Letter from Espargal: 12 of 2011

Spring arrived last weekend like a letter in the post, pretty much dead on time. The weather gods pulled the vernal equinox lever (maybe these days they just left-click) and hey presto! The change was palpable. I trekked jerseyless around the hill and felt beads of perspiration trickling down my back. This is the best time of year, before the invasion of the flies, ticks and mosquitoes. We’re sitting out on the patio once again to wash down the sunset and it’s becoming hard to justify a fire a night.

On Saturday Olly and Marie came around to watch the “super moon” rising. We sat around the table on the east patio, sipping drinks and fending the dogs off the snacks. (I’ve read those books on pet discipline but the dogs haven’t!) Because the moon was at its closest point to the earth for 20 years, the orb loomed enormous over the horizon. If you missed it, it’ll be back in another 20 years. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12799686)

I also discovered, while watching a documentary, why it is that the moon rotates once per revolution of the earth – i.e. every 24 hours. Or, put another way, why we always see the same face of the moon. It’s because the pull of the earth’s gravity sucks the surface of the moon towards it. Over millions of years, the resulting bulge as the moon rotated acted as a brake until the moon “locked on” to the earth. Sorry if that doesn’t fascinate you. It’s my kind of stuff.

Tuesday morning, Edite, the census lady came to call. She hails from the next hamlet, she said, and had often seen us passing with the dogs. Portugal, like Britain, is busy carrying out its decennial population survey. I opted to fill the census forms in online rather than spend 15 minutes answering questions at the gate, especially as our conversation was interrupted by a call from our lawyer.

NELSON AT WORK - SEE BELOW

The lawyer, to my surprise and delight, said she’d now obtained all the papers she needed for our purchase of the larger of the two adjacent properties. (The smaller one can wait.) She said she’d set up an appointment with the notary for early next week.

That should give us the best part of a month to fence the new plot and incorporate it into the rest of the property, prior to the arrival of our house-sitters early in May.

Also on Tuesday, our occasional worker, Nelson, arrived to help us clean up overgrown areas of the park and the new property, a task at which he’s spent most of the rest of the week.

Jones, for her part, has spent her free time painstakingly attaching netting to the ceiling of the Bijou Ensuite in order to hide the sheets of black insulation. It’s a great deal of work but a case of whatever makes one happy.

At a Lions sale, for a tenner we picked up two heavy curtains that will serve to close the open doorway between the main room and the kitchenette (to be. We are still awaiting delivery and installation.)

On Wednesday quite a lot of stuff happened. Because I was concentrating on painting the tractor entrance gates with Nelson (I did the top while he did the bottom), I forgot to fetch Natasha – until she sent me a “where are you” SMS. (She has just passed her driving test and is feeling very pleased with herself. Her partner, she revealed, permits her to drive his car but only with him in the passenger seat.)

MARGUERITES

That afternoon I nearly forgot to attend the funeral of a friend. (Jones reminded me.) The bilingual service was conducted by a Portuguese priest who apologised in halting English to the mainly expat congregation for his lack of fluency. (He tended to confuse his “stand ups” and “sit downs”, causing occasional titters among the mourners.) At one point, the mother of the widow gave an unaccompanied rendering of Gounod’s Ave Maria over her son-in-law’s coffin at the front of the church. She must be in her 80s. In her day she was a fine soprano and still hits the high notes.

SCILLAS

Wednesday evening the Portuguese Prime Minister resigned after failing to push a fourth austerity package through parliament. Early elections are inevitable. It doesn’t really matter who wins them. Portugal is in the soup. The country is bankrupt and there’s little doubt that a painful IMF rescue package is around the corner, à la Ireland and Greece. (We will be interested, Canadians, to see who/what emerges from your elections.)

LAVENDER

On Thursday morning a banker whose colleague had talked me into a (thus far) poor investment explained why it was actually a good opportunity in disguise. He had, he declared, persuaded his father to invest money in the same fund, so confident was he of its performance. All we have to do now is to wait for the fund to make some money.

