Letter from Espargal: 33 of 2010

You will be aware that Espargal plays host to few world leaders; we do not often hit the headlines. The bottom line is that Espargal isn’t a place where a great deal happens, other than weather, flies and carobs. And, as I’ve said, that’s how we like it – apart from the flies and sometimes the weather. But, all that may be about to change. It depends what Dr Dennis Graen and his team uncover in Ermenio Palmeira’s lower field.

So far, it isn’t much – the excavation - two large holes - has revealed a few walls, a few ceramics and a few coins. What’s clear from the coins and the ceramic fragments is that the team is unearthing the remains of a Roman building – whether a villa or merely an agricultural store of some kind they don’t yet know. Not enough of it has been exposed.

Let me interrupt my flow to say that we went down last Sunday afternoon to take a look, having been advised by Ermenio that a team from Germany was at work on his land. We took the tractor because if we take the car the dogs want to come and because we were not sure exactly what terrain we had to cross.

For once, Jones agreed to ride in the box. She wouldn’t sit on a little chair like a good Portuguese wife but she did make herself comfortable on a towel on the floor, hoping like mad that nobody would see her. It’s hard to look dignified riding in the box of a tractor (although many Portuguese wives seem to manage it well enough).

First thing, of course, we bumped into neighbours, Fintan and Pauline and then Zeferino. All concealed their surprise as best they could as my wife tried to explain the circumstances and make casual conversation. It’s not every day that Jones is caught on the back of a tractor. (I was going to write in flagrante delicto but she objected!)

Anyhow, with the help of Eduardo – Ermenio’s grandson – we found the dig and introduced ourselves to the diggers. They are a team from a German university, under the direction of Dr Graen (an archaeologist whose extensive work in Portugal became clear with a little later googling on the internet).

The mountain of stones on one side of the dig and of earth on the other bore testimony to their efforts. They had dug down between one and two metres, uncovering walls, floors – one of them waterproof - and a recess for wine or olive oil. A detailed record was being taken of exactly where anything was found and everything lay.

Dr Graen showed us a coin and how the (frag- mented) roof tiles had been shaped to fit into and over one another to make a secure water-proof roof. He estimated that the ruins dated from the 3rd or 4th century AD (CE if you prefer). The hillside setting was typical for a Roman villa, he explained, close to a water source and overlooking a fertile plain.

We were fascinated and, not for the first time, I wished that I could understand German (in order to follow the convers- ations of other members of the group). To our regret, the team was preparing to move to another site before returning home.

Afterwards, Ermenio invited Jones to take a look at the mini-museum that I described last week – and then invited the pair of us into his living room. It is the first time we’ve entered the house and we were intrigued by its old floor tiles – reminiscent of those at the Quinta - and many antiques.

Also hard at work have been our fence erectors. They set themselves up in the park after I took down their cement mixer and half a dozen loads of sand and stone. Using a really handy little self-powered barrow – more accurately, a muck-truck – they delivered the fresh cement to the holes they’d dug earlier and erected a couple of dozen poles on the eastern field.

That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to dig holes in the steep, rocky southern flank. After spending a couple of hours trying to break rocks with their small jackhammer, they went away to hire a larger one – which did the job (as well as serving to destroy a couple of protruding rocks on the fringes of my tractor track). It was, they said, the toughest fence they’d ever had to erect, full of steps and bends. I believe them. It’s all I can do to scramble up the slope.

Another visitor was Nelson the painter who, having done a great job on the house interior is now about to tackle the exterior. He came around to suss out the job and a second time to clean the paintwork with a pressure hose. There are some bad cracks that need filling and multiple minor cracks that need to be covered before the final coats are applied. We have made a couple of trips to our paint supplier to decide on colours.

We really liked the original colour that we painted the house but the formula for this vanished some years ago when the supplier started using a computer-controlled colour-mixer. We came home with a couple of 1-litre sample colours to try out on the walls before making a final choice.

MIST OVER ESPARGAL

Autumn – as I recently predicted – has arrived at last and I love it to bits. The shy autumn flowers are peeking and poking out of the soil along our trails. Our days hover around the mid-20s and our nights the mid-teens. If only it would stay that way! We’ve even had a day of (very) light showers, just enough to dampen the surface and assure the plants that the worst is over for another year.

