Letter from Espargal: 41 of 2007

Calgary airport: Let me start by saying that this is an unashamedly family letter, full of family names and family news, and accompanied by family pictures.
DINNER AT THE CARE HOME
It’s a grey Monday afternoon. On the far side of the terminal window, crews are spraying the aircraft wings with anti-freeze. The temperature is deep into minus territory. (My brother) Kevin has dropped me off. My flight is still a couple of hours away. I’m carrying a box full of muffins, as requested by Jones. (She says she asked only for one.) Calgary security confirmed that I can take them through. I’ve said my goodbyes: to Cathy and her girls, to Kevin and Ann, to Penny and Mark and Alan and their families, and to Mum. All week Mum has been slipping gently away from us. Her time left on earth is very short.

I arrived in Calgary on Thursday the 15th to find Mum poorly but still able, during her brief waking periods, to respond lucidly to staff and family.


KEVIN & ANN
Kevin and Ann had flown in from the US a day or two before. Glad as Mum was to see us, it was the arrival of Cathy (and her daughters) that brought her especial joy. We took it in turns to be at her bedside, exchanging a few whispered words when she surfaced and ensuring that she had whatever she wanted to drink. She had stopped taking any solid food.

The nursing staff would come in regularly to check her and turn her. Several told us how they admired her. Their job is not an easy one. Many of the residents of the care home are infirm and others are foggy headed; dealing with them demands a lot of patience. It’s quite common to bump into old folk making their way down the corridor on their “walkers”, who ask earnestly: “Where am I going?” or “What am I doing”. We learned to steer them gently back towards the east wing, from which they emerge. Mum, I should add, is in the west wing.

As during our previous visits, (my niece)
PENNY (right) AT THE RINK, WITH COUSINS & HER MOTHER
Penny and Mike ran an open house. Their home is within easy reach of the rest of the family. Their hospitality was warm and untiring – and I thank them. We often gathered there of an evening for a pasta meal, games with the kids and an hour of conversation. Their elder son, Jackson, celebrated his fifth birthday during my stay with a party at a bowling alley. It was a hoot, with some of the little tots barely able to carry the bowls. That didn’t stop them from having oodles of fun. Another day I went along to watch Jackson taking skating lessons. Canadian kids take to the ice almost as soon as they can walk. Jackson is already confident on his skates and will soon be quite at home on them.

His younger brother, Wyatt, is something else. If Jackson promises to be sensitive and artistic, Wyatt looks likely to be the family hockey or football player. Their dad is 6’7” and his children seem to be following in his footsteps. (These opinions are mine alone, I should emphasise, and probably fallible.)

I joined Kevin and Ann one evening for dinner at (my nephew) Mark and Mindy’s home.

KEVIN WITH RACHEL & ETHAN
Their young son, Ethan, is a honey although Mindy confesses that there are days when she is relieved to thrust him into his returning dad’s arms. Well, that’s fair enough. Mark teaches aviation at a college in Calgary. He shares custody of his older son, Connor, with his first wife.

ALAN & ANITA
(My younger nephew)Alan (who has resumed his studies with his eye on a medical degree) and Sarah have produced two daughters to bring a little gender balance into the family. Young Esther is bright-eyed and bonny. Her older sister, Rachel, is a real character. She led the boys in great games during a family gathering that Kevin and Ann arranged one evening. The young cousins are clearly going to have fun growing up together. We missed only the Witbank side of the family, Brendan, Conal and Micaela.

CATHY & ERICA
Cathy’s daughters, Erica and Anita, were delighted to renew the acquaintance of their Canadian cousins. It was their first trip to Canada since Penny’s wedding 10 years ago. Erica and Anita are both at university; Erica is doing a Masters in Design at Goldsmiths in London and Anita is completing a Bachelor in Political Science at Constance on the Swiss-German border.

