Letter from Espargal: 12 of 2007

It’s a case of “hold the front page”. There’s great excitement in the village. A digger has been brought into to uncover an “ancient well”, which the villagers are now busy clearing of accumulated dirt. Jones and I saw the digger at work yesterday, ripping up the surrounding cobbles. We thought that it was merely part of replumbing work that was happening in the background and paid little attention.

Today, as we returned from a morning walk, we chanced on a group of villagers gathered at the spot. Closer approach revealed the mouth of the well (at ground level) and Zé Carlos a couple of metres down, hard at work with a hoe and shovel. Each time he filled a bucket with dirt, an assistant would haul it up with a rope and dump the dirt into the back of a tractor. Zé Carlos said he intended to dig down until he struck water a metre or two lower.

The villagers explained that the old well had been covered up in 1935 when the local authorities had built a new well close by to serve the village. The “new” well (still) has a hand-operated wheel that drives a pump that spurts water out of a pipe – a great improvement on rope and bucket. In the intervening years people had forgotten the exact location of the old well.


The council has now decided to expose the old well and to build a wall around the mouth. It’s an historical feature. The villagers believe that the well dates back to the Romans. In evidence they produce a haul of ancient ceramic shards found in the fields as well as – if anyone were still in doubt - a coin dating from the reign of Augustus Caesar. The also point out that the walls of the old well have been worn smooth by the passage of innumerable buckets down the centuries. Who knows?

In another significant development, we have picked, cooked and eaten our first beans of the season. The beans, as always, are excellent even if the crop itself is poor and the rodents have had their share; in fact, more than their share. The plants that I sowed in Sarah and David’s field are dotted with chewed pods. We worked our way along the bean plants, plucking the larger beans. The small ones may yet take heart from the promised rains and swell in size.


At Jones's request I have set up a bench in the south garden, placing it in the shade of a carob tree and using a spirit level to get it exactly right. Jones is very particular about having things level - especially her pictures.

We have head-scratched over a minor puzzle. It concerns a chap who lives in a nearby hamlet and who leads his dogs out each afternoon on a quad-bike. The dogs trot along behind. (A little dog, equipped with doggy goggles, sometimes sits astride the petrol tank). The rider turns off the dirt road that runs through the orchard below us, along a track that, we presumed, must lead him back home. It’s one of the few routes that we’re not familiar with. So we thought we’d follow it.

It led us for a couple of kilometres towards a distant village (Esteval dos Mouros – the Rock Rose plot of the Moors). The area was clearly popular with hunters, whose cartridge cases lay scattered all around. We also came across some spectacular orchids. But we couldn’t find a turn-off that might have led our quad-biker back home. It was as though he vanished into thin air.

The puzzle was solved when I encountered the rider one afternoon and asked him. It appears that he goes for miles, all the way to Esteval dos Mouros and then back by another route. His dogs must be the fittest in the Algarve. Jones and I are resolved to follow the route one day, equipped with the necessary refreshments to see us home.
Alternatively, we might consider hiring the quad-bikes which (the rider explained) he wants to rent out to visitors – although I doubt that the dogs would approve. (Jones, checking my letter, says I can count her out as well.)

A rep came along one afternoon to demonstrate new technology for accessing the internet via the mobile phone network. I had been making enquiries about it on behalf a neighbour who has dial-up internet access. The technology, different from the 3G Connect Card system that I’d been investigating earlier, still depends on the strength of the available signal. Although it’s much slower (and considerably cheaper) than broadband it proved to be 3 times as fast as dial-up here in Espargal. Every so often when I have to use a dial-up link I find myself tearing my hair out in frustration. How did we ever get by?

We’ve had some welcome showers along with an unrelenting, exhausting, nerve-wracking wind. The first of the showers arrived last weekend as I was preparing an evening barbecue. I was able to pull the barbecue cart under the lee of the upstairs patio and to continue grilling without interruption. I was quite pleased with myself. The rain continued overnight – although only a measly 7 millimetres registered in the morning. We need more rain before the onset of the hot months. Already the soil has dried out. Big cracks have opened along the tractor tracks – and this is only March.

