Letter from Espargal: 25 of 2008

If I seem distracted you may blame a lusty cicada that is making the very devil of a racket outside the study window. When I go out on to the patio to protest, he stops; sit down again and he resumes his chorus. He’s the size of my thumb-nail. In terms of noise for size, he knocks an amplifier into a cocked hat.

Let me stick with my creature theme. Fellow villagers, Mike and Liz, were showing me a goldfinch fledgling that was testing its wings on a nest near their front door. His three nest mates had already flown. I managed to snap him before he too upped and awayed. Being in on his launch made me feel quite special.

I’d been down to Mike and Liz with the tractor to help them move gravel and road surfacing material. My part was actually to drive the tractor while they heaved away with shovels, loading and emptying the box. I explained that I felt bad leaving them to do the work but that I’d probably feel worse if I joined them. They seemed to understand. They’re both retired from the UK health service, with extensive (and in Mike’s case, personal) experience of bad backs.

Even so, I haven’t stinted on my twice-weekly carob-clearing shifts with Leonhilde and Jose-Luis. Like many Portuguese, they own bits of land all over the show. I take the car down to the area concerned, leave the dogs in the shade and get to work. My task is to snip the suckers off the trunks and zap unwelcome bushes. Much ducking and weaving under low branches is required. I keep a fresh shirt and vest in the car. Leonhilde chops out the lighter undergrowth with a hoe while Jose-Luis does a little raking - puffing and cursing his troublesome legs.

Leonhilde points out the numerous traces of wild pigs – “javali”. There must be scores of them around. One never sees them. They are creatures of the night. They create private paths through the countryside, sandpapering tree trunks with their itchy backs and leaving extensive muddy brown stains on rocks. Most evident are the patches of turned-up earth, where they have been rooting. The hunters, knowing their fondness for almonds, bait known haunts with nuts and return when the moon is full.

Still on animals: Jones gave a cry of delight when our long-lost (semi-official) black cat, Squinty, strode through the door after a two-month absence and started squalling for food as ever. Jones had quite mourned him, as she often does our more itinerant animals. Where-ever Squinty went there must have been a supply of food for he looks in good nick, if somewhat slimmer. He’s simply taken up where he left off, camping on Jones’s feet when she works in the garden.

She’s continuing the mammoth task of cutting back. This week she’s been working her way into a thicket beside our driveway. It’s slow going, trying to separate the thorny tendrils of a nasty creeper, smilax aspera, from the desirable growth. I follow on behind, carefully poisoning the creeper and the new shoots of bramble. My latest project is to build stepping stones into the steeper parts of the path that leads down the hill through the “park” above the house.

Jones is often just finishing up of an evening, baggy in hand, when neighbours, Marie and Olly, pass by with their dog, Poppy. It’s impossible for them to creep past because the dogs set up a hue and cry. We fall into conversation across the gate (there are always important village matters to discuss) and we sometimes inveigle them in for a sun-downer on the garden bench. Marie likes Bacardi and coke; Olly joins me in a beer. The dogs get a romp and biscuits. It’s a great way to draw the curtains on the day. We even had an impromptu barbecue at which I was able to demonstrate my culinary skills. I do a good sausage when the force is with me.

One morning Marie texted us with a “please help” message, as they were going out, saying the electricity supply to the cottage of their immediate neighbours, the odd couple, Chico and Dina, had failed.


Given that Chico and Dina were in no position to help themselves, nor likely to win much sympathy from their Portuguese neighbours – their bizarre antics have won them few friends - I went round. I didn’t expect a warm welcome, having landed on Dina’s fist-shaking greetings-list after a fall-out.

As my goodwill mission became clear, however, scowls disappeared and I was bidden enter the cottage like some saving grace. The interior, apart from the TV set, comes straight from the 19^th century; ditto the electrical supply and wiring. Chico assured me – and I subsequently confirmed - that he’d paid his bill. He took a while to find a statement. The old fellow is half blind as well as illiterate.
Much hunting through pockets and wallets eventually produced a receipt that I took along with me, together with a box of (huge) onions that was thrust upon me by way of thanks.

