Letter from Espargal: 21 of 2010

DAWN

There are several reliable signs that one is getting on, apart from a receding hairline and advancing waistline. One such sign is the growing number of great-grandparents among one’s acquaintance. The other night we were guests at the birthday party of a friend who was turning 80. “I never expected to go to anybody’s 80th birthday party,” I told her. “I never expected to turn 80,” she replied. It just goes to show.

Summer has arrived, as it does every year. It is my least favourite season. I’m in a sweat from morning till night and develop itchy spots in embarrassing places. If there were a practical way of sleeping all day and being active at night, I should adopt it. But there isn’t – certainly not one that’s acceptable to the animals. Instead I have been retiring during the heat of the day to my reclining chair to watch the football on the TV.

The match between Slovakia and Italy is the most exciting I have ever seen. I was on the edge of my chair, figuratively speaking. On the other hand, during the lethargic Portugal-Brazil game, I could barely summon up the energy to call downstairs for another cold beer.

At least Portugal is through to the last 16 - unlike former champions, France and Italy, who have shuffled off their coils (sorry William!). I do hope that the Portuguese team shows its mettle. It would mean so much to this little nation. We try to do our bit here on our stony hillside. The Portuguese flag flies from our upper balcony. For the sake of neighbourly relations I feel obliged to show public support for England – and on Cathy’s behalf for Germany. I know how the Vicar of Bray felt.

We have not been entirely idle – far from it. Jones has laboured, as ever, in her demanding garden. Piles of plucked out vegetation have grown beside the paths, to be collected with the tractor and heaved on to the weed mountain. For the next three months, until the first rains come, watering the garden will take at least an hour a day. My part is to water the trees each week. I have also spent long hours strimming the hillside and poisoning the worst of the weeds.

Our war with the ticks continues. It’s very hard to know which side is winning. Seldom a day passes that we don’t encounter a few of the wretches clinging either to our clothing or skin. Those we catch I crush between two stones. They’re so tough that standing on them is a waste of time. As we were sitting, glass in hand, on the patio after a walk one evening, I felt a tickling on my right calf and hauled up my trouser-leg to find a tick ascending. I despatched him. Two minutes later came a tickling on my left calf. Same story.

Before any more ticks came along, I removed my trousers and finished my sundowner tickless in my undies. As I explained to Jones, I’d rather amuse the neighbours than be eaten alive. I thought the scene might make a good picture for the blog but Jones declined, saying people had better things to look at.

After drinks we play two games with the dogs. The first is the “wait for the biscuit game”. The dogs are instructed to sit. Once they’ve done so (most of them) I place a biscuit on the floor just out of their reach. The idea is that they have to wait for permission to eat the biscuit. Raymond and Bobby will go along with this although they drool with anticipation. Ono is a reluctant participant and Prickles completely fails to see the point. Unless you restrain him, he makes a grab at all the biscuits he can find.

WAIT WHILE I HIDE

The other game is “hide and seek”. I hide. The dogs have to seek. They love this game. Unless Jones keeps them sitting on the patio, they cheat like mad and peep around the corner to see where I am hiding. Once hidden, I call them.

DISCOVERED

They then dash madly around all the hiding places in the garden trying to find me. Discovery usually comes within a matter of seconds and they leap exuberantly upon me. It’s best to have a handful of biscuits at the ready as a reward for their success.

We took the car to Faro one morning for its first service. (It turns 1 this week.) While Honda did the necessary, we went along to inspect the city’s revamped market – and very smart it is too. The upper floor is occupied by a citizens’ service centre at which we will need to renew our residence permits.

Afterwards we strolled back down through the shopping precinct to the harbour.

Visitors were riding the mock train that takes them on a city tour – and the storks were raising their young on the nests they had built on lampposts and steeples.

The secretary of the senior university called to ask me to pop in next time I was in town.

This I did – to learn that the principal was recovering from the effects of a stroke, and to receive the gift that the university presents each year to its volunteer teachers.



The gift is always something special. This year it was a crystal platter with a tracery of pewter leaf-work. It will join the half-dozen other such presentations in the display cabinet.

I have nearly finished reading a fascinating book - THE DRUNKARD’S WALK by Leonard Mlodinow - about the nature of probability. Let me recommend it to you.

