Letter from Espargal: 42 of 2010

It’s been a whirl of a week, an Alice in Wonderland kaleidoscopic tumble down a rabbit hole and it’s hard to know whether we’re still falling. The themes are little changed – pups and renovations, with a thousand little deviations en route. So let’s start with Monday. That morning I phoned Globaldis to ask when we might expect the timber on which further progress in Casa Nada hinged. “Tuesday or Wednesday” said a helpful fellow, who promised to phone us first. That was a hopeful start.

Monday brings my weekly English lesson at the senior university (more senior than university but still). En route to Loule we fetched our recently widowed friend, May, who joined us for lunch. The skies were grey and promised rain. My Portuguese pupils (most of them about my age) as ever were reluctant to speak English and keen to chat away in their own language. I don’t know that they learn anything but they seem to enjoy the experience.

On Tuesday it rained. There was no sign of the timber delivery from Globaldis, which – in the circumstances - we were quite glad about.

On Wednesday Portugal went on strike in protest against the austerity budget that the government has introduced in an attempt to balance its shaky books. (Much debate about whether Portugal is going to follow Ireland into the hands of Mrs Merkel and the IMF!) Transport services were few and far between, which meant fetching Natasha from Loule in the morning and taking her home in the evening. She didn’t seem to mind.

Mid-morning as I was trying to persuade (Natasha’s friend) Natalia to round out her “o”s so that “boss” didn’t come out as “bors”, my mobile phone rang. It was a neighbour to ask whether we knew that our home phone was out of order. We didn’t.
I thanked him and reported the fault to the phone company. The phone company tested the line and said it was working fine. The problem must be with our equipment – probably the splitter, I was advised to change it. I made a note to get a new splitter from the computer shop later in the day.

As there was still no sign of our timber, I phoned Globaldis again. The delivery manager said he’d been trying for two days to ring me on the house phone but couldn’t get through. No, he wasn’t aware that Idalecio and I had both pointedly given our mobile numbers to the saleswoman who had taken our order. Anyhow, the timber would arrive on Thursday.

Thursday dawned bright and beautiful. Globaldis rang as we returned from our walk. Would we please meet their truck in Benafim and guide the driver to the delivery point. Of course we would. The delivery point was Idalecio’s yard. (There was no way on earth that the truck would get near our house.) The 13 metre beams overhung both the truck’s cab and its tail.

The on-board crane lowered the beams on to the pallets we placed on the ground. Idalecio, his dad and I sawed them into the lengths that we had carefully calculated on a sheet of cardboard the previous day. Then we loaded the pieces on to the family pickup and brought them up to Casa Nada. I let Idalecio unload the heavy stuff while I trotted back and forth purposefully with the odds and ends.

After lunch, I built a Heath-Robinson mini enclosure for the pups in the garden and we gave them their first taste of the open air. We took it in turns to keep an eye on the babes. Not that it was really necessary. The dogs don’t see them as a threat to their interests – not yet. The pups seemed unfazed by the great wide world. After their lunch and a tussle, they went to sleep. So did I, on a piece of polystyrene beside their enclosure.

The rest of the afternoon I spent under my desk trying to revive the phone. The new splitter didn’t help. And trying to sort out the tangle of wires from the NTBA box to the splitter to the ISDN box to the Skype box to the fax & the phones gave me a headache. Despondently I phoned the computer shop, which promised to send out a technician on Friday morning.

On Friday morning several people arrived. Idalecio arrived to start erecting the wooden platform in Jones’s room in Casa Nada.

Helder and Isenho arrived to lay a concrete foundation around the lower fossa in preparation for the reinforcing wall they plan to build next week.

And Rui arrived from the computer shop to see if he could mend the phone. Like me he spent an hour under my desk plugging and unplugging everything he could find before shrugging his shoulders. Before leaving he phoned the Telecom fault line to insist in authoritative Portuguese that the phone company send out a technician.

