Letter from Espargal: 7 of 2007

It is not often that I can report a major development. Today is an exception. Let me come to the point. Both Casa Nada and the wooden shed (referred to by Jones as the “work chalet”) have at last been tidied up. This big project has been on the to-do list for months (years?), and its completion is significant. For as long as I can remember Jones has been on at me to tackle it. (“When are you going to …..” etc?) And I have been putting the job off for a rainy day. Except, that it was never done on a rainy day because it was impractical to move the contents out into the rain.

The wooden shed was erected at the same time as the house was built. Its purpose was to contain whatever would not fit in the house. However, the shed soon proved unequal to the task. As one object after another migrated inside it, humans became confined to the small remaining space just inside the door. (The rodents, whose poos spotted the floors and shelves, obviously still managed to get around.) The end result was that 90 per cent of the contents became invisible. If items could be found at all, it was only by tossing other items into new heaps. It was bad news.


This problem, we thought, would be resolved by the rehabilitation of Casa Nada - the Nothing House – so called because it doesn’t officially exist. It was once a dwelling on the property. By the time it came into our possession it had been reduced to four roofless walls over a pile of muck and the remnants of tiled floors. Idalecio and helpers restored it, creating two small rooms and one large room. For me, it’s a storage area – a barn. For Jones, it’s a dream guest cottage to be. She would love to install a small bathroom and other amenities.

We have compromised. One small room is allocated to Jones. The other small room is my tool and paint storage area. One half of the large room accommodates my tractor. The other half has alternated between being an informal barbeque dining area and a space in which to keep my trailer. Jones preferred the former arrangement and I the latter. Well, the trailer has now been covered by a tarpaulin and thrust outside to take its chances with the elements.

What inspired the great clean-up – returning to my theme – was the need to find additional duties for Natasha, our once-a-week Russian maid. As the result of the labour contract the pair of us were led to sign in the erroneous belief that it would help her obtain legal status, Natasha has to pay 33 euros a month to social security ( I have to pay 66 euros). In short, she needed to earn some extra cash and we agreed that she would work an extra day once a month.

Thus it was done. All Friday long the pair of us laboured away, moving stuff in and out. Natasha swept, oiled and vacuumed. She also helped me sling some additional chicken wire over a section of the carport where the outside cats (Squeaker and Squawker) love to rest up on the shade-cloth – to the cloth’s clear detriment. Jones did her thing in the garden, as well as feeding neighbouring cats and taking a neighbour’s dog for a walk as she does each day.


Natasha and Dani were here earlier in the week as well. Dani and I continued clearing the Graça field, turning boughs into firewood, branches into mulch and the useless left-overs into ash. It was a big job and still awaits completion. We also thinned out the many saplings in the upper area of the field, the section that I only recently learned was mine. Most of the saplings were wild olives and almonds. It’s no good just cutting them down as they promptly sprout again. So Dani wound a heavy chain around their base and I hauled them out root and branch with the tractor. We must have extracted at least 30 and there are as many still to do.

On Thursday I fetched an elderly friend of Jones’s and took them to Alte for a catch-up lunch. While they dined, I repaired with the dogs to Luis’s café where Luis was kind enough to allow me to plug my (flat battery) notebook computer into the elderly extension cord that already bore much of his establishment’s electrical burden.

Luis’s is our favourite hide-away, slightly dog-eared and down-at-heel. Luis is to be found behind the bar and his wife in the kitchen. Among other things they serve excellent home-made medronho and the famous Alte fig and almond tart (of which none better). We normally seat ourselves outside under the orange trees.

We went there last Sunday, as well, to take in the Alte carnival. Such was the crush that Jones had to carry Stoopy. Participants had gone to great trouble to dress up in exotic costumes (rather than following the example of the bare-breasted Loulé samba dancers whose attractive figures are still leaping about on the front page of this week’s Algarve Resident).


While we sipped our coffees and medronhos I took a picture of a young English girl whose parents were seated nearby and who amused herself by jumping up to grab oranges from the tree. We have recently seen Flags of our Fathers and, you never know, I thought the right picture might lead to fame and fortune.

