Letter from Espargal: 9 of 2010

This week has drizzled, showered, poured and stormed its way towards the weekend. If the weather continues like this, which it gives every appearance of doing, the Algarve will lose its sunny reputation. The conversation in the cafes and with neighbours is all about the rain. It’s wet; wetter than we can remember it, wet and grey when we wake; grey and wet when we sleep.

Espargal spends much of its time hiding in the mist. Down in the valley frustrated farmers cruise slowly past in their pick-ups, looking dolefully at the lakes occupying their lands. Wet or not, the dogs still insist on a walk each morning and evening. We’ve been taking them down in the car to the narrow tarred road that runs through the valley.

At least that way we can stay out of the dirt while they rush around, leaping across the ditches, splashing through the lakes and squishing through the mud. We take towels with us to dry them down before bringing them home. (Additional towels and blankets protect the seats and the rear of the car.)

A guest dog is spending the week with us. She is Herme; she belongs to Dutch neigh- bours who are away for a few days. The boys have often bumped into her on the road and regard her as one of the gang. Herme looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, half dog, half angel.

But she has shown a hidden talent for dragging Jones into prickly wet bushes and for rousing cats in the night. She’s fitted in well enough, especially around the hearth, where it counts. There’s nothing like a fire in the wood-burning stove to settle the dogs down – us too, for that matter, especially in front of the TV at night.

This (Friday) afternoon I have finally received the e-tickets from KLM that I booked and paid for 24 days ago – to visit Cathy and Rolf in Berlin in mid-March.

Their arrival followed further frustrating hours of phoning KLM’s call centre and refaxing through (proof of payment) documents that I’d twice faxed through already.

The last straw was to hear yesterday that the reser- vations had been cancelled because payment had not been received. In desperation I emailed the airline’s agents into whose account the fare had been paid. They immediately emailed me back to say that they were providing KLM with proof of payment, which they evidently did. What I can’t figure is why KLM didn’t get in touch with them 23 days ago, puzzlement that I’ve expressed in a detailed letter of my woes to the airline.

With our flights settled at last, we’re waiting to hear whether looming strikes by BA staff may affect the flights of our house-sitters. They are due to arrive in Faro the day before our departure and we’re depending on them to tend the beasts in our absence.

SLEEPING CATS

Another complication that required much telephoning to sort out concerned the travel insurance that we’ve been taking out each year with a UK insurance company before visiting family overseas. In the back of our minds is the disastrous experience of an acquaintance who inadvertently bankrupted himself by having a stroke while on a visit to the USA. Desirous of avoiding any such disaster, we have been careful to obtain medical cover as part of the annual travel policy.

SHELTER FROM A SHOWER

This year, the insurance company refused to provide me with medical cover. As my medical circumstances hadn’t changed, I thought that the refusal was based on my landing in the dreaded “65 and plus” category. Fortunately, a conversation with the insurers revealed that it had been based on a misunderstanding and they’ve issued the cover as usual.

Before I leave the subject of complications, let me add that a French woman with two large dogs has just taken a two-month rental in a guest cottage just across a field from us. We dropped by the other day to say hello and suss her dogs out. They were impressive; not hostile but also not to be tangled with. We are taking every precaution to avoid the area when we go walking. The boys think they own the hillside but they could be in for a nasty surprise.

Why doesn’t life keep itself simple? I wish I knew.

COBBLER'S DEN

The simplest task of the week was to get the front of my long-suffering Ecco boots sewn up. To do this I nipped into the den occupied by the elderly cobbler who operates in a building beside the senior university. He sits amid his tools and a pile of footware in a scene that could come straight out of the 15^th century but declines to have his picture taken because the place isn’t tidy enough.

I dropped the boot off with him before classes and picked it up again afterwards, paying the princely sum of 3 euros for his troubles. The only other cobbler in Loule has closed down a similar operation and when this old fellow goes, that will be the end of the trade – except for the kiosks now to be found in shopping centres.

