If you were to step outside Valapena this weekend you would find the air suffused with the scent of lavender. That’s because Jones has been cutting back her thriving lavender bushes and I have been shredding the off-cuts. They’ve created new crests on the mountain of mulch that is rising across the track from Casa Nada and they smell wonderful.
Even without the lavender, there’s a delicious change-of-season feel to the air. The haze of summer has blown away and we’ve some welcome clouds instead. Temps are down into the 20s and there’s even been a spattering of rain. We sat on the patio, drinks in hand, watching the moisture drift down on the garden and the water stream from the upper patio into the barrels on the cobbles below. It’s the first embrace of autumn and we’re relishing it.
I little thought during our years in London that I would ever want to see more clouds. Then I found the interminable grey skies of Britain mildly depressing. It seemed like a country of faded colours. Now I’d gladly trade our sun-burned days for those grey skies - not that we’re likely to have the option here in the Algarve. We saw a few excerpts of Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth - declining rainfall, shrinking glaciers and melting mountains - and we shivered – or should that be “perspired”?
Last weekend we visited Faro for a meal at The End of The World restaurant and a philharmonic (read “brass band”) evening on the dockside. The restaurants in the pedestrian malls were doing good business, serving bustling tables in the walkway outside. At The End of The World, two waiters worked hard to keep diners happy. After the meal I asked our waiter if he could find a few scraps in the kitchen for the dogs. He returned with a plastic bag bulging with leftovers. I could hardly believe the quality of the food. Nor could the dogs. They have dined like kings all week.
From the restaurant we strolled down to the dockside, passing the cycle police – good-looking fellows in shorts on mountain bikes - who patrol the pedestrian precincts. At the dock the music was already underway. Barbara and I found a bench from which to watch the passing scene while we listened to the combined brass bands of Faro and Loulé. There’s a good turn-out for these events, with some of the audience seated in plastic chairs in front of the stage and the rest scattered around the square across the road.
On Tuesday we kept our pledge to Natasha to take her after work to an electronics supermarket to find the video-camera she wanted. When I put it to her that she was investing a lot of her meagre earnings in high-tech equipment she replied that having a video camera had been her dream. I guess we all have to have dreams. In the event, the range available at the shop proved disappointing and Natasha decided that she could do better in Loulé, where she had carefully noted the available models and prices.
Back in Loulé we met Dani, her other half, whose elderly moped had been out of action for several days as the result of a flat tyre and (subsequent) damaged wheel. As usual he was skint so we advanced him the cash to purchase a second-hand wheel and then oversaw the transaction on the pavement outside his apartment block. Unlike Natasha, Dani has holes in his money-pocket and is forever having to mortgage his possessions to secure the loans he seems to live on. He “borrowed” another 5 euros at the same time to replace a lock that he said thieves had broken while trying to steal the moped.
Without particularly wishing to stick our noses in their domestic affairs, we were puzzled as to how Natasha could afford (albeit with a partial loan) to purchase expensive equipment while Dani was broke. As we are their principal bankers, the interest is legitimate. While their responses didn’t really jell, it would seem that they operate separate “accounts”, a reflection of their increasingly separate lives. I suspect that it’s only their small son, whom they both adore, who keeps them together.
Wednesday we had set aside to take Nosey, a neighbourhood cat and prolific breeder, to a vet to be spayed, something that has long been on Jonesy’s mind. Nosey doesn’t belong to us. She doesn’t belong to anybody. But she spends quite a lot of time with our neighbours, Sarah and David. When they’re away, Jonesy shares cat-feeding duties with another neighbour. Two of Nosey’s offspring have moved in with us. Since having that litter last year, she has had at least two others. One disappeared without trace. The six kittens of the latest litter (by now on commercial food) romp around David and Sarah’s garden.
For several days, Sarah had been feeding Nosey inside a cat-box in the hope that Nosey would enter the box as usual on Wednesday morning, and be locked in. Last time David tried to catch her she panicked and scratched him severely. This time the plan worked. After phoning around to ascertain prices we had opted for a vet in a village some distance away. The cost of the operation was 85 euros. When we handed over the cash the vet gave us a grateful nod instead of a receipt. I guess that’s how they keep it cheap. Nosey has since been reunited with her brood and appears perfectly content. She ought to be. Life should be a lot less demanding for her in future.
For Sarah’s birthday on Thursday evening, Jones arranged sunset drinks with the local expats on a hillside in the bush a couple of kms away. The last 500 metres was accessible only to serious 4x4 vehicles. So I was sent ahead on the tractor, with chairs, folding table, snacks and drinks in the link-box, while Jones met the rest of the party and conducted them up the track (left by the electricity-pylon builders) to the appointed spot overlooking the valleys below. The setting was spectacular. If it was a long way to go for a drink and a chat, nobody complained – and it proved an excellent start to an evening that finished up with dinner in Benafim at the Hamburgo (from Hamburg, not hamburger).
Heavy machinery has been in evidence outside the house of a Portuguese neighbour. We understand that his old fossa has clogged up and that he’s digging another. In theory he should be applying to the Department of the Environment for permission to have a fossa (soak-away sewage pit) and waiting to hear from them what type is acceptable in the circumstances. It took us seven months to pry an answer out of them and we landed up with an impractical system because of our supposed nearness to a water source. Never mind that virtually everybody else in the village is closer to the source, and all have traditional fossas. The yawning chasm between theory and practice is wide enough to swallow most of Portugal’s vast bureaucracy.
I hope to be back walking with Jones and the dogs again next week after spending most of this one hobbling around with housemaid’s knee. It wasn’t particularly sore, just stiff and swollen. At least it’s had the benefit for Jones that the bed and coffee are made when she gets back in the morning, and the dogs’ breakfast is waiting. Sometimes she even finds that the garden has been watered. Now that’s not to be sneezed at.
We have hired our first film of the season – “The Weather Man” with Nicolas Cage and an ageing Michael Caine. It was a character study, well done if not uplifting. We have fallen behind on our movies. We always do during the summer. Jones has a little list of those she wants to see and so do I. In the meanwhile, I am gaining some insights into the nature of infinity with the help of Brian Clegg’s book on the subject. (The BBC is about to broadcast a programme series on the same). Jones has taken to reading the Sunday Times supplements, supplied to us second hand by a neighbour. The quality of the writing makes them a pleasure to read, especially after we have waded through the gobbledegook of the Portugenglish local rags.
**********************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment