Letter from Espargal: 12 of 2008

It would be easier to tell you this week about the things we haven’t done because I can’t think of much that we have, other than pulling out a lot of weeds (most of which Jones took across to feed Maria’s chickens, which just love fresh dandelions). As to the things we haven’t done, they’re legion. Maybe they’re best left for another week.

One thing I did do was to reinforce the stays holding our cypress tree, which has been leaning ever further into the valley. It’s our special tree, bought to help hide the outline of the house against the hill and planted into the Idalecio-built stone garden. The roots don’t have enough room, however, to anchor the tree properly, and it shows. The wind is the price that we pay for the views we enjoy in every direction.

Another thing we did – last weekend – was the walk up our miniature Table Mountain, Rocha de Pena (the rock of suffering). The mountain squats over Benafim’s shoulder. It’s a 15-minute drive from here to the village that huddles in its shadow and a wonderful 2-hour walk up one side, across the top and down the other. The mountain is a refuge for Early Purple orchids. From the top we took a couple of pictures showing Espargal hill jutting up from the Algarve plain, against the backdrop of the sea.

Also last weekend, I took a call from Dani. That’s to say that I called him back (at our expense) after he’d rung me and promptly rung off. Dani launched into a detailed description of his mother’s ill health – rushed to hospital, a litre of fluid removed from her lungs and much else that I didn’t need to hear. The point was that he badly needed money, as ever, and hoped that we would renew his line of credit, which had long since expired.

Keeping this story short - we drove into Loule on Monday morning, met Dani and “lent” him the wherewithal to take a mini-bus back to Romania. Dani promised faithfully to repay the money within two months. (I should as soon expect to be taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot – but there you are.) This is not an account of our virtue, just of life in Espargal. If I were as penniless as Dani, I don’t doubt that I’d swear by the whole pantheon.

RAINBOW OVER ESPARGAL
Natasha breathed a sigh of relief at Dani’s departure. She was in no doubt that it would simplify her life. No love has been lost between them for a long time. She will now concentrate on trying to legalise her position in Portugal and in persuading the Portuguese courts to award her sole custody of their young son. That much I gleaned from her when I went to fetch her from the bus in Benafim on Tuesday.

At the end of the day we ran her back to Loule (because the return bus service doesn’t operate during the Easter break) before joining three local ladies at the Hamburgo for supper. Two of them are a retired Dutch couple, who have settled in the village, and the third a widow who had lived in Rhodesia. It was a fine supper. The ladies are knowledgeable, enjoy good conversation and a glass or two of red wine. All three want to improve their Portuguese and hope to join classes at the senior university.

ROCHA DE PENA
Wednesday we walked and weeded. Walking you’ve heard enough about. Weeding’s another story. Jones and I both have our least favourite weeds. My pet hates are nettles, thistles and dandelions (which come in chicken-useful and -useless varieties). Jones especially hates two types of low creeper, both of which invade her garden, sending out sly shoots and dropping seeds in every direction. She can’t pass by them without wrapping her fingers around their roots and ripping them out. We piled the weed-heaps on a wheel-barrow (my tractor still lingers, loveless and clutchless, in Vitor’s garage) and added them to the weed mountain in the Casanova field.

I’ve dropped by a couple of times to see how the tractor is getting on – and it isn’t. The problem is that it’s a South Korean model for which spares (in spite of the salesman’s assurances to me) are difficult to acquire. I consoled myself when I bought it with the thought that the engine was a Kubota, a popular Japanese make. But, as Vitor pointed out, the problem lay with the clutch, not the engine. So we wait.

OUR LOWER FIELD
Thursday we drove to Loule to attend a mid-morning notary appointment. This had been made on our behalf by a young woman who runs a facilities office, which helps people to sort out Portugal’s horrendous bureaucratic tangles. The aim of the appointment was to link Casa Nada (a former ruin, now a big storeroom) on our property to the lot on which it stands (something the lawyer we employed when we bought the property signally failed to do). The end result would be to allow us to register the ruin and restore it in due course as a cottage, should we so desire.

If this situation puzzles readers unaccustomed to European bureaucracies, I’m sorry. In these parts, the paper world and the real world exist in parallel universes. Nothing is substantial unless there’s a piece of paper to prove it.


