Letter from Espargal: 16 of 2008

JONES GARDEN
By my calculations we are into the second third of the year. Little is known about what happened to first third. It’s hard enough tracing the events of the past week. It started well. I remember that. We went with friends (David & Dagmar and their guest, Anna) to join the festivities at Alte, a small town visible across the valley. On the outskirts, vendors had covered the pavements with an assortment of old agricultural implements and knick knacks. I was interested in a brass bell but wasn’t seduced by its 60 euro price tag, in spite of the vendor’s insistence that it was a bargain.

We lunched at tables laid out in an open tent beside the river. David and I both arrived from different kiosks with armfuls of beer. Jones protested that we should have consulted each other first. But, as I assured her (and soon became evident) the problem of having too much beer has not yet been invented. We were asking Anna how things were going with her husband, a dentist (working back in Germany), when Jones gasped and spat out the crown of a back tooth. She has a habit of doing this although seldom so appropriately. So it was down to her dentist at the first opportunity.

After that, things start to blur (not from the beer).
Jones has spent much of the week gardening and I strimming. To say that I’ve been strimming doesn’t do the subject justice. It’s like Heracles saying that he’d been cleaning the stables – or Sisyphus speaking of pushing a rock up a hill. Strimming a couple of unruly acres is actually more akin to painting the Forth Bridge. The stuff grows almost as fast as one can cut it down. Where-ever possible I use the tractor to clear the earth but the rock-studded, tree-strewn slope above the house does not permit mechanical ingress.

Worthy of mention is the exceptional crop of canes that has sprouted around us this year. Jones tells me that they are actually giant fennel. The canes grow several metres in a matter of a few weeks and then gradually harden during the summer. They’re not tough enough to be put to practical use. For this one has to choose canes from the river banks. These canes, after drying, are still widely used in roofing. Previously, tiles were laid directly upon them. These days, there’s generally a layer of insulation between them.

When I haven’t been strimming (or walking or shelling beans), I’ve been transferring the entire contents of my CD collection to my computer. The inspiration for this came from Barbara’s brother, Llewellyn, who uses a computer, attached to an LDC-TV screen, as a home entertainment centre. I liked it. As I have dusty CDs that I haven’t listened to in ages, I thought it an excellent idea to put all the music together on a hard disk. After much labour, I proudly showed Jones how one could view every single album on a single computer page.

Being Jones, she wasn’t impressed, pointing out that one still had to scroll up and down to see them all. Much easier, she felt, to look at the CD racks and simply choose the music one wanted. Well, I guess you pays your money and you takes your choice. I love having al the music just a finger tip away on the computer, (an area where Jones would probably admit to being a bit of a luddite).

Speaking of which – I have spent a couple of useful hours assisting neighbours, one to get back on the internet and the other with the content of a proposed internet site to advertise his holiday cottages.
The latter, Idalecio, has almost completed the cottage that he has been rebuilding – stone, tiles and canes, with underfloor heating throughout. It looks splendid in its new coat of paint and he hopes to find a few summer guests. He is about to do up a second cottage close by. In an ideal world he would buy and restore an adjacent ruin and put in a pool. Then he would really be in business.

Around us, half a dozen other builders are at work. The village has been heaving with cement and delivery trucks. (Twice we were intercepted by truck drivers trying to make deliveries – hard when there are no road names and few house names.) Below us a Scottish couple is extending. Right beside them a young Portuguese couple is building a house. At the end of our road there’s been a sudden spurt of activity at a house for a young Dutch couple and above them another Scot has added a second floor to his home.

At the bottom of the village, Horacio (the local builder) is completing his latest house, while across the road from him a third team of builders has moved into a cottage that the owner has long tried and failed either to convert or to sell. (We are led to understand that the previous two teams walked out after being left unpaid.) For little Espargal, all this represents major development.

May the 1^st was Labour Day. The locals celebrate the holiday by finding a spot somewhere along a river bank for a picnic. At the end of the day they return up the dirt roads towards Espargal in clouds of dust. I mention this because, as usual, we were out walking and, in order to avoid the dust, we diverted up the hillside and took a narrow contour path back to the village. It’s a route we’ve avoided the past few weeks because of the seasonal host of ticks that lurks in the long grass. Still, we thought better a few ticks than choking dust.

What this is really all about is an awkward spot halfway along the path where one has to step around a bulging bush. I stepped in a place that wasn’t there and disappeared down the slope with a crash. Jones said later that she thought the wild pigs were about. She found me lying head down in a tangle of prickly shrubbery and rocks. It took me all of five minutes to untangle myself and regain the path. Jones helpfully retrieved my specs from a shrub while I extracted thorns from my flesh. My wounds were minor although, as I pointed out to the neighbours, they felt much worse than they looked. I regret that I wasn’t in a position to take a picture for the blog.


During another walk we came across two neighbours tending their immaculate vine plantation down in the valley where, sadly, many of the old vines are straggly and overgrown from lack of attention. When the two ladies spotted me taking a quick picture, they objected. They didn’t want to be seen with their backsides sticking out, they insisted; I should show their faces instead. So I took a couple more snaps and promised to print off copies for them.

Another picture,of lupins,arrived from Jane, an English friend who lives in Benafim. I was much impressed. You may judge for yourself.Just before last month’s rains, I sowed two of our fields with lupin seeds that I purchased in Germany. Will be interesting to see whether the plants turn out as handsomely.

On the social front, it’s been a whirl: to the Hamburgo on Wed with a party of German friends; to a Labour Day lunch on Thur with other friends (we all had to wear something red); to a concert in Faro tonight (after Jones has entertained her Portuguese neighbours to afternoon tea) and out to dinner tomorrow night.

Next week has all sorts of things marked in ahead of our departure to Canada the week after. The pups need their second inoculation; I need to renew my international driving licence; and that’s just the start. The pressure mounts. As I may have remarked before, retirement is not for the faint hearted.