Letter from Espargal: 4 of 2009

The house is quiet. The dogs have settled down, satisfied for the moment with the walk to the river and back. The heavy cloud that has marked most of January hangs over the valley. A fire flickers away in the wood-burning stove. It’s as close to noon as makes no difference. The day doesn’t really matter because most days are like this. Jones is doing domestic things. She has just held one of my older vests up to the light and informed me that she’s consigning it to the rag bag.

The fact is that Jones sometimes throws her authority around when it comes to old clothes, my old clothes, that is. The other night, I was sent upstairs like a schoolboy to change my trousers – “you’re not going out in those old jeans, are you? - shortly before we were to meet two friends for supper at the local. Once seated, I inquired of the male partner whether he too had changed his working trousers before coming out. This question he treated with the derision it deserved, pointing out that no-one could see his trousers while he was sitting down at the table. That’s my kind of logic.

This, however, is not a letter of complaint about matters conjugal. The thing is that nothing has really happened in Espargal this past week, nothing that marks it out from preceding weeks. True, I got a call from the council, informing me on old Zeferino’s behalf that his water bill, which I had taken in to be rectified, was being reduced from 70 euros to just over 4. This will no doubt please Zeferino when he hears the news. And we gather that Evangelina’s bill has come down from 120 euros to 30 cents. That’s what you call a meaningful reduction.

And true, Paulo the plumber eventually called around to deal with the leaking cisterns on both loos. I’d been phoning him for weeks and he’d either snuffed out my calls or promised to pop in when he had time. It isn’t that Paulo is a bad plumber. His problem is that plumbing for him is merely a way of earning sufficient money to go hunting. He’s obsessed with the sport - if you will allow hunting to be a sport. Around here, it’s more a way of life. No matter what the weather, Sundays, Thursdays and public holidays throughout the winter you can see Paulo’s van parked down at the former primary school where the hunters gather.

I’d been complaining to Horacio, the local builder, about Paulo’s failings. Horacio, who had his own problems getting hold of Paulo, was sympathetic. As it happened, he bumped into Paulo the following day and passed on my complaint. The first I knew of this was a phone call I took from Horacio while I was out walking, to say that Paulo was on his way round. I hurried home to find him at the gate.

There followed 30 minutes of adjustments to the finicky plastic and rubber interior fittings of the two loo cisterns, along with some heavy breathing. It did the trick. The leaks have ceased. Even so, the rubber washers were looking a little tired and I thought it a good idea to get a new standby mechanism. Jones and I both have a thing about wasting water. To stop the constant dribbling into the bowls, we’d been turning the cisterns off at the wall.

PRICKS, STAYING WARM

I’ve decided to purchase a Sat Nav – known in Portugal as a GPS – my first. With some valuable advice from those in the know, I have my eye on a Garmin Nuvi 250W Europe, as a compromise between price and utility, although I’m torn between that and the Magellan 4040. (Helpful comments would be appreciated!) Here in the Algarve it’s hard to justify the purchase of Sat Nav. But we’re planning an Easter trip to the UK, which is likely to involve lots of crawling around minor roads and I think it’s time that we bit the bullet. The age of shining a torch on an illegible map, that’s just as likely to be upside down, has passed.

Planning continues too for our spring visit to family in Canada. As it happens, the family bit is the easy part. We are also intending to visit areas around Vancouver and nearby Seattle, just across the US border (which has required us to fill in the now compulsory “ESTA” immigration form online; to my surprise, we both got initial approval within seconds).

I have spent hours trying to find accommodation along our planned route that meets both our budget and my expectations. This is not an easy task. It’s like trying to reconcile the two poles of a magnet. Jones proclaims herself happy with a bed and four walls. Her husband likes something rather more comfortable, preferably with internet access, a kitchenette, a view, no noisy parties and few neighbours, especially in the room overhead. One or two experiences in cheap ski hotels have taught us the hazards of sharing flimsy buildings with fellow travellers, especially the sort who come trooping back to their bedrooms as pissed as farts in the early hours, yelling and slamming their doors. These are not people I want to meet on holiday.