I have reached “E” in my book on word origins. What a treasure chest it’s proving! Did you know that the word “doll” is derived from Dorothy (like Hal from Harry and Tel from Terry), or the origins of “draconian” and “dunce” (from the Athenian, Draco, and the Scottish theologian, Duns Scotus).
DUNS SCOTUS

Just as fascinating was to discover that don and doff came from “do on” and “do off”. “Do” originally meant put or place. Now who would have known that?

Saturday morning: Last night we attended a concert in Faro, a Brahms piano concerto followed by Beethoven’s 7^th – after supper at a restaurant adjoining the theatre. I don’t remember much about the first piece. Fortunately I don’t fall over when I dose.

Even Jones confessed to shutting her eyes during the second movement.

The weather’s horrible and the dogs want to go walking. I’ve no enthusiasm for it. Jones says it's time to go, even if we don't feel like it. She took a dawn photo. See what you think!

Letter from Espargal: 8 of 2010

Friday morning: The sky has gone dark, what we can see of it through the mist. The branches around the upper patio whirl about in a frenzy. Rain slaps fiercely against the glass doors. We are very pleased to be inside, all the more so for having just returned from a long trek through the hills. As we left we weighed up our chances of hanging on to the patchy sunshine; we got home with very little to spare. To have been caught in this tempest would have been most unpleasant. It’s really fierce.

I have just come off the phone to KLM, whose e-tickets for our planned visit to Berlin next month are now 17 days overdue. They were still investigating, Maria informed me. She advised me to wait another week before I called again. One wonders how long it takes an airline to extract its money from its agents. At least, I assume that’s the problem. Strange! I was always under the impression that the Dutch were among the world’s more efficient nations.

We listened to a radio programme about the recent collapse of the Scottish holiday airline, FlyGlobespan. Its demise was due largely to the 35 million pounds owed to it by its agents, rascals by the name of e-clear who seem to have e-cleared off with the loot. One hopes that KLM is not among e-clear’s clients.

Last night we went to Faro to listen to a piano recital by Artur Pizarro, who according to an online biog (http://www. bach-cantatas. com/Bio/ Pizarro-Artur. htm) gave his first recital on Portuguese TV at the age of 4. He played a selection of Chopin etudes. Jones said he was very good. She knows about these things. (I took piano lessons for several months in my youth before deciding, much to my father’s irritation, that I wasn’t going to be a musical prodigy and there was little point in continuing.)

Behind us sat a couple who alternated between coughing and whispering. I fervently hoped that they would put themselves out of our misery with all possible despatch. Several times I was on the point of sushing them loudly.

In front of us, a young man glanced every so often at his mobile phone, possibly desperate for a message from Celeste or Maria or Dolores – this in spite of a fervent plea at the start of the concert for the audience to turn the wretched things off. (The pianist twice broke off from his performance to appeal for silence, saying it was being recorded for broadcast.) Mobile phone addiction afflicts the Portuguese worse than most. Lots of people would rather be separated from their spouses than their phones.

Jonesy is paging her way through a pile of French magazines, left to her by the French family that were staying in the village. They appear (at a superficial glance) to be mainly uppity women’s mags. (The “uppity” applies to the mags rather than the women.) I was unwise enough to comment, after turning a few pages myself, that the publication seemed to be full of women posing in fancy clothes. I’m not sure that I actually said fancy clothes but I used words to that effect. My comment, which Jones interpreted as a sneer, evoked a fierce defence ….along the lines that it was better than looking at porn magazines.

I have to confess, as a simple male, that I have never understood why women should be endlessly fascinated by pictures of other women wearing clothes that the readers either can’t afford or wouldn’t be seen dead in. Does the purchase of new outfits, or the wearing of them, convey the impression to the wearer of a new persona? If women’s magazines featured women driving tractors, I could understand it. I might even buy a few myself.

We listened to an interview with some designer guy who confessed that he planned on Sundays exactly what clothes he was going to wear each day for the rest of the week. When asked to describe what he was wearing at that moment, he laughed it off as a simple outfit, and then went on to talk about his apparel in words that I barely understood. I thought he must come from a completely different planet. If the truth be told, I also know on Sundays what clothes I’m going to wear for the rest of the week but it doesn’t take any planning.

