Letter from Espargal: 25 of 2007

This week I have done most of my good deeds for the year. The principal beneficiaries of my virtue have been David and Sarah, who have been working long hours to complete the new roof over their house before the arrival of their family. I have been sharing duties with Olly, another Espargalian expat. We have assisted Idalecio while David and Sarah have toiled below. Sarah mixes concrete, David pours it into a barrow and then dishes it out into buckets, which he places on a board attached to an electric hoist at the top of the house. I operate the hoist. When the system works, it works quite well.

However, as I pointed out to Ollie when he passed our gate one afternoon, there are other considerations at stake. It was in our mutual interest, I put to him, that he should not over-exert himself and thereby unfairly raise expectations of others. Our chief function should be seen as a convivial one - to entertain our neighbours with good conversation while they worked.

There have been a few ups and downs - and not just with the hoist; Sod’s law is nowhere more applicable than in the construction industry. For instance, lacking mains electricity, Sarah and David depend on a generator to power their concrete mixer. Without warning, their generator packed up last Saturday morning. They tried first to fix it and then to get a spare part. Failing in both endeavours, (with their arriving family in mind) they bought a new generator and carried on.


Then, as Sarah was dumping her umpteenth load of sand, gravel and cement into the cement mixer, with a great gnashing of teeth it gave up the ghost. The cogs of the driving wheel had worn down and no longer gripped the barrel. Nothing daunted, I leapt upon my tractor and went to borrow a cement mixer from another neighbour. After the briefest of pauses, we continued working.

The method of construction is first to throw a ring-beam around the walls.
Reinforced concrete beams are laid across the void and hollow concrete blocks hung between them. Reinforcing rods are tied on top and, after much underpinning and careful calculating of water run-off levels, concrete is thrown over the lot. Of course, I simplify but that's the essence of it. As I was saying to Idalecio, to go the official route - with architects, engineers, plans, approvals and the whole horror story - would probably cost ten times as much and would certainly take ten times as long.

One morning Jones and I sat on our front patio and sliced up plums that she had picked at the house of Maria of the Conception, with the assistance of Maria’s granddaughter, Carina (11). (Barbara has been summoned around there several times, for tea and to provide company for the vivacious young Carina, who also presented a one-act, one-actor play that she had written herself.)

They filled a large plastic bag that I then hung on the tractor link box while Jones, at Maria’s urging, climbed on the back like a good Portuguese wife and clung on for dear life during the short drive back to the house. (Women commonly travel in such fashion, generally to pick crops, often sitting on small stools. Men, naturally, do the driving.)

As we sliced up the plums I thought how blessed a place we live in.
Cicadas shrieked in the trees, bee-eaters chattered as they wheeled
above us and the dogs lay motionless after our walk through the hills.
One evening as we sat on the patio sipping our hard-earned sundowners, a little owl floated across the garden and perched itself on our phone-pole. The bird was too small and distant to be caught on camera. But in our mind’s eye it perches there still.

Coming back to the plums - many of them had been stung by the justly infamous Mediterranean fruit flies. We cut out the bad bits and Jones put the rest into plastic bags to freeze. I slung the rejects into the garden bed in front of us, assuring her that within 3 days they would vanish into nature’s bosom. But she afterwards picked them all up again, saying she couldn’t bear to have them staring at her for 3 days - and she told me off for throwing away bits that she considered quite edible. I’m afraid that there’s often more edible material in Jones’s larder than in mine.

CARINA'S PLAY
We have moved our small freezer from the back patio to Casa Nada – as part of the latest trial rearrangement. Jones is not a person who is easily satisfied with current arrangements. She is liable to feel that a different arrangement might be an improvement and she either shifts things around herself or calls on me to help her. When I came to move the freezer, I noticed that it was not plugged in. This was bad news. It was filled mainly with my precious home-grown fava beans, which were not happy to have spent several days thawing out. Jones promptly put them on the stove to cook, assured by Maria that they could then be safely refrozen.

This latest rearrangement is tied in with the imminent arrival of David and Sarah’s family. In view of the state of their house Jones has offered them the use of Casa Nada to camp for a few days. There are two beds they can use in her room there, plus a table and chairs along with a gas hob in that part of the main section that is not taken up by the tractor.

