Letter from Espargal: 5 of 2010

ALMOND BLOSSOM

Friday night: not a word is writ. The week has simply run away with us. Take today for example. Forgive me if I lapse into diary form and the present tense.

Jones woke me 7.30 ish, as she usually does, with the dawn pouring through the window. I rolled over gingerly; the dermatologist had zapped me the previous day.

Jones put the coffee and toast on the bedside table – three pieces of toast with marmalade. Ono continued to snooze on his blanket beside me. He has (move-over) bed rights. So does Dearheart – when there’s room. The toast is delicious. The protocol is to leave three crusts on the plate for Raymond, who comes through to the bedroom to fetch them.

When they take his fancy – he prefers butter to jam - Raymond crunches them on the spot. Otherwise he carries them politely back to his basket. As always, we listen to the BBC morning news programmes .

I put on a shirt and zip-up thing to go through to the study. Now that the rain has gone, the mornings are cold. There's a veil of mist in the valley. Jones wears a thick nightgown, with a wrap around her shoulders. First thing we check emails and the weather, then tab through Facebook, news sites and the radio and TV prospects for the evening. Raymond can’t see the point of this. He alternately jogs my elbow (time to go walking) and thrusts his nose into my pockets (biscuits). He’s good natured but persistent. Time to get dressed.

Our worker, Nelson, arrived as we left. He’s been working in the park. I’ll join him later. We went walking down in the valley. In the distance farmers were burning off branches. The smoke kept low and stung our eyes. We had to pick our way across the still soggy fields. The dogs rushed off after a probable rabbit (they caught one a couple of days ago). Jones eyed Jorge Vieira’s broccoli crop longingly. She loves broccoli. I said we’d call on Jorge and ask him if we could pick some.

First to Benafim to order sand, cement and a gravel mixture from the building merchants - to improve the steep path up through the park. Thence to Jorge’s house on the Alte road to inquire about broccoli. Jones also wanted tangerines for Eveline (from the French family, who are about to return home to the Savoy).

Jorge wasn’t home but his wife and son were. She said we were welcome to help ourselves to broccoli (but to give some to a Portuguese neighbour, Leonhilde, as well.) She didn’t have any tangerines but she did have oranges. Her son helped me pick a crateful in the orchard just across the road. They declined any payment.

On the way home we bumped into Cesar, who was loading (our) sand on to his lorry with a digger, the same one borrowed by thieves a few weeks earlier to rip the cash machine from the wall of the parish office. Cesar said he’d be up shortly.

We stopped briefly in the valley to pick broccoli. In the village Jones hopped out with a clutch of oranges for Eveline while I continued home. Cesar arrived moments later. He tipped the sand and the gravel into two neat piles. Nelson came down to assist us. We loaded the cement on to the tractor for safe-keeping in Casa Nada. The skies were greying up and rain looked possible.

It seemed a good time to fertilize the carob trees. Nelson loaded the fertilizer on to the tractor. The sacks are 50 kgs each, really heavy! I don’t touch anything over 20 kgs. It took us 90 minutes to scatter half a bucket around each of the carob trees.

Jones came to say she was off to a farewell lunch for Eveline in Benafim. She walked down into the village to get a lift. I lunched at home, the usual muesli, banana and yoghurt, then lit a fire and snatched 15 minutes on the couch. It’s a bad day when I miss my siesta.

WILD NARCISSUS

Then I went back to the park to re-join Nelson. We had earlier tractored up two loads of rocks to build a series of steps into the slippery descent. He carried the rocks down the awkward, twisting path while I prepared shallow beds for them.

My mobile phone rang. It was Leonhilde, wanting to know where Barbara was. She was expecting my wife to fetch some tangerines. I explained that Jonesy was still at lunch. Moments later, Jones arrived, having walked back up from the village. She immediately set out for Leonhilde’s house – only to return 15 minutes later. No sign of Leonhilde, she said. We rang. Leonhilde said she was at home after all. So Jones set out yet again. She was doing a lot of walking.

At 17.00 Nelson and I called it a day. After all, it was Friday and we could afford to finish 30 minutes early. We carried the implements down the hill to the tractor shed. He was still going strong but I was bushed. I paid him for three days’ work. Fifty euros a day is the going rate. I throw in an additional five euros for travel costs.

