Letter from Espargal: 48 of 2008

The year staggers towards the finishing line. Or, maybe, it’s me who’s doing the staggering, having caught a seasonal cold, and indulged in a fit of coughing that’s put my back out again and given me a renewed bout of sciatica. So, coughing and spluttering upstairs and limping downstairs, I haven't been the world’s happiest bunny.

As our friend, Nancy, has wisely pointed out, these ailments afflict men in a form infinitely more severe than the mild doses that their spouses occasionally suffer. This is indisputably the case, as little as we may be heard to complain. My laying low (as opposed to "lieing low") has left Jones to cope. She has been working overtime to feed the cats (neighbours’ and our own) exercise the dogs, prepare the meals, tend the fire, clean the house and – of course – nurse her ailing husband. Letters of sympathy should be sent to the usual address.

My state has limited my mobility. Before my latest setback I’d been driving down to the valley each afternoon for a gentle hour-long amble with the animals along the agricultural road and a return via the parallel tractor track. There’s very little traffic and it’s a lovely area to stretch one’s legs. Jones keeps the two smaller dogs on the lead. Raymond we allow to roam free. He needs the extra exercise if he’s not to drive us mad by chewing up everything in sight, including his basket. Also, unlike his fellows, he’s obedient and comes back when called.

But he got a little overwhelmed by the imagined attractions of a friend’s bitch, for which we cared over Christmas. In her attempts to dissuade Raymond from these unwelcome attentions, Jones suffered rope-burns before being tobogganed along behind him down a grassy field. The experience left her feeling sore and very displeased as well as knocking her confidence. She now knows, she ruefully admitted to me, that she can’t hold him against his will.

Such travails did not prevent us from joining neighbours for an intimate Christmas dinner. Our hosts were Mike and Liz, retired medical workers who occupy a cottage at the bottom of the village. Their dogs, like ours have clear ideas of their rights and role, and tend to share the furniture with their humans. This sharing is done in a tasteful and charming manner, as you may judge, and seems to come naturally to all concerned.

We appreciated the great care that our hosts had taken to prepare a Christmas table and cook a Yuletide dinner. Jones, for her part, spent the better part of a day preparing goodies that we took along to complement their efforts. It made for a pleasant and delicious evening. The cherry on the top was the model tractor that I received from Mike and Liz for Christmas.

Jones had spent a good deal of time selecting and wrapping seasonal gifts and writing appropriate cards. Her kindness was returned with interest. This exchange of Christmas tokens is a process in which I paid little part, other than to drive my wife down the road to drop off some of the gifts. However, I was touched to receive a sack of pumpkins and several litres of wine from one Portuguese neighbour, and a plate of fishcakes, along with more wine, from another.

For Christmas I gave Jones a fine Cashmere jersey. She loves Cashmere and was very pleased with the gift. As it happened, the jersey had been sent to a neighbour by relatives in the UK. It proved to be too small for its recipient, who suggested to me that I might be interested in a deal. I was, as I subsequently confessed to my wife. She was not at all put out. Why should she be? Cashmere, after all, is Cashmere, and gift horses are not to be looked in the mouth.

With night falling early (we’ve passed the solstice already), we’ve been listening to lots of radio and watching a fair bit of TV. Much of the time I settle after supper on the dog mattresses in the lounge, an action that prompts the dogs to snuggle up on all sides.

The TV schedules at this time of year are full of old movies, mainly bad Santa movies that we’ve avoided. But there’ve been a few gems as well. One of them was scheduled to start at 21.30, about the time that Jones might consider an early retirement. However, she thought she could stay awake for it. The demands of the day proved too much for her. I found her in bed, still in her nightgown, with her head against the headboard. Feebly, she told me that she was determined to watch the film. She didn’t have a hope. I watched the first few minutes before deciding that an early bed was the more inviting option. In fact, I've had more early beds this past week than in the preceding year.

