Letter from Espargal: 38 of 2008

If we were to compare perfect days, today might qualify as the Algarvian entry. The vine leaves are reddening under a mellow sun in the gentlest breeze. I love it. We are back from a trek across the valley to look for fallen plums in the orchard half way to Benafim. There weren’t any – none that had survived the rain. Instead, we sought shiny stones (quartz) to extend the crystal path in the garden and wallowed in the pleasure of being alive and active on such a day.

It was not so earlier in the week when we were assailed by thunderstorms that had us huddling around a fire for comfort. A flash and terrific clap of thunder overhead knocked out the electricity mid afternoon, imposing our first candlelit evening in years. It was close to midnight before power was restored.


But it isn’t the weather that’s been on our minds. This honour goes to a court case in which I and a number of friends were called to give evidence. It was my first hands-on experience of the Portuguese judicial system, as well as the first time I’ve testified in court - no big deal but quite tense nonetheless. All my sympathies lay with the complainant; the defendant is a disputatious former neighbour who will, I hope, get his comeuppance in due course.

Both were in the court, along with their counsel, the judge (an attractive young woman) and the usual lackeys. Witnesses, with the assistance of a translator, were questioned by the judge and lawyers for both parties. Also testifying were our friends and former neighbours, David and Dagmar, and another friend, Mike Wood.

At issue was the access to our former home, the Quintassential, across a strip of land that belongs to the awkward neighbour. When we bought the property 22 years ago, our access was guaranteed by the then owners, the neighbour’s parents. But the contract they signed was never notarised, which meant it carried less authority, matters of which we knew nothing at the time.

The case was brought by the Quintassential’s new owners against the neighbour, who had been harassing them to create a totally new entrance on the far side of the property (all but impossible) or, otherwise, to move their gate and enter by a different access route (awkward and impractical). This neighbour doesn’t actually live next door. The problem has arisen because he built a large villa (which he can’t sell) on the property and he resents the passage of other people’s vehicles across a corner of his land.

The interesting bit is to know how he obtained permission to build in the first place because, as I and other witnesses testified, we had never come across a ruin that might justify the later construction of a house. Ruins serve to show that a property was once occupied and generally persuade the authorities to permit a new construction. This issue might be important to the outcome of the case – if it transpires that the neighbour falsely claimed to have a ruin, with the connivance of a corrupt official.

QUINTASSENTIAL 1988
That evening, I went through Jones’s bulging picture scrap book and found a number of pictures that were taken shortly after we had finished building at the Quinta. They clearly show the neighbour’s property below the Quinta -. with no sign of any ruin. I emailed the pictures to the new owners. The disagreeable fellow may come to rue the day that the dispute went to court.

We joined David and Dagmar to see the latest film of the Coen brothers (of whom we’re fans), a black comedy, Burn after Reading. It hasn’t had great write-ups but we came away well satisfied.

Jones has had a very Portuguese week. After Portuguese lessons on Monday she went to tea with Maria of the Conception.
JONES,MARIA & HER DOG - RAYMOND'S DAD

On Wednesday she joined other expats at Elsa’s house for tea and Portuguese conversation – a new venture. Tuesday and Thursday she went through Portuguese exercises with Marie and Olly. I tried joining in this revision but found my companions too technical and precise for my taste. They want to know what the rule is (a Jones strong point), which verb tenses are required and why. I prefer to go with the flow. I guess it’s whatever works for you.

During one neighbourly visit, we were summoned next door by mad Dina into the cottage she shares with old Chico. Although she is unable to speak, other than a few barely-decipherable words, Dina loves to sit in front of the telly. The picture was fine but the audio was lacking and Dina was understandably unhappy. We fiddled around with the wires and aerial but were unable to restore the sound.

Later we were able to secure another elderly set in working order, which I took around to the cottage. Stepping carefully across the food-strewn floor and between puddles of dubious liquids, I installed the set in the front room. Dina was thrilled to have her programmes back. She laughed wildly and tried to hug her knight-errant. She's a large woman with a vast bust, whose hugs are better avoided. Side-stepping the hospitality that was being pressed upon me, I made my escape.

Early next month we are expecting guests, whose sojourn gives us the opportunity to spend a few days away. I searched the internet for hours for a venue that would take dogs (sadly, our favourite dog-taking pousada is closed at the moment) and eventually came across a holiday cottage in the Alentejo whose owner was prepared to have us.

