Letter from Espargal: 8 of 2009

If ever you are curious about the workings of a small family distillery, you may come with us to Monte Ruivo (Red, or ginger, Mountain) to see one in action. Monte Ruivo is a hamlet 30 minutes away, so small that it didn’t feature on the large-scale map that Jones was scrutinising in the car. So we navigated by stop-and-ask, and eventually we found it.

Our mission was to obtain half a case of medronho (pronounced “mehDRUNyu”), a Portuguese aguardente (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguardiente) with much to recommend it. In particular, we were after JR (Joao Rafael) medronho, a brand to which Llewellyn has taken a fancy. We had a bottle with us, hopeful that the label might ring bells with the locals.

In the event, once in Monte Ruivo, we came across a pedestrian, who turned out to be Mrs Rafael, and who led us to the distillery where, she said, her husband was hard at work. Indeed he was busy - but not too occupied to demonstrate the process. Medronho is made by distilling the fermented berries of the arbutus (or strawberry) tree. This is found scattered across the Algarve hills.

Unusually, our host cultivates the bush. He showed us three vats in which berries are fermented for 60 days before distillation. Close by, a load was simmering away in a copper pot, above a fire – just berries and water, he said; nothing is added.

It takes four hours to heat the brew sufficiently to begin the distillation process.
From the wall, Joao took down a copper apparatus that he used to link the pot to the tubing that twirled down through a cold-water tank to a spout. Puffs of steam began to issue from the spout, followed by a trickle of the spirit itself. The first litre Joao threw away, saying that it would be tainted by pollutants from the copper tube.

The alcohol content of medronho varies. Typically, it’s around 50% although the first few litres from the still can be over 80%. We were fascinated by the process. So are the Portuguese authorities, who carry out frequent inspections and do their best to ensure that all production is labelled and taxed. We departed with several bottles of the precious liquid.

On the way home, we stopped at an adega in the village of Barrosas to renew our wine supplies. These days we buy wine in 10 litre-vacuum packs instead of bottles – at 1.8 euros a litre. The vintage might not win many prizes but it’s quite acceptable with supper. As well as saving us both cash and recycling, these purchases permit us a virtuous sense of thrift in these hard times.

Mind you, if one were to judge the state of the world economy by the number of houses rising in Espargal, one might think it in rude health.
The nearest is a mansion that has sprung up below us. It belongs to a young info-tech fellow. The house seems to be catching its breath prior to completion. The neighbours are probably not too pleased at the proximity.

At the end of our road, our Dutch neighbour-to-be, Dries, labours away most days on the house that he is building single-handed. It is a Herculean task. At some point in the future he will feel an enormous sense of satisfaction but for the moment he must feel mainly the aches and pains of heavy toil. Progress is slow. The walls have crept up to roof level and the big cement trucks have been around to fill the ring-beam. Dries says he hopes to move in to a section of the house by summer while he completes the rest.

Two more houses are getting underway, the first of them in a field adjoining our neighbours, David and Sarah. Horacio is building it for the daughter of a retired Portuguese couple who live close by. The foundations have already been dug and his team are about to begin tying the metal reinforcing rods. I stopped off as I passed by on the tractor, to have a word with him. He was putting up two small sheds. These are apparently now obligatory, to store materials securely, as is a portaloo, before the engineer responsible for the project signs the “go-ahead”.

The government has adopted a policy of placing responsibility for buildings on the shoulders of engineers, who have to comply with local regulations and take the rap if there’s a problem. Sadly, it has had no perceptible impact on the numbing delays that accompany the planning process, not locally anyhow.

Midweek we had lunch with old friends, Olive and John, who have spent several years and thousands of euros trying to obtain a habitation licence for their house, near the coast. The builder couldn’t construct their house in the approved position near the road because electricity pylons were installed there. So, instead of applying for the plans to be changed, he simply built the house elsewhere on the plot, saying he would put the application in later. Of course, he never did. And while the couple have been able to live in the house for the past decade, they lack the vital document required for its sale.

As you may discern, not a great deal else has been happening in Espargal this past week. Each morning we stroll through the valley where the shepherd grazes his flock, or we walk 3 kms down the newly-tarred road to the river and puff our way up again . Raymond runs free while we keep the two little guys on leads.

At the river, Jones pointed out an old well that is now a dangerous pit. It was once lined with stones and topped with a metal wheel-and-buckets mechanism that used donkey power to draw water and tip it into an irrigation channel. The mechanism has since collapsed into the hole, which is several metres wide and deep. We were nervous on behalf of the dogs, which peered over the edge. It would have been impossible to retrieve one without the use of a ladder.