CISTUS

(Portugal’s banks are desperate for cash to lend to the government to keep the country afloat. It’s somewhat ironic that the penniless state is supposed to protect depositors’ money in the event of a bank failure, an instance of the fox undertaking to safeguard the chickens’ interests.)

ADMIRING IDALECIO'S WORK

I left Jones to do some shopping in Loule while I continued 15 minutes down the road to our lawyer’s offices. There I sat down at the computer with Felismina who tried to simulate on the Financas website the taxes and stamp duty we’d have to pay prior to purchasing the property. At first she couldn’t get the programme to work and, when it did, it was painfully slow and unconvincing.

So she said she’d go to the Financas office that afternoon instead and email the information to me. This she did. I made the payments online (that’ll be a couple of thousand, thank you!), then emailed the receipts to Felismina, who will have to present them to the notary before the deed can be done – a case of heavy front-loading.

Somebody in Portugal has just won 70 million euros – half of Friday’s staggering Euromillions jackpot. It wasn’t us. At least, as I informed members of the syndicate, we won’t have to worry about what to do with all that money!

Letter from Espargal: 11 of 2011

Friday morning… on one of those made-in-heaven days when civil wars and imploding nuclear power stations are almost impossible to imagine. We are back from our walk. That’s to say, we have staggered back home after 90 minutes of being tugged every which way by those huge pups, of being dragged madly downhill and hauled bodily into bushes. Yes, we constantly try to teach them the rules of the game but they’re more interested in exploring their new world and having fun.

ON THE ROAD

While we’re on rules - it’s a rule of life in Portugal that one should never attempt to accomplish more than one thing a day, particularly tasks of a bureaucratic nature. Delays that run to minutes in most parts of the world here extend to hours. The list is long of people who have broken this rule and paid the price. So we were recklessly ambitious last Monday when we set out to do three things – and actually achieved them (a feat awaiting ratification from the Guinness Book of Records.)

BISCUIT BREAK

One of our aims was to obtain from the post office a small device that will soon be required of motorists using the east-way Algarve freeway - about to become the east-west tollway. Cameras placed at various points along the road will pick up an ID from the device and bill the motorist accordingly. (Vociferous campaigns to keep the road a freeway have come to nothing as the government is bankrupt and can’t afford to maintain the motorway.)

COME OUT OF THERE

How visiting drivers will cope is not yet clear, nor is the punishment for failing to display the device from mid-April, as required. All that is clear is that in the days leading up to the deadline, the queue for these gadgets will stretch half way to Spain. (Portuguese queues are famously as long as Portuguese delays.) And it is with no small measure of self congratulation that we have managed to obtain this device and bring it home with us – albeit with a lot of waiting around.

While we were running around purchasing devices, fending off a banker trying to sell us insurance, giving English lessons and forgetting the bones we’d ordered from the butcher, Idalecio was back at the ranch completing the plumbing in the Bijou Ensuite. He connected the basin, shower, loo and geyser to the inflows and outflows, tightening or replacing drippy components as he went along. So we now have a working bathroom, even if it lacks a door (for the moment).

Finally, we gave him some token assistance as he heaved the beds up on to the raised platform and manoeuvred a cupboard into place. The place concerned was a precise fit. The cupboard should have gone in with finger nails to spare. But, as we discovered, the top of the cupboard had a distinct overhang. The options were to cut off the overhang (I paled at the prospect) or lift the cupboard six inches to raise the overhang above the beam supporting the platform floor.

This, with a great deal of effort, we managed to do. The cupboard is now in place and Jones is getting on with the inevitable cleaning up, prior to the fitting of the kitchenette – probably in the course of the next few days.

SCRAMBLE TO THE GATE

Midweek, Rui called from the computer shop to install a decent router and to replace the capricious antenna in my desktop. This proved a great deal more complicated and time-consuming than either of us had foreseen. After reassuring him that the dogs wouldn’t bite him, I left him to it while I ran Natasha back into town and dropped off a file at the lawyer. I got back to find the job completed and Rui gone.

