Letter from Espargal: 13 of 2010

We are basking in a glow of creative satisfaction. Most of my week has gone on making a long overdue path between the house and the cisterna. Before you snort with contempt at the puniness of this achievement, you need to look at the terrain involved.

It was originally a steep fall of rocks and dirt, created by the levelling of the site for the house. Jones planted the area with trees and shrubs and it gradually transformed itself into a crowded garden, intersected by a line of uneven stepping stones that led down to the cisterna. With the growth of vegetation down the years, the stones all but disappeared. Negotiating them became a hazardous business for the unsure-footed – ditto the task of watering the garden in the dry months. Many a time I stumbled and cursed.

We should long ago have embarked on creating a clear path through this wilderness, were it not for the inevitable damage to Jones’s garden – an analogy in miniature of the conflict between developers and conservationists. Anyhow, Jones eventually gritted her teeth and, with Nelson’s assistance, I set about the task. While he did the groundwork, I took the tractor into Benafim to load up the box with the gravel we needed for the job. Just help yourself from the yard was the advice from the local supplier - which I did.

Digging out the stepping stones and widening the access was the easy bit. It took just a couple of hours. What took the next three days was finding the rocks to make steps, digging foundations for them, cementing them in place and finishing the job with an artistic flourish. The final result has been pleasing to all concerned. Nelson and I posed beside our engineering achievement while Jones took the necessary pictures to commemorate the occasion.

To celebrate the success of this enterprise, we supped at the Coral (still awaiting its “Le France Portugal” plaque), where 20 euros buys an excellent dinner for two, along with a bottle of the house reserve. I tried to fend off the local drunk who, after downing a few, feels impelled to engage all and sundry in slurry conversation. Having said which, he’s harmless, except to his own liver. Brigitte came across with a menu in French and Portuguese that we have agreed to translate into English.

Jones, for her part, has been labouring away with her pickaxe in the old sheep pen. Much of her time has been taken up replanting items that we had to clear from the new path, as well as bulbs that Raymond and/or Bobby have taken to digging up from other parts of the garden – greatly to my wife’s annoyance. It’s hard to know how to stop them.

Of course, we have continued the ritual of morning and evening walks. Last Monday morning the sky was grey with cloud. Weather forecasts were mixed. As I recall, I said to Jones before we left on a long jaunt, that it might be an idea to bring the golf brolly from the car. As she recalls, I told her that the brolly was there but that it probably wouldn’t rain. The long and the short of it is that we got soaked to the skin, all six of us. The rain started at the half-way point. We staggered back utterly sodden 90 minutes after we’d set out.

Midweek I met the postman at the post boxes. He was new and struggling to match up the mail with the indistinct and faded names on the boxes. His biggest challenge was what to do with a parcel addressed to Grandad John, Espargal – no surname or house name. I signed for it in the expectation – correct, fortunately - that it was intended for the only John in the village, a retired army officer who lives nearby and who was grateful to receive it.

Other village news concerns Donna Caterina, a great-grandmother in her 90’s who has continued to totter along the road each day on her exercise outing. At least she did until she lost her balance and fell into a drain, injuring her upper body and face. She’s back in the care of her daughters after being treated in hospital. It’s been a real fear of mine that our dogs might upset her as they rush out of the garden at the excited start of a walk.

Following the saga of our ticket booking exercise with KLM, we have received a letter of abject apology – well deserved, I may add, but also appreciated. I intend to acknowledge it.

JASMINE IN FLOWER

A still unresolved saga is that concerning my attempts to obtain the proceeds of my investments with Liberty Life in South Africa. For months I’ve been filling in forms and submitting them to the company with the assistance of financial advisers in Cape Town. There hasn’t been a conceivable complication that hasn’t arisen.

The latest, just revealed to me, is that my South African tax number (from 25 years ago) is in an obsolete format, which Liberty doesn’t recognise. Thus to obtain my money, I will have to apply to the SA tax authorities for a new number and then begin the process of claiming the investments all over again. It is a great deal easier to give money to Liberty than to get it back again. I’m in some doubt whether the proceeds, should I ever get them, will meet the mounting financial advisers’ bill.

Pause there to pull a tick off my neck and crush it beneath the haft of my letter opener, to which its remains are messily glued. What wretched creatures they are! Jones emerged from the shower the other day to find one still clinging to her tummy. It went down the loo, with a brief, unrepeatable valedictory.

BBC TV has been running a weekly series on sacred music that we have greatly enjoyed. The first programmes dealt with music from earlier composers, much of which we were familiar with. (Faure’s Requiem is in my personal top ten – not that I’ve listed the other nine.) The later programmes have featured the work of living composers, including a Pole, Henryk Górecki, whose music we found most attractive. I downloaded his 3^rd symphony (legally, on iTunes). It’s the kind of music that goes well with the lead-up to Easter.

Speaking of which, our thoughts go out to you far-flung folks this weekend. Happy Easter to us all.