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.