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.