Letter from Espargal: 21of 2007

I wish you could have seen us last Sunday evening as we set out in our glad rags for the Senior University bash down at the coastal resort town of Vilamoura. In the recesses of my wardrobe I had discovered a pair of flannels that I didn’t know I still had (having long since given away all my formal gear). To accompany them I chose my flowing Madiba shirt (thank you Lucia and Llewellyn). Jones had donned her Chicago dress (thank you Kevin and Ann).

The only fly in the ointment was the disappearance of Prickles, for whom we hunted in vain as we were about to set out. Having given up on him, we discovered him just beyond the gate as we were leaving and bundled him into the car. He didn’t mind that. On his fun list, hitting the road comes a close second to hunting for rabbits.


The bash was held in one of the several restaurants of a palatial hotel situated on the marina at Vilamoura. We had occasionally peered through the stately glass windows at the other-worldly figures in its cavernous interior but had never entered the impressive portals. The doorman indicated that we would find the restaurant situated on the lower floor – which we eventually did, in a separate building located beside the inland sea that served as the hotel pool.

The restaurant glittered with candles, starched tablecloths and all the stuff that you don’t find at the local in Benafim. Scores of our fellow teachers and pupils were present. Men’s apparel ranged from “smokings” (as formal men’s outfits are known) to golf shirts. Among the ladies some slightly wrinkly décolletages were on display. Waiters hurried around the tables, topping up wine glasses.


After the feast came the usual speeches and the presentation to the teachers – all volunteers - of a thank you gift. The gift is always something specially acquired or made for the occasion – this time a lead-crystal cut-glass bowl. Having Prickles in the car, we were able to make our apologies and our exit before the theatre-group pupils presented their customary mini-drama.

Monday first thing I took a flat tractor tyre to the garage at Salir to get a new tube fitted. Don’t’ think that this is a simple process. Although the nuts had come off the wheel with a bit of effort, the wheel itself absolutely wouldn’t separate from the hub – in spite of any amount of bashing. Vitor, the village mechanic responded to my plea for assistance. The problem was a common one, he assured me, caused by rust and best solved by levering the wheel off with a crowbar – as he promptly demonstrated.

Getting the wheel in (and out of) the car took a fair bit of grunting. Tractor tyres are filled with water to lend the tractor more weight and stability. They are not meant to be carried around. At least the Monday morning queue I anticipated at the garage didn’t materialise. In the half hour that it took the garage to mend the tyre, I got rid of our empties (we always seem to have a pile of bottles and cans awaiting disposal) and did a bit of shopping. By mid-morning, the wheel was back on the tractor and the tractor was back on the road. I felt so much better. Having the tractor out of action always makes me feel uneasy.

I spent the better part of a day scarifying our fields, all of which were turning green with weeds. Does it sound like fun, sitting on your bum, steering a tractor? It’s not - not on our hillside in the hot sun. The vehicle slips and slides and skids and spins its wheels and hooks the scarifier on rocks and roots. What I did enjoy was being accompanied by a swirling cloud of swifts that were clearly benefiting from the bugs I stirred up. (I thought of them as angels as they swept about me.) Sparrows and even a fiscal shrike later joined the party.

Maria of the Conception said it was a pity I’d cleaned up the fields because her hens were crazy for the dandelions that she had been picking there. She and Leonhilda dropped around to give Jones a bag of dried flowers to make a “sleepy tea” (not that Jones needs any such assistance). Poor Leonhilda is still leading a half life, spending most of her time hiding from her disturbed husband in her sister’s part of their semi-detached house.

WAS THAT A RABBIT?

Maria’s dog, the unfortunate Bizu, is still hobbling around unhappily – a rope securing a back leg to a front one – supposedly for his bad behaviour. It turns out (according to witnesses to the event) that the little boy who was allegedly “attacked” by Bizu last week, had been teasing local dogs while riding his bike. At some point, possibly frightened by the dog, he fell off the bike and suffered some grazes. His screams alerted his mother, who rushed out of Dina and Chico’s house (where she was tending their needs) and shrieked blue murder.

