Letter from Espargal: 24 of 2009

Some weeks leave a great frothing wake. Others slip past with barely a ripple, as this past week has done. The ripple in question bobbed our boat around on Monday evening when the diminutive Prickles went walk-about with Bobby - our second dog drama within a few days. Prickles, for all his “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth” air, is sometimes possessed of a devil, as was the case on Monday.

He gave a couple of yaps to explain that he needed a bit of space in his life before the pair of them vanished down the hill for an extended rabbit hunt. No amount of searching, calling and whistling produced any sign of the pair. Jones and I both thought of the Madeleine McCann case and the agonies that parents suffer when children go missing.

PRICKLES

We had a miserable supper on the patio. Jones was convinced that they’d fallen into a crevice or worse and that we’d never see them again. I resolved to put the little bastids on dry rations if they ever made it home. In the event, when they returned at midnight, hungry and VERY thirsty, I was so overjoyed that I showered them with treats. Talk about the prodigal sons! I woke Jones, who came downstairs to see them for herself. The sinners hardly looked up from their dishes.

LOADING MELONS

The other mini-drama of the week was to behold Jorge, the melon farmer, whizzing down the road on his buzzbike, closely followed by the GNR (the police force that operates in rural areas and small towns). We saw the GNR van parked on the roadside a few minutes later, with Jorge leading two officers towards the heart of his melon field.

When I bumped into him later, he confirmed that he’d been targeted by thieves. He reckoned that he’d lost about 1,000 kilos of melons. We didn’t have time to exchange more than a few words but I’ve little doubt that suspicion will fall on the gypsies, who are notorious for such thievery.

At last our road is officially named – Rua do Cercado. We still await our house number – not that it should make any difference to our postal address. We came across the team cementing in a stone on the next corner one hot afternoon. Zeferino, who may always be found in attendance on any such village developments, informed me that the two workers needed beers. They didn’t deny it so I went home to fetch a couple – for which the guys were grateful.

When I asked one of them if I could take his picture beside the name stone, he carefully deposited his beer in the back of his pickup before pretending to put the finishing touches once again to the cement with his trowel. He wanted any photos to reflect his hard labour, not his thirst, and I don’t blame him for it.

TEZ AIRCRAFT

I often get photos emailed to me by an old contact of mine, an Australian doctor, Tez, who is among of group of ex-monks (myself included) who stay in cyber touch with each other. Tez is a hotshot photographer. He loves taking pictures of birds and aircraft.

TEZ HERON

His admitted idea of heaven is to camp on the fringes of the local airbase with his camera. His recent shots include the above picture of the navigator in the aircraft waving to him, and this one of a heron flying. The definition is quite remarkable.

MIKE A380

I mailed the aircraft picture to another aviation freak, Mike, one of our regular housesitters. Mike admired it and responded by sending me a picture he had himself recently taken of the A380 Airbus landing at Heathrow. I’d hoped to see the plane myself while passing through Frankfurt recently. No luck.

My own attempt at arty photography – taken with my Nokia N95 cellphone – is this early morning “shadows on the fields” shot, which I snapped down in the valley as we were walking the dogs. You can see Prickles' lead clutched in my left hand.

Jonesy, on the right, was admiring the clouds. Algarvian summers tend to be blue- sky affairs and the odd cloud is really welcome. She took this picture of the fields and clouds a few seconds later. And I think it’s just as arty. Both have a French pastoral flavour to them.

No word yet from the carpenter about the new hall cupboard, nor from the lawyer about any developments re the registration of Casa Nada. So, as so often we wait. Happily there’s no rush for either, although I would hope to see the cupboard in place within a week or two.


Our Irish neighbours, Fintan and Pauline, assisted by Ollie, have been working hard on their new holiday house in the village – intended for holiday rentals.

Fintan and Ollie were raking gravel under a torrid sun when we arrived to deliver some ferns that Barbara was donating to the garden.

