Letter from Espargal: 4 of 2011

It’s been sunshine and showers all week and not necessarily in that order. One moment we’re basking; the next we’re gasping as the wind whips the rain in our faces. Poor Ersenho has found it hard going as he cuts, carves, jack-hammers and digs a trench all the way from Casa Nada to the fossa at the far end of the garden.

The trench is to take the discharge pipe that Horacio, after taking a series of measurements, has gone off to purchase. Once that’s in and buried, we’ll be able to use the facilities in Jones’s Bijou Ensuite.

MORE SUNRISE

That’s to say, we would be able to use them if they were installed. But we really need to varnish the floor tiles and paint the walls before we do the installation. And Idalecio has advised us to wait for a little warm weather to dry out the tiles before we varnish them, lest we varnish in the damp. So for the moment, the facilities remained piled up in the corner of the tractor shed. As I say, it’s been sunshine and showers.

STEVE & LUIS AT WORK

Also struggling against the elements have been Steve and Luis, the fencers, who – as I write – are completing their work on the enclosure meant to hold the dogs, especially the pups, when we want them out of the way.

BETTER SHOT

Like the larger fence that they erected, this one leaps up several large rocks, which has entailed the construction of stepped fencing sections. The air has been thick with dust as awkward rocks were either demolished with a jack-hammer or sliced up with a diamond-tipped angle-grinder blade.

The pups continue to wear us ragged, so lovable and yet so exhausting. Their twice-daily walks barely tire them. They rush around joyfully, licking the other dogs’ muzzles, stealing shoes, digging up plants, dismembering their mattress and roly-polying around the yard.

CONCRETE BASE

As soon as Horacio’s men have erected the gates at the tractor entrance this coming week, we’ll introduce the (not so) little animals to the enclosure. Aurelio has already laid a concrete base where we’ll place a kennel and where the dogs can rest under the shade of the almond tree.

Speaking of almond trees, the hundreds dotted around the valley below us are in bloom and a joy to behold as they are every January. The bloom is either white or pink, depending (we understand) on whether the tree produces sweet or bitter almonds.

Slightly luckier with the weather were an architect and an engineer, who arrived from an estate agency to value the property next door. This is land that we have long wished to purchase, as it juts deep into ours and prevents us from completing the periphery fence. While the multiple owners of the plot have been willing to sell, they have had to wait for the youngest of them to turn 18.

Another caller was the MRW courier, who hooted her presence at the front gate, prompting a chorus of howls from the dogs, who were clustered in their baskets around the fire in the lounge. (To be warm when the weather is cold and cool when it’s hot must surely be among the world’s great luxuries!) The courier came to deliver 3 books that I had ordered from Amazon. Such deliveries to Portugal are now free if the order comes to more than £25.

Yet another outburst of canine protest greeted a knocking on the front door. This proved to be Marie, with a large slice of her home-made cappuccino cake to cheer us up. A few crumbs remain on the work-surface beside the afternoon cuppa that Jones has delivered to my desk. (For those unacquainted with our set-up, we have a mini- kitchenette upstairs beside my desk in the study. This permits us to refresh ourselves on occasion without disturbing any guests who may be using the downstairs facilities. It was, if I may say so, one of my better ideas.)

Jones and I sat down one evening to watch Inception, the reality within layers of dreams film that has won high praise from both critics and audiences. I had already watched it through once without being persuaded. And after 15 minutes of joint viewing we agreed that it represented the emperor’s new clothes and gave up on it. Anybody want a hardly-viewed DVD?

WAKE UP - TIME TO GO WALKING

As ever, a mishmash of almost uninterrupted dreams has filled my sleeping hours. During one of these, I found myself attending some big outdoor ceremony. As part of this a troop of uniformed young women came trotting up the road in close formation, followed by another of uniformed young men. To my great surprise I became aware from the appearance of the latter that one and all were either exceptionally gifted or sexually aroused. They disappeared off down the street, where I chased after them in an effortless loping run (I must have been dreaming), for what purpose I couldn’t say. I was worried that that I lacked the cap I should have been wearing. But the troop vanished from sight. There the dream endeth. No, I haven’t a clue either.

I had reason to reflect as BBC World Service Radio announced that it was making a quarter of its staff redundant, just how lucky I have been. My redundancy offer (all of 12 years ago) was relatively generous and unlikely to be matched for those now about to lose their jobs. One of the several members of staff who were taken on at the same time as I was, was a bright young man who worked his way up to become the head of the Albanian service – one of 5 language services shortly to be axed. I wondered what might happen to him, and the other 650 members of staff facing unemployment. That must be very scary.

