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.