In preparation for this, we have been allowing Raymond inside the house (where he has to lie down on a mat) and taking him for outings in the car.
MOVE OVER

While the other dogs travel on the back seat, Raymond is consigned to the rear. If the journey lasts more than a few minutes, he is messily car sick. Yuck! I have been busy cleaning the car and Jones equally busy putting our dog towels through the laundry.

Such episodes aside, the dog is growing both affectionate and obedient. He loves to play with his brother, Bobby, who is smaller but more assertive. Bobby was adopted by an 88-year old neighbour, Zeferino, who remains fit and active in spite of his advanced years.
We came across the pair of them during one of our walks and joined them for the next hour through the fields and orchards.

The final kilometre of the route home can be taken either gently by road or up the slopes of Puffer Hill, where the paths are steep, stony and slippery. Zeferino opted to accompany us up the hill. Our doubts about the wisdom of this proved to be needless. Although the old man was slow he didn’t falter, declining any support. It gives one hope for the years ahead.

Letter from Espargal: 37 of 2008

In view of the growing demand for the rescue of vehicles in distress, I am giving consideration to going commercial. You will be aware (if you’ve been diligent) of the recent rescue of Mr Frosty’s lorry after the driver had graunched his differential while making an ill-advised 3-point turn. Well, hard on its heels came a call-out to save a neighbour from a sandy fate on the banks of the Algibre river.

Fintan’s plea for assistance reached me as I was concluding a purchase in the spare parts department of VW in Faro.
In consequence, he and his son, David, had to wait an hour to be rescued while I drove home and fetched the tractor. Even so, when I arrived at the scene I found the pair of them in good humour although I have it from impeccable sources that the air had earlier turned blue. (It’s not that the river was in flood or that there was any danger to life; in fact, there was hardly a puddle to be seen in the river-bed.)

The problem was that their car was firmly stuck in a steep, sandy rut near the ford where the tourist jeeps cross. (We provided a diversion for one of them.) It wasn’t the easiest of rescues. The car’s tow-point was awkwardly concealed behind its low-slung front spoiler and David had the devil of a job trying to thread the thick rope through it. Once he had managed this, Kioti hauled the car to safety with his usual SOS nonchalance.

Another minor adventure called for rather more effort, although not on the part of the tractor. This one entailed the removal, what my wife refers to as a “repatriation”, of a rock – nay, more of a boulder - that had taken her fancy. She had long admired the this particular stone and was thoroughly put out to find it pushed aside during the road making activities of the machines that have been grunting around the area. As we passed by with the dogs, Jones ventured the opinion that the rock would look good on our property (never mind that it weighed half a ton).

The hint was clear. Armed with two large crowbars, I drove to the scene – about a kilometre away. As usual when collecting large rocks (we have a line of them along the bottom of the property) I was able to back the tractor up and wedge the base of the box underneath it. But strain as I might, I couldn’t get the thing on board. Nor could I both lever the rock and hold it up while I tried to slip smaller stones
underneath it.


It so happened, as I was puffing and heaving, that a neighbour, Liz Brown, came strolling past with her dogs. Accustomed as she is to local eccentricities, she still evinced some surprise at my antics. I explained the situation. One has to hand it to Liz. She is not the sort to watch a man making a fool of himself without assisting him, and with barely a comment about some neighbours’ proclivities, she put her shoulder to the boulder. Between us, in a matter of minutes, we’d shoved
that jolly stone on to the back of the tractor.

Getting if off again, at the entrance to one of the fields, was easy by comparison. I’d planned not to say anything to Jones (who was having tea with Maria of the Conception) but she was alerted by another neighbour to my activities and pleased to find the handsome stone now firmly ensconced in a position where it was unlikely to be further disturbed.

Midweek we fetched Natasha, who was unhappy with aspects of her young son, Alex’s, new bicycle, and took her to the shopping centre where she’d bought it on the outskirts of Faro. It was apparently missing a bell and other features. While she confronted the sales staff, we took a leisurely coffee. Back at the car she confessed that she’d had no luck. Other bicycles came with a range of extras but hers
apparently did not. We stopped for an hour on the way back to install an anti-virus suite on a friend’s computer (Kaspersky’s – I really like it); then another hour to attach some more racks to the walls of Natasha’s flat.