ALMOND BLOSSOM

The number of places listed online is legion. After narrowing them down, I start going through reviews. “Tripadvisor” is particularly helpful in this regard. Time and again one finds comments like “paper-thin walls”, “noisy neighbours”, “surly staff”, “ancient beds” and “filthy carpets” – and reluctantly draws a line through a superficially promising candidate. On our last Canadian holiday, the hard work really paid off. I’m optimistic that it will do so again.

Midweek we set out for Faro to see the Frost/Nixon, with a small diversion to the bank, following a phone call asking us to drop in. This proved to be a big diversion instead, as the banker was tied down with other clients. So we did a bit of shopping afterwards instead and have put off the film till later. Should I add that we have opened an account with the Bank of the Holy Spirit? That really is its name: Banco Espirito Santo. Whether it gets divine guidance is doubtful. At least it hasn’t been in the headlines, unlike some other Portuguese banks whose directors are facing hard questions over dubious deals and missing funds.

My immediate neighbour, Idalecio, tells me that the owners of our former home,the Quintassential, have won their court case against a neighbour who wanted to deny them continued access across his land. This access had been guaranteed to us in a contract by his parents when we bought the house. This is good news. We know that the issue has weighed heavily upon them and we are heartily relieved that the matter has been settled in their favour. The fellow concerned has built a large villa on his land and was put out that he had to surrender a corner of it for use by other people.

Friday evening Jones invited the expat neighbours around for drinks. My job was to serve the drinks and keep the dogs in line.

Jones entertained young Chloe by teaching her the separated finger trick, a manouevre that Chloe practised hard, before rushing around the company to demonstrate her skills. It was a good evening.

Our Irish neighbours are about to head to Dublin and our immediate British neighbours are getting ready to return to the Isle of Wight. With luck they'll miss the freezing weather that's heading down towards Britain.
A pause there to walk the dogs up to the hilltop and back. We’re keeping them confined until Horacio has completed a dog-proof fence around the back of the house. He meant to do it this week but the rain has delayed the completion of other projects. He apologised. I understood. We admired the almond trees which, catching their breath from the wind and rain, have burst anew into pink and white blossom. It’s a treat, as good as the famous Japanese cherry blossom.

The fields around us are studded with trees that seem to have been decorated for Christmas. We wake in the morning to the sight of the blossom bursting out on the branches just outside the small window at the end of the bed. (I do at least, because Jones gets up in the dark at an unholy hour.) It’s an inspiring sight.

Letter from Espargal: 3 of 2009

We are back from a walk along the agricultural road (narrow and designed to give farmers access to their lands) that runs along the valley floor between us and Benafim. We braved several minor squalls, suffering little more than damp trousers and wet feet (Jones i.e., who wears her shoes through to the bone in the interests of economy).

This is as a mere inconvenience compared to the soaking we got earlier in the week from an icy squall that froze our hands and nearly blew us off our feet. The wind has done no favours to the almond blossom, which now stains the road under the trees with a soggy, grey mush.


The advantage of the valley road is that it’s little used, paved and level. (I’m still having a problem with slopes.) We are able to avoid the gluey mud that lurks in the surrounding fields while allowing Raymond to rush around to his heart’s content, chasing rabbits both real and imaginary, and depleting his exhausting levels of energy.

Mostly, it’s been a quiet, damp, fireside kind of a week. We were among the millions who watched the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States and who hoped for better things to come. I don’t think that politics makes for good family letters but I can’t hide my relief at the exit of his “misunderestimated” predecessor. (For what it’s worth, I am tacking on to the end of this letter some Bushisms, courtesy of a fellow non-admirer.) I missed most of Obama’s address as I had to hurry down to get Natasha to the bus on time.

Natasha returned on Wednesday, the only sunny day this week, to labour in the fields. She works an extra day for us each month in return for our paying her share of the social security tab. In the morning, wearing one of my heavy winter shirts to shield her from the cold, she removed the suckers that sprout each year from the trunks of the carob trees. Later we loaded the tractor with heavy bags of fertilizer and toured the property, scattering the contents around the base of the carobs, just in time for the arrival of the rain on Thursday.