The child was first patched up by our Irish neighbours. He was then taken up to the health centre by Maria’s husband, Joachim, to have his grazes examined. Joachim drew a line, however, at the mother’s demands that he pay for one or other medication. Signs of a dog bite there were none – and one would most definitely find distinct traces of a Bizu bite. Nonetheless, Bizu is being punished and everyone is very unhappy about the situation. It is generally thought that it would be more sensible to hobble the little boy.

TIME FOR A TRIM
On Tuesday evening all the local expats went along to the Adega to celebrate what turned out to be our neighbour, David’s birthday. I thought that we were celebrating the acquisition of their new (second-hand) car, a handsome green Kia 4x4 that looks remarkably like our Honda. It even has the same age and mileage. As if to rub the salt in, they can boast a lower range of gears that the Honda lacks. There could be very little doubt, as I told them, that they were endeavouring to keep up with the Joneses, possibly even to gain a lead. And, as I told Jones, it was time we upped the anti by getting a new car ourselves. Jones was not impressed. It takes a tough argument to impress Jones when it comes to spending money on new cars.

David and Sarah have stripped one of their bedrooms and taken up its floor in preparation for the latest renovations of their old cottage. The floor comprised only elderly hand-made ceramic tiles laid directly on the earth – no cement base or grouting. (Mould, damp and ants had been coming through for years, Jones adds.) They plan to re-lay the tiles on an insulated screed before replacing the old roof with a modern insulated one as well. This they will do themselves with a little help from Idalecio, and possibly an occasional neighbourly hand.

Idalecio is coming here shortly to build a base on which to raise our 1,000 litre (overflow) water tank. An additional metre plus of height will give us welcome additional pressure when we water the lower garden flowers.

I drove up to Benafim, towing the trailer, to purchase cement and grey cement “blocos” for the job. Building materials are acquired via one of two adjacent supermarkets in the high street, each of which sits opposite a builder’s yard and has a depot just out of town. The womenfolk do the groceries and the men the construction stuff.

The Quim Quim supermarket boss despatched Victor, a big Ukrainian, with me to load the trailer with the cement and the blocos. He had to watch where he put his big boots as he got into the car because Prickles was riding in the passenger footwell as usual. Did the dog bite, Victor asked. I was able to assure him that he was safe from attack. As we loaded the trailer, Victor told me how cold it got in Ukraine and I told him that I'd seen enough of Canadian winters to know exactly how it felt.

Letter from Espargal: 20 of 2007

SEA VIEW - LOOK CAREFULLY

It’s a blue-sky Saturday morning. The wind has blown away the brown smudge of pollution that often stains the air along the coastal plain and, through the gap in the hills, we can make out a dark blue streak of distant sea. (Yes, on a good day we do have a sea view.)

ALTERNATIVE MOUNTAIN VIEW

The dogs are stretched out after a 90-minute circuit through the valley, tugging hard at their leads in a fruitless bid to get at the ever-tantalising rabbits and partridges, and nearly breaking our necks on the steep, stony roads in the process. Those little fellows have amazing pulling power.

Summer is here. Passenger jets bound for Faro airport are sliding overhead, packed with tourist cargoes. The airport is chaotic. We have been to there twice this past week, once to welcome Cape Town cousin Jonathan and wife Carol and a second time to see them off. (Portugal was their last stop on a family catch-up and personal wind-down European trip.)


We spent the better part of a day with them, visiting Estoi for a stroll around the Roman ruins and a glimpse of the palace and gardens (closed while undergoing conversion to a luxury hotel). We lunched on the elevated patio of a café that served us salads and toasted sandwiches, with card-playing and dice-throwing locals for company and colour. By general consensus this was agreed to be a preferable venue to the smart restaurant next door that had turned us apologetically away for lack of space.

ZONKED DOG

As for Espargal, life continues at its usual pastoral pace. The countryside is still lush after the late rains. Fruit is ripening steadily on the trees from which we pluck what we can as we pass by. In the orchards below us the orange pickers are busy. The melon-man daily drives his truck up from the valley, packed with great boxes of melons bound for market. Eager green tomato plants are rising from small holes in strips of plastic that stretch out across the fields. These strips block the growth of weeds and prevent the evaporation of water from the fine irrigation hoses running beneath them.

