Letter from Espargal: 34 of 2007

Summer’s been clinging on by its fingertips. We are promised some rain this next week to bring us relief, probably in the shape of thunderstorms. The flies have tormented us endlessly on our walks. They have to be waved away constantly with switches broken from olive saplings (wild trees, not grafted ones). The flies can tell when we’ve got both hands full because they swoop instantly on our noses or lips. At home I have been putting to good use a gift from Llewellyn and Lucia, a tennis racket-shaped device called the “jolt” that zaps them most satisfactorily. Little sparks fly out as they short-circuit the wires.

Last night we saw such a moonrise as would stir the heart of any feeling human. We were seated on the south garden bench, baggies in hand, the dogs at our feet and a day’s work behind us. As if on cue, above the eastern hills there rose first a glowing disc and then a vast, luminous orb. It was our own private lunar theatre. We decided to rename our seat the “moonrise bench”. Other sun-downer venues – depending on the wind and the weather - are the glade and the upper and lower front patios.


We’ve been doing lots of walks, as ever. One morning we bumped into old Jose, a villager who lives with his wife and son (and various noisy dogs) in a house at the bottom of the hill. He is often to be found clearing the ground under his trees, and he’s always pleased to have a natter. We came across him collecting almond nuts; a half-filled sack was slung over his back. He gestured at the sack. These nuts are not for sale, he informed us, clearly expecting us to guess their purpose. Jose’s quite hard to understand because, like many older villagers, he’s short of front teeth.

After he’d waved away the other options – eating? cooking? – he triumphantly told us that they were bait for wild pigs. The pigs loved almond nuts, he assured us. The hunters would climb up on to a metal platform at night and wait for them to appear. Then bang! Bang!

Jonesy was not best pleased to get this news. She’s on the side of the piggies. I reckoned that sacrificing one or two porkers to the pot was fair enough. Judging by the evidence, there’s no shortage of the animals. Their hoof-prints and diggings are to be seen all around us. It’s not only the pigs that love almonds; so do our dogs, all three of them. They steal nuts from a bucket on the front patio and roll them around noisily in their teeth until they get them locked in just right. Then they crunch the shells and eat the nuts. It’s an impressive display of biting power.

It’s been another social week. Forgive the diary format. Proceedings began – from the point of view of this letter – at a concert to be given last Friday evening by a wind quintet from the Algarve orchestra at the Roman ruins in Estoi. We arrived with Llewellyn and Lucia and other friends under lowering skies to find the musicians, fearful of rain, decamping to the church a kilometre away. So we returned to our cars, warning new arrivals of the change of venue.

Jones and the other ladies had brought picnics, which we unpacked and consumed in the town square. That was probably the best part of the evening. Although there was a printed sheet with a list of the pieces to be played at the concert, there was no introduction. The music was obscure and it was impossible to know when one piece stopped or another began. Young Portuguese members of the audience, less than entranced (and who could blame them?) communicated in stage whispers and fiddled with their mobile phones. I wasn’t sorry when it ended.

Afterwards we took coffees and baggies at a café on the square. We tried speaking Portuguese to the man behind the counter – until it became apparent that he was Irish. He said he’d sold up his business in the UK and come out to help his Portuguese wife run the café. He proclaimed himself less than pleased with the petty politics that he’d encountered and had already had a run-in with the local authorities. He was also getting a stick from a rival café just across the lane.

On Saturday we locked the unwilling dogs in the house and took ourselves to Lagoa to a show sponsored by a local English-language newspaper – a mini version of the Rand Easter Show that once was. Food stalls, including a South African barbeque stall, were doing good business. We were enjoying lunch until a singer got up on stage and started bellowing into a microphone. We fled the scene. They say if it’s too loud, we’re too old. Well, we’re too old.

The rest was ok. I liked the cars, especially the new Honda CRV. Jonesy liked the garden section. We both liked the craft work, especially a series of miniature drawers made by a spindly, hippy-looking guy from tree-trunk cross-sections. They were exquisite and priced accordingly. At a satellite TV stall I bought a TV card for our receiver in order to obtain several UK TV channels that are currently blocked. The results were disappointing - grainy and hardly watchable. The vendor has promised to come round to sort out the problem. He thinks we may need a bigger dish.

Saturday evening we took ourselves to dinner at the Adega, to find a big Portuguese group already dining there and their small children running around. The proprietor shrugged his shoulders. That was the way it was and there was nothing he could do about it. We ummed and aahed before deciding to stay on. It was probably a mistake. I blocked the door near us with a chair to stop the little brats from running in and out but it didn’t help much.

