Letter from Espargal: 51 of 2006

(The Cork Walk through the valley)

The year-end is creeping up on us. We knew that it was near but not this near. We have been distracted. One distraction was the field that I’ve been trying to buy for the last several weeks. It has proved a particularly elusive field. In the course of our purchase attempts it emerged first that buying it as a couple married with a pre-nuptial agreement was all but impossible. To avoid the looming complexities we had to buy it in the name of either one of us. Okay, I said, we would buy it in my name.

The day before the sale was to be concluded in front of the notary, we were informed by our lawyers that the property was still registered in the parish of Alte and not in the parish of Benafim, whence it should have been transferred 20 years ago. That meant a last-minute dash to the Finanças in Loulé to beg them to amend the same day a document that normally requires a seven-day wait. It would have been impossible had not our lawyer’s girl-Friday been on excellent terms with the Finanças staff. I bought flowers for the Finanças clerk concerned - although only after the fact lest they be construed as a bribe.

So the 16.45 signing of the sales contract on Thursday evening went ahead, albeit at 18.15, because the notary had fallen hopelessly behind and there was a crowd of people waiting in her office to complete one or other bit of official business by the year-end. As a result, our lawyer had to kick his heels with me in the adjacent café for an hour. We drank coffee and talked about life in Portugal. (He said his wife was also a lawyer and they had become accustomed, however disagreeably, to the delays that were part of the Portuguese bureaucratic process. Their two young children are looked after by grandparents – thank God for grandparents – until the parents get home in the evenings.)

(Our favourite Faro Beach restaurant)

And thus we are the owners of another field, and I’m thrilled to bits about it. It’s a splendid field that forms a perfect L around a field we already own and that, I strongly suspect, will one day be reclassified as an urban property – where some undesirable person would otherwise build a big house in a spot where we’d much rather have a field.

For the record, we now own a clump of 5 plots here in Espargal. From above they would look a bit like the Canadian maple-leaf symbol, grouped around the house and more or less guaranteeing us an impermeable green belt – with one exception. The property that we most want to buy is not for sale because half of the heirs have disappeared into thin air abroad and can’t be found to sign the necessary paperwork. Long may they remain so.

On Tuesday Natasha came to work and, because my cyber-dictionary was seriously at odds with my Excel programme – for reasons which, after a harmonious three-year relationship, are beyond me – I took my computer into the shop when we drove her home that evening. I checked with the shop on Wednesday and again on Thursday morning (when I went to the Finanças). But in spite of their best efforts they couldn’t persuade the two programmes to get along. Nor, after uninstalling the dictionary could they get the computer to function without throwing up error messages. So they returned it to me with apologies on Thursday evening and didn’t want to charge me anything for their hours of labour. The computer still functions. It just isn’t very happy.

Also not very happy are our two kittens, Braveheart and Dearheart, which we took in to the vet in Albufeira to be “done” early this morning (Friday) and fetched again this evening. Dearheart appeared to be supine until the vet removed her from the recovery cage and tried to place her in her transport box. At which point she made a bid for freedom and scratched the vet when the latter tried to restrain her. Both kittens are back safe and sound and, willy-nilly, getting used to their neutered status. Jonesy is desperate to love them and feed them. She is finding it very hard to accept the vet’s instructions that they should get no food till the morning.

Between taking and fetching the kittens we accompanied Llewellyn and Lucia on a final 2006 walk into the valley and back through the orange grove. Thence we went to the airport to return their car, stopping only to tell old Chico that his mysterious letter from Social Security was to inform him of his old age benefit this year. I phoned Social Security in Faro to confirm this. (Like many older residents, Chico has never learned to read.)

Finally we headed to Faro Beach for a relaxed lunch in the sun on the patio of a favourite restaurant. The two dogs huddled down on a towel beneath our table and glared at the cats that were bumming crumbs from other diners. One or two other dogs came to sniff under the table at the intruders. Happily, all were friendly and there was much wagging of tails.

It was the last of many delightful meals that we have enjoyed with our visitors during their stay – including a spread at the Angolana last night, at which we drank (their) real champagne, to celebrate our latest acquisition. They will be in the air on their way home to Cape Town as I write.