Spurred on by her tidy-up of Casa Nada, Jones launched herself at the piles of screws, nails, bolts and assorted miscellanea that were scattered around the adjacent wooden shed. Summoning me, she demanded to know the purpose of the Heath Robinsonish collection that I have acquired over the years. Any item whose usefulness I could not justify to her satisfaction was cast out. I suppose I should add, to her credit, that she devised a system of old plant pots to hold innumerable odds and ends that had previously lived in a maze of awkward corners.

It is the case that I find it much easier to discard Jones’s property and she mine than we do our own. We both tend to hoard. She’s forever trying to commit my treasured old clothes to the ragbag. Aware of this danger, I have patched my favourite Tilley hat for the umpteenth time. The crown had almost come adrift from the brim as a result of perspiration-wear - in spite of numerous washings. The brim itself is in good nick. So is the upper part of the crown. It’s just the intervening portion that has worn through. I hope that the repair will extend its life by at least another season.

In-between times I have continued to paint our house, fussy bits of which have remained to be done. To reach the base of the upper patio wall holding the railings, I hoisted up the extension ladder and tied the paint-pot to an upper rung. The ladder had to be moved at regular intervals. During one move, the paint pot hooked on a tile and then came crashing down on to the cobbles below. Although it landed on its base it spat out a wave of paint that flew over the cobbles and patio.

Jones was out and I was able to clear up the disaster before her return. Mercifully, it was a water-based paint that hosed away with little trace. I might add that I had taken the precaution of placing only an inch of paint in the pot. Even so, an inch of paint can make a mile of mess.

For a week or two a large crane has been visible in a dip in the hills some 15 kms from us, above the town of Alte. Beneath the crane in beanstalk fashion a tower has sprung up. We thought that it might be a mobile phone antenna. Jones, I need hardly tell you, was not pleased at this despoliation of her view. I wasn’t thrilled myself although I
appreciated that a lot of mobile phone users might be grateful.


Midweek the tower grew a propeller and manifested itself as a wind turbine to generate electricity. (There is a great farm of these things in the ever-windy south west tip of Portugal.) In the picture I am posting on the blog you can just make out the tower in the gap (if you click on the picture and look very carefully).

Late news: Sarah's family have arrived. Young Kayleigh and Robbie came walking with us on Friday morning. They have now gone off camping. Jones is meanwhile showing Carina around her garden. There's never a dull moment.

Letter from Espargal: 24 of 2007

One of the things that I have found about retirement is that unless you plan your day meticulously, it simply slips away. By the time one has scheduled in two dog-walks, a siesta, garden-watering, a sun-downing half-hour and a few household tasks, little time remains. Then there’s always the unexpected – like an SMS from Lesley to say that Eddie would be robbing his hives of honey the following day and did we want to watch. We did - after lunch at a popular eatery in Messines that specialises in grilled chicken and chops.

By the time we got to Eddie and Lesley’s place, I was ready for my afternoon snooze. I find that this exercise plays an important part in my fitness programme. They were kind enough to offer me their couch. I woke to find them all in the dining room, along with racks of honey and a big silver drum for spinning it out. The honey was delicious. A couple of bees were crawling up and down the window pane, demanding it back. Not until the following day did I discover that while I’d been communing with Hypnos, Jones had donned protective gear and gone out with Eddie to brave the little stingers. She’s had some unpleasant experiences with bees and confessed to being nervous.

As Eddie is an experienced builder and plumber. I asked him about the temperature fluctuation problems we’ve been having in the showers with our thermostatic taps. The cause was generally a gummed-up cartridge, Eddie said, advising me to replace rather than clean them. The next day I tried to get at the cartridge. Not a chance in hell. Whoever made the tap didn’t intend amateurs to fiddle with it. I phoned Fintan, a retired plumber neighbour, to seek help. Fintan’s a good man. He came around promptly. Crouching down in a poise that would have busted my knees, he found a tiny hole underneath the tap that took an Alan key and was able to dismantle it.

I took the tap down to Anibal Madeira in Loulé. A very helpful fellow pointed to the faint trade-mark etched on the tap. It was an Italian model, he told me. He phoned the suppliers. They said new cartridges would have come from Italy. Since it was the holiday season in Italy – a period that seems to extend from June to September – this could take a couple of months. I ordered one. I also bought a new manually-controlled tap that I’ve since installed myself. It works fine, although it’s very sensitive and Jones nearly scalded herself by setting it too high.

