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.