There, you can see that I really don’t have much to say – and I’ll cut myself short before you do. The New Year arrives on Thursday. We’re due to join Idalecio and his namorada for dinner on New Year’s Eve. After that we may wander up to the top of the hill where the villagers traditionally gather to watch the firework displays over the coast. Or we may just head for another early bed. Whatever, the case, may 2009 treat us all kindly.

Christmas 2008

We shall let the pictures say it.

Letter from Espargal: 46 of 2008

Thursday 18 Dec: We are both occupied in the study on one of those dawn-of-creation mornings, Jones hunched over her desk doing Christmassy tasks and I….well, you can see what I am doing. There’s a rim of cloud poised over Benafim hill. It can stay there. Espargal and the valleys around it are bathed in bright, windless winter sunshine. And very welcome it is too after several days of stormy weather. We were woken one night by loud bangs as a shutter broke free from its wall moorings and clattered mightily first against the frame and then the wall. I could hardly pull it closed against the strength of the wind.

Today’s cheery weather comes as an antidote against yesterday’s frustrations, when the dogs took themselves off for a romp through the hills and I woke to a most unwelcome bout of lingering (left leg) sciatica, courtesy of some injudicious back exercises, to complement my (right leg) twisted knee. It is hard to know how best to limp. Fortunately, we’d arranged with Natasha to do an additional day, distracting me from our misfortunes as Jones went off fruitlessly looking for the dogs (which returned of their own volition six hours later to a pretty frosty welcome).

I tended small brushwood fires around the property (one at a time) to which Natasha dragged the useless summer cuttings - useless, that is, for firewood. Anything of any substance had already been cut into lengths and stacked. Well, sort of stacked. I don’t try to emulate Olly’s artistic woodpiles.

Natasha asked me to make an additional DVD copy of several hundred photos that she wants to send back to her family for Christmas. I also printed off a couple of copies of a picture of her son Alex (3) with Santa Claus and a rather attractive elf. (Jones wondered what the elf was doing. Seems clear to me that her job was to attract the dads to the grotto.)

Natasha has acquired both a digital camera and a video camera, and makes frequent use of them, but she doesn’t have the means to transfer the pictures. She is frustrated by the limitations placed on internet facilities at the public library, where pen-drives and DVDs and not permitted. She’d love to make use of my computer (she doesn’t hesitate to ask) but I’ve hardened my heart as I can only see that leading to trouble.

Christmas looms, not that you would need any telling, and with it our first thoughts about the New Year. It’s a subject, I confess, on which we’re doing a fair bit of head-scratching. As Bernie Madoff knows, it’s bad form to discuss one’s personal finances in public and I don’t intend to. But it’s safe to say that I hardly know how to begin preparing the (fairly flexible) budget that I always draw up in late December for the year ahead.

Earlier this year the pound in which we’re paid bought 1.40 euros; at the start of the week it fetched 1.10 euros and this morning buys 1.05. (Passengers changing their money at Heathrow airport were getting less than one euro per pound!) That’s the bad bit; mind you, people being paid in euros and spending in pounds will hardly believe their luck. The hard bit is knowing what it will fetch next week and the week after.

This is not a devious plea for sympathy or support (not yet - although any sympathetic responses will be well received). Thousands of British pensioners settled all over France and Iberia will be wrestling with the same uncertainties. For the expats of Espargal it will be a case of cutting their cloth accordingly and fairly carefully. By typical Portuguese standards we remain well off. Portugal’s news media, like most, are full of redundancies, unpaid workers and closing factories. I really don’t know how I would cope with being made redundant for Christmas.

As to our Christmas plans, they’re pretty simple. We intend to go to a Christmas concert in Quarteira this coming Sunday evening and to join neighbours for a festive meal on Christmas Day. I will give Jones an additional loving squeeze that morning and, sciatica permitting, I may even bring her the coffee and toast that she daily brings me. On Boxing Day we’ll gather at the Snackbar Coral. That’s it. I don’t think I could take any more supermarket carols.

Friday 19 Dec: This morning dawned even more beautiful than yesterday. Jones went off early with the dogs while I slept in. I woke to see what seemed like mist hanging over the valley. A closer look established that smoke from a couple of fires had hit an inversion and simply spread out horizontally. It was quite spectacular, like the table cloth that used to hang over Table Mountain.