The rest of the day I spent assisting Idalecio to rig up the platform in Casa Nada. It’s officially a mezzanine level but a platform is more like it. From a large pillar (to be) cemented firmly in the floor, various beams radiate out into holes that Idalecio has knocked into the walls. Stacks of floor timbers are waiting to be laid across the beams in due course.

If you think that it’s simple to build a mezzanine level you’ve never tried it. All sorts of unexpected questions about joints and supports crop up. We sorted things out as we went along, arguing the merits of our various ideas for preventing the thing from collapsing around Jones the first time she used it. We got most of the structure up and secured but we stumped ourselves trying to work out the dimensions for the stair treads and risers.

From time to time Jones came to inspect our progress, bringing steaming cups of refreshment and the curious dogs with her. She seemed to approve. The dogs sniffed everything at length without expressing an opinion. It was wet and miz outside so the tea and coffee was really welcome.

In spite of the rain, Isenho and Helder managed to lay a concrete foundation all the way around the lower garden fossa (septic tank). It’s a big tank (badly constructed and leaking) and about to be shored up on all four sides. They work hard those guys, mixing load after load of concrete and barrowing it through the garden to the fossa. Even so they seem to enjoy their labours – and they’re seldom short of a topic of conversation.

Now it’s Saturday morning – grey and damp. There’s a fire going in the lounge. Jones spent half an hour cleaning out the pups’ area on the south patio (as she does every day, she points out) while I clutched the little pissers.

They’re about as cute as it gets – and I’ll swear that the brown male pup has blue eyes (look for yourself) but they need their own fossa. The ceaseless flow of urine and pooh defies the imagination. We simply can't stay up with fresh supplies of newspaper - and it's not the weather to take the pups outside.

Idalecio’s dad brought us a load of fresh fruit and veges, as well as 5 litres of his new wine, to thank us for a few carobs that we’d collected. Jones is making the most delicious pumpkin soup each day for lunch.

Letter from Espargal: 41 of 2010

I’m at my desk, scratching my heading and looking across the green valley below us – where we walked this morning - to Benafim on the slopes of the far hill. It’s a lovely view although I’m not finding it inspiring. When one’s literary juices dry up it can be helpful to kick off with the weather, or so I find - a kind of mental enema. It gets the flow going again - an appropriate metaphor for the paragraphs that follow. (The weather is: hat-thieving wind with patchy blue sky – following a squally night that delivered 8mms of rain.)

The wet bit was timely – for we had a lot of work going on around us - with many nervous glances at the sky, lest the impending rain ruin a newly-rendered wall. Under Horacio’s guidance, Helder and Isenho had spent much of the week creating the wall. It shores up the adjacent section of the upper fossa (septic tank), which had been prone to malodorous minor leaks.

The new wall is built of reinforced concrete. Had the old wall been equally strong the new one would have been unnecessary. But the house builder was in a rush and did a job that just about lasted the five years for which the construction was guaranteed. (To be fair to him, the septic tank was not on the original plans. The three-fossa design was a last-minute whim of the woman who ran the relevant authority in Faro.)

Unlike the original builder, Horacio is a perfectionist. It was fascinating to watch him at work. To ensure a permanent bond between the two walls, he drilled numerous holes into the old wall and super-glued protruding metal rods into them. These rods also served as anchor points for the shuttering.

Once the concrete had set and the shuttering was removed, Helder cut off the protruding ends of the metal rods and rendered the wall. Finally he and Horacio replaced the cobbles that had been dug up to permit the work to go ahead.

I have sufficient extra patio tiles to cover the top of new wall; then it remains only for me to paint it. My interim responsibility was to tractor up supplies of sand and stone from the heap at the bottom of the driveway to the cement mixer at the top. You should be aware that ours is a very steep driveway.

BARBARA WITH HORACIO

This new wall was merely a warm-up for a much bigger task that awaits the team on the lower fossa, which is suffering the same problems. Of that, more in due course. I should add that I’m well aware of much quicker and cheaper ways of repairing such leaks. But I don’t know of any that would both last the course AND prevent future leaks emerging from new cracks – a product of the minor earth tremors that plague the region.

