Last letter of 2012

FULL MOON - 28 Dec.
Like the year, the week has all but disappeared in a swirl down the plughole of time to where-ever the great archive of history is stored. It’s gone in a flurry of Christmas correspondence, festive meals with Llewellyn and Lucia, oldie-films, dog-walks and unseasonal funeral arrangements. I struggle to separate the days, even to remember what happened the day before yesterday. So let me start with yesterday. At least I can still recall that.

Having walked the hounds nervously around Espargal hill to a deafening chorus of hunters’ guns, we headed into Faro hospital for, hopefully, our last visit. I had been advised by Paulo, the undertaker, that I need to sign a form declaring that I (as Olive’s “cousin”) did (or did not) want an autopsy carried out to determine the cause of her death. This – after consulting with the family - I did. Like us, they are anxious to know why she died – and are struggling to come to terms with the events that came on them so suddenly. As her daughter says, she died before her time.

Afterwards we drove to the Algarve Forum where I planned to buy myself a fancy new mobile phone on the sales. In the car-park, however, Jones laid out all the reasons why I didn’t require a new phone – especially that there was nothing wrong with my old one. Why not wait, she cajoled me, for the next generation of phones and get one of those - a compromise to which I shall hold her in due course.

So, making a virtue of necessity, I agreed to go instead to Faro beach for coffee, a baggy and sandwiches. The day was picture perfect. Walkers strolled by in the sunshine. In the broad estuary below us, as the tide rippled in, a dog swam out to fetch a stick that his master was throwing. At the airport across the water, jets launched themselves magically into the air. A pleasant young lady served us the best ham and cheese sandwich we could remember and was delighted to keep the change.

Wednesday Llewellyn and Lucia took the train to Lisbon for a three-day stay. We dropped them off early at the station. He later reported that a coffee shop at the Queluz Palace had tried to rip him off, but backed down hurriedly when he challenged the bill in Portuguese. Tourists are regarded as easy pickings all over the world. (If God didn’t want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep!)

That afternoon I fired up the tractor and drove into Benafim to stock up on fertilizer for the carob and almond trees. This generally comes in 50kg bags that I find back-breaking to move. Happily I came across an outfit stocking 25kg bags that are much easier to manage. We’ve started to scatter the pellets under the trees.

Tuesday was Christmas. Midmorning we all went down the road to visit Ermenio’s growing private museum. He loves to show people around it. Apart from the barrels along the wall where his new wine is maturing, the room is filled with the agricultural implements of his youth,

along with his sculptures and some pieces of still near-perfect Roman tiles and paving that he recovered from the field below the house. His son also came across several Roman coins. The family tipped off the authorities, who are working with a team of German archaeologists to unearth the Roman remains. Ermenio said that the Romans had practised the art of grafting trees, just as the local farmers still do.

Now was the time to cut the tops off wild almond and olive trees, he advised us, at about shoulder height. Then in the spring, he would come and graft them for us. I shall be glad to take up his offer. I have a real sense that our trees do not belong to us. They are merely ours to take care of until the next generation comes along. Some, especially the olives, are hundreds of years old.

Afterwards Jones went off with L&L for a walk along the coast while I busied myself cleaning and mopping the floors as my Christmas present to her. Between the mud and dust that the dogs bring into the house and the hair that they drop so generously, the floors seldom sparkle for more than a few hours. It doesn’t matter how much one cleans or combs the animals, they simply shed a constant rain of hair. When I gaze at my balding pate in the mirror, I reflect that they’re not the only ones.

Tuesday’s as far back as I can remember. I know that we’ve been out to wonderful dinners and enjoyed some lovely wines. Jones arranged with Brigitte at the Coral to supply us with a veal-in-wine dish that served us well for Christmas dinner. Llewellyn brought me a superb bottle of whisky that will be lucky to see the New Year in. Jones has exchanged Christmas gifts with family and neighbours – and taken pleasure in unwrapping ours. She enjoys her Christmases and makes an effort to decorate the house accordingly.

While I appreciate her efforts I can’t say the same. I find myself caught somewhere between disbelief in the tale and disgust at the naked commercialism in its name. It might be different if we had kids and grandkids to conjure up the necessary magic. I stopped doing Christmas gifts at much the same time that I stopped having birthdays, except for the ladies at the parish office and two helpful bankers. Mind you, I still believe in non-birthday and non-Christmas presents.

L&L are due back here on Saturday and return to London on Monday. On Monday night the locals will congregate noisily around the summit of Espargal hill to celebrate the arrival of 2013 and to watch the fireworks lighting up the sky along the coast. The dogs will come crowding into the bedroom, unsettled by the din. Jones, if I know her, will fall asleep before the magic hour. I may stay up to reflect on the good things that have come our way in 2012 and to hope that 2013 brings more - to us all. And so the year ends, and with it this chapter.