In view of my state Jones offered to take the dogs on the evening walk. I preferred to join her, even if we cut it a bit shorter. The evening route is over the top of the hill and around the side. The going is rough. It takes a brisk 30 minutes or a leisurely 40. We hardly ever meet anyone, other than occasional expat dog walkers.

Prickles has to stay on the lead. He’s inclined to wander off. The other three rush around the bushy hillside, searching for rabbits. The other day they flushed out a fox - the third we’ve seen in as many weeks.

After supper we watched the third episode of a history of the British navy. At least we tried to watch. I find the combination of a good supper, a glass of wine, a warm fire and a comfortable chair quite overpowering, especially after a day’s labour.

Saturday morning: We went to a funeral in Benafim, that of an old fellow from a prominent local family. Half the village seemed to be related to him. As usual, the menfolk chatted outside the church until the service was over. (What a sensible arrangement!).

Then they swung into procession behind the hearse to see the old man off to his resting place in the town cemetery.

Tonight we are going to a flute concert in Loule. I shall never stay awake unless I get a quick siesta in – and even then I'm liable to meditate. Time to sign off.

P.S. Saw Up In The Air and loved it.

Letter from Espargal: 4 of 2010

OUTSIDE FARO CATHEDRAL
We’ve done some serious running around. Much of this focussed on my Aussie ex-monk correspondent, Doug, and his wife, Kath, who flew down from London on Monday morning, somewhat pooped from a late night and an early rising. We gave them a brief tour of old Faro before dropping them back at home for some shut-eye. Monday afternoons bring our usual lessons. For Portuguese homework we had to prepare a recipe – not my forte. Even so, I scribbled down two, one for toast and the other for fruit salad.

Brigitte, at the Coral, had prepared a special supper for us. She’s a fine cook. Over dinner Doug and I did a lot of catching up. The last time I saw him was in July 1964 - at the monkish passing-out parade in Sydney. I and my fellow South Africans then flew back home to continue our studies, leaving the Aussies to do the same.

Doug peered over my shoulder at the computer screen to go through the photo of our group. He could still name every individual and knew what had happened to most of them. Few had remained with the Marist Brothers – maybe 20%. One or two of those who had, had gone to jail for abusing children. Most, like us, had left, married and settled down to earn a living (which was decidedly undemanding after life in the monks). I found the leaving pretty difficult, a little bit – I think – like getting divorced. Not that I ever got divorced.

Tuesday we did a tour of local sights, rubber-necking through the glamorous development at Quinta de Lago, lunching at Faro beach and finishing up at the Roman ruins at Milreu, just outside Estoi. On the way home we diverted to take in the spectacular new pousada (luxury state-run hotel) nearby. The heart of the hotel is a renovated 18^th century palace. Jones and Doug peeked inside and returned much impressed. There’s a chain of these establishments across Portugal (as well as in Spain, where they’re known as paradors). David and Dagmar, who had recently visited Australia, joined us at the Pedras restaurant that evening for supper.

We had to drop our visitors back at the airport promptly on Wednesday morning for their return to London. Doug was flying back to Brisbane at the end of the week, Kath staying on with her daughter and new granddaughter. Doug emailed me a couple of striking pictures he had taken of the house. You can admire them for yourself.

A power failure rudely interrupted my allegedly Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) unit. This is a device that protects my computer, both against such failures and the ravages of our notoriously erratic voltage. The village is at the end of a rural electricity supply line and, with the vacuum cleaner going, one can literally hear the voltage rising and falling. So I took the UPS into the computer shop in Loule. It’s the second I’ve bought there. The first one simply got burned out.

3 CATS

The computer man replaced the battery and pronounced the unit fit again. At the same time I invested in another 2 gigs of memory to bring my desktop model up to 3 gigs. The computer was slowing under the burden of the programmes that I’ve downloaded over the years. It should now be capable of an upgrade from XP to Windows 7, if I decide to go that route. Comments from Windows 7 users would be welcome.

FIRST ALMOND BLOSSOM

Still on the high-tech front, we’ve been making daily use of our new PVR digibox (although I’ve yet to get to grips with some of its fancier functions). I really like the unit. No longer do we miss favourite programmes during an evening out. Each day I check the schedule for material we’re interested in and set the recorder accordingly. We wonder when we’re going to find the time to watch/listen to all the stuff that’ stored up.

