Letter from Espargal: 43 of 2008

It’s been cold. Some days it’s felt almost as though we were back in a Canadian winter, in spite of the thermometer’s insistence that temperatures remain comfortably above zero. Certainly, there was nothing comfortable about the winds that howled down from the Arctic. We’ve kept our shirts and jerseys zipped up to the throat on our walks. The dogs have taken up station around the wood-burning stove, which is working overtime.

The week began in a hurry and continued that way. Monday brought the usual English and Portuguese lessons, closely followed by the Portuguese class end-of-year lunch. For this event we retired to Pedras d’Agua restaurant (Water Stones), a once favourite (now, bit distant) venue, just down the road from the Quinta. We presented our Portuguese teacher, Antonio, with a book on the wines and wine regions of Portugal. Antonio’s real job is teaching English at the high school in Loule. Like most Portuguese teachers he’s up in arms over the education minister’s attempts to force through a controversial new teacher evaluation regime - Antonio says just in a bid to save money.

In the afternoon I had a phone conversation with a worried Natasha, who is still trying to legalise her position in Portugal. She’d been contacted by the immigration department and told that she had no chance of getting a residence visa unless she obtained a new work contract from me, raising her income to the national minimum wage. She was given three days to hand the required documents in to the government offices in Faro.

The evening was spent trying to help a neighbour work out why his internet link had failed. The puzzling part was that his service provider had no record of his contract, even though he was paying monthly for the service. We eventually got it sorted out. It was one of those Portuguese situations, so complicated that their telling requires its own chapter. I’ll spare you. The toughest bit was getting through to a help-line operator; the ISP computer didn’t recognise the home phone number that we had to key in – and kept us in an endless loop.

Next day I got a call from Barclays public relations in Jersey in connection with a complaint that I made months ago. The bank had failed to pay me due interest, a failing that puzzled the clerk whom I eventually got through to at the time. (Callers typically have to wait for 10 to 15 minutes while the call centre computer repeatedly assures them that they will be attended to by “an account executive” ASAP.)

The public relations woman was contrite. She said the interest owed would be paid promptly. The interest, I told her, was the least of my complaints. It was bank’s ridiculous call-waiting times that drove me to close my account. She promised that this complaint too would be looked into. I’m not holding my breath.

JONES PICKING UP BITS OF SPONGE - SEE BELOW

Next morning, Natasha sent a text saying that she had missed the bus to Benafim – not for the first time. Young Alex keeps her up late and, as a consequence, she struggles to get him up and off to the crèche in time. I advised her to take the lunchtime bus instead – which she did. Not that she got much work done in the afternoon; the pair of us spent most of it with an accountant, drawing up the required new work contract.

This contract will not affect Natasha’s real wages but it will sharply raise the related social security payments. She filed the papers with the Financas and the Social Security offices and we then ran her into Faro to present the duly stamped and approved documents to the authorities. An official rang me to check that it was all kosher. I assured him that it was. Now we wait; her prospects look good.

We joined David and Dagmar at the cinema to see the new Brideshead Revisited. It was ok in a slow period drama way. I drifted off for a while, an interlude that didn’t seem to spoil the film. The Portuguese subtitler mis-read much of the dialogue – translating expressions such as “still” (meaning “even so”) as “calm”. There were just a handful of people in the cinema, most of them English-speaking, so it didn’t much matter. Local audiences prefer action movies.

I’ve been suffering from a dodgy tooth and waiting for my dentist to make an appearance. He is an itinerant South African who lives some 400 kms away in Spain and divides his time between surgeries in three countries. On the day of the appointment, his receptionist called asking me to come in early. The problems required double root canals and new crowns. The bill hurt more than the drill.

One thing to be said about the dentist is that he doesn’t hang about. His assistant can hardly stay up with his requests. He said he wanted to get back home to Spain that afternoon – about a 2.5 hour drive he reckoned. That’s really moving. I’d noticed the Porsche parked outside the surgery. Clearly, dentists are not feeling the pain.


