Letter from Espargal: 12 of 2010

There ain’t much to tell. Dare I say it? We’ve had a bit of sun and a bit of rain. It hasn’t been hot and it hasn’t been cold, except maybe one evening when we ran to a fire. It’s the wind that makes the difference.

The clocks go forward early this Sunday morning. Suddenly we’ll be back into long sunny evenings. The pavement cafes will welcome the change. So will “Le France Portugal” – aka the Coral – which has just reopened after refurbishment. We stopped over for coffee and apple tart after dumping the recyclables in the nearby bins.

LE FRANCE
Jones said knowingly that the licence, stuck to the window, should read “la France” rather than "le France". This we pointed out to Celso and Brigitte over supper the same evening. We should have known better. "Snack Bar" was masculine, they explained; hence "le", as with the ship, Le France. Next time we'll know better.

The dogs have been scratching a whole lot, especially Raymond who seems to do little else when he’s not walking or eating. Jones dropped in on the vet and came back with some anti-flea muti and a receipt for 66 euros. Ouch! The fleas would be a whole lot cheaper. But given that the dogs live in the house and that Ono has somehow wheedled his way on to the bed, it’s a case of grin and bear it.

Jones has been spending a lot of time in her garden, mainly digging out weeds in the old sheep pen. At least we think it used to be a sheep pen. It might equally have held pigs or goats. The dogs look on with puzzled resignation as she wields her pick axe, as if to say that walking would be better exercise.

The other afternoon she exposed a bit of rusty old metal. At first she thought it was the remains of an ancient gate. A little further digging revealed it to be an ancient iron of the sort used to press clothes. I can remember the housemaid using just such an iron as she worked in the kitchen of my uncle’s farm in what was then the Northern Transvaal back in the 50s – the 1950s that is, for any who might be in doubt.

Speaking of gardens, we've been admiring that of our commuting neighbours, Sarah and David, whose flowers have been thriving in their absence. Sarah is one of those people gifted with green fingers. I hope that the flowers still look as good when the couple arrive back down next month.

For my part I’ve been labouring in the park with Nelson to improve the series of steps that lead up the various banks to the gate at the top. Unusually, Nelson is a gypsy. Unusually, that is, in that most gypsies still keep to themselves and don’t run much to manual labour, except for picking crops. Nelson works well. He arrives in his BMW on the stroke of 8. The old car looks good, at first glance anyhow, until one sees the mirror sticky-taped on to the door – and listens to the uneven grunt of the engine.


We went out together on the tractor to hunt for flattish rocks. They have to be big enough to remain in place and small enough to heave into the tractor box. We came back with a couple of dozen that we dug into the banks of what were once a series of terraces. They look good and offer reasonably secure and comfortable passage in both directions.

Afterwards, Jones put Nelson to work for an hour or two to clear a wicked patch of brambles and thorny creeper in the adjacent field. They've spent years establishing themselves and give as good as they get.

MORE GARDENING

We joined our film-going friends, David and Dagmar, at the cinema, the men opting to see “The Edge of Darkness” and the women “It’s complicated”. David and I gave our film good marks, a solid thriller, marred only by the chatterers in front of us who prompted me to find another seat. The ladies were equally pleased with their chick flick.

I’m reading a book that Cathy gave me, Quantum by Nanjit Kumar, on the lives of the people who made the breakthroughs in quantum physics. How fascinating to read that Einstein came fourth out of five in his university class and had the very devil of a job finding employment thereafter. Has to be a moral there somewhere.

At my English class on Thursday – the second of the week – we discussed the downgrading of Portugal’s credit- worthiness by the Fitch ratings agency, and the implications. The government has just passed an austerity budget that's really going to hurt. We had already touched in class on Portugal's membership of the so-called PIIGS’s group in the Eurozone (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Greece).

It’s a most unfortunate acronym. If the UK used the euro, it would certainly be a member too. Then I guess it would have to be the PIIGUKS or the UKPIIGS. As we receive our pensions in sterling and spend them in euros, this is not just academic stuff. We listened with interest to the Chancellor’s pretend budget midweek - and wondered which party would be in government in a few weeks' time.