This includes a new BBC radio series, called The History of the World in 100 Objects. The first objects under scrutiny have been hand-axes, the all-in-one tools used by our ancestors for something over a million years. It’s hard to imagine life without a battery-powered drill.

On our way home one evening we passed the odd couple about a kilometre from the village, pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with kindling. I couldn’t imagine how they would get it up the final steep 200 metres of hillside. Chico must be well into his 80s and Dina weighs a ton. So I went down in the tractor and loaded both Chico and his wheelbarrow on board. Dina had to walk. It was the same story the following evening. My charity was probably a mistake.

THE ODD COUPLE
The next morning Chico turned up at the door, bearing 5 litres of olive oil and some eggs. These he delivered together with a request for further assistance, although exactly what was hard to make out. Chico is frustratingly difficult to understand as he mutters under his breath. Eventually I worked out that he wanted me to bring the tractor and a chainsaw around to his property.

This I did, rather unwillingly. It wasn’t the morning I had planned. On the far side of the field he and Dina had managed to cut down several trees by hand. But they were having the very devil of a job trying to saw them up – and little wonder. I made a start on one of the trunks. After 30 minutes of slow progress I gave up. My saw needed a new chain and my heart wasn’t in it. I’ve promised to return.

Chico is little liked in the village and gets scant help from the Portuguese. It’s his expat neighbours, Fintan and Ollie, who are generally called to the rescue. Ollie is summoned into their cottage daily to sort out the TV. The set mutes itself each time it’s turned off and the odd couple haven’t worked out how to get the sound back when they turn it on again. I had intended to give them our old TV antenna but was strongly discouraged from doing so by our neighbours, who feared that the daily call-outs would become hourly summonses instead.

Midday Saturday: We woke to rain. When it showed no sign of letting up, we piled the dogs into the car and went walking along the narrow tarred road in the valley. Our brollies didn’t stop our trousers from getting wet or our feet from being soaked. The dogs soon looked more like seals. After drying them off we continued into Benafim to the recycling bins and for coffees and toast.

Brigitte said her computer was playing up. I promised to drop in to see if I could help. (I couldn't.) Now Jones has cleaned the windows of the wood-burning stove and I must pop downstairs to make an early fire. A little siesta on the adjacent couch after lunch appeals - for the sake of one's health, of course.

Letter from Espargal: 3 of 2010

Saturday morning going on Saturday afternoon: The mist has lifted sufficiently to reveal the valley; the drizzle seems to have stopped. The dogs have been walked – or rather they have sprinted across the boggy fields in the distance. The recycleables have been recycled in Benafim. We have taken coffee, toast and a baggy at the Coral. Jones is cleaning the wood-burning stove so that I can make an early fire. It’s not cold, just miz.

We have lost our money on the lottery, as we do every Friday night. But hope runs eternal. We look forward to next week’s draw, as we do every Saturday morning. Who knows? Somebody in the UK won a cool 26-million pounds last night.

Like most weeks, this one has been quite social. One evening we went to a fondue supper with the French family who are renting a house at the bottom of the village. Our eleven-strong group got along well in spite of the inevitable struggles with language. There was Frank (in his 40s), who is having intensive physiotherapy locally after losing the use of his legs in a skiing accident two years ago, with his parents, Eveline and Roger. Visiting was Jimmy (20s, also French and paraplegic – motorbike accident) with Natalie and, finally there was the English-speaking contingent.

We sat down around the kitchen table, dipping our bread-speared forks into the fondue pot that Frank tended. When necessary, Roger added a little more dry champagne to the mix. The conversation was mainly about a medical product, still under development, in which the two disabled men were placing their hopes for recovery. The product is called neurogel. (http://www.neurogelenmarche.org/)

Jimmy was anxious that it should receive as much publicity as possible, with a view to raising the funds required to complete its testing and license it for human use. On his computer he ran a video apparently showing a cat with a (partially?) severed spinal column gradually recovering the use of its rear legs after being injected with the gel. He hoped that within a year or two Neurogel would enable him to walk again too. For his sake and Frank’s, and all the thousands of people like them, I pray that these hopes may be realised.