The EDP technician turned up after lunch. He flicked the cottage mains-switch a couple of times, assuring me that the ancient meter was still up to the job. He must have had the magic touch for light instantly returned, the TV came back on and Dina sat down to watch. I made my apologies and left. Such are the burdens of a modern knight errant.

The EDP, by the way, hit on a novel way to recover the money owed to it by defaulters. It supposed that it would add their debts to the bills of those clients who actually paid for their consumption. I am not joking. The whole mad scheme went to an enquiry. The expat association warned its members of what was happening and told them how they might register their protests – if they didn’t want to pay their neighbours’ bills as well as their own. A political head of steam boiled up and it seems that the scheme has finally crashed.

PARK STEPS
On Thursday we took Leonhilde into Loule to visit another villager, Maria, who has just had neck surgery and is recovering at the home of her daughter. (Jones often gets together with the two women for afternoon tea.) Maria has long been troubled with sciatica and hobbles about the village on a crutch. During a visit to a consultant she was advised to undergo emergency surgery, during which she has had a plate inserted. The operation was done privately and the whole village is whistling at the cost. The poor old thing was whipped out of hospital almost as soon as her stitches were tied.

Letter from Espargal: 24 of 2008

AT LOULE FAIR
There is very little, it seems, that can hold Espargal back from its inexorable march towards the world stage. A few years ago you’d have been hard put to discover us on the map, amidst the sleepy citrus orchards and dusty carob groves. But times are a changing. Following the arrival of (admittedly, an intermittent supply of) mains water, street lights and tarred roads, we are now to have street names – and those proposed have animated the village. In fact, tempers have grown quite frayed.

The names have been indicated on a map set up beside the postboxes. Although residents have a week to comment on the proposals, it would seem that few were consulted beforehand and many are quite displeased, as much by their exclusion from the process as the names themselves.

We heard Joachim Sousa exchange some angry words with old Zeferino on the matter. Just why, I’ve no idea. And, while I was helping Leonhilde clear under her carob trees, she snorted with indignation. She finds it ridiculous that her road is to be called the Rua da Figueirinho – the road of the little fig tree; she also feels that the road up to the trig point should be called by the summit’s traditional name, “farol” (lighthouse or beacon – as in “Faro”) – and not the Rua do Telef, as proposed.

Ours is perhaps the least controversial, the Rua do Cercado (enclosure), derived from the traditional name for our part of the hill. We have no problem with that. If you ever come looking for us, we’re the brown house at the end of the Rua do Cercado.

The fuss has added to the heat and stickiness of a hot and sticky week, marked only by a brief and unseasonal shower that descended on Loule on Tuesday evening. We had just done our grocery shopping and were dropping Natasha off when the first drops fell. By the time we’d parked, real rain was coming down. It lasted just long enough to wash the oppressiveness out of the evening air and wet the tables and chairs at the fair.

It was to the fair that we were heading. One goes there as much for the passing show as anything on offer at the rows of stalls.
The show included a large policeman keeping a tight rein on an equally large Alsatian police dog. At one point the dog caught sight of and strained towards a tiny Chihuahua, which was equally fascinated by its giant cousin. I tried to snap the pair of them as they met nose to nose in an amicable encounter but was frustrated by the delay on my mobile phone camera.

Our routine is to have supper before the crowds arrive, at long tables set up beside restaurant booths. Then we spend an hour touring the stalls – full of knick knacks, cane baskets, cakes, home-made liquor and amateur art. We always try to support Existir, an organisation that assists disabled people. This can be difficult because the items on sale at its stall tend to reflect the abilities of the people it assists. Finally, we leave the crowds to enjoy the amplified entertainment and go off for coffees and baggies at a pavement cafe.

Our neighbours, Sarah and David, were due to join us. But they called off at the last minute after running into a drains problem. We found them hard at work on the problem the following morning. This entailed David’s lifting heavy stone covers and thrusting a hose into the fragrant heart of the problem at one end, while Sarah waited in the field at the other end for hopeful results.