Jones popped around to take a loaf of bread to a neighbour, Maria, who has been house bound with sciatica these past few weeks. We gather from her husband, Joachim, that they are expecting approval any day for the construction of a house on a plot of land across the road from their cottage – for their daughter, we understand. Jones reported that their big dog, Bizu, has been hobbled, poor fellow, following a complaint about his behaviour. Bizu is a Belgian shepherd whose fierce aspect belies his usually gentle nature. But he does throw his weight around a bit, especially in pursuit of eligible bitches. He has apparently alarmed care workers and is being kept at home for his sins.

The care workers have been coming to visit the odd couple, old Chico and (not always so) mute Dina. Chico has got very old and is going blind. We were all concerned for him – and for Dina, who is incapable of living alone. But the social services have now taken the pair of them on board, bringing them food and taking them to the day centre in Benafim.

As we passed them in the road this week, Chico winked and said he was coming to see us, bringing “good things”. I wish he wouldn’t. But he did. He and Dina rolled up at our front door last night, just as I was taking a shower before going with Jones and our neighbours to supper and a concert. Jones went downstairs in her gown and curlers to receive them, along with a 5-litres of olive oil and a bag of oranges. She wished that I could have seen Dina (who has a vast bust) resplendent in blue gingham beret, bright green Ralph Lauren t-shirt, and a green plaid pleated skirt.

Earlier in the afternoon, Idalecio and I spent another two hours trying to break the back of the lengthy translation we have been doing – a guide to the new thermostat that he’s about to add to his under-floor heating range. This thermostat can be infinitely programmed for every kind of situation, and it’s all the programming steps that we have been setting out – 14 fine-typed pages of instructions about DIL switches and relays and you name it. Idalecio says that he should be paying me for my services. But I have pointed out to him – quite honestly – the strides in Portuguese that I have made as a result of our combined efforts.

I have asked Idalecio to do another job for us, to build a 1-metre high platform for the 1,000 litre plastic water tank that takes the overflow from the cisterna. At the moment this tank sits at ground level below the cisterna. I hitched a hose to the tank to allow Jones to water the flowers along the fence at the bottom of the garden. The pressure is (understandably) very low, and when one tries to water the flowers on the upper side of the tank, the flow dries up completely.

Let me add that it wasn’t a simple matter to hitch a hose to the tank outlet. The hose is much smaller than the outlet. So I went along to Gilde’s hardware store on the outskirts of Salir, where I’m a regular (and, I like to think, valued) customer. Gilde’s has a large variety of hose fittings but there was no combination that worked exactly. So, once he’d helped the customers ahead of me, Isadoro grabbed half a dozen items from the shelves and went outside to the workshop to make me a personalised fitting. I was very grateful and said so. It was real service – free of charge – the other face of Portugal with its horrendous bureaucracy. The fitting works admirably.

Wednesday and Thursday saw the last of our language classes for the academic year. We presented our teacher, Antonio (who teaches English at the high school) with a book on the origins of English words, half of it (as I pointed out to him) to thank him for his efforts with us this year and the other half to get him back next year. (I have to be careful what I write these days as he and our classmates are now aware of the blog address.) I am sure that Antonio will forgive me for saying that the book is an excellent one - Word Origins by John Ayto. Jones found it at Griffin’s (expat) book shop in Almancil (along with a history of art book that she has added to her collection). It was the only copy. I have ordered another for myself.

This weekend the Senior University holds its annual banquet bash at a posh hotel on the coast. The evening is a lengthy one, with a performance by the drama group and speeches from minor VIPs before the presentation of trophies to worthies. Happily, the food and wine are something special. What’s strangest to my eyes is the complete absence of any dress code for such occasions. Dinner jackets are just as acceptable as jeans. You wear whatever you’re comfortable with and everybody else is comfortable with that.

This great range of acceptable attire was only too clearly visible at the Beethoven concert we attended last night – his 3rd piano concerto followed by his 3rd symphony. Beside the ladies in evening gowns was a motorcyclist clutching his helmet. It was no problem for anyone.

We dined first with a group of friends at a restaurant beside the theatre. The food was good but the restaurateur is naughty, simply telling us the total price at the end of the meal, without presenting so much as the usual scribbled bill. While the tax advantages of such an approach are clear, it irritated some of our group who like to know what they’re paying for and I suspect that the restaurant will have to change its ways or lose our custom.