Some time is passed each day in conversation with the neighbours who stroll this way. Ollie and Marie come past twice a day with their dog, Poppy (and often with a neighbour’s dog in tow as well). Dona Catarina, well into her eighties, uses our road for her twice daily constitutional (it’s the only level road on the upper part of the hill). She never fails to inform us that she is not allowed to sit down for 30 minutes after taking her pills. With her are often to be found her daughter, Leonhilda (a grandmother herself) and Maria of the Conception (her cousin I think) and their various dogs. (Everybody in Espargal is related to just about everybody else.) We generally have a little chat and, if we’re not careful, we get invited back to Maria’s place for cake and fig liquor.

The German builder, who is to construct the new house at the end of our road, has returned to offload a truckful of equipment but hasn’t yet made a start, possibly because the intermittent drizzle this week. The ground is still muddy. Indeed, my tractor has been leaving a trail of mud from along the road from the exit of the Graça field to the house.

Now it’s Saturday, going on for lunch. The sun is shining gloriously across the valley, with a few big black patches beneath the drifting clouds. We rose late this morning after a concert last night to which we took our Dutch lady neighbours. After breakfast we did our “all the way round” walk. It takes an hour plus. We’ve done it in an hour but that’s a real rush and the dogs don’t get a chance to sniff anything. Today we admired the orchids (only the “dull” variety are out yet) and the bloom of the bee-busy hazy-blue wild rosemary that dots the hillside. We live in a lovely part of the world.

Letter from Espargal: 6 of 2007

Several eminent residents of Espargal have spent much of this week gathered at the end of our road where Mario’s digger has been hard at work. It’s been levelling the middle section of a plot that Mario sold last year to a young Dutch couple. Like other properties on the hillside, the plot slopes quite steeply. Creating a level base for a house represented several days of work. In fact, it is a split-level base, presumably for a house with two storeys on the lower side and one on the upper.

Also present were the Dutch couple themselves, along with their dog (an Alsatiany sort of beast), and their German builder. Everybody kept a close eye on the digger as its bucket munched its way steadily through the soil. From time to time, Mario would reverse the digger and shove a pile of earth towards two hillocks that he had created at the bottom of the plot. One hillock comprised reddy-brown soil and the other a light brown type. All the soil in the area divides itself into one or other type. The reddy-brown stuff, which is what we have, is much stonier and harder to work.

If this seems like a lot of unnecessary detail, you may have little idea of how much excitement is created by the prospect of a new house arising in the village, to say nothing of new neighbours. It is a major event, the subject of much discussion. Such activity can keep onlookers happily employed for hours on end, providing valuable amusement at a time of year when there’s not much work to be done in the fields.

If one should grow tired of watching Mario’s digger, one can take oneself down to the bottom of the village. There, two council workers have been repairing dry-stone walls that were damaged during the road-widening exercise. Although both guys are nearing retirement, they remain impressively powerful. In view of the rocks that they are heaving into place with their bare hands, it’s easy to understand how they came to be such solid citizens. Some of the rocks are at least as heavy as they are.

From time to time they stop to pound a rock with a sledge-hammer in order to obtain stones they need to wedge big rocks into place. The final result is an object of beauty, a dry-stone wall that rises obliquely and evenly from a wide base. I have tried to build such walls and I can assure you that it doesn’t come naturally.

These walls are solid, long-lasting and virtually maintenance-free. They effortlessly withstood the earthquake that rattled much of Portugal early in the week (registering 6 on the open-ended Richter scale). We barely felt it here. Elsewhere people are reported to have fled buildings in panic. It was the biggest earthquake to hit the country in several decades, although a mere tiddler compared to the great Lisbon quake of 1755 that laid flat most of the city and much of the rest of Portugal.

As I write – Friday afternoon – we have been playing cops and robbers with the weather. There’s a low pressure system approaching from the Atlantic that’s promising us some serious rain. But so far all we’ve had is squalls. Each time we go outside to do a bit of gardening, a squall drives us back inside. As soon as we sit down inside, the sun comes out.

I hope the weather improves before Sunday, when the 3-day Loulé (winter) carnival begins. (There’s another carnival at the height of summer.) Loulé council closes down the main avenue for the occasion and decorates the route with rows of flags and bunting. All the shops close. One has to pay a small fee to enter the carnival zone. Floats - poking fun at politicians and personalities - parade along the route. On these floats shapely young women advertise their assets in spite of the often freezing conditions. No need to tell you how the lads are drawn from all around.