Letter from Espargal: 43 of 2012

I had meant to sit down and write a thoughtful Christmas blog but, as happens in this uncertain world, events have simply overwhelmed us. Most of the week has gone into dealing with the serious illness and sudden death of Olive, one of the two widows whom we’ve been assisting for a couple of years.

As she has no family in Portugal, we have been pretty busy, first visiting her as well as keeping her offspring informed – and then dealing with bureaucracy of mortality. There’s never a particularly good time to die but Christmas has to be the worst. Half the world’s on leave and the other half wishes it was.

So I won't pretend that what follows is anything other than random selection of thoughts and pictures. For some of the latter I must thank (Barbara's brother) Llewellyn and Lucia.

They arrived from London on Wednesday morning to spend Christmas with us.

Both are beach lovers. They rented a car as usual and have exploited our warm sunny days at a favourite resort on the coast.

In truth, you would hardly know that it was winter. Temperatures are in the high teens by day and barely drop into single figures overnight.

When parking the car, I still have to take care to lower the windows sufficiently to allow ample fresh air to reach out two inveterate canine travellers. On the day before the winter solstice, I killed two mosquitoes. One was trying to get out of the bedroom window (she did, but not of her own volition).

ALMOND BLOSSOM
Speaking of Christmas – here’s a BIG thank you to the many kind people who have sent us Yuletide cards and other good wishes. I confess that I have sent out no cards this year and we are no closer to the family picture that I’ve been planning to email – although there’s still time.

Special thanks go to Chris Jones for the pictures from South Africa of the Jones family, both resident and visiting, which we have scrutinised. Llewellyn has recently acquired a fancy Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone which, he says, takes better pictures than his camera does. I’ve drawn this advantage to my wife’s attention – albeit not very productively.

We did manage to get up the Coral to mark the 9th birthday celebrations of young Joey. It gave us the opportunity to talk to a neighbour, who switched effortlessly between Portuguese, French and English and admitted to speaking fluent Spanish as well. In my next life I have decided to be a wealthy polyglot.

For the rest, there’s little to be said that I haven’t said before. We all visited the Alte monthly market, where Llewellyn took lots of pictures and we bought our share of nick-knacks.

Our Christmas lights are twinkling from the patio rails.

There’s heavy dew overnight. We slither around the hill with the dogs in the mornings and tramp around again in the evenings, afterwards scraping the mud off our boots.

Barri appeared proudly one day with her first rabbit.

BEAN SPROUTS

Our beans are shooting up, which is nice. Jones is having the neighbours around to drinks this evening. Most of my efforts will go into distracting the dogs who feel (rightly or otherwise) that they should have a key role to play in such events.

PRICKLES HOSES DOWN THE HIRE CAR WHEELS

We look forward eagerly to illustrated Christmas letters from Canada (as well as from other parts of the world).

And we wish you a happy Christmas.

Letter from Espargal: 42 of 2012

Once again, it’s Friday, the rain clouds are bearing down on us, Jones is doing her thing downstairs, the dogs are scattered around the house like cushions and I am sitting down at my computer.

We have been up to Benafim to dump the recycleables, raid the supermarket, refuel the car and leave Christmas gifts for the two wonderfully helpful women who run the parish office. And, of course, to refresh ourselves at the Coral.

So, another week has flown and we’ve precious little to show for it. At least there's no-one we need to impress. I had my last English class of the year on Monday. It’s quite fun as long as one doesn’t take it seriously. As soon as my pupils – all retired or nearly so – get excited, they argue loudly among themselves in Portuguese. I certainly learn a lot even if they don't.

We discussed a Portuguese programme to protect migrating birds from turbine blades at the country’s many wind-farms. On the approach of birds, monitors equipped with radar facilities and computers alert the turbine controllers who shut the turbines down. According to the report, no birds have been killed in Portugal in years, while in neighbouring Spain hundreds have died. We have booked ourselves on a visit to one of these farms early next year.

On Tuesday we went to see the lawyer who has been trying to take some land from one of our plots and attach it to the ruins at the bottom of our property. In practice, this is already the case. We've fenced them off. But on paper it’s a tangle that we still need to get sorted out.

That evening we joined D&D at Anna Karenina. I left at the interval, unimpressed and unable to endure the steady munching of the popcorn consumers. The movie seemed to me a triumph of form over content, with endless gracious entrances, exchanges and exits. Instead, I spent an hour poring over the latest electronics in the adjoining stores, which I did enjoy.

Jones said afterwards that the film had improved and she’d become quite involved. Unlike me, she had read the book and knew more or less what to expect.

Wednesday – forgive the diary format; this is the only way I can recall where the week has gone – I spent a couple of hours sewing up the new cushion covers that Jones has acquired for the dogs. These latest ones have the Leicester Tigers logo all over them, unlike the earlier ones with West Ham United emblazoned across them.