It’s full of tales and reminiscences that the author uses to illustrate popular fallacies, as well as layman’s explanations of the laws of probability and the histories of the people who discovered them.

These laws are often counter-intuitive. A famous example is the so-called Monty Hall problem, which appears to defy logic.

If you were interested, you would find it at Wikipedia, which explains it much more elegantly than I ever could. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem) As the article states: Even when given a completely unambiguous statement of the Monty Hall problem, explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still meet the correct answer with disbelief.

Letter from Espargal: 20 of 2010

So, we’re back and still getting used to the idea after nearly a month of touring around North America. Terry and Margaret, our house sitters, had a last day to relax in the sun (Margaret in her leg cast) before we accompanied them to Faro airport early last Tuesday morning. They had made prior arrangements with their carrier to provide Margaret with wheelchair assistance. She has an appointment in the UK to follow up on the broken ankle.

The start of the week also brought the last lessons of the “academic” year. Elisabete, our Portuguese teacher, had suggested in our absence that each pupil should prepare and bring along snacks typical of her (they’re all women) country of origin – and then explain how they were made. I’m glad I missed the exercise. Jones took along a few cookies from a hypermarket as a gesture of good will.

My English class presented me with a bottle of Antiquissima, a fine Portuguese brandy, along with a hand-drawn card to express their gratitude for my efforts, Both were much appreciated.

I heard later that the university’s annual banquet had been postponed as the principal had suddenly fallen ill. He is the moving force behind the institution and should he be unable to resume his duties, it would be in serious trouble.

On Wednesday, after much whistling all around the neighbourhood, the two black cats returned nervously and somewhat thinner to the house. We warned the dogs to be on their best behaviour or else.

Each year, during our holiday absence, the little devils decide that the cats are surplus to requirements. I’m not sure exactly what happens but the cats decide that it’s expedient to camp out in the park until our return.

Speaking of cats, Jones went around one afternoon to visit Maria, a neighbour, who’s having a hard time after a bad hip replacement. While they were conversing, Maria’s cat returned home in a dreadful state. It had been mauled, apparently by another cat, and was pitiful to behold.

Jones said we had to take it to SOS – a surgery run by a group of veterinarians in Loule. Since the four dogs needed their annual jabs, we piled them in the car, borrowed a cat-basket from another neighbour and took all five animals along. The vet, a young Brazilian woman whom I’d not met before, thought the cat was beyond saving - no surprise - and she put the unfortunate animal down.

PRICKLES

I then took the dogs into the surgery one at a time – they hate going to vet – to be checked and jabbed. The jab combines the compulsory rabies vaccine with shots for several other prevalent diseases. After brief examin- ations the vet administered the injections while I secured the animals and did my best to reassure them. They weren’t happy. I warned her not to try to take Prickles’ temperature with an anal thermometer if she wanted to leave the surgery alive; she took my advice.

One afternoon Idalecio invited us around to inspect the work he’d been doing on his house and garden. He inherited the old house from his grandparents and has been renovating it with a view to letting it out, along with two apartments – especially over the summer holidays when demand peaks. We were impressed by his efforts.

Like most dwellings in the village, his house was originally painted with whitewash. He’s now turned it a deep red colour. It looks great. His garden is also showing the benefit of his efforts, enhanced by the new stone walls that line the driveway. In the meanwhile, Idalecio has moved himself into the studio apartment that once housed his occasional restaurant.

Just down the road is a villa being constructed by Horacio, the local builder. We went along to see that too, accompanied by our friends, David and Dagmar. Horacio showed us around, explaining the layout and pointing out the high-tech insulation. The authorities here require all new houses to be heavily insulated, double-glazed and equipped with solar water-heaters. As much as we struggle with the stolid bureaucracy, we do approve of such measures.

Another of Horacio’s projects is a monument nearing completion in Benafim. It’s been built as a tribute to a local woman, Dona Antonia, who made generous donations of land to people in the parish. The monument is being painted in traditional colours – ochre, blue and deep red – from pigments prepared the old way. The woman’s portrait and the story of her life are laid out on the walls on tiles designed by a local artist.

In-between times we’ve been catching up on a month’s growth in the garden – tidying, cutting back, strimming and, where the worst of the weeds are concerned, poisoning. There’s no other way of getting rid of invasive thorny creepers. All around us the fields are deep under grass and weeds and there are long days of strimming ahead of me.

