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 FOREGROUNDBecause 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.
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