Letter from Espargal: 28 of 2007

You will sympathise with us that we have hardly had an early evening all week, so pressing have been our social engagements. Last night we attended a dinner at Ollie’s restaurant to mark the 60th wedding anniversary of the first neighbours we encountered in Cruz da Assumada when we arrived there in 1987. You may think it quite difficult to be married 60 years (especially to the same person) but Tom and Joyce, who embraced in their teens, appear little the worse for the experience. They were really our mentors as we came to terms with the peculiar ways of Portuguese bureaucracy.

As for Ollie, he was born in the house that we bought and named the Quintassential. In the 90s he built himself a new home just down the road from us and opened a restaurant a stone’s throw away. Its location was perfect and it proved very popular among our acquaintance. Many an evening we (and Quintassential guests) trooped down the driveway for supper at Ollie’s – and later staggered up again. (It was – in fact still is – a very steep driveway.) To our great regret, Ollie moved away to reopen a much bigger establishment on the eastern outskirts of Loulé – where he remains.

Wednesday we accompanied neighbours to the Madeirense, a restaurant that takes its name from the owners’ origins in the island of Madeira. It was the feast of the Assumption, a public holiday in Portugal as in much of Europe, and the Madeirense was choc a bloc with diners, inside and out. Fortunately we were among the first to arrive. The restaurant is justly famous locally for its chicken and for the giant kebabs that it serves on long skewers. With us, in the car, came Robbie and Kayleigh, our neighbours’ “adopted” grandchildren, plus the three dogs. The kids really love the dogs (which return their affection) and have come walking with us most mornings and evenings.


They have also spent several mornings helping me to pick carobs. This service was really on behalf of a Portuguese neighbour, Leonhilda, whose husband is not well enough to bring in his crop this year. As carobs are the couple’s principal source of income, the matter is serious. We and other neighbours have been assisting Leonhilda where we can. Her carob trees are scattered among a number of properties in the area. We would arrive by tractor, Robbie and Kayleigh seated on folding chairs on the way out and on bulging sacks of carobs on our return.

To my great embarrassment, during one return journey, a panel that I had secured (not very well) to the tractor’s link-box came loose and jammed itself up against a wheel. We were travelling slowly and the incident caused us no harm. However, there was no way that I could remove it. The tractor sat unmoving in the middle of the narrow dirt road, unable to travel either backwards or forwards. What’s more, that happened to be the day that a fleet of vehicles was using the road to reach Horatio’s house where a rig was drilling a borehole. Within the hour, they would be coming back from lunch to find the road blocked.

I wasn’t pleased. We were rescued from our predicament by nearby English neighbours, who responded to my call. To resolve the problem we had to free the link-box by knocking out a stubborn pin with a hammer and chisel. It took ten minutes of sweaty effort. Once that was done, we were able to retrieve the errant panel and to continue on our way. It’s an episode that I would probably not have recounted had I not been nudged by Jones to own up to it.

Much of one morning I spent at Jones’s behest sewing up Ono’s lover. This object is a cushion-sized chunk of foam rubber, encased in old pillow-cases. Although, like our other pets, Ono has been snipped, his condition does not deter him from a daily dalliance with the object of his affections. In fact, his favourite trick when we have guests is to drag his lover downstairs for a display of canine virility.

The problem with Ono’s lover is the damage it suffers during our ritual evening tug-of-war (a contest that leads up to the seduction finale). As you may imagine, it doesn’t take long before the pillow-cases start to come apart, causing bits of foam rubber to fly around the study (and Jonesy to say bad things to us).


For her part, Jones has also been doing some sewing up, mainly of the knees of my older pairs of jeans. Like my well-worn garden hats, they have been showing the strain of late. Jones’s free hours have gone into clearing a strip of severely overgrown shrubbery on the opposite side of the driveway. The area has long been a tangled jungle of thorny creepers, trees and shrubs - and these two brief sentences hardly do justice to her persistent efforts to clear the area up.

Our lower strip of garden, (a right of way below the fence) that we call Banco’s Broadwalk, has become a favourite evening visiting spot by several Portuguese neighbours, especially Maria of the Conception. I have installed several logs and large stones where walkers can rest and admire the view. (There are, by the way, at least half a dozen Marias in the village, all older women. None is called simply Maria. There’s Maria of Sorrows, Maria of Lourdes and so on – a hearkening back to the days when the church called the tune).

Last weekend we went to a folkloric evening in Alte, known as the “bodas” (wedding feast or anniversary). Like so many events in Portugal, it started late. People sat around shivering in the amphitheatre stands. Many had arrived scantily dressed on a warm evening that turned cold and windy. We cheered up at the eventual appearance of the “wedding couples” but then had to endure a round of dull speeches before the folk dancing got underway.

ROBBIE & KAYLEIGH THANK YOU NOTES
It was interesting to compare the variety of styles adopted by groups from different parts of Portugal. What we really wanted to see, though, were the visiting Turkish and Greek troupes; but when by 11.30 there was still no sign of them, we gave up and came home. We brought Robbie and Kayleigh with us, leaving parents and grandparents to sit it out. (They later reported that it was well worth the waiting).

Robbie and Kayleigh’s family spent much of their time here looking for and then attempting to buy property. They found a small registered house – really just a couple of rooms - on several acres in the west coast, for which they put in a successful bid. That was the easy part. Then they tried to get fiscal numbers – the first step towards buying anything in Portugal. After waiting in line for hours at the Finances in Loulé, they were informed that they had to come back with someone who had a Portuguese residence card. Next they queued at the bank to open an account, only to be told that they first had to provide evidence of employment. Welcome to Portugal!

The family strolled over one evening for a barbecue that Jones planned to hold just outside Casa Nada. She went to an enormous amount of trouble with the preparations, as she is wont to do. The evening wind got up as usual, however, and we thought it prudent to move ourselves into Casa Nada instead. After opening the windows, I actually brought the barbecue indoors for what proved a most pleasant evening.

We had a meal up at the Hamburgo as well (but I think you’ve had enough restaurant reports). The interesting bit of the Hamburgo visit was the installation (which continued noisily as we ate) of two air-conditioners in the walls. Much as we like the venue and the food, we have found the place freezing in winter and hot in summer. Our future visits should be much more comfortable.

I sat up one night to catch a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower that was promised us in the media. Ten minutes’ watching of the northern skies brought me one impressive orange falling star. That was it. So I went to bed.