This is the season of wild fires. To minimise the danger, like most of our neighbours I strim and scarify our lands. I took the tractor around to old Chico’s fields to do the same for him. Separated by two steep banks, they slope uncomfortably down the hillside. Only the trees protruded from the jungle of tall grass. I descended nervously to his bottom terrace, using my lowest range of gears. I was glad the locals weren’t watching. They imbibed tractors with their mothers’ milk and would have been much amused by my efforts.

On the top field, Mario was clearing the growth with his digger. He had attached a wide, toothed shovel to the digger arm and simply tore the grass away with raking motions like some huge grazing monster. By the time he was finished, the field was virtually bare.

We stopped in Zé Carlos’s yard one afternoon to find him crouching over the back hub of his tractor, a much-used John Deere, about ten years old. Around him on a sheet of plastic lay a variety of tools. He’d removed the left back wheel to get at the side-shaft, which had lost its teeth - for the third time, he said - and was spinning uselessly. It seemed to me to be a hugely complicated job.

To remove the faulty part Zé Carlos had to undo a series of plates and covers. The tractor had been put together in such a way that nothing could be unbolted without unbolting something else first. In desperation, Zé Carlos had hacksawed off the mudguard. He’s a patient and methodical man, which just goes to show. The bolts were hidden away in places where they were hard to see and harder to get at. Zé Carlos said he liked John Deere because their tractors were well finished. Whatever the case, I made a mental note never to buy one.

He and his dad have continued to give us their overflow melons and tomatoes. We have two or three small melons for lunch each day, occasionally with a splash of port in the hole in the middle. They are really delicious.

We asked Idalecio for advice about the mildew that has been attacking Jones’s pumpkin plants. He brought us a packet of muti to spray on the leaves. One often sees farmers spraying their crops, generally from tanks mounted on the back of tractors. Idalecio told us that pests were a huge problem. Unless crops were treated regularly – sometimes every day - farmers were likely see nothing in return. Part of the problem was, he said, that imperfect fruit and vegetables didn’t sell. He warned us that the better fruit looks, the more it has been sprayed.

My spraying has produced mixed results. The older leaves of the pumpkin plants are still dieing. At the same time, some of the plants have been growing energetically. Two of them have spread out of the garden and down the steps. We wait to see whether they will produce any pumpkins. Jones is not optimistic. She says she feels disheartened. On the other hand, our granadilla plants have produced their first proud, purple fruit. Very good it tasted, too.

Each afternoon, after taking the dogs for a brief outing (it’s generally too hot to go far) we stop off at Sarah and David’s cottage to see how the big renovation is going. With Idalecio’s energetic help, they’ve been working like slaves throughout the day. Sarah mixes the concrete, David hauls it up on a pulley (he’s just bought an electric winch) and Idalecio dumps the mixture in the shuttering. Even though they’ve made great strides one can’t see the house being ready next week when their daughter and family are due to arrive.

Twice we’ve been to Loulé’s summer fair. The first time was really to fill a couple of hours before taking Dani up to friends of ours in Cruz da Assumada to collect an old washing machine. We made a second visit with a group of expat neighbours and visitors, joining the throngs that roamed around the tented stalls erected on the square below the courthouse. These sell every kind of home industry product. Our group bought a box of cakes that we then consumed, along with coffees and tummy-settling medronhos, at the tables set up on the central islands along Loulé’s main avenue.

Last weekend we went to Faro to listen to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, put on by the Lisbon symphony orchestra and choir. I thought it was great. Like most summer concerts, it started at 10 p.m. In spite of this, scores of people failed to make it to the theatre on time. So many were late that the house lights were actually brightened again to assist the late-comers, who continued to troop down the aisles for 20 minutes. One woman, with clippety clop heels, got hissed at. I think part of the problem was the late arrival of one or two coaches.

Maria of the Conception has had her granddaughter, Carina, to stay. Carina, aged 11, is very bright and quite fluent in English. She told Jones (who had gone around to Maria’s place for tea) that English verbs were quite easy to learn although, as she pointed out, the third person singular generally requires an “s” at the end of the verb. Jonesy nearly fell over in astonishment at such erudition. Luckily no English children were present as I don’t think they’d have known what Carina was on about.

Jones has just read through my letter as usual. “It’s a bit……” she paused, “humdrum”. “But,” not wanting to be too hard on me, she added: “otherwise fine”. There you have it.

