The week has run away with us. When I looked up, it was December, which has come as a bit of a shock. It means that 2012 is just around the corner and I’m still coming to terms to 2011.
Mondays brings English class and widows. Here you see me seated among my pupils. You will understand why it’s called the Senior University although, in truth, it’s rather more senior than university. That’s by the by. The atmosphere is very pleasant, I learn a lot of Portuguese and there are no exams. What more could you ask?
On Tuesday we went to the ballet. This is not something that we do very often – about once a decade I guess. But since the Russian Ballet was coming to Faro, and with notions of the Bolshoi and Nureyev, I thought we ought to go, especially as the ballet concerned was Swan Lake and the music is heavenly. Tickets were a reasonable €25 euros each, although this is considered expensive in these parts. I managed to secure two from the half dozen that were left.
As it happened, Jonesy had taken a black dress into the Russian dressmaker in Loule to be shortened. Her plan was to wear it with some black tights that she recently acquired in Berlin and tall boots. It was, she understood, the latest fashion. Very smart she looked too; but so different to the Jones I knew that I started laughing. My amusement so unnerved her that she put on a long black coat that entirely hid her fashionable attire.
As to the ballet (not the Bolshoi), it was – like the curate’s egg – good in parts; in fact, very good in parts. The lead ballerina was excellent but her leading man (?) was a bit in awe of his own (admittedly spectacular) physique and jealous of the thunderous applause that went to the lady. This spurred him on to leap ever higher – to little avail. The corps de ballet could probably have done with a bit more practice. We reflected that it’s a long way from adequate to excellent.
ANOTHER JONES SKY
On a Wednesday, Natasha comes to clean. For months she has struggled with a severely underperforming car. Vitor, the local mechanic, thought he could do something about it; we had arranged for Natasha to leave the car at his workshop, where I would fetch her. That was the plan.
No sooner had I arrived at the workshop than Natasha called from Loule to say that the car wouldn’t start. While she waited for a tow-truck, I returned home to give Natalia (another Russian) her usual Wednesday morning English lesson. Then I went to fetch Natasha from the workshop. There, Vitor reported that the starter motor needed repairing or replacing and that (since Thursday was a public holiday) the car wouldn’t be ready until Friday at the earliest.
NOT THE UPRIGHT ONE - THE OTHER ONE
Wednesday evening we took ourselves to supper at the local, where our group included commuting Irish neighbours who are having an upper floor added to their house in the village. The house is located at the top of a steep property. The builders had been unloading materials from a tractor parked on the driveway when the vehicle suddenly took off.
One of the workers tried – and failed – to stop it. He was lucky not to injure himself. Fortunately, instead of heading down the drive (to career across the road and into the neighbours’ kitchen) the tractor had veered off, crashed through a fence and come to rest against a tree where, at the time of writing, it awaits rescue. It will have to be lifted out – no easy task, as the angle is acute and the ground is soft.
Vitor was telling me that another neighbour had an even luckier escape when his tractor slid off a steep, muddy track and hurtled down a rocky bank into the field below.
Thursday was May’s 81st birthday, an occasion that we celebrated at the Calypso in Loule with May, David and Dagmar.
May, a former neighbour in Cruz da Assumada, lost her husband just over a year ago. We see her each week for a meal and Barbara often takes her shopping while I’m giving my English lesson. As it happens, she had fallen over her cat a day or two earlier and was feeling very tender; but not so tender that she didn’t enjoy her lunch.
We noted with pleasure that the restaurant was doing good business and that most of the customers were Portuguese. Restaurants have been hard hit by the financial crisis and are going to be harder hit in the New Year when the VAT on meals rises from 6% to 23%. The VAT on electricity has already been raised by the same amount and it hurts. My only consolation is that the EDP is now paying me more for the electricity it buys from me than vice versa.
The photos that I took last week of the cobbler and his wife, I delivered this week to their little shop, along with a leather cushion that Mary had chewed a hole in. The cobbler seemed pleased. He’s a man of few words though and, after telling me that the cushion would be ready the following day, returned to the boot he was repairing on his last.
THE LUCKY ONES
Jones has been much concerned with the bitch of a Portuguese neighbour who (the bitch) lives in a barrel, attached to a long chain. She has recently had pups, one of which remains with her. (We have not asked what happened to the rest.) As a gesture to her state, her owner thrust some old jeans into the barrel as bedding. But these get dragged out again by the chain.
Barbara, who passes the bitch each evening (en route to feed a stray at the bottom of the village) has long been tossing her a few biscuits and has won her confidence. After seeing the poor dog shivering one cold evening, she took an old sack down to try to provide the animal with better bedding. It’s an awkward situation as one doesn’t want to upset the neighbour.
For most of the week we have been bathed in gentle sunshine, with barely a zephyr to rustle the branches. Such times as we have not been walking the dogs, clearing the undergrowth, cutting back the trees or burning off the prunings, we have spent thinking about the possibilities for next May when our regular house-sitters will be coming down once again.
Jones has a wodge of travel cuttings whose suggestions we’ve been exploring. It’s strange that no matter what key words one types into the search engines, the same travel sites come up time and again.(Jones is a great taker of sky pictures - just in case you were wondering.)
POST SCRIPT: The pictures tell their own story
And the tractor still drove away, although not very far as the front right tyre
was a write-off.
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