Okay, as I said, there’s not much to tell.

Letter from Espargal: 11 of 2010

You'll have to forgive a rushed job, and one that's really just a catch-up. It's been a runaround week or two. We had four nights with my sister, Cathy, and husband, Rolf, in Berlin on the pretext of admiring their new apartment. Our thanks go to our neighbours, Marie and Olly, who stepped in when the house-sitters who were due to look after our animals had to cancel their trip because of illness in the family.

VIEW FROM THE APARTMENT
Although there are direct flights between Faro and Berlin, we found them mighty expensive. Instead, at half the price, we took the train to Lisbon and from there we flew with KLM, with a connection in Amsterdam. Schiphol Airport won us over. It's easily the nicest of all the European airports we've experienced so far - spacious, uncrowded, easily-navigable and with lots of facilities.

Berlin was mainly cold and damp. It didn't matter. We loved the new apartment with its space and high ceilings. It was one of several apartments in an old building with splendid views over a boat basin, just across the water from the apartment they'd previously rented. We spent three days visiting museums and galleries as well as seeing Avatar (again) and Alice in Wonderland in 3D, a format not available here in the Algarve.

Our return home coincided with the arrival of spring.

This week, for the first time this year, we've sat out on our north patio in the evening, sipping drinks and feeding almond nuts to ourselves and the dogs. Lest this seem excessive, let me say that we have more almonds than we know what to do with. The dogs love them. They often crunch the shells to get at the interiors although they prefer us to do it for them.

We visited Benafim to see how Celso and Brigitte are getting on with the refurbishment of Snack Bar Coral - now renamed France-Portugal (or Portugal-France). The pair of them were working hard when we knocked on the door. The place is still in a state of upheaval. The hope is to reopen later in the week.

Just across the road from the snack bar is the monument that Horacio (the builder) is constructing on behalf of Loule Council, in honour of a local woman who was a great benefactor. Horacio was pleased to show us around. Illustrated tiles will be attached to the main wall and there will benches for folk to relax and watch the passing show. Horacio is under pressure to complete the work. The constant rain over the winter has hammered his deadlines.

According to a headline in the local rag, the rainfall this past winter has been the heaviest since records were first kept in 1870. I spent 15 minutes removing mold that had collected on walls around interior windows facing the weather. In the cavernous bedroom cupboard I found a suitcase and a belt covered in mold. I fear to look further.

We've left the cupboard doors open to allow the contents to breathe.

The orchids are out, delighting us as they do every spring. There's a patch of naked man orchids at the top of the hill. And on our walk around the valley this morning we found some truly splendid "naked men", along with "early purples" and "woodcocks". The scillas and other wild flowers are also out in a glorious show. Farmers were hard at work in their vines to make up for lost time, pruning and turning over the soil.

If you look closely at this picture of telephone poles marching across the vineyards (from Benafim to Espargal), you'll notice that one pole is leaning over at an angle of 45 degrees. It's really being held up only by the wires - and the day it goes down we'll lose our phone line and our internet link. I reported it months ago to Portugal Telecom, who subsequently sent a fellow out to take a look. Evidently, it wasn't considered urgent.



SCILLA

You may recall that we visited the SA consulate in Lisbon six months ago to renew our passports. Mine arrived fairly promptly but there has been no sign of Barbara's. The other night I dreamed that her passport had arrived in the post. I was surprised (in my dream) that the passport was contained in an ordinary envelope rather than in registered mail.

I was recounting this to Jones the following morning as we drove down the hill. We stopped to collect the mail, and there - yes - was a card from the postman saying that her passport was available for collection from the parish office.

What I'm working on now is trying to dream up a few numbers for Euromillions; speaking of which, we had a double win last week. Pity it amounted only to 18 euros.

Letter from Espargal: 10 of 2010

We’ve been spending much of the week waiting for the rain to stop, which it has, intermittently, before starting again. The animals – there are seven official beasts plus the hangers-on – like to be dry and warm as much as we do. So to pacify them, and to dry the washing, and to keep the house comfortable, we tend to make an early fire and to spend much of the day within its warm embrace.