On Sunday we attended a barbeque lunch given by the Dutch ladies, Anneke and Nicoline, to celebrate the first anniversary of their arrival in Espargal. A friend of theirs brought along a gas barbecue and a mountain of meat, more than enough to feed the guests - an easy mixture of Dutch, English and Portuguese. (We took half a dozen chops home with us, to share with the dogs. They got the bones.)

I found myself talking rusty Afrikaans to a Dutch couple on one side of a table and Portuguese to Horacio, the house builder, on the other side. The Dutch couple were interested in quizzing him about house prices and local regulations. They told us that in Holland only millionaires could afford houses like our hosts’. Horacio said that 300,000 euros was closer to the mark in Espargal. The house was complemented by the newly installed swimming pool. Jones and several other guests sat on the pool side, dipping their feet in the water.

Monday morning I scarified the fields while the gang went off shopping. The mid-month rain has turned the countryside green around us and our plots were rapidly disappearing under a carpet of weeds that I intended to nip in the bud.

It was Llewellyn and Lucia’s last day with us. We celebrated it with a walk around Quinta da Lago’s nature reserve and a picnic on the fringes of the Roman fish-salting tanks. Early the next morning we saw our visitors off at the airport. They are now back in Cape Town, preparing for a move to the UK some time early next year.

Tuesday Natasha works for us. We’d arranged to pick her up in Loule on our return from the airport. She was late and embarrassed; deservedly so. She’d overslept. I fear that young Alex often keeps her awake at night and she finds it hard to get going the next morning. She had a short day with us as I had to run Jones into the dentist in Loule for a 4.30 appointment - fairly minor stuff fortunately. The next two days I spent mainly on the tractor and Jones in the garden. She wants to get a load of stuff planted out before the rain arrives.

We took an hour off to visit Suzi, who runs a facilties service in Benafim, to try to sort out the status of our properties – part of our attempt to get urban title for Casa Nada (which will greatly enhance the value of the property and give us the right to convert it should we so desire). With her help we determined that the old house – now the tractor shed – is already on the Financas’ books, presumably as a result of our earlier efforts to register it.

Next, the title has to be entered into the records of the Conservatory of Title Deeds. And then, we have to set about correcting all kinds of errors in the deeds of our various plots (we have 5), mainly relating to neighbours who no longer exist. (Each property sale in Portugal records the neighbours to the north, south, east and west of the property concerned!) Bureaucracy is wonderful, don’t you think, in that it creates work for itself and guarantees life employment for its exponents - a bit like house work, only less useful.

Letter from Espargal: 33 of 2007

The retireder I get, the surpriseder I am that we ever found time to earn a living; I’m talking about that happy period when work was something we were paid to do. I have frequently considered going back into paid employment in order to enjoy the benefits of holidays, time-off, sick-leave and all the stuff that working people take for granted.

There hasn’t been any particular outpouring of sympathy when I have previously related the stresses of retirement living and don’t suppose I’ll get much now. Still, I’d hate you to be in ignorance of what awaits you when you finally land in golden pond.

If you wonder what on earth I’m talking about, just look at this past week. Saturday evening we went to dinner at the Auberge, the restaurant below the Quintassential that, before its revamp, was known as Ollie’s. It was our first visit since the restaurant’s reopening (one of many) under new management. Our God-daughter Caitlin joined us and other friends. Two of them, Mike and Lyn, had just flown in from the UK for a holiday, and the occasion was to celebrate Lyn’s birthday.

We found the Auberge full, mainly of expats, mostly British and speaking in those expensive offputting accents. Because there was “live music” (a singer-cum-musician) the menu was fixed and there was a premium to pay. That much we knew in advance. While the service was good, the food was indifferent, the music was loud and the bill was wrong - in the restaurant’s favour. Afterwards we agreed that the Auberge could do without us. That’s to say, I agreed. Jonesy thought that we might give it another chance.

Sunday morning we went for a long trek with the dogs along the paths that run between the super-luxury development of Quinta da Lago and Faro estuary. It’s a beautiful area, studded with stretches of tidal water and home to numerous birds. Apart from the scenery there are the palatial houses, just across the water, to ogle. Even the littler ones cost millions. Much of the path runs alongside the golf course. I particularly enjoy this section as it offers passers-by living proof that golfing skills cannot be bought, not even by those wealthy enough to play at Quinta da Lago. Golf balls can often be retrieved from the mudflats, where the golfers themselves decline to tread.

