Letter from Espargal: 26 of 2010

I am sitting at my desk, listening to a Proms Beethoven concert, dabbing by turns at the computer keyboard and the perspiration dribbling down my neck and waiting for the end of July. The fan above my head pumps hot air down from the ceiling, prompting me to wonder whether I put it in the right place.

Each day I have received an email from the Portuguese weather bureau warning us that the heat-wave will continue and urging us to take due precautions. (Terrible forest fires are raging up in the north of the country where the arsonists have been at work again.) So far the emails have been unfailingly accurate. As soon as we have won the lottery, I am going to buy a house somewhere cool, where we can retreat in the summer – dogs, cats and all.

This torrid state of affairs has done nothing to upset the routine of Jorge Vieira, who may be found in the valley each morning leading his team of melon pickers. Jorge was so pleased with the pictures we presented him of his melon picking (See Letter 24) that he wondered whether we wouldn’t visit his tomato plantation on the far side of Espargal hill to take a few pictures of that. Of course we would.

We drove down in the car, the air conditioner roaring to keep us all – dogs and humans - tolerably cool, and parked under a handy carob tree. Jorge’s tomatoes are something else. Thousands of plants are lined up like regiments of soldiers, groaning under their burden of fat green tomatoes. Each plant twirls up around a cord that hangs from a eucalyptus frame some two metres high or it would surely collapse from the weight of its productive success.

Jorge informed us that he was up at four each morning to tend his various crops. He irrigated the tomatoes for six hours a day, he said, mixing fertilizer into the water that flowed up from a borehole on the edge of the field. Vegetables were just like us, he explained; they needed food and water to grow. There was no arguing with the success of his tomatoes. As if to underline his words a large diesel generator (energising the borehole pump) thumped away in the background.

From his tomatoes Jorge led us into the adjacent pumpkin crop, where some of the world’s largest pumpkins were fattening in the sun. At my suggestion, he lifted one up for a picture. It came away from its roots and he presented it to Jonesy (who loves pumpkin) as a thank you for our efforts.

She staggered somewhat under its weight as we retreated to the car, replete with an armload of tomatoes as well. I have printed off some fine photographs of all this activity, with which I am sure that Jorge will be equally pleased.

For my part I have been inspired to build a new tap in the garden in front of the house, exploiting the skeleton of the defunct irrigation system there.

Perhaps I should explain that I installed the system some years ago to relieve the burden of daily hosepipe irrigation. But the relief was short-lived.

Between Jonesy’s plants (which buried the sprinklers in foliage) and the sprinkler heads (which popped and jammed) the system rapidly went the way of the Ford Edsel.

Anyhow, I have installed the new tap which, once it stops leaking, will do very well in serving that part of the garden. Artistically, I have concealed the tap upright behind a large bough that I was planning to use for firewood.

Speaking of which, I phoned up an old contact to order a load of the finest oak firewood for the winter. (Summer, lest you think me crazy, is the best time to order firewood. You can’t accuse me of not planning ahead.) This cork oak is such wonderful wood, I confided to the supplier, that it hurts me to burn it.

He intimated that it hurt him equally to sell it but, at the end of the day, business was business. (Cash please and no, sorry, can’t offer you a receipt!) The wood burns long and hot and leaves just a trace of ash. Let me add in haste that we have no intention of deserting the village firewood supplier; we’ll mix the oak with the local timber.

Jones has spent most of her week crouched in a newly-developed section of garden beside the fence, patiently scraping the hard soil away from a peak of protruding bedrock. She calls this area Nelson’s column – Nelson the gypsy having cleared the area and the column of bedrock speaking for itself. In her inimitable way Jones has been adding the final touches and putting in small succulent plants.

As you will know, we live in a very rocky part of the world. If you look at any of the quarries in the area, you realise that our hills are solid rock with just the thinnest patchy veneer of soil. Every autumn I pick up thousands of stones from our fields and every spring the scarifier turns up thousands more. (I tell myself it’s in a good cause but I’m not certain that I’m persuaded.)

Friday morning I went to visit the Benafim accountant who has been helping me to make Natasha’s social security payments on line. I took him the password that I had recently received from the Portuguese authorities. In short, it wouldn’t work. And when he phoned to find out why, it was because we were some special case that didn’t qualify for online payments. He threw up his arms in despair.

As I result I had to drive into Loule to make the payments at the Social Security office by the end-of-the-month deadline. The problem is not so much paying the money over as waiting to do so. Also, one can pay for three months ahead but only in January, April, July and October. Otherwise, one must make monthly visits. Crazy? Yes, it’s crazy but that’s how it is.

Natasha herself arrived for work this week both pleased and upset. Her pleasure arose from her success in her second attempt at the driving theory exam and her annoyance from her initial failure and the cost of taking it again. Much more annoying, she discovered that some blundering bureaucrat had confused the names of her child and her Romanian ex-partner. As a result the Romanian authorities had spent weeks looking in vain for her boy (instead of her ex-partner) when the former was all the time with her in Portugal. Natasha is trying to obtain sole custody of the child and the process must now start again.

I’m head-scratching over the English lessons I give to Natasha’s namesake. The problem is the timing. So far we’ve had them at 6.30 on a weekday afternoon (when her husband gets home to look after their small daughter). But this arrangement eats into the dogs’ walking time and they make their resentment loud and clear.

I spent some hours reading through the academic thesis of a Portuguese veterinarian acquaintance of ours. She’d written it in English which, though most impressive, needed a little polishing here and there.

I feel after imbibing it that I deserve an honorary degree in animal bugology myself. In fact, to stay up with my ever more educated nephews and nieces, I was recently able to persuade the University of Espargal to award me (yet another) honorary doctorate, a picture of which sublime occasion I attach for your admiration.

Final Edition: In order to finish this blog on a sober note, let me put up a picture of a dinner that we were fortunate enough to attend at the Alte Hotel with much of the Espargal expat gang ("community", I believe, is the "in" word). The picture was taken by visiting friends from the UK. What it doesn't show is the terrific view from the hotel dining room, down across the Algarve plain to the sea. To appreciate that, you really need to be here in person.