SORRY ABOUT THE PHOTO- GRAPHER

We lay towels on the floor close to the exterior doors to dry paws and shoes after forays outside. This precaution keeps to a minimum the trail of damp prints that so often drives Jones to distraction, especially after she has newly mopped the tiles. Worse news are the yellow puddles that decorate the south patio floor, evidence that a dog couldn’t get out or chose not to. Jones is very good at mopping them up, muttering as she does so.

What we haven’t resolved, and are never likely to, is the tension created by the animals and the stove (on one hand) and the state of cleanliness for which the Jones soul longs (on the other). My wife is one of those people who are not at ease in a dirty or untidy environment. (Fortunately, I am more tolerant in this respect.)

The fact is that the beasts, as much as we love them, spend their lives dropping hairs and crumbs, especially on our tiled floors. Aiding and abetting them is the long chimney stack that rises above the fire; for all that it warms the house, it distributes a steady flow of soot particles. No amount of vacuum-cleaning brings more than a brief respite.

Jones’s avatar occupies a small, easy-to-clean apartment with no animals to complicate her life. In this unencumbered world she is free to come and go, to visit her exhibitions and to travel. (I am not exactly sure what role a spouse plays in this alternative world.) But saddled with a heart that’s melted by miaauws and seduced by animals in need, the real thing doesn’t really stand a chance. For myself, I couldn’t imagine living in the countryside without dogs.

Yes, we have been to see Avatar. Jones was frankly unimpressed. She’d been hoping to see the film in 3-D and it failed to live up to her expectations.

I was rather more taken – by the sheer technical wizardry of it, as much as anything. And I want to see it again. I spent some time afterwards reading up on the processes involved. Apart from anything else James Cameron went to enormous lengths to give his actors first hand experience of a jungle environment and to have a linguist invent the Na’vi language. Creating the visual effects took 900 people at a 4,000 unit computer-farm (according to the Wikipedia article). The whole thing cost close to half a billion dollars. Little wonder that his backers were terrified of failure.

If there’s an irony in this, it was watching Cameron’s former wife, Kathryn Bigelow, clean up at the Bafta Awards in London with her relatively low budget production, The Hurt Locker. Cameron had to look on as his ex-partner made visit after visit to the stage of the opera house to receive the film’s accolades. He had the consolation of taking the awards for production design and visual effects. I wonder what this portends for the Oscars.

Apart from the film and the inevitable walks, we have managed the odd inter-pluvial venture into the garden, mainly to rip out the huge wild celery plants that everywhere spring up at this time of year.

WILD CELERY

Mature specimens can easily occupy a square metre. Jones has cut back the vines and taken several buckets of dandelions across to Maria’s hens, which fall hungrily upon them. Mostly, however, we’ve limited ourselves to peering at the sodden greenery or trying to figure out whether the apple and fig saplings that we replanted a few months ago are dead or merely dormant.

We were dissuaded from further raiding the broccoli field in the valley by the farmer, who told us during a chance encounter that he was spraying the plants, now that they were in flower. Why and with what were not entirely clear. Jones has reluctantly taken his advice.

HAMBURGO LUNCH

Last Sunday evening we joined the expats at the Coral for a closing-down supper. The closure is for three weeks only while the interior of the snack-bar undergoes a revamp. In the meanwhile we are taking morning coffee at home. The Dutch ladies took us to lunch at the Hamburgo to thank Jonesy for looking after Ermie during their absence. (Ermie, they insisted, not Herme; they read the blog.)

JONES DAWN

The fates willing, we are going to Berlin next weekend. (The fates, in this case, are represented mainly by BA, the airline bringing our house-sitters; its intractable cabin crews have yet to announce their strike dates.) We return home on Wednesday 17.

I have arranged to give additional English lessons to my class at the Senior University to compensate them for my absences during our planned trips this spring.

My book of origins has this to say about a “white elephant”, an expression as familiar to most of us as its source is obscure: “The notion of the white elephant as something unwanted arose apparently from the practice of the kings of Siam of presenting courtiers who had incurred their displeasure with real white elephants, the cost of whose proper upkeep was ruinously high.” How delightful! Like being appointed minister of agriculture in the Soviet Union.