HOME SWEET HOME

The Skype phone plugs into the back of the new router, which will allow us to make cheap phone calls once again. Skypers please be aware that this phone advertises our online presence whenever the router is turned on, regardless of whether we’re around. The fact that we might not answer your call is not necessarily a reflection on your standing.

MISTY MORNING

On Thursday, en route to the dermatologist in Faro, I stopped over at the computer shop in Loule to pay the bill. Rui explained that the previous day’s difficulties had arisen as a result of interference from other appliances in the study. He said he’d been able to configure the router in a manner that resolved the problem. Certainly things are now (fingers crossed) working fine.

CISTUS

We’d hardly left Loule when the dermatologist’s receptionist called me to cancel the appointment. They’d run out of cyro-squirt, she explained; would we mind coming another day? We wouldn’t! We went shopping in nearby Almancil instead, stopping off for a celebratory coffee & cake. (While I’m not exactly a fan of medical consultations, Jones is positively allergic to them; she’d rather do handstands on a skyscraper.)

HIS MASTER'S VOICE

That brings us back to Friday. Jones has brought mid-morning coffee and toast, along with instructions to keep an ear out for the dogs' bones cooking on the hob while she cleans up Casa Nada. The dogs themselves are collapsed in their baskets. The tips of the branches beyond the upper patio are swaying ever so gently in the breeze. Across the valley Benafim lies asleep in the sun. On the telly behind me, British MPs are huffing and puffing over the fate awaiting Colonel Gaddafi. There’s much to be said for living in Espargal.

Letter from Espargal: 10 of 2011

Greetings from Espargal on a wet, chilly, windy morning. At least there’s a cheery fire in the hearth and no sign of any tsunamis rolling up the valley. The pictures from Japan that we’ve been witnessing these last few hours are an embarrassment to Hollywood’s special effects departments. When buildings go floating across the countryside and ships lie scattered sideways around their quays, you know it’s a good idea to be somewhere else.

ESPARGAL

In this regard, Espargal is as good a place as any. In fact, it’s better than most. I noted after downloading the latest update of Google Earth that Casa Valapena is situated 1,000 ft above sea level. This is quite reassuring. Although you may not associate Portugal with natural disasters, much of the country was devastated in 1755 by a great earthquake and tsunami.

The news from Casa Valapena is good. The topographers dropped by midweek with their report on the property that we are in the process of purchasing. The plot is something over half an acre in size. That this is barely a third of the area alleged on the title documents came as little surprise and no disappointment. (The estimated size of unsurveyed properties in Portugal tends to be pretty haphazard.)

As you will see from the adjacent picture, the property in question – outlined in green - juts deep into ours - outlined in red. (The purchase waits on the issue of the necessary documents by the ever sluggish local authorities.)The dark blue rectangle is our house and the light blue rectangle is Casa Nada. We will be delighted in due course to incorporate the plot and complete the exterior fence. To this end, our fencers came by on Thursday to calculate the distances and costs involved.

In some areas they had to be content with estimates as the thorny undergrowth is quite impenetrable.

Another visitor that day, a most welcome one, was the electrician who spent it completing the electrical work in the Bijou Ensuite. We’d been waiting several weeks for him to call. He’s much in demand and has fallen behind schedule, mainly because his assistant – a keen footballer - is out of action for several months following knee surgery. I gave what help I could.

There are situations, such as reporting whether a light has come on or feeding wires down a tube, where even the most unskilled assistance is useful.

Equally welcome, at the start of the week, was a visit by a PT (Portugal Telecom) technician, come to see why I couldn’t link to the internet in spite of Sapo, the ISP’s, considerable efforts. The reason was that the crappy (made in China) router issued to me by Sapo didn’t work. The technician grunted that he had a vanful of similar rejects.

