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.