I have been downloading more classical music from the Itunes store. When Jones hears a piece that really takes her ear, or finds a reference to one in the paper (Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat major most recently) it takes just a few minutes to find the work online, choose a performance and purchase it. This instant gratification business has something to be said for it. What an amazing world we live in!
ANOTHER ZONKED DOG

Letter from Espargal: 19 of 2007

The worst moment of the week was dropping young Prickles off at the vet on Tuesday morning to be “done”. I pushed him, much against his will, into a small cage in the holding room and left him uneasily to his fate. Jones and I had both entertained doubts about the best course of action. But all our other dogs and cats had been snipped and the vet had assured us that this would be for the best. So we dropped him off and drove guiltily away.

The dog was a bit shaky when we fetched him again that afternoon but seemed otherwise ok. He didn’t want any supper and he had a bad night. We all had a bad night. Jonesy also had a bad morning when she discovered that he’d been sick both upstairs and down. Prickles didn’t want his breakfast and couldn’t be persuaded to take the prescribed anti-biotics. We called round to the vet for advice (between test- driving the new Honda CRV and our Portuguese classes) and were advised to try again that evening.

Our evening efforts were just as fruitless. By Thursday morning, when he continued to turn his nose up, we were seriously worried. In desperation Jonesy tried smearing fish paste around his mouth. That did the trick. In a matter of seconds the dog went from no interest in food to ravenous hunger. It was so good to see him eating again. At this point he’s almost back to his irrepressible self. I don’t think that I’d want to nurse sick kids. Nursing animals is bad enough.

As to the new Honda CRV – Jones was relieved to discover that I didn’t mean to buy one this year – it’s very nice, if a little strange on the eye. The demo car was the top of the range, 6-forward gear, diesel version with all the bells and whistles. The “panoramic” roof is something else. From the outside it looks conventional. From inside, one gets an astronaut-like view of the world through darkened glass or perspex. The car has ample power and drives beautifully. The only catch is the price. With 100% tax on top, it costs between 40 and 46 thousand euros, depending on the model. If we win the lottery I shall probably buy one. (So far Llewellyn and I have made 20 euros on our bets and lost something over 100.)

Please take as read continuing English, Portuguese and computer lessons, along with more translations, much walking, garden watering and all the usual time-consuming stuff. English and Portuguese classes are entering their final week (I got a bottle of hooch from my grateful pupils) as the schools and universities prepare to close down for the long summer holidays.

On Sunday we went along with Mike and Lyn, our English, visitors to the annual fair at the village of Alcoutim on the banks of the Guadiana river that separates southern Portugal from Spain. It’s a favourite fair, with the customary arts and crafts stalls, lots of music and plenty to eat and drink. (All it lacks is decent loos. Impatient queues of both genders form outside the small loo-huts and there’s a strong temptation, especially among the beer drinkers, to use nature’s facilities instead.)

One craft stall was selling basic wooden furniture - stools, benches and tables made of slabs of oak sitting on stout legs (cut from branches). They were selling for 15 euros - a snip. Mike (who does a useful line in old books and the like) would love to have bought the lot and flogged them at car boot sales back in the UK. But as they weighed several kilos each, this was out of the question. I bought four stools, two to go either side of our south garden bench (to hold our evening appetisers) and two for the front patio. We are well pleased with them.

Midweek, our commuting neighbours, David and Sarah, arrived down from the UK for the summer. Their house is surrounded by fields clad in head-high weeds that would win the Chelsea weed show hands down. Our neighbours expressed their gratitude to Jones for sweeping their patios and ripping out the worst of the thistles and dandelions in their garden. They are ferocious workers, the pair of them, and are planning to finish reroofing their cottage before the arrival of their family in a few weeks’ time. They’ll have to wait a few days at least as we woke to light rain on Thursday – to our delight – and there’s more due over the next few days.

As we were setting out to walk the dogs one afternoon we fell into conversation with a Portuguese neighbour who was returning home along the path below our house. This poor woman has a husband (in his 60s) who is suffering some severe mental condition. I have no idea exactly what. But it is characterised by periods of aggression and she fears for her safety. He is back at home – on medication - after being interned for some weeks. There is no solution in sight. We offered to assist her in any way we could but it’s hard to know how one can be useful.

