you may imagine, the project has occupied a fair amount of our time. The rest of the week has gone into the usual walks, watering, carob-picking and running around.

One afternoon I spent meeting representatives of security companies at the home of Olive, whom we’ve been assisting following the death of her husband. We’ve asked them to quote her for an alarm system. She would love to sell the house and return to her family in the UK. But in the present depressed market her chances of a quick sale are low. Vendors, especially of typical “3-bed, 3-bath villas with pool” like hers, are many and buyers are few.

We nearly bought a new mattress at the Lagoa fair, where fancy mattresses were on offer at a discount. I should preface this story by saying that while in London we invested in an expensive mattress in order to mollify my very fussy back. And it’s still doing good service. Jones sees no reason why it should not continue to do so. But I, as the family spender, have been interested in a modern latex or memory foam model on the basis that resting in peace is best done during one’s lifetime.

As it happened, we stumbled on a stall at the fair that had a range of these on display, including one with back massage, magnetic therapy (you may well ask) and much else. As it was going for a declared 50% discount, I was very tempted. Jones was not tempted in the least – “Do we need it?” she wants to know on these occasions - but after much subsequent discussion she reluctantly conceded ground.

We were planning to return to the fair on the final day to seal the deal until, after some serious research on the internet, I concluded that it might not be the bargain it had seemed. So, as we’d showered and fed the dogs early, we had a drink on the patio and watched Ratatouille instead (a great cartoon about a culinary rat), a gift from Barbara’s Vancouver-based family.

We are without our satellite digibox and easy access to our favourite UK radio and TV channels. The box has gone back to the suppliers to establish why many of the channels are either mute or inaccessible. I had hoped that a new remote control – obtained by my sister in Berlin from its German manufacturers – would resolve the problems. (It did resolve some.) As we can still listen to radio via computer or smart phone – and have a range of TV channels via our Portuguese digibox, our deprivation is not excessive.

Thursday brought Natasha (back from holiday in Russia), some welcome rain and some unwelcome mud. We have started to allow the pups into the house for brief periods. Russ is just fine. He settles down and while curious about the cats, is not hostile to them. His sister is a different matter. Mary we have to keep on a lead. She can’t take her eyes off the cats and quivers with excitement as she watches them. It will, I fear, take some time, to persuade her to live in peace with her feline neighbours.

Letter from Espargal: 32 of 2011

2011-08-26T17:53:00.006+01:00

Once again the week has revolved around the works for the solar panels. On Monday morning, the concrete delivery that was due on Monday afternoon arrived with five minutes' notice. I barely had time to send a warning SMS to the neighbours affected before the huge yellow pump came grunting down the road, scraping the leaves from the trees as it did so.

The vehicle took up station close to the delivery point while the operator sought out Horacio the builder. The former was less than happy. As he pointed out, the narrow road was flanked on both sides by steep banks, which meant that the pump could not brace itself as required by fully extending its feet.

After some discussion, although he was within his rights to refuse, he agreed to put out the feet partially and give things a try. As the crane did not have to lean over more than a few degrees, I felt that there was little risk involved.

Close behind came the concrete truck, hard on the heels of a friend, Desi, and her family, who had arranged to pick up carobs. While they set to picking, the truck nuzzled up to the pump, which gushed a river of wet concrete into Horacio’s heavily reinforced shuttering. The overseer recounted that he’d made a similar delivery to another expat, whose insecure shuttering had burst asunder. Seriously bad news! There’s not much you can do with a lake of rapidly drying concrete.

We had no such problems. The only difficulty was directing the hose, as the concrete began piling up on one side. Horacio clambered up the structure and grasped the hose himself. In five minutes the job was done. The operator indicated that a bonus might not go amiss in the circumstances and the two behemoths trundled back down the road and out of our lives.

On Monday evening Mario returned on his digger to fill in the trench carrying the heavy cable across the field.

On Tuesday, Horacio’s workers were back to remove the shuttering. If it stayed in place more than a day or two, Horacio explained, the planks tended to stick to the concrete and to shatter as they were levered off.

Pedro worked with a big jackhammer to cut a trench across the concrete driveway and up to the electricity box. Horacio is juggling his workers to cater simultaneously for the needs of other clients. He has as much work on his hands as he can handle, which I assure him is a good problem to have.

On Wednesday Pedro returned to finish the job and to patch the holes in the concrete cube where the reinforcing rods had been cut back. The metal ends are then buried in concrete to prevent them from rusting. From time to time I would take the tractor a kilometre down the road to Horacio’s building site, Pedro riding aft, for another bag of cement or box of sand.

On Thursday Pedro and Carlos returned to rebuild the electricity post outside the house to take the new connection. By law in Portugal, all buildings have to have their utility connections at the property boundary to enable easy access and reading. The difficulty arises with unfenced old houses, such as ours at the Quinta, where the original connections are made in the house façade.

Later occupants then fence the property, which means that the meter reader has to brave the dogs, a hazardous venture. The chap who reads our (external) meter here gets such a barking each time that he doesn’t hang around a moment longer than necessary.

On Friday Luis the electrician came along to make the connections. At this point we are all ready for the installation of the solar panels early next week. After that, as I’ve explained to Jones, all we have to work out is what to do with the money rolling in from the sale of our electricity to the national grid. Jones, as ever, is not easy to convince about these things.

While I’ve been running around with the workers, she has been cutting back the vegetation on the recently acquired plot, which is heavily overgrown after years of neglect. It has a number of useful carob trees – we’re still busy picking – as well as small oaks and indigenous bushes. Already the area is starting to look more like a park than a jungle. We sort the cuttings into two piles, one to shred and the other to burn.

For the first time we get a good view of the house from the east, a most pleasant one as you may judge for yourselves.

Tuesday night we went to Fatacil, the Algarve’s big industrial, food and craft fair, held at Lagoa, some 30 minutes away. It’s extraordinarily popular. The roads are parked nose to tail for a kilometre in every direction.

We arrived in good time to find a table for smoked ham and cheese sandwiches. That was the best bit. There were fewer serious displays than usual and more home-craft of the kind one finds everywhere and seldom purchases. We had hoped to come across a new wood-burning stove on one of the displays but came home disappointed. Our only trophy was a bottle of olive oil from a kiosk that, like many, wasn’t doing any business. Jones has several times been moved more out of pity than need to support such ventures.

One evening, Ermenio - a farmer to whom we give most of our carobs in exchange for produce - invited me down to the valley where he grows his crops. Laid out on the valley floor were several hectares of flourishing tomatoes, peppers, melons and watermelons.

What struck me most was the excessive waste of items that did not meet market requirements. Any tomato or melon with the least mark was simply tossed aside. The strips between the crops were strewn with thousands of rotting tomatoes. Nobody would buy them, Ermenio commented; consumers check each item separately and simply ignore anything that's imperfect. I guess it's true but the waste is terrible.

On the tech front my sister, Cathy, in Berlin has managed to obtain a new remote control for our German-made satellite box, which she is posting down. With luck it may cure the problem that we have encountered with radio channels. Meanwhile, my computer and my smartphone are standing in. On Llewellyn’s advice, I downloaded a free Android application (TuneIn Radio) that’s given us excellent smartphone access the to the BBC, whose World Service and Radio 4 channels have long made up our rising and setting audio diet. The phone speaker is strong enough to obviate the need for headphones.

After the failure of yet another page counter on my blog site, I did a lot of research and eventually downloaded and installed a model offered by StatCounter. This offers a useful range of information about visitors to the site. I also discovered what I should have known before, that Google itself gives all kinds of visitor information on the blogspot site if one looks for it under Stats.

PRIDE OF PERU

Thursday’s post brought with it a revised water invoice from Loule council, following my petition to the President for a reduction in July’s bill (as per last week’s blog). The President, God bless him, has seen fit to reduce the bill from €269 to €96, given the circumstances. So it was with lighter hearts that we continued from the post boxes to Benafim for coffee and toast at the Coral.

En route we bumped into Horacio, from whom we were grateful to learn of a speed trap a few hundred metres down the main road. There’s a 50 kph limit on stretches of road that are deemed to be within villages even when there are few houses in sight.

Since this is not a country where speed limits are taken seriously and since Portuguese motorists are always in a hurry, the police do good business. It’s common to see oncoming motorists flashing their lights to warn of speed traps ahead.

Letter from Espargal: 31 of 2011

2011-08-19T12:55:00.028+01:00

My attention this week has been focussed mainly on the adjacent field, where our solar voltaic array is due to be installed. The first reason for that is that after digging the foundations with his JCB last weekend, Mario had to shift an almond tree whose shadow would otherwise have fallen on the panels. This move I blessed most reluctantly and only on Mario’s assurance that with generous irrigation the tree might well survive.

While I removed the main branches with a chainsaw, he dug a generous hole to take it. Then, having wrapped the tree in a sack to protect its bark, he lifted it from the ground and carried it across to the waiting hole. Finally, he packed the soil in around the roots once again. Since then each day I have watered the tree generously from a barrel attached to the tractor box.

I am hopeful of a successful transplant, especially as the one small branch remaining continues to wave its green leaves in the air. At heart I guess that I’m a tree hugger. At least, I believe that two trees should be planted for each one cut down. Several of the trees that we put into the garden some years ago are now soaring happily over our heads, bringing us both shade and fruit.

