We planted our bean seeds on Friday afternoon which was fortunate because it rained - as forecast - on Friday night, 35mm of it. Actually, it didn’t just rain, it snapped and crackled and popped all around us and the downpour that followed the initial thunderclap drummed against the glass doors.
After a lightning flash, I count the seconds to the thunder to gauge how close the lightning is and whether I should pull the plugs on sensitive equipment. Last night, the lightning and the thunder were simultaneous – very close and very loud – so after disconnecting the TV and computer, I settled down with the pups in front of the fire to reassure them that it was just a storm.
Jones had already gone to bed, not that she was doing much sleeping. Also not doing much sleeping were Dearheart, the cat, and Ono, the dog, both curled up in the crook of her legs. Talk about three in a bed. Normally Ono won’t let Dearheart on to the bed while he’s there and he certainly wasn’t very happy about her presence. But for once he was more concerned with just hunkering down.
Happily, the storm waited until after the concert we’d attended in Faro and after the supper we enjoyed up at the Coral in Benafim. (The Coral is now officially the France-Portugal but since that’s a mouthful I’ll stick to the old name.) The concert was really just an hour of chamber music presented at the Faro Museum by a quintet from the Algarve Orchestra.
For reasons best known to themselves, the organisers feel compelled always to feature one modern (i.e. tuneless, atonal & discordant) work at such events. Last night it was a “Wind Quintet” by Filipe de Sousa who, fortunately for humanity, died in 2006. Would that it had been sooner!
Anyhow, we survived it. And supper at the Coral, really just tapas, toasted sandwiches and a bottle of wine, was delicious as it always is. (Serious meals await Brigitte’s return from France.) The telly behind the bar showed two soaked football teams kicking a sodden ball on a flooded field in the pouring rain in Lisbon while a huddle of wet fans looked miserably on. Players were sliding around in showers of spray. It was more akin to waterpolo than soccer.
As I was saying, we got our beans planted just in time. That meant my spending the morning on the tractor preparing the ground, which was damp but not muddy. Although the beans occupy just a few square metres, I cleaned up our fields at the same time and Leonhilda’s adjoining property while I was at it. If my furrows are not the straightest in Espargal, I draw your attention to the slope and the trees that dot it. The rain of the last few weeks has turned the countryside green and the new crop of weeds is already ankle-high.
Nightfall now arrives before 18.00. The evenings are long and we’re grateful for good TV to lighten them. Inevitably the best TV is scheduled for 21.00, after the gameshows, quizzes and other corn. We often watch one programme, record a second and, if necessary, discover when a third will be repeated.
I sat up one night to watch – utterly fascinated - a documentary on the construction at a factory in Wales of the wings for the Airbus A380 superjumbo. The scale and complexity of the operation is simply dizzying. On completion, the great wings are floated down a river, shipped across the sea to France, transported by road to Toulouse and there mated to other sections of the aircraft flown in from across Europe.
On the news front it’s hard to get away from speculation on the future of the euro and dismal economic prospects for most of the nations that use it. The hard-pressed Portuguese government continues to squeeze its citizens with new taxes and cutbacks as it struggles to balance its books. The unions, unsurprisingly, are up in arms and have called a national strike for next Thursday. Poor commuters; they’re the ones that really suffer. Even around here folks are feeling the pressure. Two of our Portuguese acquaintances are among the thousands reported to be seeking a livelihood overseas.
We joined friends one evening to see “The Ides of March”, a film that we thoroughly enjoyed in spite of (“because of”, says Jones) a very cynical (many would say realistic) outlook on the mores of politicians. I really liked the script as well as the plot although some would say that the language left much to be desired. (It fascinates us that locals hardly blink at the use of the f-word in the English dialogue although the Portuguese subtitles always resort to a euphemism.) I gave the movie four stars (out of five); Jones thought three was closer to the mark. It wasn’t worth arguing over the difference.
CLEANING UP THE MESS
We got home to find that the pups had done their best to destroy the place in our absence. They’d discovered and dismantled a large bag of garbage as well as ripping apart a sack of soil and two of Jones’s pot plants, the entire contents which lay distributed across the cobbles. The pups were as pleased as Punch with their handiwork. They’ve had Jones close to tears more than once.
It’s hard to know what to do about it (other than making sure that garbage is safely locked away). Mary now scoffs at the fence we erected around the puppy enclosure. I need to raise much of it to render it effective once again. When the dogs are with us they’re fine; trouble comes when they’re bored. Here they are perched on a boulder at the bottom of the garden. One of my better pictures!
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