The same thought – how to be useful – occurred to me as we returned home from Loulé one afternoon. The road sweeps down the hill in a series of bends, with a double lane for uphill traffic. Motorists tend to speed up the hill, especially those with small cars that run out of steam towards the top. Anyhow, we came around a bend to find a gypsy cart that had some how broken down and was completely straddling both uphill lanes. There was one horse pulling the cart and another attached to it, along with the usual confusion of family and dogs.

Jones says a tractor was on hand, to pull the cart to safety. I didn’t see it. I was too busy frantically flashing my lights at oncoming traffic – generally a signal that there’s a police trap ahead. Slowing down is something that Portuguese motorists do with the greatest reluctance. The following day, as we returned to Loulé, we looked out for any obvious signs of a collision. There were none. As so often, the third world and the first world live uneasily together in Portugal. We have previously witnessed a string of gypsy carts heading up a freeway in the wrong direction.

FEEDING TIME

I have been putting the finishing touches to Idalecio’s fence by placing small rocks along the base, both inside and out, where-ever there is a gap that the dogs might exploit to dig their way out. So far, its integrity seems to be holding, much to my pleasure. It’s reassuring to let the dogs out of the house in the knowledge that they can't breach the fence, given that they’re much inclined to go yapping after passers-by. The eastern border remains unfenced but it’s 100 metres from the house and has a natural barrier of thick bush.


I finally yielded to temptation and sprayed much of the bramble that has been strangling fruit trees on the field below us. The bramble is looking very sick but will probably require a coup de grâce. The first fruits of the season have ripened. Jonesy has been collecting apricots and plums from the trees as we pass by. Figs and other delights await.

You may recall that I regard myself as a classy exponent of Freecell – a card game found on WINDOWS equipped computers. The good news is that I have pretty well weaned myself of the game. The bad news is that I have found another game, Spider Solitaire, even more compelling. For this I blame my Canadian niece who alerted me to its lure.

Letter from Espargal: 18 of 2007

This has been a head-over-heels kind of week. The days have rushed past without so much as a pause. We have guests; we’ve been fence-building, translating, gardening, eating out. Summer arrived last Sunday, as suddenly as if someone had flicked the hot-weather switch. We turned on the fans, dug out the anti-mozzie gizmos and reconciled ourselves to four months of sun creams, perspiration, irritating insects and flower watering. We try to be out with the dogs by 08.00; later than that and we struggle in the heat, as Jones reminds me when she brings me a waking biscuit and coffee in the mornings.

OLD COTTAGE THAT WE PASS EACH DAY

“Early” is when the rabbits come out to feed. We’ve seen half a dozen the last few mornings. I wish you could see the dogs explode into life as they yank us down the road after the elusive bunnies, yapping, scrabbling, begging to be let off the lead. It really is ironic that they are never so alive as when their predator instincts take over. Eyes shining, tails waving, they stand quivering at the spot where the rabbit has disappeared into the bush. What wouldn’t they give for a chance to really chase those bobtails!


At Jones’s request, I strimmed a two-metre wide path through a heavily overgrown field just below us, which offers a short cut to the main road at the bottom of the village. This field gets no attention from its owner – very unusual around here. It is flush with fruit trees that yield handsome summer crops. The fruit rots on the trees except when it’s looted by the birds – especially the azure-winged magpies - or Jones, who loves nothing more than to pluck a few peaches or plums as she passes by. I have opened a circle around the trees to allow her easy access.

STRIMMED PATH, WITH DEAD FIG TREE IN FOREGROUND
Because of the lack of attention, bramble is running amok on the field. The stuff is vicious, vigorous and invasive. It has already completely smothered a large fig tree and it threatens others. I am tempted to pop down one evening with a load of herbicide. In spite of my strimming, we are still picking up ticks. We check each other’s clothes after walking through any grass. Even so, I found a tick on my neck while I was at the computer. He went down the loo, along with my curses, to a watery grave. All week I have been putting a soothing balm on three tick-bites left by a previous visitor.

As I write, Jones has gone over to David and Sarah’s place to pull out a few weeds before their arrival down here. I told her that she was mad. She has weeds enough of her own to attend to. She said she couldn’t bear to have them find the place completely overgrown.