Like me, Erica and Anita were keen to exploit Canada’s relatively lower prices. (Apart from anything else, Alberta imposes a 6% sales tax on goods and services, compared to around 20% in much of the EU.) Alan, who knows everything that’s worth knowing about desirable technology and where to get it, took a morning off to lead us to a specialist mobile phone importer. There I acquired a Nokia N95 cellphone (cum camera, video camera, GPS, web browser, MP3 player, radio and much else). The device, Nokia’s attempt to compete with the “iPhone” is not yet widely on sale in Canada.

I took numerous pictures of our get-togethers, along with a few videos. Under the guidance of their Canadian relatives,
KEVIN & NIECES

my German nieces also made some very satisfactory high-tech purchases. Let me add that Alan managed to acquire and unlock an iPhone that he demonstrated to us. It was the first I’d actually seen in action. What a stunning bit of technology it is.

Let me move from high-tech to motor cars because my Canadian family is nothing if not keen on cars and enjoys little more than trading used ones in for new ones. (I tell Jones that the new ones are more environment-friendly but she's not persuaded.) As it happened, my visit coincided with vehicle purchases by both Alan and Mark, although it is their wives who will benefit most. With young families and the need for child seats, both nephews opted for mini-vans. I was wowed by their sheer space and practicality, to say nothing of the fold-down televisions, self-opening and closing doors, rear-view camera and you name it.


KEVIN
Kevin too confessed to having acquired a new vehicle, a Jeep suitable for towing. I didn’t get to see that as it’s in Chicago, parked beside his beloved Audi (RS4). The towing will be done by the mobile home that’s due to be delivered in the spring. He and Ann are both keen (mobile home) travellers in spite of a few small setbacks with their first two, and hope to spend some time touring North America. As you may be aware, the firm Kevin was heading has been bought out by a competitor and he is contentedly out of a job right now. I have urged Kevin, now that he has a little free time, to spend some of it writing to the rest of us – so that the news comes from the horse’s mouth rather than its stable mate's.

CATHY & SARAH
Espargal: I’m home, 24 hours home in fact. It’s a chilly evening after a warm, sunny day – some 30 degrees centigrade warmer than Calgary the day I left. The first fire of the season is burning in the stove. The dogs have snuggled down in their baskets beside it, just the happiest little guys. I went walking with Jones and the dogs while Natasha cleaned the house. The hills are green and damp after last week’s rains. Jones showed me the spot where she went off-route while leading our neighbours around a steep, bushy hill. The party floundered around in the dusk until Jones released Ono, who promptly led them a few metres back to the path, where they found Stoopy already waiting. Silly humans.


MARK & ERICA
In my English lesson today, we discussed the plight of the unfortunate British woman teacher who has been arrested in Sudan for accepting the vote by her young class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. She is accused of insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs. This strengthens my suspicion that God has disowned humans as a disappointing experiment. Certainly, if I were God, I’d raise heaven’s drawbridge.

On Natasha’s behalf I tried to fill in an online application form for the Portuguese Frontier Service but each attempt we made to submit it was rejected with an error message and an apology. Natasha is anxious to legalise her residence in Portugal. She’s not finding it easy. Ironically, she’s visited the Frontier office in Faro several times to establish exactly where she stands in the light of constantly changing regulations. The officials guide her as best they can despite knowing that she’s in Portugal illegally. It’s only if foreigners are caught working without a permit (or committing crimes) that the authorities actually expel them.

Jones is ironing. In spite of the warmth generated by the fire, she’s wearing a light jersey over her gown. She doesn't warm easily. I brought her back a few “love you” gifts from Canada. For fear that the customs authorities might challenge me over these (and other) purchases, I thought it prudent to discard the smart containers before travelling. Of course, customs showed no interest in me whatever. Security at Frankfurt airport did, checking that the mass of wiring inside my satchel belonged to the ipod, the radio, the 2 cellphones, the headphones and the notebook computer that I was carrying.


CATH (& ESTHER), SARAH & MINDY
I have always found security at Frankfurt to be exceedingly thorough. It’s the only place that my bags have several times been subject to random searches and where I’ve been asked to boot up my computer. On this occasion, the female security guard examining my belongings finally approved everything except a 200 ml container of fresh orange juice (off the Air Canada flight), even though it fitted into the small plastic bag permitted. The maximum permitted size was 100 ml. She said that she could confiscate it or I could drink it and leave the container with her. I thanked her and drank it. Thorough as they are, Frankfurt’s security officials, like Calgary’s, are also quite pleasant – not a compliment that one can pay to the leaders of the free world.