We were most impressed by the layout, a combination of different-coloured gravels, lawn and bark covering, separated by curving lines of rocks. The bark and gravels were laid over heavy plastic to discourage the weeds that would otherwise take over the place after the first rains. Boulders were studded around the exterior, some as sculptures and others dividing off one section of garden from another.

A workman was putting the finishing touches to the cobble drive-way that had been laid the same day. The house is being readied to take its first guests next month. It’s luxurious, with three bedrooms and three bathrooms en suite. Air-conditioning is provided throughout and a cool blue pool awaits dippers. No, I don’t get paid commission by Fintan. But I have no hesitation in recommending it.

Letter from Espargal: BJ Birthday Extra

This special birthday edition gives me the opportunity to stick up a few pictures (click on them to see them full page) that wouldn't otherwise make it. Among the cards that Barbara received from wellwishers was this one, and it took my fancy. I hasten to add that Barbara is the thrift controller in our household and that her credit card seldom emerges from her purse. Readers should further note that Jones generally dislikes having her picture taken, and that the posed shots were really intended for a tiny audience. As they're lovely pictures, I hope she will not mind my posting them up here.

To thank neighbours for gifts, Jonesy posed with each gift in turn and then attached a photo to the thank-you notes. She tried to get Prickles to sit inside the ceramic vase but Prickles thought this a daft idea and would have nothing to do with it. So she had to content herself with the company of the other dogs. Please note how the colour of vase matches the front door.












The dress was another gift. This picture was taken on the crystal path. I'm quite proud of it with those thingummy flowers (I'll think of the name in a moment), the new car and an admiring dog all worked into it.




And then there was the pack of handsome puppy greetings cards. This picture was taken in Jones's corner of the study, where she spends many meditative early-morning hours, surrounded by favourite things. We are still trying to work out how the glass desk top got itself cracked.

After our visit to the Loule craft fair, we repaired as usual to one of the open air cafes situated on the islands of the Avenida, Loule's main drag. The proprietors had no objection to our bringing with us a load of cakes from the fair. They supplied the coffees and digestifs.


At the subsequent birthday barbeque, having failed to find a missing dog (discovered the following day), I consumed a little wine and discussed with Pauline, the other birthday girl, the secrets of marital harmony. It was Barbara's view that I should delete this photo. At least it serves to illustrate why most babies burst either into laughter or tears on first beholding me. A comparison with the god, Pan, might be appropriate, although I don't have hooves and I don't recall that he wore specs.



From time to time, I am mistaken for a neighbour, Mike Brown, (and vice versa). Although there is a superficial similarity, trained observers will notice that I wear a larger hat (the brim, I mean) and long-sleeved shirts. The little fellow seated beside me is Zeferino, the octogenarian neighbour whose dog, Bobby, we walk each afternoon and occasionally lose.

Letter from Espargal: 23 of 2009

I have spent part of the morning (and plan to spend part of the afternoon) recovering from Barbara’s birthday barbeque bash. The barbeque took place last night on the patio of Idalecio’s guest cottage, a charming venue to which the company repaired after enjoying a round of drinks with us.

Idalecio had agreed to host the barbeque professionally in a joint celebration of Barbara’s and (a neighbour) Pauline’s birthdays.

I had intended at the same time to deliver Bobby, the dog we walk and feed each afternoon, back to his owner, Zeferino, who lives next door to Idalecio. So far, so good. But no further.

I fastened Bobby’s lead briefly to a bench on our front patio while I went inside to fetch a handful of biscuits for him and another for Zeferino’s cat.
WHAT'S LEFT OF THE BENCH

As I emerged, Bobby took fright – from what, I’ve no idea. He fled through the open gates, dragging the bench behind him. The bench shattered and Bobby vanished across the fields, trailing his lead, with our dogs in hot pursuit.

By the time I caught up with our lot, there was no sign of Bobby. And he didn’t respond to my calls. After notifying Zeferino and spending an hour in a fruitless search, I gave up and joined the party at the barbeque, not in festive mood, even though it proved in every other respect to be a delightful occasion.