On days like today, we repair to the enclosed south patio. It's a suntrap so inviting and so cosy as to seduce the heart of a cardinal. (Come to think of it, various cardinals have had their hearts seduced down the years, if not always by suntraps.)

Jones suggested a walk along the agricultural road in the valley. So off we went in the car, with the three dogs barking madly at the canine competition. The valley itself was supremely peaceful – a day made in heaven. We stopped off at a tomato field (no longer being picked) to stock up on supplies.

Afterwards we went to the supermarket in Benafim, newly taken over by a chain and very smart. Parked incongruously outside beside an elderly tractor was Benafim’s only Ferrari, the possession of an Englishman whose father, we understand, either owns or owned a football club. We saw him working once, stripped to the waist, with a poem tattooed on his back. (I should add that Ferrari, like Lamborghini, is much better known in these parts for its tractors.)


Inside the supermarket we met a distant neighbour, Graciet, who lives in a hamlet half way between us and the town. She was glad of a lift home, explaining that the only family vehicle was a tractor and her husband, Joachim, was using it to fertilise Leonhilda’s carob trees. Jones rode in the back with the dogs, with Ono snuggled up beside her as always and Prickles peering out of the window in search of enemies. Prickles is the world’s greatest sissy but you’d never guess it from the ferocious, pint-sized insults he hurls from the car.

Graciet pointed out a house owned by a German neighbour, saying it had just been burgled. She didn’t know how much had been taken but she’d heard that the owner had lost a computer and other electronic equipment. It was unsettling news. We subsequently heard that a much closer neighbour, who'd just moved in, had also been burgled. Burglary is a huge problem in the Algarve although it’s more common in the urban developments closer to the coast. We shall have to take more care. We have grown careless, sometimes forgetting the keys in the door when we go out - and it’s not wise.

Letter from Espargal: 45 of 2008

The weekend has turned up and caught me unawares. It looks like sun and showers. Jones has gone walking with Llewellyn, Lucia and the dogs. I tried a gentle amble around the koppie above the house midweek but got an unmistakable thumbs-down from my knee and have reconciled myself to another inactive week. Mind you, my sufferings have been quite tolerable. I’ve grown attached to the sleep-in benefits of my valetudinarian state. One could almost be tempted to delay one’s recuperation.

After a smattering of toast and coffee around 07.30, consumed in bed with one hand while I fend off Raymond’s affectionate approaches with the other, I turn on the BBC’s morning news programme and drift off again. Given the latest depressing financial developments, there’s much to be said for sleeping through the news.

Llewellyn and Lucia flew in yesterday morning for a Portuguese long-weekend, having caught a red-eye from Birmingham. It would have been nice to have them for Christmas but ticket prices didn’t permit. L&L got a great welcome at the airport from the dogs, which know that’s where we meet people and went rushing up to couple after surprised couple to inquire whether they were the lucky guests.

En route to the airport I stopped at the big Staples store on the outskirts of Faro and bought myself a comfortable office chair on which to seat myself at my desk. For years I’ve alternated between a wretched swivel chair (topped up with sponge cushions) that must have come from a CID interrogation suite, and a kneeler. As part of our efforts to end the recession, I thought it was time to invest in some more suitable seating. It’s a splendid chair, even if it’s made in China, one of those padded leather types that allow the occupant to lean back in occasional contemplation of higher things.

Another acquisition is our new camera, hand-delivered by Llewellyn because Amazon UK wouldn’t post it down here. It’s a Canon Ixus 85, smaller and neater than the Ixus 400 (with a failed charged-couple-device) that it is replacing. Regrettably, the new camera takes a different battery and memory card from the old one. For the rest, we are delighted with it. We promptly tested it at Faro beach, where we sat down in the sun to coffees and ham’n-cheese sandwiches at the “Electrico” (tram), so-called because the little café was housed in an old tram until it burned down some years ago.

