FRIDAY EVENING. The sun is going down on a hot week in a western sky slashed pink and grey. Turn around and there’s a luminous orange moon rising regally over the eastern hills. Accompanying this glorious spectacle is the opening night of the BBC Proms which, excepting an instantly forgettable opening premiere, it is proving delightful. 
What more could one ask, you might think. Well, one could wish for the instant elimination of the junior “musical” group from Lisbon that has rented our neighbour’s property for the fortnight. Their horrendous amplified racket penetrates the thickest walls, rending the air day and night with thumps, bangs, howls and wails. Our tolerance and, I suspect, that of other neighbours has been tested to the limit. As I write, Jones and I are both wearing headphones with the sound turned right up in a bid to drown them out.
I suspect that hell is a bit like that – no flames and trident-wielding fiends – just beautiful things that are irredeemably polluted, a suggestion of what might have been had the serpent not had his devious way in the Garden of Eden. Anyhow, putting aside the next world for the moment, most of today has gone into assisting Olive with matters arising from her husband’s death in this one. We fetched her and her daughter, newly arrived for the UK, for a round that began at Almancil post office and continued via the bank and the undertaker to lunch at the local and a host of Skype phone calls from our house in the afternoon. Later we dropped in on her lawyer to request an authorised English translation of the death certificate – as required by institutions in the UK. We’re nearly there.
SATURDAY MORNINGWe got home to find that a wet patch on the cobbles beside the house was getting steadily wetter, despite the hot sun and roasting temperatures. A check at the pump-house revealed a racing water meter. I’ve turned the water off and phoned the plumber. With luck he’ll be here in the morning, along with an occasional worker who has agreed to dig up the cobbles to expose the pipe. Digging things up, like lifting things up, is regrettably anathema to my back.
(SATURDAY MORNING: Nelson and I found a faulty connection which, after a trip to the hardware store, we replaced with a new one. It's not leaking....yet! I await the plumber's inspection and approval of our work.)If I haven’t been digging things up, I have at least been putting them up. That’s to say I have been raising fences. The reason for this is that Mary, resenting the restrictions of the puppy pen, has been leaping the fence, leaving brother, Russ, peering dolefully through the wire.
PUPPY DAMAGEI should explain that while the pups are free to roam around the garden most of the day, we put them in the pen overnight and when we go out. Otherwise they either get into the house, where they raise hell, or out of the gates as we leave or return. While the pen is spacious, with numerous shady spots and ample shelter, it’s still a pen. And Mary, spotting large rocks either side of the fence, made a bid for freedom by standing on one rock and launching herself over to the other.
So I spent an afternoon raising the fence and blocking access to the launch site, standing back when I was finished to admire my handiwork with that “job well done” feeling. Then I returned the pups to the pen. Mary paused only long enough to consume the biscuit bribes (required to entice her in) before, as our backs were turned, making her exit once again. To our astonishment, she was still getting on to the launch rock and simply jumping that much higher. So I spent a second afternoon raising the fence once again – this time a full meter. So far, so good.
One morning we found the dogs barking loudly in the old pig pen at a yellow green snake. I called them off. Jones peered at it from the safety of the track and opined that it was just a sloughed off skin. We shall never know because when I went to look later in the day it had gone. Another two-meter specimen that was being disturbed by the dogs shot up a tree in the twinkling of an eye. I was most impressed at its speed and agility. Even though the tree was small, I couldn’t spot the snake in the branches. Not that I looked too closely. 
NO SNAKE PICS BUT HERE'S OUR SPIDEROn Wednesday afternoon Desi came to clean in the place of the absent Natasha. Desi is Dutch, 30ish, shapely and attractive. Also she drives a substantial Nissan 4x4. That’s as much as I can tell you about her. She’ll be standing in for Natasha until the end of August.
Also on Wednesday we took Russ to the vet as he had developed a large lump on his shoulder. The vet identified it as an abscess and prescribed antibiotics. The usual suspects, Ono and Prickles came along for the ride. The latter refused absolutely to approach within 50 metres of the veterinary surgery, clearly remembering the unpleasant things that he had suffered there a week earlier. Prickles compensates for such cowardice by hurling vociferous abuse at passing dogs from the safety of the car.
Wednesday night we went with friends to The Lemon Tree restaurant in Almancil to celebrate Jones’s birthday and that of another neighbour. The venue was a cut above the local, the sort of place for a special night out, and all agreed that it was a fine meal. I was recounting to Pauline, the other birthday celebrant, that while I led an enviably relaxed conscious life, in my unconscious I frequently found myself back in the monks and trying to get out. Pauline helpfully responded that I must have unresolved issues – although she didn’t say how one set about resolving them. Blow me down; the very same night I dreamed that I was being recruited into the monks once again – and was saved only because no road could be found on the map to the monastery from wherever I was. I wish I could get the monks out of my system.
If it’s not the monks, it’s the BBC, where - with a bulletin looming - I can never find a desk to sit at or a computer to work on. This situation, ironically, applies in real life to many of my former colleagues at the World Service, scores of whom are being made redundant because of the cuts to the corporation’s income. How very scary that must be! I’m ever so grateful to have worked there in the good times.
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