Letter from Espargal: 29 of 2009

SUMMER - FROM THE UPPER PATIO

I’m running late. Most of the stuff that’s happened this week has been late, and a bit confused to boot. I was going to begin with the wonderful news that Autumn had arrived on Tuesday. What a relief it was! How we relished the cool morning and the refreshing breeze! But summer returned on Thursday and ruined my pitch. That’s typical of the way things have gone these past few days – nothing disastrous, just a little topsy turvy.

For instance, we were going to have a new Portuguese satellite system installed on Tuesday afternoon. Fearing that the job might not be done by the time we had to take friends to the airport that evening, we postponed the installation till Thursday morning. Thursday morning the installers called to say they were behind. Could they make it Thursday afternoon instead?

That was okay by us, even though Jones was having neighbours round to drinks in the evening. We didn’t think the neighbours would mind if the guys weren’t quite finished. In the event the team arrived at 16.30. They had a hard time getting a new cable down the narrow channels that ran through the house wall and didn’t finish until 6.

That’s when I discovered that they weren’t installing the receiver I wanted, the one with a hard drive and all sorts of clever recording gizmos. Nor could they do so that evening because it would take them another hour to run yet another cable, and they had a further installation awaiting them elsewhere.

Maybe I’ll upgrade to the fancy receiver later. Meanwhile, the system works just fine and gives us a range of channels in half a dozen languages (if we wanted them), even if we can’t record anything. It interests me that Portugal Telecom, which used to make its money from telephone calls, now depends for a living on internet packages and satellite TV.

It was as the Portugal Telecom team were completing the job that Jones discovered that (our neighbour, Zeferino’s dog) Bobby had gone missing after chasing a rabbit while out with Zeferino in the morning.
BOBBY & HIS BROTHER
When he isn’t lost, Bobby spends most of his time with us. The dog is fated. If there’s something that can go wrong with his life, it does. This is exhausting for the rest of us. There was no opportunity to go looking for him as the neighbours were due shortly and Jones had cocktails to prepare.

While we were having drinks, we asked the neighbours to keep an eye out for Bobby. Hardly had we done so than the dog turned up at the gate, looking as though he’d been dragged through the bush backwards. Maybe he’d lost a tussle with a huge rabbit or had a brush with the sheep that graze in the valley. He was ravenous. We fed him and watered him.

Then Idalecio, our neighbour phoned. He was down on the coast somewhere. He had guests staying in his cottages. One group had called him to say they’d run out of gas and couldn’t connect up to the new gas bottle. Idalecio wondered if I could help. I said I’d try. By the time I got round to his place, the problem had been sorted out. I carried on to take Bobby home, my pocket full of cat biscuits for Zeferino’s mog, which ambushes me of an evening with pitiful cries of hunger.

Pause here while Raymond brings up his breakfast noisily on the study carpet beside us. Yuck! Jones informs me that the mess is full of half-digested biscuits. (I have mopped up the worst of it and Jones has taken the carpet downstairs to give it a good scrub on the cobbles.)

THE SINNER

Friday I planned to renew my driving licence, as required by law of drivers at intervals from age 60. That meant taking the licence to the Portuguese AA in Faro, along with the medical form that Dr Sergio had filled in, saying that I was fit to drive. On checking the form, I discovered that the doctor had omitted a vital phrase. So we went first to Alte to try to find him and have him complete the document. Success.

From Alte it’s 40 minutes down the highway to Faro. We didn’t feel like getting out of the car when we arrived there because the car was wonderfully cool and Faro was stinking hot. It’s always oppressive in the underground parking garage. Knowing that it would be, we’d bribed and browbeaten the dogs to stay at home.

The lady at the AA in Faro was most helpful, unlike her pain-in-the-arze happily-absent colleague. All was in order, except that I’d forgotten to take photos along. The lady directed me to a nearby photographic shop to do the necessary. I now have a piece of paper saying that I’m entitled to drive until such time as my new licence arrives (or the piece of paper runs out.)

I could tell you more stuff like this but I suspect you’ve got the drift. Mainly what we’ve been doing is collecting carobs. So has just about everybody else in the area. The thwack of long sticks in high branches can everywhere be heard in the bush as we walk the dogs in the morning.

One evening I went down to the valley in the tractor to help Leonhilda bring home some of the sacks that she and neighbours had filled that day. She said they had done 39. That’s a vast amount of carobs.