Saturday I pack my own goodies and Sunday morning I fly to Dublin. There I have to wait before catching a flight via London to Calgary early on Monday morning. For reasons beyond my ken, the discount that I have obtained on this flight was available only if one boarded the plane in Dublin rather than in London.

Stand by Mum, here I come.

That’s about the size of it.

I do hope that 2007 is kind to us.

Happy New Year and God bless.

Christmas at Espargal

Happy Christmas all.

Here we are at breakfast on Christmas Day, from left to right, Jonesy, Terry, Llewellyn and Lucia.

Jonesy made pancakes to mark the occasion. After breakfast we moved through to the lounge to see what Santa had brought. The pictures speak for themselves.

Now we are going for a walk with the dogs. This evening we will all repair to Idalecio's little restaurant for Christmas dinner. That's it.

Letter from Espargal: 50 of 2006

It’s a cold, sunny day. The weather bureau warns us that lows in the Algarve will be barely above freezing; that’s cold for us. As if to make the point, heavy frost lines the valley floors. Not that I mind being cold. It’s almost a relief in this global warming environment, with Europe’s ski resorts reduced to despair by their verdant slopes.

I’m just back from a brisk hour with the dogs, which have now settled themselves contentedly in the sunshine on the back patio. Jones has gone off with Llewellyn and Lucia for a visit to Loulé. On their return, we are going to Messines for lunch with friends. One way and another this has been a very sociable week, following our guests’ midweek arrival from Lisbon..

Last night we met friends at Oliveira’s restaurant on the outskirts of Loulé. Ollie is the man who used to run our favourite and much patronised eatery, on the corner just below the Quinta. We’ve not seen much of him since his move into town some years ago. What has been clear is that he’s made a roaring success of the business.

His wife, Odette, still sweats away in the kitchen with one or two helpers. Their son and daughter wait on the tables, along with son’s girlfriend and a couple of hired hands. They had a huge party going, including the mayor and a big group from the council. Our conversation was limited by the amplified efforts of a singer-guitarist, whose presence we would much rather have done without. That aside, the meal was excellent.

Friday morning I fetched Natasha from Loulé to accompany her on a mission to Faro. We had been instructed by the Social Security office in Loulé to take her employment contract to Faro to be endorsed - as part of the process of getting her legalised.

In due course we found both parking and the government office concerned and we settled down to wait in a lobby, along with half a dozen other people whose mobile phone conversations identified them as east Europeans. After 90 minutes of kicking our heels we were summoned upstairs into a large room occupied by two women and thousands of files stacked high against the walls. From the clerk at whose desk we seated ourselves I established that we had arrived at the Inspectorate of Labour.

The woman took one look at Natasha’s passport and declared that she lacked a work visa. End of story. No visa no contract. We patiently explained what Social Security had told us, that under new legislation a valid passport sufficed. Evidently, it was not so. Natasha was bitterly disappointed. Her chances of getting a work visa are minimal. Even if she did, she would have to return to Moscow to fetch it. The only good that comes out of the whole business is that she gets on to the national health scheme – although both she and we will have to make social security contributions in return.

On Thursday evening we went to a concert given by the Orchestra of the Algarve at a church in Faro. As we arrived a fire engine came wailing past us and stopped in front of a house just round the corner. Although no flames were visible, a cloud of smoke from the roof could be seen against the night sky. The firemen had to batter their way into the house to extinguish the fire. We had the impression that the place was unoccupied.

The concert took place in the Church of Carmel, one of several rococo churches in the city, with their ornate, dusty gilt-covered carvings rising unto the heavens. It was a good concert, ending with Mendelssohn’s lovely Italian symphony.

In-between such outings and our walks, the week has been partly taken up by neighbourly events of one sort or another, and exchanges of small Christmas gifts. Barbara has presented various friends and neighbours with flowers and received plastic bags full of fruit or eggs in return.

When we found old Evangelina shivering outside her small house one afternoon, we asked her why she didn’t put on more clothes. Because she had none, she told us. So we found her a coat and a warm jersey, which greatly pleased her. She thrust a dozen oranges into my hands in her gratitude. As is common, her house has no interior heating whatsoever. The only warmth comes from the fire she makes in her outside kitchen.