QUINTASSENTIAL

Another outing was to the Auberge restaurant in Cruz da Assumada, just below (our former home), the Quintassential. The occasion was in celebration of a neighbour’s birthday – and very pleasant it was too. We recalled that on our arrival in the Algarve some 22 years ago, the site was occupied by a primitive country store. It was dark, dingy and damp, selling milk, water and a few basic supplies. Jones remembered an old car, covered by a dusty tarpaulin.

This has also been a week for visiting accountants. One is a Portuguese man who operates out of a house near Benafim. Each year he attends to the bureaucracy around Natasha, whose official employer I remain. Inevitably she has to be insured and social securitied and reported on to the Portuguese authorities, who base her residence visa on her continuing employment.

The other firm focuses on tax and investment for expats, people whose affairs are frequently complicated by a variety of foreign income sources - as ours are, however modest. So it’s a case of grin and bear it, knowing that we would be hopelessly out of our depth if we were called in by the taxman (as many are) for a case review.

GREAT PICTURE

Saturday afternoon: The mist and drizzle are back. The fire is lit. The animals are snoozing around it. We have just sat down to biscuits, cheese and a glass of wine with Rob and Helen (our neighbours’ daughter) who dropped in to say hello. They are down from the UK to work on the house they have bought 30 minutes away in the village of Cortelha.

DOUG & KATHY
On Monday we are expecting Australian visitors, Doug (an ex-monk) and his wife, Kathy, who have been spending several weeks in the UK to assist their daughter with the arrival of her first child. They will be with us for just two days ahead of their return to Queensland. I was in the Marist Brothers’ novitiate with Doug – and several dozen other guys – near the New South Wales village of Mittagong for 18 months in the early 1960s.

SYDNEY 1963

I’ve not seen him since although half a dozen of us continue to communicate by email. So there will be much reminiscing.

On the home front, after some research and conversation (with my technologically knowledgeable brother-in-law, Llewellyn) I have put in a new satellite receiver (or digibox). More accurately, a nice man from Marc Electronica installed it for me, although I had spent an hour in advance, with Barbara’s assistance, laying a second cable between the house and the sat-dish some 40 metres away in the garden.

This digibox comes with a PVR (personal video recorder) 160Gb hard disk that enables the user to record radio/ TV programmes. The channels are free to air. The second cable is required, like the twin-LNB he also installed, to permit the recording of one channel while watching another. In due course we may also acquire a thin-screen high definition TV, which (high definition, i.e.) the receiver supports. A lottery win would be a big spur in this regard.

Letter from Espargal: 2 of 2010

Midweek: We are grateful for double-glazing and a stock of firewood. So are the animals, which are gathered around the stove in the living room. They don't move, except for the occasional scratch. It’s cold – a couple of degrees above freezing.

The rain has briefly gone, to be replaced by a soupy sun and biting winds. The freeze that’s gripped northern Europe all week has us shivering too. It’s the wind chill that stings, a factor that features on North American weather forecasts but is never mentioned in these parts.

During a break in the showers I took the tractor down to the Palmeira yard at the bottom of the village where Idalecio’s family keeps a supply of firewood. For good measure Mr Palmeira threw in a box of lettuce and pumpkins. As I write, Jones is downstairs in the kitchen, turning both these products into the giant vege-salad that makes up our evening meal most nights.

The Palmeiras were packing lettuce in the back of their large delivery truck, out of the wind. They ripped the bottom leaves from each lettuce before washing off the soil, trimming the upper leaves and packing it. The picking and preparation of the lettuce took two of them the whole day. I don’t know what the final product fetched at the market but it wasn’t a lot. I don’t think that many Portuguese farmers get rich, not from farming at least.

We fetched our Isle of Wight commuting neighbours, Sarah and David, from the airport on Monday evening and gave them a bed for the night. (They would otherwise have had to spend it in a frigid house.) This service is normally provided by other neighbours, Mike and Liz, but Mike is still getting over a chest infection that he picked up on Christmas Day.

Still on a neighbourly theme, we’ve been walking with Eveline, a French woman in her sixties whose family is renting a house in the village while her son, Frank, undergoes intensive physiotherapy nearby. Frank has been in a wheel-chair since losing the use of his legs in a skiing accident a couple of years ago. His parents are staying with him and he is visited by his wife and children from time to time. Eveline retains her schoolgirl English, which is very useful from my point of view although she and Barbara converse mainly in French while I mind the dogs.