While Horacio’s team has been busy with fossa repairs, Idalecio has continued with his labours in Casa Nada. He laid a cement floor in Jones’s workroom-to-be, then a layer of insulation, followed by the wiring for under-floor heating and finally another layer of cement.

This is as far as he can proceed until the timber we ordered some time ago – to create a mezzanine platform - is delivered. The suppliers are not able to give us a firm date. We are hoping that it will be early this coming week.

While Idalecio was around we got him to cut off the upper section of our leaning Cypress tree – his own suggestion. The tree, blown over by the prevailing winds (in spite of the three stays supporting it) was threatening to break the retaining wall on which it was leaning – and it was far too big to replant.

The problem arises from the shallow earth available in that area to support the root ball. While cutting the tree in half is hardly ideal, the remaining part looks okay and the tree should survive the operation. I loaded the branches on to the tractor and turned them into mulch that Jones promptly seized to spread over her borders.

If these were not works sufficient to keep us occupied, Carlos and Manuel, the kitchen fitters arrived on Friday morning to install a dishwasher that we ordered some weeks ago. Fitting it in meant changing the cupboards around as well. At the same time we had decided to install new cupboards under a kitchen counter to hide the bottle & can recycling containers that reside there.

It was Carlos who had installed the original kitchen and we had no hesitation in returning to the small firm concerned to do the additional work.

The quality of both the materials and the fitting leaves little to be desired. Although we have yet to try out the dishwasher we are well pleased with the finished product. Jones has invited the neighbours around for tea to admire it.

At the same time they can admire our fast-growing pups, which are entering their second month. The puppies are simply beautiful. Feeding them has become much easier since we weaned them away from the teat. They fall upon their food as enthusiastically they fall upon each other, staggering around in fierce growly tussles.

Their teeth have grown sharp as their tummies have grown fat. Both are threatening any day now to surmount the barrier that we have laid in the downstairs bathroom, where they spend the night. What we haven’t yet managed to do is to persuade them to use the sand-tray we put down for them.

Jones is going through wads of newspaper in an effort to contain the excessive flow of puppy pee and poo. The rest of the zoo is gradually becoming accustomed to their presence – although nose-to-nose meetings lie ahead. And yes, they’re still looking for a home.

Are you tempted? Here they are again - simply adorable. You can reach me at the usual address.

Letter from Espargal: 40 of 2010

This week has followed where last week led. That’s to say, things have grown. The pups of have grown (bigger), the weeds have grown (higher), our Casa Nada project has grown (costlier), the weather has grown (colder), my hair has grown (thinner). I could go on in this vein but you will have the idea.

Of all these growths, it is the puppies, inevitably, that have demanded most attention. At something over three weeks they are starting to become little personalities, staggering around the bathroom floor, climbing over our shoes and growling at each other – amid much peeing and poohing (mainly) on the newspapers that we lay down for this purpose.

We are introducing them to a paste made of puppy pellets (ground down and dissolved in warm water for the moment). More importantly, we are encouraging them to lap milk from a shallow dish rather than sucking it from a bottle.

They have taken enthusiastically to both innovations, albeit with a great deal of coughing and snorting as some milk goes up their noses rather than down their throats. Jones carries the puppy paste in a plastic glass that the little guys are happy to dive into.

I stick to the milk bottle when I give them their midnight feed, clasping each little animal to my chest in a towel with one hand while I direct the bottle with the other. It’s as close as I shall come to understanding what it feels like to suckle a infant, an activity which, according to a friend of ours, is the best feeling in the world.

I shall have to take her word for it although I confess a fascination with nurturing such a proxy babe. While I read endless books on the evolution of life, it’s not the same thing as raising one’s own tiny creatures. (Right now I'm finishing Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, interesting as always if a bit of a rant at creationists.)