Friday lunchtime: The sun is back. We have just taken Poppy home. She joins our lot from time to time when her owner neighbours take a few days’ break. You’d never know that she wasn’t one of the gang - ditto Serpa, from next door, who often hops through the fence to come on our walks. We must look like the annual kennel outing.

THE BOYS

Yesterday the boys flushed out a rabbit in the neighbouring field. They chased him fiercely towards our property. The rabbit, however, knew the exact location of a small gap under our fence - and vanished through it in the twinkling of an eye, leaving the boys nosing around the grass in frustration.

We had our friends, David and Dagmar, around to celebrate her somethingth birthday. Dagmar and Jones are fond of chick flicks.

In anticipation, we had ordered two recommended chickflicky DVDs from Amazon in the UK. After supper, we sat down to watch one of these, called The Hangover. It was all about 4 guys who go off to a stag night and wake up the next day in possession of a baby, a chicken and a tiger, without knowing how on earth this came about.

As it turned out, the movie was more of a stag night flick than a chick flick. But we watched it through nonetheless. It had its moments.

P.S. My latest favourite words: deed-poll, defalcate & demijohn

Letter from Espargal: 7 of 2010

JONES DAWN

The poltergeist that has been playing intermittent silly buggers with our electrical appliances has been flushed out, much to our relief. This malicious spirit struck first on Christmas Day, as we were preparing dinner for guests, throwing the house into confusion. The microwave refused to work, the hob played silly buggers, the lights went on and off, the computer beeped and the TV threw a fit. As you can imagine, this scenario was quite alarming.

The next day I asked an electrician to call around but he was busy when we were free and vice versa, so nothing came of it. Besides, the problem seemed to have gone away. All was fine until Sunday night when the poltergeist struck again, with equally scary results. I tried flipping the switches in the fuse box one at a time to isolate the fault – without success.

In the midst of this confusion Marie phoned to ask if we were suffering the same low voltage phenomena as she was. Bingo! We’ve known for years that the voltage in country areas is erratic but it simply hadn’t occurred to us that this was the cause of our woes. Marie said she had reported the problem to the electricity board; to emphasise the point we followed suit. Minutes later, as if by magic, the lights suddenly brightened and everything worked again. It was a lesson about the extent to which our lives run on electricity.

Something else I learned was how the film “Invictus” – about Nelson Mandela’s relationship with the Springbok rugby captain, Francois Pienaar - got its name. We went to see the movie - with reservations about Hollywood attempts to reflect developments in South Africa. But we thought it quite good. Morgan Freeman, who had obviously studied Mandela’s manner at length, was perfectly credible. Matt Damon spoke good South African and did a passable job as the Bok captain.

In the course of the story, Freeman gives Damon a poem, which includes the line – “I am the master of my fate”. This I later googled. I remembered enough Latin to understand the symbolism of the word “Invictus”. But I had no idea that it was also the title of the poem from which the line was taken. The poem was written by William Earnest Henley (1840-1903), whose own trials of life were severe. I confess I’d never heard of him.

According to one reviewer, what Mandela gave Pienaar in real life was an extract from Teddy Roosevelt’s speech ‘The Man in the Arena.’ Jones commented at the time that the most glaring inaccuracy in the film was casting Madiba’s personal assistant, Zelda le Grange, as a black woman. This, however, according to one sharp-eyed reviewer (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1057500/goofs) was only one of dozens of goofs. No doubt Clintwood would argue that he was making a movie, not a documentary.

HER BEDROOM SECRETS

What we have made is a reservation to visit Cathy and Rolf in Berlin next month. I should say that I spent hours on the internet hunting for suitable and suitably priced flights. Typically, tickets were around 400 to 500 euros each once all the extras had been added in, which I thought painfully expensive. Eventually, I found a really good deal with KLM. I chose to pay for this by bank transfer as the least expensive option. That was on Tuesday 2 Feb. (The money left my account immediately and, as I later confirmed with the bank, the transfer was made as requested.)

ALMOND BLOSSSOM

When the e-tickets had failed to arrive two days later (as they should have), I started phoning KLM. Five international phone calls and 11 days later, they still haven’t arrived. KLM have now asked me to fax them a bank statement showing proof of payment, something I hope to obtain from the bank on Monday. The problem lies, I suspect, with the Lisbon agent into whose account the original payment was made. I shall not hasten to fly with KLM again.