JONES WITH HALO

By the time we’d finished, our haloes were burnished to a gleaming dazzle.

On Thursday we took ourselves to the opening a small art exhibition at a fancy hotel near the coast. One of the artists, Liv Wedset, is a fellow pupil in our Portuguese class. Several other class members arrived to lend support.
Jones, who is the family art fundi, was impressed by what she saw and resolved to acquire a number of pictures as soon as we win the Euromillions lottery.

From there we continued to a celebratory supper at the Adega. We are about to mark our 29^th wedding anniversary. I had duck rice, Jones stuck to her usual salad and we shared a really classy bottle of wine. (I needed a small baggy to restore my nerves earlier in the week after hearing from a friend, who’d been on a Scandinavian cruise, of the wicked price of beer and wine.)

One of the two brothers who run the restaurant was comparing building woes with a party of Dutch guests. He’d tried to build his own house, he told them, but was eventually defeated, not by the construction but by the impenetrable wall of bureaucracy that surrounded it.

Friday dawned cloudy. We took ourselves on a long trek through the hills. Half way down the road (now under re-construction) to the river we found our passage blocked. Two large machines were creating a culvert. One of them, a picapau was bashing its way laboriously through solid rock. All the holes that have been drilled for
electricity posts are also into solid rock. We conclude that our hill is a big lump of rock, like several others around us that are now giant quarries. On the far side we ran into more machines and people, erecting poles and running cables through them. All these poles appear to be intended to take electricity to a single remote house. Either that or there's a vast secret project about to unfold.

Fintan and Pauline invited us around to their house in the afternoon to meet son Geoffrey and his wife, Yvonne. Pauline is famous for her teas. We went, of course. At one point I went outside to give the dogs leg-lifters, only to bump into the tractor salesman from Benafim. One of his new tractors, identical to mine, had been incorrectly wired and wouldn't function for more than a few minutes before overheating. So he wanted to check the wiring on mine. I took him home to show him.

I’ve been scarifying our fields in preparation for the showers that are forecast for tomorrow. They’ve turned green, already, after last week’s rain. The weeds grow so fast that they reseed themselves within a matter of weeks. Some villagers are already planting fava beans. That will be our next task. We’ve nearly finished consuming last season’s, beans that Jones has stored in the freezer, and they’re as good as new.

P.S. Take a look at this fruit. Do you recognise it? I'm prepared to bet that you don't. No it isn't a tomato. It's a persimmon, given to us by Leonhilda. My wife tells me that one has to eat them very ripe. The skin is bitter and must be peeled. There you have it.

Letter from Espargal: 36 of 2008

If it seems to you that my prose is a little more sensitively phrased than usual, it may be because of the care that I am taking on the keyboard with the middle finger and ring finger on my right hand. The pair of them came off the worse for wear midweek during an encounter with a rock that I was laying on the “simple steps”. While I don’t mean to cast any aspersions, the fact is that I had already placed the rock in position twice but not to Jones’s satisfaction.

Although she normally acknowledges my creative talent in positioning rocks, on this occasion she wasn’t happy, and to please her I was trying again. It was as I dropped the rock into exactly the right position that it trapped my fingers against its neighbour and left me clutching my protesting digits. (I have a satisfying bruise.) If there were any consolation to be had, it was to find Jones at last content with the arrangement.

The “simple steps” have occupied much of the week. They connect the cobble-stone driveway and parking area with the upper garden. For years a steep and rocky path has linked the two, quite negotiable while used soberly or during daylight but otherwise not for sissies. Our neighbour, Idalecio, who has constructed the superb stone wall terraces in the lower garden, had pledged to build us decent steps once he had a little time on his hands. But he has been caught up with the demands of his summer guests, carob picking and other business interests. So, having completed Terry’s Terrace in acceptable fashion, and with my wife’s encouragement, I thought that I might have a crack at the steps myself.

They’ve been quite tricky. The route is on a rising curve, studded with outcrops of bedrock. Construction is by the simplest possible method; I have cemented the risers into position and, once Jones has put down a plastic lining to hinder weeds, we have backfilled with gravel. I don’t mean to make it sound easy because it hasn’t been. (Forgive me if I give myself a left-handed pat on the back). The challenge has made the results all the more pleasing. Jones, who has advanced critical faculties, has lauded my efforts.