Letter from Espargal: 23 of 2007

Did I say it was hot and windy? Well, now it’s hot and windless. And it’s hard to know the lesser evil. We are back from our usual tramp through the valley. We struggled up the rear of Puffer Hill, pausing in the shade of trees to catch our breath. At the top we came across Idalecio, Sarah and David tying reinforcing rods in the sun. Our dogs gratefully lapped up the water that Sarah put down for them as we inspected progress. What used to be the upper front half of their cottage is now a heap of rubble in their field. One can peer down into the roofless rooms below. Over the next fortnight a flat-roof and a mezzanine bedroom will manifest themselves – in time for the arrival of their family. It’s a major renovation.

Idalecio moved across there after spending three days with me painting our house. On the last of them we cursed as we braced ourselves against the wind. I’d have put him off if he’d had anything more sensible to do that day but once he arrived, I felt compelled to do my part. The house exterior is an ochre colour, with door and window frames and a raised platband design outlined in ivory. Buffetted by gusts, we struggled to hold brushes steady - and there were lots of infuriating smudges. I had tried using masking tape to keep the colours apart but this either came loose or, after a day in the sun, glued itself permanently to the wall.

The main part is now done. The house gleams anew. The gates and railings remain – probably a day’s work for the pair of us. It can wait until Idalecio is free again. In the meanwhile, I am trying to motivate myself to do the little bits, like the narrow faces of wall between doors and shutters. While I tell myself that it is just as important to sit down and write to you, I know in my heart of hearts that it is also the easier (and far the cooler) option. Still, I spent much of yesterday up a ladder tracing out the platband design, so I’ve got a little moral credit in store.

Plus – and I hope that I write with my customary modesty – I have resolved a long-standing irritation. This problem arose when Jones felt the need to place a decorative lamp in the lounge beside a wall, which - for reasons I can’t explain - had no sockets. (During the construction of the house I had marked all the required socket points for the builder and the electrician.) The only way to plug the lamp in was to trail the cord beneath a carpet to a socket on the far side of a sliding glass door. While the lamp worked fine, the arrangement left much to be desired – as Jones occasionally reminded me.

So on the eve of her birthday I tried to work something out. I lay down on the floor the better to get a worm’s eye-view of the situation. There wasn’t enough room to bury the cord beneath the tile grouting. Then I had my eureka moment. I had allowed for sockets on all the patios and there was a handy socket point on the other side of the wall.
With apologies to Natasha, who had just finished cleaning the lounge, we pulled back the sofa and I used a long drill bit to make a hole. The bit had to penetrate an inner cement block, the interior insulation and finally the outer cement block. It did so with an inch to spare. The lamp now shines with a glow of additional virtue.

My mobile phone is playing up, turning itself off for no good reason and showing some reluctance about being turned on again. As a precaution I ordered a small SIM-card recording device from Vodafone, delivered by a courier who had to come all the way from the coast to get the 10-euro fee. The device works well enough. One takes the SIM-card from one’s phone and inserts it into a slot where it can be either backed up or restored.

But there’s a snag. The device’s memory is divided into 4 blocks, each of which can take up to 75 contacts. My mobile phone has nearly 300. When I backed-up Block A, the device chose a random selection of names/numbers from the SIM-card. Block B chose exactly the same contacts, and so did Blocks C & D. In other words, one can back up a maximum of 4 SIM-cards, each of which contains up to 75 contacts. The device sits on my desk as I write. I can’t see a way around this one, other than deleting dozens of useful contacts. Knowing that some high-tech people occasionally read my letters, I hope for a helpful response.

The week has been social as well as practical. Monday night we joined friends, David and Dagmar, for a salad supper, a film and news of the arrival of their second granddaughter (who emerged a day later). Tuesday we went with Sarah and David and friends of theirs to Idalecio’s restaurant for an expat splash. Wednesday was Jones’s birthday. To mark the occasion, I took her coffee in bed.

After breakfast we piled the dogs in the car, not that they need any encouragement, and went shopping. First for a bench to put in “The Glade”, among the trees at the top of the Graça field. Then for some plants to go in the garden. A light lunch followed on the terrace of Portas de Ceu, (Gates of Heaven) with the dogs curled up in the shade around the table. The “S” had fallen off the “Portas” sign, reducing Heaven’s entrance to a single gate. This I pointed out to the waitress when she arrived with our order. “You’ve lost one of Heaven’s gates,” I told her, pointing at the sign. She was a bit puzzled until she caught my meaning. She was the kind of girl who clearly kept her mind on earthly needs, like delivering coffee and croissants promptly.