We renewed our search first thing this morning. Ninety minutes of looking and calling in every direction failed to produce Bobby. At that point, I went to fetch my tractor to trek around the back roads while Jones renewed her search of the fields, trying to work out where the dog might have run from the last point at which he’d been seen.

(LIBRARY SHOT)
She found Bobby within a couple of minutes, unharmed but trapped by his lead. We must have walked within 50 metres of him during our searches but he uttered not a sound, nor did our dogs come across him. Our relief was huge. We shall sleep better tonight than we did last night.

We just had time to feed and water him and deliver him home before making our way down the road to the village well for its official inauguration.

Over the past few months, the well has been rebuilt and the area around it paved. A picnic bench has been installed and troughs of flowers placed nearby. All very smart. A few dozen villagers gathered for the occasion, most of them exploiting the shade offered by the tall stone walls around the well.

And a very important occasion it was too, attended not only by the local worthies but the president of Loule council, Dr Seruca Emidio, and his inner cabinet. Dr Emidio, to his credit, engaged Barbara and other expats in amiable English conversation before going on to tell the locals in Portuguese how hard he and his councillors were working to improve their lives. Regional TV and the local press were on hand to record the event. After the speeches, we were invited to the picnic table for port and cakes.

According to some, the well dates back to the Romans (several of whose coins have been ploughed up in the fields). Whatever the case, the well is really the heart of the village and the reason for its being. Idalecio tells us that in times of drought its water was carefully rationed, each family having to manage on so many buckets a day.

The other news of the week is that Espargal has been getting street names and its houses have been assigned numbers. Both the names and the numbers have been inscribed on tiles that are being attached to the walls. The name of our street, the Rua do Cercado (an enclosure) is yet to go up, possibly because there’s no handy wall to attach it to.

At the house of our neighbours, David and Sarah, we watched parish workers pasting up both the name (Rua da Talefe – the trig-point, at the top of the hill) and number (20). Many of the names are traditional, having being used for generations by people in the area.

To other news: I was dismayed a few days back to find that my trailer was faring poorly under the carob tree to which it’s been consigned since Jones voted for its eviction from Casa Nada. Its state became evident to me while I was lying flat on my back with an angle-grinder, removing the trailer’s old number plate (in order to attach a new plate matching the registration of the new car). Although the galvanised sheet metal was fine, the (usually invisible) spars that made up the chassis had started to rust.

So I hitched the trailer up to the tractor and towed it down the road to Idalecio’s dad’s yard in order to make use of the pit employed to service his own vehicles. Crouching beneath the trailer, I was able to rub the spars down and then to paint them. I was grateful for the protection of my hat, which took the sting out of my many head thumps as I worked away. It wasn’t an easy job. The pit was designed for short Portuguese workers and not tall estrangeiros. I’m still trying to get the crook out of my back.

After painting the upper rims of the trailer as well, I parked the vehicle back under the carob tree. As I told Jones, I need to construct a shelter for it before the onset of winter. It doesn’t like being left outside.

We have agreed a price with Sergio, the carpenter, for the construction of a large fitted cupboard in our hall. This price is considerably below his initial quote, which I considered excessive, as I told him. Sergio agreed that it was high but insisted that this was because the price of beech (needed to match existing display cabinets) had gone up. Even so, because I was “an excellent customer” (and he really needs the work), he offered to knock 20% off the price – an offer I promptly accepted. With luck we should have the cupboard installed towards the end of the month.

On our way home from Benafim with Natasha one morning, we spied a woman walking along the road towards the several tiny hamlets in the area. I thought I recognised her and stopped to offer her a lift. In the event, she was a stranger and, although slightly hesitant, she accepted a ride with us. Jones climbed into the back with Natasha and dogs to give her the front passenger seat. She identified herself as Guimar and said she was heading for her cottage in the hamlet of Charneca, about a kilometre down the road.

We started chatting, saying we lived in Espargal and pointing to our house, visible high up on the hillside.
CASA NADA, UPPER LEFT
Oh, said Guimar, her brother-in-law, Bernadino, used to live in those parts. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was Bernadino who had sold us the property. We had long since lost contact with him and had been trying to trace him through our neighbours as he might be the key to our eventual registration of Casa Nada.

