This week doesn’t have a starting place; it has simply dribbled away into cracks and crevices. I have nothing to show for it, nor anything new to tell you about collecting carobs, waiting on widows, walking the dogs or watering the garden. You have had every jot and tittle.
(Pause here for thought and inspiration while you admire Jones's fine picture of an Espargalian sunset!)
It’s not that this state of affairs otherwise troubles us. We learned a few days ago that my brother in South Africa had narrowly escaped being car-jacked. As he was about to get into his pick-up in downtown Witbank, he was confronted by three men wielding knives. He has no doubt that he would have lost his vehicle and possibly worse had he not been able to draw the pistol that he always carries with him. On seeing the firearm, the intending hijackers fled. Although by South African standards the episode was trivial, it left my brother badly shaken.
I too was somewhat shaken last weekend although for different reasons. One of the dogs jumped up at me for a hug as I was collecting carobs. I stumbled backwards, wrenching my back. So it’s been a tender few days.
Jones has been walking the puppies while I trail along behind. (Although we call them puppies still, they’re anything but.) She’s also spent several hours each day picking up the last of the carobs. We had half a dozen sacks to present to our farmer friends, who were very pleased to receive them and regaled us with melons, tomatoes and peppers in return.
En route to deliver the carobs I diverted to visit the German student archaeological team that has returned to the site of the Roman remains on the farmer’s lands. The team is here in double strength this year with half its members excavating in Espargal and the rest working on the site of other Roman ruins near Silves. They’re not finding it easy going as we’re enduring what I hope will be the last heat-wave of the summer.
They showed me the few tile and amphora shards they’d collected, along with several fragments of glass and a 2nd century AD coin. They have also uncovered a hard smooth floor that seems to have been used for olive oil production. Another find was the skeleton of a pig. This however the farmer recollected (as he unloaded my carobs) he’d buried there himself years earlier after it had died of some disease. I popped around to the dig later in the week with a box of icecreams that the students fell upon.
Close by, two machines are working away building a handsome wall from huge rectangular rocks to support the bank overlooking Vitor’s driveway. The diggers work in tandem to lift and place the rocks. Each is trimmed to size by a worker with a sledgehammer and then carefully lined up and levelled. I was equally impressed by the care taken and the harmonious result.
These rocks are often employed to support steep banks in expensive locations. The advantage I learned from Horacio the builder when he dropped around to collect payment for the base of the tracking station. Apart from good looks and strength of the resulting structure, such construction does not require the licence that is otherwise obligatory for walls much over a metre high.
Our solar array meanwhile faithfully and fruitlessly tracks the sun each day across the sky, as yet without contributing anything to the national grid or the Benson purse. The firm involved informs us that the installation is due to be inspected on Monday the 19th. We have fingers crossed that it will be approved and that a contract will follow hot on the inspectors’ heels.
To further impress them I have painted the extended pillar holding the new electricity boxes, which were installed as part of the project.
Natasha joined us for a day to hack back the ivy that had overtaken parts of the garden. Jones insisted that this exercise was necessary, assuring me that the ivy would soon grow again. I do hope so for the walls are now painfully bare. Natasha has lost one of her regular clients to what’s known in Portugal as the “crise” and is keen to find additional employment where she can.
Midweek a man arrived from the company that is due to deliver our new wood-burning stove, known here as a salamandra. He inspected the premises and measured the six metres from the lounge floor to the hole in the inclined ceiling that leads into the chimney above. We talked about the best way to seal the flue so that neither soot or sooty water – the bane of Jonesy’s life – comes drifting/dripping down the chimney.
Another caller was the firewood supplier, who arrived with a load that should see us through the winter. I've been shifting it with the tractor. The deliverer wasn’t particularly happy, telling me in vivid language of an attack he had suffered at home a few weeks earlier from a Bulgarian burglar. According to his account, the burglar had set about him with a weapon of some kind, breaking four of his victim’s ribs before fleeing the scene.
A son had chased after the assailant, caught him and apparently exacted revenge. In court the man was convicted but released under orders to leave the country. Whether he did so is another question. The bottom line is that Portugal cannot bear the cost of jailing foreign criminals nor has it any effective means of expelling them.
With such unfortunate events in mind, we are pursuing with Olive the security options that a couple of companies have submitted to her. Typically, an alarm installation costs 1,000 euros plus, with monthly fees of 30-50 euros, depending on the services required. While en route to see her, we dropped in on the electronics shop to inquire about our ailing digibox. Terribly sorry (or something similar) said the man behind the counter but our technician is on leave this week. We wish he’d told us that when we arranged to take it in because the TV channels were still working perfectly well.
I’m also chasing a small parcel that DHL was meant to have delivered to me some time this past week. The tracking number doesn’t register on their site and the central DHL phone number asks clients politely to call back on Monday when the office reopens! Tom Hanks, where are you?
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