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.
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