Tooth or no tooth, I have remained partial to the occasional piece of chocolate. Waking from a siesta one afternoon, I spied a small Kit Kat bar in a basket on the dining room table. It was just what I felt like. I made a neat slit in the wrapper and considerately removed half the bar, leaving the rest for Jones (not that she would ever consume half a bar). Then I thought no more about it. A day or two later we came across neighbours who thanked Jones for a gift she had taken them but expressed their puzzlement at getting half a Kit Kat. The light dawned. We’ve bought another Kit Kat to present them with the other half.

Today we are promised rain. It’s much needed. In preparation, we have fertilized the carob trees, hauling the 50 kg sacks of ammonia-something around the property on the back of the tractor and scattering half a bucket around the trunk of each tree. The carob trees represent a link with the history of the Algarve as well as a serious part of the local economy. One doesn’t ever own carobs. One just looks after them until the next generation.

Raymond’s love affair with Braveheart the cat continues. We have fetched Raymond’s brother, Bobby, from a yard 100 metres away as often as possible to let the pair of them play together and to give Bobby a solid meal. They charge around madly, not doing the garden any good but usefully tiring Raymond. The downside is that they love nothing more than disembowelling sponge-filled cushions.

Poor Bobby spends most of his day on a chain and his nights in a dark little shed. Jones made a cardboard kennel to go into the shed. I was carrying it down the path in front of me yesterday afternoon when I twisted my knee. A kindly neighbour has lent me crutches. Several days of inaction lie ahead.

Letter from Espargal: 42 of 2008

Thursday night: Espargal is settling down to sleep after a simple yet moving event. The people of the area accompanied the statue of the Virgin Mary of Fatima along the road to the old village school in a candle-lit procession. I think it was the timelessness of the occasion, the sense of pilgrimage, that lent it appeal. It is hard to convey the emotions in words and I must leave it to the pictures on the blog to express what I can’t.

It is an event for which the village spent much of the week preparing. (The statue normally stands in the shrine at Fatima where Mary is believed by the faithful to have appeared several times to three young Portuguese shepherd children in 1917.) In anticipation of the visit the school exterior was repainted before being decked in flowers and palm fronds. Houses along the route were similarly decorated. So were public taps, culverts and even road-side rubbish bins. Gates were hung with flowers.

Several pigeons were crammed into a small cage, to be released at the appropriate moment. Jones indignantly asked the man bearing the cage whether the birds had been fed and watered. He wasn’t sure. Whatever the case, I don't doubt that they survived the experience.

We asked ourselves for whose benefit this was all being done. Clearly, it wasn’t for the sake of the statue. Possibly it was what the statue represented, or maybe that’s how people always prepare for a festival. Whatever the case, we all had the sense that a special honour was being bestowed on the village.

Dozens of estrangeiros, including all our neighbours, turned out for the procession among the hundreds of Portuguese. For many of us, belief didn’t come into it. Our motives, I think, were somewhere between respectful curiosity and the wish to be part of a fascinating local event. The gathering point was the pavement outside the twin cafes at Alto Fica, two kms from the village. Having left the protesting dogs howling at the front door, I drove down with Jones, giving a lift to our Dutch neighbours (who later supplied some of the pictures) en route. They planned to join the procession while I drove back to Espargal to meet them.

We arrived ahead of the crowds, and refreshed ourselves, as night fell, at the Star of the Morning café. Old Chico and Mad Dina were already seated in the café; she made the sign of the cross several times to indicate her sense of the occasion. The parish priest introduced himself to us, a charming young fellow, who said he had five congregations to look after and had told his bishop that he needed a helicopter.

Candles for the procession were on sale from a car boot for those who hadn’t obtained them in advance from the parish office. Each candle had a plastic cup fixed to it to protect the flame from the wind – not that this protection was really needed for there was hardly a breeze. More candles twinkled inside hundreds of 5-litre plastic bottles that lined the route, and yet more flickered on patios and small shrines.

