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.