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.