The crowd gathered in two long lines ahead of the statue and moved off towards the village, reciting the rosary and singing hymns.“She” was borne aloft on the shoulders of the litter bearers.The walk took about 45 minutes. When the procession reached the old school, the faithful gathered in the grounds for a brief service. We looked on from a neighbouring house that belonged to one of the expats. Then “she” was placed on the back of a pickup, to travel back to the church. We returned home to reflect on the occasion and offer consoling treats to our outraged dogs – they hate being left behind.

During supper at the Hamburgo a couple a nights later, we were astonished to see what appeared to be the statue standing on the icecream refrigerator. For a moment I thought that it had been placed there for safekeeping while its guardians took supper. But Graca, the cook (and wife of the proprietor), confessed that the statue was hers and that she was merely taking the opportunity to display it.

Saturday: I had intended to get this off on Friday morning but events intervened. As we returned home from our morning walk via the running field just below the house, we bumped into a Portuguese couple who were pruning their trees. A forest of branches lay about. We fell into conversation, during the course of which we were offered the wood cuttings which, they said, would otherwise be burned. The stuff was too good to waste. The upshot was that a neighbour, Olly, and I spent the better part of the day chain-sawing the branches into handy sizes. We got two large tractor loads. Jones worked beside us with the big shears, preparing piles of kindling.

Like most folk around here, we light a fire in the house each evening to take the chill out of the air. The cast-iron salamandra in the centre of the lounge, with its long chimney pipe, is wonderfully efficient and brings the whole house to a comfortable temperature within a few minutes. Our days continue picture perfect, gentle sunshine under cloudless blue skies. It’s ideal weather for tourists but not for farmers. Our beans and peas will soon be shrivelling up in the fields. We have started watering the garden again. Each day we look anxiously at the ten-day forecast for signs of rain and each day we’re disappointed.

This morning we walked 45 minutes down the gravel road (being widened and soon to be tarred) to the Algibre river bed at the bottom of the valley. It was as dry as a bone. There wasn’t a drop of water in the wide gravel bed. We walked up to the low dam wall that the farmers of old erected to hold their irrigation water. That too was completely dry. We are fortunate that the boreholes in the valley still give us an adequate supply. For drinking water, some villagers still turn to the old hand-pump beside the well.

Midweek we made a visit to the Griffin bookshop in Almancil to get some new reading matter. While there was masses of popular fiction on display – clearly the preferred reading of the retired expat class – their non-fiction shelves were thinly populated. Even so, I returned with half a dozen volumes that should take me the next several months to wade through. I have been reduced for the past month to John Ayto’s splendid “Word Origins” which, while fascinating in parts – try “blimp” or “bonfire” – is thicker than potato soup. I generally manage a page a night and am barely halfway through the “b”s.

Our big puppy, Raymond, is having an affair with Braveheart, one of the black cats. Braveheart deliberately takes up station beside the dog in the evening and endures several minutes of intimate nuzzling before calling a halt to proceedings. The cat often settles himself in the dog’s basket, leaving Raymond with just his rear in the basket and the rest of him sprawled across the floor. It’s quite touching. The other cats remain distrustful of the dog and continue to give him a wide berth.

Letter from Espargal:41 of 2008

A Quantum of Solace at the Algarve Forum made for a pleasantly explosive start to our week. We thought the film good value. We’re agreed that Daniel Craig is the best of the Bonds, better even than Sean Connery, although some might regret the move away from style to hard-edged action. Jonesy, who dislikes film violence, said the whole plot was so fantastical that the string of killings didn’t bother her. Certainly, our hero displays a remarkable ability to survive the most ferocious episodes, suffering just a few scratches while disposing of formidable villains.

The large courtyard at the Forum was ablaze with a vast artificial tree. As much as I resent the arrival of Christmas in November (when Advent’s abstinence would be more pertinent), I had to admire the tree. It is so big that I had difficulty capturing the whole image with my phone camera.

Our real digital camera, a Canon Ixus, has given up the ghost. No, I exaggerate. The camera’s not quite dead but all it records now are fuzzy spectra. I know nothing about the innards of a digital camera but our guests, Mike and Lyn, who are camera buffs, suggested a failed “CCD” – a charge-coupled device.