Another welcome 7 mms arrived later in the day as we set out to see The Painted Veil. We both liked the film – although I hated the usual distractions. Three English women a few rows away were conversing in stage whispers and consulting their mobile phones. They were clearly irritated when I asked them to turn the phones off. I didn’t point out that they shouldn’t have been on in the first place. A screen announcement at the start of each movie asks the audience to disconnect mobiles and not to converse during the film. It gets about the same level of respect as the speed limit. Dad used to get really bothered by any such distractions and I fear that he passed his botheration genes on to me in their entirety.


Dani and I continued our attack on the Park when he and Natasha made their usual Tuesday appearance. The timber we brought down gave us to two tractor loads of firewood, including half a dozen hollow trunk bases for Jones’s flowers. She uses these as containers for live plants, packing the hollow space with soil. We use them to line the fence and they look superb. Jones spotted several large such bases on the property that Vitor, the mechanic, has been clearing and Vitor was happy for us to have them.

At the end of the day with Dani I found that I would have to take him and Natasha back to Loulé because the evening bus service didn’t run during the school holidays. If I wasn’t best pleased the dogs were thrilled. They love nothing better than a ride in the car. When we got back Jones complained that she hadn’t got a single thing done the whole day. All she had done was to look after her workers - toast and coffee on arrival, followed by morning tea and cake, lunch, and afternoon tea and cake, generally served wherever we’re working.

Apart from this Jones had found herself drawn into conversations with several passing neighbours. It wasn’t that she minded the conversations. She just felt frustrated that she had nothing to show for the passage of the day. She hadn’t even finished digging a hole for a plant. I hugged her and assured her that from our point of view, her day had been a most valuable and appreciated one. Isn’t it strange how we still feel the need to justify our daily existence, even by digging a few holes or picking up some stones.

p.s. The villagers have just come to borrow my submersible pump. I took it and several metres of hose along to the well on the tractor. Last I saw Zé Carlos he was five metres down with water up to the rim of his gumboots.

Letter from Espargal: 11 of 2007

BENAFIM FROM ONO'S PATH

The news this week is of discoveries. Jones and Ono have discovered a path running from the western edge of the village around the side of the hill to the carob trees at the back. And I have discovered two new groups of tongue orchids – serapias - on the fringes of the road leading down to the river.

The path, judging from its overgrown state, is little used. I wasn’t with Jones the afternoon that she came across it. She says she followed Ono until the path reached a tractor track that runs to the bottom of the hill. Accordingly, we’ve called it Ono’s Path. (All our routes have names.) I later spent an hour with secateurs cutting back the bushes. We think the route was once used by farmers and the donkeys required to bear the sacks of carobs back to the village.

As for the serapias, the discoveries are quite exciting. Until now, we’ve been aware only of a single patch of them, growing in the shade of a tree on the far side of the valley. Serapias are probably the rarest of the varieties that we come across. Those we’ve found are hard to identify exactly. A glance at the orchid book lent to us by the Mackrills (regular visitors and orchid experts) shows numerous similar flowers. We did note that ours came with three distinct markings.

After a warm spell and the unwelcome arrival of a few mosquitoes, our weather has turned dry and cold. A wicked wind has whistled down from the Spanish mountains (where truck drivers have been caught in heavy snow). The benefit has been the bluest of skies and the dispersal of the pollution haze that normally hangs over the coastal plain. Jones agreed that we should have a fire in the evenings, even though it means that she will once again have to scrub the glass panels of the wood burning stove.

Last weekend we had a brief thunderstorm as I was putting together two garden benches on the front patio. Thunderstorms were a frequent and unwelcome part of our lives when we lived at the Quinta - a real menace to our electrical systems. Now, for some reason, they seldom occur. That on Sunday, although brief, was a cracker.

A feature of such weather is its effect on Stoopy, our small black bitch. Stoopy has become Jones’s dog as Ono has taken to me. Where Jones goes her shadow is seldom far behind. At night, Stoopy curls up on Jones’s side of the bed. But in the event of any explosive noise - hunters, thunder or fireworks - Stoopy abandons Barbara for me. During the storm she followed me out into the rain when I went to look for a drill bit in Casa Nada. Her switch of allegiance is quite blatant and unapologetic –a bit like the Vicar of Bray’s. She simply turns to Jones for love and me for protection.