The week began with a visit to Gilde’s hugely useful hardware store on the outskirts of Salir. I phoned beforehand to order the materials needed to construct a new fence along the bottom of our property. Because these included fencing posts and rolls of wire netting, I fetched the trailer down from its parking spot above Casa Nada. I can’t get the car up there. The track is too steep and slippery. Instead I have to use the tractor – after taking off the link-box - to pull the trailer down to the tarred road below the house, where I hitch it on to the car.

We (the dogs insisted on coming along) arrived at Gilde to find nothing ready for us. The place was packed and the staff were short-handed because Eva, the boss’s daughter, is nursing a new baby. So we waited our turn, listening to a long exchange between the boss and a client who’d bought masses of stuff without having the money to pay for it. More worryingly, he didn’t seem to know when he would have the money. Eventually the boss took me outside to cut the 2-metre posts that I required.

Monday afternoon I gave a neighbour the first of a series of lessons on the mysteries of his computer. The neighbour is a retired plumber and it is as well to be in his good books. Later we went to the cinema to see Fractured. We liked it. We were especially lucky to find only 4 other cinema-goers, who didn’t converse, check their mobile phones or crunch popcorn.


Tuesday, while I went to class, Idalecio got to work on the new fence, digging the holes to take the posts and concreting them in. Jones and I have not seen eye to eye over the need for this fence. It was one I hoped to leave until we had managed to purchase the adjacent property. In the mean time, a very informal and insubstantial fence has separated the garden from the right-of-way below it. Through this “barrier” the dogs have passed with ease to challenge the right of passage of villagers or other dogs. So I asked Idalecio to erect a decent fence, continuing the line that runs down the west side of the property and in front of the house.

After the English lesson, I visited Nyima, the solar heater installers, to report that, in spite of their work at the end of April, the leak from the expansion valve on the roof is as bad as ever. A stream of water trickles down the tiles and makes its way into the cisterna. I have rigged up a hose to carry the overflow into the flowers. Nyima wonder whether the leak is because of the high water pressure from the mains supply. I am going to experiment and report back. The pressure is also causing problems with the thermostats controlling the water temperature in the showers.

Midday, two friends arrived from the UK to stay with us. Usefully, Natasha was cleaning the house and had things spick and span. She said Dani had got a job with a second carpenter, having abandoned a first because the fellow paid him only a fraction of his wages, with a pledge of more to follow. Sadly, the situation is all too common.

Wednesday brought shopping and Portuguese lessons. Of course the dogs come along. Prickles is now as keen a traveller as the other two. He likes to lie down in the foot-well, under the feet of the front-seat passenger. Seems to work well enough. He’s lovely little dog, with oodles of personality, even if his sense of his own importance in confronting other dogs is in inverse proportion to his size.

In the afternoon Idalecio and I continued our joint translation of his underfloor-heating instructions. We’ve completed 5 pages in twice as many hours. There are 9 pages to go. Wednesday evening we had neighbours around to a barbecue. I grilled sausages and kebabs over a charcoal fire just beside the south patio where our guests were seated in the balmy evening air. The dogs were eager to approve my culinary skills and grateful for such titbits as I slipped them under the table. The guests seemed happy enough as well.

Thursday was a public holiday, Corpus Christi. (I gather from Cathy that it’s also a holiday in Germany.) The name took me back to my monkish days when these religious feasts marked highlights in the liturgical year. To the average Portuguese today, I suspect, it’s just gobbledygook, however welcome. It wasn’t a holiday for me or Idalecio. We laboured on the fence all afternoon, removing the old fencing as we installed the new. For dinner I took our visitors to the Hamburger, as much appreciated by the locals for its food as its closeness – at the far end of the agricultural road, well away from police traffic checks. (The owner worked in Hamburg; hence the name.)


Friday morning I returned to Gilde for more fencing supplies in order to finish off the job with Idalecio that afternoon. To tension the wire netting we used the traditional method around here – the tractor. One puts the vehicle in its lowest gear and gently tugs the netting till it’s nice and taut. The fence looks good. It blends into the green of the garden as I pointed out to Jones. She says she still liked the pokey old one better.