It was traditional to have the kitchen separated from the house. That way the kitchen fire did not add to the heat of the house in summer - while in winter everybody sat in the kitchen to eat before making a rapid exit for bed. The potty was under the bed for any nocturnal needs. It still is in houses like Evangelina’s.

And so we have arrived at the brink of Christmas. Our thanks go to the kindly people who have sent us yuletide cards and letters. Our own Christmas communications have been by email. Apart from catch-ups with family and friends we’ve been exchanging greetings and pictures with fellow passengers on Barbara’s cruise.

More hours have been stolen by a bit of software that went on the blink and started to play silly b.gg.rs with my registry. Much uninstalling and reinstalling has followed. Although the software manufacturers have been both prompt and helpful with their suggestions, as fast as I seem to resolve one problem another crops up. I suspect the computer will have to go to the shop for expert attention.

One or two afternoons have been occupied in collecting stones from the fields. I’ve been dumping these in a small ditch, across which I’m making a new access. There is something strangely satisfying about clearing a field of stones. It’s as though one is tuning into some ancient rite – paying obeisance to the god of agriculture. Next week, with luck, I’ll complete the purchase of another field. We hope the plot will grow in value and it will certainly grow lots of beans. But more than anything else, we want to prevent anyone else buying it and building a house there. After our painful experience at the Quinta we have come to put a great value on the space around us

There, I'm done. Our thoughts are with you - in South Africa, Europe and North America.

Happy Christmas.

Letter from Espargal: 49 of 2006

(The rear deck of the Marco Polo where Jones and Maureen would take refreshments.)

We have spent most of this week as we spent most of last, waiting for the arrival of the Portugal Telecom engineer, who has failed to turn up. Twice I have been into the PT office to implore the staff to expedite the repair but my implorations have been in vain. The engineer has remained elusive and we have (barely) survived a second week without a phone line or internet access.

The one useful feature of my visits to PT is that I have ascertained how to use the wifi facility that they now make available in their centres. One can at least catch up on the emails that one cannot access at home. The facility is being made available free for several months to clients of PT’s internet services. We have further noted that large wifi signs have been erected around the Forum Algarve shopping centre on the outskirts of Faro. It’s catching on. In-between times friends have been generous in allowing me the use of their home wifi.

I gathered that a local fellow was making use of a computer connect card to access the internet and arranged to meet him to hear how well it worked. I’m sorry to say that he wasn’t enthusiastic about its performance in this area. He reported that the signal was poor, downloads disappointingly slow and the connection unstable. Fifteen minutes down the road he got a great signal but not in Espargal. In the circumstances he didn’t recommend that I get one.

On Monday evening we went to the cinema to see Casino Royale. I was much impressed by Craig Daniel, the new Bond. He cuts an athletic figure and is much more convincing in the action scenes than most of his predecessors, especially the grandfatherly Roger Moore. In fact, I think he’s even better than Sean Connery. He brings all the necessary élan and sophistication to the part. Jones, however, did not think him particularly good looking (craggy, at best) nor did she like the movie’s graphic violence. You can’t please everyone.

Jones’s unused traveller’s cheques have been returned to the bank, where I took the opportunity of presenting the man who looks after our interests with a bottle of Christmas spirit. He in turn presented me with a diary and an imitation-leather cheque-book holder. He has been very attentive unlike the people at Barclays. The latter have not been able to find a way of insuring that our cash cards are not blocked again next time we go overseas. There is no facility for informing them in advance of such trips. We think this a very poor effort and have informed them accordingly.

What’s more, we recently received a letter from Barclays in Jersey informing us that we would in future be liable for an annual fee (for the privilege of allowing them to make money from our deposits) unless we kept a minimum of £2,000 in our account through-out the year. We wrote back asking them kindly to close the account. I hope that a few other clients do the same, not that it is likely to bother the bank unduly or to make a dent in its large profits. In my experience, banks are a bit like (some) cats – sleek, glossy, self-serving and liable to scratch. I hope that I do not offend any cat lovers.

