Letter from Espargal: 21 of 2012

This week, apart from trying to win the Euromillions, I have endeavoured to stay cool – with minimal success on both fronts. The Met Office warned us last week that this one would be a scorcher and they spoke truly. It’s been horrible and quite enervating. There are times when I’ve had barely enough energy to stagger from my swivel chair to my recliner for an extended siesta.

Lisbon and the north have been even horribler and conditions in the Alentejo, just across the mountains, have been unspeakable. This region simmers in summer and freezes in winter. Little wonder that so few of the slaves condemned to work the mines there in ages past lived to enjoy their pensions! An email just in from the Portuguese Met Office (with which I’ve registered) informs us that March, April and May this year were hotter and drier than average. I could have told them that myself.

As I was saying, I have been doing my best to avoid melting into a puddle and then evaporating. The fan in the study whirrs back and forth through a continuous arc with a click-squeak, click-squeak to mark its passage. The shutters are closed against the sun. Raymond sprawls on the tiles under Jonesy’s desk, the coolest place that he can find. Ono and Mary prefer something a little softer close by.

Jones herself, whose comfort zone extends into higher temps than mine, doesn’t seem as afflicted although she's gone decidedly summery. (I know some people will argue that like other females, she simply doesn’t make a fuss!) I literally break out in spots. There’s a spectacular rash of pink itchy lumps orbiting my tummy and bottom and extending up my sides. At first Jonesy put them down to bedbugs or worse – washing everything in sight just in case – but these spots come and go with the heat not the bugs.

Speaking of which - the mosquito squadrons have arrived. I abhor mosquitos as much as I hate the heat they thrive in. Although the blighters will ignore a tender Jonesian limb flung across the bed, they will burrow under the blankets to snack on a Benson ankle. At night, I turn on both the air-conditioner and the fan, the latter to confuse the mosquitos. I find this works quite well.

The best place to stay cool is in the car. We almost get shoved aside by the torrent of dogs trying to clamber in with us. Tuesday morning we took Barri along for her rabies injection, as required by law, before delivering all seven doggy log-books to the parish offices, which issue the annual licences. Jones supposes that we are among the few people in Espargal who license their dogs. It may be so; I don’t know. Certainly, nobody has ever come around asking to see the documents. Maybe that’s because visitors get such a barky welcome.

It’s hard to know whether we’re training the dogs or they us. For ages, Ono has slept in the bedroom and Raymond in the study upstairs, with the rest either downstairs or on the enclosed patio. Then Mary made it clear that she also wanted to be an upstairs dog and prevailed – against Jones’s wishes. Since our return from holiday, Raymond has insisted on sleeping beside the bed, where Jones falls over him at night. And now young Barri is asserting her rights. Giving way is the price of peace. Otherwise it’s scratchings, whimperings and whinings. I guess it’s like raising kids.

Wednesday we drove to Faro to get Vodafone to register the new 4G-compatible sim-cards that they’d sent us in the post. They warned us that our current mobile phone sim-cards would become unusable when 4G is switched on at the end of the month. I don’t pretend to understand what difference another G will make but we’ve inserted the new cards and they work well enough.

Still on matters vaguely technical, I was quite surprised to get a couple of emails from a neighbour, recommending an obscure slimming product. But since I’ve made no secret of my attempts to shed a few pounds, I thought no further of them. Until, that is, I got a third email plugging another weird substance. I alerted the neighbour, who had unwittingly become the victim of an Adware infection that was firing off emails in his name. The interesting part of the story is that his slimming emails went to other people as well, including a portly friend who is exceedingly sensitive about her shape. He hasn’t heard back from her.

Another story comes from Barbara’s brother, Llewellyn, who flew to Prague to join his wife, who is there on business. He stopped at a cash machine at Prague airport to draw the local currency, before catching a bus into town. Several stops along the route, he became aware that his suitcase was no longer accompanying him. The poor fellow leapt off the bus and made his way back to the airport as fast as he could.

