Letter from Espargal: 27 of 2010

FORMAL BENAFIM SUMMER ATTIRE

I have spent some time trying to think of an opening to this letter that encourages you to read at least as far as the second paragraph – an opening that makes no reference to the weather, our walks, the garden or the animals. But as you can see, I have already failed in this endeavour. It is exceedingly difficult to write a letter about things that have little bearing on one’s life; and harder still to write about those events that touch one most closely. Or, at least, I find it so.

Having said which, I might easily be found guilty of writing too much. I have been going through my correspondence to the family down the years. Apart from the odd letter from the 80s, it starts in January 1994, when I acquired my first computer. In those days, before we had email, I would print the letters out and then fax them from London to our far-flung family. That, at least, was a huge improvement on the photocopies (10p a time) that I used to make in the corner shop and post out to the far ends of the earth.

I’ve spent long hours converting these old letters from their original format into WORD. They are a diary of our lives, a very extensive one, hundreds and hundreds of them. Our ups and downs, successes and failures, comings and goings are all recorded, along with the antics of Mr Mavis, our London cat. Maybe one day I shall be able to turn them into the book that I have been talking about. Or maybe not.

I was once going to write a book about God (I had the title - Benson’s Bedside God-book) but I have never managed to write anything one day with which I felt satisfied the next.

I have just finished reading a book that Cathy gave me, Quantum by Manjit Kumar. It’s an illuminating account, not so much of the discoveries of sub-atomic physics, as of the lives, rivalries and contentions of the discoverers. (Einstein, as you may know, graduated with a poor degree and had the very devil of a job finding work. Some universities didn’t even bother to reply to his letters seeking a position.) One quickly concludes that Nobel prize winners, apart from being bright and lucky, are little different from the rest of us.

RIP DONA KATERINA

Let me return to the hamlet of Espargal. The week began with a funeral, that of Dona Katerina who, for as long as we have been here, has tottered up and down our road on her stick, taking her daily constitutional. She was in her early 90s. Her three daughters (themselves grandmothers) live locally. She passed away suddenly at the end of last week.


We joined the throng that, in traditional fashion, followed the hearse from the church to the cemetery on the outskirts of Benafim. I think that it’s a lovely practice. Mourners are not expected to attend the funeral service although they’re welcome - if there’s room. But they pay their final respects by marching behind the coffin to the grave-side.

For once, the traffic has to wait. It’s a great send-off. RIP Dona Katerina. Afterwards, we retired to the Coral for a late breakfast with neighbouring expats. It took a while. The snack bar is on the cortege route and inevitably a popular post-funeral watering hole.

The continuing heat of summer (to which I have so far managed not to refer) seems only to inspire our insect companions, especially the ants. We have to place the dog-biscuit bowls in a tray of water to give the dogs a 50-50 chance of getting at the biscuits. The several water bowls are patrolled by wasps and the trees are full of cicadas. Truly, the insects rule.

Exhorted by Jones not to drape my perspiration-soaked shirts and vests over the front patio, I have resorted to the washing line, upsetting the ant columns that use it as a highway.

I have to shake these clothes vigorously before putting them on in order to rid the garments of the protesting insects.

On cue, an email arrives from the Portuguese Met Office (to which I subscribe) informing us that this past July has been the hottest since 1931 – 3 degrees above normal with an average maximum of (approx.) 32 degrees. That’s hot (even if it’s not as hot as in Russia, much of which seems to be burning down). I feel that my complaints are vindicated. My upper legs and tummy are still covered in heat bumps, complemented with a bite from a tick that I picked up on a morning walk. Jones plucked the wretch from my back and I crushed it under a stone for its troubles.

The heat did not deter us from making our annual visit to the Sao Bras festa, one of those that we always enjoy (although I was disappointed by the absence of any tractors this year). It’s best to turn up early, both to sit down at a supper table before the crowds arrive and to precede the amplified nocturnal entertainment from the nearby main stage.

We were entertained instead by a band of drummers, who thumped their way enthusiastically down the avenues between the kiosks. Jones returned home with a small ceramic bowl (no surprise there) and a cork bracelet. (Seen in the dog-bowl picture above) We are relieved to see that as cork (sadly) declines as a bottle stopper, it’s being processed instead to make garments and other products.

Natasha was pleased to get an extra day’s work – cleaning our many shutters and sliding doors. She’s anxious, now that she’s passed her theoretical exam, to get on with learner driving and frustrated by some hold-up with the cars. We have to run her back into Loule in the late afternoon as the bus from Benafim doesn’t operate during the school holidays.

We took the opportunity of trying the newly-opened bypass – a second quarter of Loule’s long planned ring-road. It will ease the flow of heavy traffic that gums up the heart of the old town morning and evening. (For absent expats, the bypass links the roads into Loule from Querenca, Salir and Boliqueime to the freeway network.)

The melon man was delighted to receive copies of the latest pictures that we had taken of him – and plied us so generously with grateful fruit that we hardly found room in the car. Yes, we have been eating a lot of melons – watermelons (melancia), round yellow melons (meloa) and rugby ball shaped melons (melao), and very good they all are too. Jones took some more pictures of the pickers which will no doubt ensure us a renewed supply of melons in due course.

As for Jones herself, she continues to spend long hours crouched in the shade of the trees, cutting back, cleaning up and protecting her more delicate plants from the sun. She says she finds it cooler outside. (I don’t.) Most afternoons I join her in the watering. Then after walking the dogs, we retire to the front patio, baggies in hand, olives at the ready, to watch the sun go down. If you’ve heard this before you will know that not much as changed here in Espargal.