A google search soon revealed numerous unhappy camera owners complaining about the failings of these sensors. Like ourselves, the complainants found that their cameras suddenly ceased to function. Those with cameras under warranty, or who tried to claim insurance, were generally accused of having dropped the camera – a charge that all denied. The long and the short of it is that it’s cheaper to buy a new camera than a new CCD.

Also reaching the end of their lives were two of my long-suffering Tilley hats. (For the uninitiated, Mr Tilley – a Canadian – claims to make the best cotton hats in the world, and probably does.) Mine have borne the heat and burden of the years, being much patched and repaired in the process. Hard-wearing as they are, they don’t last the claimed life-time. However – and this is the point – Tilley guarantees to replace free of charge any (properly-registered) hat that is honestly worn out.

So, I posted the two old hats along to Mr Tilley in Toronto, along with a picture of me wearing his headgear (I look remarkably like him) and a polite note, wondering whether he’d like to send me one new hat for two old ones.Sure enough, this week a parcel arrived from Canada. In it were TWO new Tilley hats, together with the old ones. All I had to pay was the postage. Well, I tell you, Mr Tilley has a customer for life. I regret that in the best of worlds I can’t see myself wearing out all my Tilleys - both new “work” hats, my existing work hat and 3 “going-out” Tilleys – one that I bought, one from Mum and one from Mike Nash. I might just set up a Tilley shop, aimed at people with big heads.


Tuesday evening, after dropping Natasha at the Alto Fica bus stop (5 mins away), we retired into the adjacent Madrugada (Daybreak) café for a coffee and a stiff baggy.

We needed the baggy after spending much of the afternoon searching for two awol dogs, which Jones eventually discovered exhausted in the back of beyond and we brought home in the car.
THE BOYS

From Natilia, behind the bar, we heard that the statue of the Virgin
from Fatima would be processing from the hamlet to Espargal on the evening of the 20^th . We knew that the image was spending a couple of weeks in this area as part of an extended tour of Portugal. The faithful will march in procession behind the statue, holding candles, along the 2 km route to the village.
SCHOOL BEING PAINTED
The statue will stop for a service at the school, which is being repainted for the occasion. We shall probably go along, even if we have to admit to joining the ranks of the merely curious. Fatima is important to our more pious neighbours, most of whom have visited the shrine.

Among the gathered patrons in the café was Jorge Vieira, a serious local farmer, who spends his summers working in the fields and his winters hunting. He invited us to help ourselves to his tomatoes, as they'd been damaged by the rain and he was no longer picking them. And so we did. We could have filled a truck. Jorge confided that he’d be going after wild boar under a (nearly) full moon the following evening. He waits for them, rifle fitted with night-sight at the ready, in his pick-up. He’d already baited the target area with piles of almond nuts, which the piggies simply adore. I wished him luck. Jones said she was on the side of the piggies.

What success he had, I haven’t heard. What I can tell you is that he somehow graunched the big scarifier he hauls behind an even bigger tractor, shearing the heavy metal arms. The force must have been terrific – probably caused by the teeth hooking under a rock. The local welder, Dinis, was preparing to fix the thing when I took my own scarifier around to him on Thursday to have plough plates attached to it.

Thursday morning we took leave of Mike and Lyn, who have returned to their home on the Isle of Wight. Like us they revel in the Portuguese countryside and, ironically, they know a great deal more about the flora and fauna than their hosts. They were lucky with the weather. The current 10-day forecast shows 10 little suns. A little rain would be so welcome.

YAPPER HOUSE
Our moment of drama came this week as we were passing a house where several little dogs often come hurtling out to protest at our passage. They’re harmless but very distracting and tend to upset our lot. As we were keeping an eye on the yappers, Ono suddenly dived into a hedge. Simultaneously there came a loud squawk from the hedge, a shriek from Jones and a great tug on Ono’s lead. Ono came flying back out of the hedge with his mouth full of feathers and got severely reprimand for his sins. I could find no sign of the assaulted bird. Hopefully, only its plumage suffered.