Guimar didn’t have his phone number but she did have the number of his daughter, which she gave us – and we passed on to the lawyer who is now handling the matter. Talk about coincidences!

The Jones birthday included a visit to Loule’s summer handicrafts fair. This is always held on the square outside the law courts in kiosks erected for the purpose. Those who desire may take dinner at makeshift tables and listen to the amplified entertainment from the nearby stage (an attraction we generally avoid).

Most of the stalls offer knick-knacks, beads and other trinkets, at prices the locals can afford. There is always some art on display as well, generally of a more lurid kind and seldom costing three figures. There was one abstract painting that appealed to me but it didn’t meet Jones’s approval so we left it where it was.

A burly policeman with an even burlier rottweiler kept an eye on proceedings from the sidelines. Our neighbours tell us that the dog stood impassively by its master’s side until a child passed, pulling a toy dog on a string.

The sight terrified the rottweiler, amused onlookers and embarrassed the policeman. Such is life. “A vida é assim”, as they say here.

My siesta calls and so do the animals. Enough unto the day....

Letter from Espargal: 22 of 2009

Midweek, mid-afternoon; having risen from my siesta on the study carpet with Raymond, I’m hiding from the sun until it moves round a bit to roast some other part of the world. Algarvian turbo-summers are not my scene.

Downstairs, Natasha is labouring away with the vacuum cleaner. As we were out walking early with the dogs, I received a text message from her, saying she’d missed the bus from Loule – something she does too frequently for her own good. I wasn’t sympathetic, and sent back a message saying we’d find another day for her to work. When I spoke to her ten minutes later, she’d hitched a lift with a motorist, who dropped her off near Benafim, where I fetched her. If she’s not good at getting up (and Alex off to the crèche) she’s not short of initiative.

The rest of the morning I spent cleaning up some heavily overgrown fields near ours. They were a fire hazard – deep in impenetrable brown weeds. The rows of almond trees hadn’t been picked in years, nor their branches pruned. I had to duck my head as I passed under the trees, and break off the dead twigs that tried to gouge my eyes out.

A compressed mass of grasses collected in the scarifier, flattening the vegetation as it passed, like a steam roller. Swallows swarmed around me, gorging on the insects I disturbed. The tractor itself disappeared beneath a thick coat of grey dust; the air inlets blocked up with seed-heads. I had to hose the vehicle down afterwards.

CLEAN TRACTOR BESIDE PLUM TREE
Idalecio’s dad told me, when I went to collect a couple of boxes of tomatoes from him that the land belonged to an old woman and her retarded daughter. Such fields are not uncommon, their owners having grown old or moved on.

Pause there to help Jones find her glasses. A brief search revealed them to be resting on her head.

Jones has hardly emerged from her garden all week, except to make another load of jam. This time it’s plum jam. Our plum tree, like our neighbours’ trees, is groaning under its load of ripe fruit. With luck I’ll get another batch of her tomato jam as well. During our walks we’ve been eyeing the huge melons that George Vieira and his assistants pick each morning down in the valley. Jonesy loves them.

One afternoon we drove to Faro to see State of Play and enjoyed it. Like most of the reviews we read afterwards, we felt that it was a good movie that could have been a great movie. It got a bit too clever for itself. We went to the first show of the day, at 15.45. The afternoon audience was mature, sparse and mainly foreign; not the sort to chew popcorn and consult their mobile phones. We got back in time to walk the dogs and water the garden. Our favourite time of day is at sunset, baggy in hand on the moonrise bench. It makes the heat almost worth bearing.

A regular summer task is to get the dogs vaccinated. That’s our three and Bobby, who joins his brother, Raymond, behind the grill in the rear of the car. The operation is easier described than done because the animals have grown to recognise the vet’s surgery and vigorously resist being taken inside. It requires three of us, Jones an assistant and me, to persuade (read “drag”) them into the waiting room.