A pause there to answer a knock at the door. Such interruptions always send the dogs into a frenzy of barking as they seek to learn the identity of the visitor. Having managed to hold them off and squeeze through the door, I encountered our elderly (80-something) neighbour, Zeferino. With some difficulty, he fished a letter out of his pocket - his water bill. Like all the water bills that have arrived in the village, following the recent installation of meters, it’s full of errors. Everybody has been madly overcharged.

There is a message at the top of each bill, saying that Loule is making changes to its computer system for water management, with a view to improving its service, and would appreciate citizens’ understanding for any failings. Well, failings there are aplenty. I spent some time on Loule’s helpline, trying to assist puzzled neighbours, as the bills are coded and difficult to interpret. My helpline guide explained how things worked. Consumers are charged on a rising scale for water consumption and then proportionately for garbage removal from the communal roadside bins. The assumption is that people dispose of as much garbage as they use water.

However, some people were also charged for drains (sewage), which the village lacks, and others for several years’ consumption instead of several months. The whole thing was a mess. We have made one visit to Loule’s utilities office to get bills sorted out on behalf of one Portuguese couple and we shall gladly do the same on Zeferino’s behalf after classes on Monday.

We’ve been making travel plans for late May and early June, when we’ll be visiting family in Canada, first Barbara’s in Vancouver and then mine in Calgary, with a bit of touring along the way. As usual, the house and animals will be looked after in our absence by house-sitters who used to be our Quinta guests and now return here each year. It’s a wonderfully useful arrangement. Our precious pooches have never had to suffer the indignity of being housed in common kennels in our absence.

This week’s film outing was to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which has since been nominated for a host of Oscars. I thought it quite remarkable, the first half at least, because I was driven to distraction by the pop-corn chewers, chatterers and mobile-phone consulters and took myself off at the interval to do the weekly shopping instead. Like Saddam Hussein and (it’s rumoured) Kim Jong-il, I really need my own private cinema to watch undisturbed. I wish that there were a more efficient system here of downloading/renting movies. Even then, I suppose, I’d have to wait six months for the new films or buy pirate copies.

Another interruption, this time for a man who’s just arrived from Loule to tune in two new zappers for the electric gates.
I ordered them, reluctantly, after losing one. Losing the second would have spelled disaster. The man is Ukrainian. Like most such workers, he speaks fluent Portuguese, although with a distinct east-European accent. The electric gates are really a boon. They’re our one real luxury. Without them, I’d have to stop the car at the bottom of the steep drive each time we left the house or returned, and go up to open or close the gates. One doesn’t need it, especially in wet weather.


The rain has renewed our river - at last. For months the Algibre, a 45 minute walk down our new tarred road, has been just a dry, gravelly bed. It was a relief to see the water flowing again. That's what rivers are meant to do, to be alive, to run. The bottom line is that the Algarve is gradually getting hotter and drier, which makes one grateful for every passing shower.

Barbara has just taken Raymond’s brother, Bobby, home. She generally fetches him each day for a romp and a meal. Otherwise, like so many of his fellows, he’s liable to spend much of his life at the end of his chain. He and Raymond generally spend their time jousting. This afternoon, they spent it shredding a towel instead. Jones sighed as she picked up the remains, which have since been washed before being consigned to the rags basket. But she’ll fetch him tomorrow just the same.

The rest is Dubya's legacy - which I intersperse with pics of a little local love affair:

*'The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.'**

*'If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.'



**'One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.' **

*'I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.'

*The future will be better tomorrow.'




*We're going to have the best educated American people in the world.'

*'I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.'

*'We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe '




*'Public speaking is very easy.'

*'A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.'

*'I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them.'



*'We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.'

*'For NASA, space is still a high priority.'

*'Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.'

*'It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.'

Letter from Espargal: 2 of 2009

CORTELHA COTTAGE - SEE BELOW

We have got our good deed for the year done good and early. The object of our benevolence was an elderly gent in a British-registered Mercedes who was trying to reverse out of a parking spot at the Modelo hypermarket in Loule with a flat front tyre. After alerting him to his predicament, I hauled out my small pneumatic jack and went to offer my (somewhat limited) services.

