Letter from Espargal: 15 of 2008

Natasha remarked that the Algarve has only two seasons, autumn and summer. As a denizen of deepest Russia, she was speaking from hard experience of what it means to have four seasons a year. It was difficult to argue otherwise. Our conversation had turned to the seasons as it seemed to us that summer had arrived that very day. It was hot. We were in the car with the air-conditioner blasting away, en route to the house, having picked up Natasha after my late-morning English lesson in Loule. She works an extra half-day for us each month, to make up her share of the social security we pay on her behalf.

After finishing the ironing and cleaning a couple of our large windows (set into 2 metres x 75 cms sliding doors), she joined Jones in the garden. The garden, like much of the countryside around us, has been overtaken by a riot of exploding rain-induced greenery. Our notional paths and steps have all but vanished under the leafy jungle.

Jones has started to cut back. She resolved to get rid of the huge borage bushes that start to die off at this time of year but finds her resolve weakened by the bees that are still busy in the blue flowers. She hates to deprive them of the nutrition they find there. Even so, she and Natasha piled the tractor high with borage corpses, which I then forked up on to the compost mountain, along with a tractor load of cuttings from a neighbour. For my part, I’ve been strimming, especially under the trees where low branches block access to the tractor. The carob beans are already heavy on the trees, with an excellent crop in prospect.


DOCK
While we were working I pointed out to Jones the lovely call of the cuckoo down in the valley. Jones was unimpressed. She regarded the bird as innately immoral, she replied, and it sounded to her as if it was calling out: “F…. off, “F…..off”. I have to say that I found this a little hard on the cuckoo. Jones would like to see the creatures of the field displaying the same respect for each other that she believes befits humanity but I’m afraid that evolution has led us all astray. It’s hard to know whether to blame Darwin or the divinity.

Today is a public holiday. On the 25^th of April, the Portuguese celebrate their Day of Liberty, marking the anniversary of 1974 revolution that ended the dictatorship. As we went walking this morning, admiring the poppies still burning red in the fields, we heard festive explosions coming from Alte and could see rockets bursting over the town in the distant hills. There’s a weekend of celebrations ahead there, and we’re planning a visit.

In fact, Friday always feels like a holiday. It’s our first day off. You may think that I am being ironic but this is not so. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are lesson days and Tuesdays bring Natasha. That means meeting her bus in Benafim and dropping her off again at the bus-stop in the afternoon – as well as researching on the internet whatever information she might require. With staff come responsibilities.


Jones prepares a light breakfast for her, as well as giving her lunch and afternoon tea. I sometimes tell Natasha that she eats better than we do. Dani continues in Romania where, Natasha understands, he is taking his driving licence and a job. He would appear to have inherited some property on the recent death of his mother. Whatever the case, she is happy for him to be there – the longer the better in fact. Life seems to have become much less demanding for her in his absence.

After running her back into town one evening, we continued on to the vet with Serpa’s two puppies, which were due for their first inoculations. Jones has named the bigger pup, which we are to take, Reimundo. I thought this derived from Rei (king) and Mundo (world) but according to a name derivation site (www.behindthename.com/) it comes from the Germanic name /Reginmund/, composed of the elements /ragin/ "advice" and /mund/ "protector". There you have it. Maybe Jones will call him something else when she learns this (she says not).


His slightly smaller brother is temporarily being called Stormy – a name given to him by Kayleigh on account of the bolt of white lightning that runs down his neck. Stormy is due to go to another neighbour. Apart from Raimundo’s being sick in the car, both en route to the vet and on the way home, the two pups took their first outing, along with their inoculations, in their stride. They weighed in at just over and under 5 kgs. They are both going to be big boys. Idalecio has agreed to keep the pups until our return from Canada early in June.

We went one evening to view a cottage that has been on sale in the village since the death of its elderly owner a year or two ago. It is one of several old houses up for sale. Our inspection – we were joined by, Marie, an English neighbour - was made out of sheer curiosity. I phoned up a number that was advertised over the front door. A relative, who is acting on behalf of the heirs, showed us around – and very interesting we found it.

The old cottage has no garden whatsoever. It is bounded on three sides by its own walls and on the fourth by a small yard that contains a cisterna. There were several rooms inside, all in good nick, along with a large storage room that could become a double garage; but there was no bathroom and no running water or drains. That would be the first concern of any buyer, along with the need for a fossa (in the absence of any public drains in the village).

The asking price was 60,000 euros although the relative emphasised that this was negotiable – and we gather elsewhere that the price has fallen sharply since the place first went on the market. I think that the house would make a good hide-away for someone who didn’t want to be burdened with a garden. But a key question is whether a buyer would be entitled to put in several necessary windows. The relative was certain there would be no problem – he would be. The local builder is due to give us an opinion. (Portuguese law prohibits people from putting in new windows when these overlook their neighbours.)