The new road to the river has blotted out many of the orchids that used to grow along the verges. Their annual spring appearance was always a source of great pleasure. Jones has been heard sighing over their fate. She has doubts about the desirability of progress. The closer the progress, the greater her doubts. I was delighted to spot several surviving “naked man” orchids at the base of some rubble, which Jonesy scrambled down to photograph.

On the side of the road, we were both struck by the sheer vigour of a bulb that was thrusting up through the edge of the tarmac to stake its claim on life. By the time we came to take a picture of it, wild pig had eaten the leaves. But you may see for yourself the crack it has made in the tarmac. It seems to us a metaphor that nature will have the final say, and not very far hence.


Another plant that has been drawn to our attention is a leafy job that has sprung up close to the gate of the house. Our neighbours have identified it as a kind of wild spinach, encouraging us to pick the leaves and cook them. They assure us that it makes an excellent dish. We haven’t yet done so, because the dogs find the plant an irresistible leg-lifting target. I tell Jones that the leaves in the middle are untouched. She's not persuaded.

Letter from Espargal: 7 of 2009

The sun is shining. The wild daffodils in the hillside are looking glorious. Spring is upon us. We can hardly justify the fires we continue to light in the evenings, as much for cheer as warmth. It’s Carnival weekend. Council crews were busy putting up stands and bunting as we drove through Loule this morning en route to the bank. I’d received a bank email saying that government regulations required us to take our ID documents along to our branch as part of the continuing process of verifying client identities.

This news greatly surprised our account manager, who knew nothing about it and suggested that the email might be part of a phishing expedition. I doubted it, as no information had been sought online. So he phoned Lisbon to check and was very displeased to discover that the bank HQ was contacting clients without first alerting the branch managers.

We had to cut our meeting with him short because I had a mid-morning dental appointment 10 minutes down the road in Almancil. As I arrived at the surgery, crocodiles of gaily-dressed children were making their way along the pavement to the carnival location. I thought the appointment was merely for the dentist to replace a couple of temporary crowns with permanent ones. But he had to complete two root canals first, and by the time I staggered out 90 minutes later, I was starting to feel a little sorry for myself.

I do not mean to cast any aspersions on the skills of the dentist, who was telling me as he drilled away how the steward on a recent flight in southern Africa had taken his (the dentist’s) cabin bag to the back of the plane to store it during the trip. When the dentist left the plane, he found plastic ties had been used to lock the zips. Only later, when he cut the ties off, did he discover that two mobile phones and a camera had been stolen from the bag. He was very displeased. Little wonder.

I reflected, as we shopped in a supermarket after the dental appointment, that Jones has the gift of trans-location, or whatever the proper name is for being able to disappear up a supermarket wormhole. She wheels a trolley up an aisle while I go off to secure one or two items. And when I return, she has vanished into some parallel world. I explore every corner of the store for 10 minutes, generally sweating under a bag of dog-food and feeling hard done by; there’s no sign of her. Then suddenly she re-emerges from the wormhole, and carries on shopping as if nothing has happened. It can be a very irritating habit.

The big news of the week, certainly as far as the dogs are concerned, is that we have completed the fence around the back of the house. Horacio’s men arrived on Wednesday afternoon to attach and tension wires to the posts they’d cemented in a week earlier, and then to attach a wire fence – in fact, two wire fences, one of larger-gauge sheep wire and beside it another of chicken wire. It took them several hours of hard work. I was glad I hadn’t tried to do it myself.

Instead, I worked with Natasha to bring up load after load of “turvena”, a road-surfacing material I had delivered, to build up the road levels under the two gates. Their height above the road would otherwise have permitted the dogs to squeeze underneath. The turvena had been dumped at the bottom of the garden 50 metres away, as close as the delivery truck could get. I left Natasha to do most of the shovelling, although I did make a few gestures in that direction, bending my knees and taking great care not to upset my finicky fusspot spine.

Then I’d reverse the tractor up the steep driveway and around the back of Casa Nada to spread the turvena on the tractor track that leads to the bottom of the property. It was the first decent day’s work I’ve done since putting my back out some months ago – and I felt very pleased with myself for my efforts. More importantly, the dogs now have half an acre to run around in but can no longer take off over the hill each time they feel bored. They sniffed suspiciously at the fencing but haven’t yet tried to test it. That may yet come.