On Thursday we took a break when Jones attended a ladies’ lunch that ran well into the afternoon. She was a founder member of a women’s luncheon group that was inspired by a neighbour in Cruz da Assumada, although she retired from it soon after. She joined some 40 other members and former members for a 10th anniversary celebration at a hotel set high on a hillside above the town of Sao Bras. After dropping her off at the entrance, I took myself and the dogs to a rather more humble meal at one of our regular stops.

I’ve been relistening online to a BBC business programme that I first heard last weekend. In it, various representatives of Icelandic banks, which have been doing big business in the UK, swear blind that their banks are sound and that depositors’ money is safe. Less than a week later, their banks are defunct and depositors are clamouring for succour at the British government’s door. Jones and I have been taking in the daily news with a sense of dread, wondering where the turmoil’s going to end and what the world will look like when it does.

In the meanwhile we have been into Loule to open a new bank account. Following the collapse of the Bradford and Bingley, we’ve been dividing the accessible parts of our modest savings pie among different institutions. As it happens, there are a few disquieting clouds over our regular Portuguese bank. Although it gives me excellent service – it’s streets ahead of our British bank - the senior management has left much to be desired.

As I write, Ono is capering around beside me with his lover (a sponge-filled cushion that he alternately tries to impregnate and uses for tugs-of-war). He is damp. I had to wash him down after our morning walk. While off lead, he rolled himself in an irresistible dollop of extra-squishy poo. And since he is fond of hopping up on to the bed with the humans (dare I confess it?) a swift and fragrant clean-up was mandatory. Raymond, who had the more of the same smeared across his neck, got the same treatment. I had to beg a bucket of water en route from two building workers to clean him up sufficiently to attach his lead.

We noticed as we walked that a line of new electricity poles now occupies the holes that a picapau has been drilling across the hills for the past several weeks. Big lorries with heavy lifting gear have been trundling along our gravel roads, bearing cargoes of long reinforced-concrete poles. How they negotiated the steep tractor tracks up the poles is hard to know. Jones groaned at the rape of her pristine countryside. I told her that it was the price of progress but it isn’t the kind of progress that she wants to see.

Saturday: My letter is late. That’s because we’ve been so caught up with the simple steps and trying to tire Raymond (which is a bit like trying to wear out the force of gravity). We were woken by a storm overnight and were delighted at dawn to find that 22 mms of rain had fallen on the garden. I know the Brits are sick and tired of the wet stuff. We live in the expectation that the Algarve will get steadily drier and hotter in the years ahead, and we count every drop that falls a blessing.

At Ermenio’s urging, we drove down to his tomato fields on the valley floor before lunch to take as many fallen tomatoes as we could carry. We had come across him tying up his wind-blown saplings in the fields as we walked to the café at Alto Fica for coffees and baggies this morning. He thanked us for the large sack of carobs that I’d deposited at his sorting shed yesterday. As for the tomatoes, their season is virtually over. They lie in their thousands on the muddy ground, most of them destined to return to the earth. Jones feels pained at the waste. I have learned that agriculture is about earning a living, not feeding the hungry.

For computer users only: I have had the satisfaction of sorting out a minor yet exceedingly irritating problem that I was encountering with Excel. For some inexplicable reason, the alphabetical letters at the top of columns were replaced with numbers on my files, which made it really difficult for me to enter formulae in the cells. After much googling I discovered that this setting can easily be changed back to letters. Anybody who has encountered similar problems can save themselves the trouble of googling around by sending me a sensible donation – gold coins are proving most acceptable right now.

Letter from Espargal: 35 of 2008

Two quite exciting things have brought a little fizz to our lives. The first was a ketchup bottle, plastic fortunately, which exploded as Jones was lifting it down from the shelf, splattering her and her kitchen with a starburst of ketchup bomblets. I’ve known ketchup bottles build up a head of steam before but nothing quite like this. Jones stood with her hands outstretched, disbelieving of the mess that confronted her. Naturally, like a good spouse, I hurried to offer sympathy and assistance.


The second event was the collapse of our bank. When I say our bank, I mean that we kept some of our savings there. It was a regular British bank, formerly a building society. And like lots of other banks, it dabbled in the disastrous US mortgage market and got screwed by the credit crunch. Last Friday it was trading as normal, although its share price was plummeting. By Monday it was history, subsumed after frantic weekend negotiations into a rival, which had itself already been swallowed up by a bigger bank in an earlier take-over.