A neighbour, Joachim Vieira, had half a dozen sacks on his tractor. I loaded the same number on mine. He carefully tied on the long rods. Then Leonhilda clambered on board and we came home. That’s the way it is in these parts. The guys drive the tractors; the girls ride side-saddle on the wheelguards or sitting behind atop the sacks of carobs. (It’s better than walking, especially after 8 hours in the field.)

We collect our own carobs for an hour or two each morning, managing one or two sacks a day. These we give to the neighbours in exchange for fruit and veg. At current prices a 35-kg sack fetches 10 to 12 euros. It used to be closer to 20 euros. The farmers groan at the decline. But they pick furiously nonetheless. They can’t afford not to. For some the carob crop represents their main income. For pensioners, it’s a valuable supplement.

TOMATO PLANT

Jones has been carefully nurturing several tomato plants. Professional tomato growers plant their seedlings under a framework of beams from which they hang cords around which the plants entwine themselves. The plants grow to a metre and more in height, bearing masses of fruit. I have tied cords from an overhead carob tree around Jones’s tomato plants as well. The plants are looking good. All that awaits is the tomatoes.

Letter from Espargal: 28 of 2009

I’m at my desk, hiding from the sun. It’s midweek and the blog is coming in bits. Jones is doing Jonesy things at her desk behind me. Natasha is vacuum cleaning downstairs and the animals are scattered around the house like cushions.

As usual during the day, our phone and the internet connection are down. Tonight they will be up again. There’s a widget somewhere between us and the exchange that fails when it heats up which, in the Algarve summer, means every day - very irritating, the more so as we seem to have been singled out.

A man from Portugal Telecom phoned earlier in the week to say that a team hoped to address the problem this afternoon. So we’re waiting for a call, not exactly on tenterhooks. PT’s last attempt at repairs failed.

The week is following its usual pattern. To the walking, watering and weeding we’ve added carob picking. It’s pretty basic stuff - using a long pole to whack the carobs down and then spending hours picking them up and putting them into sacks, to be given to a neighbour in exchange for fruit and veg. The whacking down is harder work than it might sound. Try waving a 4-metre pole above your head for 30 minutes and you’ll see what I mean.

Tuesday I took my carob-picking assistants (Robbie and Kayleigh) and a friend of theirs to Zoomarine. This is a big marine park about half an hour away. The key attractions are dolphin, seal and sea-lion displays, with swimming pools, picnic grounds, restaurants, funfair stuff, bird-of-prey displays and much else thrown in.

The extensive parking grounds were filling up rapidly when we arrived and joined the queues. We headed first to the dolphin pool where a thousand people or more had filled the stand. The dolphins were still behind the scenes but acres of human flesh were on display, most of it saggy and unattractive. Bikinis were much in evidence, with a wisp of ribbon or waft of netting attached for modesty. A clown warmed up the crowd.

6 DOLPHINS IN THE AIR

When the dolphins and their trainers did make an appearance, they were simply superb. Commentary was in English and Portuguese. The seals and sea-lions, which performed in a different pool a little later, were less acrobatic but just as entertaining.



I went cautiously back to the scene of the wasp episode to see whether my endeavours had been successful. They hadn’t. The insects had given me the finger, opening another door about a foot away from the one I’d blocked. A second assault on their stronghold lies ahead. The question is how many doors they have, or can open at will. In the meanwhile, my carobs lie all around them.

The dogs are barely able to consume their supper for the numbers of wasps that bother them. I have reluctantly set up my wasps’ traps once again. (The BBC reports the death of an English farmer who had the misfortune to disturb a wasps’ nest and died for his pains – of an allergic reaction.)

We took some pictures of Joey, the 5-year old son of the proprietors of the Snack Bar Coral. Joey is just crazy about cars and spends much of his day arranging and rearranging his collection. He had them all lined up around the snooker table. Jonesy counted them - 120-something. Joey is fated to become a rally driver or racing driver, I fear. It's just in his blood.

One afternoon we went to Alte for a consultation with Dr Sergio, the same fellow whose amiable Great Dane had terrorised our lot the previous week. I thought it better not to raise the subject, as I was dependent on his goodwill and stamp for the renewal of my driving licence. I expected just a brief once-over and an eye-test but I got a thorough examination.

While waiting for the consultation, I assisted an elderly English couple into the waiting room. Neither spoke Portuguese and they had difficulty communicating with Isabel, the receptionist. The old fellow sounded in a bad way. After doing a bit of translating, I helped Isabel conduct him through to a consulting room and lay him down on an examination couch. (Dr Sergio, who speaks English, was busy with a patient at that point.)