My offer was as well because, as the gent confessed, the odds were against him. He had never changed a tyre in his life. He didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. He had no idea where the key was for the locked wheel-nut. Indeed, he’d never heard of locked wheel-nuts. His best thought was to try to reach the nearest garage. “Bad idea,” I said. Instead, we scratched around in the boot, where we found the key, along with the jack and some other useful kit.

After chasing off the gypsy who was loitering around the back of the car and whom I strongly suspect of deflating the tyre for nefarious purposes, I tried undoing the wheel nuts. No go! The wheels were large and well secured. So I went into the store to seek help. A security guard was eventually despatched to assist us. He couldn’t get the nuts off either but a passing Englishman, who became aware of our plight, did - with a long-levered spanner. A second security guard arrived and with his added muscle the wheel was changed. The old guy was talking on his mobile to someone he’d summoned to rescue him but who’d gone to the wrong Modelo store. It just wasn’t his day.

Having thanked the security men and wished the old fellow well, I went back to rejoin Jones and dogs, who had been waiting patiently all the while. I hope that my good deed redounds to my credit when I’m an old fart with a flat tyre. The way things are going, that may not be very far down the road.

Still on rescues; another was conducted at home in the runnels of the lounge sliding glass doors. There, curled into a tiny ball, I found one of Portugal’s luckiest field mice (the area is patrolled by our three cats).Talk about a wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie! With a teaspoon I scooped it out of the runnels and into a bucket. This Jones took off to a field, together with a small supply of cat nibbles, to sustain the little rodent until it had recovered its senses. The irony is that I have two mouse traps – so far unsprung – set in the tractor shed where the little guy’s companions have been crapping all over show.

SARAH & HELEN
Last weekend we took ourselves off to inspect the property that had been newly acquired by Helen (daughter of neighbours, David and Sarah) and partner, Rob. The old house is situated 30 minutes away, high in the hills on the edge of the village of Cortelha. Their purchase won our immediate approval; it’s a sprawling cottage (13 rooms in all) on half an acre.

We found the couple hard at work, painting and plastering, along with Sarah and David. They had made great strides in the few days they'd been there, often working late into the night. The house had not been occupied for a decade and was in need of love and attention. For the moment it’s “campable”, pending the renewal of the plumbing.

GARDEN

In the longer term it should make a wonderful holiday cottage or home. It has enormous potential (read work). We thought it perfectly situated, with the security of neighbours on either side and the vastness of the open hillsides above.

In the adjacent field, the local goatherd grazed his flock. Their appetite was evident from the bare branches in the lower reaches of the more delectable trees. Above us, in the evening skies, soared a flock of storks, coming home to roost for the night.

We were taken back to our own purchase of the Quinta in similar circumstances 22 years ago, a purchase followed by 12 years of commutes before we eventually moved permanently to Portugal. One is almost tempted to utter a rheumy-eyed “how time flies!”

Tuesday brought the annual interview with our accountant, 40 minutes down the road in Guia. Portugal’s tax year, unlike the UK’s, runs from Jan 1 to Dec 31 and returns must be in promptly thereafter. They can now be entered online but with the complexities of foreign pensions and currencies to deal with, we’d rather the experts did it on our behalf.

On the way home we stopped off at a sprawling superstore to look at the range of available fencing. Jones has come to terms with our need to fence the area around the back of the house to prevent the dogs wandering off daily into the bush. But she doesn’t want a fence that looks like a fence because she doesn’t want to feel fenced in. No need to tell you how hard it is for a limited male to get his head around this kind of problem.

The long and the short of it is that “we” have decided on wooden posts and sheep wire fencing. With a neighbour’s help the following afternoon I hitched up the trailer and went around to Gilde’s excellent yard on the outskirts of Salir to get the necessary. All we await now is a couple of labourers from Horacio’s team of builders, probably some time next week. It will be a while before I do any more digging or cementing myself.

On Thursday we ran Natasha into Faro, where she had an 11.00 appointment with the immigration authorities. Rain was pouring down and there were frequent patches of mist along the route. We were lucky to find parking near the offices concerned and took ourselves to breakfast in an adjoining café while Natasha went to report. She joined us soon after to say that there were 15 people ahead of her and the prospect of a long wait.

