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.