Beer kiosks do a roaring business among the adults while the kids amuse themselves hurling eggs and flour-bombs at each other (and often at indignant visitors as well). Jonesy and I went along once or twice and decided that we’d experienced as much of Loulé carnival as we needed. We are not natural revellers, either of us. On the other hand, we are easily persuaded to go along to the much smaller kiddies’ carnival at Alte, just across the valley.

At my neighbour, David’s request, I dropped into the workshop where his Lada Riva had been taken following a recent accident and arranged for it to be delivered to his house. It arrived a couple of hours later on the back of a rescue lorry – an ingenious flat-bed vehicle that uses a winch to draw damaged vehicles up on to its back. (It is illegal to tow vehicles on a public road in Portugal.)

As David wasn’t home I paid the driver cash and asked if I could have a receipt. The driver looked at me in mild surprise. He explained that if he made out a receipt, I would have to pay VAT – an additional 21%. Clearly, not many of his clients require receipts. We compromised on a scrap of paper that he tore off an envelope, bearing his signature and the amount. David is considering the purchase of another (equally used) Lada and of cannibalising the damaged vehicle for spares.

On the home front, I’ve been working at erecting a new section of fence, using only poles and wire that I had removed from another fence. Jones thought my initial efforts a bit Heath Robinson but she softened as work progressed. The final product, she accepted, was almost professional, even if one of the poles was a foot short and had to be lengthened with a piece of stick shoved into the top of it.

We have both been working in the garden, removing barrows of wide-leafed plants that explode all over the place during the wet months. Each can easily occupy a square metre or more. They are all over the surrounding fields as well. Unless the earth is tilled, it goes jungle green under a waist-high carpet of vegetation. Dani spent a day clearing the wild growth along the fringes of our newly acquired (Graça) field. There’s been no sign for a few weeks of the owners of another adjacent plot, which I want to purchase. They were due last weekend when, I suspect, the rain put them off.

Letter from Espargal: 5 of 2007

(February sunset over Espargal)

I have discovered that I own a chunk of land of which I was ignorant; what a stroke of good fortune! The man who enlightened me is the owner of a contiguous property, a man, as it happens, with a slightly shady reputation for moving boundary markers. He is a resident of a nearby hamlet who has long been trying to sell me his property and probably would have done if we had been able to agree on a price. But he wanted 20,000 euros (he now wants 25,000) and wouldn’t negotiate. I’d have been more tempted if it were the only property we wanted to acquire. But it was merely third on our list – behind two other plots that are closer to home.

Anyhow, this fellow has recently been very keen to sell. He drove up on a marketing exercise and, when I again declined, asked me to approve a new marker stone that he wanted to put in on the edge our land. This was speedily done. Afterwards I asked him about the ownership of some 400 square metres of uncultivated land adjacent to mine. This land was also mine, he informed me; and he proceeded to show me the exact boundaries. I can tell you that I was chuffed.

If only one could begin all one’s letters with such welcome news. Still on the good news front, we have had some soaking rains, the first in two months.

The other news of the week, even if it’s not our own, is of the sale of the company that my Canadian brother, Kevin, has been running. I was most surprised to hear of it in the BBC business slot. So let me wish Kevin and Ann all the best in whatever lies ahead once the sale and handover are completed.

Our own lives have continued in a much lower key. On Friday evening, we dropped Dani (back for the first time in months) and Natasha off in Loulé and then continued to Faro for supper and a Beethoven concert. His first piano concerto was followed by his first symphony – both lovely works, close to my heart.

Thursday meant the usual English lesson. Spare hours went into cleaning up the recently-acquired Graça plot, which is still covered with a carpet of branches awaiting attention.

Wednesday we had to present the results of our Portuguese grammar homework to our teacher. We had recently requested more grammar instead of extended conversation classes, as much as we enjoy the latter. I had left my homework till the last morning when I tried to fill it in at the breakfast table. Jones, still a diligent pupil, had carefully completed the exercise earlier. She refused to allow me to copy her answers, even if she did assist me with my own. I thought this a bit mean.