MOONRISE

I have finished reading a book called “Jesus, Interrupted” by a biblical scholar named Bart D. Ehrman. Co-incidentally, I saw him interviewed this week in a TV programme about the many “gospels” that didn’t make it into the New Testament canon. The book was a fascinating read – intended for people who want to look behind scenes. I write (a bit like Ehrman himself) as a once devout biblical student who has lost the devotion but not the fascination – if that’s allowable.

GRAPES FROM ERMENIO

Now I'm onto Richard Dawkins' latest, The Greatest Show on Earth, (courtesy of Cathy) which tries to show doubters why evolution is not just a theory but a fact of history. Dawkins, whose writing skills I have long admired, gets irritated beyond words by the creationists and intelligent designers - and little wonder.

Letter from Espargal: 32 of 2010

This week hasn’t been without its excitement. Take Friday morning, for instance. At 2 a.m. my right thigh was seized with cramp; I groaned out of bed in the dark and made my way through to the study where I clung miserably on to the exercise bike until the cramp went away. (The bike is used more for hanging the washing than exercising but that’s another story.)

At 3 a.m. while my brother, displaying a toothless lower jaw, was explaining to me that he visited a Brazilian dentist for pain relief, Bobby rent the night asunder with a howl of protest at some passing animal. Returning to the study I managed to half fill a pail with water that I hurled down from the upper patio in the direction of the howl. Bobby, by that time, having set off a chorus of alarm among the village curs, had retired once more to his bed. Cursing his hide, I followed suit.

At 5 a.m. a distant thunderstorm (which had not been forecast) broke over the mountains, flickering and drumming against the sky.

At 6 a.m. , following a dazzling flash of lightning and clap of thunder, I arose again and pulled out the plugs for our electronic devices. We’ve lost too much equipment down the years not to know the dangers of electric storms.

It will not surprise you that I was barely in a state to enjoy the coffee and toast that Jones brought through to me some time after dawn. (Jones, as ever, has taken a number of pictures of the Algarve sky, which as usual, I share with you.) It was as I was consuming these that I remembered that I had left outside both the tractor and the mulcher, which were getting soaked in the first shower of the season.
Groan! I couldn’t even go back to bed as I was still in it.

The tractor was piled high with branches – the third such load - that I intended to mulch first thing in the morning. These had been cut the previous day to prepare the way for the fence being constructed along our as yet unfenced borders.

The fencers were Steve and Luis, who had finally got the project underway after a run of bad luck. This included trying to use on their previous job a tin of mis- labelled paint that promptly congealed when mixed with the thinners recommended by the suppliers.

They weren’t the happiest bunnies when they arrived here. But they got to work with gusto nonetheless, clearing the overgrown borders and digging holes for the posts. I've been trotting around the neighbours, explaining why the fence is being erected - dogs - and ensuring that I'm not treading on anyone's toes.


The garden is looking glorious. The yuccas are in bridal bloom and the pink lilies nearby are a joy to behold. I do not intend to gush. You may admire them for yourselves.

I regret to say that my desktop computer has been ill. Symptoms began last week when several programmes started behaving strangely. Then the computer started running the disk-check programme each time it booted – a warning of hard disk corruption.

I checked that my backups were up to date and rushed the device down to the computer doctor on Monday morning.

It was as I suspected. The computer techies were able to transfer everything to a new hard disk but it took them hours to undo the damage done to various programmes by the corruption. Everything seems to be working again, albeit with the odd quirk. In the interim I had to borrow back the laptop that now resides on Jones’ desk.

I was troubled to hear on the BBC news that a drug I’ve been taking for years to reduce osteo-arthritis of the knee and hip has no more effect than a placebo. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11330747 It was mum who put me on to glucosamine and chondroitin, a combination that has served me well, or so I believed. In fact, I recently acquired a substantial new supply at a pleasing discount. And I have certainly thought that I felt better for taking it. The only consolation, according to the trials at Bern university is that the drug does no harm. I shall certainly finish my supply in the hope that the placebo effect continues to benefit me, even if the drug doesn’t.

A neighbour, Ermenio, invited me down to his wine cellar to look at the mini-museum of old cultural and agricultural objects that he has set up there. In a dozen unsealed barrels, the new wine was bubbling away, a process set to continue for the next several weeks. Hanging on the walls and standing on shelves were a host of the implements and traps by which previous generations have lived.