On Tuesday Horacio the builder returned with Pedro to measure up the foundations for the solar unit base and to lay a concrete floor. It was very hot. When I asked Pedro after lunch as a matter of politeness whether there was anything he needed, he replied that a small beer would be most acceptable. I understood exactly how he felt. Trying to survive the Algarve summer without beer is like trying to climb a rope with one hand. For the sake of sociability, I thought it best to have a can myself.

I had another on the seafront at Alvor after we had been to visit Marie in hospital, where she was recuperating from a hip replacement operation. It was the first time we’ve explored the area and a very attractive resort it is – not that we usually go near the Algarve resorts in summer.

As it happens, the hottest day of the week was Sunday, when the funeral of Manuel’s father took place. Manuel and his wife Graça run the only serious restaurant in Benafim, a business that he took over from his father some years ago. In spite of the searing heat, hundreds of people turned out to follow the hearse a kilometre from the church to the cemetery, ourselves included. The old man, who’d been ailing for some time, would have been proud to witness his send off.

Afterwards, we collapsed at a table outside the nearest bar and took refuge in a couple of reviving beers. At least Fintan and I did. Jones found relief in an icy baggy; Pauline confines herself to soft drinks. I hope that there’s beer in heaven; it would come as a terrible disappointment to find that paradise was dry. (I note that the Pope, currently on a visit to Madrid, is offering pilgrims a plenary indulgence; if it came with a beer guarantee, I might be tempted.)

On Thursday Horacio returned with Carlos to tie the reinforcing rods for the concrete base. Each rod was measured to fit within a couple of millimetres of its assigned place. That was important, Horacio insisted, if the structure was to be uniformly strong. He had seen concrete split down one side where the reinforcing rods were too far apart. I didn’t doubt it. Horacio, happily, is an excellent builder and I’m grateful to have him doing the job – all the more so after hearing the builder horror stories of a friend who is constructing a house not far away.

Friday the solar man returned with the centre post, which has to be cemented into the block and to remain there for a week or so while the concrete sets. The post weighed a ton. The builders struggled to get it off the van and they struggled even more to get it into position. It was one of those jobs that called for both brain and brawn.

Once it was in position, the post was carefully “verticalled” and stabilised. Now the workers are continuing to erect and brace the shuttering around the post. The construction will take some eight metres of wet cement and Horacio has too often seen what happens when the shuttering isn’t robust enough. The cement truck and a pump are due on Monday afternoon.

(Note: The following comment comes from a know-all pedantic nephew: "Please note the material you refer to being used in the construction of your solar panels is concrete and not cement. Cement is the binder used with other materials including sand, aggregate and water – to make concrete.")

I have made progress on the printer front, with the help of my brother-in-law, Llewellyn, who is clued up about these things. It was essential, he pointed out to me, to plug the fax cord behind the splitter and not in front of it (as I had originally done). Even so, it took some time to install the printer fully on my old desktop computer. Subsequently, the installation on the (Windows 7) portable computer proved a doddle.

Still on such matters - I nipped into Staples in Faro (en route to the airport to fetch Marie’s daughter, Debbie while Olly was fetching Marie from the hospital), to inquire whether the two missing spare ink cartridges had arrived. They hadn’t.

Then on the way back, I stopped over at Honda, to ask what a new brake light cover would cost me. That’s another story. I was unpleasantly surprised a few days earlier when a friend pointed to a small hole in the plastic unit and consequent fractures. How it came about I haven’t a clue. Whatever the case the whole unit has to be replaced and the price is painful. Honda didn’t have any in stock. Hopefully the unit will arrive at much the same time as the missing print cartridges.

Another irritation is a sudden decision by our satellite box to deny us access to radio channels. The TV button lists the usual (scores of) channels available. The Radio button now supplies only the audio from whatever TV channel one had previously selected. The technician who installed the system said he had never come across such a fault before. Well, he has now. My suspicions lie with our dodgy remote control. Both the control and box will shortly be making their way to the repair shop.

On the animal front we have been lavishing attention and various medications on our big dog, who has an infected pad. The poor fellow has been hobbling around, stopping every few yards to lick his ailing paw. Even so, he was anxious to come walking. We had to lock him inside the house with a bone for consolation.

A vet friend prescribed anti-biotics (over the phone), which a sympathetic pharmacist was happy to supply. (I have to salute the common sense of Portuguese pharmacists, who worry more about assisting people than following petty prescriptive rules.) The inflamed pad appears to have burst at last and the dog seems much happier – little wonder!

While on troublesome legs – I had a message from my brother recently describing how a daily dose of magnesium had rid him of painful leg-cramps at night. It’s a remedy I have been using for some years, more in hope than anticipation. This week, in spite of a daily dose, I was three nights afflicted with such racking cramps as nary a villain deserved. If anyone knows of a way of avoiding these cramps (short of amputation) I should be most grateful to hear of it.

During such moments as we’ve not been running around, watering trees, shredding branches, or spreading mulch on the garden, we have been picking carobs. At this time of year all Algarveans pick carobs. The roads are full of old tractors piled high with sacks of carobs, often with hubby driving and wife perched on the back, heading home after a long day under the trees.

Letter from Espargal: 30 of 2011

2011-08-12T14:57:00.020+01:00

It is not every day that you will find me firing off petitions to the President of Loule Camara but Wednesday was the exception that proved the rule. In my best Portuguese, taking in several Present Subjunctives and a couple of Formal Imperatives, I set out a good case for the reduction of my July water-cum-garbage bill. Seeing that this bill exceeded my water budget for the entire year, I had every reason to throw myself at the President’s metaphorical feet.

The problem wasn’t the water bill per se. I accept that last month we went through a lot of water. As I explained to the President, attaching several photographs to illustrate the point, a buried t-junction fitting had given way, causing a serious leak, the existence of which I became aware of late in the day.

The problem is the way the bill is calculated. It rises exponent- ially with consumption. But worse, the bill for communal garbage removal (from the big green wheelie bins placed at convenient points) is proportional to one’s water bill. Thus I found myself billed with well over 100 euros each for water and garbage in July, plus tax – a total of nearly €270 – more than six times our mid-summer average. (In winter our water bills are negligible.)

RUSS AT THE WHEEL

Jones heard me whistle when the bill came in and she was good enough the following day to trot into the citizens’ one-stop shop in Loule with my petition while I waited in the car with the dogs, engine and air conditioner running at C34*. The petition has been recorded and we await the outcome.

I had hoped to go straight from there to Staples in Faro where “Paulo” had promised to set aside a Canon Pixma 885 multifunction printer for me. But I had a medical appointment on the coast 30 minutes later and it was evident that the printer would have to wait.

PATCHING THE PUPS' MATTRESS - AGAIN

The appointment was at the small medical centre at Vale do Lobo, one of several resorts in the area. We arrived spot on time at 16.00 to find that there were two patients waiting ahead of me. So we lounged for an hour under an umbrella pine at the edge of the golf course and watched golfers arrive in their golf carts and tee off just in front of us. Jones thought it ridiculous that the only exercise the golfers got was to whack the balls and then hop in and out of their golf carts.

Finally I got to hand in a couple of reports to an ophthalmologist and a GP, who clucked approvingly, patted me on the head and told me to come back in six months’ time. Oh, and please pay the receptionist on the way out.

From there we headed to Staples where Paulo, good as his word, had left the printer at the cash desk. As it was quite heavy I asked for help to carry it to the car, at which diminutive Sara, who had been serving me, lifted it up and carried it out herself, declining all assistance. She was used to it, she insisted. Talk about embarrassing!

After having Marie and Olly around to drinks that evening (on the eve of her replacement hip operation), I spent much of the night trying to install the machine – a process comparable in complexity to launching a space shuttle. Eventually I managed; the appliance now works just fine although I’m using a USB connection rather than the available wifi – and I can’t link up the fax cord without losing my internet connection. So there’s more work ahead.

DOOR WITH BROKEN NIPPLE, BOTTOM LEFT

The real story is that the new appliance replaces an HP printer/fax/scanner that this week finally gave up the ghost. The problem is that a tiny plastic nipple has broken off a door hinge. The door has to be closed before the appliance will function. I took the printer down to the HP outlet for repair but they shook their heads.

BEING THROWN OUT

For some months I’ve been able to persuade the machine that the door concerned had been properly closed, enabling it to print. But it finally rejected my attempts and bombarded me with “open door” messages. So, for the sake of a minute plastic nipple, an appliance lands in the bin. Kinda sad!

CAROB HARVEST

This is the season not only of carobs, of which I’ve been harvesting a sack a day, but also of figs, a fruit in which Jones delights. She knows the location and fruitfulness of every fig tree for miles around and brings home dishes of the most delicious black and green figs for the pair of us. It is my contention that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not an apple tree, as widely rumoured, but a fig tree.

While an apple gleams with a hint of interior virtue, a fig beckons with a suggestion of a good time to be had. It’s a decidedly sexy fruit. Anyhow, we’re eating lots of figs.

We joined neighbours one evening at Benafim’s annual bash, held at the social centre above the town to raise money for a retirement home. Everyone turns out for music, dancing and either barbecued chicken (most of our group) or porridge and pork (me). Plastic cups of beer or wine cost just 80 cents – a bargain although, as ever, the crowds were well behaved.

MY THORNY ENEMIES

With us were two of Fintan’s grandchildren, young ladies who accompanied me to the tombola stall where a fiver bought 35 tickets and delighted them with a host of prizes. Their only complaint was that a boy had put water on the slide, which meant they had to stay off it for a while or soak their dresses. The youth explained that his intention was to lubricate the slide, as he illustrated by shooting down it on his feet in an impressive crouch.