During the brief examination of each animal prior to the vaccination, the vet takes its temperature with a rectal thermometer. None of them enjoy this but Prickles shrieks anal assault. You would think the little dog was being tortured to death. As far as he’s concerned, his back passage is a single-purpose, uni-directional arrangement – and not to be messed with. He won the day.

On Thursday, Sergio the carpenter called. He’s the fellow who made the fine cupboards for our bedroom and later much of our study furniture. Times were hard, he told us, and orders thin. His five-man team had been reduced to himself and a single assistant. He was very keen to get the job. It’s to build us a hall- cupboard to size, to take all sorts of stuff (hats, shoes, keys, some tools), replacing a cabinet (that started out in Johannesburg and followed us to London, the Quinta and finally Espargal). We await his quote. I hope that it reflects his eagerness.

That evening we supped alfresco at the Coral. A bottle of wine, three kebabs for me and a huge omelette for Jones, plus the usual coffees, came to less than 15 euros. That's value for money.

Beside us, the owners' 5-year old son, Joey, played with his cars. Joey's crazy about cars and headed for the motor industry, one way or another.

Friday was the day that Jones chose to do some special things to celebrate Saturday’s birthday. First task of the day was to go with the local architect to Alte to visit a lawyer who might, he thought, be able to sort out the registration of Casa Nada. She was a very clever lawyer, he said, who had resolved some fiendish stuff.

The lawyer, after glancing through a wodge of papers, shook her head. The omens were bad. She would speak to the notary about the prospects but she wasn’t hopeful. So much for 18 months of bureaucratic run-around with the facilities agency in Benafim. The good news, if there was good news, was that we might be able to register Casa Nada in 11 years’ time - that is, 20 years after buying the property.

I found Jones, who was walking the dogs in the village centre. She wasn’t at all pleased (neither was I) and couldn’t see why the Portuguese authorities would ignore all kinds of pressing proofs of the legitimacy of Casa Nada.

As a birthday treat, she wanted to visit Luis’s snack bar for coffee and some of Alte’s famous fig tart. But Luis had run out of fig tart, as had the next cafe. So we decided to motor 20 minutes to Boliqueime to visit a favourite art gallery there.
It was hot and we were grateful for the powerful air- conditioning unit in the new car. (The car’s a dream, “fabuloso” as the Honda technician described it when he sorted out a minor problem with the radio, which was changing stations of its own volition.)

We arrived in Boliqueime to find the art gallery shut. It was so shut that we wondered whether it had packed itself up and moved elsewhere. (It had, as we subsequently confirmed on the internet.) So, giving up any further celebratory thoughts, we drove home, stopping en route at George Vieira’s place to buy a load of melons and water-melons - big, fat and very sweet. If you can’t win them all, at least you can feast on melons. Enough; Raymond’s waiting for our siesta.

Letter from Espargal: 21 of 2009

En route to the opening of an art exhibition on Thursday evening, Jones and I (Ono and Pricks in the back seat) were listening on the car radio to an impassioned debate in the Portuguese parliament. Speaker after speaker stood up to denounce some dreadful outrage that had rocked the house to its foundations. All we could make out was that someone had resigned as a result. It must have been pretty serious stuff because nobody resigns over a minor scandal in Portugal.

On Friday’s lunchtime TV broadcast the question resolved itself. The resignation came from Portugal’s Economy Minister, Manuel Pinho, whose sin was evident on screen for all the world to see. In response to a challenge from the leader of the communists, Mr Pinho had stuck his forefingers up beside his head in a cuckold gesture.

One has to feel reassured about the priorities of Portugal’s parliamentary deputies. No-one gets too upset about the disappearance of the odd million into the cracks and fissures of members’ interests. But you can’t poke fun at the bedroom antics of members’ spouses. Mr Pinho must be regretting his rashness – at least until the elections in two months’ time and his likely reappointment to another post.

As I say, we were listening to the debate in the car – our new car, that is. (If you’re not interested in cars, you might want to read something else.) On Tuesday afternoon, having cleaned our old CRV, I traded it in for a new model. Jorge Silva, the salesman from whom I bought the first Honda 9 years ago, was delighted to sell me another.