Letter from Espargal: 3 of 2011

Everybody has gone. Cousin Jud (pronounced Jude) has gone back to Paris en route home to Cape Town. The workers, Pedro and Aurelio, have gone home for the weekend. Luis, the electrician, has gone (some- where) having explained to the workers exactly what trenches had to be dug and cables laid where in order for him to make the necessary connections. We have gone around the hill with the dogs for the second time today and the sun has gone down on another Friday evening.

Let’s start with cousin Jud, whom we met at Faro airport last Sunday evening after an absence of a decade and a bit. Cousin Jud, for the uninitiated, is the third-born of the 8 Cornell siblings – our mothers were sisters - who were growing up in Cape Town as the Bensons were finding their feet in Johannesburg. As a tender youth I remarked innocently to her mother that I could see the advantage of having eight children, because if one died, she would hardly notice it. This insight did nothing to endear me to her.

Our last encounter with my cousin was in London where she was writing her doctoral thesis while we were contem- plating a move to Portugal. Jud has just completed a spell of several years with Unesco in Paris. She had a little time to spare before heading south and we thought it an excellent idea that she should spend some of it with us.

During her stay she got to meet Natasha and to take in the delights of Loule. We visited the Fortaleza at Sagres and the old city of Faro, and we took a brief look around Quinta do Lago, refuge of the super-rich. Jud assisted with a dog-walk or two and, during several leisurely meals, brought us up to date on her life and those of her brothers and sisters.

Some of the time she simply curled up on the couch and read a book as we bustled around dealing with visitors, workers and animals.

The workers have been hard at it all week. They’ve had twin tasks. The first was to erect pillars to take gates at the tractor entrance to the property, and then to lay a reinforced concrete driveway from the pillars to meet the existing driveway.

My part was to tractor up numerous loads of sand and gravel from the bottom of the property to the work site.

Wednesday morning, as we were strolling along the agricultural road in the valley, Luis, the elec- trician, arrived at the house with Horacio, who summoned me back home.

Luis is a busy man and can’t afford to hang around waiting for clients. I explained to him what our thinking was and he explained to me what was wrong with it.

The overhead cable link to the wooden shed had to go in favour of an underground feed, the small fuse box in Casa Nada had to be replaced with a large one – and so on. I nodded in agreement. He was the professional and I wasn’t going to argue with him.

Horacio’s workers took note of his requirements and, with the nod from their boss, set about meeting them; never mind that this involved boring huge holes through the walls and desecrating Idalecio’s new plaster.

As a result, Jonesy’s little Bijou Ensuite is rapidly becoming a Bijou Establishment. Or, more accurately, because Luis believes in looking to the future, the building will be sufficiently powered and plumbed once the job is finished to support further development without further demolition.

Steve and (another) Luis, the fencers, were also back to cement in a new line of poles, intended to give us a holding area for the dogs when we don’t want them under our feet. They (the fencers) are due back in the next day or two to erect the wire netting.

QUINTA DO LAGO SUNSET

I was pleased, during a visit to Faro, to fetch Jones’s repaired mobile phone from Vodafone without the expected charge. Our conversation turned to the merits of various models as Jud had expressed an interest in acquiring a new mobile phone. I tried to interest her in a smart-phone; (I remain quite seduced by my own). But while she watched my demonstration of its capabilities politely, she wasn’t persuaded.

FARO STORKS

Another visit was to Portugal Telecom in Loule to begin the process of recovering my broadband internet connection following my disastrous migration from ISDN to analogue. This is likely, I am informed, to take the better part of a month. In the meanwhile I am using a Vodafone dongle, which gives me a reasonable service. Jones, however, has got out of her habit of checking emails daily on “her” computer and has to be chased to sit down at mine.

Our pups grow and grow – ever bigger, stronger and fitter. Trying to tire them is exhausting. They have been taking two 30-minute walks a day in their stride, and returning to war noisily in their cardboard home, which rocks around the patio as they tussle. We have taken them on their first full hour-long trek down the far side of the hill and back up again. Happily, they seem to have settled in with the rest of the pack in spite of their woeful lack of manners.

Brief break there to consult the Friday evening Euromillions draw where, once again, I discover that we have lost our money – little wonder considering the unlikely numbers that came up. I shall now have to think of an inventive new excuse for other members of the syndicate.

Letter from Espargal: 2 of 2011

It’s a Saturday afternoon almost too pleasant to be inside the house writing a letter. The sun is shining, the temperature is mild, the pups are squeaking, the almond blossom is exploding on the trees around us. We are not freezing as the Calgarians are, up to our necks in water like the Queenslanders, or mud like the Brazilians – nor are we revolting as the Tunisians are.

