(Siesta time!)
My week has sputtered along, marked (maybe marred) by a couple of late-night films and sleepy days. I’m finding it hard to maintain an easy rhythm in Jones’s absence. For her part, during the week-long voyage to Mombasa, Jones went down with a virus that was touring the ship. According to the online itinerary (http://www.orientlines.com/destinations/africa/33d_passage_africa.htm ) she’s due to arrive in port on Saturday morning early. I have heard little from her, as you may glean.
“As far as I can count this is midpoint of trip so not so long till home.
Passing through strait to Gulf of Aden.
Watching sunset over distant coast of horn of Africa. Four days at sea over. Four to go. A bit boring.
Try to message as we pass close to land. Have been sick with ship virus along with 60 others. M okay.
(by email) Have been in quarantine for the ship bug from Luxor. This (Wed) is first day out, sorry long silence. Am now fine, will sms from mombasa.
(by email) Don’t know if you saw my line yesterday, but today netcentre guy eldon has helped me. am now fine after the luxor virus, looking forward tho to being on land again. have not had opportunity to read all the emails, hope am not missing abything importnat. is it still ok for llew to meet ship, do you know? will sms him later. Can’t remember all the things was going to say. still bit flakey after 4 days throwing up and runs. o for baggies.”
Cathy flew home at the weekend after a very pleasant and easy stay. The showers that dampened the first half of her visit were replaced by a series of blue-sky days that gave way to another spell of rain midweek. Before it arrived, I managed to sow six more rows of beans that ought to provide us with a handsome crop in due course. The rule is a handful of blue fertilizer granules and half a dozen beans in the furrow every half metre or so. What’s more, I weeded the bean plants that I sowed last month, having seen a previous crop all but overcome by the jungle of weeds that sprang up simultaneously. Our carob trees should also be smiling soon. They’ve enjoyed generous scatterings of ammonia fertilizer around their trunks.
Acquiring the fertilizer meant a trip to Benafim where two of the small family-run supermarkets in the main drag are tied in with building supply businesses directly over the road. Women folk manage the former and men folk the latter. Come to think of it, one of the women concerned was recently widowed when her husband wiped himself out on his motorbike. She employs a men in our village to do deliveries. He wasn’t there when I called so she trotted over the road with me to help me load a 50kg sack of fertilizer.
Running these businesses requires multiple crossings of the road and loading of lorries in the street, hazardous stuff given the number of world speed records that are set in Benafim high street. In a bid to slow the traffic down – there are no traffic cops for miles around – Benafim council is now putting a traffic circle at the main crossroad. Big machines have been grunting around for a couple of weeks. Half the job seems to be trying to persuade the local drinkers to move their cars from their favourite parking spots outside the adjacent café-bar. Habits die hard in this part of the world.
Eddie and Lesley Vanko came around just before Cathy’s departure to assist me with some plumbing
problems. That’s to say, Eddie worked on the plumbing (with a couple of minor useful suggestions on my part) while Lesley passed an hour or two with Cathy and a magazine before we all went to the Adega for lunch.
Although I hesitate to confess it, two of the tasks involved a dripping tap and a loo cistern with an obstinate mechanism. I write as a handyman (of sorts) who has replaced any number of tap washers and fiddled around in the innards of numerous loo cisterns. But I had never dismantled a combined hot-and-cold-water tap before, nor had I worked on a double-flush loo. Both appeared to be seemingly undismantleable. This was because, as Eddie demonstrated, an alan key had to be inserted into a tiny aperture in the tap while in the loo cistern there was an all but invisible retaining screw. In spite of his professional efforts, both the tap and the loo have continued to play up intermittently and I may have to procure new innards for the both of them.
A bigger job was to prepare the mains water supply pipe for the installation of a water meter at some point in the future. To facilitate this, the parish offices supplied free to all householders a section of plastic piping with brass fittings at either end. These fittings had to be connected to the pipes in the water supply box, leaving the short length of pvc to be replaced by the meter in due course. (Sarah and David, I have a fitting waiting for you.)
In the meanwhile, Eddie has connected the mains water supply directly to the house plumbing. The pressure is a huge improvement on the efforts of the cisterna pump. Taking a shower is a real pleasure. On the other hand, the valve on the solar water heaters freaked out. It started leaking so much water down the roof tiles that I felt obliged to disconnect the mains and replug the pump, pending a visit by a technician.
I see that the Al-Jazeera English TV channel has been added to the free stations available on the satellite signal that we receive. I watched bits of its opening night and was quite impressed by the extent of its coverage and its emphasis on third world issues, aims set out by its British editor in radio interviews earlier in the day. I can see it becoming a strong contender against BBC World and CNN. France launches its own international channel shortly, although I’m not clear whether it’s to be only in French. You may be aware that Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel has not gone down well with the Americans.
Thank you to those correspondents who have brought me up to speed on Connect Cards. All considered, I’ve decided to stick with Telecom’s broadband service at home and to use wifi services when I travel.
Wednesday and Thursday brought the regular language lessons. The dogs came with me as they usually do. I put down a blanket in the corner of the classroom and they plonk themselves down there for the duration of the lesson (more or less). There are no objections.
I left the car at a tyre service outlet on Thursday, after encountering a disconcerting and growing low-speed wobble from a front wheel. The outlet manager heard my description of the problem and immediately said that the tyre concerned was “torto” – twisted or bent (as he later illustrated). I left him to put on two new tyres while I went to lessons. He had to order them in and didn’t have the price which, as it happened, was somewhat high. Nor did he have a book to give me an official receipt (although he promised to have one next time I dropped by) – meaning that he could pocket the VAT. I consoled myself that at least I didn’t have to waste a couple of hours at another outlet.
The sun’s back and the dogs are waiting for their walk.
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