HEADING FOR THE GARDEN

Jones and I spent an hour at Olive’s place. She worked in the garden while I discussed the security report drawn up for Olive by a consultant. In short she needs an alarm system, the installation of which we hope to arrange on her return from a visit to her family in the UK. It is regrettable that burglaries and robberies have greatly increased in the Algarve these past few years, certainly since Europe adopted open borders.

MORNING GLORY
Let me hasten to reassure North American readers who may be alarmed by news of riots, arson and looting on our side of the pond that all is well here in Espargal. We have suffered nothing other than the distant throb of amplified music from the Benafim Sports Club festa on the far side of the valley. True, several people have been struck on the head by falling carobs, myself included, but they suffered no injury that a couple of beers didn’t put right.

Speaking of injuries, I took a fall on Friday morning that would have left lesser souls in intensive care. I slipped on some gravel as I was tracking down Puffer Path with the puppies – and went flying down the rocky slope. The landing was bruising. Jones came back to inquire whether I was okay and the puppies to lick my face as I caught my breath and checked my extremities. I felt cheated that, apart from some earth-streaked clothes, there was so little evidence of my sufferings.

Later Friday the solar panel man and builder came along for a pow wow on the planned installation. The builder has to construct the reinforced concrete base.

Latest: Mario the local digger man arrived Friday evening with the builder to see what needed to be done. They measured the work out and calculated the right angles.

Then, as the evening was overcast and fairly cool, Mario promptly fetched his digger and went to work on a trench for the cable and foundations for the base.

Actually, it wasn't that simple. You can see some of the rocks he encountered but the rest will keep for next week.

Letter from Espargal: 29 of 2011

2011-08-07T13:02:00.018+01:00

Good Sunday morning: We’re just back from brunch with Marie and Olly at the Coral. I’m late putting up the blog. That’s because it’s been a wicked week - a spotty bump, rush-around, puppy-trouble, neighbour-assist, medical check-up alphabet soup of a week. And then some.

JONES SUNRISE

Most time- consuming has been the neighbour assist. The neighbour concerned is Olive, who we’ve been supporting since the death of her husband, John, just over a month ago. The occasion was a farewell-to-John get-together at her home. These days I think people call them a celebration of life. Not that Olive was doing a lot of celebrating.

Whatever the case, Barbara spent the better part of two days helping her prepare for the event and part of a third helping her clear up. Equally helpful were our friends, David and Dagmar. Were I responsible for such an event it would be self-service beers and biscuits. But Olive and Barbara were determined to offer folks a spread – and they did – to which guests added their contributions.

JACKIE (left) and MAY, ALSO RECENTLY WIDOWED

Jackie, an Anglican minister friend, led an informal service in the late afternoon shade provided by the house. I contributed two minutes on John’s virtues. That took very little effort as he’d done sterling work at the Quinta, where he and Olive had stayed with us in 1995 while they were still building their house. We were touched by the arrival of the doctor who had treated John, a really considerate gesture on his part.

The puppies, changing the subject, have been giving us grief. Mary has been barking at length from the pen overnight at anything and everything. How much this disturbed the neighbours is hard to say because barking in these parts is considered the music of the hills. Most people are simply deaf to it. However, it certainly disturbed me. I considered locking the pair of them in the tractor shed but dismissed the idea as impractical.

PUPPY MAULED FOAM

Midweek Mary began hopping the interior fence once again. She would retire there with Russ to eat her dinner and then reappear on the patio minutes later, as pleased as Punch. So we bowed to the inevitable and let her sleep on the patio with other dogs. She liked that but Russ didn’t – and wailed his loneliness from the pen. So we let him sleep on the patio too. Apart from two destructive episodes, this has worked. There’s certainly much less barking at night.

FORMER CUSHIONS

Friday we got back from the clean-up at Olive to find that the pups had been in a fight, whether with each other or the big dogs it’s impossible to know. Mary was nursing a wound in her front right leg – she wouldn’t put her paw down - and Russ was limping. They were both distinctly unhappy.

MARY

The cause of this contention was almost certainly a bone. We’d distributed meaty bones, as is our usual practice, before we’d left. So Jones cleaned the wound and we gave her lots of sympathy, which was pretty much all that we could do. Saturday morning she was much better, insisting on coming on the usual walk.

RUSS

As Jones went down to feed the stray one evening, she came across Portuguese neighbours scrubbing the front passenger seat of their car with copious amounts of soap and water. They were clearly worked up about something. Between imprecations the husband explained that he’d stopped to give an elderly man a lift. The fellow had repaid this kindness by pissing his pants in the car. It was, needless to say, the last lift the neighbour would be offering to any codgers.

He has my sympathies. Mind you, so does the old man, given the unpredictability of elderly male bladders. It is a great virtue of Portuguese roads that they are lined with gents’ natural loos, and a pity that the old guy didn’t get to use one.

The spotty bumps and medical check-up are me. The former have driven me into a scratching frenzy. I always break out in heat bumps in summer but not on this scale. Jones, who reckons that something has been biting me, has put everything bar the bed through the washing machine. The pharmacist, who thinks it’s an allergic reaction, has dosed me with gel and pills.

Annual check ups are not normally blog material. But this one involved my first visit to a smart new hospital near Faro airport. I was most impressed, the more so after my encounters with Faro’s bedlamic general hospital. The new one proved quiet, prompt, scrupulously clean, suspiciously short of patients waiting in corridors, full of gleaming machines and staffed by really helpful people.

RAIN

Last Monday it rained. I mean really rained. I measured 8 mms. That’s quite extraordinary. July and August in the Algarve are almost guaranteed rain-free months – much to my regret, I might add. The rain gave Jones two days off watering the garden, an activity that takes a great deal of her time. She has been spending long hours cutting back as well as mitigating the damage that the wretched puppies do to her plants. Any plant they find in a plastic pot is stolen and dumped so that they can play with the pot.

For my part I’ve been collecting (and destroying) seed-heads from an unwelcome thorny thistle as well as starting on the carobs. The carob collecting season is just getting underway, announced by the rattle of long sticks in the carob trees. One of the neighbours explained that he was starting to bring in his carobs early this year for fear that the gypsies would otherwise steal them. A problem with carobs is that they are sold for cash – not very much, but still cash. And the temptation to help oneself to other people's carobs is great.

We arrived home one evening to find three crates of fruit and veges lying outside the gates, a welcome gift from the farmer to whom we donate most of our carobs. There’s a lot to be said for barter in these uncertain economic times. The media are full of the woes of the euro and the dollar.

The solar panel company informs me that our application to install a solar voltaic system had been accepted by the authorities. Before signing on the dotted line, I’m arranging a meeting with the local builder to ensure that he and the solar outfit are talking the same language. He has to build the concrete base to take the panels. With luck, we’ll be up and running by the end of September.

Letter from Espargal: 28 of 2011

2011-07-29T13:47:00.023+01:00

ESPARGAL MORNING

I’m about to draw a great big black line through July. We’ve survived it. That’s half the battle won. Now we can turn our attention to August. Survive that and we’ll have seen off the flaming dragon for another year. Then I can start to relax again – ease back on the sun-cream, stop scratching heat bumps, venture outside before 16.00. I look forward to it. If April is the cruellest month, September is the kindest.

Apropos of nothing – I took the tractor down the road to Vitor’s place for a service, its third - known in Portugal as a “revision”. The vehicle has notched up 250 hours, still a tractor baby if not a baby tractor. Vitor’s young son, Bernardo, came along to watch proceedings, seating himself on the step-up. Next to arrive was his wife, Ana, along with Jose, her neighbour from over the road. There are no “Do not enter” signs in Vitor’s workshop; there, servicing vehicles is a sociable activity; clients, family and neighbours are all welcome.

We agreed, as Vitor delved into the innards, that tractors are dangerous beasts. He had been servicing them for 20 years, he confided, and in that time not a few of his clients had died beneath their vehicles. Or, as Idalecio put it, the problem with old (i.e. 2x4) tractors is that they won’t go in all sorts of places; and the problem with new (4x4) tractors is that they’ll go anywhere – even really stupid places. This I can testify from my monthly visits to top up the water-supply at the dogs’ waterhole on the far side of the hill. It’s quite a scary trip.

After changing the oil, Vitor cleaned the filters with an air hose and gave the grease nipples a squirt. Sorry if this account is a bit long but I’ve got to write enough to fit in at least a couple of photos. And anyhow, there isn’t much else to report. I left my chain-saw with him for an overhaul as well. I haven’t his knack of tuning the acceleration and the choke.

Before putting the tractor away, metaphorically speaking, I went down with Olly to collect some more rocks from the fields for the walls that he is building. Our bit of Portugal is rock-strewn. You quite literally trip over them everywhere you go. Espargal hill is not made of earth with lots of rocks; it’s made of rock with patches of earth. Most farmers are only too pleased to have one remove a few rocks from the vicinity of their carob trees. Olly was kind enough to come back with me to help Jones arrange a couple of large stones in a rockery that she is extending just outside the gates – as this pleasing picture illustrates.