This week I did something that I’ve never done before, although my nephews and nieces will laugh at me. I opened an account with Itunes and downloaded a couple of classical albums. Jones had expressed a strong interest in obtaining the symphony that includes Litolff’s Scherzo – not a composer or a piece that I’d ever heard of, to be frank. I also bought Saint Saens 2nd piano concerto and Durufle’s Requiem. One could easily spend a lot of money this way.

I’m reading an excellent book by Lee Smolin. It’s called: The Trouble with Physics – The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next. It’s well written and intended for the layman. In spite of the fact that I don’t understand much of it, I’m really enjoying it. Sometimes I barely get through a page before I feel my eyes closing. I dream of bosons and fermions.

This morning a man arrived in a smart Mercedes and tried to sell me a bargain Turkish carpet for 2,000 euros, one of three that he was anxious to get rid of at a 50% discount before he returned to the Canary Islands. As lovely as his carpets were – pure Kashmir, he insisted – I declined. He asked about the other foreigners living in the area and went off to try his luck with them. I doubt he’ll have had much.

Jones has checked my letter through. We always have small differences over what constructions are acceptable and what ought to be changed. In the end she gave our compromise version the nod rather than her blessing, acceptable but a bit pedestrian.

Sorry about that.

Lettter from Espargal: 17 of 2007

(COMPOST MOUNTAIN)

We have been doing a lot of gardening. Jones has been doing the discriminating bit (which requires the gardener to distinguish between the desirable and undesirable growth). I have been strimming and piling tractor-loads of weeds on to our tower-of-Babel like compost mountain. The strimming is much overdue; not only the outer reaches of the “garden” but the many paths in the area are badly overgrown. This makes their negotiation both tricky and subject to the acquisition of ticks, whose season is upon us.

As if to make the point, I was sitting in our Portuguese class midweek when I felt a slight prickling on my chest. A quick peek and a grab proved the agitator to be a tick making himself at home. Making my hasty apologies to the class, I hurried to the bathroom to get rid of it. I am not partial to ticks.

Ten minutes later, Jones felt a similar agitation. A glance down her blouse – she did the glancing, I should make clear - showed another tick crawling around where no ticks are permitted. Her exclamation left the rest of the class in no doubt about her feelings. Making even hastier apologies, she shot out of the class to the ladies’ bathroom to do away with the pest.

I know that the likelihood of the pair of us both finding ticks crawling on our chests in the same class in the same few minutes is extremely low. But that’s how it was. It is possible that we had picked them up while making our way down the grassy contour path earlier in the morning.

It is equally possible that we acquired them while having the dogs vaccinated at the vet before class. I had crouched over each dog in turn to secure and distract the beast while the vet poked a thermometer up its rear and did other unseemly things. Our dogs fail to see the point of this kind of treatment. They do not like going to the vet. Only Prickles strode boldly in. I suspect that he too will know better next time round. Although he’s not aware of it, that’s is in a fortnight when he goes to be nipped in the bud. It’s a dog’s life, I’m afraid.

At the weekend we went to a concert in Faro, one in a Beethoven series that we have greatly enjoyed. Jones, however, was not impressed by the performance of the soloist in Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto, an elderly gentleman of minute stature who, whatever his failings, was much applauded for his efforts. (His CV included the winning of a music prize back in 1951.)

During the interval Jones expressed the view that he old fellow wasn’t up to the demands of the piece – and had simply made up what he couldn’t manage or remember. When I replied that I had enjoyed the concert nonetheless, Jones said I couldn’t have because I’d slept through the entire thing. This is an example of the kind of hyperbole that spouses are liable to. I am not denying that I rested my eyes from time to time or that she gave me a number of unnecessarily wakeful thumps on the arm.

Jones was better pleased with the second work, Beethoven’s 5th symphony. I loved it. What glorious music! For once, the concert hall was virtually full, albeit it with as many estrangeiros as locals.

My Portuguese bank has introduced a new security measure to prevent online banking fraud. Each time a client wants to transfer money out of an account online, he/she now has to acquire a 7-digit security code to confirm the transfer. This is texted within seconds by the bank to the client’s mobile phone. Presumably, any lurking hacker will in future have to steal both one’s banking details and one’s phone in order to profit.