By the time he arrived back, most of the desks had closed for the night, and he could find no-one to help him in English. Nor could he remember exactly where the cash machine had been located. His attention was drawn to a group of officials at the far end of the terminal – where he found both the cash machine and his suitcase – surrounded by some very suspicious and displeased policemen. Llewellyn says they were ready to give him a mouthful but were moved to pity by his obvious delight and relief.

Wednesday night: We’re sad about Portugal’s exit from the Euro 2012 football finals. They did a great job in holding Spain to a 0-0 draw, and it was fate rather than feet that finally decided the outcome. At least they can return with their heads held high.

Thursday night: Germany out! I can scarcely believe it. Sorry Berliners! We know how you feel. If the Italians are as sprightly again on Sunday, the final should be a humdinger.

Friday: It’s marginally cooler. Hallelujah! There’s a brisk wind moaning through the shutters and tousling the tree tops. Jones is doing her thing downstairs. With Natasha’s departure for a holiday in Russia, the chores have grown. And we’re having the neighbours around for tea this afternoon. I will have to cut my siesta short. Life is tough.

Letter from Espargal: 20 of 2012

DAWN OF THE LONGEST DAY

If I were the ruler of the world – an unlikely prospect, but still – I should issue several decrees. Broadcasters would be fined a week’s wages every time they said “of course” or “the thing is” - and people who constantly describe everything

as “amazingly” this or “incredibly” that would grow pigs’ ears until they ceased. In fact, I should set about improving humanity in all sorts of ways, which can probably wait until next week.

If Jones were ruler of the world, husbands would face all kinds of penalties for failing to hang up their clothes or tidy their desks, among other faults.

HILLSIDE ABOVE ALTE

Not a great deal has happened this week, well, other than the Portuguese football team getting through to the semi-finals of Euro 2012. Tonight – which will almost certainly be ‘last night’ or ‘the night before’ when you read this – Greece is playing Germany in a match that will have very little to do with sport.

A voice from downstairs says: “I hope Greece wins,” but then Jones always supports the underdog. I have to balance any such sympathies with the interests of my German family, who spoil us madly during our visits to Berlin, a state of affairs I should hate to disturb.

As I was saying, it’s been a quiet week although, to be sure, not entirely uneventful. For instance, May had a turn during lunch in a busy restaurant and Jones, who was sitting beside her, had to support her for the best part of half an hour – not for the first time. As there was nothing I could do to help, other than make suggestions, I consumed the excellent salmon that had arrived on my plate. I was negotiating the sale of May’s dessert to diners at the adjoining table, with whom we had struck up a conversation, when May recovered her senses and devoured it herself - a case of all’s well that ends well.

Followers of my diet will be pleased to learn that I was able to record definite progress by the end of last week. (I’m still processing the actual figures.) The graph appears to have gotten a little bumpy of late but then with all such enterprises one has to expect a few bumps in the road. One is not disheartened; it can only be a matter of time until a sylphlike me emerges from the somewhat portly cocoon.

WAIT FOR MY COMMAND

Another work in progress is the training of the animals. After dinner in the evening, the dogs have to sit down on the cobbles while I place a special biscuit just in front of each dog. Each treat is accompanied with the strict instruction: “Leave!”


The dogs are not supposed to eat the biscuits until I give the say-so, generally a matter of 5 or 6 seconds after the last biscuit had been set down. If I wait any longer, Prickles begins to squeak with anxiety, which the other dogs take as the signal to consume their treats.

Barri is still learning the ropes but she’s coming along. She also hasn’t learned yet that she’s a girl and that girls do it differently but Russ, her main playmate, doesn’t seem to mind. Russ is a very good-natured fellow.

The night-time arrangement is proving more challenging, with some of the dogs in and others out – with out-ones wanting to come in and in-ones wanting to go out, along with whinings and scratchings on the door.