I made a separate trip around the other side of the hill to fetch two more rocks that Jones and I have long gazed at covetingly. (That’s not a word that I’ve ever come across before, either, but Dictionary. com assures me that it’s legit.) We pass them every morning as we dip down the hill and through the carob groves with the dogs. That’s to say, we used to. I brought them back and planted them at the base of the rockery, where they seem quite settled. (Jones refers to this process as “rock liberation”.)

The two pups, Russ and Mary, continue to give us concern with their allergic reactions to either microchip or vaccination. They went back early in the week to the vet, tugging restlessly at their leads in the small waiting room. Half an hour passed slowly, in the company of other equally restless animals. Mary is highly strung and won’t sit still for a moment. Russ caught the vibe. There was little to be done for them other than to continue with a diet of pills.

A RUBBISH BAG - WHAT FUN!

Monday afternoon we took two recently-widowed friends to lunch. I left Barbara at the table with one of them while Olive, the other, came with me to the post office and her lawyer. We returned to find the lunchers still at it – the other guest, at least. She’s a seriously slow eater. Like most Bensons, I fear, I tend to eat fast, a failing for which my wife has often had reason to upbraid me.

Thursday morning we set out on a similar mission, this time with the lawyer to visit the Financas, which require one to report the death of a tax-paying partner within 90 days. That meant an hour of hanging around and 60 seconds of signing documents. Jones and I found time to take ourselves around the corner for a welcome cup of coffee at the Gates of Heaven. Even so, matters have much improved. Some years ago, all trips to the Financas meant impossible queues and a morning or afternoon wasted. These days 90% of such business can be done online.

MAHLER

Our final task was to meet a retired British policeman who followed us to Olive’s house for a security review – given the deaths of both her husband and a large dog. We’ll hear his suggestions shortly.

The Proms are entertaining us with Mahler’s 9th, a symphony that the composer was never to hear played. I recall many years ago overhearing a conversation between my dad and a musical friend of his. Dad, like me, was a great Beethoven fan. The friend was urging him to discover Mahler. I don’t think that Dad did, and I’m not sure that we shall either. But we’re doing our best.

SUNDAY BREAKFAST AT THE CORAL

For supper we dined on a chicken that didn’t cross the road. It was one of three that we saw lying in the street in their plastic coverings as we emerged from a super- market car park.

CELSO - OUR HOST

One had already been squashed out of all recognition. I stopped the car to remove the other two – and was able to save one, leaving it on the pavement for some hungry person to take home.

Jones decided that since our household had as many hungry members as any, it might as well be her. Muttering something about “road-kill”, she leapt out of the car to retrieve the fowl. And a fine chicken it proved to be.

SUNDOWN

We enjoyed the best bits while the dogs feasted on the scraps. We suspect that the birds fell from a large truck that was turning in as we left.

As I was saying, not a great deal has happened this week. And, as I’ve said before, that’s the way we like it.

Letter from Espargal: 27 of 2011

2011-07-22T16:57:00.016+01:00

Friday afternoon: I have awoken from my siesta. Bartok’s 3rd piano concerto tinkles away on the telly (I can’t recom- mend it). Jones is occupied in the kitchen. The beasts are slumbering. The puppies have been banished to their pen in disgrace after destroying yet another pot plant. They delight in tossing out the contents and chewing up the plastic holder, an act of vandalism that both irritates and depresses my wife as she searches for the victim's remains.

Of course the weather’s hot but not as hot as that in the eastern US and Canada, which sounds truly awful.

ABOUT TO SET OUT TO LOULE FAIR

The week has wriggled along. We have water again. Paulo the plumber approved the new T-junction that Nelson and I had installed in the mains pipe, ascribing the failure of the old junction to subsidence. He advised us to lift the pipe slightly as we packed sand in beneath and around it. This I did as Jones shovelled sand into the hole. Now it remains only for one of Horacio’s workmen to pop around and replace the cobbles. Laying cobbles is one of those jobs that looks easier than it is – laying them straight and level, that is.

Paulo then discerned that the rumbling vibration that accompanied a running tap was due to a faulty water-pressure control-unit attached to the solar heaters. He promised to return with a new one later in the week, which he did, clambering up a double-ladder to get on to the roof where he squatted lotus-like on the tiles. (I am mildly envious of anybody who is able to adopt the lotus position, my own joints being located in the wrong places.) The new unit cost 26 euros and for his two visits Paulo charged us an additional 12 euros – the kind of price a London plumber extorts for answering the phone. We now enjoy vibration-free showers.

We have done our best to be good neighbours. I have three times taken Olly – he rides side-saddle on the tractor – down the hill to collect rocks for retaining walls that he is building at the bottom of his property. I sit on the tractor making light conversation while Olly heaves the rocks into the box. I find this arrangement works quite well. Then we return to the house to unload them. I lower the box and Olly removes the rocks. After the last run he led me down the steep hill below the house to show me the incipient walls, intended to prevent further wash-aways of the kind that accompanied a violent storm last winter.

Before returning home I nipped down the road to talk to Horacio, who is working on an extension to a house nearby. Horacio remains exceedingly busy in spite of the economic crisis gripping Portugal and I wanted to alert him to my hopes of installing a solar voltaic panel. I shall hear at the end of the month whether our application has been accepted by the energy authorities for this year’s quota. If so, I shall need a builder to construct the heavy concrete base required to support the panel. Horacio thought that he could fit me in. Fingers crossed!

We have also been running around once again with Russ, whose abscess failed to respond to the anti-biotics that we’re feeding him twice-daily on the vet’s instructions. (Jones has to hold Mary, aka Crocodile No. 1, while I feed Russ pill-spiked spoons of pate.) So back to the vet Russ went on Wednesday for a second opinion. The young vet concerned called in her more-experienced partner, who sedated Russ and kept him in for the day to drain the abscess.

On our return we employed one of Jones’s vests to cover the two small drains in a bid to prevent the dog from scratching them out again. Strangely, Mary has developed a small swelling in exactly the same place. Another vet, a friend of ours, thinks that both dogs are reacting either to the micro-chip or their vaccinations. On her advice, we have shaved the area and are rubbing in a hopefully helpful muti.

Before leaving the animals and arachnids theme, I can report that Jones screeched as we were folding a sheet upstairs in the study and dropped it with alacrity. (As I have said before, she’s not the screechy sort.) It emerged that Simon the Spider, who had disappeared from his perch on the ceiling, had taken up residence in the folds of the sheet instead. I could just see his hairy feet poking out.

Simon is large as well as hairy, not the sort of company that one wants in bed. I took the sheet outside and shook it over the balcony. But we’re not sure whether Simon decamped en route and is waiting in a corner for his next appearance. (Jones once awoke at the Quinta to find that the crawly feeling she had on her tummy was caused by a passing centipede, an experience from which she has not fully recovered.)

We lunched one day with a visiting former BBC colleague, Anita, who had holidayed at the Quinta. We wouldn’t have recognised her children, who as tots used to run around the garden. I hadn’t seen Anita or, for that matter, virtually any other BBC colleagues since my retirement from the corporation all of – I can’t believe it – 13 years ago. In the interim, like many of the journalists there, she too opted for redundancy and has since settled in Canada. It was interesting to compare notes. The waters flow by so fast.

Thursday we ran Olive and her daughter, Margaret, out to the airport for the latter’s return to the UK. Olive is still awaiting forms from several UK enterprises – to wind up John’s affairs. We did the round of post office and lawyer with little to report for our efforts.

We have spent long hours in spite of ourselves following the phone-hacking inquiries in the UK. Although we both felt that the whole affair had degenerated into a media feeding frenzy, we remained fascinated. It’s not every week that a scandal claims the heads of top cops and media executives as well as closing a popular newspaper and threatening to land a bunch of people in jail – Britain’s Watergate!

As one columnist complained, more attention was paid to the shaving foam that was splattered in Rupert Murdoch’s face as he testified to a parliamentary committee than to the millions of people threatened with famine in the Horn of Africa. The trouble with distant famines is that they appeal to givers’ finer feelings while a good scandal grabs you in the gut. There’s no drama like watching the mighty hanging on by their finger tips and then toppling into the void as the odds mount inexorably against them.

I am making my way through a book, War Games by Linda Polman, on the dispersal of aid to refugees, mainly in Africa – with the inevitable militia rackets, wasteful do-gooder schemes, publicity stunts and inter-agency rivalries. It makes for depressing reading. There seems to be no mission, no matter how lofty or well-intended, that doesn’t fall prey to the baser instincts of human nature or that isn’t exploited by villains for their own ends. I guess ‘twas ever thus.

Let me end with this fascinating picture of a companionable warthog that has taken to bedding down on cold nights in a bar in a Zimbabwean game park. I cannot vouch for the story but the picture speaks for itself. According to the report, the barman hands the animal the pillow on arrival. If he’s absent, it merely fetches the pillow from a couch itself. Why not?

Letter from Espargal: 26 of 2011

2011-07-16T00:03:00.014+01:00

FRIDAY EVENING. The sun is going down on a hot week in a western sky slashed pink and grey. Turn around and there’s a luminous orange moon rising regally over the eastern hills. Accompanying this glorious spectacle is the opening night of the BBC Proms which, excepting an instantly forgettable opening premiere, it is proving delightful.

What more could one ask, you might think. Well, one could wish for the instant elimination of the junior “musical” group from Lisbon that has rented our neighbour’s property for the fortnight. Their horrendous amplified racket penetrates the thickest walls, rending the air day and night with thumps, bangs, howls and wails. Our tolerance and, I suspect, that of other neighbours has been tested to the limit. As I write, Jones and I are both wearing headphones with the sound turned right up in a bid to drown them out.