A little later: The walkers are back. I have made an early fire to ensure their comfort. The aroma of fresh toast invades the study. Little Jonesy squeals are coming from the breakfast table, where Lucia has handed over some Christmas presents; just little ones, she says, to thank us for having them. Jones particularly likes a scarf that Lucia has given her – “just my colours”.

Last night we took them to the Snack Bar Coral, a small establishment in Benafim, where we joined neighbours for supper. It is run by Celso, a Portuguese who spent much of his life in France, and his French wife, Brigitte, who struggles with the Portuguese language. The Coral boasts a billiards table and a brisk turnover of locals who drop in for a drink and a chat.

Brigitte has started adding cakes and quiche to the menu. We’ve often had snacks there, generally out on the patio in the sun, but never a meal. So last night was an experiment – steaks in mustard sauce – and most acceptable too, even though Jones (speaking to Brigitte in rusty French) had got the day wrong. Jones wants to expand the number of local venues available to us. She likes a bit of variety in her eating. My preference is to eat as locally as possible, with home just a short drive away down quiet back roads.

I’m reading a book about protecting one’s identity. I recently heard an interview with a man who had his identity stolen and spent painful years recovering it. The steps he has now taken to prevent a repetition by becoming virtually anonymous are startling. When he described what he’d been through, I understood why. It’s a destructive experience suddenly to find that there’s another you who’s been running up debts and signing contracts in your name, at your expense.

As to the rest of the week, it’s very hard to know where it’s gone. It seems to have just drifted off into corners and vanished. There are a few useful things that I’ve done, apart from giving my final English lesson of the year and some limp-around shopping (tick-collars for the dogs, a new zapper for the gates).

One is to take Bobby’s kennel on the back of the tractor around to Zeferino’s yard and set it up beside the run to which Bobby is generally chained. While his owners appeared grateful for our efforts, Bobby has not been. So far, he has shown the greatest suspicion of his kennel and confined himself to peering in just far enough to secure the biscuits that we have tossed in as an enticement.

The other useful thing – at least I hope that it will be useful – is to start going through the hundreds of letters that I have written to my family over the past 15 years since acquiring my first computer. They are really a diary of our lives – work at the Beeb, the development of the Quinta, our move to Portugal, our tenants, our hassles and our holidays – all chronicled in a great deal more detail, and sometimes rather more florid and verbose style, than I suspect any readers appreciated.

I’m converting everything to the same WORD format, font and style, before I print out a draft. It’s slow work and is going to take months. So many memories come tumbling back, of people and incidents that I’d long forgotten. I also have a record of my fax exchanges with Barbara during the summers she spent the Quinta looking after guests for several years before I retired from the BBC. I plan to arrange all the material in chronological order first, for the record. Then I might think about any possibilities it offers.

Friday night we joined our friends, David and Dagmar - former Quintassential neighbours - for drinks, followed by supper at the local. Dagmar has the knack of giving her home a warm, Christmassy feel. We tried out our new camera in their lounge. Llewellyn's camera is giving up the ghost as ours did, with a failing CCD. What does one do with cameras that are not worth repairing? It seems crazy just to throw them in the bin.

The moon is supposed to be extra large tonight, at least as seen from earth, as its orbit brings it particularly close to us. Mmmmm! I'm not sure, beautiful an orb that it is, that it looks any different - maybe because it was so high when I snapped it.

Letter from Espargal: 44 of 2008

This has been a jumbled up, tumble down sort of week, most of which I’ve spent clanking around on crutches (and hating it) or limping around without them (and rueing it). My muse has fled and my prose may prove more pedestrian than I have been. The problem about crutch-motion is that it requires the use of both the mover’s hands. It’s one thing to be aware of this restriction and another thing, vastly more frustrating, to live with it. Doing anything useful, like carrying firewood or cleaning ash from the stove, becomes awkward, irritating and time-consuming.

The bottom line is that while I have concentrated on recuperating (from a twisted knee) the burden of the week has fallen on Jones. After bringing me knee-improving coffee and toast in the morning, she has taken the dogs on the mandatory walk, often in damp weather. (It’s been wet and unusually cold; loads of snow has fallen over the interior.) She’s avoided the main roads as she has to leave Raymond off leash, making for muddy outings. We place a large towel on the hall floor to retain up the worst of the returning paw marks.