During a visit to Loulé we arranged to meet Natasha at the office of an accountant who drew up an employment contract which, she hopes, will enable her to benefit from Portuguese Social Security. We didn’t have time to register it at the Finanças that day so I arranged to meet her at the Finanças later in the week. Great was my consternation when I arrived there to discover that the document I had carefully taken along was a similar-looking bank statement.

The dogs didn’t mind. They enjoyed the ride in the car and the leg-lifting opportunities at the adjacent park. They have become so fond of outings that, given the choice between a ride in the car and a walk, they choose to ride every time. Ono sits bolt upright in the centre of the back seat with his paws splayed out and peers unwaveringly through the windscreen. We often wonder what he thinks.

I have been in intermittent contact with our lawyers concerning our intended purchase of a plot of land contiguous with our own. This has been dragging on and was clearly not high on the lawyer’s priority list. He said the latest delay was caused by new legislation that required Barbara and me to petition the local council for some exemption in view of our being married in separation of property. I don’t pretend to understand it. (In Portugal, people get married in community of property.) Anyhow, it appears that we can circumvent this complication by buying the property in either my name or Barbara’s rather than jointly. We are hopeful (if not exactly confident) that the process may still be completed by Christmas. I shall be off to Canada shortly afterwards to see Mum and the family.

We have been in daily touch with (Barbara’s half-brother) Llewellyn and Lucia, who arrived in Lisbon from Cape Town at sparrows on Thursday. They are spending a week in the city before travelling down to the Algarve by train to be with us over Christmas. Llewellyn has impressed us by setting about learning Portuguese. He goes as far as reading novels in Portuguese, a step well beyond our own modest efforts at speaking the language.

After lessons on Thursday (plus another visit to PT) I drove to Almancil for a dentist’s appointment. The consultation had been made weeks in advance to fit in with the dentist’s occasional visits to Portugal. (He’s a South African who lives in Spain and consults in at least 5 countries on a rota of sorts – don’t ask me why).

He was due to fit a crown to a tooth he’d already prepared (and he did). However, I had been suffering pangs in another tooth for a week and asked him to take care of that at the same time. Regrettably, I have reached the stage where virtually any dental work is expensive. Most of my teeth have been mined for half a century to the point where there’s little left to play with. It’s all crowns and the like.

We have a friend who is close to retirement age and who confesses to having had only a single filling. Would that we had been similarly blessed. If I were able to order genes for my next incarnation, I would very much like to have black hair, an olive skin and faultless teeth. Good looks and a manly physique would be much appreciated as part of the package.

Jones has returned to her routine of taking both our dogs and the neighbour’s bitch (Serpa the spaniel) on afternoon walks. Sometimes I go along. At others, I load the tractor’s link box with stones from our fields and dump them on the side. The stones vary in size from golf ball to football. I estimate that in five to ten years, at the present rate, I should have all our fields cleared. oy them.Meanwhile, in spite of the stones, our beans are coming along nicely.

The woman who works at the local hardware store presented me with a rolled up calendar during my last visit. I asked her whether it had a beautiful girl on the cover. No, she smiled at me, adding that she did have some with beautiful girls if that was what I would prefer. I thought I’d better stick with the one she’d given me. I unrolled it to reveal a Christmas doggy with a bow – not exactly my taste if blandly inoffensive. Speaking of which – we have brought out our Christmas lights and arranged them in the shape of a tree upstairs on the patio railings and pergola. It is visible for miles around at night. Much as I have my doubts about the wisdom of having Christmas I quite like our tree.

Thank you to those correspondents from whom we have received Christmas letters. We greatly enjoy them.

Letter from Espargal: 48 of 2006

(Gisa: Jones loved Egypt and says she would gladly go back. She took lots of pictures but none of herself.)

Jones is home. She arrived at Lisbon airport early on Sunday morning. When she left I had promised to meet her and I kept my word. Having been rudely roused by my mobile phone alarm at 01.00 and, after showering and putting the somewhat surprised dogs in the car, I set out. En route I stopped in Loulé to fetch Dani, Natasha and Alex. Natasha had asked for a lift as she had business to enact at the Russian Consulate in Lisbon the following day.