This is all by the by. We are still trying to complete the licensing of Casa Nada, our own elderly cottage, and not aiming to become entangled in any further ventures.

Another evening we joined friends, David and Dagmar, at “Miss Pettigrew lives for a day”. Admirer that I am of Frances McDormand, I found the film tedious and the seat uncomfortable so I retired at the interval. The others later reported that the second half was much improved and that they had the satisfaction of a happy ending.


You may have noticed from the blog that I have been busy with my mobile phone camera (both with stills and video.) After taking several shots of a neighbour, who was showing us where one of his trees had burst open a slab of rock, I offered to make a print for him – a favour much appreciated by the local people.

But my printers – I have two – went on strike. The bigger printer would print anything else I asked it to but claimed to have a paper jam each time it was confronted with the neighbour’s picture. The smaller printer insisted that the existing colour cartridge was out of ink and then that a new replacement was dry. I felt like the victim of a conspiracy. A new colour cartridge finally did the job. The refill shop that supplied it warned me that they don’t keep. This is clearly the case, an expensive lesson.

Let me finish as I began. The orchid season is nearly over. They are spring flowers.
But the late orchids are still glorious, including the pyramid orchids along the road that leads up from the citrus orchards in the valley. As so often, I think that we are wonderfully lucky to live in such a splendid place.

P.S. We have lunched on our beans, picked within the hour and hot out of the pot! We dipped them in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. What more could one ask of life?

Kayleigh

Letter from Espargal: 14 of 2008

I have only little things to report this week. The littlest of them was a dung beetle, pushing its ping-pong sized ball of dung erratically through the grass under a carob tree. I know not where he was going. I came across the little guy as I was clearing under the trees in preparation for summer’s carob crop. Every so often the ball would roll forward an inch or two, dragging the beetle over the top with it and dumping the insect helter skelter, legs akimbo on the far side. It was the first time I’d seen such a beetle at work in real life and I felt quite privileged for the front row view.

And, still on little things, the European Bee Eaters are back from their over-wintering quarters.
"BORROWED" PICTURE
They sit along the electricity wires, displaying their stunning aquamarine chests before launching themselves with shrill cries like flashing rainbows of light. They’re lovely to watch. The swifts (or martins or whatever they be) are also back, skimming along the surface of the road before shooting up vertically in a dizzying display of avian aerobatics.

We’ve a weekend of showers ahead. The satellite picture shows the Atlantic flecked with white dots. Each shower comes gusting in on the wind, hurling a spray against the French windows and soaking in seconds any soul that it happens to catch in the open. In a few minutes the cloud moves on and the sun comes back to warm us up again.

The showers have brought out the snails in force. While these are cursed in English gardens, here they are welcomed. The roadside is dotted with the bottoms of snail gatherers, who lean into the grass to find their prey, tossing their capture into a plastic bag – to be turned into a delicacy in due course. Jones was invited around to Maria’s house one morning, not for snails fortunately, but to try Maria’s formula for beans, done the way that her husband, Joachim, likes them. They were delicious, those she brought home for me to taste. We’ve been picking our own beans too. Jones boils them up briefly and adds them to the generous salads that she prepares most evenings.

We have managed to get walks in between showers. With us, as usual this week, came Robbie and Kayleigh, our visiting neighbours’ adopted grandchildren. They have been assisting Barbara in the garden as well (having negotiated a good rate of remuneration) and have joined us at puppy-feeding time.

(Click on the video above to see Kayleigh playing with the pups. I battled for hours to upload the video to this blog but it absolutely refused to cooperate. So it's by itself.)

Close by, Idalecio has been working away on the holiday apartment that he has been restoring. For years it was just a ruin, attached to the side of his house. Gradually he has transformed it into a smart stone dwelling, adding a patio and stone steps. Also available for holiday rentals will be the apartment across the pathway from his house, until recently occupied by his former partner, Mariette, who has now moved out.

We drove up to Benafim with Robbie and Kayleigh for coffees and icecreams at the café, seating ourselves at a table beside the old fellows playing dominoes in the corner.

Across the road, half a dozen workers were engaged in alterations to the pavement, some of them labouring, some advising and one holding a heated conversation on his mobile phone. While we watched, the fish delivery van drew up outside the café with a great blaring of its horn, attracting several women out of the café to purchase their daily portion of fresh fish.