A few minutes later, Isabel came through to the waiting room to ask me the English word for “cenouras”. Carrots, I told her, somewhat puzzled. She vanished again to impart this information to the couple. They were still there when I left. I hope that the carrots have done the trick and the old fellow is feeling better. I had a vision of Jones and myself some way down the road. It’s never easy to grow old and feeble, the more so in a foreign country. At least we speak Portuguese.

Jones has been hard at work on a section of garden just outside the tractor door to Casa Nada. She’s planted succulents and laid a bed of small rocks over a wodge of (anti-weed) newspapers. As always, it looks good and should reduce the work of forever having to strim or pull out winters’ weeds.

Another project has been to tidy up an area beneath two pomegranate trees. Some years ago I covered the ground with matting and a layer of bark. This cover would work well if Raymond and Bobby didn’t use the area for their wrestling matches, scattering the bark in all directions.

Jones, who likes a neat environment, is addressing the problem. My part is to reroute the plastic piping that carries water to Casa Nada. This task entails mainly lying with my face in the dirt, trying to attach fittings (that seem designed to spring a leak as soon as the water is turned on again).The fittings concerned came from a hardware shop in Loule that we’ve been patronising for some 20 years.

From the store I went to Lidl to meet Jones, who’d been doing the grocery shopping. When we came to pay the grocery bill, I couldn’t find my wallet. Bad moment – not so much the loss of cash as the huge hassle involved in card cancellations and replacements. Fortunately, Jones had her card with her. After searching my pockets and the car – in vain – I called the hardware store. The wallet was there for the fetching, I was assured. And so it was. I’d left it on the counter. I don’t know how these accidents happen but they do, especially when one is distracted.

Stop Press: I’ve had a call from Portugal Telecom to say that the problem with the phone line has been fixed. It evidently has or the technician wouldn’t have got through to me. My internet link is functioning once again, too. It’s almost worth suffering the loss of these things just to get them back again.

Letter from Espargal: 27 of 2009

Things have gone with a bang this week, some things at least, especially an egg that Jones tried to microwave. Although she had taken the necessary precautions, or said she had, the egg blew itself up like a suicide bomber. The explosion startled us both. It threw open the oven door and spread a white and yellow mush evenly around the oven. The bang was quite impressive – certainly as impressive as I ever wish to experience at close quarters. I cleaned up the worst of the eggy fragments before Jones set about restoring the oven to its usual pristine state.

This endeavour brought another setback, announced with a loud (why are the fates against me?) groan from the kitchen. It seems that the top came off a bottle of strong cleaner while Jones was trying to remove the container from the cupboard under the sink. The bottle fell over, the contents went everywhere and she had a great deal more cleaning up to do than she had envisaged.

That, however, was as bad as the week got which, compared to mudslides in Taiwan and upheavals elsewhere, wasn’t too bad at all. Jones returned from the UK on Monday morning. The dogs gave her their usual frenetic welcome at the airport. On the way home we stopped to get her new specs from the optician. The old lenses had become so badly scratched as to be virtually opaque.

WATERPERRY GARDENS

Jones spent several excellent days with her family in Leamington Spa, with outings to favourite places, attested to by the photographs she brought back with her. On seeing her garden and her house, both of which I’d cared for with the greatest diligence in her absence, she got a distracted look about her and said she hardly knew where to start – there was so much to do. No doubt that husbands all over the world are familiar with this response.

WITH LUCIA IN LONDON

As much as there was to do, we found time to join friends for a patio lunch beside the river at a favourite restaurant in Alte. After the meal, as is quite usual in these parts, I asked the waiter to put our scraps (and any others he might have in the kitchen) into a plastic bag for the beasts. On our return, Jones cooked these up on the stove. So delicious were the chickeny smells that issued from the pot that all the animals lined up in anticipation. If you look carefully, you will spot the diminutive Prickles behind the chair, bottom right.

Friends’ visiting teenage children, Robbie and Kayleigh, joined us midweek for a bit of carob picking. After dropping off Natasha, we headed to Alte for icecreams. This was a mistake. We had all three dogs with us and we’d barely got them out of the car than we ran into a large (fortunately amiable) Great Dane.

Our three greeted this beast with the kind of welcome the Angles and Saxons gave to the Vikings. The Dane was intensely curious and followed us all the way to the tearoom and back again, trying to sniff our lots’ bums while they hissed, snarled and spat at it in return.

We gathered from the tearoom owner that the dog belonged to the local doctor. It didn’t like being locked away, she told us. It was evidently well known and liked for it got a pat or a hug from a number of passers-by, including a small boy.