Jones says she sometimes feels we are being held to ransom. Once Barri grows a little older, we shall be able to leave the back door open overnight as we did before and then they can come and go as they please. As yet, we can’t trust her unsupervised inside the house as she is a great chewer of anything to hand.

Speaking of the door, it took me the best part of an afternoon to fasten the “Fatima-hand knocker”. Had it been a wooden door, the job would have taken five minutes – just drill and fasten. But the knocker had to be attached to the thin metal plate of the front door.


The only sensible place for it was beside the locks, where the screw protruded uncomfortably and it took me an age to hacksaw off the protrusion. I ended with cut fingers and a sense of ill-being. A coat of paint to the door and the knocker the following day – I had to wait for the wind to die down – improved matters all round.


We lunched one day with our friends, Eddie and Lesley, who have put their home in the countryside north of Messines on sale. If you are interested in a gorgeous house in the Portuguese hills, you can read all about it at casamargarida.weebly.com

During our walk this morning, Jones informed me that something bad had happened. It emerged that her windbreaker had dipped into the mid-point bucket of water from which the dogs drink; and the camera, which was in the pocket of her windbreaker, had taken a ducking. As if to make the point, the camera had frozen. I tried to reassure her that it would probably work again when it dried. (It’s no good telling my wife: “It doesn’t matter, we’ll buy another one.” She doesn’t want another one; she wants the frozen one to unfreeze.)

WILD DELPHINIUM

I removed the battery and the memory-card to let everything dry out. But it didn’t help. Last chance was to recharge the battery, which I did on our return home. Eureka! The camera works again and Jones is delighted. She has taken lots of pictures of flowers, sunrises and sunsets – her favourite things – which you may admire. (What browser do you use? I find the blog pictures won’t download properly on Safari although there’s no problem with Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.)

As ever, she has been spending long hours tending and watering her garden. I got out the chain-saw to remove a couple of low branches from a wild olive that were hindering her access, and piled them on the back of the tractor for shredding.




Note how the tractor shines. It took me the best part of an hour to hose down first the engine and then the bodywork to remove the dust and dirt accumulated while cleaning up the fields. I'm not sure why it feels so much better to be driving a bright and shiny vehicle, but it does.

Letter from Espargal: 19 of 2012

It’s Friday again and the wind that has driven us to distraction all week is is rattling the shutters. Fridays are different. On Friday the syndicate bets on the Euromillions lottery. We wake up potential millionaires and we retire poorer than we rose. But experience has not served to extinguish hope.

THE GARDENER
Sometimes I talk to Jones about how a (vanishingly unlikely) big win would affect our lives. The answer is hardly at all. I can't think what we'd splash out on. The irony is that so many winners are driven from their homes and communities by the ensuing hue and cry, to seek comfortable anonymity elsewhere.

We noted with interest recent comments by Sue Townsend, the author who grew rich on Adrian Mole's Diary. She confesses that she struggled to come to terms with her subsequent fame. As to her wealth, she found that people resented it both when she gave them money and when she didn’t.

Speaking of which, it’s been an expensive month – and not just the credit card bills rolling in from our May holiday. June brings car tax, car insurance and car service charges, along with the unholy costs of getting our animals vaccinated/spayed.

Barri, to our delight, took barely 24 hours to recover from her operation, renewing her growly mock fights with (half-brother) Russ and effortlessly leaping the fence into the park. After a morning walk, Jonesy secured Russ and Mary while I took the electric clippers to them, shaving off great wads of hair. Both are long-haired and really suffer in the heat.

WATER BOTTLES - MID-WALK REFRESHMENT

Our good turn for the year was to pay for the spaying of a Barri’s mother, Maggie, a neighbour’s bitch, who was forever falling pregnant. The operation was in our own interests. Three of her offspring have come our way and, much as we love them, we can’t handle any more.

ANOTHER JONES SKY

Monday brought the last English classes of the year. These normally last an hour – from 15.00 to 16.00. But I’ve been starting at 14.00 for a while to compensate for those missed during our travels. We troop downstairs midway for refreshments at the coffee shop across the road, flinging open the classroom windows for air as we leave.