In general, we have a great deal to be thankful for, albeit that for the umpteenth week I’ve had to write to other members of the Espargal syndicate to explain why we have failed yet again to win the Euromillions jackpot.

Jones has nipped down the road, having discovered in a cupboard some Christmas gifts that she wrongly thought she had given to the neighbours for whom they were intended. Idalecio has gone home, having spent the morning completing the wall that he has been building around the Casa Nada fossa. The wall will serve both to hide the fossa and to hold the sand needed to support it.

Idalecio is a natural wall builder. Although it’s heavy work, he admits to enjoying it – much more than building walls with bricks. Using stones is so much more creative. Each stone has to be selected for its niche – and then trimmed with a hammer for a face or a fit. The end result is always pleasing. Our garden is replete with walls that Idalecio has built and there is seldom a day when we don’t appreciate them.

Also gone home are Pedro and Aurelio, who have spent much of the past week working on two of our projects. One of those is to lay down an electricity feed from the house to Casa Nada. The electrician overseeing the work said we’d need much weightier cables than the one that’s been linking the two buildings. And Horacio suggested (sensibly) that we bury the new feed to render it both safe and invisible.

To this end, Pedro dug up a row of cobbles from the side of the house and spent two days jackhammering a channel along the side of the carport. It was a long, slow job but Pedro is very good at that kind of thing and, unlike me, has a supportive back. Aurelio then laid out a long coil of protective plastic sheathing in which to house the cable when the electrician returns next week.

That done, the pair of them set about constructing the pillars to take Fintan’s old gates at the tractor entrance to the property. As instructed by Horacio, they dug and jackhammered large holes for the foundations (Horacio does nothing by halves) and have since cemented in the iron skeleton for the pillars.

My part in all this was to tractor up loads of sand and gravel for Horacio’s workers from the pile that Paulo, the delivery man, had dumped at the bottom of the property.

Equally, Idalecio and I made 4 trips to the rock-ridden bushveld on the fringes of the village to load the tractor with stones for his wall.

(Note the scorpion that was living under one of the rocks that he removed!) We live in a rocky part of the world. Rocks are free for the taking. Local farmers are delighted to have them removed, although one could spend a year doing it without noticing the difference.

Between the weather, the workmen and the animals, Natasha had a tricky cleaning task – although she managed well enough.

There was one seriously foolish thing I did that I must confess to. At the suggestion of my computer guru I asked for our phone line to be changed from an ISDN to an analogue line. It was simple enough, he said, and would speed up my internet connection.

BJ DAWN

To bring about this change, I had to fill in a complicated form and send it to our phone company which in turn had to send it on to Portugal Telecom, who eventually despatched a man to do the work.

“What about fitting a filter to the line for the internet connection?” I asked him as he finished up. That wasn’t on his instruction list, said he, and he went on his way.

MORE DAWN

So I phoned the computer shop. Could they fit the filter and a new (analogue) router.

Yes, they could, as long as PT hadn’t cut off the ADSL signal.
PT assured me that they hadn’t.

Along came a nice lad from the computer shop to fit the router. But there was no ADSL signal on the line and the router didn’t work.

The lad phoned PT to ask them to reinstate the ADSL link. Although this required only the pushing of a button somewhere, PT insisted on sending somebody around. Would the 21st of January suit me?

LAST DAWN

I supposed that it would, if that was the first available date. Then the PT man (all this over the phone with lots of lengthy pauses) said sorry. He’d just noticed that I wasn’t a PT customer. I would have to ask my phone company to request PT to reinstate the ADSL signal on the line.

There’s more but I suspect that’s probably enough. Welcome to Portugal!

And by the way, our ISDN phones don’t work any more! Jones is not best pleased.

THAT WALL - AGAIN

What else? Old Chico’s goats are back after camping up the hill for a couple of weeks and Chico is pleased.

We went to see “Inside Job” at the cinema, an overly long documentary on the great financial crisis from which we may be emerging – revealing but not for the faint-hearted.

HOW TO MAKE A BED WITHOUT DISTURBING THE CAT

Cousin Jud is due to arrive here on Sunday for a visit of several days. I have acquired several bottles of good red wine. (The previous sentence has no necessary connection with the preceding one.)

Letter from Espargal: 1 of 2011

I don’t know whether it’s possible for me to consider the week without mentioning the rain, the pups, our walks or the Bijou Ensuite. It would be a funny sort of letter because these things, as ever, have been at the centre of our lives. Anyhow, let me see how far I can get.