Back home, Kayleigh, who’d been stung by wasps a few days earlier, was lucky to spot a number of the insects emerging from a hole in the ground beneath the carob tree that we were picking – lucky, that is, to see them before she trod on them. Although the wasps are not normally aggressive, they get very upset when anybody approaches home base. This I know to my cost. I waited for sunset before taking a can of insect spray and a rock, first to stun the blighters and then block the entrance. “Live and let live” is fine, up to a point and the wasps had crossed it when they put my carob tree out of bounds.

A neighbour, Ollie, had needed to take similar action a week earlier, to get rid of a nest inside a rock. There was just a small hole where the wasps were entering and leaving but they were protective of their interests and threatening the human residents. In the event, after failing to get rid of the pests with spray, he had to use petrol and a match to complete the job. (As I say, it’s been an explosive week.)

This was at Villa L, a holiday house in the village where Ollie and Marie’s family have been staying. We joined the group one evening for a barbeque, a most relaxed and pleasant occasion, at which I was able to make myself useful.

Returning to the theme of Danes, I tried to trace on the internet some choral music that we’d heard in the car on the Portuguese classical music station, Antena 2. The details were not on the station’s website but a contact email was. So I wrote to enquire. The answer came back the next day.
The music was "Hymnus Amoris” by the Dane, Carl Nielsen. I have since bought the piece online, along with a number of others by him.

August 15, the feast of the Assumption (still a big festival in what remains of Catholic Europe) brings the start of the hunting season. The next seven months are going to be a lot more explosive. Judging by the number of rabbits the dogs have been chasing down in the valley, the hunters should get a good bag. We will wince each Thursday and Sunday – and try to find a quiet spot for a walk.

ZEFERINO

We were distressed one evening to hear that our 87-year-old neighbour, Zeferino, had been taken to hospital after feeling unwell. We got the news from Luigieiro, his son, as we were taking back Bobby (who joins us each afternoon for a walk, a meal and a romp with his brother, Raymond). Zeferino returned home the following day, accompanied by lots of his family. (His house was full of mosquitoes one little girl told me.)

We’ve chatted to him since. He ate something that caused a prolonged spell of vomiting. He thinks it was a bad plum he told me although I have my doubts. He hopes to be well enough to go picking carobs again next week. We hope so to. He and Luigieiro have just forked out hundreds of euros on tractor repairs and it will take the pair of them a great many sacks of carobs to recompense themselves.

As I write, the dogs are snoozing (as usual) on the carpet beside me. We are back from our morning walk. It’s really hot outside and is going to stay that way until close to sunset. (I can’t wait for the arrival of autumn!)
Ono is dreaming and uttering little barks in his sleep. A while back I watched Raymond as he lay dreaming. Every so often his tail would start wagging. It was obviously a good dream. I hope that he was having more success with his dream girls than he has with Bobby each afternoon. The two spend much of their time trying to practise mating on each other, often at the completely wrong end.

Letter from Espargal: 26 of 2009

Jones has gone to the UK for a few days, to catch up with friends and family. I took her on Thursday morning to Faro airport, where she joined the end of a very long queue that stretched through the terminal and up to the distant Monarch desks. We took ages to reach them. When we did, we discovered that the plane was due to leave an hour late. Why is it that the romance and excitement of 21st century travel is reduced to queues, delays and searches? Jones, not famous for her patience, wonders each time why she didn’t stay at home instead. The question is rhetorical. There’s no point in telling her that it’s because her friends and family are far-flung and there’s no easier way of getting to see them.

Her departure leaves me free to follow my own schedule – albeit that I have a list of plants to water and animals to feed (only half of them our own). On my return home I found the contemplation of the choice so exhausting that I lay down on the floor for a snooze. The dogs lay snoozing around me.

OFF TO GET PLUMS - BACK IN A MINUTE
The thing is (there was a BBC presenter, now happily departed, who would always say at the start of a question “but the thing is,” irritating me no end). The thing is that choice is all very well until one actually has to take a decision. Is it too hot to go into the garden? What to eat? What did Jones say she had left in the fridge? It gets a bit wearing. This business of being a bachelor is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Jones and I used to be separated for months at a time and found life bearable if not exactly fun. We have got out of the habit. Now, even a few days’ separation weighs upon one.

