Letter from Espargal: 5 of 2008

If the Espargal Bugle were to go to print this week, every last copy would be sold. Under banner headlines there’d be exclusive pictures, showing people dressed in zip-up overalls, wearing caps, masks and gloves, carefully removing armfuls of items from Casa Shack, home of the Masseys, just down the road. No, it isn’t murder and it isn’t bird flu. It’s what happens when you go out for dinner, leaving an inflammable item too close to a wood-burning stove.

The mess is beyond description. The cottage looks as though its interior has been spray-painted black. Everything is black. The walls are black, the floor is black, the ceiling is black, the furniture is black, pictures on the walls are black, books in their shelves are black, every last item of clothing in the cupboards is dusted in black. The whole place is black.

Poor Fintan and Pauline, the owners, came home last Sunday night to find their beautiful cottage morphed into a sooty hell. The place was still filled with smoke. The actual fire didn’t do much damage, except to an overhead air-conditioner and to the villain of the piece, a sofa that went up in flames. (If the wooden ceiling had caught fire, the whole place would have gone up). The smoke damage, however, was awesome. I think I’d have wept.

Fintan and Pauline had some luck on their side. They were able to move instantly into another house that they own in the village, one they had built for holiday lets. The house is fully furnished and very comfortable.

Their other blessing has been their neighbours, who have spent much of the week helping them to sort out the mess. Before the cottage interior can be redecorated, it has to be washed down with a power hose and allowed to dry out. And before this process can even start, every single item has to be removed. For a start, all the clothing and linen in the place has to be washed, some of it several times. Neighbourhood washing machines have hardly paused for days. Washing lines are groaning under the load. I’ve been helping Jones hang stuff out and bring it in again.

Back at the cottage, soot is being painstakingly wiped from every book and picture, every plate and every knick-knack. It’s all being packed away in large cardboard boxes and stored, along with furniture, in neighbours’ garages until the place is ready. I’ve made several trips with the tractor to fetch boxes, which Olly (God bless him) has walked back to unpack in Casa Nada (as I’m still pleading sciatica and limiting myself to lifting nothing heavier than a wine bottle.) The weather has been wonderfully co-operative. Jones, Dani and Natasha joined the clean-up brigade outside in the garden. Jones came home with the cutest little Hitler moustache, along with lots of other sooty goo.

LUNCH BREAK
To make life more interesting, (our neighbour) David, after towing his trailer around to help remove the furniture, tried to turn his 4x4 in the sloping field below the house and found himself stranded, his tyres spinning helplessly on the slippery grass. Jones blamed herself for accepting a lift from him instead of calling me (with the mobile she’d left at home) to come and fetch her.

The first I knew of it was a phone call from Fintan asking me please bring the tractor and a towrope. It took me 15 minutes, first to pull David’s vehicle from the field up to the tractor lane above it, and then to tow it back up the lane on to the cement driveway outside the house. The lane wasn’t particularly steep but its grass cover was wickedly slippery. It was a rude reminder of just how useless conventional tyres are in slick off-road conditions. Jones snapped away with my mobile phone-camera.

Midweek, all concerned repaired to the Hamburgo (so named because the family lived in Hamburg) for an expat community meal. The chef there does a splendid leg of lamb. It was heartening to see so many people pulling together to assist a couple in trouble. And the same thing would have been true for any other expat couple in the village.

The week’s other excitement came from the arrival of a huge pump-truck, along with several cement trucks, at the corner of our road.The occasion was laying the foundations of a house, which a Dutch couple began building early last year. They got as far as digging the trenches and laying the reinforcing-rod grid when the project stopped. For months the iron rods have been gently rusting away. It was rumoured either that the builder wanted more money or that the building licence had expired. Whatever the case, the builder was back overseeing operations, along with much of the rest of the village. The huge cement trucks had difficulty turning. They occupied the entire width of the road.

At the bottom of the village a second house is springing up, and construction deliveries are being made for a third nearby. In a village of just 50 or 60 houses, most of them old cottages, such building operations herald new neighbours and inevitable changes. Everybody’s curious to see what emerges. The one project that hasn’t got underway is the model village (so-called) that’s due to arise in a large field less than a kilometre away. Whatever problems it’s encountered, long may they continue.

WEEDING BEANS
Following my unintentional double-donation to Buskaid via “Verified by Visa”, I received an unhelpful response from Visa Europe referring me to the issuing bank. I was about to forward the correspondence to a financial watchdog programme on BBC radio when two more emails arrived, this time from Buskaid itself. One apologised for a fault on the website that had prompted many other donors to make double donations as well – and it said the second donation in each case was being returned to the donor’s bank account (which it was). The other email thanked us for our support of the Buskaid project. So all’s well that ends well.

Friday we took ourselves and some old friends to lunch at Faro beach. There’s a small, unpretentious restaurant down the far end of the beach that specialises in fresh fish. The restaurateur brings a platter with a variety of fish to the table for diners to choose. One can sit outside on the restaurant patio, overlooking the sand and sea, and enjoy a delightful and inexpensive meal. At this time of year the beach is virtually deserted.

Our friends asked us if we always took the dogs with us. It wasn’t so much that we took them, I explained, as that they simply came along. They are dog people themselves and I think they understood. Part of the attraction of the restaurant is that dogs are permitted on to the patio, especially in the winter months when clients are few. Our pets disappear (sort of) under the table. Several other dog owners were lunching there as well, two of them with lovely Labradors. There was much sniffing and snuffling as the dogs, while remaining on their best manners, did their best to suss one another out.

Afterwards, the whole troupe went tearing around the beach in a celebration of freedom.

There you have it. With a bit of luck we’ll get a shower over the weekend. A drop of rain would be welcomed by the bean crops that are ripening all around us. Leonhilda and Maria have been busy weeding their crop on the field beside us. Our crop is unlikely to be so lucky.