THE CHICKENS

Also suffering, but far more severely, has been the pound sterling against foreign currencies. We watched in dismay as it nose-dived against both the euro and the dollar. The British government is saddling itself with debt in a bid to ride out the recession and the side-effects for pound-paid expats are really bruising. Oh for the heady days when the pound fetched a 1.6 euros plus . It’s now (10.15 on Friday morning) 1.16 and heading for parity. One starts to understand how the Icelanders are feeling. Some of those Tilley hats may come in useful when we sing for our supper.

This multi-legged little fellow was spotted by Jones as she crossed the road. I don't know whether he packs a sting. I didn't fiddle around with him. He brought back old memories to my wife, who was woken up in bed at the Quinta one night by one of his mates. It was crawling across her body. (Jones doesn't "do" pyjamas). She nearly freaked. She still shudders at the memory.


And finally, while we're into images, I was tickled pink by the HIS and HERS signs outside the loos at Odeceixe during our recent visit to the Alentejo. We had to look twice. That's imagination for you.

Letter from Espargal: 40 of 2008

We are back from the Alentejo (the large province just north of the Algarve). Pleasant as it was to be away, it is even pleasanter to be back, especially to such a comfortable home as ours. As our write, our guests are usefully employed. Lyn is making supper and Mike is trying to fix our digital camera, which has reduced itself to taking blurry stripes. Fortunately, my phone-camera is still functioning and the pictures will speak for themselves.

It was on Tuesday morning that we packed the car and set off. The packing called for some care as most of the back seat was occupied by our smaller dogs, Ono and Prickles, and the entire rear section was taken up by our larger dog, Raymond. (Such luggage as we took was squeezed in behind the front seats.) The little guys are seasoned travellers. Raymond’s case is more complicated. He gets very noisy when he sees other dogs and very car sick. We have reduced the problem by starving him before taking him on journeys. Fortunately, he always sicks up in the same corner, an area that we cover with a relay of towels, which are replaced, shaken out (yuck!) and rinsed at frequent intervals.

We took several hours to ease our way up the west coast to our destination, a country cottage that we had found on the internet under a “Pets accepted” heading. It’s in the hills near the tiny village of Troviscais. Getting no response from the owner’s mobile number, we obtained (somewhat vague) directions at Maria’s cafe. Following these, we set out down a beaten track through a forested area. Happily we soon came across the owner, a woman architect, who was alerted to our presence by her five yapping dogs. Hopping into her 4x4, she led us a kilometre from her house down a steep slatey road to the cottage, deep in the valley below.


The cottage (see http://www.casasdacerca.com/uk.html) won our instant approval. It was made of large clay bricks (known as taipa) and had been sympathetically restored. Downstairs were the kitchen, bathroom and dining room. A staircase, built into the dining room wall, led upstairs to the lounge and bedroom.

Happily, because the nights were cold and damp, the house came with a big fireplace and loads of firewood. It also had Sat TV, which was welcome (once I’d worked it out) because the evenings were long and the low-energy lights made reading difficult. I sat up late on US election night and was much relieved at the result, however poisoned the chalice that awaits the victor. (The possibility of a President Palin down the line was utterly terrifying!)

Around the hillside from us were a few cottages, which we passed on our afternoon circuit. Like most in the Alentejo, they were painted white with blue window and door surrounds. Once or twice we came across Portuguese workers – either cleaners or builders. Of the occupants we saw no sign.

Because of its situation, our cottage got the sun late and lost it early. The valley was moist and mosquitoes abounded. We kept the doors and windows shut. The broad Mira river was a 15-minute walk away, past barbed-wire and electric fences intended to keep cattle in and wild pigs (we think) out. Numerous brown cows, each with a clanking bell dangling from its neck, wandered down from the eucalyptus-clad hills in the morning and back up in the evening. We wondered how effective the electric fencing was. It certainly did the job, judging by the howl Raymond let out after brushing against a wire.

One night we crept up the track to Troviscais, past the big Alsatians that guarded the adjacent farm, to sup at Maria’s café. Locals, showing zero interest in the US elections, sat around, watching first a game show and then the football.



