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.