I suspect that hell is a bit like that – no flames and trident-wielding fiends – just beautiful things that are irredeemably polluted, a suggestion of what might have been had the serpent not had his devious way in the Garden of Eden.

Anyhow, putting aside the next world for the moment, most of today has gone into assisting Olive with matters arising from her husband’s death in this one. We fetched her and her daughter, newly arrived for the UK, for a round that began at Almancil post office and continued via the bank and the undertaker to lunch at the local and a host of Skype phone calls from our house in the afternoon. Later we dropped in on her lawyer to request an authorised English translation of the death certificate – as required by institutions in the UK. We’re nearly there.

SATURDAY MORNING

We got home to find that a wet patch on the cobbles beside the house was getting steadily wetter, despite the hot sun and roasting temperatures. A check at the pump-house revealed a racing water meter. I’ve turned the water off and phoned the plumber. With luck he’ll be here in the morning, along with an occasional worker who has agreed to dig up the cobbles to expose the pipe. Digging things up, like lifting things up, is regrettably anathema to my back.

(SATURDAY MORNING: Nelson and I found a faulty connection which, after a trip to the hardware store, we replaced with a new one. It's not leaking....yet! I await the plumber's inspection and approval of our work.)

If I haven’t been digging things up, I have at least been putting them up. That’s to say I have been raising fences. The reason for this is that Mary, resenting the restrictions of the puppy pen, has been leaping the fence, leaving brother, Russ, peering dolefully through the wire.

PUPPY DAMAGE

I should explain that while the pups are free to roam around the garden most of the day, we put them in the pen overnight and when we go out. Otherwise they either get into the house, where they raise hell, or out of the gates as we leave or return. While the pen is spacious, with numerous shady spots and ample shelter, it’s still a pen. And Mary, spotting large rocks either side of the fence, made a bid for freedom by standing on one rock and launching herself over to the other.

So I spent an afternoon raising the fence and blocking access to the launch site, standing back when I was finished to admire my handiwork with that “job well done” feeling. Then I returned the pups to the pen. Mary paused only long enough to consume the biscuit bribes (required to entice her in) before, as our backs were turned, making her exit once again.

To our astonishment, she was still getting on to the launch rock and simply jumping that much higher. So I spent a second afternoon raising the fence once again – this time a full meter. So far, so good.

One morning we found the dogs barking loudly in the old pig pen at a yellow green snake. I called them off. Jones peered at it from the safety of the track and opined that it was just a sloughed off skin. We shall never know because when I went to look later in the day it had gone. Another two-meter specimen that was being disturbed by the dogs shot up a tree in the twinkling of an eye. I was most impressed at its speed and agility. Even though the tree was small, I couldn’t spot the snake in the branches. Not that I looked too closely.

NO SNAKE PICS BUT HERE'S OUR SPIDER

On Wednesday afternoon Desi came to clean in the place of the absent Natasha. Desi is Dutch, 30ish, shapely and attractive. Also she drives a substantial Nissan 4x4. That’s as much as I can tell you about her. She’ll be standing in for Natasha until the end of August.

Also on Wednesday we took Russ to the vet as he had developed a large lump on his shoulder. The vet identified it as an abscess and prescribed antibiotics. The usual suspects, Ono and Prickles came along for the ride. The latter refused absolutely to approach within 50 metres of the veterinary surgery, clearly remembering the unpleasant things that he had suffered there a week earlier. Prickles compensates for such cowardice by hurling vociferous abuse at passing dogs from the safety of the car.

Wednesday night we went with friends to The Lemon Tree restaurant in Almancil to celebrate Jones’s birthday and that of another neighbour. The venue was a cut above the local, the sort of place for a special night out, and all agreed that it was a fine meal.

I was recounting to Pauline, the other birthday celebrant, that while I led an enviably relaxed conscious life, in my unconscious I frequently found myself back in the monks and trying to get out. Pauline helpfully responded that I must have unresolved issues – although she didn’t say how one set about resolving them. Blow me down; the very same night I dreamed that I was being recruited into the monks once again – and was saved only because no road could be found on the map to the monastery from wherever I was. I wish I could get the monks out of my system.

If it’s not the monks, it’s the BBC, where - with a bulletin looming - I can never find a desk to sit at or a computer to work on. This situation, ironically, applies in real life to many of my former colleagues at the World Service, scores of whom are being made redundant because of the cuts to the corporation’s income. How very scary that must be! I’m ever so grateful to have worked there in the good times.

Letter from Espargal: 25 of 2011

2011-07-08T23:20:00.023+01:00

We have done a lot of partying and said farewell to our guests – in that order. I have become an authority on what to do if you die in Portugal. And I’ve nearly finished learning about the seven solar nuclear processes involved in the formation of elements. I knew that we were children of the stars but not we got to be that way.

AT THE STATION

As ever, it’s hard to know where to start; maybe with the farewells. These went off okay given the difficulty of getting 5 people to the railway station and 5 more to the airport on time on Thursday morning. The expression “like herding cats” came several times to mind.

NANCY, JANE & THEIR MUM
Don’t misunderstand me; everybody was lovely and the kids – pre-teens - were uncomplicated, caring and affectionate. It was just that each person had a slightly different agenda: a question, a conversation, a missing item, retrieving a garment from a suitcase – and Chris danced around trying to get the show on the road on time which, to his credit, he did.

We set off in convoy from the superb little house 5 minutes away that the visitors had rented for the week. That was Jones, the dogs and I in car 1, Chris & greater family in car 2 and the cousins in car 3 -first to the petrol station to top up, then to Loule station where half the party was catching the train to Lisbon, en route to Paris and Johannesburg (time there for pictures and a few tears) and finally to the airport.

The airport was chaotic – both very busy and in the process of radical remodelling – an unfortunate combination. I directed Chris and Jane, who were following me in the hire cars, around to the rental park, only to find that the entrance had been blocked off as part of the reorganisation.

RE-ROUTING WARNINGS INSIDE THE TERMINAL

With time running short, the poor things had to re-circle the airport to find the way in – along with a lot of other bemused and frustrated souls. Anyhow, they made it in good time for last hugs and squeezes before vanishing off through security, on their way to join family in the UK for a week prior to their return to Canada.

Although both families had to travel near halfway around the world to meet in Portugal, there was no doubting the success of their efforts. They jelled instantly, both the adults and the young cousins, and had the most wonderful time together. It was a pleasure to join them in various activities, including several hides and seeks with the dogs. They’ll not soon forget their summer holiday, nor the pools, beaches, waterparks, go-karts and suppers out that made it so special.

Their South African origins were revealed by an anxious question one evening: they’d omitted to lock their hire car, which was parked inside our gates; would it be safe, the questioner wondered? We hardly ever lock anything, I assured her - one of the benefits of living with 6 dogs in a tiny Portuguese village at the further reaches of a dead end. Not that life in these parts is crime-free; several people in the lower reaches of the village have been the victims of thefts and burglaries.

My thoughts, like our visitors, have been much abroad for our family, like theirs, finds itself scattered across countries and continents. My Canadian brother and his wife have just taken delivery of their dream motorhome. Although they’re experienced motor-homers, they’ve spent the week under intensive instruction on the RV’s many systems.

What a difference from the little caravan they used to tow around behind a 1600cc Ford. These last several years they have become snowbirds, fleeing the bitter Canadian winters to roost in sunny California. Judging by the pictures, they won’t have to make too many sacrifices en route.

My sister, Cathy, is newly returned to Berlin from South Africa, where she attended a memorial service for Iris (Mum’s sister and the last of our aunts) and caught up with our extended South African family. I have just read her fascinating account of the visit, with its unsettling details of small-town cremations and the desirability of encasing the coffins of loved ones in concrete to prevent grave-robbers from digging them up for resale (minus the corpse). (My sister chides me for making no mention of the happy family reunions and the wonderful encounters with wildlife on game farms.)

Much of my time has been taken up assisting Olive, one of our old friends, with the bureaucracy entailed upon the death of her husband John. One has to meet both Portuguese requirements and those of the British institutions that inevitably become involved in the follow up. To register the death in the UK, the British Consul in Portugal helpfully invites relatives of the deceased to complete forms (available online) and to forward these with the associated fees to the government. Gone are the days when you can simply die and get away with it.

This unpleasant business of death was a subject Jonesy once raised with the friendly shepherd who used to graze his flock on the hills around the Quintassential. The lambs would gambol merrily as the ewes concentrated on feeding themselves. “How can you bear to sell these lovely creatures to the butcher?” asked my wife. “Why!” he replied with surprise, “they are born to die”. It’s a line I have often reflected upon.

On Friday we went to a memorial lunch for our friend and Quintassential neighbour, Joyce Shubrook, meeting again many of the people who, in happier times, had helped celebrate the diamond jubilee of her marriage to Tom. “Say when,” I instructed Tom on that occasion as I filled his glass with cognac. “When it covers the ice,” he replied, ignoring his wife’s disapproving eye.

En route to the lunch we stopped at the home of a friend who has recently had a solar voltaic module installed. This is a biggish panel of arrays that costs some 20,000 euros and follows the sun around the sky to feed energy into the Portuguese national grid.