FROM MY CLASS

Our classroom is small and lacks air conditioning, which is a bind in the hot months when we have to choose between being stifled or drowned out (by the traffic outside or the class next door).

Tuesday we accompanied Maggie and her owner to the vet, as mentioned.

Wednesday we ran around. First stop was the Social Security offices where I had to settle long outstanding fines amounting to two euros something for the late online payment of Natasha’s monthly social security. Employers of domestic labour are obliged to pay this tax between the 10th and the 20th of the following month. I didn’t even know about the fines until the accountant traced them; they went back several years.

In the afternoon, I had a rare bit of luck. I was due to have minor surgery this coming week at a hospital in Faro for a long-standing ailment. The operation had been booked in April but the condition had improved in the interim to the degree that the surgeon – who saw me without an appointment - thought the operation unnecessary. I thanked him and fled. There are times when you don't want a second opinion.

That evening I celebrated with a large whisky, my first drink since I set about losing some weight. It didn’t taste as good as I expected. And, having set my course, I haven’t missed the daily beers nor wine with supper. As to any progress, it’s hard to know. It’s too early to take any comfort from the scales.

The BBC has just launched a new series entitled: The Men who Made us Fat. To my regret I missed the programme last night (although I hope to be able to view it in due course on the BBC iPlayer, to which I’ve just subscribed). I was fascinated to read The Guardian’s review, which starts by informing us that Britons are typically 40 pounds heavier than they were 50 years ago – and why! It’s worth a read.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat

DOG GAMES

Still on iPad, I’ve downloaded half a dozen books – so quick and easy – that I’m gradually making my way through. It's brilliant just to reach down beside the bed during a night-time waking hour and pick up the self-illuminating iPad for a read that disturbs neither my wife nor my dog.

Natasha spent all of Wednesday here doing the windows before returning on Thursday afternoon to clean downstairs as usual. Next week is her last until August, when she returns from holiday in Russia. I spent some time online with her, searching for the cheapest flights and dates.

It’s a tribute to her discipline and house-keeping skills that for the second year running she’s found the resources to take herself and her son home. The journey starts at Loule bus station at 01.00 – thence via Lisbon and Madrid to Moscow. We tried to check her in online but discovered that Iberia permits this for just the 24 hours prior to departure.

SEEN AT THE HARDWARE STORE - GUESS WHAT FOR!

Friday we stopped off at the Coral for coffee and toast before making a grocery and hardware run. Celso and Brigitte have just relaunched their dishes of the day, a fact that they are anxious to bring to the attention of all concerned. All concerned, please note. Your custom will be appreciated.

I haven't mentioned the long hours that Jones has continued to lavish on her garden, nor mine with either the strimmer or the spray. But it's these, as ever, that have taken up most of our week. Also, the Euro 2012 football championships have occupied rather a lot of my evenings.



The Portuguese flag flies proudly from our upstairs patio but the team will have to improve on its performance if it hopes to go through to the quarter-finals. As I type, England and Sweden are 2-2 and my nerves are frayed.

Letter from Espargal: 18 of 2012

SUNSET OVER ESPARGAL: Llewellyn

Hello from a sunny, breezy Espargal. Mid-morning: we are back from the vet, where we took young Barri to be spayed. I wish there were a way to explain to one’s pets why such visits and procedures are necessary. All we can do is to lavish attention and affection on her when we fetch her again this afternoon.

Also with us, to get their annual jabs, were the big fellows, Raymond and Bobby, neither of whom can see the point of the exercise. Both were deeply distrustful of the young vet who had to administer the twin injections and growled their displeasure as he approached, syringe in hand. I tried to reassure them as I grasped them tightly, just in case. Apart from expressing their feelings, however, they were well behaved and the visit took place without undue upset.

The same was true earlier in the week when it was the turn of the other four dogs. Next year we’ll ask the vet to come to the house instead – somewhat more expensive but so much simpler!

