The dogs were equally breathless. They’d chased a rabbit on the road and then dragged us up Puffer Lane in pursuit of a grouse that was doing a speed waddle up the path ahead of us. I had Ono and Serpa Fish on their leads. Jones was holding Stoopy, who had flopped down on the ground to recover her breath. Clearly the time had come to shave off a layer of Stoopy’s winter coat. Our winter, such as it has been, seems to be over. We did have one frost down in the valley as a nod to the season and, to be honest, we still enjoy a fire in the stove at night – just to take the chill out of the air.
But the the signs of spring are all too visible. The almond trees are already in blossom and the fields are filling with flowers.This week has seeped away between the cracks of the days. As so often it’s hard to know where it’s gone. Thursday brought a return of my English lessons. Jones came with me to Loulé with a view to having streaks put in her hair. Instead, she had a regular hairdo from Fatima, whose empty chair was too tempting to resist. Fatima is actually a men’s hairdresser but is happy to do women’s hair as long as they don’t need any fancy stuff.
Twice we’ve dined with a friend, Gary. He and his partner, Malcolm, had considered buying and settling in Portugal. After taking a villa for several months while they looked around, they decided against it. Malcolm has returned to the UK by car, surviving a stormy ferry voyage and the tail-end of the gales that tore across most of Britain. Gary and their two cats are due to follow by air.
Idalecio came around one afternoon to help me replace panels that had been torn from the roof ridge of Casa Nada some weeks ago by our own mini gale. We drilled holes through each of them to take fasteners that grip the supporting beams. As an additional measure I need to intrude expanding foam in the gaps between the panels and the corrugated sheets underneath them.
Another job – one I signally failed to do – was to adjust the catch in one of our large sliding doors to allow it to close properly. I removed what seemed to me to be the obvious panel, with disastrous results. The aluminium firm concerned said it had a worker who could help me but that I’d have to fetch him from Loulé. This I was happy to do. The man kindly undid the damage I’d done and showed me the tiny aperture through which I should have adjusted the catch in the first place. He also checked all our other doors (there are ten of them) and windows at the same time.
Spare hours have gone into the care of our new field. I’ve been picking up the numerous stones that litter it, pruning the growth and reducing the substantial pile of old trees and branches lying in the centre of it. They’d been left there by the previous owner after the last pruning. It’s the custom to burn off such pruned material during the winter months. Most days one can see plumes of smoke arising somewhere in the valley, and then flattening out as they hit an invisible air barrier. (Global warming, I fear, doesn’t figure very high on the priorities of the average Algarvian farmer.)
At Jones’s insistence, I saved as much of the wood as I could, lopping off only the most useless twigs and tossing these on to the fire. The rest went on to the back of the tractor – to be delivered to the threshold of our strange couple, Chico and Dina, for whom it provides both heating and cooking fuel.
Dina had summoned us with loud cries earlier in the week as we passed by with the dogs. In her meaty arm she clutched a 5-litre plastic bottle of locally-distilled fig liquor, known as “water that the birds don’t drink”. This she presented to us, throwing back her head and indicating with her thumb towards her mouth exactly what she expected us to do with it. (Dina, you may recall, never learned to speak – although she shrieks and yells well enough.)
She knocked on the door of her English neighbours this week and made the sign of the cross to indicate that things were amiss. From our enquiries it seems that she is referring to an accident in which, if we have the story correct, a car driver reversed over an unfortunate man from a nearby village, killing him. It was, Natasha told us when she arrived to work on Tuesday, all the talk of the other passengers on the bus.
Returning for a moment to the fig liquor. The deal is that it’s in exchange for firewood that I provide to Chico and Dina and my ploughing of their fields. They absolutely insist on returning any favours and the arrangement was a compromise to persuade them not to turn up on our doorstep with large chunks of slaughtered sheep or goat. I asked for one litre of fig liquor per load of firewood or ploughed field but Chico insists on making it 5 litres.
As we passed the home of another villager, Leonhilda, she popped out with another litre of the same to thank us for the fresh bread that we take her from Hans the baker every second Sunday. When she heard that we were expecting a guest for lunch that day, she baked a cake and then called Jones to arrange to meet her half way to deliver it. A very good cake it was too.
Leonhilda suggested that we try growing some garlic, as well as beans, and explained how to go about planting garlic segments. They have to go just under the surface with their little pointy caps on top. She took a bulb of garlic and showed me which cloves to use, only those on the outer rim of the bulb. When I asked when we might pick the garlic, she said it was traditionally done on St Anthony’s Day (some time in June if I remember rightly).
Down the bottom of the village half a dozen labourers, a lorry and a digger are busy widening the agricultural road that winds down through the valley and up the opposite hillside to Benafim. We suspect that this is being done to facilitate the building of the “rustic” village that is due to arise on the fringes of Birrao, the neighbouring hamlet. Given a choice, we’d prefer to stick with the single-track road and the rocky field where the village is due to be built.
One evening we went to see The Prestige, a strange film about the rivalry that comes to destroy the lives of competing London magicians.
I am reading a book that I acquired in the bookshop at Calgary airport on my departure. The author is James Risen. It’s called State of War and it’s about the events in Iraq and Afghanistan and what led up to them. I am finding it very sobering; in fact, downright scary.
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