Jones and I both had our fingers crossed that the procedure would be successful. But shortly after we arrived in Loule, the facilities person rang to call the meeting off. The notary had a problem and had cancelled all appointments for the day, she informed me. Also, she had discovered that a couple of the Finances documents we needed to present to the notary were out of date. This last statement she made quite unapologetically, in spite of her earlier assurances that all was in order and under control.

Over lunch I downloaded updated documents from the Portuguese Finances interactive website (the anomaly of living in a high-tech third-world environment) and we then walked the dogs an hour through the fields to Benafim to hand the papers over to the facilities person in readiness for our next attempt. Afterwards we sat ourselves down on the pavement at Rui’s Café and consoled ourselves with a round of baggies, bicas (expresso coffees) and rice-cakes. This repast left us ample change out of 5 euros and reminded us of the benefits of living in Portugal.

Around us the valleys are green, still benefiting from last week’s rain. The farmers are out on their tractors, clearing the ground under the carob trees in readiness for the August crop. Many pastures are covered in wild flowers, a delightful carpet of yellow. Jones says they are corn marigolds Our beans, like our neighbours’, are waist-high and nearly ready for picking.

BEANS & POPPIES
That brings us to the present, Friday morning. Shortly, we will drive to the town of Almancil. There we will take an old friend to lunch and sign up our annual travel insurance. The latter is an end-of-March chore, along with renewing my international driving licence, ahead of our spring travels.

We have two trips planned: first to the UK (April 1 to 8) where we look forward to catching up with friends in London and Barbara’s brother Llewellyn and Lucia in Wawick; and then to Canada (mid-May to June 5) where we both have family. We were delighted to hear from Cathy that she will be able to join us in Portugal, while Rolf is away, on our return from Canada.

More immediately, on Saturday evening we’re going to a concert. On Sunday our next house-sitting couple arrives. On Tuesday we’re off to London.

That’s it.

Letter from Espargal: 11 of 2008

We are back from Berlin, of which more follows.

Sadly, we learned while we were away that Stoopy, our elderly dog, who was very close to Jonesy, had fallen ill. Our house-sitters took her to the vet, where she was sedated and placed on a drip. When we went to see how she fared the morning after our return, we learned that she had died overnight. I don’t doubt that it was for the best. She’d been growing increasingly stiff and erratic. We brought her home and, with a little help from Mario’s digger, buried her nearby. It hurt. If we didn’t love them, I guess we wouldn’t miss them.

Following a heart-stopping incident with my tractor just before our departure for Berlin (See the following paras) I stopped off at Vitor’s workshop to see how the vehicle was faring, I found it in two parts, separated by the clutch-box. What had been the clutch-plate was a burned-out mess. The repair was not particularly complicated, Vitor informed me; the problem was getting the parts. The model was unusual and there were no representatives in the Algarve. So we wait.

[Two neighbours arrived for a quick tractor lesson - given that they would have to move the tractor out of the garage during our absence in Germany in order to get at the boxes housing Fintan’s possessions, which were piled up behind it. As Olly had driven tractors before it was just a question of showing him the particulars. After a quick induction, I invited him to drive it down the steep incline to the road, warning him to use the engine to control the speed – not the brakes.

Olly climbed into the seat, put the tractor in gear and, the next moment, hurtled down the concrete roadway towards Fintan’s car, which was parked at the bottom. Mercifully, he managed to avoid both the car and killing himself.

When he’d recovered his composure, Olly complained that there were no gears to engage. I checked. So did Idalecio and finally Vitor, the village mechanic. No gears! So we pushed the tractor to the side of the road to enable cars to pass and I arranged with Vitor to have it carted off to his workshop.]

Back to the present - Natasha called from the bus to ask us please to meet it promptly at the bus-stop. She was penniless and needed the cash to pay the driver – after losing her purse to a sneak-thief while walking Alex in Loule. She said she’d lost a week’s wages. Ouch! She is hugely thrifty and saves all she can.

What follows is the letter I was working on during the flight back from Germany.

We have seen and done more memorable things in a week than may easily be described in a brief letter. For me the highlight was a visit to Wittenberg, the town where Luther challenged the might of the Roman Catholic Church and, unlike his rebellious predecessors, lived to tell the tale. We visited the much-rebuilt church where he preached (and was later buried), and then the house – once part of an Augustinian monastery and now a museum - where he settled down with an enterprising former nun and fathered a family. Since the collapse of the DDR, the German authorities have taken immense pains to restore the buildings and to give visitors a vivid idea of life in Luther’s household.

