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.