I’m interested in following suit. During our recent travels through Spain and Portugal, we saw vast farms of these arrays – along with armies of wind turbines. I’m all in favour. It makes so much more sense to harvest the sun and the wind than to burn fossil fuels or rig up nuclear power stations.

Oh, and that book, if you were interested, is: The Magic Furnace by Marcus Chown, subtitled The Search for the Origin of Atoms. The bottom line is that we really oughtn’t to be here at all, so complex and unlikely are the inter-related laws of physics that have led to the kind of universe we inhabit. You probably knew that anyhow.

Letter from Espargal: 24 of 2011

2011-07-02T20:23:00.021+01:00

JONES DAWN

Friday morning: Choppy waters! It hasn’t been the best of weeks. Still, it’s had its moments. On the bright side Chris Jones and family flew in from Vancouver – via Gatwick - last Saturday afternoon pretty much on time if pooped by the journey. It’s a long flight across Canada and the Atlantic, and longer still with children on a budget airline. Some warm hospitality and a night’s sleep restored their spirits, Marie’s pool refreshed them and the dogs quickly adopted them as part of the family.

ON THE ROCKS

Chris is Barbara’s nephew. He and his wife, Jane, emigrated from South Africa to Canada several years ago; their children are Luke (10) and David (4). With luck I’ll post on the blog some of the photographs that Chris and Jane have been taking.

The family keenly anticipated the arrival from Johannesburg last Tuesday of Jane’s sister, Nancy, and party – three adults and three children – for most of whom we had booked a holiday villa close by.

JANE, NANCY & THEIR MUM

Nancy works for an airline, which was due to fly the group into Lisbon early Tuesday morning via its European hub. After much head-scratching - this is the holiday season and the trains are crowded - we made rail reservations for the final leg from Lisbon to Loule. We knew that the party would have to scramble from plane to train. But we reckoned that if we met them at the airport, we could get them into taxis and 10 minutes down the road to Oriente Station. They’d let us know that they were travelling with cabin baggage only.

PETER WITH SISTER, JANE

Enter Robert Burns with his lines on “the best-laid schemes”. The airline cancelled its overnight flight to its European hub. Nancy phoned to say they’d be arriving a day late. I called Portuguese Rail; “you can exchange the rail tickets,” a nice lady said, but you can do so only once. Back we went to Loule station.

BJ WITH KIDS

Wednesday morning at sparrows, after a restless night, Jones and I set out for Lisbon, Ono and Prickles on the back seat as ever. It’s easy driving on the magnificent toll road that links the Algarve to the capital. We were about half way there when we had a text message from Nancy: their connecting flight to Lisbon was also delayed “for (dubious) technical reasons”.

RELAXING IN LOULE

Let me keep this short. The delay was about three hours. The visitors missed their train. But we thought they might make the afternoon train instead. I waited at the airport; Jones waited at the station booking office, ready to purchase new tickets the moment I sent word.

TB WITH THE KIDS

At last, the group came through into the concourse. We hastened to the taxi rank, where the queue moved with snail-like indifference to our impatience. I exchanged anxious texts with my wife. Our train leaves in 15 minutes, I told our taxi driver. He had us at the station in five. Jonesy was at the entrance, clutching the tickets. Up the escalators we went, two levels to the main line. With some satisfaction and relief, we bundled the visitors into their railway carriage. Then we drove ourselves home.

Am I making too much of such a mini-drama? Well, it took up a lot of emotional space. I should conclude by saying that Chris and Olly met the travellers at Loule station and brought them back for a glorious reunion. They are now as happy as clams in their holiday house, the cousins revelling in one another’s company and the pool as much as the adults. The weather continues torrid; temperatures have been in the mid-30s all week.

Still on the bright side, I have my smartphone back. Its vital organs have undergone a total transplant. It was obviously in a bad way. Happily, the phone was still under guarantee and the repair has cost me nought. What a pleasure it is to have it at my finger tips again instead of wrestling with primitive 20th century technology.

Having said that, the week brought more than its fair share of unwelcome news. Cathy has flown from Berlin to South Africa for the memorial service for our last surviving aunt, Mum’s sister, Iris, on whose farm north of Pretoria we enjoyed many happy holidays as children.

JOYCE, AS WE REMEMBER HER, WITH TOM

Closer to home, one of our first neighbours in Portugal, Joyce Shubrook, has died, several days after suffering a stroke in the wake of a heart attack. Joyce and her husband, Tom, really introduced us to life in the Algarve when we bought the Quintassential back in 1987. For decades they had been the mainstay of the local branch of the expat association.

JOHN IN HAPPIER DAYS

Another old friend and neighbour, John Vincent, who has been in poor health for some time, is being admitted to a nursing home near Loule. He and his wife, Olive, had been hoping to sell their home near Almancil and return to the UK, where their families live. Given the current state of the market, they would be very lucky to do so.

The pleasure of entertaining our visitors has been dulled by these unsettling events.

GRANNY WITH DAVID AT ZOOMARINE

Saturday morning: We joined the gang for supper at the Hamburgo last night. They had spent the day at the Zoomarine park and were in great form as they showed us their pictures and related their adventures.

JANE DUSK OVER ESPARGAL

Towards the end of the meal, I had a call from Olive. She said the doctor had just phoned to say that John had died. It was a mercy but not a surprise. He had gone downhill rapidly, as was evident when we visited him at the nursing home yesterday. We will assist Olive with the funeral arrangements today. Rest in Peace Iris, Joyce and John.

Letter from Espargal: 23 of 2011

2011-06-25T10:06:00.006+01:00

Mainly this week I have perspired and swatted vexatious insects. These pursuits, judging by the weather forecast, will continue to be my main activities for the foreseeable. Jones says that I wouldn’t feel so hot if I didn’t think about it.

Well, it’s hard not to think of being hot when there’s a stream of perspiration running into your eyes and down your neck. As it happens, I can tell how hot it is by the number of pit-stops I make on our morning walk. In high summer I can complete our circuit with nary a pause. In winter, hardly a bush is spared.

This week we have stuck to a shorter circuit on the advice of the vet who snipped the two pups last Monday. To our great relief, he used a new micro-surgical technique on Mary, eliminating the need for the miserable lampshade collar that prevents pets post-op from getting at the wound. The following day she was understandably subdued but by Wednesday she was full of beans once again.

Russ, beyond a brief loss of appetite, hardly seemed to notice the small incision he suffered. While they were under anaesthetic, both pups were micro-chipped, as is now required by law.

Also Monday, we went into Faro to hand in my ailing smart-phone to the repair shop. “About ten days” said the young man who noted down its symptoms. In the meanwhile, having lent out my spare mobile, I am reduced to using the bare-bones guest phone.

This is Nokia’s starter model, not that any status-conscious child would be seen dead with it. The phone costs the same as a replacement battery, which tells you something. Using it feels like going back to the horse and cart. The predictive dictionary offers the user bursts of a mandarin-like gobbledegook that suggest the origins of the phone itself.

Tuesday we went to the notary to complete our purchase of the ruin on the adjacent land that we acquired earlier this year. All went well until our lawyer asked me for the print-outs of the tax payments that must be made before a property can be sold. Details of the payments have to be noted on the deed.

I had to confess ruefully that I hadn’t brought them. Fortunately for me, I’d made the payments online and was able to use the secretary’s computer to access my bank account and print off the references. Even so, I’m still kicking myself.

Wednesday is Russian day. Natalia comes for 90 minutes of English and Natasha (a name that is actually the familiar form of “Natalia”) comes to clean. I fetch the latter from the bus in Benafim. If truth be told, she would rather be driving herself in her newly-acquired Nissan Almera but the car is playing up.

At the end of the afternoon I took her around to a workshop near Loule to see if the problem had been fixed. It hadn't. The replacement part that the garage had installed hadn’t done the trick, she learned, and another part would be necessary. All that’s clear to Natasha is that car ownership is proving more expensive than she anticipated. We could have told her that.

From the workshop we proceeded to the house of elderly friends of ours for whom Natasha cleans. Her duties include tending the pool, which needed to be emptied before her other half, Slavic, arrived to scrub it down the following day. While Natasha was familiar with the filtering and back-washing procedures, she’d never emptied the pool – nor were there instructions on how to do so. Having looked after our pool at the Quinta, I was able to set things up for Slavic.

Jones, as well as tending her ever-demanding garden, has been preparing for the arrival of her nephew and family this weekend, as well as extended family early next week. One of her tasks has been to clean the Bijou Ensuite. On removing a drawer, she came across such a tribe of long-legged spiders as never you have seen before, dozens and dozens of them. Jones is not a squealer but for once in her life she squealed.

Let me pause to tell you that while I merely vacuum up an unwanted arachnid, Jones traps the creature under a glass and frees it outside. With a nest of disturbed spiders, all fleeing every which way, such a tender approach is not feasible. She was reduced, much against her instincts, to vacuuming them up as hard as she could go – although, having sucked them all into the vacuum cleaner, she took the appliance outside and removed the bag; thereupon, the spiders poured out again like souls freed from hell. It was astonishing to watch.

My part in the Bijou Ensuite preparations was to install certain objects in the bathroom. We’d bought the necessary at a hardware store the previous week but they’d disappeared without trace. In vain we searched high and low. Jones then recalled that I’d nipped into a phone store while carrying the purchases to the car. Back I went to inquire - all of a week later. The lass behind the desk was pleased to return the objects, which I have since fastened into place.