I was fascinated to read the detail of how Luther was spirited away by his protectors from the church authorities, who were ready to send him up in smoke, and the gusto with which the denizens of monasteries and convents took to his teachings. Within 3 years of his rejection of many church teachings and practices – famously, the granting of indulgences - monks and nuns had fled their cells for a more congenial life. Doubt is cast over whether the famous 95 theses were ever nailed to the wooden church door which, like much else, fell victim to fire and war. The current door is cast in brass, with the theses spelled out (in German) for those with the patience to read them through.

Our excursion was part of a 3-day outing from Berlin, focused on the cultural-historical centre of Weimar. We drove south across the German plains through a forest of wind farms, heading for a delightful hotel in the little town of Apolda where Cathy had secured us a romantic-weekend special deal. Jones and I found ourselves directed to the spacious honeymoon suite. There awaiting us we found great scatterings of rose petals across the bed and furniture and a bottle of chilled sparkling wine.

The special deal included dinner on both nights and entrance tickets to a spa half an hour away. Cathy had booked a massage for me at the spa. Lacking her fluency in German, I had some difficulty in making myself understood to the receptionist and the masseur. It was clear that English-speaking visitors were a rarity in that part of Germany. After the massage I proceeded to the pools.The first confusing element for foreign visitors is the changing-room set-up. Although there are signs – in German - for men and women, these apply, as I discovered, just to the toilets and showers. For the rest there is no gender separation.

One changes in small booths (larger booths are available for families) with two unboltable swing-doors and then places one’s possessions in an adjoining locker. (It took me five minutes to figure out how to extract the key.) At the end of the corridor women chatter while they dry their hair. Off the main corridor to the pools, the shower room doors swing open from time to time to reveal, for anyone who may be interested, the naked forms of those showering within. Although devotees clearly find it all very relaxing, the system would cause our prudish New World cousins to faint dead away.

I found Cathy and Jones floating in a pool from which piped music issued underwater – best heard with one’s ears below the surface. The mineral content of the water was so high that floating proved quite effortless. It was sinking that took an effort. One could choose to float around in any of half a dozen spacious pools, one of them outside the large dome that protected the rest from the winter weather. A café bar offered clients a range of refreshments. It was quite an experience, and clearly a popular one among the local people.

CATHY
In the evening we would repair to the hotel dining room for 3- and 5-course nouvelle cuisine meals, served with local wines. We guessed that the hotel had been constructed after 1989. Most of the towns and roads in the region had clearly undergone a post-merger facelift, financed with the swingeing taxes paid by west Germans to assist their compatriots in the east. Of the smoky Trabants that had once chugged along Thuringia’s roads and the dirty cement buildings that had lined them, little sign remained. In fact, it was a lovely part of the country, typified by wide-open spaces and gently rolling hills.

We spent a day and a half visiting Weimar, a city that I knew only from the name that it gave to the ineffective German government that oversaw such a disastrous period of pre-war inflation. The only reminder of this period that I came across was a series of framed bank notes in the Bauhaus museum, with nominal values of one million to one-hundred million marks. Cathy told me that they were on display only because the artist who had designed them belonged to the movement. For the rest, the city celebrates its links with the giants of German literature and music.

The highlight of our visit to Weimar was a 2-hour tour in a facsimile 1925 Talbot bus, made for the purpose by VW. It was conducted partly by the driver/owner of the bus, a knowledgeable man with a dry sense of humour, and partly with the help of a trilingual video programme that was played on screens at the front of the vehicle.

Our trip ended, as it had begun, in Berlin. Initially we stayed with Cathy, who moved into the living room to give us the luxury of using her bedroom. For the last two days, when Rolf had returned from one of his frequent business trips, Cathy booked us into a suite in a hotel nearby.

Under Cathy’s guidance we hit the Berlin trail. Worthy of special mention among our visits were a tour of the KPM porcelain factory (we came to understand why the stuff is so precious), a Dali exhibition and a display of Hitler’s grandiose plans for the development of a vast stone-built city (Germania) within Berlin.