The benches (that I was putting together) were a bargain from a big hardware store, Like much of the stuff on sale, they were made in China. Jones wants to put one under an olive tree in the south garden. I want the other to go in the wooded area that Dani and I have cleared of excessive saplings, at the top of the Graça field. We have called it “The Glade” – a place to linger over a baggy on a summer evening.

THE PARK

This week Dani and I turned our attention to The Park, an acre-plus of rugged hillside, that rises above the house. It takes us about a week each spring to trim back the trees, strim the terraces, rip out the thorn bushes and generally make the place presentable. It’s an area I love, with little dells to be found among the boulders, trees and bushes. It would be the perfect place for children to play hide and seek.

In its efficient use of space, nature doesn’t waste even the little holes and fissures in the rocks. These collect dust and droppings in which, after a time, seeds sprout and plants spring up. Sometimes trees establish themselves in the rock. Their roots must find a way through to the earth below.

One evening I watched a BBC TV documentary about the mis-selling of products to bank customers. The pictures were filmed secretly by a journalist who got a job at Barclays, which failed to check her credentials or those of a colleague of hers. As a Barclays customer, I was fascinated to see managers and trainers instructing recruits how to cold-call, mislead clients and generally flog the bank’s products. What counted was simply meeting sales targets and making commissions, especially by persuading customers to change to new fee-paying accounts. For this change no signature was required.

Some customers found that their accounts had been changed for them without their knowledge or consent and arrived to confront the bank over the unexpected charges that appeared on their statements. I understood for the first time why, when I recently called Barclays, the woman who handled my inquiry said she was going to change my account to a better one. I insisted that she leave it alone. I have since written to Barclays, recounting the incident and expressing my unhappiness.

Naturally, the corporate PR exec, who was given the opportunity to reply to the revelations, disowned her employees’ tactics. Barclays was a service oriented establishment and any rogue elements would be weeded out, she assured us.

JASMINE IN BLOOM

Another evening we went with English neighbours to a garden exhibition in Faro. It was the opening night and there were almost as many exhibitors as visitors when we arrived. Jones is interested in installing a small swimming pool, a number of which (fibre-glass models) were on display. I was more taken by the Jacuzzis, some of which were almost as expensive as the pools. An enthusiastic salesman hurriedly put out his cigarette to explain the benefits of the 2-person 10-thousand euro model (made of the very best Canadian components). I brought Jones along for a look but she’s not into jacuzzis and thought it unnecessary for me to have raised the salesman’s hopes.

The night was cold and after 45 minutes of looking around, we took ourselves to a on-site restaurant with some welcome radiant gas heaters to warm our bones. There were few other diners, excepting a scrum of VIPs from Faro Camara, tucking into tables of snacks. Apart from Ollie’s rather tough smoked-sausage, it was a good supper. And the dogs were grateful for the remains of the sausage (although we did wonder later whether it was the cause of Ono’s vomiting up his supper in the corner of the bedroom some time after midnight.Yuck!).

A two-man team has started work on the foundations of the house that the Dutch couple will be building at the corner of our road. A perfectly carved trench marks the limits of the house, with deep holes to take the bases of reinforced concrete pillars. (This is earthquake country.) Watching the progress is going to keep much of the village busy for months to come.

Letter from Espargal: 10 of 2007

VIEW OF THE HOUSE

I was reflecting this week how different people are. (I do not expect to win any prizes for this insight.) The immediate cause of my reflections was a BBC TV series about a cooking competition. The final programme had been drawn to our attention by passing neighbours, one of whom had been following the series and was anxious to be home in time to prepare dinner before the final.

Jonesy turned it on out of interest (although she awarded it only 3 out of 10 for compulsiveness). We watched three earnest finalists trying to outcook each other, among a flurry of “amazings” and “incredibles” from the judges, along with a “brave choice” and even a “miraculous”. I confess that watching people cook and eat does nothing to jangle my genes. Given the choice I would have preferred the finals of the snail-racing championships.