I am summoned downstairs for final guest preparations. The cobbles must be swept and boys' beds made. (I sure hope the dogs don't mind the guests sharing their patio.) Then the floor tiles must be vacuumed and mopped. The whole place has to gleam. It's a good thing I'm not in charge of the welcome desk.

Letter from Espargal: 22 of 2011

2011-06-19T13:42:00.007+01:00

Until Saturday evening the week was going okay; nothing to rave about but we were making progress and had won back a few of the euros we'd bet on the lottery. The garden was being licked into shape. The exuberant crop of weeds in the fields was ploughed under. The pups were starting to respond to our commands - just little things but satisfying none the less.

Saturday evening we had committed ourselves to go the Senior University annual bash. This usually takes place at a posh hotel on the coast; the setting is celeb and the food is really special. This year, however, it was held in the Santa Barbara Centre of Well-being, not an institution with which we were familiar. I spent at half an hour trying to locate it on the internet and another 10 minutes keying the (wrong) address into the satnav.

We found it eventually - after touring much of the Algarve and squeezing into (and out of) a crowded parking lot for what turned out to be a different event. The Centre of Well-being was not the posh hotel. The effects of the economic crisis were all too clear – we felt like Business Class passengers who’d been ushered to the back of the plane.

The hall was noisy, with dreadful acoustics. An amplified fado singer boomed and echoed off the walls. We couldn’t understand a word of the echoey peroration from the guest speaker. The university boss, who’s suffered a stroke, struggled to grasp his notes and speak into the mic – poor man. Jones found herself seated beside an elderly woman who was suffering from dementia.

Queues for the food stretched halfway round the hall. My plate got whipped away so I shared one with Jones. Nobody seemed to notice. A woman who’d drunk too much lurched about and tittered at everything.

When the choir assembled on the stage for some folk music, I tried to video them with my smartphone. This was a mistake. The phone, which has been playing up, promptly entered a vicious circle of reboots. No amount of soft resetting restored it to life. Nor on our return were my subsequent efforts with a hard (factory) reset of any avail. It has to go to the phone doctor first thing on Monday – after we’ve dropped the pups at the vet to be snipped, that is.

Fortunately, I have all the information backed up on computer. But I have to hook the phone up to the computer to access the information - and the phone isn’t working. The pictures I hoped to put up on the blog got wiped during the hard reset. (Hence the plethora of Jonesy sky pics!) So I wasn’t a happy punter when I got to bed at 3 a.m.

When my technology fails I find myself ill at ease, as if in the presence of a sickly friend. Although these events were relatively trivial, they took up a lot of emotional space. I’ve spent Sunday morning keying names and numbers into the guest phone.

The rest of the week just spattered along. Each morning starts with a stiff hour-long hike down the hill with the dogs – 6 of them - and back up the other side. It’s steep, sweaty, rough and rocky – hard work with an impatient dog on the lead. We arrive back as if from a route march. I immediately change my soaked vest and shirt for the previous day’s, which have since dried on the line. (The weather’s been hot and is set to get hotter.)

Each morning, around 02.30, Pricks comes inside – we leave the back door ajar - and starts squeaking beside our bed because the cat is occupying his favourite chair. There’s nothing to be done but to clamber out of bed and turf the cat out so that Pricks can get a good night's rest. We must be mad!

Jones is trying to get the place ready for the arrival this coming weekend of her nephew and family from Canada. They’re to be joined a few days later by 6 relatives from South Africa, who’ll be staying nearby. We’ve been organising accommodation and transport and, of course, the notarised invitations that EU states insist on before allowing SA passport holders to visit.

BRIDGE OVER UNTROUBLED WATERS

I’ve been talking to our lawyer in preparation for the purchase of half a ruin in a couple of days’ time. The rubble – that’s all there is – is located in the property that we acquired a few months ago but it has separate title. Its acquisition should bring our land-grab to an end. Apart from anything else, we’re starting to feel quite poor. (Not too poor to make several sociable visits to the Coral to catch up with neighbours.)

Much of my time has been spent on the tractor, trying to subdue the weeds that ran amok in our absence. Although only one of our several acres is really arable, it’s divided among several steep, rocky and tree-dotted plots. Scarifying is hard work – and quite scary at times. While I was at it, I cleaned up a couple of neighbours’ fields – yours was overdue, Sarah and David, as we’ve long-since consumed your generous jam offering.

The best bit of this tractoring is the swooping of the swallows (swifts, martins?) around the tractor in pursuit of the insects that are disturbed. The birds arrive as if on cue. Their ethereal elegance and agility are beyond my powers of description. I have the sense that a flight of angels is whirling around my head. Not that I get too distracted lest the low branches of the almond & carob trees take it right off.

Letter from Espargal: 21 of 2011

2011-06-10T15:28:00.022+01:00

We’re home from the sea. The dogs have given us a licking-good welcome. The cats have returned from the hiding places they take up during our absences. Our house sitters have gone. So too has the rain that fell in generous quantities during their stay.

Jones has been catching up with the neighbours as well as cutting back and watering the garden. I’ve been strimming every blade of grass in sight – more thistles and dandelions, actually, than grass. Our suitcases are back up in the roomy bedroom cupboards. We’ve been through the post and caught up with correspondence. The amazing cruise is just a memory.

But since I have very little else to write about, let me finish my account of that cruise with the “Behind the scenes” ship’s tour that we took on our final day at sea. It lasted well over two hours.

First came an introduction by the “hotel director”, a senior officer who was responsible for 800 of the 950 crew on board. As he pointed out, a cruise boat is really just a travelling hotel and it has to provide all the same facilities. Most important of these, arguably, are the extensive kitchens.

The head chef, who hailed from the Caribbean, conducted us around them, explaining how everything worked. With two thousand passengers (and, of course, nearly a thousand crew) to feed each day, they don’t stop. Food is available somewhere on the ship night and day. Jones and I thought that the meals were very good, with a wide choice of dishes, although we confined ourselves to the buffet restaurant.

The downside was the loud pop-music that boomed out relentlessly from numerous ceiling speakers and, on busy days, the difficulty of finding a table. Whenever conditions allowed, we’d eat out on the open rear deck instead. The liner also had two large “sit down” restaurants and half a dozen (entrance fee) speciality restaurants.

I have to say that the kitchens gleamed. They’re stainless steel throughout on tiled floors. The chef said that on the last inspection, the ship had been penalised one point out of 100 – because some of the kitchen tiles were cracked. Even so, 99% isn’t a bad pass.

Then down to the 3rd deck, where most of the crew live and work. A wide corridor known as Route 95 runs the length of the ship. This deck is also the location of the vast storerooms that hold the ship’s supplies. The ship stocks up once every nine days during the passenger “turn around” in Copenhagen.

Still on the 3rd deck is the ship’s laundry which, like much of the ship, works in shifts to cope with the load.

Apart from bedclothes and passengers’ personal belongings, the laundry deals with up to six thousand linen table napkins a day. We watched in fascination as great machines gobbled up wet napkins and spat them out, dry and ironed, a few seconds later.

Back upstairs then, for a backstage walk-through of the ship’s 800-seat theatre. The only fascinating bit of that, for me, was to observe the magician’s doves and rabbit resting peacefully in their cages.

His cat and his (very large green) snake, we learned, lived with him and his wife in their cabin. Their act was easily for us the highlight of the entertainment, most of which tended to be animated song and dance routines. The ship's orchestra and various musicians did their thing in the numerous bars and lounges, where passengers were encouraged to buy drinks at painfully high prices.

The highlight of the tour was undoubted the visit to the bridge. We were most impressed that the captain, a Norwegian, gave up 15 minutes of his time to explain just how things worked. The ship had adopted an aircraft style cockpit, housing two officers and a range of instruments. A third officer was on watch at the windows.

The Baltic, as we learned, is very shallow. Cruise liners follow carefully plotted and marked channels and even these leave big ships with little to spare. Ours drew 8 metres and the channel we were following at the time in what seemed like the middle of the ocean was barely 18 metres deep.

To the side of the bridge, a desk held a variety of computerised equipment that the skipper could use independently of the cockpit. A shipping ID system enabled him to click on any of the dots on a screen representing other ships and immediately to obtain all the details of their name, home port, cargo, destination and itinerary.

The top toy was a handle that controlled the ship’s propellors, rudder and thrusters. When docking or departing, the skipper had only to point this handle in the desired direction and the computer did the rest. Little wonder that he seemed to berth his 80,000 tonner more easily than we moored our houseboat on the Alqueva Dam.

Saturday morning we arrived back in Copenhagen shortly after dawn. We tied up at the edge of a container port, much to Jones’s annoyance, for she was determined not to pay for either a taxi or the coaches that had been laid on. In the event, a commuter bus dropped us at the harbour gates and we had the choice of a train or bus into town.

The rest of the day we wandered around. Copenhagen has much to offer although we were disappointed by the state of some pavements, littered with cigarette butts, papers and broken glass. Those Danes are not as clean living as you might suppose.

Sunday we flew home. Our suitcases were first off the carousel. The Ferretts were waiting for us in the terminal. The rest you know.

Letter from Stockholm

2011-06-03T15:15:00.014+01:00

Thursday 2 June: Stockholm is our final port of call but there’s no room for us in the harbour. We anchor offshore at the port of Nynashamn. Buses are to take us 45 minutes up the highway to Stockholm itself. The ship’s tenders are lowered to take passengers ashore. Jonesy takes photos of the action.