A solid box turned out to be an old- fashioned rat trap. Various wire devices on the walls were designed to do the same job. Some of them were intended to be concealed in the rodent’s burrows or niches.

An iron implement that looked vaguely like a set of handcuffs emerged as a hobble for horses or mules, intended primarily to prevent the animal from being stolen, according to my host.

And a strip of matted grass was identified as a sling. Ermenio demonstrated its use, whirling it over his head and shooting out a stone at lethal speed. They were used largely by shepherds, he informed me, people who had ample time to practise and were known for their accuracy with the weapon.

I was most impressed by the collection, a sentiment I shared as we celebrated my visit with a small glass of medronho – a most excellent brew.

As we left, Ermenio pointed out a group of German students who were excavating the ruins of an ancient building close by – of Roman construction, he believed. The Romans were certainly present locally; he has several Roman coins that have turned up in his fields.

Jones, for her part, has been excavating the old pig-pen in the corner of the south garden. She has hauled out barrowloads of soil and stones.

In times past every Portuguese country family kept a pig or two, to be slaughtered at Christmas. Some still do – and although only
licensed slaughterers are now (officially) permitted to do such work, the shrieks of the doomed animals can still occasionally be heard in the hamlets.

Poppy, (RIGHT) a small dog belonging to neighbours Marie & Olly, has spent a few days with us while her humans were away.

She passes the gate on a walk at least once a day and is by now thoroughly at home here, settling down with our lot within a few minutes, even if she sometimes has to share her basket with them.

It's a case of "into your basket" before goodnight biscuits are handed out - and the nearest basket serves the purpose.

Letter from Espargal: 31 of 2010

In the Espargal headlines this week:

Cooler weather expected any day now.
Nimble hare eludes pampered dogs in valley chase.
And leaning cypress tree border dug over and mulched.

That’s enough headlines. The bottom line, as opposed to headlines, is that life has continued pretty much along its placid pastoral course, with little disturbance except from the restless village dogs.

The latter included the brothers, Raymond and Bobby who, finding themselves locked out one night, barked in exasperation until I stumbled sleepily downstairs to let them in. I had forgotten to open the rear sliding door that we leave ajar. Ours are not pets accustomed to sleeping on cobbles at night.

Jones and I have spent much of our time in the garden and the park (an acre of hillside above the house) she generally cutting back and clearing under the trees - I bringing in carobs or mulching. She often works crouched down on her haunches in the shade,

hacking away at a vicious creeper (that she calls) vipers’ vine in a display of suppleness that I can but envy. Even the undemanding Lotus position proved beyond my powers during my attempts at yoga. To pick up the black carob pods that lie scattered under the trees I either kneel or bend over in a wide-legged stance.

Jones pointed out to me the appearance of crocus-like plants (sea squill) that spring up from bulbs each autumn. These bulbs, found all over the hillside, are huge and often appear to have been gnawed. But, however tousled, they shove out their plants energetically on cue as the sun loses its sting and the air freshens with the promise of moisture.

The fence erectors made a brief appearance towards the end of the week after spending most of it taking arms against a sea of (human and mechanical) troubles. They hastened to assure me that they usually run a tight ship but had run into a few storms. After making a series of measurements they departed to do some preliminary post welding. Their sand and stone has already been delivered and they hope to start putting in the posts next week.

Other visitors included the local builder who came along to assess several jobs that we have in mind. He’s happy to do them as long as we’re prepared to join the queue for his services. Recession! Not as far as he’s concerned. Nor for his son, the local painter, who is due to repaint the house exterior before the onset of winter.

Equally busy is Dinis the metal worker, who dropped in one afternoon, apologising for keeping me waiting. He’s got just about as much on his books as he can handle.

SOUTH PATIO

He came round to measure up a safety rail that I want to install along the south patio. We often concertina back the doors in summer before sitting down for drinks with guests. But it’s a practice that I’ve felt uneasy about as anybody who unwittingly stepped backwards would take a nasty fall on to the cobbles below.

Thursday we made a leisurely visit to Loule. We popped into Teresa’s ceramic shop beside the castle to fetch bowls featuring the names of our latest Canadian great-nieces. Teresa was seated in a corner, painting designs onto bowls, as ever. We love her products and regretted that our display cabinets were already bulging.

