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.