ABIDING MEMORY OF PICO MOUNTAIN

We’ve been back from holiday a week. As usual, our house-sitters, Terry and Margaret, did a brilliant job of looking after the zoo. After seeing them off at the airport, we plunged into the jungle of catch-up tasks that inevitably await us – washing, correspondence, banking, bills, lessons and like. In spite of our best efforts, it takes a couple of days to sort ourselves out, unpack and heave the suitcases back up into the cupboards.

Since then Jones has been spending most of her time getting her garden into its summer trim. She has barely come inside the house. Her barrow creaks under an enormous load of weeds that awaits dumping on to the compost mountain outside the gates. She has been carrying armfuls of the same across there.

One evening, she couldn’t find her mobile phone; I rang it and we followed its “buzzing” to the compost, where she discovered it under a heap of weeds – none the worse for wear, fortunately.

For my part I’ve been ploughing, strimming and spraying to get the fields – mine and a neighbour’s - back under control.

We returned to find the terrain a metre deep in spring growth, a veritable palette of flowers, weeds, prickles and burs. The burs are the worst. They attach themselves gleefully to the long-haired dogs, in spite of grooming I’ve inflicted on the animals, and are the very devil to remove. So are the harpoon-shaped grass-seeds. Nature doesn’t miss a trick.

I take an extended siesta after lunch before returning to the fray in the late afternoon. We generally work until nine before coming inside to enjoy one of Jones’s mega-salads for supper.

THE GOOD LIFE: Llewellyn

Speaking of which – for the umpteenth time in my life I have decided to try to do something about my profile, which has been imperceptibly rounding out for some time. The trigger was a comment from one of my pupils, who had been absent from class for a while and who noted my more portly appearance. But his observation merely underlined a growing unease that I’ve been feeling myself, aggravated by occasional unexpected (uncomplimentary) glances in the mirror.

I'M NOT MENDING IT AGAIN

My wife is deeply sceptical about the likely outcome, pointing out that my age, my genes and my record are all against me. It’s not that my record is hopeless. I have scored one or two notable successes. The problem has always been maintaining the good work. It’s so easy to slide back into one’s old habits. Stay tuned, as they say!

AZORES WAVE

I was pleased to note this morning that the local press had published my letter (“It Hurts!”) about our hire-car experience in the Azores. I’ve taken every opportunity and avenue, with due discretion, to spread the bad news, and I shall continue doing so. I’m still sore. Being ripped off leaves a bruise that takes a long time to heal.

Beware the latest email scam – emails from people pretending to be Fedex and other courier firms, with a nasty trojan in the accompanying attachment. I’ve had a couple already. There are woeful websites with the experience of unfortunate recipients who’ve opened them, generally because they were expecting a parcel.

Mid-week we took the car in to Honda for its annual service – well deserved. Our odyssey through Spain and Portugal added nearly 3,000kms to the clock, with never a missed stroke or a murmur – except on my part when we lost ourselves in convoluted city centres. Still, we both enjoyed the touring and Jones has suggested an area of northern Portugal for our next venture – hopefully with updated GPS disks.

FARMER WITH AZOREAN CATTLE DOG

What I liked as much as anything about the Portuguese destinations was our ability to converse with people. We (mainly me) chatted to barmen, restaurateurs, passers-by, waiters, receptionists, sales-ladies, whale-spotters and you name it. It makes life so much easier and more pleasant. I really missed the ability to do the same in Spain.

PYRAMID ORCHID - Terry Ferrett

Spain, both its empty exchequer and its bankrupt banks, has been much in the news – not that you would need telling. Madrid’s denials that the banks will need a bailout are received with growing scepticism and falling ratings. I confess that I await with some nervousness the outcome of the Greek elections due on June 17. For if Greece leads a Mediterranean exit from the euro, life could get quite exciting. I would not look forward to the reinstatement of the old Portuguese currency. Whatever its problems, the euro has been a boon for us.