They are all duvet covers, being sold for a song in Loule, presumably the product of some desperate stock sale in the UK. Jones herself has spent many more hours repairing to the damage to other favourite cushions, which are now piled up well away from the pups. The decor- ations at the corners are actually patches.

OLIVE - ARCHIVE
Thursday I took Olive into Faro to sort out her phone bill. To her puzzlement, she has continued receiving bills from Portugal Telecom in spite of transferring to another service. The problem, as I’d ascertained earlier, was that she had originally been allo- cated two numbers, only one of which had been transferred.

Thursday night Jones joined neighbours for dinner at a restaurant. I was feeling slightly under the weather and was more than happy to stay at home with the dogs. Every now and then I wake with sinus pains that persist all day – symptoms I associate with the broken sleep patterns I used to have while working shifts.

I watched TV coverage of the heated debates over women bishops and gay marriage in the UK, over the surge of immigrants into Britain, over independence for Scotland and much else. Folks sure find a lot to disagree about. I felt grateful to have to worry only about how my beans were growing.

Letter from Espargal: 41 of 2012

Friday afternoon: The sun is squinting through the clouds at Benafim across the valley, which is a nice change from the 30mms of rain that drenched Espargal overnight and doused us out on the hillside this morning – welcome and timely though it was. As I sit down at my desk now, newly arisen from a delightful fire-side siesta, the dogs are nudging me for their afternoon outing. OK, first things first.

ONE HOUR LATER:
We have dried off the dogs and changed out of our sodden clothes. That’s to say, I have changed. Jones has gone off, still dripping, to feed her waifs and strays. Pity that our exit coincided with the arrival of large black cloud.

Life at the moment seems to revolve largely around dogs and widows. Both prompted us to visit Portugal Telecom this morning. The first aim was to replace the TV zapper that Barri had discovered and remodeled.

I was really mad when we came across the remains, remonstrating angrily with her and waving the useless device in her face as she cowered in her basket. That won’t stop her from chewing up the next one she finds. It’s just not possible to put everything chewable in the house beyond her reach. And she’s pissing on the patio again, unwilling to go out in the rain.

We also wanted to resolve a problem that Olive is having – continuing to receive bills from PT in spite of having transferred her account elsewhere. Thursday we fetched May from Loule and Olive from Almancil and took them both shopping at Apolonia. (The dogs had to squeeze up a bit but didn’t seem to mind.) Apolonia is a supermarket in a class of its own, much patronised by the expat community.

No more British TV?

I bought a local English paper with a headline story about the (possible) loss in the new year of Iberian access to British satellite TV channels. That would really be a blow. One of the ironies of life is that we get for free the BBC and commercial channels for which UK residents have to pay an annual licence fee. I’d be happy to pay as well if necessary. But I’d hate to lose the signal.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Wednesday Natasha came to clean. It wasn’t easy in the drizzle. She was happy to relieve us of some footwear and an airline bag that we no longer use. One of these days we are going to have to do some serious down-sizing. It’s hard to know where we’ll start.

RUTH'S ROSE

Barbara joined me mid-morning to sow fava beans in our newly-ploughed furrows, along with generous scatterings of blue fertilizer pellets. We completed the task just in time for the drizzle that drifted in after lunch.

Also drifting in came two elegant egrets, keen to seek juicy worms in the rich turf. Barri joyfully chased them away, ignoring my angry yells. When I wag my finger in her face, she adopts a pose of such remorse and repentance as would touch the heart of a loan-shark. But it doesn’t last.

Yet another drifter is the fellow who powers his way across the valley on windless evenings in a motorised wing. It sounds like a small lawn mower. How the pilot gets off the ground and how he lands I've no idea. But he obviously manages both without too much trouble as we see him often enough.

Also on Tuesday, we went to fetch Ermie from the house of our Dutch neighbours, Nicoline and Anneke, who have gone to Thailand to attend Nicoline’s son’s wedding. Ermie will be our guest for the next fortnight or so. The pack has met her often enough before and accepted her return with just a few personal sniffs. Our dogs also love her cushioned cane basket, which is not good news; they’ve long since demolished their own.

This year Loule moved its Christmas fair from an exhibition hall in the industrial zone to the heart of the town. Vendors were lucky with the weather, catching a rare few hours of sunshine. We were happy to wander up the Avenida, supporting the cake sellers and an animal charity.

There was little demand for traditional crafts. Basket weavers stood idle behind their wares.

Jones calls me to supper, a large bowl of salads and veges. It’s what we have most nights and it’s fine by me. We'll watch a new BBC series on “behind the scenes” at Westminster Abbey.