Jones has subbed my letter. She's not impressed: too much domestic detail! I tell her that nobody has to read it. The pictures may be of interest.

Letter from Espargal: 40 of 2007

This letter starts mid-morning on Thursday because that’s as good a time as any. It’s also our first free morning of the week. Monday and Wednesday mornings bring lessons, while Natasha comes on Tuesdays (sometimes with Dani).

We are having morning tea; that’s to say, tomato sandwiches and milky coffee. The tomatoes are about an hour old, having been picked from George Vieira’s tomato fields during our walk and carried home on our backs. The sandwiches are cut from yesterday’s bread, made by Marie in her bread-making machine and presented to us in appreciation of the removal of two tractor loads of oleander cuttings from her gate – with one more to come. The cuttings were reduced to a small pile of mulch the same afternoon. It’s amazing how plants shrink when you take the air out of them. I guess that applies to most things.

I hesitate to say it’s been a busy week because you will think you’ve read this letter before. But idle it certainly hasn’t been. One sad duty was to assist elderly friends with the death of their old dog. The dog, a large (48kgs) animal, had been suffering from cancer for some time. In spite of strong pain-killers it was evidently in growing discomfort from the swelling tumour on its shoulder. With a little help the friends prepared a grave in their garden and I then took the vet to the house to put the dog down. It took three of us to carry the animal to its final resting place.

The vet confided, as I returned him to the surgery, that cancers, along with arthritis, were increasingly common in pets, probably because they – like us – are living longer. He said he found himself being asked to destroy ever more animals in distress. Jones had specially prepared a plant for me to give the friends in memory of their dog. And, of course, I forgot it in the back of the car, which didn’t make me the flavour of the month.

The plant was duly presented the following day when we returned to install a new printer on the friends’ recently-acquired notebook computer (replacing an ancient desktop model). The notebook’s USB ports wouldn’t take the parallel connection from the old printer. Assistants in the computer shops swore blind that there was no way around the conflict. One has to say that the old printer was nearing retirement, in computer accessory age, that is. If a dog ages the equivalent of seven years during one of ours, I reckon that a computer ages at least ten. Jones would probably double that estimate, given my proclivity for acquiring new equipment.

From a number of pictures that Jones took during a barbecue one evening, it is evident to me that the fairies have been busy stealing my hair at night. The balding pate is quite undeniable, a scene that brings me no pleasure. I guess it’s a case of resigning oneself to the inevitable. I could never bring myself to salve my pride by combing my hair across my head – not that it’s that bad yet. I certainly don’t buy all that “looks sexy” rubbish. Frank Sinatra didn’t have a hair implant because his balding head turned the fans on.

We all know that people’s self image doesn’t always align itself with the real thing. I have always tended to be kind to myself. In my mind’s eye my head is hairier and my figure trimmer than the mirror generally allows. In short I feel better about myself than I have a right to, except when the illusion is shattered by a wayward mirror or a photograph. There is little doubt that if I were looking at any anybody who looked exactly like me, I would think him a funny-looking guy.

The barbecue was a good one. I have learned to sizzle the sausages to perfection. It’s only the chicken kebabs that weren’t up to scratch. Although they were crisp on the outside, they were a mite rare inside. Putting them back on the grill led to an over-crisp exterior. I don’t know why. The fire was just right. I suspect that chicken kebabs are plain ornery and that’s all there is to it. Anyhow, the dogs think I’m a top chef and Jones was complimentary – except about the chicken.

If the 10-day weather forecast is correct we may have rain next Friday. That will be very nice. Our protracted Indian summer is starting to test our nerves. The skies remain incorrigibly blue, the days interminably sunny. I have been using the air-conditioner to remain cool in the car. One really has a sense that the world is out of kilter. If it does rain next Friday, I shall not be here to experience it. We are off to Lisbon on Wednesday and I continue to London and Calgary on Thursday. Barbara will have the company of British friends until the end of the week. I shall probably not write again until my return towards the end of November.