Speaking of the dogs – as ever – since we started driving them down to the valley each day for a walk, the car has started to show the strain. We cover the back seat with a large towel for the little guys and have an old carpet that sits on the rubber mats at the back for Raymond. Even so, things started getting pretty paw-stained and dog-hairy, especially in the wet weather. So we amended Natasha’s once-a-week cleaning duties to include the car. And lo and behold, while doing this, she discovered the missing electric gate zapper. It was tucked down, completely invisible, between the passenger seat and the seat-belt socket.

I wish she’d found it a few weeks ago, before I ordered 2 replacement zappers. (Let me add in my defence that I believe in cleaning my own car but have been driven by bouts of sciatica to avoid such "bendy" exertion.)

DAGMAR's do

There’s been quite an outbreak of OAPism in the area. (OAP stands for Old Age Pensioner, a status one acquires willy-nilly at age 65; it is the preferred abbreviation in all British tabloid newspaper headlines, as in: “Brave OAP fights off thug!”) We attended a 65^th birthday lunch for our Quinta neighbour, Dagmar, on Monday.

BIRTHDAY BOYS CENTRE STAGE

The same evening we celebrated the 40^th birthday of an Irish neighbour, leading up to the 65^th birthday of his father at midnight. We were pleased to note that nobody turned into a pumpkin or looked any worse for the occasion. Other neighbours are about to follow suit, along with Jones in July and me a months later.

At Dagmar’s lunch I met a Portuguese man, an ex-hunter, who said that in retirement, cooking had become one of his hobbies. When I asked him why the locals were busy shooting thrushes, he said they made a most wonderful delicacy. One could consume the birds, bones and all, a real treat. (I recall once being offered such a dish in France and having to decline it.) We understand that the hunting season draws to a close this Sunday - until August, that is, when it opens again.

Midweek I phoned Portugal Telecom to warn them that one of the telephone line posts that line the valley between Benafim and Espargal, was leaning over at an ominous angle. The person who took the call was grateful to learn from me that the post posed no danger to person or property and to note my mobile phone number.

Two days later I got a call from a PT worker who’d been despatched to do something about it. We met him in Benafim and led him to the scene, where we left him. It was only a matter of time before the post toppled over, taking all the local lines (and internet connections) with them.

The post is on our valley walk, close to an orchard where thousands of oranges have fallen to the ground. It always makes us wince to witness such waste. Presumably, the farmer does not think it worth his while to pick the fruit. Jones likes to nip in and pick up half a dozen oranges as we pass by. She’d no sooner done so one evening than she encountered the farmer, who was coming up the road on his tractor. I’d gone ahead with the dogs. Jones said she’d managed to cram most of the fruit into her capacious pockets, keeping one orange-clutching hand behind her back as she greeted the farmer with the other. Not that he’d have minded. But one feels a childish sense of guilt, nonetheless.

Letter from Espargal: 6 of 2009

I wish you could be here now, to soak up the warm sunshine and bask in the perfection of an Algarvean spring day. A breeze is toying with the tops of the trees, visible just beyond the upper patio railings. Gone are the clouds and the forecasts of rain. The skies are deepest blue and the fields a lush green. The puddles on the dirt roads are gradually drying up. We are back from a circuit with the dogs through the valley. As so often, Bobby came calling early and joined us on the walk, hopping up into the rear of the CRV with Raymond for the short drive down the hill.

In the vineyards below, farmers are busy pruning their stock. As I went to fetch Natasha from the bus earlier in the week, I came across Leonhilda striding down the road, clutching heavy shears, on her way down to cut back her vines. She was glad of a lift. We had to raise our voices to hear each other against the gunfire that echoed through the valley. The hunters were shooting birds, “tordos”, Leonhilda informed me. I didn’t recognise the word but the dictionary identified it as a thrush. Jones and I wondered what on earth inspires people to go around trying to kill thrushes.

With the return of the good weather, we’ve been venturing deeper into the hills, exploring a track that was cut by the electricity department when it installed new lines. The route is steep and uneven. How the trucks ever managed to lug the heavy reinforced concrete poles up the rocky hillsides remains a mystery to us. Even so, we are grateful for the new routes. So are the wild pig, whose hoof prints are clearly visible in the soft earth. The only downer has been renewed complaints from my right knee, which clearly wants more nursing before I embark on any further adventures.


We’ve been pleased to sit outside in the sunshine at the Snack Bar Coral for the first time this year. The interior is also pleasant but can get a little smoky at times. We always get a warm welcome from Celso, along with coffees, baggies and a slice of his wife, Brigitte’s apple pie. It’s a treat we award ourselves from time to time.