The night was clear and moonlit and there was virtually no traffic on the toll-road north. The occasional BMW or similar cruised past me, scornful of my tortoiselike150 kph. We made a couple of motorway stops to take on refreshments and give the dogs leg-lifters. In spite of a wrong turn we made it on time to the airport where, because of a snail-like baggage service, we had to wait an hour for Jones to appear. When she did, her welcome would have warmed the heart of a queen.

The sun was rising as we returned home. The fields were green and frequently waterlogged on either side of the road. And the hunters’ guns were popping as we made our way back up Espargal hill. In spite of her tiredness Jones was unable to rest until she had restored the house to the shape in which she’d left it. That’s not to say that it was untidy or dirty. Natasha had laboured all the previous day to remove the last speck of dust. But there were objects out of place, pots unreturned to their rightful drawers and unusual arrangements of odds and ends. All of these had to be righted before, with harmony restored, Jones felt that she could begin to unwind.

I downloaded the 200 plus pictures that she had taken during her travels and got brief descriptions from her of the places involved. She gave me a rundown on some of her adventures, which were many and of which I’d heard little. For over a month we’d enjoyed only the briefest text message and email communications, followed by a couple of phone calls during her stay in South Africa. I have suggested to Jones that she write an account of her trip or at least dictate her diary to me. She feels that this is not near the top of her priority list.

On the Monday we walked the dogs 5kms to Benafim, sticking to the roads because the plain that separates our hill from Benafim’s hill was swimming. En route we encountered Zeferino (80+) who was on his way back after walking to the town himself to meet someone who wasn’t there. He stopped for a chat and welcomed Barbara back. Further along we bumped into more neighbours who gave her a further welcome. It took us closer to 90 minutes than the usual hour to reach the town.

After topping up on salads at a supermarket we made our way to Rui’s Café for truly delicious ham and cheese sandwiches, washed down with tall glasses of cold red wine. We sat at a table on the pavement, with the dogs tucked under our feet. Occasional scraps made their way down from the table to the grateful animals. The café itself was packed and smoky. Lunchtime news blared from the TV hoisted up on the wall. The local police parked carefully on the pavement and popped in for refreshments. It can truly be said of Benafim that what you see is what you get. Pretensions it has none. Jones said that she felt that she had really arrived back home.

Monday my internet link and the phone started to play silly b.gg.ers. Tuesday they gave up the ghost altogether. Portugal Telecom said they were treating the repair as urgent, given my status as a ISDN customer (paying twice the standing charge for a dual line). Tuesday, as promised was damp. We took ourselves to Alte, where the sun came out long enough to allow us a walk and a fig-and-almond-tart lunch at Luis’s place. In the afternoon we sorted through Jones’s pictures. Afterwards she took the dogs for a quick walk, just in time to run into a shower and to return with two soggy animals. Hardly had we lit a fire and dried them off when the area was shaken by a squall that bent the trees double, whipped shutters from their clasps and rattled the house. It’s the closest I’ve come to experiencing a hurricane and as close as I ever want to come.

Wednesday got screwed up by my efforts to stay flexible enough to attend within short notice to the Portugal Telecom engineer who failed to show up to fix the phone. (One has to arrange to meet the man at the local school and lead him back to the house.) So did Thursday. Still no engineer. Calls to the Portugal Telecom faults number brought only a computer voice informing me that the fault was being attended to. I’m beginning to understand the withdrawal pains that drug addicts endure, a case of cold cyber turkey.

Thursday afternoon our expat neighbours came around for refreshments and pre-Christmas conversation. They arrived half an hour before the vacuum cleaner demonstration man whom I’d agreed to entertain in order to assist friends - who’d already agreed to buy one - to obtain a discount. The appliance is a Rainbow, confidently described by the demonstrator as the best in the world. It’s certainly a remarkable machine. It’s also, undoubtedly, the most expensive of its kind – around 2,500 euros if one obtains the discount available by purchasing before the end of the year. The female neighbours wandered upstairs to watch bits of the demonstration.

At the request of the demonstrator, I pulled back the sheets on the bed to expose the lower section of the mattress. The fellow then ran the nozzle over the surface for a half a minute before removing a filter and revealing the mass of dead bed-mites and their droppings that the machine had sucked up through the surface material; at least, that’s what he said they were and we believed him. It was kinda scary. Even so, Jones does not consider the astronomical price worth the machine’s considerable advantages; it’s a dust remover, air purifier, and perfumer as well.

