(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.
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