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.