Now it’s Friday. We are back from our walk. I took some pictures along the way, of an ancient mouldering tractor, villagers, the public water tap and so on. The dogs are snoozing in the car, their favourite place (towels on the seats to keep them clean). Jones is watering the garden and putting mulch around the base of her plants. We’ve had to fall back on the cisterna for several days because the pump in the parish borehole has apparently broken down (again). Whatever the case, nobody in the village has had any water.
It’s not really a problem – unless it continues beyond a week - as everyone has a fall-back supply.

Jones has planted two small walnut trees, acquired from a nearby field with the owner’s blessing. That’s along with more fig trees and shrubs. As soon as I’ve finished this, I need to fill a dozen 20-litre plastic containers with water and to deposit them alongside various vines and young trees in the adjacent field. It saves us heaving water over by hand. We shouldn’t have to irrigate anything at this time of year (yes, I know, I’ve already done the weather) but that’s the way it is.



Then I must finish the mulching and have another crack at the spiny weeds that survived the first round of poison spray. If there’s time I’ll also finish cutting away the growth that is constricting the contour path that runs around the side of the hill. Perhaps I’ll have a little nap first to muster my resources.

Of course, it’s not all work. One has to keep the mind active as well. I have finished reading THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS by Lee Smolin. While I enjoyed the book, I understood almost as little of it as I did of THE EMPEROR’S NEW MIND by Roger Penrose. The book tries to explain why there has been so little progress in the field of string theory in spite of the enormous resources put into the study of it. I am consoled by Mr Smolin’s assurance that the problem may lie more with string theory itself than with the reader’s attempts to grasp it.

My latest bed-time reading is THE ANCESTOR’S TALE by Richard Dawkins. I’ve read most of his books and I think he’s brilliant – however people may feel about his sermons on atheism. At least atheists don’t go around blowing up infidels and expecting to be rewarded in heaven.
According to a UK security chief, there are at least 2,000 people in Britain who are dabbling in terrorist activities – even if they’re just on the fringes. That’s scary - like the security arrangements at Chicago’s O’Hare airport where more than 100 workers were discovered with fake security passes. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Letter from Espargal: 39 of 2007

This letter begins on Wednesday evening. It is not yet 10 o’clock but the night is all of four hours old and feels well established. Jones is seated in my ultra-comfortable reclining leather chair in front of the TV, trying to watch a programme on Edwardian photography. I can see her eyelids closing, opening briefly and closing again. Her bed beckons. She was vaguely hopeful of seeing a film starring Harrison Ford later tonight but she’s hasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell.

The fact is that Jones is not a night bird. Her routine has her rising at five each morning to consider the dawn mysteries at her desk. And unless we’re out to a concert or a film, this is the hour when she fades. I do not say this by way of a complaint. It suits us well for me to potter on the computer at night while she does her thing in the morning.


Although this has been the busiest of weeks for us, it’s been busy with the ordinariest things, not easily magicked into a letter. I feel a bit like the housewife (or house-husband, if you prefer in this age of gender equality) who has laboured all day to produce the minutest of metaphoric mice. One can’t write endlessly about the bread and butter stuff of life.

Two afternoons went on cleaning up a field below us that hasn’t been touched in years.
THE FIELD
The land was deep under weeds, its fruit and nut trees half-strangled by a vicious combination of brambles and a thorny creeper. This was a matter of some concern to Jones, who is very fond of the fruit that it provides. Plus, it hurts to see good trees dying and the weeds running amok. The field belongs to an old chap who lives at the bottom of the village. When we met in the street, I asked him if I might plough in the weeds. He was a bit taken back and initially wanted to know what it would cost him. Assured that the service would be provided free, he was happy to let me go ahead.

