Letter from Espargal: 35 of 2012

If my writing were to appear a little strange it might be because I am typing on a small, rather cramped Portuguese keyboard that I have borrowed from Inforomba. You may not have come across Inforomba. They’re a computer outfit in Loule, one I’ve been using for the best part of 20 years, and very good too. But their technicians were unable to repair my Microsoft Natural Keyboard after it had taken a bit of a bath the other evening – never mind the details.

MORE JONES SKY PICS

In spite of my efforts to dry it instantly, it squeaked in protest at the treatment and flatly refused to function thereafter. In vain I combed the big electronic stores to find a keyboard with an English layout. Amazon has pledged to deliver a new keyboard to my door within a fortnight, inevitably for a fee. In the meanwhile I am having to use delicate little finger strokes on this Portuguese keyboard. Although all the labels in the keys are in English, a dozen keys are in the wrong places, which is a bit of a pain.

If a moribund keyboard is a nuisance, it’s nothing like the problem that’s caused when one’s cyber security suite accuses one of reneging on one’s licence and closes down. That really pissed me off. For well over a decade I’ve been using Kaspersky and been well satisfied with their services. They come out well in all security reviews. I take out a three-year licence for three computers, one for my desktop, one for my laptop and a third for Olive’s laptop, of which more later.

In this instance, the suite practically accused me of cheating, nor would it accept the activation code. So I fired off a “help” email to Kaspersky and sat back to wait with all the frustration and irritation of those falsely accused. Some 24 hours later, as I was researching the merits and costs of rival security programmes, Kaspersky responded. Their suggested remedy – essentially removing the programme and reinstalling it – seems to have worked, the second time around that is.

Still to be repaired is our channel-losing digibox and our wireless audio-visual transmission system.

GREAT PHONE, THAT!

Under the circumstances you wouldn’t be surprised if we thought that we were having a bad week. We knew we were having a bad week when Jones found Barri reconfiguring the guest mobile phone – her second attempt to modify such equipment. By the time we discovered her, the phone had been altered beyond repair. Worten were happy to sell us a similar model – Barri seems to prefer Nokias – and to change over the battery and chip. Like her half-sister, Mary, Barri is adept at removing items of interest from tables and taking them off for a good chew.

Almost as useless as Barri’s mobile phone was Olive’s old laptop computer. It took an age to do the least task, even opening a simple “text” file. Also, a couple of its keys functioned only intermittently. This made it a real pain to use. Before going on holiday, I had tried with great frustration and no success to install her modem-pen software on it to get her back online.

So while in the UK, with Llewellyn’s assistance, I visited Curry’s store in nearby Southall to buy the least expensive laptop I could find, both to assist Olive and to spare myself. In the event, I bought the third-least expensive, a Lenovo with good specs. I have told Olive that she can borrow it or buy it, as she prefers. I installed the Kaspersky security suite on it (which seems to have prompted my own subsequent troubles) and the modem-pen. Olive is now back on line and very pleased to be so.

We took her into Faro on Tuesday to sort out a bureaucratic tangle arising from services that remained in her former husband’s name. (John died nearly two years ago.) And on Friday we returned to take her shopping and to resolve – successfully for once – a minor problem with her new phone. (Well, it was minor in that it was easy to resolve but major in the sense that the phone wasn’t working.) On the communications front, at least, Olive is now a pretty contented person.

My English class last Monday saw the return of several old pupils, two new ones and the informal handing over to me of the traditional gift that is presented at the end-of-season banquet to the teachers – all volunteers. (I hadn’t been present.) This time it’s a fine piece of glassware, although it’s hard to know what we will do with it as it’s not really a jug or a vase and the display cabinets are full. While I take my English class, Jones takes May shopping at the Pingo Doce store across the road from the parking garage in Loule.

Interruption there to settle a protesting Prickles in one of the study chairs. His normal doggy bed on another chair has been occupied by an overflowing Mary instead. Believe it or not, there are rules that we enforce about which chairs the dogs are allowed to use.

While they’re not permitted on the leather sofas they are allowed on the old armchairs, albeit somewhat reluctantly on Jones’s part.

It’s been a wet week, delivering some two inches of really welcome and badly needed rain. You wouldn’t know this if you crossed the Algibre river bridge as there isn’t the least sign of water below.

It’s all being soaked up by the dry earth. However, the Espargal hillsides have had a real soaking and the dogs return from their walks with their paws caked in mud and stones.

In an effort to spare her floors, Jones has taken to washing their paws down with a hose. I then dry them. The method works after a fashion. We had earlier tried dipping the dogs’ paws in a water-filled tray but at this they drew the line.

Jones has spent some time trying to waterproof the kennel of neighbouring Maggie – mother of three of our dogs - whom she visits each evening with a treat. Maggie had her barrel accommodation upgraded when we took down a spare kennel, which her owners, Joachim and Maria, were happy to accept.

Here you see the couple hard at work shelling their almond crop. Joachim cracks the nuts on his cut-to-measure tree-limb table; Maria sorts the kernels from the shells.

Last night, after a most pleasant supper at the Coral, we attended our first (and probably our last) Portuguese political meeting. The people of Benafim parish are up in arms.