ORCHID - JONES GARDEN

On Thursday I got a “please help” call from Olive, an elderly friend who, with husband John, spent some months with us at the Quinta while building a house on the far side of Almancil. She couldn’t get on to the internet – the sort of problem that’s plagued me only too often. Portuguese helpline technicians are generally good at sorting these things out – if one can get through the maze of “press 1 for this and 2 for that” prelude before arriving at a real person. Fluency in Portuguese helps enormously.

When we did finally reach a technician, he resolved problem in seconds. A minor change to the software configuration did the trick – although it wasn’t clear to me why the system had functioned happily for years with the old configuration.

ANOTHER JONES SKY

The following day, I had another call from Olive to say that the system was down again. Once more I went round. This time, the technician, when we reached him, apologised that the error had been on their side – and put it right. (So far, it appears, so good.)

From Almancil I continued into Faro to visit Vodafone. Jones’s newish mobile phone needed repairing and I had a question concerning some functions on mine. Much to my annoyance I discovered that the 2-year guarantee on her phone didn’t cover the repair. “The phone was broken,” the young Vodafone lady informed me and the guarantee didn’t cover breakages. The breakage in question was the failure of the recharging unit, which no longer allowed the insertion of the fine plug-point. Reluctantly I signed the fixit agreement, drafting an angry letter in my head to Nokia as I did so.

AND YET ANOTHER

To discuss my own query I had to wait nearly an hour for the Vodafone guru; his time was being taken up by an English couple whose mobiles weren’t performing as they should have. They would walk away, only to rush back with a repetition of whatever was upsetting them. Eventually I got the man’s attention. In a few seconds he explained what I should have been doing and wasn’t. So easy when you know how. (No amount of googling or scrutinising the manual had helped.)

Another visit to Faro was to take in the New Year concert. The resident conductor had drafted in two young musicians using electronic instruments to play with the orchestra. To accompany their music they cast a video showing shadowy dancing figures on to the wall at the back of the stage. While I credited the conductor’s efforts to renew our classical music experience I was distinctly underwhelmed by the results. Nonetheless, the players were well applauded, whether out of politeness or enthusiasm it’s hard to know.

HORACIO - RIGHT

Horacio the builder came around one evening to settle up his bills for the fossa repairs over a fine glass of whisky. We were lucky to have done the bulk of the work before the year’s end because both VAT and prices have risen since (as the government tries to balance its shaky books). He’s due back this coming week to erect a couple of pillars and put up gates at the tractor entrance to the property.

But the real work has been going on in Casa Nada where Idalecio has completed the glass-brick wall separating my part of the building from the kitchenette-to-be beside the Bijou Ensuite. The wall works really well, creating a separate space for the kitchen without giving the sense of a real barrier. Idalecio has also laid the tiles for the floor and done about half the grouting.

We ran into a problem with the planks that serve as the flooring of the raised platform. I hadn’t screwed them all down as they were secured one to another and gravity seemed sufficient for the task.

SARAH INSPECTS THE WORK

But the excessive moisture from all the rain swelled them and they lifted.

I had the very devil of a job freeing them and getting them to lie flat again. They are now all firmly screwed down.

The small tank that is to hold discharges from Casa Nada has been delivered. A built-in submersible pump will empty it automatically when the contents reach a certain level.

The hard work will be routing an outflow pipe some 40 metres across the garden from the unit to the fossa.

And the pups…..well, they’re fast becoming real dogs. We had the pair of them down to the vet for their first vaccinations. They now accompany us on walks twice a day and gradually becoming accustomed to trips in the car down to the valley.


The two big guys go in the rear. Prickles and Ono hop on to the (double-covered) back seat; Jones climbs in with one of the pups and I hand in the other. They’re already leaping on and off their divan and it won’t be long before they jump in themselves.

They’re beginning to respond to their names and in the space of a few days have learned to sit for their treats. The next job is to create an area where we can keep all six dogs when we need to get them out of the way.

Our last several evenings have been taken up with Downton Abbey (which I bought on DVD). Jones expressed herself dissatisfied with the outcome of the final episode of the first series.

Two romances appear to have been nipped in the bud and there’s no happy ending in sight. At least there’s lots of space for creativity in the second series, due out this year.

I have just finished a splendid book, Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher, which tries to analyse to what extent human thought and perception is affected by the languages people speak. On a similar theme, I have begun The First Word by Christine Kenneally – a search for the origins of language. I’ve long wondered how our species came unconsciously to construct such amazingly complex vehicles for communicating.

The sun is due to return this coming week. That will be very nice. We are both fans of the rain but, as mother frequently pointed out to me, one can have too much of a good thing – and I think we probably have.