Immediately after the programme came the 2nd leg of the Uefa Cup clash between Benfica (one of Portugal’s top football teams) and Paris St Germain. The match was played in Lisbon before tens of thousands of passionate fans. They were desperate for their beloved team to overcome the deficit acquired during the first leg in Paris. Now this was unmissible television - incredible feats of skill, amazing passes, brave tackles and miraculous saves. When Benfica won with a late penalty kick the fans went absolutely delirious. I was rather pleased myself. (Jones had left me to it and retired to bed.)

ON THE ROAD

I hope that I do not give the impression that I am a dreary football fan with no appreciation of food. This week I was the chef at a barbecue, the results of which were acclaimed by all concerned. What’s more, I can talk at length about the state of my beans, now reaching maturity in David and Sarah’s field. Jones has picked a few and we had them in a salad one evening. They are as tasty as ever.

However, and this is the bad news, there are very few actual beans on the plants. The locals tell me that the lean crop is the result of the poor rains this year (following the torrents that fell towards the end of last year). One would have thought that there isn’t a great deal to growing beans. But not only do the plants require the right amount of rain to perform, they require it at the appropriate time.

THE GRACA FIELD

One begins to understand why farmers are keener on getting subsidies than growing food. I was listening to a report on the radio about how the Scottish authorities have permitted farmers, who get paid for not growing crops, to sell the subsidy contracts while retaining the land that they get paid for leaving fallow. Crazy! Before I abandon agriculture, let me add that Barbara’s unsubsidised garlic plants and her new vine cuttings appear to be coming along well. Her flowers are a joy.

As I was saying, I had cause to reflect how different people are. Another reflection was that half a lifetime of living with Jones had not diminished our (mainly amicable) disagreements on all kinds of subjects.

It happens that I am a fast eater, someone who is disinclined to linger over meals when there is so much waiting to be done – even if it’s having a siesta. Jones has been trying to slow me down. When she offered the opinion that eating slowly reduced one’s calorie intake, I was understandably sceptical. Since calories are calories, I could see no rational reason why the calorie content of a given amount of food should depend on the speed of its consumption.

VILLAGERS

When I am particularly anxious to dismiss a Jones argument, I google the issue to prove the point. (After all, if one finds that one has the wrong end of the stick, there is no requirement to return to the subject.) Jones, who is not a regular internet user, is at a disadvantage here.

However, she is a great fan of a British magazine, The Week, copies of which she gets from a friend. When Jones comes across an interesting article she cuts it out and files it (her librarian instincts die hard) or leaves it on my desk. You may imagine with what relish she left me a report on the calorie reduction that could be obtained by slower eating.

It’s okay. I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong. As I tell her, if I were right all the time our marriage would be unbearable. How could you possibly live with somebody who was always right? There is even an argument for deliberately getting things wrong from time to time just to make one’s partner feel better.

Jonesy might have suffered a few doubts about the contents of The Week after reading an article on 10 other uses for one’s microwave. These included softening old mascara with a 40 second zap in the oven. She tried it and succeeded only in frying the mascara brush.

HARD TIMES

Dani and Natasha are making a double visit this week. He is trying to earn some extra cash before (hopefully) finding work with a carpenter. Natasha works an additional day each month to help her find the money that she now has to pay to the social services as part of her employment contract.

Dani and I have been using the tractor to clear young saplings from the heavily wooded small piece of land that I recently learned was mine. The trees are mainly wild olives and almonds. Unless they have been grafted they are regarded by the locals as little better than weeds or firewood. Dani winds a chain around the base of the young trees which I then rip out with the tractor.

Young as they are, the trees are well rooted. Several times they held fast while the tractor’s front wheels reared in the air at the strain. After a while the heavy coupling holding the chain broke and then the chain itself broke – three times. We have had to work with shorter and shorter sections. (As mentioned, there’s no point in just cutting the trees off at the base because they simply sprout again.)