For the rest we picnicked in front of the TV at home. The dogs would settle down in their baskets in front of the fire. Like them we tended to retire early. They’d wake us up for a 06.00 pee and then sleep for another two hours. After breakfast, we’d walk an hour-circuit up into the hills and back down past the river. Then we’d pile into the car, do a bit of exploring and spend some time at one of the great empty beaches that stretch away down the coast.

Our favourite was at Almograve. Typically, it was lined with towering cliffs and studded with spectacular outcrops of rock. Raymond would rush up and down the sands at high speed, deliberately brushing the other dogs as he ran. They would clearly have loved to join him but resisted the temptation for fear of being knocked flying.

LOOKING DOWN ON ODEMIRA

Close by was the historic town (Romans & Moors), of Odemira through which the River Mira flows. The town is attractive, clinging to the steep hillsides above the river. It’s full of character, having made just a few essential compromises with modernity. Wooden stairs and stone steps provide short cuts to upper and lower parts of the town. We really liked the place.
THIS IS NOT A TREE

A tree set in a roundabout turned out to be a sculpture made entirely of scraps of iron.

And thus the days passed.



But I run ahead of myself. For the great event of the past week was the Benafim parish walk last Sunday. Hundreds of people turned out. The more serious and athletic types entered themselves in either the 8 or 16 km run/s, bounding away from the starting line in a great show of energy. The majority, including ourselves (and the inevitable dogs) opted for the 5 km or the 10 km walk. I signed up for the longer walk at the control booth and got a couple of numbers to attach to our backs, unaware that these were intended only for the runners (something that was pointed out to me by a polite gentleman halfway through the course).

We covered our 10 kms in two hours. Much of the route was along familiar tracks. Although the walks were not intended as races, most folk were making good time.

I was impressed by the general level of fitness. We walk two hours a day and think that we’re in pretty good shape but it wasn’t until the last steep uphill back into Benafim that we started overhauling those in front of us, some of them much older than ourselves. Our fellow walkers included our Dutch neighbours, to whom I’m indebted for the blog pictures.

Afterwards, as we relaxed on the patio at the Snackbar Coral, we saw the parish priest leading a large “All Souls” procession. It was going down the road from the church to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. Most of those processing were female and elderly, albeit with a good sprinkling of odds and sods. As they passed, they sang a hymn. I was taken back to an earlier life in distant lands. Pass the baggy, Jones. How the times change!

Letter from Espargal: 39 of 2008

Let me open a wormhole into Casa Valapena this Friday morning. We are just returned from our usual trek through the valley. The tarred roads glistened from the overnight rain and we were forced to dodge around the broad puddles on the gravel roads. Jones begged a couple of lemons from the woman who lives in the house of “bichos” (a bicho can be any creature from a grub to an ugly person) and received a bagful, straight from the tree, along with the invitation to help herself in future. We made it back home just in time to beat an incoming shower.

In the house, some light classical music is competing with the churning of the washing machine and the insistent meowing of the ever-hungry cats. A fire glimmers in the wood-burning stove, just sufficient to bring a little cheer to a dull end-of-October day. The dogs are settled in their baskets. That’s apart from Raymond who knows that he has to lie down if he comes inside. He has just been thrown out for sneaking through to the kitchen to consume the cat biscuits. Jones, soft-hearted (when it comes to animals), is bound to let him in again shortly.

That reminds me. Another stray has been running around the village. It looks like an Alaskan malamute. Our dogs go beserk when they see it. It’s as if they know that it has no right to be here. We understand that its owner, from a village a few miles away, has been looking for it. But when he’s around the dog isn’t – and vice versa. The bicho house woman said it had been running around there early in the day.

It’s been an up and down week, like most I guess. On the positive side, I managed to sow our beans and peas, two lines of each, before the rain arrived yesterday. To do this, I had to borrow an implement from my neighbour, Joachim Sousa. Like most small farmers, he doesn’t keep both a scarifier and small plough but merely attaches the plough plates to the teeth of his scarifier. (That’s what I used to do as well but the nuts and bolts on my (not so) new, large scarifier are hopelessly rusted and I can’t undo them to get the plates on.)

