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!