Early in the week, Vitor arrived at the gate on his quad-bike, towing a small trailer to which he’d attached Olly’s non-functioning strimmer. Vitor showed me the cause of the trouble - the small plastic choke which had broken, causing the strimmer to cut out within a few seconds of firing. I had to persuade him to take a few euros for his troubles. A new plastic choke is on order.

I have also – finally – installed Fintan’s computer in his home in full working order. It took the expertise of Inforomba to sort out the virus update problem we’d run into. At the same time the computer shop added some extra ram and installed SP2 – so the visit was well worthwhile. To my embarrassment, when I first took the computer back to Fintan, it froze solid as soon as we tried to link to the internet. Another visit to Inforomba and an updated driver has resolved the problem.

Tonight we are going to Faro for a concert, the second in the series of Beethoven’s works.

Letter from Espargal: 9 of 2007

FEEDING THE CATS AT DAVID AND SARAH'S PLACE.
Quite a lot of stuff has happened this week, one way and another. For instance, one afternoon Jones put her pick-axe through the water pipe to Casa Nada. This happened as I was discussing a computer problem over the phone with a neighbour - and moments before I was due to run Dani and Natasha down to the bus stop. I can tell from the way Jones bellows “Terrrrryyyyy” that she’s run into an urgent problem. I made my apologies to the neighbour and went to take a look. The jet of water that was shooting into the air would have delighted the hearts of any budding public fountain engineers.

In view of the imminent arrival of the bus, I turned the water off at the pump-house as an interim measure before driving our workers to the bus stop (dogs in the back seat as usual; they think they now travel in the car by right). I got back to hear from Jones that she had confided the problem to neighbours, who were walking past the gate as they do on their circuit each day. Moments later, they turned up in the car with Fintan, another villager, who happens to be a retired plumber.

It so happened that Fintan had come along a few days earlier to take a look at a different plumbing problem, a leak in the pumphouse. It was only a small job, he explained, but he needed a couple of parts to fix it – which he subsequently obtained. Within five minutes he had cut and capped the holed pipe and in another five he had repaired the leak in the pumphouse. I was most grateful and said so – wondering whether the gentlemen would care to share a beer. They declined my offer although they accepted a large bar of Toblerone chocolate – our one and only, as I told them - that Jones offered them instead.

Happily, Fintan was slightly in my debt in view of my considerable assistance to him this past fortnight with his computer. He ran into a problem with a free security programme, which I resolved by stripping it off and replacing it (at his cost) with Kaspersky’s security suite. Well, I sort of resolved it because the new programme works fine but it won’t update.

NAKED MAN ORCHIDS. In fact, I was back at Fintan’s place this morning while John, another neighbour, who is a computer professional, tried to fix the update problem. In spite of much effort and cleaning up of the hard disk, he failed. As a result I will now have to take Fintan’s computer into my computer shop, which specialises in Kaspersky. At least, if I haven’t actually sorted out any problems, I have shown lots of good will – which, I think you’ll agree, at the end of the day, is what really counts.

I have also been helpful to another neighbour whose strimmer wasn’t working. After explaining to him what generally needs to be done – clean the plug and filter, replace old petrol etc – I actually went along, prompted by Jones, to help him. We did all the necessary and the strimmer fired first time. Well, it sort of gurgled and died. After that it just coughed uselessly. I offered to take it down to Vitor, the village mechanic, who nearly always manages to sort these things out. As I say, when push comes to shove, it’s the good will that matters more than results.

EARLY PURPLE ORCHID.
Jones – coming back to the damaged pipe – was most apologetic for her actions, especially as she had known that the pipe ran through the section of the garden concerned. I didn’t feel that the apologies were necessary but it was quite useful to have her feeling apologetic. This is because it would seem that not only had I inadvertently poisoned some of her favourite plants the previous week but I had also scarified a precious cutting while cleaning up the vege patch with the tractor.

This cutting, which had been given to her by Leonhilda - a Portuguese neighbour – was evidently a very special plant and likely to be irreplaceable. Jones was severely upset to have had it rooted up and she shared her displeasure with me. A couple of days later she later came across the cutting still attached to a clod of earth and has replanted it in the hope that it may sprout anew.