Sergio, the carpenter came midweek to measure up the hall cupboard and present us with a few options. He was due last Friday but failed either to call or to arrive (which, in Portugal, is not regarded as unusual.) When I got hold of him I let him know that he was not the flavour of the month. Sergio was apologetic and insisted by way of repentance that I should convey his very best wishes to Jones, which I did.

After finalising the dimensions of the new cupboard, he and his assistant carried the old display cabinet (that I had emptied in anticipation) around to Casa Nada, where it has taken up residence in Jones’s room, along with the lizards and a few other items of furniture. If we ever get Casa Nada legalised, the cabinet will prove useful.

It takes a while to call to mind all the other achievements of the week. Jones wanted a simple path of flat stones laid in the south garden, which I have provided her. That wasn’t too difficult. Each evening we have sat out on the new level patch at the top of garden, sipping baggies and mollifying the dogs with the occasional biscuit. The end of the week brought a stunning full moon to crown our work.

One night, I woke Jones in the early hours to reassure her that Prickles and Bobby were back from yet another jaunt through the hills. Jones gets so worried when the dogs go astray – never mind that it’s for the umpteenth time – that she can think of nothing else until their return. In her mind she rehearses waking in the morning to find that they’re not back, and working out how she’s going to cope with their absence. Prickles has been sentenced to remain on his lead indefinitely. The little guy can stand up on his hind legs all he likes, pleading with his eyes to be allowed to join in rabbit chases. No chance, mate. Our hearts have been hardened. (That’s what we said last time too.)

I’ve been along to the Portuguese automobile club to obtain a form that has to be filled in by a doctor, to the effect that I’m still capable of driving a car – rampant ageism if ever I encountered it. Drivers holding Portuguese licences have to go through this performance at 60 and 65 and then either biennially or annually once they turn 70. I rue the day that I traded in my British driving licence. At the time it seemed to be compulsory to take out a Portuguese licence if one wanted residence here. The Brits let you drive until you go gaga and forget which side of the road you’re on. But since half the Portuguese drive on the wrong side anyhow, I can’t see the point.

Late one afternoon the street namers and house numberers turned up to affix a number to our gate post. It was the number “20”. I liked it. So much rounder and more satisfying than, for example, “17” or “23”. One of the team chipped away the paint to give the cement a good base before the other carefully mounted the tile. I expressed my thanks with a couple of beers. So we now reside at “Rua do Cercado, 20” in Espargal, should ever you need to programme your satnavs. Our postal address remains unchanged.

I have composed letters inviting two of my South African cousins to be our guests in Portugal next month. Having written them, I took them up to the parish office in Benafim, where the president was kind enough to sign them and emboss them with his seal. Gone are the days when the Portuguese immigration authorities welcomed visitors from Africa without the assurance that, having spent their money, the visitors will take themselves home again. Now, if you want a visa, you have to produce a credible letter of invitation. How those intending tourists manage, who don’t have family and friends residing in Europe, I’ve no idea.

Friday update: This afternoon I went into Loule for the funeral of a former neighbour, Andy Carmichael. There was a hot wind blowing. Loule was baking. The chapel was full of estrangeiros, mostly of Andy’s age – and mine! Afterwards, the hearse left without the usual cortege of walkers to the cemetery, an event that drew a critical comment from a Portuguese onlooker. A fire engine howled past me as I walked back to the car.

The eastern horizon, when I got home, was full of smoke. The news that night was of a huge fire between the Algarve towns of Sao Bras and Tavira. Over 100 units, 5 planes and hundreds of fire fighters were trying to extinguish it. Miserable farmers spoke of the damage done to their property. It looked horrible.

Letter from Espargal: 25 of 2009

DOMESTIC HARMONY
This week I have levelled a patch of the garden and built a rockery. I can see you shrug as you read this. After all, you may think, a rockery is not exactly a pyramid and doesn’t require a great many rocks. Well, I can tell you that to build a rockery acceptable to other members of this household, takes a lot of rocks and not just any rocks. The pharaohs might have built more impressive rockeries than mine but they had more workers and their projects did not have to meet their spouses’ expectations.

There’s a sloping section of the garden under the trees with which Jones has felt dissatisfied for some time. She said she wanted to be able to sit out there on level ground. What she envisaged, she explained, was a low retaining wall, supporting a level area on which we could place a bench or two and entertain guests - not that we’re short of benches or places to entertain guests!

My heart quailed, given that I was the intended work force. In truth I could find little enthusiasm for the project or the amount of (mid-summer) work it entailed. Even so, I felt obliged to show good will. So, cursing the flies that buzzed around my ears, I embarked on what I hoped might prove an acceptable alternative, really just a scaled-down version.