It seems that the parish is likely to be merged with two comparatively distant parishes. What’s really pissed the people off is the manner in which it’s being done, without consultation, at the behest of one or two politicians. So the several hundred folk who turned out in the sports club hall were mad as hell and let the politicians know it in no uncertain fashion.

Whether it will make any difference remains to be seen. The Portuguese government is set on reducing the country’s several thousand parish councils by more than half with a view to increasing efficiency and reducing costs. It’s not a popular policy. In these austere times few policies are.

Letter from London: October 2012

Okay, this is London and we're shortly about to leave it to return to Portugal. Luckily I checked our tickets this morning and found that I'd booked us back on 20 November instead of October. Hoo boy! This is the kind of thing it's not fun or cheap to discover shortly before leaving for the airport. Meanwhile......

This is Edgar, who is one of the principal residents at the home of Llewellyn and Lucia in Hanwell, London, where we stayed. Edgar is very big. It is fortunate that he is mild-mannered and very well disposed towards guests. He never fails to attract attention in the pubs he often visits with his humans.

Next meet Hazel. Hazel is not small, except by comparison with Edgar. She too likes guests and encourages them to scratch her head when they're not otherwise engaged. The pair of them are permitted to make themselves at home on the family sofa, except when the humans are having a TV meal there.

Tigger is one of the two household cats. He is very outgoing, loves company and is liable to join humans in bed in night where the first indication of his presence can be needles in one's leg. Tigger's companion, Charles Brown, is somewhat camera-shy and declined to appear on the blog.

The humans and canines in the household are very fond of one another. The humans take the dogs walking twice a day. The dogs are exceptionally well behaved. This is generally true of the humans as well. It's surprising how many creatures can fit amicably on the same sofa.

Llewellyn is a high-tech sort of a person who possesses every manner of electrical wizardry, all of which comes together in ways that ordinary mortals are unable to fathom. He is often to be found on the sofa, issuing computer commands to distant pieces of equipment, which sing or dance accordingly.

Barbara was wont to make herself comfortable in an easy chair in the lounge over a magazine or a conversation. Although it is not evident from the picture, Llewellyn has done an enormous amount of work in the living room following the purchase of the house last December.

He is also an excellent cook and is often to be found in the adjoining kitchen, where Barbara now stands. From the kitchen, a long narrow garden leads some 50 metres to the River Brent, which joins the Grand Union Canal a little further along.

The house is brilliantly situated for bus, tube and rail. It's barely 15 minutes into Paddington on the Heathrow Connect train that stops at Hanwell station, 10 minutes' walk away - 9 if the park is still open.

Among the first things we did on arrival in London was to replenish our Oyster cards, which serve for all the above means of travel. And in four days we did a great deal of hopping on and off of buses. On several occasions, younger passengers offered us their seats, a gesture as kind as it is unsettling.

And we took a good many tubes (metro/underground)and trains as well. Lucia, here pictured beside me, commutes two hours a day into and out of central London - a journey that will shrink to a fraction of that time when the Crossrail project is completed in a few years' time.

Here we are outside the Royal Academy in Picadilly, where Barbara and Llewellyn had spent a couple of hours at the Bronze exhibition. I spent them in the nearby Hatchards bookstore, where I acquired a copy of Spell it out, David Crystal's excellent account of how English spelling came to be so complicated.

Church Street market is a stroll away from our old London lodgings in Maida Vale, once a favourite destination for Barbara on an off-day from her job at NBC. Strange how all the stall holders look and sound so alike. At least a dozen of them were selling suitcases.

John Betjeman's statue stands proudly in the stunning concourse of St Pancras International station, where the Eurostar begins and ends its journeys to the Continent. We watched one of the trains gliding in to stop beside us - still impressive, however many years on.

Equally impressive is the new concourse on neighbouring Kings Cross, similarly surrounded by smart shops and cafes. We refreshed ourselves at the Patisserie Valerie where the staff, as so often in London, were from the European mainland, frequently from Poland.

Richard and Penny, friends hailing from way back, have recently completed a project to establish an outside studio room at their Islington home, situated below what was once their raised garage. It's very smart, overlooking the courtyard that separates it from the house.

Access is gained via a passage which also serves as an artwork in itself. Richard and Penny are both interested in art and supportive of local artists. They are rightly proud of this particular project although, they confess, it cost them years of sweat and tears as well as lots of lucre. (Those rings are part of the art!)

Another outing was to the new Westfield shopping centre close to the BBC's vast old headquarters in Shepherds Bush. I fear that the great variety of upmarket shops will drain away custom from central London, as has been the pattern elsewhere. Why go into the West End when it's all available here?

Two old friends from SABC days, Malcolm and Gary, have recently moved to Eastbourne, where we went to catch up on old times and admire their new quarters. Our admiration was sincere - they made a brilliant buy - and we liked the local pub just as much. Time to head to the airport. Enough unto the day!