Drainage problems we can speak of with some authority, having had plenty of our own down the years. Like most villages ours has no public drains. Each house has its own. People have long since learned not to put anything artificial down the loo – not even loo paper. Even so, after a time most drains play up, as the result of a fatty lining in the pipes or the invasion of roots.

We found Idalecio scooping out roots from a blocked drain beside his house one morning, just before the arrival of the first guests at his holiday cottages. He’s full; two couples and two kids in each. One group apparently arrived at another destination, to find it choc-a-bloc. They came across Idalecio’s ad in a local paper, phoned him – and arrived very soon after. We try to creep past the cottages with the dogs in the morning so as not to wake the visitors.

Natasha came on Thursday for a second day’s work – needed to pay the bill for a long session at the dentist. I’d warned her to bring garden clothes and footwear. We spent 3 hot hours picking up stones from the fields in the morning, and another 3 shredding branches and clearing under carob trees in the afternoon. Natasha went bright pink from the exertion. At one point she clutched her chest and gave a little scream. I feared that she’d overdone things. But the source of her distress turned out to be a bug that she’d turned up with the hoe. Natasha doesn’t like creepy crawlies.

We noted with regret that the owners of the big new house going up 100 metres below us have blocked off the path that we used to take through the property. We knew it would happen sooner or later. But it’s a pity nonetheless – the price of progress.

I had two phone calls (I lost the first midway) from my internet supplier, Telepac, which always follows up problems with a questionnaire on client satisfaction. This generally comes by email. If one doesn’t respond, one gets a phone call instead. While the principle is admirable, the format inevitably includes a dozen irrelevant questions. I tried to explain to the unfortunate woman who called me that there were all sorts of issues that I hadn’t discussed. I had absolutely no idea how familiar the helpline technician was with Telepac’s product range. But her job requires that every contingency gets a mark from 1 to 10 – and eventually I just gave in and allocated 9 to everything.

The days still start with a doggy outing, and we try to let Raymond and Bobby exhaust themselves in play on the patio on our return. Jones has continued with her interminable cutting back and watering, I with shredding and clearing. I cleared and shredded a neighbour’s cuttings too – and was rewarded with a loaf of still-warm home-made bread. I can’t tell you how good it tasted with thick slices of tomato.


We get the tomatoes, as well as water melons, from Jorge Vieira on the other side of Benafim. Jorge farms both on a big scale. He apologised for the quality of the melons. They were not yet at their best, he explained, because his early production had been grafted on to pumpkin stock, which is more forgiving of bugs in previously-tilled soil than melon seeds. Even so, they taste pretty good to us.

Letter from Espargal: 23 of 2008

In a perfect world, I would hire a man to ensure that everything in the house worked properly – or, at least, was fixed as soon as it broke. Yes, I know that in a perfect world nothing would go wrong. And yes, the fixer might also be a woman. If women qualify as Anglican bishops - have you been following that debate? – one can hardly deny them fixer status.

But I stray from the point. Because the world is not perfect, the struggle continues to keep things working. Part of the struggle has been with my internet provider, Telepac, an offshoot of Portugal Telecom. Each day for the past week my connection has gone down for several hours, coming back in the evening - until Wednesday when it died altogether.

Each day I phoned the Telepac support line to report the problem. Their technicians know that clients often blame Telepac for problems that originate at home and doubted my word, especially as the fault had been fixing itself. Finally they admitted it and promised to fix it. I got the connection back on Friday but only after phoning them yet again, to hear that I had to reconfigure the router first. I can carry daily burdens as well as the next man but life without the internet amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Also out of action is my hard-working strimmer. After several years of strimming, I found that a small flexible cap that serves to inject petrol into the cylinder at start-up, had cracked. So when I pressed it, the petrol squirted over me rather than into the machine. Getting a new part was easy. Fitting it proved more complicated. As I write, the strimmer is lying in pieces on the workshop floor but I still haven’t worked out how to extract the old cap and install the new one.