For what it’s worth, this is the list of extra costs (in euros) associated with our flights. Booking fee 5, fuel surcharge 60, passenger service charge 14.83, security charge 14.50, passenger service charge 12.52, passenger service charge 7.97, airport security charge 4.65, security tax 4.03 and the Netherlands noise isolation charge 4 – everything except a Haiti earthquake relief fee.

The total cost for a 56 euro ticket is 183.50. That’s to say that the airline gets less than a third of the total – well, unless one counts in the sneaky 60 euro fuel surcharge. (Why not just price the ticket at 116 euros?)

HIS BEDROOM SECRETS

This week I dreamed that Jones and I were walking down a road, overlooking a hillside stacked with cable-rolls. I might have been tossing the odd stone down the hillside. Anyhow, the cable-rolls came loose and whizzed down the slope towards a car park, with predictably disastrous results. I was overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. Shortly afterwards I found myself required to fill in a five-page yellow form about the incident - whether as a witness or accused I wasn’t sure. In any case, I refused point blank to do so.

BIANCA, HORSE & VIGOR

We have to report a failed attempt to reconcile our dogs with a delightful newcomer, Vigor, a friendly Alsatiany sort who belongs to our new Dutch neighbours, Dries and Bianca. Twice our lot have encountered Vigor during our walks and chased him over the horizon, greatly to my vexation. To resolve the situation, we invited Dries and Bianca to come around with Vigor, with a view to going for a walk on neutral territory.

What a snarly disaster! Fortunately our new neighbours were understanding and nothing was shattered other than the peace of the neighbourhood. (Barbara, who is reading a book entitled “Animals in Translation” – thank you, Ann – keeps on finding relevant passages.)

Friday morning: Cold, just 5 degrees, with the rain slanting in on the wind. Surely, if ever there were a case for a real sleep-in, this would be it. But the dogs would have none of it. So, we piled them into the car for a pee and poo run in the valley. The narrow road there is tarred and the traffic scarce.

JONES DUSK

Once there, Prickles refused to get out of the car. (He is a fair-weather walker.) When I hauled him out through the passenger door, he shot back in the driver door. We left him behind. But we didn’t get much further ourselves. The rain was icy. Our trousers dripped. Jones’s fingers froze inside her gloves. We retreated to the Coral instead for coffee and toast and to thaw out. I thought I could hear Prickles chuckling but it’s hard to be sure.

Letter from Espargal: 6 of 2010

It is not often that I sit down to write to you before lunch while digesting a generous measure of local wine. Today is an exception. This is because I was waylaid on my way home from Idalecio’s wood yard by his father, Ermenio, who enticed me into their ancient cellar and plied me with their latest vintage.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Friday started like most days with coffee and toast and an exchange of emails with the SA financial firm that is assisting me to obtain the benefits of long-dormant investment policies. This process has proved analogous to pulling teeth with exceedingly long pliers from a reluctant dinosaur. But that’s a story for another day.

After breakfast we walked the dogs along the valley road and back to the car via a dirt track, trying to avoid the boggy bits and dodging the puddles left by an inch of rain. Jones took pictures of the almond trees whose pink and white halos have exploded all across the valley.

They’re glorious but their glory is proving short-lived in the wind and the rain. A confetti of blossom drifts down with every gust and stains the ground below.

Mid-morning I took the tractor down to fetch a load a load of firewood from the Palmeira family farmyard. While Idalecio tossed pieces into the box, I wandered over to watch his brother, Jose Carlos, stripping long canes of the leaf that clings to the nodes. To do this, he was running the canes one by one through an old machine, secured to a pallet on the back of their delivery lorry.

The canes are to refurbish the roof of the family wine cellar in the traditional manner. For centuries it has been the custom in these parts to make a roof by laying tiles on top of canes secured to wooden poles. These days people tend to insert a strip of insulation as well. Such a roof should last for a couple of generations.