If this all sounds like a very active week, it hasn’t been – not on my part anyhow. Mostly, I’ve been watching football, snoozing and coming to terms with my jetlag. Much of the time, the three activities have merged as I nodded off in front of the TV screen. Such displays of indolence eventually got to my wife who upbraided me. But given the heat, the sonorous drone of the vuvuzelas and the lacklustre quality of the soccer, I thought her reproaches a trifle excessive.

During my more waking moments, I have been delighted with the brilliant quality of our thin-screen TVs. The football championships are being transmitted in high definition. One can just about see the blades of grass on the pitch. Our old TV has been donated to Vitor, the village mechanic, whose own set had broken down, upsetting his young son. Vitor’s equally pleased. In return he presented me with a weather-proof jacket that had evidently been given to him but was several sizes too large. It suits me just fine.

Letter from Calgary

FAMILY SCENE

It's all very well writing about life on the road and life with the Joneses. Life with the Bensons is a bit trickier. It's closer to home, in a manner of speaking. For blog readers unfamiliar with the clan, let me expand. In the days of yore, the Calgary Bensons used to be one family. But time moved on, they all grew up and settled down - and now they're four families.

There's my brother, Kevin, and his wife, Ann, who live in a lovely home in DeWinton on the southern outskirts of the city. They also live in their motor-home at a retreat in California and at other times they're on the road. But that's another story.

NASH HOME

Then there's their daughter, Penny, businessman husband Mike (Nash), and boys, Jackson and Wyatt. They have been staying with K&A in DeWinton for a couple of months while the Nash home, a few miles north, undergoes extensive renovations. We went to take a look and the renovations met with our full approval albeit that the house is an inch thick under sawdust.

MINDY

After Penny comes Mark, wife Mindy, and children, Connor, Ethan and (baby) Megan. They also live not far away in a suburb of Calgary. The parents are both qualified pilots but right now they are more concerned with academic studies and raising the kids.

ALAN & SARAH with Mindy's baby MEGAN

Finally, there's Alan, wife Sarah, and daughters, Rachel and Esther. Their house too is 15 minutes down the road. Alan's in real estate. Sarah keeps herself pretty busy on the daughter front, with her two small girls and a third on the way. Of course, they all do masses of other things but I'm confining myself to minimalist descriptions.

One of the features of the Calgary Bensons (I'm treating Penny as a Benson) is their love of their motor cars. They are exceedingly fond of their automobiles, all of them. Boring! Boring says Jones. But seeing that I'm a car fan myself, and have some good pictures, you'll have to bear with me.

Kevin and Ann met us at the airport on our arrival in a spanking new Mercedes that was barely out of the box. He tried to pass it off as the car he'd had the year before but I was having none of it, especially as the previous Merc was a different size and colour. It's Ann's new car, as it turned out. She is delighted with it and little wonder!

Kevin's car is an Audi RS4. For the uninitiated, RS4s are racing cars in road car guise. Kevin loves his RS4 and, if you have any sense, you'll admire it and close its doors with great care. The suspension is a trifle hard for those of us with bad backs but it's a great car for going places in a hurry. There's a beeper thing on the windscreen that looks for traffic cops and zaps them with a death-ray if they are bothersome.

Beside Kevin's RS4 in the garage (for the moment) is Mike's RS4. Mike also doesn't believe in wasting time on the road. He likes to get home to the family and to watch the (ice) hockey games on TV. He can occasionally be heard grumbling about all the slow drivers who impede his progress.

Penny likes cars just as much as Mike. Only she likes them big; the bigger the better. She graduated up through a couple of 4x4s to a Yukon (Obama-size) that she loves dearly....though not so dearly that she doesn't fancy an even larger Merc.

Mark has just acquired a snazzy BMW in lieu of a truck that he found a bit of a brute for commuting. He acquired the truck to haul a large caravan around on camping-style holidays. The truck remains in the wider family for the continued hauling of the caravan and trailers. These vehicles live in a warehouse in Calgary.

TRUCK & TRAILER

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't note what Alan was driving although I can assure you that his taste is just as refined. Mindy and Sarah both use 7-seater family vehicles, ideal for hauling children around in safety seats.