Another highlight was a mime performance, entitled Infinita by a group calling itself Familie Floez. Actors dressed as infants and geriatrics, mimed scenes that might have taken place in the first and last years of life. They were simply amazing. I was astonished at the end to discover that the entire performance had been given by just four people and that all were male. If ever you see the Familie Floez playing in your neck of the woods, go along.

Letter from Espargal: 10 of 2008

FLOWERS FROM SARAH'S GARDEN
I know, I’ve said it before and you’ll begin to think that I’m in my dotage. But I hardly know where the week has gone. All I can tell you is that, where-ever it was, it was in a great hurry. Given that we had lessons on three days and Natasha and Dani on the other two, I suppose that’s not really surprising. I got masses done with Dani in the fields – strimming new growth, burning off old cuttings and bringing in firewood - while Natasha did her usual brilliant job in the house. The place is looking good.

This is fortunate because our house-sitters arrive later this weekend and on Monday morning we’re off to Germany. We’ve taken a look at the 10-day forecast for Berlin and it’s showers – rain or snow – just about every day. (It would be so nice if that were the forecast for Loule, which has loads of sunshine every day and needs loads of rain.) As you may be aware, Germany has been plagued of late by transport strikes. Cathy has assured us that Berlin’s trams and buses should be working next week even if Deutsche Bahn isn’t.

The journey entails an early train ride to Lisbon ahead of afternoon flights to Frankfurt and Berlin. It would be much simpler to fly directly from Faro but the direct trip is vastly more expensive. During our stay, we’re to hire a car and go off to explore Weimar (of The Weimar Republic and hyperinflation notoriety), staying in a country hotel whose special offer includes a visit to a local spa – all this thanks to the hard work that my sister has put in on our behalf.

Several of my evenings have been devoted to our planned visit to Canada in May. I spent hours on car-rental sites as well as those listing the available accommodation in places we want to visit and, more importantly, those offering reviews by previous visitors. This trip will be easily the most exotic we’ve ever made (of a kind we’re unlikely to make ever again, adds Jones, who also challenged my use of the word “exotic”, pulling out her own dictionary when she disagreed with the interpretations we found online).

With bookings not quite complete, it entails 2 train trips, 8 flights (1 by seaplane), a ferry ride, 1,500 kms on the road and stays in at least 11 different places. I wondered to Jones what intending travellers did before the age of the internet. I suppose they went to travel agents.

On the local front, Jones has been down to Idalecio’s twice a day to visit Serpa and her pups, taking with her small tins of dog delight. After several days of refusing to leave her pups, Serpa has got over the novelty of motherhood. She is now content to leave them to their own devices while she rushes up to the fence to seek her usual treats and favours. After initially keeping all-comers at bay, she also permits Idalecio to remove the pups (still blind) from their box and to handle them. Idalecio’s son, Eduardo (5) informs us that they intend to keep the brown pup for their own; we may have the black one, if we wish. It’s a decision that will await our return from Germany.


Another Jones mission was to visit the house of English neighbours (David and Sarah) to take pictures, at their request, of their garden, which is looking wonderful in their absence. The results you may judge for yourself on the blog. The orchids and poppies are courtesy of the fields around us. Not all of nature’s bounty is as welcome. I have spent a couple of afternoons going around our property with poison spray, knocking out some of the less welcome visitors.

We bumped into a neighbour, Joachim Sousa, one afternoon as he stood contemplating a hen that was standing nervously at the side of a field adjoining Joachim’s house. Joachim was clearly in a very bad mood. He explained to us that a stray dog, which he’d had been feeding, had broken into his hen coop, eaten one of the feathered inhabitants and allowed another to escape. The escaped hen had never been out before and, terrified out of its hennish wits, fled each time that Joachim tried to coax it back. What Joachim had to say about the ungrateful “cabrao” of a stray dog doesn’t bear recounting in a family letter.

More unusually, someone had deliberately broken off a newly-grafted section of one of his trees. We were surprised. That’s not the kind of thing that happens much in Espargal. Nobody minds whether you walk across private land but it’s on the understanding that you don’t touch.

Friday brought confusion to the village square when two huge cement trucks and an even bigger pump arrived to tend Horacio’s latest house. We looked on as the pump put down the enormous “feet” that would support it during the operation. In a practice that would stun North Americans and bewilder the English, Portuguese builders commonly lay two reinforced cement slabs in a house, one for the floor and another for the roof, thus turning the house into a quake-proof reinforced cement box. (Our house is so constructed.)
Horacio and his workers made last-minute preparations as the pump prepared to pour the roof slab. Preparations for this had taken at least two weeks while elaborate shuttering and numerous supports were put in place and the reinforcing-rods laid.