Jones and I have spent hours cleaning up a field just below ours. It belongs to an old fellow who lives at the bottom of the village, who was only too pleased to have us clear it, having ascertained that the service was free. We often pass through the field with the dogs, which have been picking up ticks from the long grass. Several fruit and nut trees on it had slowly been succumbing to a mass of thorny brambles.
BRAMBLE
I used the tractor to do the basic clearing, reversing in under the trees where I could to rip out the brambles with the scarifier. Then we cut off the mass of dead branches from the best fruit trees and attacked the brambles by hand. They are vicious, tough, resistant invaders which, left alone, will rapidly knit themselves, anywhere they get a foothold, into a virtually impenetrable hedge. I take poison spray to them several times a year.

We had a phone call one evening from a couple who had stayed with us at the Quinta, people who had bought a plot of land in the 90s and with whom we had lost touch over the years. They were down from the UK for a brief visit and joined us in Loule for lunch. Both are in education and contemplating retirement next year, possibly down here. The biggest obstacle to Britons moving to Portugal right now is the continuing slide of the pound against the euro. It’s hurting us and most of our acquaintance. It will also hurt Portugal’s tourist industry this coming season – although it will obviously affect British visitors to any country in the euro zone.

Natasha confessed that she’d been struggling to get some photos of herself and young Alex on to a site on the internet where her Russian acquaintances could see them. Her problems were several. She had been using computers at the public library, computers that did not permit users to transfer files via DVDs or USB connections. So she had been trying to detach picture files from an internet based email account. But, with no formal training in the use of Windows – especially Portuguese or English programmes, as opposed to Russian Windows – she’d made little progress.

We transferred the pictures from her camera to my computer and, after we’d worked out the means of uploading them to the (Russian) site, and then of using a virtual keyboard to write captions in Russian, I left her to put up as many as she wished. I should add that this was on a non-working afternoon. As usual, I dropped her off at the bus stop afterwards for the ride back into Loule.

Two cats - one official and the other a scrounging visitor - started a great scrap in the garden one evening. I summoned the dogs, which rushed down to break up the fight. They're always delighted to do this. The two cats fled up a carob tree, climbing to the highest branch, where they continued to squall and bat at each other as they swayed back and forth. In the end, I used the hose to send them on their way. These fights have resulted in unpleasant injuries to two of our cats, including young Braveheart, who had a great raw patch ripped down his throat and chest.

I have been reading. My sister, Cathy, aware that I’d read Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion”, sent me a copy of a response to it by Alister McGrath, a former atheist scientist turned Christian theologian. It’s entitled “The Dawkins Delusion”. As I told Cathy afterwards, neither book left me feeling much better informed although Dawkins’ was far the more entertaining. I don’t think that science tells us much about whether or not there’s a God. On the other hand, I don’t believe that Theology does either. I’ve read a great deal of it in my time without being any the wiser on matters divine - although it has taught me a lot about people.

Friday night we went to the 65^th birthday celebration of a neighbour of ours, Mike Brown (pictured with his two sisters behind him). The best thing about being 65 is that, with luck, it brings a pension with it. It’s quite staggering to me that within a year or two I’ll be following suit. I shall conclude before the thought overpowers me.

Letter from Espargal: 13 of 2008

Where to start? We’re home from snowy Warwick. It’s been raining; four marvellous inches in four days although I doubt that our fellow travellers on the plane from Coventry would have shared our feelings. Our departure gave us our first taste of Coventry airport, which serves only one airline (Thomsonfly) on passenger routes. The terminal is tiny – just two check-in desks.

Ours was the only flight due to depart that morning. Even so, the whole security brigade was on duty at 4 a.m. when we arrived and, with nothing else to do, went over us with a fine toothcomb. I got random searched. One security woman even tested the small tubes I was carrying in the permitted see-through plastic bag; for what, I haven’t the faintest.

We spent the second half of our week with Barbara’s brother, Llewellyn, and his wife, Lucia, newly moved into a house they are renting on the borders of leafy Warwick and Leamington Spa, after their recent move to the UK.
The weather was chilly, especially after the snowfall that we woke up to one morning. Lawns, trees and buildings were uniformly white. The area is upmarket; the houses, although modern and pleasant, were out-graced by the cars parked beside them, as though signalling their owners priorities.

Lucia works close by. Llewellyn, who likes neatness and order, had the house looking trim within days of occupying it. I inspected his entertainment computer set-up with interest. All his music was recorded on a computer linked to an LCD-TV. One could sit on the couch, listening to music and using a wireless keyboard and mouse to surf the internet - or press a button to watch TV.

