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.