The strimmer’s last outing was at the start of the week when I went to help
Leonhilde and Jose-Luis clear under their carob trees ahead of the August picking season. They’re both aged around 70. Jose-Luis, a heavy smoker with health problems, is capable of little physical work so the burden has fallen on his wife. If I’d known what I was letting myself in for I might have thought twice. In my mind’s eye I saw the tractor doing the work, tearing out the undergrowth and levelling the area under the trees. This is the usual practice as it makes for easy picking when the beans are later knocked down with long poles.

In this instance, the plot that wanted clearing was on the south face of a steep, rock-strewn hill. Using the tractor was out of the question; it was hard enough negotiating the slope on foot. The trees had been left untended for several years. A forest of suckers sprouted around them and a jungle of undergrowth beneath them. The suckers come from the ungrafted part of the tree and are useless. They simply steal the tree’s energy and should be taken off every year.

I attacked them with long-handled loppers and used the strimmer on the undergrowth while Leonhilde hacked away with a hoe. From time to time Jose-Luis did a little raking or pruning. Mainly, he sat smoking - I've never seen him without a fag in his mouth - and repeating forlornly “Eu nao posso fazer nada.” (I can’t do a thing). It was really quite sad.

Over two mornings we got quite a lot of work done – although that’s only the first of half a dozen plots requiring attention. I reflected that this was how my ancestors had spent most of their lives – and millions of people still do - scraping a sweaty living from the hard earth. Even as a weight loss regime, it has little to recommend it. Little wonder that the younger generation has fled to the cities, leaving the old people, who know no better, to cultivate the land.

More immediately, the difficult part of this neighbourly arrangement fell upon Jones, who had to manage the morning dog-walks in my absence. That’s four beasts – plus Zeferino with Bobby. The first day she took them out in two shifts, facing loud protests from the parties left behind. The second day I took two with me, and that worked quite well. Raymond continues to eat us out of house and home – quite literally; anything made of wood, plastic or cloth is liable to be chewed up. His energy, like his appetite, is boundless. The other dogs flee indoors with us for a little peace and quiet.

Another struggle, one that we’ve become caught up in, is Natasha’s campaign to gain residency in Portugal. She came to me with a letter she’d received from the authorities, informing her of the documents she would be expected to present at an official interview. These include a tax return and receipts from her employer. Officially that’s me. I signed her work contract but, like her unofficial employers, we pay her cash in hand.

NATASHA
So we went to an accountant in Benafim to seek assistance. The good news is that it’s all being sorted out. The bad news is that we are both liable to a fine; she for handing the return in late and I for failing to fill in a tax form, relating to her employment, that I knew nothing about.

Natasha was puzzled that the same English word, “fine”, could serve to describe both a penalty and a pleasant day or excellent state of health. My “Word Origins” book says both meanings come from the Latin word, finis (end) along with lots of other words like final, finish and finance. It’s a truly excellent book, by John Ayto, should you be interested.

On Thursday, Jones threw a small party for our expat neighbours to celebrate the final sunset of her 63^rd year.
PREPARATIONS
The intended venue was Espargal’s rocky hilltop, 100 metres above the house. But the wind was gusting so fiercely that we fell back on a knoll beyond the summit, in the lee of the gale. I took up plastic chairs and tables on the back of the tractor, followed by a tub of drinks covered in ice (which Jones had been making for days) – and finally a car-load of goodies that she had spent the day preparing. Sarah and David, whose cottage is close by, assisted with a table and chairs of their own. The site proved a much more sensible, if less romantic, venue for the occasion. We toasted the sunset and wished Jones all the best for the year ahead.


She says she feels just as fit and well at 64 as she did at half that age, and if you saw her in action you’d believe her. When my back and joints are well disposed, I feel the same way. There are days, however, when I wonder whether we are simply vehicles for our genes.

Jones’ birthday was on the Friday. It was a run-around day. First came the usual crack of dawn (at least that’s how it seems) outing with Zeferino and the hounds.Then I went to fetch Natasha from the bus; she was working an extra day for us, part of a trade-off for her share of the social security tab that we pick up on her behalf. She spent most of the day cleaning our huge windows. We left her to it while we went to a birthday tea with neighbours, and then on to the Alte Hotel for a glass of wine and a sandwich. One really goes to the hotel for the magnificent views as much as anything.