It’s quite dramatic watching the tenders being swung out from the deck and lowered 100 feet into the water. We make our way down to the 3rd deck with hundreds of other passengers. The sea is choppy and one has to board the tender with care.

It’s a catamaran capable of taking well over 100 people. The boat’s nose goes up as the pilot opens the throttles. The twin propellors pack a punch. Passengers disembark at the floating dock and make their way up to the coach park.

We have booked a “highlights” tour of Stockholm. Our coach has broken down, we learn. A replacement is on its way. It arrives and we set off. I snooze most of the way. In Stockholm an elderly guide joins the coach. She is enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Not a building escapes her attention.

We stop on a hill for a view of the city and the main harbour. Stockholm is truly beautiful, a city of islands, bays and bridges. For two hours the coach takes us on a tour of the city, past the buildings of state and government, past parks, across bridges, through the suburbs. We are shown some mega-expensive apartments, one of which belongs to Bjorn Borg. Everwhere, boats are tied up in little bays and inlets.

I am disappointed that there’s no opportunity to get off and wander around. It’s my own fault. I booked the wrong tour.

Back to the hotel to drop the guide and a chance for a welcome beer. I have to change euros for Swedish crowns at the desk. Then it’s back down the highway to Nynashamn again.

NYNASHAMN COACH PARK

Jones and I decide that another visit to Stockholm is a must. We have three hours before we must rejoin the ship. We wander up the road for a look at the little town. As in Stockholm, there are great outcrops of granite to be seen on all sides. It’s a public holiday, Ascension Thursday, and the place is fast asleep.

An old lady is taking her cat for a walk. There’s a little more action at the port where a ferry is loading. I need a pee and Jones has forbidden me from using the bushes. So it’s back to the coach park. We chat to the young women running the visitors’ shop. Their English is good. Jones chooses a few souvenirs. I get another t-shirt.

Back on to the tender for a choppy ride back to the ship and some welcome late afternoon tea (i.e. a pint of Boddington’s ale). More pictures as the tenders are hauled back on board. The operation is swift and practised. We’re impressed.

After supper, we make our way to the 12th deck observation lounge for a malt whisky (our first) and some reflective conversation. Our voyage is nearly over. We have Friday at sea. We have booked a "behind the scenes" tour of the ship, including a visit to the bridge.

Saturday morning early we dock In Copenhagen. Sunday we fly home.

Letter from Helsinki

2011-06-03T14:48:00.017+01:00

Wednesday 1 June: It’s another beautiful day. We slide gently into our berth in Helsinki. Other cruise ships are already tied up. We haven’t booked a tour and are not in a rush. First we take a leisurely breakfast on deck. The choice of food in the buffet restaurant is excellent.

Then downstairs to Deck 3 where we are checked out of the ship by the crew, who slide our ID cards through a reader. The Hop-on Hop-off buses are waiting. We hop on. Upstairs, in the open top bus, the commentary is hard to hear and out of sync.

The bus takes us on a tour of the city. Helsinki is bigger than we expect, home to half a million people plus. We love the leafy parks. Some of the locals have found themselves grassy spots to celebrate the sunshine.

We hop off again and make our way to the modern art gallery. The exhibition is a temporary one, not of Finnish art as we expect, but of African art. Jonesy likes the South African artists best.

A few blocks further we visit a church hewn out of rock. The walls are rough red granite. Only the roof protrudes.

The dome is supported by a ring of curved beams. The interior is truly beautiful. Everwhere, tourists are taking pictures, as we are ourselves. We resent their chatter.

Then back on foot through the city centre to the open air market. Jonesy stops at a stall where a woman is selling one-off items of jewellery and designer table wear, made from titanium, steel and aluminium.

The stall holder is pleased to tell us about her craft. She's not at all pushy. We buy a pendant from her. It’s very unusual and most attractive.

Nearby, the city hall has an exhibition of 1930’s pictures. We are taken by a remarkable work of art - a chain-work of giant, linked fingers.

It sits on top of one mirror and below another, creating an illusion of huge depth. Jones tries to take pictures from several angles.

We decide to walk the two miles back to the ship. All the signs are both in Swedish, which we can make out, and Finnish, which is a mystery to us. The shoreline is edged with parks, rocky beaches and marinas. The marinas sit partly within natural walls of large boulders. This place is simply made for boats.

Around us the people of Helsinki are walking their babes and their dogs, sunbathing on the grass or the sands, talking in a language of which we understand nothing.

We feel very much at ease. We stop for refreshments at a kiosk whose owner speaks excellent English. She was born in the US, she confesses. Jones is anxious that we're heading in the right direction. It's ok. We can see the ship in the distance.

When we get back to the ship I reward myself with two cans of Boddingtons’ ale from the Sports Bar. At 1730 the engines rumble, the side thrusters whirr into action, the water churns beneath us and we head slowly out towards our final port of call, Stockholm.

Letter from Russia

2011-06-01T22:09:00.021+01:00

Monday 30:
We berth in St Petersburg, the highpoint of our voyage, the only city where we stay for two days. As we quickly discover, the city simply overwhelms one. A potted history: The population is 4.5 million people.

MAIN SQUARE - SNATCHED FROM BUS
The city was established in 1703 by Peter the Great on marshy land. He was a great admirer of things European and hoped vainly to institute a system of canals like those of Venice. Many buildings are slipping slowly into the marsh.

Like Copenhagen and Helsinki, it’s a key port embracing dozens of interlinked islands. The climate isn’t great. St Petersburg enjoys only some 60 sunny days a year and we had two of them.

The first day starts out bright and early in the ship’s theatre; we are sorted into groups. Thence to the terminal building where we join the queue of passengers waiting to be processed. Russian immigration officials scrutinise our landing cards and passports. We're through. To the fleet of buses. Ours is number 16.

Awaiting us are Nadya and Julia, our guides, both 30-something, slim and unsmiling. But like Irina and Tatiana the following day they prove to be very good at their jobs and we warm to them. They lead us around like mother hens, waving numbered flags above their heads. The main attractions in St Petersburg are huge and so is the number of their visitors. So it’s very easy to get lost. The guides wear neck-mics and issue their groups with earphones, which helps.

Our immediate destination is Peterhof, the summer palace of the tsars, situated on the bay - about an hour’s drive. After a "comfort stop" at a souvenir shop (all such stops take place at souvenir shops), we arrive. Peterhof is stunning, utterly overwhelming in scale and its sheer glittering gold-leafed, magnificence.

To protect the extensive parquet floors, laid out in exquisite patterns, we are issued with elasticised over-shoes. For over an hour, we follow Julia through the great halls, corridors and reception rooms of the palace. The building was intended to awe the tsar’s visitors and it awes us. No luxury was spared. The palace suffered during three years of Nazi occupation. Of the damage no sign remains. Refurbishment and restoration continue unceasingly.

After lunch, we make our way past the multiple gilded statues and gravity-fed fountains to the far end of the gardens, where a hydrofoil awaits us. We zip back to the city for a visit to the fortified island at the heart of St Petersburg.

Within its walls stands the historic church of St Peter and St Paul, golden domed like all churches. Inside are the tombs in white Carrara marble of the later tsars, including the unfortunate Nicholas II and his family.

We are led into a small chapel to hear a stunning rendition of Russian a capella singing by a small choir intent on raising money for a new stained glass window. The CDs are expensive but we buy one anyhow. Their harmonies are perfect. Their bass singer hits low notes that I last heard from Paul Robeson.

Back at the dock, the immigration officials check us back in just as carefully as they earlier let us through. This is Russia. Elsewhere, a cursory glance at the ship’s ID-key card, issued to all passengers, has sufficed.

Tuesday 31:
We are on an afternoon visit to The Hermitage Museum, the home of St Petersburg’s art collection. Irina and Tatiana prove just as accomplished as their colleagues the previous day. Once again, the visitor is overwhelmed.

The collection was begun in the then Tsars’ Winter Palace by Catherine the Great for her own private purposes. As it grew, so did the need for more space. After the communist revolution, all private collections were nationalised. This great hoard is now housed in five buildings, including the Winter Palace, all interconnected in a vast complex. We follow Tatiana through an endless series of rooms, upstairs and down.

The Hermitage (so called because Catherine, a French-speaker, liked to think of herself as a hermit, alone with her collection) holds three million objects; only 10% of them are on public view. New buildings are planned to exhibit more of them. Once again, the scale and magnificence of the palace leaves one bereft of words.

The highlight of the tour for many visitors is the carefully guarded “gold room”, the storehouse of hundreds of solid gold artifacts, most obtained from burial mounds across a sweep of Europe and Asia. Tatiana translates the detailed account given to us by an elderly expert.

Finally we are whirled through hall after hall of old and recent Masters. Tatiana points out the two or three most important paintings of each artist and gives us a few seconds to take in another score or so. The tour is designed to give one just a taste of what The Hermitage holds. To get to know its contents would take years.

We sail out of St Petersburg on the most beautiful of summer evenings. (Sunset is after 11 pm) Jones and I join hundreds of other passengers on the ship’s extensive decks. The first 90 minutes of our passage is across a shallow, narrow bay, along a channel.

KOTLIN ISLAND

Then we slow down to pass through massive sea-gates beside the island of Kotlin. On both sides of us, great causeways run a total of 25 kilometres to the mainland. This is a huge flood barrier, intended to prevent storm surges from inundating St Petersburg, a city often flooded in the past.