WOODCOCK ORCHID.
I reported the situation to Leonhilda, who has given Jones more cuttings as well as some eggs from her hens to thank the pair of us for my work in cleaning up her (adjacent) field at the same time as I was scarifying mine. Like most of the farmers in the village, her husband has an older (two-wheel drive) tractor that struggles on the steep slope. What’s more, he hasn’t been very well or felt inclined to tackle strenuous work.

Another gift, a bottle of olive oil, came from the strange couple (Chico and Dina) whom we encountered ambling along the main road in the drizzle last Sunday afternoon on our return from Hans the baker’s place in Benafim. After encouraging a reluctant Stoopy to join Jones in the front seat and an even more reluctant Ono to occupy the rear of the vehicle, we shoe-horned the couple into the back seat. Dina is a very large lady and Chico is a very old man. Neither of them is exactly supple.

WILD TULIPS.
On our arrival at their cottage Chico insisted that I should wait outside while he hurried in to fetch me something. It turned out to be 5 litres of newly-pressed oil. It was, he insisted, very good. And he spoke truly. I would much rather have left it with them but you can’t argue with Chico. If you do something for him, he does something for you. We are still working our way gradually and pleasurably through the 15 litres of fig liquor with which he’s rewarded me for various other favours.

On Monday night we went to Faro to see Dream Girls. We thought it was very well done and that Jennifer Hudson deserved her Oscar. I can’t pretend that it was my kind of music or that I enjoyed the company of a gaggle of teenyboppers who spent most of the film chatting, munching popcorn and consulting their mobiles.

Another night, Tuesday I think, I woke Jones around midnight (at her request) to come on to the patio to admire the eclipse of the moon. It was a full eclipse, visible across the length and breadth of Europe. The media had spoken about a “blood-red orb” - a bit over the top although it was certainly a striking phenomenon. We watched as the moon’s left flank began to glisten as it emerged from the eclipse and the light crept ever so slowly across its face.

The main news of the week, I think, is the hardest to convey. It’s the onset of the orchid season. The dull orchids have been out for weeks. But Jones has now spotted the first mirror orchids. On the path below the house she found Early Purples and Woodcocks although the latter were outshone by a grouping that I found on the road out of the village.

DAWN OVER VALAPENA.
Orchids apart, the fields are ablaze with wild flowers. Some hide themselves under the trees or among the rocks. We never know when we’re about to stumble across some magnificent new specimen. I wish you were here to share some of our pleasure in these simple things.

Letter from Espargal: 8 of 2007

This has been a mainly agricultural week. It has taken me the better part of two afternoons to clean up the Casanova and Graça fields (named after their former owners), both of which were disappearing under a mass of winter vegetation. If you thought this was easy work you’d be wrong.

The first step is to remove the link-box from the back of the tractor and attach the scarifier, a process that takes (me) at least 15 minutes and a lot of effort – sometimes grazed knuckles. A scarifier is a plough-like implement that rips out vegetation and turns over the soil. Unlike a plough, it doesn’t create furrows. (It tends to hook on buried rocks and tree roots, leaving the tractor wheels spinning.)

I watched a TV programme this week in which three mega tractors attached and shed their implements in a matter of seconds - just a matter of click-on and click-off. Nobody in Espargal has a tractor like that. Here one has to physically detach the hydraulic lift bar and the lower forked bars that support the implement. It’s best done on a level surface (if you can find one). Once the non-required implement has been removed, one has to back the tractor slowly and carefully up to the item to be attached. Unless the tractor is lined up exactly, it’s all but impossible to fasten the scarifier (and it weighs a ton). Gloves and a heavy iron bar are advisable.

After attaching the scarifier and tensioning the supporting bars one is ready to get to work. In a perfect world the field to be “ploughed” should be free of rocks and trees and level. Ours are real world fields; they slope and are dotted with rocks and trees. That makes life awkward, especially as the protective bar over my seat cannot hinge down (as new ones can) to avoid catching low branches.