Dona Casimira and Zeferino, who must have well over 160 years between them, were among the village stalwarts who turned out to watch the proceedings. Work proceeds on two other houses as well. When we complain about how the village character will be affected by all this construction, the old people remind us that Espargal was once a thriving community with two café-bars and an active primary school (now the headquarters of the hunters). Portugal has a policy of closing any primary school with fewer than 10 pupils – and, sadly, shuts down scores every year as younger people desert the interior for the coastal and metropolitan areas.

BEE ORCHID
Thursday we lunched at Quinta dos Valados, a large country house run by a retired French couple who offer accommodation and Moroccan cuisine. Our companions were our old radio and television colleagues, Gary and Malcolm, who are frequent visitors to Iberia. They had considered settling in Portugal but decided, after looking around for several months, to remain in the UK. Lunch – based on couscous and chicken - was served on the front patio, along with Moroccan rose wine. It’s a treat. Jones likes it especially as it makes a difference from your typical Portuguese menu – not that there’s anything wrong with that. And the setting is glorious.

I nipped into the bank one morning and was very pleased to discover that I’d arrived on the same day at the new customer manager – his predecessor having moved to a rival establishment. We had a useful 15-minute conversation. One of the benefits of small town living is that common or garden clients may still have a personal relationship with their bankers instead of talking to a computer operator somewhere in Mumbai (who is intent on “meeting targets” by persuading customers to change to more profitable accounts). I like it – having relationships with real people instead of with anonymous voices and the canned music one must endure to reach them.

Letter from Espargal: 9 of 2008

When (Idalecio’s heavily pregnant bitch) Serpa failed to appear at the fence this morning we suspected that her pups were on the way. Jones was anxious to ensure that the confinement was going well. But we couldn’t find our key to Idalecio’s gate. So we went through the pockets of all our work clothes. No luck. Then we searched upstairs and downstairs. Still no luck. Jones seemed to recall that I had been the last person to use the key. When we retraced our movements, however, she emerged as the more likely suspect. Eventually I stuck two fingers down one of the small pockets in the jacket she was wearing and – yes – there it was. What would she do without me, I wanted to know. To her credit, she looked a little sheepish.

So we made our way down Idalecio’s drive to see how Serpa was doing. Little squeaking sounds came from the recess, under an outside sink, where she sleeps (having given her new kennel the paw’s down). Serpa wasn’t pleased to see us and growled to let us know that we should keep our distance. We did. The responsibilities of maternity clearly weighed heavily upon her. Jones is anxious to know how many pups there are. (There are two, as we discovered the following day).

The week has flown. Sunday the rain poured down – lovely, lovely rain. We had a couple of cracking thunderstorms as well. We count the seconds between the lightning flashes and the thunderous booms that follow. When the interval gets down to two or three seconds, I pull out the electric plugs.

The dogs hate the storms. They’re brave enough when they’re chasing cats (strongly discouraged) or rabbits but when there’s thunder they come creeping to us for comfort. Jones cradled Ono and Stoopy while I checked the electrics. The electricity kept going off but only for a few seconds before it kicked in again.

While we always walk the dogs on leads, we generally let them off close to the house for a run-around in the fields. They’re lovely to watch as they chase each other in circles – so agile and graceful. Jones was admiring their capers the other day when Ono suddenly ran full-tilt into her and knocked her to the ground. Next she got clawed through her jacket by Squinty, a large, docile black cat which has adopted us and generally devotes himself to ankle-rubs in the house or garden. I don’t know what got into him. Maybe he just wasn’t getting enough attention.

The first exciting orchids are out. The /dull/ orchids make their appearance in January but one has to wait until late February for the /naked man, pyramid/ and /early purple/ varieties. That’s all we’ve seen so far. You need to keep your eyes peeled to spot them. They’re like little jewels hidden in the countryside.

After Portuguese lessons on Monday we took ourselves to Faro to see an early afternoon screening of /Michael Clayton/. I thought it a great movie. Jones found it a little intense. When I asked her at the interval what she thought of it, she said that she wished it were over. But I think she enjoyed it. Next I want to see /There Will Be Blood/ and /No Country for Old Men/.