In the evening we had a birthday barbecue. To my annoyance I discovered that there was barely enough charcoal in the two open charcoal bags to make a half-decent fire. Fortunately, we had decided to braai only sausages and they’re not as fussy as kebabs. What’s more, the dogs were happy to take care of any less than perfectly cooked sausages (should there have been any, that is).

So it all worked out okay, even if it took more time and effort than it should have. And the sausages tasted wonderful with a choice of mustards and a good bottle of wine. The annoying bit was to discover a full bag of charcoal in Casa Nada the following day. I write this with mixed feelings, knowing that it will prompt Jones to urge me (once again) to undertake a major tidy-up there. The trouble is that I can never find anything after tidy-ups. Anyhow, they upset the spiders and the lizards, as I shall point out to her. Environmental excuses are the best ones.

We stopped off one evening at Ermenio’s (Idalecio’s dad’s) yard to see what Mario was doing there with his digger, which was grunting and snorting up and down the far end. Half a dozen villagers were gathered around to watch the action, as is normal. Mario had torn down the old timber and netting structure in the shade of which Ermenio and Zé-Carlos (Idalecio’s brother) used to pack their truck with fruit in the summer afternoons to take off to market. In its place Mario was creating a raised terrace, up to which the truck would back to load/unload cases and pallets. Unlike his neighbour, Ermenio doesn’t have a forklift.

While we were there we negotiated the acquiry of a section of tree trunk that had taken Jones’s eye, along with a case of damaged or undersized melons. Some of the fruit was slightly bruised; other melons were pitted with little holes where the ants had bored their way in to enjoy a party. One could easily cut away the damaged part and still enjoy the better part of the melon. But such items are completely unsaleable at market. Ermenio was, as usual, unwilling to take any money for the case of melons that he packed for us – enough to distribute among our expat neighbours as well. But his 5-year old grandson was more than happy to pocket the fiver I profferred.

We’ve had a couple of encounters with a dog in the village. It’s big and black, young and playful. And it clearly wants a romp with our lot. But Ono and Prickles both declare a war on terror when it arrives. It’s quite difficult trying to restrain them. One morning, a young woman rushed out of a house to retrieve the dog. She was still in her nightgown and slippers and as concerned to preserve her modesty as to fetch her dog. One hand clutched the throat of her gown, the other the lower hem. Somehow, without showing an inch of unseemly flesh, she managed to grab the dog and retreat into the house. It was as accomplished a performance as I have anywhere observed.

Letter from Espargal: 22 of 2007

This has been a hot and windy week. It’s a villainous wind - a relentless, tree-bending, hat-thieving, desiccating wind, assisted in its ill work by a merciless sun. We take heart from the thought that with the solstice behind us, autumn cannot be too far away. I try to walk off each morning the refreshing beers that contribute so much to my evening well-being. Since Prickles’ arrival, we don’t really go for a walk. We go for a pull. The little guy must have husky blood. He starts yapping for his outing soon after he wakes and doesn’t stop till we hit the road. He doesn’t know how close he comes to being throttled.

While I’m on dogs – Bizu has been released from his hobble. Whether this was due to our pleas to his owner is hard to know. Whatever the case, Bizu walks freely again and we are happy for him. Clearly, hobbling animals is a habit with a long history. Maria of the Conception explained that a hobble between the two front paws is known as a “peia”. A hobble between a front paw and a back paw is a “trava”. One often sees horses and donkeys – especially those belonging to gypsies - thus restrained.

Monday we went to the cinema to see Ocean’s 13. If you haven’t, don’t bother – although, surprisingly, the film gets good marks on the IMDB site. The Algarve Forum was heaving or, at least, so it seemed to me. Jones thought it might have been busier, given the onset of the school holidays. I changed seats in the cinema to get away from kids who were working their mobile phones. The Portuguese are addicted to their phones. They carry them around like badges. The routine when one arrives in a café is to plonk one’s mobile phone ostentatiously on the table, along with fags, lighter and keys. And you’re no one unless you get a couple of important calls while you’re drinking your coffee.

As we sat with David and Dagmar over a snack after the film, we considered a restaurant opposite us that opened earlier this year. It’s one of about 20 in a line of restaurants along the upper floor, most of which offer both interior seating and take-away meals for the adjoining public gallery. The restaurant in question has somehow failed to capture the public imagination. While the places around it can hardly keep up with the demand for service, it waits in vain for custom. We’ve never seen it busy. There’s nothing wrong with the food or the décor. It’s as if Joe public has simply decided to boycott the place. I feel sorry for the several staff who stand around trying to look engaged while the world passes by. The owner must be pulling his hair out.