Bobby, Raymond’s brother from next door, often arrives for a romp in the garden. Although we welcome him (as well as feeding him) he’s noisy, nervous and excitable, with the habit of jumping up on one’s clothes. In spite of these failings we have bought him a kennel in the hope that we can persuade his owners not to keep him overnight in a damp, dark hole of a shed. The kennel came flat-pack. I shall assemble it with a little neighbourly help as soon as possible, and plan to insulate it with a polystyrene panel.

While I’m on my canine theme – it emerges that our dogs have been treated by our dermatologist’s son – rum as it may sound. For some years now we’ve been making an annual visit to a dermatologist in Faro, the last of them this week. The lady operates with a magnifying glass/torch instrument in one hand and a canister of icy gas in the other, employing the former to seek out any dermatological imperfections and the latter to zap them.

She likes to talk as she works, and was telling us proudly that her son had gone to Glascow to do a post-graduate veterinary course. We made her afternoon when she learned that our dogs had enjoyed the benefit of his services at the veterinary clinic in Loule. As we emerged, much zapped and somewhat tenderly, from her rooms, I was doing a little mental arithmetic on her likely income. She sees patients only in the afternoon, typically for 20 minutes, and charges 85 euros (upwards) for a consultation. There's much to be said for being a consultant. She says she tried working part-time at the local hospital but couldn't handle the confusion. Patients there who are diagnosed with melanoma are now sent to Lisbon for treatment.


Monday was a public holiday, Independence Restoration Day, celebrating the overthrow of Portugal’s Castilian rulers in 1640. To celebrate it ourselves we arranged to have lunch in the town of Messines with Eddie and Lesley, friends who live nearby. It wasn’t the best plan. On public holidays, three quarters of the restaurants in Portugal close and the other quarter are filled to overflowing. We eventually found a vast chicken eatery (600 parking places) and joined the (happily, fast-moving) queue. The cavernous interior was choc-a-block with chicken eaters. Within minutes we were assigned a table. There was no menu. Diners could choose between chicken piri-piri and just chicken. Even so, it was good chicken and there were no complaints.


Tuesday Natasha again the missed the morning bus and several hours’ work. (She's asked us please to phone her at 7.30 in future to ensure that she's up.) We fetched her from the 13:00 bus and dropped her off at the house, then took ourselves to Loule. After a bite of lunch Jones went shopping while I gave my Portuguese pupils an additional English class to make up for the class they’d missed the previous day. (We talked about the elderly British woman who sued her barrister daughter for alleging in a book that her mother had abused her as a child. The mother lost.)

I plan to do the same thing next week when Monday is another public holiday, the Immaculate Conception (a dogma that, in the arcane world of religious beliefs, I have found particularly puzzling). I need to get into credit to make up for the several lessons I’m likely to miss next year when we are hopeful of a family reunion in Canada.

Wednesday evening we joined David and Dagmar at the cinema in Faro. I clanked my way upstairs feeling like a fool, wanting to explain to people – not that anyone cared a damn – that this wasn’t really me and I didn’t belong on crutches and would soon be off them again. Yes, I know that it’s stupid. It makes me think of the buck that “pronk” when they flee a threatening carnivore, as if to demonstrate their virility and the futility of chasing them.

We bought tickets for a chick flick, Nights in Rodanthe. (Don’t bother.) Behind us there were chewers and chatterers, in front of us mobile-phone consulters. I’ve got too many of my daddy’s genes to enjoy a film in such a contagion (he could never abide interruptions) and cranked off at the interval to read in the lobby instead. It’s a comfortable lobby with a bar, a lounge and an internet café, and I was perfectly content there. Jonesy, who likes her happy endings, reported afterwards that the film didn’t have one. She wasn’t best pleased.