Our travels loom large – in fairly quick succession to Germany in March, the UK in April and Canada in May. I have had my head deep in cyberspace for hours, seeking flights, B&Bs, hotels (ideally comfortable with huge discounts for “seniors”), places to visit and all the rest of it. I’m making progress. I peered longingly at the “premium economy” seats that BA offers to Canada but I couldn’t bring myself to fork out double the economy fare, much as I’d love the extra space. Jones would blanch even to learn that I’d been looking. (If ever I win the lottery, it’s first class travel thereafter.)

The hardest bit has been trying to match commitments, internal flights and ferries in Canada. After meeting up with the Joneses in Vancouver, we plan to visit Vancouver Island and are hoping to take a ferry ride up the amazing passages towards St Rupert. But the ferry sails only on certain days and we’re still trying to find a winning formula that embraces all our ideas.

On Tuesday I enquired of Dani what progress he had made in court the previous day with his assault claim against two Moldovians who attacked him. He had spoken hopefully the previous week of being awarded some three thousand euros in damages. We were highly dubious. In the event he reported that his (not very visible) injuries had been examined by a doctor. That was all. He had no idea when the case would come to court. It isn’t likely to be soon. Portuguese justice grinds along very slowly indeed. I thought that Dani would be better off dropping the case and going to seek his fortune in Italy, as he had intended. He thought so too.

He and I spent the day bringing in pruned branches, mulching what we could and burning off what we couldn’t. It was my first real working day in over two months and I was very pleased to see that it didn’t provoke a renewed bout of sciatica. I am just about back to normal and I feel like I’m floating around (except when I sneeze; that still hurts). Strange that we have to remind ourselves by being ill every so often just how good it is to be well.

We’ve stopped by Fintan’s cottage several times to see how the restoration is coming along. And the answer is pretty well. (I was trying to explain to my English class how the English language allows someone to be /pretty ugly/ – but that’s by the by.) The work is being carried out by Nelson, the son of the local builder, Horacio. The arrangement is felicitous. Dad builds houses and son paints them. What’s more, he paints them jolly well. Nelson explained that in the worst damaged parts of the house he was using two coats of (very expensive) primer, followed by two over-coats.Some parts required only a single coat of primer. We were impressed by the results – and told him so.

Fintan told us that he’d got back his two missing “stuffed toy dogs”, largish animals that used to guard the stairs. He’d come looking for them a couple of weeks ago, searching through the pile of boxes in Casa Nada to see if they had been packed away after the fire. They hadn’t. His suspicions fell on Dina, whose pilfering habits are becoming a bit of a nuisance. When he failed to find several other possessions as well, he marched across to Dina’s adjoining cottage and, with old Chico’s full support, started searching for the missing items.

He didn’t find them all (Dina hides them away) but he found several and was delighted to get his dogs back. Dina had used electric cord (in one case) and ribbon to make collars for the dogs. It was quite pathetic. Jones wonders whether it would help if we bought her a large soft toy.
I have my doubts. It won’t stop her pilfering. (Dina is a very large woman who never learned to talk but who is smart and can be very noisy, especially if upset.)

Chico and Dina twice turned up on our doorstep, each time with half a sack of oranges and a 5-litre bottle of (first) moonshine and (then) olive oil. Chico informed me that at the age of 83 he was going to make an honest woman of Dina (48) and marry her .
I didn't express my doubts. I can't see how Dina could either consent to be married or understand what marriage entails. Whatever the case, Chico wanted his fields ploughed. I was happy to oblige.

I took my tractor down to Vitor, the mechanic, one afternoon to get him to look at the brake lights. They were coming on and staying on if I so much as touched the brakes. Vitor put a piece of cardboard on the floor and slid himself under the tractor to remove the offending part. A couple of his neighbours sat around passing the time as people do in Espargal. When the farmers don’t have work in the fields, they simply wander around the village and engage their neighbours in conversation. I’m all in favour.

Anyhow, Vitor retrieved a small cylinder and sprayed it with oil and cleaned it before putting it back and informing me that the problem had been solved. He wouldn’t take any money for it. It was just a little job, he said. So I presented him with the bottle of wine that I’d brought along in anticipation. There’s so much to be said for good neighbours – and ours are among the best.