Idalecio’s dad stuck a hose into a barrel to draw off a couple of (plastic) glasses’ worth of his 2010 vintage. I found the wine surprisingly good, an opinion endorsed by old Miguel, who was also persuaded to take a draft. Light beamed down on to the dusty barrels from gaps in the soon-to-be-replaced roof.

The cellar lay in the lee of a carob shed, to which we ascended. It was stacked to the rafters with the summer crop, whose delivery to the processing factory awaited an improve- ment in the market price. I got Ermenio to pose beside the pile of carobs towering over his head. His wife declined to be snapped.

Thus refuelled, and bearing an additional 5 litres of wine and a sack of pumpkins, I clambered back on to the tractor and took myself and my load home.

Lunch was waiting - soup made from newly-picked broccoli. It’s delicious. Jones snips off a couple of heads of the vegetables growing in Jorge Vieira’s fields during our walk. What doesn’t go into the soup, finds its way into the supper salad instead.

Jones arrives in my letter at an appropriate point; she and Natasha must both be commended for their efforts to remove tons of gravel and sand from Banco’s Broadwalk, where it had been deposited the previous week by Cesar, the building supplies delivery man. (Our property is located on such a steep hill that lorries have great difficulty making such deliveries anywhere else.) I had expected Nelson, our worker, to assist us in shifting it but he phoned to say he wasn’t coming.

The gravel – actually a mixture called “turvena” – was intended to improve the path up through the park to the top of the property. The sand was for future garden construction. Both piles were partially blocking the right of way at the bottom of the garden. More importantly, they were threating some of Jones’s plants.

My part was to back the tractor up to the gravel, which my workers then shovelled on board. (Shovelling anything is anathema to my spine.) With the box full, I backed 50 metres up the hill to unload the mixture by passing buckets over the fence, to be scattered on the path. It was hard work.

We spent the morning and most of the afternoon at it, spreading four tractor boxes of gravel along the path and then shifting two more of sand. The sand we unloaded into a corner of the tractor shed, just in time to get it out of the rain the following day.

I complimented my workers on their efforts, admitting that I hadn’t expected to finish the job that day; Jones replied it was because they were women. I didn’t deny her that satisfaction although I don’t think it had much to do with gender.

That was Tuesday. Thursday we tried to go walking down in the valley but a plague of hunters drove us back up the hill. They were everywhere and not overly fussed about the distance they were keeping from the road.

We are making daily use of our new satellite digibox. But there’s one weird anomaly for which I can find no explanation. The time given on the box comes from the satellite. But it’s several minutes slow. This means that recordings start late unless I remember to start them early. Any suggestions from technically minded readers will be appreciated.

Still on high-tech themes: to try to awaken a sleepy left foot, a product of my back troubles, I have been supplied with an electronic box. Four dangling wires hook up to my calf with adhesive pads, supposedly for three hours a day. They transmit a flow of shocks through the muscle. The intensity (fortunately) can be controlled by the wearer. I wander around looking like a human computer accessory.

I have finished reading Karen Armstrong’s book on the bible and am now ploughing through a hefty tome on the origins of words. Most derivations are of undistinguished Latin or Greek extraction but some are simply delightful - “costermonger” or “cockatrice” for instance. Best are the origins of expressions, such as “cock-a-hoop” or “chop-chop” (closely related to “chop stick”), whose roots have been lost in the mist of time.

If all this sounds dense, it is. Density (denseness?), however, suits my purpose, which is as much to prepare to sleep as to learn about word origins. I tackle about a page a night; after this my eyes glaze over and my brain goes into standby mode – as long as none of the bed’s occupants is snoring, that is. I can’t fall asleep to a background of snores.

I am reminded of a dream I had. I was following Jones on to the large, flat deck of an ocean liner. To my alarm, the deck was covered with several inches of water.

This did not seem to bother Jones, who splashed across to see some friends. We advanced to the bow, from which I was able to swing athletically down the side of the ship to a beach. Several onlookers admired my uncharacteristic agility. I remarked to Jones that I had my doubts about whether the ship might be refloated, for she was well and truly grounded and I couldn’t see the tide lifting her off again.

Where we had been going, or why, did not occur to me. Dreams have a way of starting in the middle of things – and often finishing there as well.