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!