He replaced the faulty router with a different model – with limited success. Download speed was pitiful but he went away promising to increase it. (He spoke truly.) My laptop talks happily to the new router by wifi but the desktop insists on a cable link, probably because of a non-compatible antenna. I have asked the computer shop to sort things out as soon as possible. But the bottom line is that both computers – Jones uses the portable – now have reliable connections at acceptable speeds – and I can’t tell you what a relief that is after a saga lasting three months.

Since getting back on net I have spent many hours seeking a hotel in Copenhagen for the three nights that we’ll be spending in the city either side of our planned Baltic cruise. I knew that the Danish capital was expensive but I had no idea how poor an opinion so many visitors had of its hotels. In this respect Tripadvisor has proved invaluable. Comments like “building site”, “terrible bed”, “filthy room”, “loud music” and “avoid it” were all too common. And the few “gems” were fully booked. I finally made a reservation at a hotel that I hope will be acceptable to Jones, whose fondness for bare bones accommodation I do not share.

Before leaving cyberspace let me add that I have been much impressed by a program recommended to me by Rolf. It’s called Dropbox and can be downloaded free. It serves to keep files on two (or more?) computers synchronised via the internet – so it’s both an automatic backup system and a means to allow people in different places to share documents. A generous allocation of space is allowed to users at no cost. Beyond this you have to pay a monthly fee. If there are any disadvantages, I haven’t come across them.

I have no dreams of my own to report this week but I can inform you that Jones found herself struggling to prepare a large, mysterious house for a stay by Queen Liz, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince William, who - it would seem - wanted somewhere quiet. And my sister confessed to despatching a midnight monster, a hostile hippo as I recall, by pinching its tongue – an unusual but apparently effective method that may prove useful to you should you be attacked by hippos overnight.

You may notice that I have spared you any mention of the animals (so far). That’s not because they make any fewer demands of us or our purses. The circus continues.

I am nearing the end of a learned tome, a book on attempts to trace the origins of language – The First Word by Christine Kenneally. She did an enormous amount of research and writes really well. One cannot help but be impressed by such a body of work. (The best I have been able to do so far is conversations between our grouchy former London cat and my niece.) Next to the memoirs of Uncle Max.

Letter from Espargal: 9 of 2011

Wednesday is as good a place to start as any. That morning I forgot to fetch Natasha from the bus in Benafim. This omission I blame on a diversion from our usual midweek pattern. Because we had a guest dog staying with us for a few days and doubted that we could fit seven dogs amicably in the car, we abandoned our usual practice of driving down for a walk in the valley before continuing on to the bus stop. Instead we trekked off around the back of the hill. It was Jones who remembered Natasha and reminded me. I followed hard on the heels of my apologetic SMS to her.

MARY

That afternoon, after dropping Natasha back at the bus, we set off again with the dogs as usual. These walks are quite demanding. Not only are the pups growing fast, they are forever diving into the bush after the other dogs. At one point Mary squirmed into a thicket from which she refused to come out. She can be very single- (bloody!) minded. After calling her and tugging at the lead to no avail, I gave the lead a great heave. She heaved in return; I lost my balance and tumbled into a rocky, prickly and decidedly uncomfortable bush.

This is not an adventure that I recount with any pride. I felt silly, sore and more than a little irritated, especially as I was stuck and Jones was scolding me for my failings (mainly out of anxiety, she said afterwards). With difficulty I managed to extricate myself. A cut finger is fortunately the only evidence of the mishap.

That evening I got a call from a PT gentleman in Lisbon who spoke good English and, for once, knew what he was talking about. (I had been phoning Sapo daily in the [vain] hope of discovering when my internet connection might be restored.) He suspected, the gent informed me, that the problem lay either near the house or at the socket; he was sure a technician could fix it the following day. It was music to my ears. I opted for the morning session between 9 and one.

Thursday: 13.00 No sign of that technician. Jones asked whether his absence meant that he wasn’t coming. I had no idea. After lunch I phoned PT in my best Portuguese to inquire. A brusque woman, if I understood her correctly, said the technician was due between 9 and 3 the next day (in a tone that implied that I should be grateful).