Around the corner are two old-time clothing shops that I visited to look for trousers. Both were manned by elderly males who, on ascertaining my needs and relative fluency, plied me with everything in sight. I resisted the advances of the first but came away with two pairs from the second. Regrettably, they are not the same size as he had only one of each.

One pair fits perfectly; the other will do if I succeed in losing a little weight (as I have long desired – an aim that conflicts daily with my beer requirements). Jones urged me to take them back, declaring such “hopeful” purchases to be a waste of money. But I’ve kept them, if only because they’re nice trousers and I got them at substantial discounts – albeit without a receipt. I don’t think that either of the outfitters has much future. They belong, like the town’s retiring cobblers, in another age.

Loule’s main drag, which runs in front of the shops, has been closed off to be turned into a semi-pedestrianised area. In due course it will be very smart and popular and the shopkeepers will benefit but for the moment the place is a mess and customers are few.

I called in at the senior university to get the timetables for the next academic year. The secretary was pleased to see me and to confirm that I’d continue giving English Conversation classes. He put me down for lessons at 4 on a Monday afternoon once again. The term begins the second week of October. What’s not yet clear is whether the principal, who’s recovering from a stroke, will be able to resume his duties.

Another visit was with neighbours to the medieval festival in the town of Salir, some 15 minutes away. Salir clings to a hill, the top of which still boasts the remains of a Moorish castle. The turn-out on the third and final night of the festival was good. Visitors thronged past the stalls lining the narrow alleys of the old town although few stallholders seemed to be doing much business. Three camels and a host of folk in medieval dress, some on horseback, lent what flavour they could to the occasion.

I stopped at a display of Moroccan leatherwork and furniture where I took a fancy to a wooden and leather stool. It was priced, the vendor informed me, at 60 euros. But the amount fell rapidly as I shook my head until we agreed a price satisfactory to both parties.

You may (or, more likely, may not) recall my recent relative success in Spider Solitaire when I achieved a score I’d long been striving for. Since then, I have stuck to my decision not to play the game again. (It’s wickedly addictive.)

I have, however, occasionally played another computer game, Freecell. This is quite demanding, requiring both luck and concentration for success. I was pleased with a streak of 52 games – at least until I googled other people’s results. One player claimed a streak of nearly a thousand games. That’s hard to imagine as some are very difficult. Indeed, one of them, game 11982 has apparently never been cracked. I certainly had no success with it.

The Dutch ladies’ dog, Ermie, has been spending a couple of days with us while her mistresses make a brief visit to Lisbon. She is the most docile of creatures – until she goes walking when, unless kept on a tight rein, she demon-dives into every bush in sight and has to be hauled bodily out.

P.S. Ermie escaped 2 hours before she was to due to return home and had a glorious romp through the hills, ignoring our imploring calls for her to come back. Jones eventually bush-bashed to collar her.

P.P.S. Last night of the Proms! What a mixture of emotions, as always!

Letter from Espargal: 30 of 2010

Quite a lot of stuff has happened these past few days and if I pause a while I shall probably be able to remember some. (Meanwhile I'm going to stick up Jonesy's sunrise pictures.) Come to think of it, as I write, news from Portugal is leading the BBC news website. All day 3 judges in Lisbon have been reading out their judgement in the infamous Casa Pia case. Several prominent people have been found guilty (after a trial lasting nearly 6 years) of abusing children in care and sent to jail for their sins. That won’t surprise you, this being the kind of world that it is.

Espargal, fortunately, is a long way from Lisbon. Local people are more concerned about the price of carobs than the evils of Casa Pia. All day long tractors, laden with carob sacks, grunt along the tracks and the thwack of long sticks sounds in the carob branches.

Just about everybody has carobs – some have hundreds of trees – and the carob crop is the main agricultural breadwinner. So the price of carobs – around 4 euros an “arroba” (15 kgs) – is a popular topic of conversation. For what it’s worth, typically it takes the pair of us about 30 minutes to collect an arroba of carobs. It’s not a good way to get rich.

Ermenio, to whom we’ve been donating our carobs, pitched up the other evening with another generous supply of fruit and veg. We’re starting to feel embarrassed about the extent of it. He’s our age and still works as hard as ever although arthritis is taking a toll of his resources.

