Letter from Espargal: 22 of 2011

Until Saturday evening the week was going okay; nothing to rave about but we were making progress and had won back a few of the euros we'd bet on the lottery. The garden was being licked into shape. The exuberant crop of weeds in the fields was ploughed under. The pups were starting to respond to our commands - just little things but satisfying none the less.

Saturday evening we had committed ourselves to go the Senior University annual bash. This usually takes place at a posh hotel on the coast; the setting is celeb and the food is really special. This year, however, it was held in the Santa Barbara Centre of Well-being, not an institution with which we were familiar. I spent at half an hour trying to locate it on the internet and another 10 minutes keying the (wrong) address into the satnav.

We found it eventually - after touring much of the Algarve and squeezing into (and out of) a crowded parking lot for what turned out to be a different event. The Centre of Well-being was not the posh hotel. The effects of the economic crisis were all too clear – we felt like Business Class passengers who’d been ushered to the back of the plane.

The hall was noisy, with dreadful acoustics. An amplified fado singer boomed and echoed off the walls. We couldn’t understand a word of the echoey peroration from the guest speaker. The university boss, who’s suffered a stroke, struggled to grasp his notes and speak into the mic – poor man. Jones found herself seated beside an elderly woman who was suffering from dementia.

Queues for the food stretched halfway round the hall. My plate got whipped away so I shared one with Jones. Nobody seemed to notice. A woman who’d drunk too much lurched about and tittered at everything.

When the choir assembled on the stage for some folk music, I tried to video them with my smartphone. This was a mistake. The phone, which has been playing up, promptly entered a vicious circle of reboots. No amount of soft resetting restored it to life. Nor on our return were my subsequent efforts with a hard (factory) reset of any avail. It has to go to the phone doctor first thing on Monday – after we’ve dropped the pups at the vet to be snipped, that is.

Fortunately, I have all the information backed up on computer. But I have to hook the phone up to the computer to access the information - and the phone isn’t working. The pictures I hoped to put up on the blog got wiped during the hard reset. (Hence the plethora of Jonesy sky pics!) So I wasn’t a happy punter when I got to bed at 3 a.m.

When my technology fails I find myself ill at ease, as if in the presence of a sickly friend. Although these events were relatively trivial, they took up a lot of emotional space. I’ve spent Sunday morning keying names and numbers into the guest phone.

The rest of the week just spattered along. Each morning starts with a stiff hour-long hike down the hill with the dogs – 6 of them - and back up the other side. It’s steep, sweaty, rough and rocky – hard work with an impatient dog on the lead. We arrive back as if from a route march. I immediately change my soaked vest and shirt for the previous day’s, which have since dried on the line. (The weather’s been hot and is set to get hotter.)

Each morning, around 02.30, Pricks comes inside – we leave the back door ajar - and starts squeaking beside our bed because the cat is occupying his favourite chair. There’s nothing to be done but to clamber out of bed and turf the cat out so that Pricks can get a good night's rest. We must be mad!

Jones is trying to get the place ready for the arrival this coming weekend of her nephew and family from Canada. They’re to be joined a few days later by 6 relatives from South Africa, who’ll be staying nearby. We’ve been organising accommodation and transport and, of course, the notarised invitations that EU states insist on before allowing SA passport holders to visit.

BRIDGE OVER UNTROUBLED WATERS

I’ve been talking to our lawyer in preparation for the purchase of half a ruin in a couple of days’ time. The rubble – that’s all there is – is located in the property that we acquired a few months ago but it has separate title. Its acquisition should bring our land-grab to an end. Apart from anything else, we’re starting to feel quite poor. (Not too poor to make several sociable visits to the Coral to catch up with neighbours.)

Much of my time has been spent on the tractor, trying to subdue the weeds that ran amok in our absence. Although only one of our several acres is really arable, it’s divided among several steep, rocky and tree-dotted plots. Scarifying is hard work – and quite scary at times. While I was at it, I cleaned up a couple of neighbours’ fields – yours was overdue, Sarah and David, as we’ve long-since consumed your generous jam offering.

The best bit of this tractoring is the swooping of the swallows (swifts, martins?) around the tractor in pursuit of the insects that are disturbed. The birds arrive as if on cue. Their ethereal elegance and agility are beyond my powers of description. I have the sense that a flight of angels is whirling around my head. Not that I get too distracted lest the low branches of the almond & carob trees take it right off.