After completing the paperwork, he took me through to the workshop for an hour’s tuition on the new car’s high-tech systems – the Satnav, auto-stabilisation, the radar that monitors other vehicles, the computer itself…..and a lot more stuff.

Later in the week I had another lesson, this time taking in the bluetooth mobile phone link and the audio system. My head is reeling and I haven’t even opened the 300-page guide book.

The technical bumph aside, I have to say that I love the car. It’s a diesel, more potent than its predecessor and a joy to drive, even though it sometimes resents interference from the driver. The lights switch on as you pass under a bridge or enter a parking garage. Ditto the windscreen wipers when it rains. Quite amazing, at least to an elementary 20^th century motorist such as myself.

Jones, who was very attached to the old CRV, regarded the newcomer with mild suspicion, at least until she discovered its benefits. It wraps occupants up in its own snug little world. The moment of her conversion came when she found that she could raise the passenger temperature to warm her toes without affecting the lower temperatures on my side of the console.

The dogs too have given the vehicle their full approval. I’ve rigged up extensive seat and boot protective covers to shield the leather upholstery from their nails.

So yes, it’s a splendid car. What it didn’t have was a splendid place to park. The old car has camped for years under heavy green shade-cloth draped around the skeleton of the car port. To obtain greater protection from the elements, I bought a number of insulated roofing panels from Gilde’s hardware store on the outskirts of Salir. (It’s a great store - well stocked, staffed by really helpful people.)

These panels Isidoro delivered early in the week. Together we manoeuvred them off his truck. They were bulky rather than heavy.
On Thursday Horacio the builder arrived promptly, as promised, with two of his men to secure the panels to the roof of the carport. The job took them barely 90 minutes. The key was having three guys to heft the panels up on to the carport roof and the use of long self-penetrating screws that drilled themselves straight through the panels into the metal struts below.

On the domestic front, life continues as before. It’s hot. The only time that I’m really cool is under the cold tap in the shower at about 8 each evening. Jones labours away at the interminable task of disciplining her unruly garden. It’s not her plants that are problematic but the thousands of invaders that spring up, scatter their seeds and fade away into miserable brown corpses. (Jones says she likes many of the invaders. It’s just that they die off in summer and have to be disposed of.) For my part I've been cutting back and shredding the cuttings.

Several times a week I curse and pluck a tick from my body, one that has evaded Jones’s surface examination of me on our return from walking. Such pests are dropped into the loo and flushed into outer darkness. Their cousins, the flies and mosquitoes, are also around but less of a threat or a pain.

Whenever we can find an excuse, we go up to the Coral in Benafim for a spot of lunch or supper or just coffee. It's a favourite stop and great value for money. One morning I went into the property registry in Loule with the sheaf of papers representing 18 months plodding bureaucracy on the part of our (former) facilities office person in Benafim. In theory, the documents should have opened the way to the formal registration of Casa Nada.

In practice, the clerk concerned peered at them in puzzlement for several minutes before advising me to see a lawyer. I shall probably have to do that anyhow. But first I’ll go back to a local architect who put us in touch with the facilities person in the first place, under the impression that the matter should be fairly straightforward. (I can’t think of anything that’s straightforward in Portugal.)

As for that art exhibition, it’s being held at a fancy hotel in a smart resort. We were invited to the opening by a woman in our Portuguese class; she and her husband belong to a group of some 20 artists, mainly English and German, who organise such events in the Algarve with a view to promoting their work.

We arrived to find 30 or 40 people present and about the same number of paintings strung around the wall of the exhibition room. Prices started at several hundred euros and ran to a couple of thousand,which is expensive for this part of the world.

I was collared by a woman who pointed out her paintings to me and informed me that she was not just an artist but also a teacher of art. I was able to plead complete ignorance of the subject on the basis that I had merely brought along my art-loving wife. While this might have been an exaggeration, it certainly wasn’t a lie.