The latest development is the erection of a puppy enclosure at the end of the south patio. This has been much inspected by the cats and other dogs, which we are allowing to grow accustomed to it before we introduce the pups. The rest of the zoo is well aware of the newcomers’ noisy presence but has contented itself so far with curious sniffings outside the bathroom door.

In Casa Nada, Idalecio has almost completed the wiring and the rendering of Jones’s “bijou ensuite” (her description). He has left the stones around the doorways unrendered. We’ll varnish these later to make them stand out in relief against the white walls. Midweek Idalecio joined us in a search for the timber that he needs to construct the mezzanine floor, really more of a platform to take two divan beds and some furniture.


A big hardware store that we visited didn’t stock the necessary lengths but directed us to a timber supplier close by that did. There we obtained what we needed – to be delivered to Idalecio’s yard some time this coming week. We were warned that the sturdy beams we need come in 13 metre lengths and have to be cut as required by the client. That lies ahead, along with the plumbing. For the moment we are well pleased with progress.

Not so pleasing was to see three men with measuring instruments marching down the track beside our fence and subsequently to find various marker pegs and coloured tapes positioned on the verges of the property just above ours. (Having built our own cottage in the woods, we are anxious to discourage anybody else from following suit close by.)

We gathered from neighbours that these are markers for a reservoir that the Portuguese water authorities are planning to build on top of the hill as part of a supply system from a dam inland to residential areas further south. That’s going to mean much trench digging and other nervous-making activities at some point. Stay tuned.

On Monday we were among friends of Harry and May who attended a lunch she organised at a restaurant near Loule to remember and celebrate Harry’s life. I spent the following day assisting her and her nephew, Kenneth, to deal with the further bureaucracy that Harry’s death has entailed. I’m much wiser for the experience.

Our afternoons are shortening as the November nights close in. It’s dark now by six. We try to walk by five to be back before sunset. Nocturnal temperatures are slipping down towards single figures – a heat-wave by Canadian standards but cool enough by ours to justify the first fires of the season. And how nice it is to have a cheering fire flickering away at night in the centre of the living room. The dogs have been just as pleased, settling down in their baskets – often with legs in the air - to snooze the evening away in the fire’s comforting glow.

I was reminded while sharing the dogs’ bed – sitting on it beside them, that is – and chatting to Marie & Olly that while we haven’t seen any ticks for months, the vile insects are still around. At some point one of them detached itself from a dog and crawled up my arm, to sup on my shoulder. I despatched the wretch vengefully before dressing the bite with a disinfectant cream. The problem is less the inevitable itching that follows a bite than the danger of picking up a serious infection. In spite of the precautions we take, we get bitten by ticks several times a year. So far we’ve been lucky.

In the expectation of rain this weekend – rain that seems to have blown away again – we planted a couple more rows of bean-seeds on the lower terrace. Jones came down to assist me. It’s not complicated. One dumps a handful of blue fertilizer pellets in a shallow trench, drops half a dozen seeds on top and then rakes them over.

SUMMER SHEEPFOLD

That’s the easy part. The hard part is persuading the rain gods to irrigate them at the right stage and then to hoe the inevitable weeds that spring up with the beans a couple of months later. With luck we shall have a fine crop in April.

AUTUMN SHEEPFOLD

Speaking of weeds, the sheepfold that Jones weeded so immaculately in the summer is now evenly covered with 10 cms of greenery. Jones declined my offer to spray / strim it, saying that it was bound to contain lots of desirable wild flowers, especially borage, which the bees adore.

The Algarve is suffering from an infestation of weevils that attack some species of palm. Hundreds of these trees can now be seen with their fronds collapsing. The picture shows Mario's digger about to root out a palm from the front yard of a house in the village.

Post Script:
We have moved the puppies for the first time from the bathroom to the sunny enclosure on the south patio. The pups, somewhat overcome by the attention, have retreated to the security of their box. The rest of the zoo is intensely curious and not exactly welcoming. Hard work lies ahead - that much is clear.