Another neighbour, old Zeferino, who’s nearly 90, is leaving his son (also our age) to bring in their carob crop this year. "He's too old," as an equally elderly female neighbour, to whom he was chatting, explained. Zeferino reckons he’s done his stint and that's hard to argue with. He must have picked up tons of the black pods in his time.

Wednesday dawned cloudy. For the first time in months I dared to go walking without first pasting myself with sun-cream. We even had a spattering of rain – just a lick. By lunchtime, the default summer blue skies were back. Temps are around C*30 by day and 20 by night. I’d like them both 10* lower but I’m not complaining. My angry red itchy bumps are going away and I can smell autumn around the corner.

Jonesy is learning to use the computer. I should say re-learning because she used one for years at work, and with systems far less sympathetic than Windows. She’s a bit of a technophobe and doesn’t take naturally to the cyber world. But she’s been persevering with the laptop (while I use the desktop), mainly with emails, and doing really well. barbarajbenson@gmail.com if you want to drop her a line.

Speaking of emails, my old friend, Dr Ronald Sole, had reason to write to the local rag this week about a report that it had published; he probably should have held his fire. The report concerned the record amount of money that had been withdrawn from Portuguese ATM machines in July. Its source was a Portuguese newspaper – and here lies the rub. Portugal (along with a number of other countries) reverses the UK/US decimal separators.

Figures in our UK bank statements appear thus: £1,000.00 Our Portuguese bank statements, on the other hand, look like this: €1.000,00 This makes the downloading of bank statements on to spread sheets somewhat hazardous; ditto the translation of financial reports. So, for instance, “1,234-billion” can be either a thousand billion plus or one-point-two-three-four billion, depending on the system used. Very confusing!

Another letter was to Portugal Telecom to congratulate them on the service we (a neighbour and I) had received from a helpline operator. The neighbour had acquired from me a laptop computer that refused to talk to his router. Neither he nor I was able to configure the thing, in spite of much tinkering. But, with 30 minutes of patient and expert telephone assistance from Mariana in fluent English, we just about rewrote the wifi code. Bingo, the two machines chatted away to each other like old friends. That’s the kind of helpline service most computer users dream of and few encounter.

What hasn’t happened this week is any progress with the fence. I sent a brief SMS message mid-week to the man concerned, expecting a reply saying they’d run into a few problems.

To my amazement, this essay came back from his wife via SMS (slightly shortened and amended to avoid Portuguese references):

Hi Terry, Marco has to babysit. His father-in-law has had an operation and can’t babysit. Steven’s truck got a red light at its roadworthy test. Steven had to take the front axle off, take the kingpin out and fix the serious things. Luis took the truck back to be retested. We are praying for a green. With the red, no passengers and no load. It has been a nightmare. I could not work all the time. Steven needed the car to fetch parts. And the cherry on the top, Mom is moving. And we had to help her move. Borrowed a van from a friend. We started Sunday after 5. Could only do one trip, costing 10 euros a day until the flat is empty. We are going to continue this weekend. I will keep you posted.

Little wonder they didn’t turn up!

I am going steadily balder, which I’m not very happy but can’t do anything about. Most people are hardly aware of this as I mostly keep my hat on (to hide my head from the sun rather than my neighbours).

I’m still having crazy 3-D dreams. This week, to my astonishment, I found one night that I had to play Jimmy Connors in an important tennis tournament. As I didn’t have a racket or any tennis togs, I had to borrow all the necessary from the somewhat surprised officials at the stadium. I don’t recall the actual match but I do remember the score. Connors beat me by three sets to love. At least that much figures.

In another dream, I found myself working back in the BBC newsroom for an Irish editor whom (in my waking life) I’d long since forgotten. My task was to prepare a bulletin for the newsreader. But most of the reports on the desk seemed to be written in foreign languages and when the reader turned up, I had nought for his comfort. The editor was outraged – as he often used to be in real life. I hope that my brain has now come to terms with his behaviour and shelved his memory for good. I don’t need that kind of stuff any more.

There; that’s all. Oh, except that Prickles, aka Mr P, aka Grand Pricks, is now also known as Little Big Mouth. Pricks is that rare dog, a free spirit. The only rules he plays by are Pricks' rules. This generally means that whatever way you want to go, he wants to go in the opposite direction - dear little fellow that he is.