Sunday afternoon we were joined by Mike and Lyn. While we were taking tea they received a phone call to say that their son-in-law, Jeremy, had fallen gravely ill. He has long suffered from an inoperable tumour on the brain, which the doctors have been trying to keep in check. Our visitors, poor things, booked themselves back on the first available flight.


Monday morning we went to Loule. Jones and Caitlin went shopping. I dropped in at the bank and the university (the term starts in 10 days) while the dogs waited patiently in the car, as they usually do, until I was able to take them around to the park for leg-lifters.

Mid afternoon I met the girls at the bus-stop in Benafim. Caitlin was very pleased with herself and the shoes, boots and dress that she had acquired. It was the last day of her stay with us. She has come walking morning and evening, her long legs marred by pink splotches from the occasional mozzie bite. We took her to Faro airport early on Tuesday. Also in the queue to check-in were our near neighbours, David and Sarah, who commute several times a year. They were returning to invigorate the heritage society that occupies much of their time in Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

On the way home we fetched Natasha in Loule. She wasn’t in high spirits. She’s getting over a feverish cold. Also she’s been suffering from back pains and had been for x-rays at Faro hospital – the results of which she awaits. What’s more, she said, Dani had badly cut his fingers at work and had to have the wounds stitched. So it wasn’t their week.

I spent much of the day searching for my main set of car keys. They love to hide in a pocket for a few hours but generally allow themselves to be found without much ado. This time, they had been absent for the better part of a week. I scoured my clothes, my cupboards, the car, Casa Nada and the wooden shed. There was nary a sign of them. One neighbour reported that (according to another neighbour) one had to offer St Anthony a sum of money in order to find them again. This smacked too much of indulgences for my liking. Very frustrating.

Mid-afternoon, Jones dropped them on my desk. She had found them lying in a box of melons that we had received from neighbours. And she had come across them only because some of the melons had gone off and had to be thrown out. It’s not a place that I should ever have thought of looking.

Wednesday morning I took the car in for a major service. Honda had warned me that it would take the whole day. So I arranged to hire a car from them - a Fiat Panda and a reminder of how the other half lives. Jones said it was fine. I guess it was, if by fine you mean it goes and there’s just enough room for two adults and three dogs. We all piled in to take it back late afternoon. The Honda awaited, along with the bill. Ouch. The workshop manager said I needed two new tyres on the back as the inner treads were worn.

After doing a bit of shopping we went to the beach for a walk to watch the sunset. Prickles ran around like a little hairy white spider, barking ecstatically. Ono chased him. From time to time packs of inquisitive dogs came down from the fishermen’s huts to inspect us. Prickles wanted to tear them limb from limb for their audacity. He has absolutely no sense of proportion. Then we went to the airport just the other side of the estuary to meet Barbara’s brother, Llewellyn, and his wife, Lucia, who are spending a few days with us on their way back to RSA from the UK. Finally we returned to the beach for supper under the stars. The moon cast a golden highway across the waters.

Thursday morning, after a long walk with Lucia, I took the car to get new tyres fitted. Llewellyn came along for the ride. The tyre firm said it didn’t have my specs. So we ordered them and promised to return the next day to have them fitted. Then we stopped at Gilde’s hardware store to buy brackets (14) and long screws (56) to strengthen the pergola (following the damage done by the storm). Isidoro wondered whether I intended to put in all the screws by hand. He clearly didn’t think it a good idea. I agreed with him. Also, he happened to have a special offer on an electric screwdriver in a presentation bag, together with a free torch that worked off one of the spare batteries. It was too good an offer to refuse.

On the way back I stopped off at the Parish office to enter myself (and hopefully Jones) in the 10-km health walk to take place on Sunday week. Waiting in the office was an old woman who lives in a house on one of our walks. We call her the crone. If you saw her, you’d know why. She likes a natter and is very hard to get away from. I offered her a lift home, anyhow, and she was grateful for it. Except it turned out that she wanted to be taken to Alte, 10 minutes away, to fetch her pension from the bank. So we went to Alte and fetched her pension and then we took her home, declining her offer of coffee. Thursday p.m. I picked carobs. We’ve another day’s work to finish picking our trees.

Anybody still there? I told you it was a pretty hectic week.


