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.