Letter from Espargal: 29 of 2011

Good Sunday morning: We’re just back from brunch with Marie and Olly at the Coral. I’m late putting up the blog. That’s because it’s been a wicked week - a spotty bump, rush-around, puppy-trouble, neighbour-assist, medical check-up alphabet soup of a week. And then some.

JONES SUNRISE

Most time- consuming has been the neighbour assist. The neighbour concerned is Olive, who we’ve been supporting since the death of her husband, John, just over a month ago. The occasion was a farewell-to-John get-together at her home. These days I think people call them a celebration of life. Not that Olive was doing a lot of celebrating.

Whatever the case, Barbara spent the better part of two days helping her prepare for the event and part of a third helping her clear up. Equally helpful were our friends, David and Dagmar. Were I responsible for such an event it would be self-service beers and biscuits. But Olive and Barbara were determined to offer folks a spread – and they did – to which guests added their contributions.

JACKIE (left) and MAY, ALSO RECENTLY WIDOWED

Jackie, an Anglican minister friend, led an informal service in the late afternoon shade provided by the house. I contributed two minutes on John’s virtues. That took very little effort as he’d done sterling work at the Quinta, where he and Olive had stayed with us in 1995 while they were still building their house. We were touched by the arrival of the doctor who had treated John, a really considerate gesture on his part.

The puppies, changing the subject, have been giving us grief. Mary has been barking at length from the pen overnight at anything and everything. How much this disturbed the neighbours is hard to say because barking in these parts is considered the music of the hills. Most people are simply deaf to it. However, it certainly disturbed me. I considered locking the pair of them in the tractor shed but dismissed the idea as impractical.

PUPPY MAULED FOAM

Midweek Mary began hopping the interior fence once again. She would retire there with Russ to eat her dinner and then reappear on the patio minutes later, as pleased as Punch. So we bowed to the inevitable and let her sleep on the patio with other dogs. She liked that but Russ didn’t – and wailed his loneliness from the pen. So we let him sleep on the patio too. Apart from two destructive episodes, this has worked. There’s certainly much less barking at night.

FORMER CUSHIONS

Friday we got back from the clean-up at Olive to find that the pups had been in a fight, whether with each other or the big dogs it’s impossible to know. Mary was nursing a wound in her front right leg – she wouldn’t put her paw down - and Russ was limping. They were both distinctly unhappy.

MARY

The cause of this contention was almost certainly a bone. We’d distributed meaty bones, as is our usual practice, before we’d left. So Jones cleaned the wound and we gave her lots of sympathy, which was pretty much all that we could do. Saturday morning she was much better, insisting on coming on the usual walk.

RUSS

As Jones went down to feed the stray one evening, she came across Portuguese neighbours scrubbing the front passenger seat of their car with copious amounts of soap and water. They were clearly worked up about something. Between imprecations the husband explained that he’d stopped to give an elderly man a lift. The fellow had repaid this kindness by pissing his pants in the car. It was, needless to say, the last lift the neighbour would be offering to any codgers.

He has my sympathies. Mind you, so does the old man, given the unpredictability of elderly male bladders. It is a great virtue of Portuguese roads that they are lined with gents’ natural loos, and a pity that the old guy didn’t get to use one.

The spotty bumps and medical check-up are me. The former have driven me into a scratching frenzy. I always break out in heat bumps in summer but not on this scale. Jones, who reckons that something has been biting me, has put everything bar the bed through the washing machine. The pharmacist, who thinks it’s an allergic reaction, has dosed me with gel and pills.

Annual check ups are not normally blog material. But this one involved my first visit to a smart new hospital near Faro airport. I was most impressed, the more so after my encounters with Faro’s bedlamic general hospital. The new one proved quiet, prompt, scrupulously clean, suspiciously short of patients waiting in corridors, full of gleaming machines and staffed by really helpful people.

RAIN

Last Monday it rained. I mean really rained. I measured 8 mms. That’s quite extraordinary. July and August in the Algarve are almost guaranteed rain-free months – much to my regret, I might add. The rain gave Jones two days off watering the garden, an activity that takes a great deal of her time. She has been spending long hours cutting back as well as mitigating the damage that the wretched puppies do to her plants. Any plant they find in a plastic pot is stolen and dumped so that they can play with the pot.

For my part I’ve been collecting (and destroying) seed-heads from an unwelcome thorny thistle as well as starting on the carobs. The carob collecting season is just getting underway, announced by the rattle of long sticks in the carob trees. One of the neighbours explained that he was starting to bring in his carobs early this year for fear that the gypsies would otherwise steal them. A problem with carobs is that they are sold for cash – not very much, but still cash. And the temptation to help oneself to other people's carobs is great.

We arrived home one evening to find three crates of fruit and veges lying outside the gates, a welcome gift from the farmer to whom we donate most of our carobs. There’s a lot to be said for barter in these uncertain economic times. The media are full of the woes of the euro and the dollar.

The solar panel company informs me that our application to install a solar voltaic system had been accepted by the authorities. Before signing on the dotted line, I’m arranging a meeting with the local builder to ensure that he and the solar outfit are talking the same language. He has to build the concrete base to take the panels. With luck, we’ll be up and running by the end of September.