Oh, I nearly forgot. One day Jones exclaimed that she had forgotten to put on her mascara, remarking that: “I must look very ugly.” Caitlin reflected that Jones didn’t look any uglier that day than she had the previous day, which didn’t exactly cheer Jones up. I wondered (half honestly) exactly where girls put mascara, and reassured Jones that I loved her just as much with or without. Jones declared that she put on mascara as much for her own sake as for anyone else’s. It makes her feel better. She often reminds me, when I’m sent back upstairs to improve my appearance before going out, that I don’t have to look at myself and she does. I suppose she’s got a point.

Do you know how many ants it takes to move a dog biscuit. The answer is nine - err, no eight. (Strange, I could have sworn I counted nine when I took the picture)

Two big tawny owls have moved into the district. They are the most beautiful birds. At night they can often be heard calling to each other, either in long “hoos” or in a 4-note quavery hoo. They’re a welcome addition to the little owls that have long been resident. The little guys sound more like cats than owls when they call to each other. Other visitors have been the wild pigs, whose traces – both hoof prints and scuffed earth – Jones found in the adjacent field.

Letter from Espargal: 32 of 2007

Our hot, dry summer is over, the dry part anyhow. The rainy season arrived on Monday afternoon in Benafim, 5 kms away, in the shape of a terrific storm. We had a front seat view. The black skies were laced with lightning and the valley shook with thunder as the town vanished into a murky shroud, full of nasty stuff. Horacio the builder, whom we met the following day unloading gear on his new site, said the hail was so heavy that he feared for the windscreen of his truck.

On Tuesday it was our turn to take a battering. We’ve had a few exciting storms out here but nothing like the tempest we experienced that afternoon. We could see it coming across the mountains, black and menacing. We keep a sharp eye out for such storms because of the danger that lightning presents to our appliances, as we’ve learned through hard experience. If the time between the flash and the crack of thunder gets down to a couple of seconds, we yank out the plugs.

The storm charged across the valley towards us like the armies of Armageddon, thundering and striking out with bolts of lightning. We got the animals inside, instructed Natasha to stop vacuum cleaning and unplugged the appliances. Next thing a deluge of rain swept across us, bending the trees double. A 3-metre beam of wood was ripped from the pergola on the upper patio and tossed into the garden. Water rushed down the roof in sheets, sailing over the gutters on to the pavements. Jones and Natasha saw a bolt of lightning hit a pole in the village with a great fizz, knocking out the power. The dogs hated it and came to us for comfort. It’s as close to a hurricane as I want to get.

When we came to take Natasha home, we found the road covered in stones, some as big as bricks. Half of Vitor’s new drive way had been swept down into the road. So had much of Fintan’s garden. Great gullies had been carved out along the roadside. We met villagers who had been caught out in the open while carob picking, which must have been terrifying. During a subsequent shopping expedition in Loule we laid in supplies for a candle-lit night. On our return, to my surprise, we found the electrical engineers already hard at work. By dusk we had electricity back. I was impressed.

My rain gauge blew down in the storm; neighbours said we’d had an inch of rain. Overnight I measured another inch. In the morning we could see the parts of the valley floor lying under a sheet of water, bad news for the tomato farmers who were hoping for another fortnight of sunshine. Zé Carlos, who was taking a lorry load of tomatoes to market each day, said that heavy rain would wipe out the rest of the crop. I fear that what’s left will be good only for the sheep. The shepherd, at least, will be grateful.

It was raining again on Wednesday afternoon when we went to fetch our London God-daughter, Caitlin, from the airport. Twice the traffic was forced into a single lane to get past car shunts – the victims miserably contemplating the damage to their vehicles as they awaited the arrival of the police. (It would never occur to a Portuguese driver to slow down or turn his lights on JUST because it was raining!)

From the airport we took Caitlin and the dogs to the beach, first for refreshments and then for a stroll along the sands. The beach runs for a couple of kilometers along a narrow strip between the sea and an estuary. The main section is lined with Portuguese holiday houses, bordered by a community of fisherman’s cottages at either end. Lots of other dogs came to inspect ours; one actually joined us for half an hour. Most of them were friendly and curious – a compliment that ours didn’t always return.

Once we were away from the crowds, we let the dogs run free. Prickles dashed through the shallow water, barking madly. The others joined the chase although they preferred to remain on the sand. Jones loves such walks along the beach. She still collects pebbles and shells. I have my reservations, as these outings entail being constantly on the look-out for other dogs and burying the inevitable dog droppings in the sands.
BAGGIES IN THE GLADE
At heart, I guess I’m not really a beach person – although I find the beach a pleasant enough place to take the occasional coffee and baggy.