STRANGLED TREE
So I took down the tractor to turn over the soil and rip out the worst of the thorn bushes. Much of my time was spent breaking off the low (twisted and dangerous) dead branches of trees as the tractor inched across the ground beneath them. Almond nuts rained down upon me. The field is much improved although it will take the pair of us at least another afternoon to tackle the remaining thorns. The bramble is extraordinarily tough and resistant. It fought me all the way, wrapping itself around the tractor wheels in protest and threatening to rip at my legs.

Old Chico button-holed me as I was passing one day and attempted to press on me a large box of sweet potatoes in (additional) payment for my ploughing services.
CHICO'S FIELD
I tried to persuade him that there was no way that we could use such a gift but he’s impossible to reason with. After a brief conversation, I seized three large potatoes and fled, leaving him with my shouted thanks and the rest of the box. Sacks of potatoes and other produce is his idea of settling a debt, knowing as he does that I won’t take his money. Dina was on hand, grunting and gesturing as usual. She is now his eyes, nudging or pulling him out of the road whenever there’s traffic. We don’t know how one of them will ever manage without the other.

Our house-sitting friends, the Ferretts (who spent 10 days house-sitting for neighbours of ours) were with us for a couple of nights before flying back to the UK. They joined us at a concert given by the Orchestra of the Algarve in Faro last weekend. The theme was film music, mostly from war and big budget movies. The orchestra had been strengthened with additional brass and percussion instruments for the occasion, making for a stirring evening indeed.

We dined out lots (don’t we always?): Sunday at Idalecio’s restaurant and Monday at the Cantinho in Alte. On Tuesday afternoon we ran the Ferrets out to the airport, leaving Natasha to clean the house and Dani to finish clearing a field. The dogs squeezed into the car with us. The Ferretts’s stay has been blessed by lovely weather, day after sunny day of it, a bit too much if the truth be told. We’ve had no rain for weeks and the country is turning dry in what should be the wet season.

All going well, the Ferretts will return to house sit for us in May/June for their usual spring break. In the meanwhile, I shall be travelling to Canada in the second half of this month to see mum and the family. I spent a couple of evenings finalising the trip. Although my air tickets were booked some weeks ago, I still had to tie up the local side. Rail tickets – from Loule to Lisbon and back – are vastly cheaper than air tickets and can be booked online but only 30 days ahead.

There’s much to be said for going by rail in this country. A 3-hour journey in a first-class carriage costs a passenger travelling from the Algarve to the nation’s capital just 25 euros, and that’s in the Alfa-Pendular express, Portugal’s fancy tilting train. By Britain’s privatised rail (read “hellish expensive”) standards it’s a great bargain.

At Jones’s suggestion, we’ve selected an overnight hotel in the Park of Nations on the banks of the Tagus river, the former world expo site. I find it ironic that it’s cheaper to book a room online with an agency than to make a reservation with the hotel. But that’s how it is. When I tried to book directly, I was told that “those rates” were only available online. Jones is to travel up with me on the 14th and back home the following morning when I fly on to London and Calgary. Neighbours are to take care of the zoo during her brief absence.


PICKING TOMATOES
We have made another raid on the tomato field on the far side of the hill, some 2 kms away by road. The owner passed us mid-week on a large tractor bearing a scarifier and we feared that we might find the tomatoes ploughed in. But no. There were still thousands of them lying there for the picking and we filled two knapsacks while the dogs waited, Prickles whining in his impatience to be gone. (Prickles utterly fails to see the pointing of waiting around during a walk.) No need to tell you that we have frequent tomato salads and tomato soups. Jones also makes truly delicious tomato jam.

This jam partners the homemade bread that we have been receiving from neighbours in return for computer assistance and other favours. The bread is especially welcome as Hans, the German baker, has more or less stopped baking. The old bakery that he hired in Benafim, with time-honoured, woodchip-fired ovens, ran foul of Portugal’s new hygiene regulations, as so many traditional enterprises have done. We were really sorry because he used to produce a whole range of excellent breads from different grains. Now he bakes only erratically for an organic farming and tourist enterprise, Quinta do Freixo, on the far side of Benafim. I suppose that’s the price of progress.