Letter from Espargal: 40 of 2012

BROWN HOUSE, TOP LEFT
If we lived on the south side of Espargal hill we should now be basking in the autumn sunshine we enjoyed there during our morning walk. Regrettably, we don’t. Like most other Espargalians we live on the north side. And up near the summit, where the house is set, the trees are bending sideways under the relentless buffeting of winds that come straight from the Arctic. Or is it Siberia?

For the umpteenth time I breathe a little sigh of gratitude for the wood-burning stove in the centre of the lounge that keeps the house so deliciously warm. The first thing we did on our return from the walk was to renew last night’s fire. The coals from a big log were still glowing. With our heavily insulated walls and roof and double-glazed windows, the house easily retains the warmth. I love it. So do the dogs.

Here I am tending the stove. That’s the silver stack bottom left. What the picture also shows is just how bald I’m getting. (I tried some photographic hair replacement but Picasa wasn't up to it.) This state of affairs brings me no pleasure. I told Fatima, the hairdresser, yesterday, that she ought to be giving me a discount given the reduced labour involved. She replied that I ought to be paying a premium as it took her more time to find the hairs.

LAGOA WINE CO-OP
We were alarmed on our return from a Christmas fair at Lagoa last Saturday to find several of our dogs larking about in the road. They were very pleased with themselves for being so clever. I wasn’t pleased at all. How the hell had they got out? My suspicions fell on my spouse who, in truth, is not always the world’s most security-conscious person.

So I went to check the gates, expecting to find one unlatched. Instead I found them all securely closed - puzzling and concerning. Next day it was the same story. Closer inspection revealed a hole bashed in the fence. Two hours and a sore back later, the hole was patched and the fence reinforced.

The Christmas fair I mentioned was held in the vastness of the old Lagoa wine co-op. The building had already been taken over as an exhibition hall by a group of artists whose work was displayed on a series of room dividers. Stalls had been erected in front of these so that visitors could admire the background art while they hovered over the usual Christmas nick-knacks.

We liked much of the art. Regrettably, most of what we liked ran to four figures while our art purse runs to two or three. In fact, favourite pieces – by disabled artists - cost us barely a tenner each.

We also liked a range of German stainless steel stove/barbecues, cleverly designed to take a variety of grills, woks and pans. As the stoves stand on wheels they can easily be moved about. They also serve as heaters. The downside, as so often with fancy products, was the price tag.

We are not great barbecuers. I make occasional use of a rickety, portable hand-me-down barbecue. There is no ideal site close to the house to erect a decent one. The best places are up around Casa Nada but the results are hardly worth the effort, especially as Jones does our turkey sausages to perfection in the oven.

MAY - ARCHIVE
On Monday May confided to us over lunch that a representative of the security firm that she employs had visited her to say that she needed a new box of electronic tricks and would have to pay several hundred euros up front. When she queried the amount with him, he reduced it on the grounds that she was an old customer. Reluctantly, she had handed over a cheque. It all sounded very fishy. So on Tuesday we drove to the firm’s headquarters to check things out. A member of staff assured me that it was all above board.

Also on Tuesday we went to Salir to follow up a phone call from the electronics shop that was supposed to be ordering us a new satellite receiver (digibox). The assistant said that the €400 euro model we’d ordered was no longer available and that its replacement would cost around €550.

That’s a lot of money for a digibox, even a fancy one, as I pointed out to her. The model concerned was available from Amazon for barely half the price. She shrugged; she wasn’t in a position to negotiate and suggested we talk to the boss.

STUDY
For the moment I think we’ll limp along with the old unit in the study. The hard disk has some corruption, causing intermittent rainbow flashes on recordings; while that’s irritating, it’s not as irritating as coughing up €550. The dodgy digibox brings in the UK radio and TV channels that we listen to and watch most. It is located upstairs. The clever bit is that we can relay the signals through to the bedroom and downstairs using some nifty plug-in sender/receivers.

SENDER ATOP DIGIBOX
At least we could until one of us inadvertently ripped a plug out of the wall. I couldn’t find a replacement receiver online. So I ordered a similar set that I sat down to install one afternoon. Eureka! We no longer have to trek upstairs with supper to watch the night’s TV programmes. Given that it’s now dark well before 18.00, the evenings are long and much lightened by good TV.

On Wednesday I scarified our fields, which had turned green under six inches of flourishing weeds. The wind was freezing. I had to come inside to find an additional jacket. When I muster the courage, I shall attach the plough plates to the scarifier and prepare the ground for the fava (bean) seeds that we sow each year.

Thursday was Olive, shopping and Natasha.

Friday is letter writing, blogging, checking bank accounts and all that stuff. Maybe finishing off that ironing as well. Tonight the Espargal expats gather for dinner at the local for a pre-Christmas do. The buy-more carols are already echoing around the shopping centres. Jesus would have wept.