After the lesson we took David and Dagmar to lunch to celebrate the birth of their first grandchild. We chose a little country restaurant that did us proud on the tenderest cuts of wild boar. I hoped that we might similarly salute the arrival of their next grandchild, due in the summer. In the event of a stream of heirs, I warned them, we might have to limit ourselves to tea and biscuits. They didn’t seem to think this likely.

On Tuesday, after my English class, we drove to Faro where we were due to have check-ups with the dermatologist mid-afternoon. Our first assignment was to find a Sony shop near the hospital where, according to Natasha, we might obtain a cord that she wanted to link her video camera to a TV. Although we found the shop it didn’t stock the item. Nor did a big electrical store in the city. So we gave up and walked the dogs down to the harbour, where we found a rough fisherman’s eatery for lunch. On the 8-metre high walls of the old city opposite us pigeons scuffled for the best nesting places. We dined handsomely on salmon and salads.

A Portuguese diner at a neighbouring table was much amused to learn the meaning of the English caption on the back of his t-shirt: “Does not play well with others”. So were his companions.

The dermatologist’s waiting room, when we got there, was choc-a- block. After an hour, Jones gave up and went to walk the dogs. I eventually got to see the consultant, who blamed the delay on two fellow doctors, a married couple, who – she said – were obsessed with their health and waste her time in a fruitless pursuit of disease. As she spoke she subjected me to 20 minutes of cryogenic zapping. It left me with a new respect for St Sebastian.

At least I got to see her after just two hours. Most people, according to media reports, now have to wait up to 18 months to see a dermatolgist on the national health service. The consultant told me that 4 of the 6 dermatologists at Faro Hospital had resigned. If they are doing as well in private practice as she is, they’ll survive well enough.

(Chico and Dina)

Shortly after we got home, the barking of the dogs announced the arrival of old Chico and Dina. She was clutching yet another large plastic container of fig liquor – the third they have delivered. He grasped plastic bags holding rice and a chunk of animal fat. This tribute was presumably in return for firewood I had delivered to their cottage.

It was pressed upon us in spite of my protests that we already had more fig liquor than we could drink (15 litres to be exact; 16 if we count a litre received from Leonhilda).

Chico said that he was feeling better, which I was very pleased to hear. Then, because it was beginning to drizzle, I escorted them home under the golf brolly. They walked hand in hand, he 82 (he told me) and she 46. It was really quite touching.

Not so touching is our growing tendency to nod off in front of the telly in the evenings. It’s jolly irritating, especially when we have made a point of sitting down after supper to watch a documentary programme. When I’m not watching Jones nod off, she watching me drift off instead. She at least has the excuse that she rises at five in the morning. I’ve none.

While I confine myself mainly to local news there are occasions in which titbits from other parts of the world call out from attention. One such was from the Caribbean island of Grenada, where Chinese and Grenadian dignitaries assembled to celebrate the opening of a splendid Chinese-funded sports stadium.

This was a reward from Beijing to Grenada for breaking off relations with Taiwan two years earlier. As the suits stood stiffly to attention they heard the Grenadian police band salute them with Taiwan’s national anthem instead of China’s. If ever there were any proof required of the universality of Sod’s law, that must be it.

(On the road with neighbours Sarah and David.)

Letter from Espargal: 4 of 2007

A cursory reflection on the events of the week brings little to mind with the potential to become great literature. Still, I’m reading The Life of Pi at the moment and, if Yann Martel can do it, I don’t see why I can’t.

Let’s start with today - Friday. At breakfast Jones reminded me that I had an appointment with the dentist at 11.00. It was fortunate that she did because I’d forgotten all about it. Although I keep a computer diary of all the events that we need to bear in mind I don’t check it every day.

So we had to keep our morning walk short. We detoured down a new road that the council is carving from a right-of-way that runs through the fields half a mile below us. The work has been keeping a digger and several workers busy for a week or two. A large truck deposits regular loads of gravel for the digger to spread around. Jones doesn’t approve. She can’t see the need for a new road when the old roads suffice.

What the old roads won’t suffice for is the traffic that will be generated by the “rustic village” that is due to rise in the adjacent field. But it's better not to mention that. If Jones disapproves of the road, she positively loathes the idea of model houses sprouting on the fringes of our village. To be honest, I’m not enthused myself.