The week began with a Sunday visit from Horacio the builder, to mark out the line of fence posts that his men were to erect the following day. We found two of his workers hard at it when we arrived back from classes early on Monday afternoon. The pair identified themselves as Helder (pronounced Elder) and Eusenio. They had dug holes for and cemented in about a dozen posts. This is harder work than it might sound because our property, like most around us, is full of rocks and stones. At one point Helder scraped back stones from the earth with his bare hands. Had I done the same, I’d have lost the skin on my fingers. I offered him gloves but he declined them. His hands were tough enough.

Dinis the metal worker came around to measure up two light gates that he is making for me. He delivered them Friday afternoon, and Horacio sent around two (other) workers to cement them into position ahead of the planned completion of the fence early next week. The gates are situated on the tractor track that leads to the bottom of the property.


Our commuting neighbours, Sarah and David, returned to a drenched UK at the start of the week. Before their departure they spent several days removing a heavy growth of weeds from their new boulles pitch and surfacing it with sand. We expressed our admiration. I look forward to trying the pitch out in due course. It should make a change from the uneven ground beside their house where previous contests have been held, and where my skills have counted for little.

There is a mouse in the house. Natasha warned us of the visitor when she found unmistakeable evidence of its presence in the pantry. Jones later spotted the little rodent as it nipped out from behind the fridge for a recce. The cats have also become aware of its arrival and are anxious to meet it. Two of them camped out beside the fridge for a time in the hope that it would betray itself. I shall have to borrow Marie’s “humane” mouse trap again. (Trap users are exhorted to check the device regularly so that any mouse prisoners are confined for a short a period as possible and spared any unnecessary suffering. How traps and times have changed!)

On Tuesday afternoon Natasha and I spent two hours with an accountant, a helpful fellow who, with his assistant, occupies the upper floor of a large house on the fringes of Benafim. Our dogs always exchange insults with his on our arrival. The office is almost entirely surrounded by shelves of files. I wondered whether he had some sort of computer back-up outside of the room or whether his entire business would go up in smoke in the event of a fire. Whatever the case, I kept my thoughts to myself.

Now that Natasha is an official employee and I an official employer, we both have to submit relevant returns. Her circumstances and income combine to place her below the lowest tax-paying bracket.

I have become the possessor of a sat-nav, my first. So forgive me if I cover ground with which you have been long familiar. It’s a fairly basic one, a Garmin Nuvi 265W, with maps encompassing western Europe. The model seems easy to use and works well. I’m impressed, possibly because I simply don’t have enough experience of other sat-navs to know what it lacks. I’ve previously used one only in Canada, where my brother lent me a model, which we called Cindy. She proved invaluable on a motoring trip through Alberta and BC.

After registering the Garmin online, I was able to update the database. This seems to be familiar with even the small roads in the area. Voice instructions are delivered in a pleasant British female accent although one may choose to be guided in other accents – or, for that matter, languages. (To make space on the hard drive, I deleted some 50 languages that I shall definitely not require.) I thought that we should call our guide Ethel but Jones demurred, saying that Ethels are shop assistants rather than geographers. We decided on Heloise instead, (after hearing the name mentioned on the radio).

We’ve been to see Slumdog Millionaire. You must be aware of the publicity it’s received. The scenes shot in and around the slums were eye openers. We were impressed if not exactly wowed. After all the hype we may have been expecting too much. The happy ending was inevitable. Even so, we’re not complaining. Jones would prefer a predictable happy ending any day to an unhappy one. And I’ll go along with that.

Letter from Espargal: 5 of 2009

As good a place as any to start this letter is Wednesday morning which, like other mornings this week, dawned with the promise of rain. On examining the satellite pictures on the Portuguese weather site, I discerned a break in the clouds that promised us an hour or two of fair weather before the advancing showers reached us. Cheered by this prospect, we all piled into the car and drove down the hill to the starting point of our valley walk.

As we emerged from the car, we noticed that the skies overhead had turned sombre and threatening. Even so, we proceeded. We are all-weather walkers, after all, and it takes more than a dark cloud to scare us off. A few minutes into the jaunt, we were caught in a sharp shower. Jones shared her umbrella with me and the dogs. Prickles, declining to join the huddle, curled himself into a ball in the lee of a wall. The shower went away again.

Ten minutes further down the trail and a bolt of lightning lit the skies, followed by a clap of thunder and an explosion of cold, very wet, wind-driven rain. Briefly we sought the umbrella’s meagre protection under the branches of a very leaky tree. The storm merely mocked us. So, growing increasingly wet and cold, we slopped back down the track to the car. As we arrived home, the skies began to clear and there was even a burst of sunshine. Clearly my strategy was sound; just the timing was wrong.

