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.