Tuesday Idalecio arrived to build a base on which to mount our 1,000 litre overflow tank at the foot of the cisterna. He constructed two walls of grey “blocos” and then, at Jones’s suggestion, lined them with stones to blend them in. But the stone lining was a bit on the thin side and the cement mixture used sharp sand, which doesn’t grip very well. So, just as he put the last stone in place, the whole facia on one side collapsed in a sludge of grey cement and dirty rocks.

We decided to take a short cut by using large rocks to line the wall instead of stones. That worked well enough and saved a lot of rebuilding. It’s not the prettiest wall but – as I pointed out to Idalecio - in 6 months’ time, when it’s buried under a carpet of ivy and morning glory, no-one will know the difference.
Thursday he came back to mount the tank on the base. I went to fetch the tractor to lift the tank half way up. By the time I got back, Idalecio had somehow managed to heave it up single-handed. I accused him of showing off. He just smiled.

The rest of the day he used his high pressure hose (with compressor unit) to wash down the house ahead of painting it. We had Daddy Long-Legs spiders scurrying in every direction. (These are strange and harmless fellows that don’t make webs and often congregate in groups.) Friday we painted and painted and painted, trying to stay in the shade as the sun moved around the house. Idalecio is due back Saturday morning at 8. He’s almost as relentless as Prickles. In his book, working time is meant for working and he doesn’t believe in wasting it.

As we painted we talked. He said there was bad blood between two of his elderly neighbours. One of these old fellows, Zeferino (a sprightly 80 plus) got Mario, the digger driver, to dump a pile of rocks and dirt on the side-road leading up to Zeferino’s house with a view to building a wall along the verge. Idalecio was to be the builder. But an even older neighbour objected, on the grounds that the wall would block a long disused (and unusable) shortcut to the main road.

To mediate in the dispute, Zeferino called in the president of the parish council, a person of no little importance. The president pronounced in Zeferino’s favour but the latter’s victory was short-lived, as his antagonist threatened to call in the building inspector from Loule. This was a low blow indeed. Building inspectors represent layers of bureaucracy that are not considered necessary to life in these parts. The pile of stones and earth looks likely to remain where it is for some time to come.

A large tractor, armed with a giant pair of scissors, has been creeping along roads in the district, cropping the tall brown fuzz of weeds and grasses along the verges. This is quite a useful function as the growth impairs drivers’ vision and is likely to catch fire from discarded cigarettes. When I awoke from a midweek siesta Jones informed me that the tractor had arrived in our road while I slept.
Jones had heard it in the nick of time to rush outside and stop the driver from zapping a promising sapling that has taken root among the weeds on the verge.

We later heard from Sarah that she too had shooed the driver away as he threatened to decapitate her young rosemary hedge plants, all but invisible in the jungle that covers their field. She and David have now laid a cement floor and a layer of insulation in the section of the house they are renovating. After they’ve relaid the tiles, they plan to set about the roof. Their energy is frightening.


Last weekend Jones and I took ourselves to Loulé’s Mediterranean festival. This is held in the narrow cobbled lanes of the old city, an area inhabited for centuries by the Moors. The city authorities close down all the access roads and then charge visitors 10 euros a head for entry. Revellers are welcome to listen to any of several bands, visit endless nick-nack-selling stalls and enjoy a meal at communal tables lined up outside kiosks and make-shift restaurants.

The ticket also allows one to visit the castle museum and an art gallery, and to examine an archaeological dig at a medieval house from which a host of Islamic remains has been recovered. All these things we did. But we were not encouraged by the crowds or the bands and made an early exit. Jones, who has a keen sense of value for money, felt she had not had her ten euros worth, and doubted that she’d been returning. I was more pained by the bill for drinks that a café dreamed up after we’d been joined at a table by friends of a friend. There are times though when it’s not worth making a fuss. It’s being taken for a tourist that really hurts.

I have acquired a new pair of spectacles. I can’t see through them very well but I believe that they add a little gravitas to their wearer. Maybe I’ll be taken more seriously now. With luck they’ll also improve my vision in due course.

The flies and mosquitoes are back from their winter break. Brendan, I need more of your terrorist-zapping fly-swatters. Help!