I’ve been reflecting on Frank’s situation – how an active, successful person comes to terms with paraplegia, both the physical limitations it imposes and the whole mental business of dealing with the world from a wheelchair. I once spent a few hours in a wheelchair and hated it. A chap in a neighbouring village is in a similar position, the result of a plane crash. He gets around on a quad bike, often with a small dog (helmet and goggles) on the fuel tank and a couple more running behind.

LOULE LIGHTS
Friday: Sarah and David came to supper with us in Loule and then to the market for a performance by musical groups who perform what are known as Janeiras (a name deriving, like January, from the Roman god, Janus). Armed with accordions, plus stringed and tinkly instruments, they traditionally roam the streets at New Year to carol the residents with songs and ditties in exchange for treats. From our experience, enthusiasm counts at least as much as talent.

The event took place in Loule’s newly-revamped market because the usual venue, the nearby Cine-Theatre, was closed for renovation. The place was crowded. All the seats were occupied and many people more stood round. Tall gas heaters helped to keep the audience warm. After an hour or so I made my way through the throng to the loo.

MAN WHO DIDN'T STOP TALKING ONCE

Forgive me if loos once again make their way into my corres-pondence. I’m finding it hard to keep them out - because this was the strangest of arrangements, and in a public place that had just undergone a complete renovation, mind you.

The men’s and women’s “washrooms” faced each other, both with the entrance door open to give all and sundry a good view of what the other gender was up to. In each case, the room itself was large but the facilities were confined to two booths, one for the disabled and the other for the able-bodied.

THE GENTS
In the men’s section the able-bodied booth featured a toilet at one end and a wall urinal at the other. Two reasonably lean guys could squeeze into the booth for simultaneous relief (as I did) as long as they were prepared to stand bottom to bottom with the door open.

As I was taking my turn, backed up against another fellow, a woman wandered into the gents, looking for a vacant toilet and, finding none, wandered out again. At the same moment a man emerged from the booth in the women’s toilet, clearly visible across the passage. Nobody seemed put out by all this. It was like a scene from a psychedelic movie. In Canada everybody would have been arrested.

Even weirder, and this, I promise, is the last loo story, was the scene in our Portuguese class last Monday, when we were discussing Christmas – not my favourite time of year. I should mention that we have recently acquired a new pupil, an immigrant with little grasp of Portuguese. To help him, our 30-something female teacher has been acting out what other pupils are saying.

I explained that one of Christmas features I disliked was the use of carols as marketing tools, especially when they were piped through to hypermarket washrooms that I was using. Our teacher, in the process of miming my complaint, adopted a slight squat to mimic my washroom performance. I promptly protested that, being a male, I was accustomed to remain standing. The teacher insisted that she had to do things her way – and the class broke down. How ridiculous can people get?

Sunday morning: I once used to think that God made Sunday mornings special in His honour, warm and sunny like the day of creation. But if this were ever one of the proofs for His existence, it has this morning been dispelled. It’s foul - grey, wet and very windy! For once the dogs showed no inclination to go out. Nor did we. We have just dragged a very reluctant Raymond through to the shower to wash him – in particular to wash off the poo that he rubbed so vigorously into his neck. I’m sure that dogs have a good reason for this particularly vile habit but I wish they didn’t. Yuck!

Letter from Espargal: 1 of 2010

FIRST DAWN OF 2010

Happy New Year. It began well for us with a sunshine dawn – so welcome after a fortnight of near solid rain. The year that had looked set to end in a drought finished in a flood. It has rained and rained and rained, and then it rained some more. We have never known the likes. The garden is soggy, the fields are under water, the ditches are overflowing;

the Algibre river (just down the road) is a swollen brown torrent. The earth is a gungy mush. Banks are collapsing. Trees are down. Uprooted road signs lie sprawled along the verges. Dams that were empty a few weeks ago can barely contain themselves.

Very little of this can actually be seen from Espargal for the hill spends most of its time draped in mist. We drove down to the river to gape. What a novelty to see water in the usually dry bed! And not just water, but rushing, gushing torrents of the stuff, rough and tumbling down to the sea.