After years of making do with MS Office 97, I have upgraded (via Amazon) to the student and home version of Office 2007. It becomes clear to me that Microsoft’s programmers have not been idle these past ten years. The possibilities of the new WORD and EXCEL programmes are just mind-boggling. Strangely, however, these programmes lack a HELP menu. The only way to reach help is via F1, which takes you to Microsoft’s online help. If you’re offline, you’re sunk. A little googling indicates that Office 2007 is beset with problems in this area. That aside, I really like it.

On the reading front, I’m midway through Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men” – a different and interesting (if somewhat repetitive) book. I’m not surprised that he had such difficulty in getting it published. Like me and most of his countrymen, he is not an admirer of the current US administration and one can only be surprised that none of its members has taken him to court or sent him to Guantanamo.

Friday evening we visited Loule’s Christmas fair. We like it. It's always much the same, a melange of food, art, jewellery, pottery, basketry, leatherwork (I bought two new belts) and what have you, all set to music by local choirs. We always fall for the puppies that the Sao Francisco kennel uses to separate passers-by from a little money. In the food hall, the local VIPs cluster around their dedicated (free) refreshments table. They're welcome. I can't remember when last I wore a tie or wanted to.

Letter from Espargal: 43 of 2008

It’s been cold. Some days it’s felt almost as though we were back in a Canadian winter, in spite of the thermometer’s insistence that temperatures remain comfortably above zero. Certainly, there was nothing comfortable about the winds that howled down from the Arctic. We’ve kept our shirts and jerseys zipped up to the throat on our walks. The dogs have taken up station around the wood-burning stove, which is working overtime.

The week began in a hurry and continued that way. Monday brought the usual English and Portuguese lessons, closely followed by the Portuguese class end-of-year lunch. For this event we retired to Pedras d’Agua restaurant (Water Stones), a once favourite (now, bit distant) venue, just down the road from the Quinta. We presented our Portuguese teacher, Antonio, with a book on the wines and wine regions of Portugal. Antonio’s real job is teaching English at the high school in Loule. Like most Portuguese teachers he’s up in arms over the education minister’s attempts to force through a controversial new teacher evaluation regime - Antonio says just in a bid to save money.

In the afternoon I had a phone conversation with a worried Natasha, who is still trying to legalise her position in Portugal. She’d been contacted by the immigration department and told that she had no chance of getting a residence visa unless she obtained a new work contract from me, raising her income to the national minimum wage. She was given three days to hand the required documents in to the government offices in Faro.

The evening was spent trying to help a neighbour work out why his internet link had failed. The puzzling part was that his service provider had no record of his contract, even though he was paying monthly for the service. We eventually got it sorted out. It was one of those Portuguese situations, so complicated that their telling requires its own chapter. I’ll spare you. The toughest bit was getting through to a help-line operator; the ISP computer didn’t recognise the home phone number that we had to key in – and kept us in an endless loop.

Next day I got a call from Barclays public relations in Jersey in connection with a complaint that I made months ago. The bank had failed to pay me due interest, a failing that puzzled the clerk whom I eventually got through to at the time. (Callers typically have to wait for 10 to 15 minutes while the call centre computer repeatedly assures them that they will be attended to by “an account executive” ASAP.)

The public relations woman was contrite. She said the interest owed would be paid promptly. The interest, I told her, was the least of my complaints. It was bank’s ridiculous call-waiting times that drove me to close my account. She promised that this complaint too would be looked into. I’m not holding my breath.

JONES PICKING UP BITS OF SPONGE - SEE BELOW

Next morning, Natasha sent a text saying that she had missed the bus to Benafim – not for the first time. Young Alex keeps her up late and, as a consequence, she struggles to get him up and off to the crèche in time. I advised her to take the lunchtime bus instead – which she did. Not that she got much work done in the afternoon; the pair of us spent most of it with an accountant, drawing up the required new work contract.

This contract will not affect Natasha’s real wages but it will sharply raise the related social security payments. She filed the papers with the Financas and the Social Security offices and we then ran her into Faro to present the duly stamped and approved documents to the authorities. An official rang me to check that it was all kosher. I assured him that it was. Now we wait; her prospects look good.