MIST OVER ESPARGAL

However, this tempest was as nothing compared to the two inches of rain that squalled down on Saturday night. The storm had been widely forecast, together with warnings of rough seas and snow in the highlands. We awoke in the early hours to a wind howling like the banshee and hurling the plastic chairs around the upper patio. Then the heavens opened; water drummed against the windows and clattered off the roof. A steady drip from the study ceiling began to plop on to the upper bookshelf. (There must be a badly cemented tile on the apex of the roof.) Eventually, we fell asleep once again.

In the morning we found the rain-gauge overflowing with more than 50 mms of water. It was the first serious rain of the season – badly needed; the country’s reservoirs are low. We wondered what it had done to the Algibre river and took the dogs down to see. Well, well! We could hear the raging waters from afar. The surrounding fields had turned into a lake, studded with unhappy trees. Our sleepy little stream had swelled into a turbulent monster, a brown torrent bearing heaps of reeds and other detritus.

The small ford where Raymond had splashed across a few days before was engulfed in a surging, swirling tide. For safety’s sake I kept the dogs on leads. Other villagers gathered to behold the scene. Only once before, they said, had they witnessed the waters so high.

Afterwards I walked the 2 kms back up the hill with Zeferino, my 87 year old neighbour. He easily kept pace with me. His vigour is truly remarkable. He’s a sober citizen and a small, if fastidious eater. What’s most refreshing about him is his appetite for life. Every day brings a fresh mission with it, whether it’s to prune his trees, visit one of his plots or just to join his fellow villagers in conversation.

The old fellow can’t read or write but he gets along just fine nonetheless, with occasional help from his neighbours. We dropped him and his dog, Bobby, off at his house, along with the new green (Chinese) collar that we’ve just bought Bobby to replace the one he lost while galloping around with Raymond.

Like our neighbours we are in receipt of a new water bill, down from just on 100 euros to 25. It’s not often that I welcome bills but this one’s a beaut. For the past month we’ve been using water from our cisterna, which has been overflowing, rather than mains water. So the next bill should be much lower still.

BENAFIM BEYOND THE VINES

As frequently happens, the mains water supply has been playing up. Jones reported to me after going to visit neighbours that water was cascading down the hill from the concrete reservoir that supplies the village, and she asked me to let the authorities know. As it was lunchtime, when Portugal closes down, I had to wait an hour to get through. A little later we heard a van hurrying up the hill towards the reservoir. Two workmen scurried into the control room, scurried out again and shot off down the road. I can only think that the reservoir was being overfilled by a pump lower down. (And as I go to air, the same problem has cropped up again.)

VALLEY WALK

Midweek, Horacio the builder dropped in to assess a job he’s agreed to do for us, the erection of a fence around the back of the house. It’s not a big job but it entails digging lots of holes for fence posts, a labour from which I’ve excused myself on sciatic grounds. Horacio said his men were ready to get to work as soon as the rain stopped, which ought to be early next week. It will be a relief to have the fence in place, and to be able to let the dogs out in the knowledge that they can’t decamp into the bush whenever they’re bored.

Llewellyn phoned from the UK to say that the Sat-Nav I’d ordered from Amazon had arrived at his house in Leamington Spa. (Amazon won’t deliver most electronic equipment overseas because of the danger of fraud.) I looked for one down here but found the range limited and the cost higher, now that the euro has risen so much against the pound. After testing the model for me, Llewellyn was kind enough to make his way through the snow to the post office. I look forward to receiving it early next week.

NEIGHBOURS, OLLY & MARIE

Britain’s snowfall and the country’s resulting paralysis has been much in the news, closely followed by the fuss over (Maggie’s daughter) Carol Thatcher’s golliwog – a reference she made off-air at the BBC to a black tennis player, although I have no idea of the context. Whatever the case, it led to complaints of racist language by people who overheard the remark, which Ms Thatcher insists was made in jest. The Beeb reacted by dropping her from the programme, for which she reports. A huge fuss erupted - and continues in all the BBC blogs and discussion programmes.

BACK EXERCISES

We took ourselves one evening to see Frost-Nixon and enjoyed it although I was surprised to see that it had made the top 250 on the IMDB site. We thought Frank Langella superb as Nixon and Michael Sheen okay as Frost, although he came over as a bit of a wimp. I hadn’t realised that the film was based on a play inspired by the original interviews. It was quite disturbing, afterwards, to discover what liberties the playwright and producers had taken with history, the better to entertain us. They always do, of course, but we’d somehow expected the movie to be closer to the truth. Silly us!