Idalecio points out that the council workers building the road do not strain themselves. He feels that with a little exertion they could construct several additional metres of road each day. While I didn’t disagree with him, I voiced the opinion that when one gets paid the same daily wage – and not much of it – for building 25 metres of road as for 35 metres, there’s much to be said for not rushing the job.

The dentist’s assistant called us as we were leaving to say that he was running late. So we went first to look for a new pair of walking shoes for Jones. My wife is particular about her walking shoes. She likes ones that she can slip on and off, even if they have laces. My preference is for sturdy shoes. After some browsing around the big outlet store at Almancil she found a pair that looked both rugged and comfortable. She actually fancied a lighter pair but I don’t think they’d have lasted on our stony roads and told her so. In her position I’d have bought both pairs. But she’s too thrifty to approve such wanton spending.

Thence to the dentist for the completion of my umpteenth crown. The guy is very good and I’ve no doubt that he’s worth the money he asks, even if the bills sometimes hurt more than the dentistry. I’ve needed to replace a mouthful of crowns that were installed 15 to 20 years ago. I wondered aloud to the dentist whether the new series would last me until the end of my life. He hoped so. So did I.

We’ve spent much of the week waiting for the rain that’s been tantalising us by not falling. We did get a couple of mills once or twice. The star turn was the appearance of a glorious rainbow, so big that the camera could take in only a third at a time.

On Thursday afternoon Idalecio came over to assist me with some heavy pruning. Just as he arrived, I took a call from an Irish neighbour who was anxious about the state of health of old Chico and asked if we could pop down the road to have a word with the old man. He and Dina had been missing for several days and our enquiries as to their whereabouts proved fruitless. He was rumoured to be in hospital.

When we went around to their (very basic) cottage, we found him seated on a bed, his pants around his thighs, looking frail and miserable. Dina looked on. The place was in a state of confusion, with stale chunks of bread and pieces of firewood scattered about. We asked him about his health. Chico is very hard to understand at the best of times. He not only mumbles, he does so almost entirely without the use of consonants.

But he confirmed that he’d been to hospital. We couldn’t make out if he’d been admitted. He said they'd be grateful for the cooked food that his English and Irish neighbours were offering to bring. I gathered that the Irish neighbours not only took the pair supper but also spent some time tidying up the cottage. We are doubtful that Chico will be able to take care of Dina much longer.

Idalecio and I then returned to attack the old olive and almond trees on the field that I recently acquired. We pruned the almond trees lightly; they are already in blossom. Idalecio said it was really too late in the season to prune them back severely. But the huge old olive trees were a different proposition. They had received no attention for years. One of them towered over the electricity lines that ran to the house.

Idalecio clambered up the ladder that I held against the trunk and took the chainsaw that I passed up to him. Then he carried out some serious surgery. Great boughs came tumbling down on to the field. Olive trees are renowned for their longevity but they tend to over-extend themselves, which leads to poor harvests. Also, the older boughs are liable both to die off and to rot from the inside. The trees can be cut back severely without harm; they then launch themselves on a new life.

It took us 90 minutes to do the pruning and as long again to carve up the wood into usable lengths. It will have to spend a season drying out in the sun first. As fast as he cut I piled the chunks on the back of the tractor and carted them off to the woodpile. There's still lots left to do. It’s work that Dani might easily do if he wished but Dani seems for the moment to be occupying a parallel world.

After English classes earlier in the week, I dropped into the Social Security office in Loulé in response to a letter I’d received from the department. Happily, there is one really efficient young woman at the office, whom I’ve come to know. She phoned up the Faro headquarters – whence the letter had come – to discern the problem. A brief conversation followed during which my young woman assured her Faro colleague that things were in hand. Whatever the problem was, it was resolved by my writing across the contact that Natasha was entitled to receive unemployment compensation.

Tonight we are going to Idalecio’s little restaurant for supper, along with David and Sarah (who is still a bit fragile after her accident) and two other expat couples.

At Llewellyn’s instigation, I have taken out some tickets in the Euromillions draw. If my next letter should come from a luxury suite in some exotic location, we’ve hit the jackpot.