Then there's also Kevin's motor-home (an RV to Americans) and the Chrysler Jeep it tows. Kevin is never happier than when he's on the road.

ANN & BARBARA

If you think I'm making a lot of fuss about cars, you probably don't know the family very well. Also, it gives me the opportunity to stick up lots of photos on the blog.

KITCHEN SCENE

Because the Nashes were occupying the guest suite in DeWinton, Kev and Ann put us up at a hotel in the nearby town of Okotoks. Like all the Calgary hotels, our hotel was full. We counted ourselves lucky to get such accommodation because several thousand oil-men were in town for a conference, so were the horsey fraternity who had poured in to watch the equestrian events at Spruce Meadows, just down the road.

Visitors who'd failed to book early had to trek miles out of town to find anywhere to lay their heads. Ours was a friendly and comfortable hotel, all the more because Ann had stocked our room to the nines with every conceivable treat.

Our hire car was equally comfortable; it's the first convertible I've driven. I preferred to drive it with the roof over my head although, at the press of a button, the roof folded itself up and packed itself into the boot (trunk). All in all we were very comfortable indeed.

BARBARA & KEVIN

During our six days in Calgary we didn't really do a lot. There wasn't a lot we wanted to do. Most days we'd drift over to DeWinton mid-morning or mid-afternoon for conversation, a trip to the shops, a meal, more conversation and maybe a walk.

Our favourite walks were two hour-long loops that took us around the houses in the community. They were all big, fine houses although many of the designs failed to win us over. It's just a matter of taste.

COWBOYS & CROOKS

The custom in that part of the world is to lay (lots of) turf around one's house, plant trees and cultivate (mainly) modest gardens. The snow that covers Calgary for half the year doesn't encourage extensive gardening. Most houses have few fences or none at all.

PLAYING IN WOODS BEHIND HOUSE

Some gardens run down to the woods, others to a lake. Bird calls fill the air. The occasional deer wanders by. Coyotes roam the hills. All in all DeWinton is a great place to live. We liked it lots.

BARBARA & PENNY

If there was one disadvantage to staying down the road, it was the need to drive back in a state of excessive sobriety to the hotel each evening. To welcome us, my brother had acquired two fine malt whiskies and some delectable wines, to which I did rather less justice than I might in other circumstances. It was just one of those things. A brush with the law was the last thing I wanted.

On our final evening, Kevin and Ann had all the family around to a magnificent spread. The sun had returned after a soggy few days and we all sat out under brollies on the back patio (porch) for some serious and not so serious conversation while they kids ran around the garden playing cops and robbers before coming in to watch a movie.

And so the days passed.

KEVIN & BABY MEGAN

On Saturday morning our hosts ran us out to the airport and bade us farewell.

Our return trip was anything but smooth, as you may judge. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

13.00: Calgary: Our Westjet flight to Toronto is delayed by 90 minutes. We wonder if we'll make our Air Canada connection to Frankfurt.
…......................
20.00: Toronto: Scramble to collect our baggage and catch the transit to Terminal 1.
Good news! We make the connection!
…......................
24.00: Toronto: Bad news! Stuck on the plane for 2 hours while all the bags are removed from the hold to find the luggage of a passenger who has been arrested and isn't coming with us.
….....................
WATCHING SOCCER - FRANKFURT

13.00: Frankfurt: Bad news! Arrive 2 hours late and (like dozens of fellow passengers) miss our connection. Rerouted to Faro via Lisbon. Warn house-sitters that we'll be arriving 7 hours late.

Good news! We get a meal voucher and watch soccer over salads.
…....................
19.00: Frankfurt. Bad news. No sign of the plane that's meant to fly us to Lisbon in a few minutes. Sure hope we make the Faro connection.
….....................
AT LAST

19.07: Plane arrives. Things looking up.
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22.00:(BST) Arrive Lisbon late. Turbulent landing. Good news. Minibus meets us and drops us at lounge for final leg to Faro.
….....................
23.15: Emerge into Faro terminal to find Margaret in wheelchair. We learn that she broke her ankle during the first day of her stay and has been confined to the chair ever since. She assures us that she still had a good holiday. Hoo boy!
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Espargal: Midnight. Good news! We're home! Delirious welcome from dogs.