On the home front, Jonesy and I have been collecting carobs from the park – the acre of rock-strewn hillside above the house – and trimming back the vegetation. We don’t plant anything in the park. Nature has already seen to that. We simply try to encourage desirable growth and to discourage the rest. I take a strimmer to it once or twice a year and spend a couple of days, usually with Dani, stripping out the dead wood.

We got the internet back on Monday evening after a 4-day interruption, caused – according to a helpful technician – by a major upgrade at an exchange. There were sighs of relief through the expat houses in the village. One of my next tasks is to fire up my old computer and retrieve the emails, mainly those to lawyers and the like. I had to take the computer back to Inforomba to see why it was giving me a dead screen (because a technician there had fiddled with the innards while transferring material to my new one).

In the meanwhile I’ve finished loading the new model with software. I was delighted after downloading Itunes to find that the programme had arrived with all the music that I had previously bought from the Itunes store. Another free downloadable programme that I’m making lots of use of is Google’s Picasa picture software. It’s versatile and easy to use. (Cathy, I have burned your pictures on to a DVD and will post it off to you.)

Friday has dawned sultry and misty.
Jones has just popped out on to the patio to take a couple of pictures. We’re planning a trip to Faro. The girls want to do a bit of shopping – window shopping at least. Caitlin has been working during her student holidays at a fashionable store in London and is a considerable authority on what’s in. And I need to fetch my repaired mobile phone.

Do you know that the Portuguese word for blessing is “bênção.”. It sounds almost like Benson. The English word “benison” is from the same Latin root, benedictio.

Letter from Espargal: 31 of 2007

The house sleeps, the canine residents scattered in their baskets around the study. It’s been a bitty week and my offerings are modest. The youth orchestra TV programme that I was looking forward to on BBC1 has been replaced by a tribute to Luciano Pavorotti, whose descriptions include tenor of the high “c”s and a man who never missed a meal. Whatever the case, he sure had it where it counted.

I am writing on my new desktop computer. It hums away smartly beside me in a matt black case. I have to confess that it doesn’t feel any different from the old one although it’s much quieter, faster and more powerful. The screen and keyboard are the same, as are all the accessories.

For some time the old computer had been showing its age. Certain elements didn’t work and others were erratic. I took it in to the usual suspects, Inforomba, with whom I’ve been dealing with for years. Silverio reckoned that he could give it a new lease on life for around 400 euros. On the other hand, he calculated that he could supply me with a brand new model, built to my requirements, along with a card reader and additional USB ports, for 560 euros. So there wasn’t really much choice. The new model was ready for collection the following afternoon. I’ve spent much of the rest of the week trying to reload and re-download software.

It’s been a frustrating task, especially as my link to the internet has been up and down like a yo-yo – leaving me with incomplete installation files. Silverio thinks that there’s a fault in the phone line. The ISP technician, who spent 30 minutes trying to talk through the problem on the phone, isn’t convinced. He suggested that I call back next time the line went down, which won’t be very long. (Indeed it wasn’t. I now have an error number and have nothing to do other than to wait. I’m told it normally takes three days to sort out. I’d count myself lucky.) If this arrives late, you’ll know why. Even more interesting, three other expats in the village have lost their broadband links as well. It's looking like a general fault. What a pain!

Another high-tech casualty has been my mobile phone, which has been turning itself off at intervals and refusing to turn on again. It’s 18 months old and, fortunately, still under guarantee. After transferring the chip to our spare phone, I dropped the mobile off at the Vodafone repair shop near Faro hospital while Jones and Erica went shopping for clothes at Forum Algarve. The shopping centre has numerous fashion outlets and is THE place to see and be seen in Faro. In spite of this, the girls came away disappointed – empty-handed in fact. There was lots of stuff but nothing that looked and felt quite right – or so they reported. Jonesy said it was also possible that they weren’t in the right mood.

They had better luck the following day at one of the Chinese emporiums in Loule. Erica’s face said it all when we met back at the city’s parking garage - the only place in town where we can be sure of securing shade for the dogs. She was on such a high that she nearly floated away. When she demonstrated the outfits one by one at home on our return, I understood why. All looked stunning on her. What’s more she obtained them for seriously low prices. (It’s scary how the Chinese are impacting on trade and manufacturing all over Portugal - and the rest of the world, yes, I know. Portuguese factories are having a hard time trying to stay in business.)