For those clients who prefer, there is an alternative “security token” system that I haven’t investigated. Such security measures have yet to be adopted by our British bank, which lags far behind when it comes to online service - in fact, when it comes to any kind of service. Also increasingly common in Portugal is the receipt of invoices as PDF attachments on emails rather than in paper form.

Cathy remarked some time ago that German banks are phasing out cheques in favour of bank transfers. Although cheques are still widely used here, account-to-account transfers online are being increasingly encouraged. Another option – long available to the public – is to make payments using the nationally linked ATM cash machines situated outside banks and in many large stores. While Portugal (regrettably) lags far behind most of its European partners in economic and business affairs generally, its sophisticated ATM network is a welcome exception.

(THE LAST OF THE BEANS, LATER SHELLED BY OUR HOUSESITTERS)
Our house sitters, the Ferretts, reported that the poltergeist that has haunted their previous visits made its usual appearance. Shortly after our departure, the mains water supply to the house failed. Neighbours confirmed that the problem extended to the rest of the village. Fortunately I had shown our guests how to switch from mains supply to the cisterna and they had an ample supply of water during the several days that it took local officialdom to fix things. “Things” turned out to be a burst pipe down at the village borehole.

Next to go down were (puzzlingly) the main BBC radio channels on the satellite television service – just before the Ferretts’ departure. This service offers us dozens of BBC radio and TV channels and hundreds of commercial channels. If we lived in the UK, like all other TV owners there, we would be required by law to pay the (current) licence fee of 131.50 pounds every year to fund the BBC. Here the service costs us nothing. We’re not supposed to have it. But there is a thriving industry in mainland Europe in installing Sat TVs for foreigners. Virtually every expat has one, aimed at the satellite that provides his/her national service.

I called the chap who installed ours (several years ago) to explain the problem. He arrived the following afternoon with his Portuguese assistant. As always, he was in a hurry. Other clients were waiting. While his assistant checked the dish’s settings, the chap concerned admitted to selling his original business to a partner some years previously. But such was the demand for his services that he began working again – quietly. It was to support his daughter at boarding school in the UK, he explained.

He couldn’t find a problem with the settings so he tried replacing the LNB on our dish. When that didn’t help he replaced the receiver as well. That did the trick. I winced at the bill. (The man could easily support quintuplet daughters at boarding school on what he charges.) But life here without the sanity of the BBC would be unimaginable. SKY and other broadcasters are also available if one is prepared to live with the adverts. Either way, one has to have a working Sat TV system.

Our young neighbour, Idalecio, has been installing new gates, which he made himself, to replace the shaky gates that were partially demolished by a neighbour’s amorous dog while Idalecio’s bitch, Serpa Fish, was in season. I gave him some advice on how to brace his gates, which proved less than helpful (but that’s another story). We lent him greater assistance by taking young Eduardo (5) on a walk with Serpa while Idalecio was hard at work on the gates. These are now painted green and look very smart. (Serpa is called Serpa Fish because her mistress swore after the death of her previous dogs that she would have no pets in future other than fish!)

Inbetween times I have sat down at my desk with Idalecio to help him translate a long technical document on a new thermostat. As a sideline to his main business (walls, roofs, steps and the like) Idalecio sells underfloor heating. The products come from the UK with lengthy accompanying documentation, full of technical detail that I don’t much understand.

Between us and my English/Portuguese dictionary and the internet, we decide what we think the English blurb is saying and turn it into a Portuguese blurb for Idalecio’s customers. The first two pages took us 4 hours. There are 12 pages to go. Much of the time is taken up adding the accents that Portuguese words require and which are not found pre-installed on my English keyboard.

The sales rep at Honda, who sold me my CRV 7 years ago, phoned to postpone a test-drive that he had arranged for me in the new version. When I told Jones that the appointment had been deferred, she insisted that she hadn’t been informed of the appointment in the first place. And she hoped that I wasn’t thinking of buying a new car when the old one would be good for another century at least. (Jones always hopes that I am not thinking of buying new vehicles, computers etc.) I assured her honestly that I was not proposing to buy a new car this year but I said that at some point – God willing – I would be. Anyhow, I was interested in test driving the new car regardless. Jones was not thrilled with my response. I fear that more negotiation lies ahead of us.