In the afternoon I returned to the accountant to pick up the monthly receipts that I ought to have been giving Natasha. He had kindly filled out a bookfull of them on my behalf. For all his work, including her tax return, he charged me just 20 euros. I could hardly credit it. I’d expected a bill well into three figures and told him so. Then I ran Natasha back into Loule and dropped the strimmer off with the agent, having destroyed the clip holding the cap in my attempts to replace it.

Finally we joined all the gang up at the Hamburgo for a delicious lamb casserole. The restaurant is run by Manuel and his wife, Graca (soft “c”). She’s the cook, and a very good one too. For her lamb special they ask only a little advance warning. We sang happy birthday to Jones and brought back the bones for the dogs, who fell on them. We finished the evening as we often do, seated out on the front patio, sipping baggies, slipping biscuits to the dogs and gazing across at the lights twinkling on the far side of the valley. Maybe we’re more than just mules for our genes. I’m still thinking about it.

Letter from Espargal: 22 of 2008

BEFORE
Where does one start writing about a week whose focus has been on saving a neighbour’s tree? The neighbour, Humberto, lives at the bottom of the village. The tree is a magnificent old fig on the “running field”, just below our land. And the villain of the piece is bramble, whose thorny embrace had already stifled another tree close by.

SUFFOCATED FIG
The fig is one of several fruit and nut trees on the plot. Jones loves the plums and figs that they produce; I’m partial to them myself. We pass through the field most days with the dogs. Humberto, who like most of us is retired, is not interested in selling it or capable of tilling it. Over the years it had become completely overgrown. When we asked him if we might clear it at our own expense he had no objection. Clearing the open sections with the tractor was straight-forward. But tackling the bramble has required hand-to-hand combat.

AFTER
Bramble is a worthy adversary. It’s tough, vicious, swift-growing and capable of completely smothering even large trees. It tends to establish itself under branches and along the edges of fields, finding a purchase between rocks and fiercely resisting attempts at removal. Spraying keeps it in check but seldom eradicates it completely. When it’s entwined five metres high in the branches, there is no option but to take it out one spiky tendril at a time. This we have done, putting in hours and hours of prickly, painstaking labour. The result has been highly satisfying, as the figs should be in a few weeks’ time.

BANCO'S BROADWALK
Jones has also continued cutting back in the garden and along Banco’s Broadwalk, the lane at the bottom of our property that villagers use as a shortcut to the square. Over the years she has planted succulents and creepers along both edges of the lane until it’s become a garden in its own right. We trot along it daily as we go to fetch Zeferino and Bobby for our morning walk.

I’m thrilled to say that Bobby has been reborn. He can hardly credit his good fortune. Not only is he no longer imprisoned in his hot, dark shed, he’s also been taken off his wire run and allowed the freedom of the yard. Zeferino proudly tells us how the dog now follows him about in the fields.

He intends to take Bobby out with him when the carob-picking season starts in a few weeks. Master and dog still come back with us to the house each day. Zeferino and I get apple juice. Bobby, who is trying to cope with the onset of adolescent urges, gets a romp with Raymond. He can’t make up his mind whether he wants to mate or play and keeps on trying to impregnate Raymond’s head. What a hoot!

ZEFERINO

Speaking of such things: we went to the cinema to celebrate our Quintassential neighbour, David Davies’s birthday. I had studied the reviews of all the films on offer and suggested one entitled “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, a chick-flick that enjoyed good write-ups and an excellent mark on the IMDB. It was a mistake. The movie was more soft porn than chick-flick, not what we were expecting. The language was as biological as the action. I don’t mean to sound prudish. It just feels a bit out of place – like finding yourself at a service in the wrong church.

Behind us, two bored pre-pubescent girls amused themselves while Daddy watched the entertainment on screen. I do hope his daughters didn’t understand English. Why the reviewers so liked the film is beyond me. If Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction warranted a half million plus dollar fine, then Sarah Marshall’s antics would have closed Hollywood down.