Keeping it simple – I took the tractor around to Joachim’s place, where he helped me fit the scarifier. I was very grateful for his assistance. The implement is big and heavy, and the very devil to attach. (You have to line up the fittings in the rear hydraulic arms exactly.) Once it was on, the rest was easy. I had my field ploughed within the hour and Joachim’s scarifier back with him the same morning, along with a good bottle of wine.

I also (this is the last paragraph on scarifiers, I promise) arranged with Dinis down the road at Alto Fica to take mine down to his welding shop, along with the plough plates, midweek in order to fix the problem. I arrived at his house at the agreed time to find only his dogs in situ. They gave me a loud if fairly good-natured barking. Folks at the local café gave me Dinis’s mobile phone number but all I got when I called was the wrong kind of beeps.

Returning to the subject of neighbourly relations, those with another Espargalian have, regrettably, taken a dip. The gentleman in question is a strange old fellow, who lives by himself and doesn’t often join in the village corner conversations. He owns several fields, none of which he tends. With his permission, Jones and I have been looking after one of them, “the running field”, close to the house, the better to pass through it with the dogs and to enjoy the fruit on the trees.

At the top of this field is a smallish carob tree in the midst of a weed thicket. The carobs on it have never been picked. So we thought it a good idea to haul out the weeds (Jones spent hours at it) and present the owner with a sack of carobs. It was a mistake. The man wasn’t pleased. He gave me a five-minute lecture on picking other people’s carobs without their permission. He also asserted that he had agreed to allow a third-party to pick the carobs, which was nonsense although I thought it sensible not to tell him so. I have dumped the carobs back under the tree (where his imaginary picker may find them) and thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie.

To celebrate some good fortune – a belated pension pay-out from the SABC - I have bought myself a new watch. It’s quite a special watch, designed to run on light-energy and to reset itself from a radio signal. In order to save money, I ordered one from Amazon in the UK, where they are 25% cheaper than in the local shops. I tried to impress on Jones its ecological qualities and my efforts to save money. She felt that it would have been better to save 100% by not getting the watch at all. Jones can be very obtuse about these things.

Anyhow, it’s a very beautiful watch, a bit big and heavy but acceptably so in view of the technology it incorporates. I’m several hours into my study of the lengthy instruction manual. I’m sure that once I’ve worked out how the thing functions that I shall be even more pleased with it. It’s not a watch whose wearer is supposed to set the time. One informs the watch of the nearest city and it decides for itself what the time should be. One small disadvantage that I have discovered is that Portugal lies (just) outside the range of the radio transmitter in Germany that corrects the time (if required) several times a day.

Speaking of which, our clocks went back last weekend. Like the people of Britain, we will spend the winter in GMT or, if you prefer, UTC.

I’ve made a couple of visits to the post office to inquire about the savings schemes it offers. On my second visit, the clerk, recognising me, called me to the desk to give me some information. This greatly irritated waiting people who had numbered tickets ahead of mine. One of them protested to the clerk about my intrusion and was told that I didn’t need a ticket. She wasn’t pleased. I hurried away, feeling like a scoundrel.


We have visited Faro fair, where one finds the best ham and cheese sandwiches in the Algarve, as well as a selection of the latest cars and tractors. All sorts of charitable enterprises muster volunteers to beg donations from the public. Some of the volunteers are shy about practising their awkward English on estrangeiros. Others don't hesitate. Being charmed out of a few euros is fair game.


From the fair we went to a performance by the Portuguese army band - 100 strong and very impressive. The occasion was army day and the auditorium was awash with military types. It was not difficult to distinguish the brass from the base-metal but we found ourselves struggling to make out the various lower ranks from the range of insignia. Whatever the case, the music was good and much enjoyed.

Jones has been maintaining her busy Portuguese schedule, going to Maria and Elsa for tea and conversation and immersing herself in Portuguese exercises with Olly and Marie. This coming week will be an exception. On Sunday we are expecting guests, to whom we’ll leave the house and cats next week when we take ourselves and the dogs off to the Alentejo for a three- or four-night stay. The duration will depend on the weather and how we like it. We will probably be out of email contact.