The café TV was showing pictures of the havoc wrought by snow and ice on the roads of northern Portugal. There’s much to be said for the gentler Algarve winters. Having finished our coffee, we wished Natasha well and went home. Late in the afternoon we got a message from her to say that she had just been interviewed. Her application to live and work in Portugal had been accepted but it would be several months before the precious residence document was issued.

We’ve continued most days to take a 45 minute excursion with the dogs along the bottom of the valley that lies between us and Benafim. Raymond runs free – he drives us mad if he doesn’t get enough exercise – while we keep the two rabbiters on leads. Afterwards, as often as not, we carry on to the Coral Snack Bar in Benafim. I admire the tractors parked in front of the shop next door while we sip coffees and baggies and exchange a few words with Brigitte. Her quiche is outstanding – unlike her grasp of Portuguese. She loves to chat to Barbara in French.

The Snack Bar Coral is a bargain.
One still gets useful change from a fiver for two coffees, a cake and a fine double brandy.

One strange feature of the snack bar is that while the gents’ loo is left open, women have to ask for a key to unlock their toilet. When I asked Celso, the owner, what the reason was for this gender inequality, he explained that when the bar was crowded, the guys tended to use the women’s loo as well as the gents’. And they didn’t bother to clean up behind them, which led the ladies to complain vociferously to the management about the state of the porcelain.

The trouble is, I guess, that there was no male evolutionary advantage in being able to pee accurately into a small hole, especially after downing a few litres of caveman consolation. And, regrettably, it still shows.

Letter from Espargal: 1 of 2009

We have been sorting out our books. As a reward we have that sense of satisfaction that comes with the illusion of imposing a little order on one’s life. The need to rearrange our reading arose from the hurried transfer of our books from their former shelves to the new ones installed by the carpenter during Jones’s visit to the US last year for the marriage of her nephew. As a consequence of this haste, novels, travel guides and grammars were scattered among my tomes on the nature of the universe. Because my wife is a qualified librarian (among other things) and knows about stuff like Dewey Decimal Classification, I invited her to lead the way.
But she was happy for me to arrange matters to my satisfaction upstairs while she tackled the cookery and garden books that occupy the downstairs bookshelves. And so things came to pass. All my precious Dawkinses, Davieses and Pinkers now cluster comfortably together.

Still on books, I am halfway through P J O’Rourke’s appreciation of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. It was among the books I found during an end-of-year perusal of the Griffin bookstore in Almancil, one of two bookshops in the Algarve that specialise in books for English language readers. It’s a great place to wile away half an hour on a dull day. We already have O’Rourke’s ‘Holidays in Hell’, a work that I found greatly superior to his critique of Adam Smith. Still, since I bought the latter, I feel obliged to finish it, albeit in increasingly ill humour.

Another thing we did was to see “Australia” (the film), a meretricious epic that I recommend you avoid. It had a more sympathetic reception from my wife, who said I shouldn’t spoil the film for others and that it had some beautiful photography. That’s as much as can be said in its favour. I felt that it was a little less convincing and a lot less touching than the latest James Bond; it contrives to pluck every string in the orchestra without hitting a single true note.

I have to pause for thought while I consider what else we have been doing, other than the usual walking, snoozing, eating and drinking. Let me tackle this by process of elimination. We haven’t been doing much watering as nature’s been doing that for us; nor weeding as it’s been too wet. Each day I march out to the covered woodpile and bring in enough wood to see us through to bedtime.

THAT'S ICE

It’s been cold – for us, very cold. There’s a bowl of Arctic air sitting over western Europe and stretching its icy fingers right down to the Mediterranean. Mornings and evenings hover around freezing; much of the Portuguese interior is in negative territory. I am grateful for the cocoon of a modern home with double-skin walls and double glazing. First thing I do in the morning, after Jonesy goes out with the dogs, is to clean the stove and build a new fire. Then I vacuum up the surrounding floor and do the washing up. She loves to come home to a warm, clean house. I think she’s beginning to appreciate the modest benefits of having a husband with a lazy leg.

We’ve watched more TV than usual and listened to a lot of radio. Jones has spent hours at her desk, writing her notes and doing her cuttings. She places on my desk such articles as she deems likely to interest or improve me. When we have disagreements, as in whether the man on the radio said the Gaza Strip was the size of the Isle of Wight or half the size of the Isle of Man, we employ Google as an instant referee, often being directed to Wikipedia for a definitive answer.