LURID JONES SKY

As you may be aware I have more than my share of lurid dreams. A friend of mine expressed the view that dreams were meaningful and could be analysed by someone with the relevant expertise. I confess that, while some dream themes are evident, I remain somewhat skeptical. Any analyst confronted with my dreams would be driven to see a psychiatrist. Take three of this week’s nocturnal episodes, for example – if you have the patience. As you will see, not even the most imaginative writer could possibly make these up:

LAST SKY

A friend and I were doing something with computers. I was admiring his expertise when I noticed a bird on the lawn outside the window. On looking again, I realized that the creature could not be a bird because it was wearing a pink top and skirt as well as high heels. It must be a woman disguised as a bird. Clearly she intended us ill. I warned my friend and we dived behind a bed as she hurled a dart through the window at us. It missed. I concealed myself between two mattresses as she threw a second dart. That missed too. Then I leapt upon her, grabbed her with my teeth and bit as hard as I could.

Jones and I had stopped at a hotel for a meal. We looked around. The hotel had both an ordinary dining room and an exclusive one, where some people were seated. The hotelier said he could fit us into it. I became aware that the hotel was used as a base for a financial TV program that was going on air. The hotelier thought I looked familiar and wondered whether he had seen me on TV. Although I confessed to working in television, I modestly doubted the likelihood (since I knew even in my dream that I wasn’t exactly famous). Jones and I sat down in the foyer. She noticed that meals were expensive, priced at £40 per person. I was about to suggest that we leave on some pretext when trays arrived with food. The spread was less than impressive for £40 and I wondered whether there was more to come.

Last night I dreamed that while I nodded off someone stole my bag and mobile phone. I discovered this theft while I was on a bus. I was trying to point out Espargal to other passengers. I got off the bus too early and found myself walking with a large dog (that belonged to someone else) on a lead. This dog leapt on to a table where a Pekinese was sitting and wanted to be friends with the Pekinese, whose owner objected. I went back to the road where another bus driver, with the consent of the inspector, who was looking on, allowed me to board his bus on the strength of the ticket stub from the first bus. At this point I found that I was shirtless as well as bagless and phoneless. I left the bus and started down a long cliff path. Home seemed very far away. I thought that I should call Jones to ask one of the neighbours to come to fetch me.

Jones, who used to say she never dreamed, last night dreamed that she was on some large, rather shabby cruise ship, and couldn’t find the cabin. That’s not a bad dream, although it hardly compares with my own. Or maybe that’s just the bare bones of it.

With the tractor I took around several large water containers to the “water hole” on the far side of the hill where the dogs pause to drink. The track was really rough, studded with huge rocks and, as I confided to Jones, not for sissies. But the dogs will be well pleased with my efforts for the water dries up rapidly in sunny weather when they need it most.

We have found the first ticks of the season, attached to Raymond. Regrettably, because they cost over 20 euros each, we have bought half a dozen tick collars for the dogs. These are meant to last for six months although they seldom do, if only because the dogs rip them off while scrambling through the undergrowth after rabbits. I wish there were tick collars for humans as well. We inevitably get bitten half a dozen times each season.

AFTERNOON TEA ARRIVES

A husband and wife kitchen-enterprise, who have served us well in the past, called to see what they could do in the Bijou Ensuite. We were concerned, I emphasized, not with style or colour but merely with price and utility. Happily, they had a display unit that they were about to scrap and will suit us extremely well. We’ve made little progress with the rest of the project this week, other than revarnishing the floor, as we’re still waiting for the electrician to finish up.

The dearth of pictures is due to the difficulty of photographing non-arriving technicians or supplying dream images.

P.S. Midday Friday: A PT technician has come and gone (back to Benafim where he found and fixed the problem) and come again. Praise be! I'm connected again (but at a miserable speed and with a cheap and nasty router). There's more work ahead.