After preparing the ground with a hoe and surrounding it with rocks, I took the tractor to fetch a load of fine gravel while Jones laid down a thick layer of weed-impeding newspapers. The area concerned was smaller than she had envisaged but she conceded that it looked good and would serve the purpose.

Barely had we finished laying the gravel and admiring our handiwork than Jones pointed to the slope behind the gravel patch. This still looked scruffy and unfinished, she complained. Could it not be levelled too? (In the military this is known as “mission creep”.)

I proposed a rockery as the most practical and decorative solution. Although dubious my wife was not opposed. So I set about creating a truly beautiful rockery. It took four days to build. Each day I drove the tractor down to the rocky fields that surround the village and crawled back home bearing a great load of rocks. I had to reverse half a kilometre up Espargal hill to ensure that none of them fell off.

Many of the rocks around here are works of nature’s art - twisted and twirled, full of holes and knobbly bumps. I wrestled them off the back of the tractor and down into position. Not only do they look good, they also now serve to support the tractor track – a case of killing two birds with one rockery. For good measure, we planted a couple of succulents among the rocks.

Next we need to purchase some more benches. Marie tells us that they are on sale half an hour down the road at Guia. We shall take a look. Jones, as ever, spends much of her time tending and watering her garden.

Another project, a much smaller one, that called for a meeting of minds, was the transfer of several years’ worth of (largely unread) garden magazines from the cupboard in the hallway to the study. The cupboard is due to be moved shortly, and replaced by a made-to-measure cabinet. (The carpenter reports a “small delay” in obtaining some of the required wood.)

Anyhow, the magazines came upstairs to the study, where Jones wanted to store them on shelves attached to the walls. I protested that the weight of the magazines would bring the shelves down and suggested that we move my files up to the shelves and the magazines down. This would make my files much easier to reach. Jones didn’t like this idea (although she went along with it) on the grounds that the files looked ugly.

And there lies the nub (rub?) of a great many conversations between us. Jones’s primary concern with things is how they look. And mine is how they work. Countless times these past 30 years we have had to find a compromise in such matters. (Jones, checking my letter, protests that only the most dedicated reader is going to finish it – and that I make her out to be a cranky eccentric but you will know her well enough.)

Twice this week we have gone out and come home to find that we have left the keys in the front door. I fear that we’ve done the same thing a great many times before, generally when we’re distracted. No harm has come of it. There’s much to be said for living at the end of a one-way system in a small Portuguese village.

We have had another stray in the village, a small, nervous, ribby, black dog wearing a collar. It tried to camp in the grass between our house and Idalecio’s for a few days. Our pooches, forgetful of their own heritage, told it to burger off – or else. We put out food and water, some of which was consumed – but whether by the stray is hard to know. After several days it appears to have moved on.

There’s a lizard that likes to spend its days on the inside of the metal door into Casa Nada. Each time I enter the building, the lizard flees along the wall. It can actually leap from the door to the wall and still keep its grip. Once the coast is clear, the lizard takes up its station on the door once again. This typically happens twice a day. I’ve been trying to persuade the lizard that it’s safe to remain on the door but it’s a lost cause.

As usual in high summer, we are attending the local fairs. Last weekend was Sao Bras, always a favourite, though we were disappointed by the number of stalls selling trashy knick-knacks. Sadly, there is a very limited demand for the traditional leather and basketwork crafts. Cheap jewellery is more in vogue.


We took a look at the art stalls but found them too lurid for our tastes. At least the tractors were up to standard. There’s something reassuring about looking at tractors – not a sentiment that Jones would necessarily share.

UPDATE: Saturday evening we went along to the Benafim fair, together with our neighbours and the visiting Ferretts (Grant is with the BBC World Service). The menu is simple and yet adequate. You can have barbecued chicken or stewed chicken or a kind of maize porridge (which I love) with a sprinkling of meaty bits on it - and a great choice of cakes to follow.

BENAFIM FAIR

The locals gather round for a song from the children followed by lots of folk music and dancing - guys with girls, girls with girls, guys with guys. You can suit yourself. The fair is intended to raise funds for a retirement home in Benafim.

We had earlier taken along a few items to the community centre to add to the “kermesse” prizes.
WITH THE FERRETTS

I was remarking to Grant, who joined us with his family for a walk through the countryside, that these fairs are characterised by a great deal of good nature. There’s as much beer and wine available as one wants to drink but I can’t recall seeing anyone the worse for wear – or misbehaving. Long may it last.