We joined David and Dagmar at the cinema to see the new Brideshead Revisited. It was ok in a slow period drama way. I drifted off for a while, an interlude that didn’t seem to spoil the film. The Portuguese subtitler mis-read much of the dialogue – translating expressions such as “still” (meaning “even so”) as “calm”. There were just a handful of people in the cinema, most of them English-speaking, so it didn’t much matter. Local audiences prefer action movies.

I’ve been suffering from a dodgy tooth and waiting for my dentist to make an appearance. He is an itinerant South African who lives some 400 kms away in Spain and divides his time between surgeries in three countries. On the day of the appointment, his receptionist called asking me to come in early. The problems required double root canals and new crowns. The bill hurt more than the drill.

One thing to be said about the dentist is that he doesn’t hang about. His assistant can hardly stay up with his requests. He said he wanted to get back home to Spain that afternoon – about a 2.5 hour drive he reckoned. That’s really moving. I’d noticed the Porsche parked outside the surgery. Clearly, dentists are not feeling the pain.


Tooth or no tooth, I have remained partial to the occasional piece of chocolate. Waking from a siesta one afternoon, I spied a small Kit Kat bar in a basket on the dining room table. It was just what I felt like. I made a neat slit in the wrapper and considerately removed half the bar, leaving the rest for Jones (not that she would ever consume half a bar). Then I thought no more about it. A day or two later we came across neighbours who thanked Jones for a gift she had taken them but expressed their puzzlement at getting half a Kit Kat. The light dawned. We’ve bought another Kit Kat to present them with the other half.

Today we are promised rain. It’s much needed. In preparation, we have fertilized the carob trees, hauling the 50 kg sacks of ammonia-something around the property on the back of the tractor and scattering half a bucket around the trunk of each tree. The carob trees represent a link with the history of the Algarve as well as a serious part of the local economy. One doesn’t ever own carobs. One just looks after them until the next generation.

Raymond’s love affair with Braveheart the cat continues. We have fetched Raymond’s brother, Bobby, from a yard 100 metres away as often as possible to let the pair of them play together and to give Bobby a solid meal. They charge around madly, not doing the garden any good but usefully tiring Raymond. The downside is that they love nothing more than disembowelling sponge-filled cushions.

Poor Bobby spends most of his day on a chain and his nights in a dark little shed. Jones made a cardboard kennel to go into the shed. I was carrying it down the path in front of me yesterday afternoon when I twisted my knee. A kindly neighbour has lent me crutches. Several days of inaction lie ahead.

Letter from Espargal: 42 of 2008

Thursday night: Espargal is settling down to sleep after a simple yet moving event. The people of the area accompanied the statue of the Virgin Mary of Fatima along the road to the old village school in a candle-lit procession. I think it was the timelessness of the occasion, the sense of pilgrimage, that lent it appeal. It is hard to convey the emotions in words and I must leave it to the pictures on the blog to express what I can’t.

It is an event for which the village spent much of the week preparing. (The statue normally stands in the shrine at Fatima where Mary is believed by the faithful to have appeared several times to three young Portuguese shepherd children in 1917.) In anticipation of the visit the school exterior was repainted before being decked in flowers and palm fronds. Houses along the route were similarly decorated. So were public taps, culverts and even road-side rubbish bins. Gates were hung with flowers.

Several pigeons were crammed into a small cage, to be released at the appropriate moment. Jones indignantly asked the man bearing the cage whether the birds had been fed and watered. He wasn’t sure. Whatever the case, I don't doubt that they survived the experience.

We asked ourselves for whose benefit this was all being done. Clearly, it wasn’t for the sake of the statue. Possibly it was what the statue represented, or maybe that’s how people always prepare for a festival. Whatever the case, we all had the sense that a special honour was being bestowed on the village.

Dozens of estrangeiros, including all our neighbours, turned out for the procession among the hundreds of Portuguese. For many of us, belief didn’t come into it. Our motives, I think, were somewhere between respectful curiosity and the wish to be part of a fascinating local event. The gathering point was the pavement outside the twin cafes at Alto Fica, two kms from the village. Having left the protesting dogs howling at the front door, I drove down with Jones, giving a lift to our Dutch neighbours (who later supplied some of the pictures) en route. They planned to join the procession while I drove back to Espargal to meet them.