Erica joined us one morning to pick carobs with our Portuguese neighbours a couple of miles away in the valley. There must have been ten pickers gathered under the trees, stuffing the pods into buckets and then tipping those into big hessian sacks. Each full sack was sewn up. Twenty two sacks were filled that day, according to a delighted Leonhilda. If you had any idea how much labour it takes to fill a single sack, you’d understand why.

There was a real sense of community spirit about the exercise. It makes such a difference to have a few extra hands; the carobs simply fly into the buckets. In spite of her stiff legs, Erica said she was very pleased to have been there. It had been a positive experience that she would long remember. One is somehow able to leave the world and its troubles behind for a few hours and to indulge in an instinctive crop-gathering activity, one that most of our ancestors would have been only too familiar with. The Portuguese chatter as they work. There’s always an observation to be made about something and a response.

To thank us for our efforts, Leonhilda’s sister, Irene, invited us around one evening for drinks. Irene lives in a semi-detached house beside Leonhilda’s – when she’s down in Portugal, that is. Irene married a French husband, Robert, and the couple, who are now grandparents – like most of our acquaintance – have their main residence in France. They usually spend a couple of months here in the summer. Along with other neighbours, they’ve been helping Leonhilda to bring in the crop as her husband is ill. Anyhow, we went around for trilingual drinks. I spoke Portuguese; Erica and Jones spoke French and the English neighbours spoke English. It worked out fine.

We celebrated Erica’s last two nights with supper at the beach and dinner at the Adega restaurant in the village of Nave de Barao. They were both fairly special meals, as much for the atmosphere as the food and for the premium wines that we indulged in. Erica said she now understood what it meant to live the good life. We saw her off at Faro airport early on Wednesday morning. She returned to London to be capped, with her parents looking on, as a graduate in design at Goldsmith College, where she plans to continue her studies in the next academic year.

Espargal has meanwhile returned to its usual peaceful state, with only birdcalls, yapping dogs and growling tractors to be heard over the sound of distant voices. Gone are the picapaus that have been hammering away for the past several weeks. The Dutch couple’s fibre-glass pool has been lowered into the excavation dug for it and is now being encased in gravel. It’s a big pool, nearly 10 metres by 4. We saw a number of such pools during our visit to the big fair at Lagoa. They are cheaper and quicker to install than conventional pools, as well, presumably, as being less likely to crack and leak. We wait to hear the Dutch couple’s verdict.

Also completed at last is the steep entrance to Vitor’s property. It took the picapau days to get rid of the final obstinate rock shelf down at road level. The property itself has been so neatly trimmed as to qualify as a work of art (a subject that we discussed long and hard with our niece). In anticipation of the house to come, trees have been either cut down or pruned and the branches cut into neat lengths before being stacked in model piles. Even the kindling has been tied into bundles with lengths of green cord. My own woodpile, by comparison, is just that: a great heap of wood, as Jones points out to me.

Idalecio’s dad rolled up one afternoon with a bakkie full of fruit and veges to thank us for the carobs we’d presented to him. He left us two boxes of melons, one of pumpkins and another of tomatoes. We presented half the booty to English neighbours who had done most of the carob collecting. The other half has been shared with yet more neighbours. The melons are delicious, and all the better with a spoonful of liqueur poured into the middle. (I’m sorry but it’s difficult to escape the subject of carobs at this time of year.)

The dogs have taken to spending the day in the car, whether in the hope of a ride or just because it’s warm and snug is hard to know. I leave towels on the seats and a door open. Ono, who likes to ride in the middle of the back seat and look out through the windscreen, has learned to lean into the curve to preserve his balance, much to the amusement of his fellow travellers.

They came with me to Gilde’s hardware store on the outskirts of Salir. Jones had been much irritated by a dripping overflow pipe. A little investigation showed that the big rubber washer in the cap had broken and I was despatched to buy another. Although Gilde’s stocks a range of washers, none fitted. All were too big or too small. “Not to worry”, said Isidoro when he had finished with his other customers. “We’ll make one”.

And that’s what he did, using a special rubber tube that one cuts to length and then seals with a lighter flame. That’s what I call service. The drip has stopped and Jones is happier. She’s been labouring away in her garden, pruning and clearing and generally just loving her plants.