We have been letting the kittens into the house to try to introduce them to the dogs. They rush around madly, exploring every corner. There’s no problem with Stoopy. She just growls if they get too close. Ono is not happy about the introduction, especially as the kittens have no fear of him and run up eagerly to smell his nose (bad news) or his bum (worse). Yesterday, the kittens got into a noisy bust-up with their two muscular half-siblings, an encounter that the dogs rushed eagerly to disperse. It’s going to be a while before we can relax with a harmonious household.

At this point, Friday morning is heading towards Friday midday. It’s sunny and there’s a cold wind blowing. We have just returned from a long walk through the valley. We bumped into a Portuguese neighbour who gave us a bag full of lemons and a Dutch neighbour who was walking her dog to Benafim. The Dutch neighbour was not very happy because she made a mistake while filling out the forms required for her to matriculate her car in Portugal and she is now going to have to pay the full import tax. The customs authorities are not proving in the least sympathetic or helpful.

Before setting out on the walk I spent 20 minutes on the (mobile) phone to Vodafone finding out (a) how long it would take to activate a Connect Card if I bought one today [answer: 24 to 48 hours] and (b) what sort of signal strength I could expect if I tried to use one here [answer: pretty low]. So I cancelled my plans to drive to a shopping centre to purchase one and arranged instead to borrow a friend’s internet connection this afternoon.

On Monday I shall travel into Loulé to complain bitterly to Portugal Telecom about their service. What a bummer.

Letter from Espargal: 47 of 2006

(The Marco Polo arrives in Cape Town)

I have reason to be grateful that I live up a hill because many of those Portuguese residents who live on the plains have spent the week bailing themselves out. It has been a very wet week. Downpours last weekend raised the Douro River, which we so admired during a visit to Porto a few months ago, a total of 7 metres, inundating riverine sections of the city, including the famous port warehouses that line the bank. (During a tour of one of the warehouses, a guide showed us marks high on a wall, indicating the levels reached by previous floods. The staff had cut loose the port barrels, allowing them to float up with the water.) The story was the same for dozens of towns and villages across the length and breadth of the country although the Algarve got off lightly.

On Tuesday, it was the turn of the Algarve to get a dousing. It happened to be the day that I was taking the car in for a service at the Honda workshop on the outskirts of Faro. I fetched Natasha and young Alex on route, as she wanted to buy him a tricycle on a sale that was about to end. In teeming rain the Honda minibus dropped the pair of us off at the Algarve Forum shopping centre. It’s a very smart shopping centre, keenly aware of its upmarket status. But its drainage system was incapable of dealing with the torrents of water falling on its spacious inner courtyard. A large and growing pool lapped ever closer to the shop doors where fashionable merchants were trying desperately with mops and squeegees to repel the tide. There was something pitifully puny about their efforts.

At a perfume store I asked a shop assistant if she would guide me to a couple of 10 euro bottles of spray, explaining that I wanted to give small Christmas gifts to two delightful women who work in the Benafim parish office. The assistant explained apologetically that the cheaper perfumes started at 30 euros. I thanked her and retreated to familiar ground. In the Jumbo superstore I came across rather less expensive products although the two I chose were placed over the wrong price tag and I found myself paying double what I intended. (When I went back to check I found that the products were correctly priced – just misleadingly stacked.)

The rain was dying away by the time the Honda minibus fetched us again at 11.30. I assisted Natasha who was coping with Alex, his stroller, a large box containing a tricycle and several other purchases. How single parents ever manage alone, especially on public transport, is completely beyond me. The car was waiting and I got back home in time to watch the lunchtime news. It was full of the floods in Faro city centre and in nearby towns.

Rain apart, the week got off to a good start. Idalecio came over on Saturday afternoon to try to cure a longstanding problem with the chimney. Because of a gap between the metal chimneystack and the surrounding brickwork, soot has tended to drift down into the lounge. Jones found this extremely irritating. I found it quite annoying myself. I tried blocking the gap at the lower end of the chimney where it emerges through the ceiling but this solution was only partially successful. I feared that Idalecio would have to bash a hole in the chimney in order to reach the stack. Happily he found that the shaped top-section of the chimney was just a heavy piece of reinforced concrete that could be shifted aside to allow him to do the job.