We arrived ahead of the crowds, and refreshed ourselves, as night fell, at the Star of the Morning café. Old Chico and Mad Dina were already seated in the café; she made the sign of the cross several times to indicate her sense of the occasion. The parish priest introduced himself to us, a charming young fellow, who said he had five congregations to look after and had told his bishop that he needed a helicopter.

Candles for the procession were on sale from a car boot for those who hadn’t obtained them in advance from the parish office. Each candle had a plastic cup fixed to it to protect the flame from the wind – not that this protection was really needed for there was hardly a breeze. More candles twinkled inside hundreds of 5-litre plastic bottles that lined the route, and yet more flickered on patios and small shrines.

The crowd gathered in two long lines ahead of the statue and moved off towards the village, reciting the rosary and singing hymns.“She” was borne aloft on the shoulders of the litter bearers.The walk took about 45 minutes. When the procession reached the old school, the faithful gathered in the grounds for a brief service. We looked on from a neighbouring house that belonged to one of the expats. Then “she” was placed on the back of a pickup, to travel back to the church. We returned home to reflect on the occasion and offer consoling treats to our outraged dogs – they hate being left behind.

During supper at the Hamburgo a couple a nights later, we were astonished to see what appeared to be the statue standing on the icecream refrigerator. For a moment I thought that it had been placed there for safekeeping while its guardians took supper. But Graca, the cook (and wife of the proprietor), confessed that the statue was hers and that she was merely taking the opportunity to display it.

Saturday: I had intended to get this off on Friday morning but events intervened. As we returned home from our morning walk via the running field just below the house, we bumped into a Portuguese couple who were pruning their trees. A forest of branches lay about. We fell into conversation, during the course of which we were offered the wood cuttings which, they said, would otherwise be burned. The stuff was too good to waste. The upshot was that a neighbour, Olly, and I spent the better part of the day chain-sawing the branches into handy sizes. We got two large tractor loads. Jones worked beside us with the big shears, preparing piles of kindling.

Like most folk around here, we light a fire in the house each evening to take the chill out of the air. The cast-iron salamandra in the centre of the lounge, with its long chimney pipe, is wonderfully efficient and brings the whole house to a comfortable temperature within a few minutes. Our days continue picture perfect, gentle sunshine under cloudless blue skies. It’s ideal weather for tourists but not for farmers. Our beans and peas will soon be shrivelling up in the fields. We have started watering the garden again. Each day we look anxiously at the ten-day forecast for signs of rain and each day we’re disappointed.

This morning we walked 45 minutes down the gravel road (being widened and soon to be tarred) to the Algibre river bed at the bottom of the valley. It was as dry as a bone. There wasn’t a drop of water in the wide gravel bed. We walked up to the low dam wall that the farmers of old erected to hold their irrigation water. That too was completely dry. We are fortunate that the boreholes in the valley still give us an adequate supply. For drinking water, some villagers still turn to the old hand-pump beside the well.

Midweek we made a visit to the Griffin bookshop in Almancil to get some new reading matter. While there was masses of popular fiction on display – clearly the preferred reading of the retired expat class – their non-fiction shelves were thinly populated. Even so, I returned with half a dozen volumes that should take me the next several months to wade through. I have been reduced for the past month to John Ayto’s splendid “Word Origins” which, while fascinating in parts – try “blimp” or “bonfire” – is thicker than potato soup. I generally manage a page a night and am barely halfway through the “b”s.

Our big puppy, Raymond, is having an affair with Braveheart, one of the black cats. Braveheart deliberately takes up station beside the dog in the evening and endures several minutes of intimate nuzzling before calling a halt to proceedings. The cat often settles himself in the dog’s basket, leaving Raymond with just his rear in the basket and the rest of him sprawled across the floor. It’s quite touching. The other cats remain distrustful of the dog and continue to give him a wide berth.