It’s a favourite site of mine. I heard the founder say this week that it is now the 8^th most popular site on the internet. It employs half a dozen people to run its servers. The rest is done by volunteers. When a bank collapses, Wikipedia’s reference is updated the same day. What hope has the Encyclopaedia Britannica of competing with that? Jones said that in earlier days, when she worked in News Information, she would have consulted Whitacker’s Almanac or The Stateman’s Yearbook. I suppose they still have their place but I wouldn’t bet on their future.

Let me doff my cap to our neighbour, Idalecio, and his amour, Sonia, for the delightful dinner they prepared for us on New Year’s eve. This they served in Idalecio’s newly-restored guest cottage, which is cosy and has the advantage of underfloor heating. While we sat around the table, Idalecio’s dog, Serpa-Fish, shared the couch with his cat (which has an impossible name) and one of Sonia’s dogs, brought along because it hated the New Year fireworks that rend the air around Quarteira, where Sonia lives. In the event, the heavy mist that descended on Espargal that night discouraged the usual revellers from ascending the hill and New Year arrived with barely a peep.

We have taken note of the markedly emollient influence that Sonia is exercising on Idalecio’s bachelor habits. For his part, Idalecio has spent the past several weeks restoring the old house in which he lives, a house that he inherited from his grandparents and was starting to show the burden of its years. He’s replaced crumbling wooden floors with reinforced concrete, exposed stone blocks and renewed much of the old plaster. Of all these developments we have expressed our strong approval.

One morning I took the tractor around to Olly and Marie’s place to help move their old lounge furniture, pending the arrival of a new suite later in the day. This visit occurred shortly after the return from the UK of our commuting immediate neighbours, Sarah and David. Their daughter, Helen, and partner Rob, who are due out this week, have just acquired their own cottage in a village further into the hills, and it’s for this cottage that the old furniture is destined.

I arrived at Olly’s place to find David already on the scene with his trailer in tow. Given my condition (described ad nauseam in preceding blogs) I thought it prudent not to carry anything heavier than cushions. But I gave what useful directions I could to my neighbours, consoling myself as they toiled with Milton’s reminder that: “they also serve who only stand and wait”. In the event, all the furniture fitted on to David’s trailer and the tractor wasn’t needed. So I returned home with little more than the merit of my good intentions.


In view of the disastrous performance of the pound, we have embarked on an austerity programme, (the fine detail of which is still being negotiated). Our first agreed thrift-measure is to buy our wine in bulk instead of splashing out 3 euros a bottle (typically) on the middle range at Lidl’s supermarket. On Olly’s recommendation, we made our way through the hills to the Cafe Paraiso in the village of Barrosas, where one can acquire Ana Maria table wine by the litre (bottle), 5-litre or 10-litre (vacuum-boxes), as one prefers.
We opted for two 10-litre boxes at 18 euros a box. The stuff is quite palatable although I doubt it’s won many plaudits. Nor am I likely to binge on it. Still, one has to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any.

Tuesday evening, after dropping off Natasha at Loule library, where she catches up on her emails before fetching young Alex from a crèche, we continued into Faro with David and Sarah. After supping with a group of friends, we went on to attend our first concert of the New Year. As usual, the performance was given by the Orchestra of the Algarve, a body financed mainly by local councils. The orchestra lacks the public support that we think it deserves – venues are often half empty, or worse - and has built up a deficit that threatens its future. Its closure would be a real blow to us. Sadly, it attracts only an older audience, much of it foreign. Portuguese youth is not into classical music.

The concert was remarkable for Max Bruch’s violin concerto in which the soloist was a young woman, barely out of her teens, who knocked us all sideways. Her name is Alexandra Soumm. She is Russian born and seems to have lived and studied across much of Europe. According to her biog she started learning the violin at the age of five and gave her first public performance two years later. Her list of subsequent achievements is impressive. Her performance, on her personal Stradivarius, was simply stunning. It’s the first time I can recall hearing a Strad in live concert. Certainly, in the hands of Ms Soumm, it sang most passionately.