That wasn’t the only scheme that didn’t go entirely to plan. At the weekend Jones and I attended the annual Senior University banquet where, as customary, the volunteer teachers were presented with a gift in recognition of services rendered. This year’s trophy was a handsome plate in blue rippled glass. I set it up on Jones’s desk to admire while we considered where to keep it. We didn’t have to consider long because, as I opened the patio door to find out what was upsetting Raymond outside, the wind caught the plate and tossed it to the floor.

I was mortified as much by my stupidity (the law of unforeseen consequences) as its loss. While Jonesy kindly picked up the blue shards, she suggested that I phone the university to see if a plate was going spare. The boss invited me to drop in the next day. I did and came home with the last of his plates. I have carefully set it up in a display cabinet.

On Tuesday morning, after breakfast in Loule, we went around to Natasha’s digs to help her change the lock on the front door. She has been uneasy for a while, having heard nothing from Dani in weeks and having no idea when he might return. He took a key with him when he left and she is fearful of returning home from work one day to find him in situ – in what is now her bedroom. She doesn’t like surprises, she confided, a sentiment with which I sympathise.

We arrived at the house to find Natasha looking glum. She said the owner, an elderly fellow who passes most of his day in cafes, had refused to allow the lock to be changed. We couldn’t find another solution. The door to Natasha’s bedroom is both fragile and damaged and will not take a lock. So she either has to live with the situation or find somewhere else to stay.

She came back with us to Espargal to clean the house. She's super-efficient and we stay out of her way as far as possible, Jones in the garden and the dogs in the car - the best place in the world, they reckon. Afterwards, as usual, I meant to run Natasha down to the bus. I’d forgotten, however, that the service had been discontinued over the school holidays. So we had to run her back into town again in the evening, a 20-minute ride each way.

It’s the kind of journey that we’re trying to avoid, with petrol now costing over 1.50 euros a litre and heading steadily upwards. In a way we feel it’s a good thing. A pain in the pocket reaches parts that global warming doesn't; pity about the workers losing their jobs as the big US car-makers close down factories producing pick-ups and 4x4s. Americans, who think they’re hard done by, have no idea how expensive fuel is in Europe, where it’s taxed, often heavily. Portugal’s fuel, like the UK’s, is among the most expensive. Thousands of Portuguese motorists regularly fill up across the border in Spain, where the tax is much lower.

One afternoon I took the tractor down to Vitor’s garage for an oil change - a service he willingly performs. Tractors generally require new engine oil every 100 hours. It’s a dirty job - not a difficult one; I’ve done it often enough. But it makes more sense to go to Vitor, who as well as being more flexible than I am, has a grease gun to service the nipple points and a compressor to clean the gunge off the radiator.

Vitor is both knowledgeable and helpful. He knows exactly what makes tractors tick and deals with some problems before I’m even aware of them. One of the rear lights was coming adrift as the result of a collision with a branch. Vitor cut, drilled and fixed two small metal plates beneath the light to secure it. For an hour’s work (on top of nuts, bolts and a spare light bulb) he charged me 10 euros. I made it 20 and considered it cheap at the price.

Another bargain is the cost of refreshments in Benafim. It was to the café there that we took ourselves on Friday morning as a reward for our labours under the fig tree. Two coffees, two cakes and a generous glass of medronho came to less than 4 euros. Afterwards I took a couple of snaps of Jones and the dogs standing under a brilliant bougainvillea across the road from the café. I mention this really just as an excuse to stick a picture on the blog.

My current reading is “Mind the Gaffe” by R. L. Trask, a gift from Cathy. It’s my kind of book. I hesitate to describe it as a pedant’s delight lest I do myself a disservice. If you want to know the difference between “discreet” and “discrete”, it’s invaluable – a blogger’s handbook. My task isn't always an easy one. Not only do I have to convince Jones that my word-choice is apposite, I also have to suffer the slings and arrows of critics who point out slips like calling our tree a Cyprus rather than a Cypress.

On a sad note, an English neighbour has died of cancer. She had been ill for some time, nursed by her husband. We have seen very little of them. But we understand from friends that his devotion and care have been extraordinary in the most difficult circumstances. The couple bought down here a few years ago and moved in after his recent retirement. As so often, we count our blessings.