An old house in the village that has long displayed a badly cracked wall finally succumbed to the elements. A pile of rubble blocks the lane where the wall used to stand. Like many in these parts, the house had stood empty for a generation or more, since its inhabitants either passed on or sought a living elsewhere.

Across the valley Benafim looks rather the worse for wear. The tidy avenue of trees that used to line the main road is bedraggled. Teams of workmen are busy cutting up boughs torn from their trunks and trees ripped out by the roots.

Fifteen minutes beyond Benafim is the village of Monte Ruivo (Red Mountain) where our favourite medronho distillery is located. To renew our supplies, we ventured out carefully through the mist with Llewellyn and Lucia, negotiating our way around a tree lying across the road. Waterfalls spilled down cliff faces. Road-signs were everywhere scattered about, their feeble concrete anchors still gripping their ankles.

At the distillery we found the medronho man hard at work. A steady flow of clear liquid poured through a filter into a bucket. Our host explained how the process worked, something he does most days for the benefit of the tourist jeeps that stop at his door. He was pleased to sell us six bottles of the precious liquid. Llewellyn is very fond of the stuff. I’m not averse to it myself; nor, for that matter, is Jones.

At home, the rain has been accompanied by a steady, irritating drip from the study ceiling on to the bookshelf below. I scaled the dizzy heights of our double ladder to try to find and fill the responsible crack, somewhere high in the wall (or the roof just above it). But my filling was for nought and the drip has continued as vigorously and irritatingly as ever.

As you may imagine, this damp end to the year has gone down badly with our animals. The dogs, largely limited to brief pee and poo runs, have been bursting with pent-up energy, exploding into barks at the least sound. During moments of respite, we have taken them down to the valley, where they gallop across the inundated fields like horses through the surf.

It was during one such expedition, while looking after a neighbour’s dog, Poppy, that we thought we’d lost them. I had Prickles on a lead and Jones had Poppy. Needing to answer a call of nature, she passed Poppy’s lead over to me while she retired behind a tree.

As fate would have it, a rabbit had sought shelter beneath the same tree. The first I knew of it was a squeal from Ono and a tug that ripped Prickles’s lead from my grasp. The rabbit fled into the trees with the dogs hard on its heels. Cursing mightily (me) and calling to no avail, we set off across the sodden field, which caked our boots and soaked our feet.

Faint barks indicated the direction the dogs had taken. Two of them we found near the car, a kilometre away, mightily pleased with themselves. The other two Jones discovered as far away again, Prickles still trailing his lead. The rabbit got away.

LEAPING UP FROM WET BENCH!

It wasn’t the only day we got wet. I had to change my trousers twice in an hour, once after sitting on a bench swimming with (unseen) water, and the second time after being caught in a squall. We saw it coming and tried to beat it back to the car. It got to us first, contorting our new brolly, which we struggled to hold, and soaking whichever bit of us it could get at.

Are you skipping paragraphs? I’m sorry if you’re sick of dogs and weather. So are we.

And so were our guests, L&L, although they did manage the odd trip to the beach. Together with Jones, they spent most of Christmas Day preparing a special meal.

They weren’t helped by the electrics, which played silly buggers with their preparations, dimming the lights, paralysing the microwave and alarming my computer. We traced the problem to a conflict between the oven and the hob, which we hope the electrician can sort out next week.

More food arrived with the neighbours who joined us, the Browns and the Dutch ladies – plus Anneke’s mum, with whom we conversed in our best rusty Afrikaans. We seemed to understand one another, with a little help from Anneke. We were sorry to lose Michael Brown early in the evening, to a dose of asthma (which has laid him up for several days).

L&L flew out on Wednesday morning, grateful to get back to Luton in the threatening snow-storms and anxious to recover their animals from the kennels. (We understand there was a great reunion; it’s hard to know whether the owners or the pets find the separation tougher.)

One afternoon we came across our neighbour, Idalecio, accompanying his young son, Eduardo, on a cycle ride. Eduardo was riding a real mountain bike – clearly a Christmas present - and beamed with pride. It took me back to my first bike at the house of my youth in Durban North – in another world, a long time ago.

P.S. Thank you Llewellyn and Nicoline for your pictures.