We were very well looked after; walked, wined and dined and chauffeured about in Llewellyn’s Honda CRV, a model several years younger than ours, ideal for the canine and feline family that are soon to arrive from the quarantine kennels. We were close to both Coventry and Birmingham, neither of which we had previously visited, nor, to be truthful, much desired to. But we did want to see Coventry cathedral, rebuilt beside the ruins of the old church after the war; and we were much impressed by it. It speaks to believers and non-believers alike. Llewellyn and I mounted the old church tower, ascending scores of winding stone steps (he more vigorously than I) for views across the city in every direction.


Birmingham was the real surprise. Our expectations were not high but we found the city centre graceful and modern and designed for easy pedestrian access, with great sweeps of paving leading from one impressive building to another. Llewellyn guided us around like a Brummie born and bred. From the city’s delightful art gallery/museum we proceeded to the city hall for a lunchtime organ concert, delivered on a massive organ by a distinguished Norwegian organist. At least, that’s what the programme said. I can’t pretend that most of it was my kind of music and I might have nodded off once or twice.

Naturally, we did no end of walking around the countryside, along canals, past locks and through parks, visiting pubs, and charity shops, a vast open-air market and anything else that took our fancy.

The purpose of the visit was to see family and friends and a number of exhibitions.
MATISSE - THE DANCE
In particular we wanted to see the Russian picture exhibition at the Royal Academy, the Terracotta Warrior display at the British museum and the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Dome. To this end, I had spent a lot of time, first on the internet and later on the phone to the UK, (successfully) trying to secure tickets. All three exhibitions were superb, if one could abide the crush of fellow viewers. We were constantly aware that we were looking on sights that we were most unlikely ever to witness again.
PATRICK HENRY BRUCE
Just as satisfying was a “Coming of Age of American Art” exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, down the road from the home of our London hosts, Ann Christine and Julian Andersen (for whose welcoming and gracious hospitality we say a big thank you).

We took the opportunity to duck into London’s newly renovated St Pancras station, now a smart eating and shopping centre, as well as the terminus of the Eurostar trains that swish passengers off to Paris and Brussels a great deal faster and more efficiently than Heathrow’s new Terminal 5.

Let me make mention of two meals, aside from those prepared for us by our hosts; the first was a dinner we celebrated with London friends, Penny and Richard, and our niece, Erica, at a restaurant near the couple’s home in Islington. Like them, Erica – a post-grad student at Goldsmiths - is deep into the art and design world. She had just returned from a visit with fellow students to Barcelona, where she had found a hairdresser to fulfil a longstanding wish of hers – to dye her blond hair black. The second was lunch with Barbara’s former NBC colleague, Nancy, and her two student children, both down from St Andrew’s for the Easter break.

Both meals were reminders of the life and friends in London that we left behind us when we sold up and moved to Portugal. Barbara loved being back in London. She said it felt like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes again. For me, it presented an opportunity to see people and do things that I couldn’t do elsewhere. But, unlike her, I felt not the least desire to live again amid the noise and confusion of a big city.

Travelling into London on the train from Gatwick, I had to accustom my eyes to the grime and graffiti that lined the track. Not a wall had escaped the attentions of the spray-paint artists. And I was struck time and again by the contrast between the well-spoken, fashionably-dressed visitors to the exhibitions and the dumpy bread-dough figures much in evidence on the streets; different nations sharing the same city.

It was as good to get back as to go. Our house-sitters have handed over our beasts and taken themselves off to the west coast for two days. The sun is coming and going, ducking in and out of the grey clouds. The views from the window are now of damp green fields and trees bent over in the wind. In our absence our beans have thrived. JONES PICKING BEANS
We picked pocketfuls of big pods after a walk and had a delightful bean salad for dinner. The garden has gone absolutely bananas. The growth lining the road has exploded to the extent that there is barely room for the car to pass.

Natasha is cleaning downstairs. Some of the attractive music that Llewellyn shared with me is playing on my computer. I am expecting one of my English class pupils, who has asked me to help him fill in an American tax return on behalf of his elderly mother, who gets a small US pension.

WATCH JONES FEEDING THE PUPPIES

Jones has gone down to feed Serpa and her pups, now bigger, bolder and delighted, like their mother, to get their noses into the doggy foods we are providing them. We think that we may take one of the two pups – the question is whether we do so before our Canadian trip in just over a month, or afterwards.

En route back from a visit to Loule, I dropped in on Vitor’s workshop to find my tractor back in one piece, with the engine turning happily. It was a good engine, Vitor assured me. I fetched the tractor the following day, driving home as close to the edge of the highway as I could, my eyes weeping in the cold wind.

The showers and squalls have eased. The local river, usually just a few damp pools and occasionally rousing itself to a brisk stream, has swelled into a swirling brown flood that roars over the low dam wall. It’s a lovely noise. I wish that we could hear it more often.