It’s toughest working at the top of the fields where the slope is steepest. It would be simplest simply to work from top to bottom but one is meant to plough along the contour of the slope to avoid dragging the soil down.
At times I lean over the side of the tractor like a yachtsman, a posture that provokes merriment among the locals. Even so, the results of my efforts have won me praise. “You plough just like a Portuguese farmer,” a neighbour, Maria, assured me as we met on the road. (Half the women in the village are called Maria.) This is no half hearted compliment.

We took the opportunity to ask Maria about a small building which is springing up across the road from her house. Any such construction is of interest to other villagers – i.e. us. Maria explained that it was a shed intended to take a machine either to shell almonds or to grind carob beans – it wasn’t clear to us.

Like the builders of other sheds in the village, the owner of this one has not thought it necessary to go through the arduous and lengthy planning process required by the authorities. Understandably, people hereabouts prefer to avoid such cumbrous bureaucracy wherever possible. It is slightly ironic, however, that the man concerned is suspected of tipping off the building inspector about a garage that a neighbour was erecting (after the neighbour succeeded in buying a small field that both men desired).


Jones, for her part, has been labouring long and hard to remove poisoned triffids, the corpses of which have been piled on our burgeoning weed heap. “Triffids” is her name for the large broad-leafed plants that invade the place every winter. They grow to nearly two metres in height and simply take the place over (as per the next picture).

I spent two afternoons going around the property zapping them with Grammox. Two or three days later they started to turn brown and to droop – an ugly sight. Jones was disturbed (a) because we were expecting visitors and she wanted the garden to look its best and (b) because the poison had zapped a few desirable plants in the process – a case of friendly fire.

She pointed these innocent victims out to me at length, lamenting their sad state and emphasising the enormity of my actions. I know how those guys feel who sprayed agent orange all over Vietnam.

Just across the fields from us, my beans are slowly coming to maturity on David and Sarah’s plot. They ought to be ready to pick next month. Every time I pass them I resolve to return the same day to weed them and then promptly forget about my resolution.

A model example of how to tend a vegetable garden is set by elderly neighbours – a couple in their eighties - at the bottom of the village. The soil in their garden has been dug over until it has reached a smooth texture. Young plants nestle in a shallow depression of earth. Each pea plant is supported by a stick. Tender shoots are covered at night by upturned 5-litre water bottles. These are removed the following morning to allow the young plants to bathe in the spring sunshine. It is all very impressive.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday brought the usual classes. After each class I slipped down the road to Inforomba’s computer shop. First I went to purchase a Kaspersky anti-virus suite for a neighbour whom I’d talked into buying it to replace his freebie. (The suite promptly found a host of nasties on his hard disk and deleted them - satisfaction there.) But it was the Portuguese version of the program and the neighbour speaks little Portuguese. So back I went to try to replace it with an English one (easily done). What I couldn’t sort out – and Inforomba couldn’t help me – was a problem with the update function. I’ll have to take the neighbour’s computer into the shop next week.

I fear that not all is well with my subconscious, not to judge by my dreams. In one frequently recurring dream I find myself wandering around a huge building looking for someone or something – generally the newsroom. When I find it, either there’s nowhere for me to sit or the typewriter doesn’t work and I have to put a bulletin on air in an impossibly short time. In my last such dream, my boss said she was giving the workers lots of stick. “But not enough for some”, I replied. At this everybody laughed. I considered it a very witty reply, even when I woke up.

In another dream I was going to dine with several friends, only one of whom I clearly recall. (I shall let him remain anonymous.) He was querulous and accused me of “having a high regard for my own opinions”. Tired of his nonsense I proclaimed: “This is too silly,” and walked out, leaving him to dine alone. That was very satisfying.

If any readers can usefully play Moses to my troubled Pharaoh, their responses will be most kindly considered.

(Sunset - moonrise over Valapena)
Jonesy was walking the dogs the other day when she met an English neighbour who was walking hers. Suddenly, the dogs went for each other, pulling Jonesy over as they did so. I wasn’t there. She says she had the devil of a time trying to get up again and to separate them. She was not best pleased with her little darlings. Fortunately, little harm was done except to the owners’ nerves.