The authorities hastened to assure depositors that their money was safe. We remained somewhat edgy because, to avoid double taxation of interest, we have placed our deposits offshore, beyond any assurance of government guarantees. Depositors are being reassured that their savings are safe and urged to leave their money where it is.

That’s another story. As you may be aware, the Irish government has rushed through a bill that gives a 100% guarantee to depositors with Irish banks. (Britain, with some caveats, guarantees the first £35,000 of deposits – an amount due to be raised to £50,000.) I phoned an offshore branch of an Irish bank to hear more. They’d simply been overwhelmed by the flood of enquiries, I was told, two thousand on one day alone. Other European governments, considering the implications for their own financial institutions, are less than pleased with the Irish.

What else? Well, among other things we got a soaking over the weekend and we loved it, 60 mms of wonderful, wet, refreshing rain – the first real downpours of the season. The heavens crackled and zipped, my internet connection went down and the electricity tripped a few times but we didn’t mind. The garden just soaked the water up.

By Tuesday a green veneer was spreading across the fields, millions of tiny twin-leafed weedlets. This annual explosion of new life astonishes me time and again. It’s as though a huge, hidden life-force is lying coiled just below the surface of the earth, poised, like the waiting colonies of flying-ants, for the release of the rain trigger.

The wetness brings new smells to excite the dogs, possibly those of the wild pigs whose hoofprints are stamped into the damp earth. These animals co-exist invisibly with us. We occupy the land by day, they by night. We never see them – although Ermenio told me he’d come across a large fellow making his way unconcernedly through the valley early one morning.

Speaking of which, Ermenio has brought us tomatoes, pears and grapes to thank us for our carob contributions. We are feasting on fruit. The most delicious figs are still available for the plucking; Jones filled a bucket with plums that had fallen from an orchard along the road to Benafim. The owner waved his approval and reluctantly accepted the 5-euro note that we proferred in payment.

JONES & PLUMS ON TERRY'S TERRACE

We have completed Terry’s Terrace, an extension that transforms a former rubble bank beside the house into an attractive feature. We backfilled the terrace with stones and covered these with gravel, giving Jones another place to sit. Jones likes lots of places to sit. Ask her why she wants a particular feature in the garden and she’ll tell you it will be a place to sit. We’ll put a garden bench on Terry’s Terrace as soon as I’ve given the benches their annual rub and varnish. After that, we’ll leave the overhanging olive tree to resurface the terrace with olive pips. Although the tree is beautiful and much appreciated, it’s ungrafted and its olives uninviting.

SNOWDROPS, WE THINK

On Thursday we took the car into Honda in Faro, who checked it over and replaced some expensive worn parts before taking it for its annual inspection. Anna, the workshop boss, assured me that the car would otherwise have failed and, a little unwillingly, I believed her. As I tell Jones, the CRV is now 8 years old; given the decline of the pound sterling, we’re unlikely to replace the car soon, and it makes sense to maintain it well. It’s given us great service.

These annual checks are taken seriously. Inspectors plug the car into a lot of computerised high-teckery that reveals the least failing. In principle, I’m in favour. In a further attempt to make the roads safer, the authorities have introduced legislation that requires drivers to renew their licences at 50, 60 and 65 and regularly thereafter. Such “elderly” motorists have to present a medical certificate saying they’re fit to drive – never mind that they present little danger to their fellows.

Our return home from Faro was marred by two accidents on the motorway. There was nearly a third, on the approach to a village, when a truck driver slammed on brakes to avoid hitting a van that had stopped for a speed-triggered red traffic light. Whether the truck driver had failed to see the red light or whether he was simply astonished that anybody would actually stop for one, is hard to know.

On our Friday morning walk around the hill (75 mins) we ran into the big yellow machines that have been grinding up and down the road to the river - more accurately, to the river bed! Why this quite acceptable gravel road is being turned into a minor highway is hard to know. There are no houses or developments in the area. The road is used only by a few farmers, hunters and safari jeep tourists. But improved and developed it is being, willy nilly. Near the road, the picapau has left a dozen large holes that are clearly intended for electricity poles. All may be revealed in due course.