Letter from Espargal: 38 of 2007

Be sure your sin will find you out.” That’s what Jones said after I used the internet to get a little help with a ferocious exercise in (mainly) subjunctive Portuguese verbs, given to us by Antonio, our teacher. (You are blessed indeed if you have had the good fortune of living your life free of subjunctives.) The exercise was actually taken from a Portuguese fable, which Google and I managed to trace, with all the original verbs in place. Thus it was that, when it came to my turn to read a passage in class, filling in the gaps with the correct form of the verb, my effortless erudition greatly impressed Antonio and possibly a few of my fellow pupils.

All would have been well had not Antonio changed a single word in the fable, replacing an old word with a more modern equivalent. Thus he was astonished when I read the original word instead of its replacement. Of course, it was my downfall. The truth rapidly emerged, much (I should say) to everyone’s amusement. I got no sympathy from Jones who, ever diligent, had at least attempted to do the exercise before comparing her verbs with the author’s. Lest you begin to doubt my character, be assured that there was nothing material at stake. There are no tests in our classes, nor are any marks awarded (nice as it is to get things right.)

Antonio didn’t know the Portuguese for the quote from Jones (who grew up in a fervent Baptist household. Google tells me that it comes from Numbers, 32:23) He said the Portuguese have an idiom to the effect that the hiding cat is betrayed by its tail. There you have it.

POMEGRANATES
We arrived back from classes to discover yet another 5-litre bottle of fig liquor deposited at our front door. Chico and Dina had evidently been around during our absence. Maybe Chico felt that the 5 litres he’d presented to us last week hadn’t been sufficient spur. Fearful of accumulating yet more moonshine, I changed the link-box on the back of the tractor for the plough and went around to tend his fields. Chico, who is half blind as well as very old, stumbled down the hill from his cottage clutching a bag that he opened to reveal beer and biscuits intended for me. I declined his hospitality as graciously as I could. Drinking and tractoring is seriously bad news, especially on Chico’s slopes. It was all that the tractor could do to climb to the top of the field carrying the weight of the plough.


With October and its oh so welcome cooler weather (temps down into the moderate 20s) has come the olive harvesting season. Bringing in the olives is generally a family activity. Large nets are spread under the trees and the fruit is whacked down with long sticks. Farmers often trim the trees at the same time, clambering up into the branches, chain saw in hand.

Old olive trees are cut back severely, leaving just a couple of small branches emerging from the trunk. Within a few years these grow into boughs and the tree is ready for another hundred years or so of bearing. This year’s crop is poor. The fruit has been badly stung by the Mediterranean fruit fly. Most of the olives have brown stains on them, an indication of the larvae to be found inside.

Twice we took knapsacks on our morning walk, to stock up on tomatoes. The invitation to do so had come from a farmer who has several acres under cultivation down in the valley. Throughout the summer he and his helpers have been packing boxes and taking them off to market. Now that the demand has fallen off the farmer has stopped picking, even though a carpet of red and green tomatoes litters the field.
(A POMEGRANATE - NOT A TOMATO!) Other fruits and nuts lie rotting on and under the trees that bore them. One becomes very aware that farming is about making a living, not about feeding the hungry.

Our relief that the (latest) stray dog had found a home was short-lived. We spotted the animal on the outskirts of Alte, 10 kms away. He was trotting down the main road, his ribs still showing in spite of the tins of food that we had supplied him during his sojourn in our area. Penny, the neighbour who had taken him in, reported that he had spent just a couple of days with her, possibly stocking up on his energy levels, before taking off once again. I hope he finds a home.

One sees lots of stray dogs in this part of the world, most of them scrawny, frightened beasts, their tails glued between their legs. And as unpleasant as it is, one can come to terms with the fate of most of them in the local pound – if they ever get that far. But every now and then, as when we came across Banco, our boxer, one sees truly handsome dogs looking for a home, and it’s far more affecting, however irrational. I think of the annual hullabaloo over the slaughter of seal pups in Canada - and the comment that if they looked like pigs, no-one would give a damn.

It has been a very sociable week, mostly with our long-standing house-sitters, the Ferretts, who are looking after the house of a friend in the village. We led them to Messines for lunch with (equally old friends) the Vankos before continuing on to the
Vanko home (in the hills north of the town) to show them the amazing work that Eddie has done in converting an old cottage into a magnificent home.

Midweek we barbecued sausages, one of my better attempts. Jones will not hear of a new-fangled gas barbecue and fiercely resists any lazy attempt on my part to light the barbecue with fire-lighters. She hates the smell. So it’s old fashioned matches, kindling and charcoal – a whole brazier full. I have found from long experience that a small fire simply leads to scorched or underdone meat. Tonight we are all going to a concert in Faro, tomorrow it’s supper at Idalecio’s little restaurant and Monday it’s dinner in Alte.

If life sounds like a party, it didn’t feel like one last night after I’d spent a day working with Dani in the “park”. We dismembered several heaps of old branches that had been piled up after our clearing last season, along with dead thorn bushes and other dross. We separated the wood into useful and useless. Dani then used the chain-saw to cut the useful stuff into firewood (we got two tractor loads) while I burned off the useless stuff along with masses of thorns.

Well aware of the evils of global warming, we burn as little as possible in the fields. Nearly all our trimmings get turned either into mulch or firewood. It was hot and the pestiferous flies drove us to distraction. We’ve had a blue-sky October and I fear there’s more of the same to follow in November.

It’s not only the flies that are still about. The odd mozzie still braves the cooler evenings. And the ticks and fleas are present 24/7. As I type I’m aware of a wretchedly itchy bite on my chest, a spot from which I plucked a tick on our return from a walk. I really dislike ticks. Why a loving and omniscient deity invented them to torment us (i.e. creatures allegedly made in his image) is almost as big a mystery as why he gave the Arabs the oil.

We watched two movies at home, The Devil wears Prada, (which I thought a bit disappointing in spite of the leading role of favourite actress Meryl Streep); and, in German with subtitles, The Lives of Others – worthy of its Oscar if not exactly a load of fun. It made me think of the reflections, broadcast on Thursday, of the former BBC Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston, on his 114 days as a prisoner of a jihadi group, and the joy of finding himself alive and free. It’s crazy, isn’t it, that we so often really appreciate the good things of life only after we lose them.