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 The youth orchestra TV programme that I was looking forward to on BBC1 has been replaced by a tribute to Luciano Pavorotti, whose descriptions include tenor of the high “c”s and a man who never missed a meal.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.