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.