Next we removed the netting that I had draped over the solar heater panels to keep the sparrows out. In spite of my efforts, the sparrows had long since returned, worming and squirming through the netting and building another series of nests in the hollows of the tiles under the panels. With the hose we cleaned the nests out. They were full of muck. I’d already taken steps to stop the water flowing into the cisterna.

Inevitably the sparrows will be back. The technician who came to replace a leaking valve earlier this month said the only solution was to raise the panels on a frame as we did at the Quinta. It means that the panels will be more visible but I think this is the lesser evil.

Between us, Idalecio and I got through a couple of other undemanding jobs that required two sets of hands. Within an hour or two we were done. I had a great sense of achievement and he made some easy money, reluctant though he was to take payment. I pointed out to him what it would have cost me to get somebody in – and that I would otherwise feel unable to ask his assistance in future.

When I bumped into some English neighbours later that day, I was taken back to hear that Vitor’s dad, stricken with cancer, had died and been buried two days earlier. I’d wanted to go to the funeral and was exasperated to find that I’d missed it. The usual practice is for the undertakers to stick up an obituary notice in the local hamlets but for some reason they’d failed to do so. I made my apologies and expressed my condolences to the widow.

I had a poignant moment the following day when, after buying several loaves of freshly baked bread from Hans the German baker, I dropped a loaf off with Portuguese neighbours. The front door to their house was opened, not by the wife as usual but the husband whom I mentioned in my last letter. He’s the fellow who has been stricken with some form of dementia and who recently attacked his wife. To avoid a repetition, his spouse no longer sleeps at home. The old fellow looked at me miserably and wailed: “I have no wife,” clearly uncomprehending of the circumstances. I gave him the warm bread and wished him well. I wish I had a wand.

On Monday I spoke to Jonesy for the first time in a month. She and Maureen were in Durban, being taken on a tour of her old student haunts by a friend. She was frustrated by her inability to respond to my text messages, for some technical reason. She’d tried various configurations without success. This frustration aside, she was having a nostalgic time in Durban and was looking forward to the end of the trip in Cape Town on Wednesday.

Subsequent calls have indicated that she’s been having a ball in Cape Town, where she has extensive family. She is staying with her half-brother, Llewellyn and his wife, Lucia. Jonesy flies back to Johannesburg and on to Portugal on Saturday. The dogs and I are planning a reunion at Lisbon airport early on Sunday morning. [For the two accompanying pictures on my blog, I have to thank Llewellyn (the ship) and Annelize (the dinner party)]

My email correspondence this week included a note from the Portuguese Financas, saying that I should look on their website for a response to our application for a temporary exemption from local taxes (a one-time benefit to the owners of a new house). Let me say that it is now possible to conduct all one’s normal fiscal business with the Department online. Parts of Portugal are rapidly going high-tech. After logging in and finding the response (in spite of misleading instructions) I was pleased to see that we had been given a four-year exemption – from 2006 to 2009. No reference was made to the two-year period during which we have been awaiting the Department’s response. Its conversion to high tech doesn’t seem to have speeded anything up

Wednesday and Thursday brought the usual lessons. Before classes, I went along with Natasha to the Social Security office in Loulé. Natasha had informed me that in spite of her illegal status she was entitled to sign on for social security if she had a valid employment contract. That didn’t make any sense to me, especially in the light of what a lawyer had told us a few months earlier. However, Natasha’s contact at the office bore out her story. The clerk said that recent changes to the law meant that foreigners were eligible to sign on as long as they were employed and had valid passports. Valid visas were no longer required. I was most surprised.

The long and short of it is that we have sought out accountants to draw up the necessary contract. The employer is required to commit him(her)self for a year to pay a modest monthly fee to the office plus 70% of the minimum wage to the employee. This (the minimum wage) is less than 400 euros a month. As a young mother, Natasha stands to benefit from the arrangement. She may even be able to legalise her status, something that she would love to do. Danny, I regret to say, has more or less disappeared off the radar.