Letter from Espargal: 19 of 2009

The highlight of the week here in Espargal has undoubtedly been the transfer of the post-boxes from their site near the well to their new roofed enclosure, beside the wall of Tony and Annette Cusack’s house, where Vitor liked to park his car. Locals have clustered around the new enclosure to follow daily progress, watching every pat of the two workmen’s trowels. Here, small is beautiful and that’s the way we like it.

As far as we know, ours are the first post-boxes to get a roofed house all of their own. This means that we will no longer have to dry off bedraggled items of mail after a storm. We were pleased to see that the three new boxes, which I had ordered (for us and two absent neighbours) via the parish office, had been erected alongside the old.

I had plastic name tags made for all three and attached them – crookedly, said Jones, who would only allow one of the three to be straight. Well, so be it. The postman can still read them well enough. We puzzle over how he manages with some of the yellowing boxes, whose (sometimes dead or departed) owners’ I.D. has become completely indecipherable.

We didn’t know whether numbers had been allocated to the new post-boxes. The ladies in the parish office couldn’t tell us and suggested that I have a word with the postie, which I did when we bumped into him outside the Snack Bar Coral.

PRICKLES WITH BRAKES ON
He suggested that we simply ascertain the highest number on the existing boxes and allocate the following three numbers to the new ones. That would make ours CP-322-Z, not that it will much matter on the mail. CP, by the way, stands for Caixa Postal (Post Box). What the Z is for we have yet to discover.

This setback aside, it has, one way and another, been quite a sociable week.
MIKE
Matters began last Sunday at Mike and Liz’s place, where the expat gang gathered for lunch. Our hosts had taken great trouble with the preparation of the tables and much else, for which we thank them. They supplied a mighty dish of coq-au-vin that guests complemented with take-along salads and desserts.

ANNEKE - RIGHT
Among the guests was Anneke, newly returned from her 300-km pilgrimage from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. I was interested to hear how she’d got on and what she thought of the experience, the more so because although she’s a spiritual person, she’s not religious. She’d walked mainly alone, she recounted, through sunshine and rain, sleeping most nights in hostels that supplied pilgrims with dormitory bunks at three euros a night. The hardest bit had been sharing her nights with a roomful of snorers. Such privations would have driven me to total insomnia.

Anneke said she intended to do more such walks, possibly to Portugal’s old university cities of Coimbra and Tomar.

Mike and Liz's dogs, like ours, tend to be fully-fledged members of the family, with (limited) furniture-occupation rights. Their newer bitch, Sammy, manages to drape herself across both chairs and their occupants in the most unusual - although always elegant - manner. Judge for yourself.

On Wednesday we attended a 70^th birthday lunch for our long-time friend and neighbour, David Davies. The function was held at a smart restaurant in the hills beyond Loule, with views right down the Algarve plain to the coast. Most of the guests, like David’s wife, Dagmar, were native Germans, several of whom kindly switched to English to converse with neighbours like us. It made me feel inadequate. I wish that I could manage a conversation in French and German but I fear that it’s not going to be in this life.

BIRTHDAY BOY
This weekend promises to be equally convivial. There’s an expat boule competition on Sarah and David’s new pitch this Sunday. I hope that Jones will be on form. The same evening our house-sitters, the Ferretts, arrive from the UK. On the Monday, they will join us and other neighbours at a country restaurant where Jones has arranged lunch.

That takes us to Tuesday, when we’re up at sparrows for flights to Lisbon, Frankfurt and Calgary. After overnighting in Calgary we continue on to Seattle for a couple of days before returning to Canada on the Friday. Enough of such stuff. We have to go walking. This is the last edition of the blog until our return in mid-June. We hope to remain in intermittent email contact in the meanwhile – best during our travels to terrybenson@gmail.com .

I have given my English pupils extra lessons to compensate them for those they will miss during our absence. We had an animated discussion this week as they explained to me how Portuguese names work. Portuguese children have at least three names, the final two always comprising the surname of the mother followed by that of the father. So the maternal line preserves its surname for two generations. The male name line continues indefinitely.

Post Script: As we returned from our walk, we found the post-box enclosure being painted. The painter protested that he wasn't photogenic but I assured him that he was streets ahead of me in that department. (I have long been aware that babies tend either to laugh or cry when they see me.)