Welcome to October. Did you notice, I wonder, how quickly September passed following the drag of both July and August? This may be partly because September has been such a busy month. (Although the passage of time is somewhat relative to the motion of an observer [Einstein] it’s seriously relative to pleasant weather and the amount of stuff one has to fit into it [Sole].)Take this past week for example. Valapena has been a veritable hive of activity. Hard at work here, apart from ourselves, have been Dinis the metalworker, Nelson the painter and Steve & Luis, the fencers. Accommodating the trucks of all three one day was no mean feat.
Dinis and his sidekick arrived to install the safety rail that we ordered for the south patio. It’s somewhat stouter than I imagined because, as Dinis explained, thinner rails had bent under their own weight and would not have supported anyone leaning upon them. Even so, the rail is all but invisible behind the aluminium frame of the glass doors and takes a weight off my mind. I had visions of someone falling a metre or more on to the cobbles and the rocks that line them, with the most unpleasant results.
Nelson has been hard at work the whole week. It has not been the painting as such that’s taken the time but the patching of the tracery of cracks that spider-web around the plaster. Apart from this, there’s the finickitiness of using a different colour on the window and door frames, along with the molding on the platibanda (a raised design on the upper wall of many Portuguese houses).
Nelson’s method is to paint an outline around all such molding and then to fill in with a roller. He’s a meticulous worker, with an enviable eye for a straight line. I’ve never seen him spill a drop of paint. He doesn’t bother to put down plastic to protect the floor and doesn’t need to. The biggest problem he’s faced is the absence of his partner and the demands of other clients waiting for his services. I’ve been assisting him as best I can.
Along the borders of the property, meanwhile, Steve and Luis have been carrying on with the fence. They were grateful to pile the several rolls of fencing on to the tractor for delivery to the site. 
All the poles are painted and capped and the fence along the (easy) eastern boundary is complete. The steep and challenging southern boundary remains. Jones doesn’t much like the sense of being enclosed. For my part, I can’t wait to have a large, fenced area in which the dogs can run securely to their hearts’ content. 
At the end of the day, the workers gather for a beer and a chat. With afternoon temperatures still in the upper twenties, a cold lager makes for a refreshing finish to a day’s work.Another project underway is to install a dish-washer and some new cupboards in the kitchen. For this we went back to the outfit that did the initial installation, a group with whose work we were well pleased. After some discussion of the options we’ve approved their quote and given them a firm order. Installation is due for mid-November.
Jones has spent hours fine-tuning two areas close to the house, the former pigpen and the old sheepfold. The raggedy and overgrown appearance of both have long irritated her. So with trowel, rake and pick, she has spent days levelling them, removing hundreds of stones in the process, and planting succulents around the borders. The sheepfold now looks brilliant and its soft surface is much favoured by the dogs for sunbathing. For its part the pigpen has been turned into a rock garden.
I regret to say that my wife has gone down with a scratchy throat and a cold. “Gone down” is not the best description as, in Jones fashion, she has carried on regardless. She doesn’t believe in being ill. I should add that picking up bugs (that she shrugs off) is my traditional role and for once (touch wood) I seem to have avoided the lurgy – thus far, anyhow.
We have stayed in touch by email with the German archaeological group that had been working nearby. They moved on a fortnight ago to another site, just west of Messines, where we went to visit them one hot afternoon. We stopped nearby to purchase a box of icecreams. They were a hit. The workers downed tools and piled into them with relish.
The team leader, Dennis Graen, explained what they’d uncovered – the lower walls of what appeared to be part of a Roman villa. Water channels ran beneath the former floor. The walls extended into the adjoining property whose owner, to their great regret, had refused them permission to dig there. 
Their finds included numerous bricks and tiles, some ceramic shards, a coin (an ancient forgery said Dennis) and a small piece of fine glasswork. The real treasure was fragment of black ceramic, which was at least 200 years older than the coin, indicating that the property went back much further than the 3rd/4th century AD. 
Back in Espargal, the annual expatriate boules championships were again hosted by Sarah and David. I can report, with due modestly, that Jones and I demolished the opposition and walked away with the trophy. In-between games we scratched the heads of the two huge and curious puppies in the adjoining property and treated ourselves to the fine lunch provided.
On the doggy front, we have acquired a Kong toy, a roly-poly biscuit feeder with a small hole in one side. The aim is to divert one’s pet by filling the feeder with small biscuits and encouraging the animal to extract them by pushing it around. Raymond, easily the brightest of the dogs, quickly got the idea and did well on the proceeds. The others looked on unenthusiastically, in spite of Jones’s efforts to educate them in its use.
Now it’s a cloudy Sunday with a promise of rain in the air. This morning we heard a 25-minute interview with Pastor Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who had threatened to burn 200 copies of the Koran. I listened in fascination. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009zklg Pastor Jones, author of "Islam is of the Devil" admitted that he hadn't read the Koran nor did he have any knowledge of the religion – he didn’t find it necessary. All Muslims (and adherents of other non-Christian religions) were doomed to go to hell – and much else in similar vein. Hoo boy!
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