Letter from northern Portugal

Tuesday morning last we gave the dogs a hug, waved Anne and Ian goodbye and took the road to Guarda in northern Portugal where we checked into the Residencial Santos, the interior design of which we liked a lot. It was all great stone walls, floating timber staircases and nooks to sit and browse. Pity that they'd given away the special room we'd booked.

The residencial was just around the corner from the old city, which featured the usual large square and towering cathedral. The area had a tired look about it, as if it had succumbed to the economic crisis. Several of the shops had signs seeking new occupants.

The square was clearly a popular gathering area. We seated ourselves at a cafe to watch the world go past. Jones clicked away with the camera. That was before I discovered that I hadn't brought the second half of the cord to recharge the battery.

I particularly liked this picture. The two girls sat exchanging news for a time in that intense way that women have, before consulting those all-important mobile phones.

In the centre of the square two large dogs lay sleeping in the afternoon sun, ignoring the commotion of traffic and passage of pedestrians around them. They were obviously very much at home on what they considered their turf. They were not so fast asleep that they didn't spring to life on the approach of another large dog,

a handsome retriever sort.

The pair of them followed the retriever - here hidden behind the car mirror - hackles raised, for several minutes, making it clear that he was anything but welcome. I feared the fur would fly.

But the resident canines contented themselves with butt-sniffing, huffing and puffing, and having the final word at the urinal. As dogs are wont to say, he who pisses last pisses longest.

As usual, we wandered the streets of the old town.

Shops came in three classes: empty, selling upmarket women's clothes, or given over to supplying refreshments of one sort of another. One street featured a string of restaurants. They weren't doing very well. We were the only clients in the first we visited, and shared another with one other diner.

A big new shopping centre on the outskirts of the city had clearly stolen much of their custom.

Just around the corner from the residencial, stairs led up through an ancient tower, in the corner of which was this unusual shrine.

Guarda is the highest city in Portugal and liable to extremes of weather. We found the October evenings surprisingly mild and I wished for either a fan or an air-conditioner to stir the air in the room at night. The best we could do was to leave the window open, inviting in the street noise as well as a breeze.

What the residencial also lacked was private parking. The nearest free parking, about 50 yards away, was much sought after, with drivers sitting and waiting for a spot to come free. We were lucky on the two days we stayed in the city to find parking with relative ease.

From Guarda we crossed the Spanish border to visit Ciudad Rodrigo, a city as ancient and brimful of violent history as any in this region. The central square is a good place to start, with coffee and a map donated by a helpful Spanish tourist. The map didn't help much nor could we easily distinguish one yellow stone building from another.

The old city lies totally within the battlements that, sadly, failed to protect its inhabitants from the French in 1810 or the British two years later. Both attacking armies pounded holes in the walls before sacking the place. Being sacked was something that the inhabitants, down the centuries, endured too often for comfort.

In one of the squares, a Spanish film or TV team was making a movie. Dirt had been scattered around to hide the cobbles and actor priests went through their lines in front of the camera while the rest of the team and the public huddled round.

It's a world neither of us misses.

Ancient stone animal carvings - dating back several thousand years - are a feature of northern Iberia, with religious and iconic symbolism. The pig is particularly popular, a much prized walking larder. This specimen might have been carved yesterday for all the impact the millennia had made on him.

From Guarda we drove north to the little town of Mirando do Douro where I'd made a four-day reservation at the Estalagem Santa Catarina overlooking the Douro River and a hydro-electric dam. The view speaks for itself. The road to Spain ran across the dam before coiling up the hillsides in both directions.

"Estalagem" is a class of comfortable hotels, generally set in the countryside. Ours was certainly comfortable - spacious and laid back. Our only complaint was about the spring-loaded doors that slammed all day and half the night - a failing that I pointed out to the management.

The second day of our stay in Miranda brought thousands of Spaniards streaming across the river into the town on what, we gathered, was a Spanish holiday. They descended on Miranda for its textiles; there are dozens of shops selling them - linen, blankets, towels and clothes. Most visitors clutched bags of purchases.

Just above the hotel lies the walled old city, where numbers of Mirandese still live. This gargoyle dating back a few centuries, indicated that the residence was a house of easy virtue - or at least a venue where instruction was available in the arts of love. What's new?

We had puzzled over the double signage in Miranda in what appeared to be Portuguese and Spanish. It wasn't Spanish, the museum curator explained, but Mirandese, a language close to Spanish which, she said, was spoken in the surrounding villages and had been recognised as Portugal's second tongue.

From Miranda it's a bit over an hour to Branganca, where we headed as ever to the historical area. By this stage, our camera battery had given up the ghost and we were dependent on my mobile phone for pictures. A large statue at the foot of Branganca castle paid homage to Alphonso the 1st (or 2nd?), who evidently did something useful.

It was almost certainly something to do with chasing out the Moors, although the Christians waged bloody wars among themselves for control of their dominions. Little wonder that people built walls so thick and high in the hope of protecting their interests.

Our final Spanish excursion was to the city of Zamora, a city much warred over by Christians and Moors for the better part of three centuries. The citadel has been restored most attractively, and the ancient castle with its keep was a magnet for scores of visitors, who paraded around its ramparts.

This area of Portugal and neighbouring Spain is marked by the construction of unusual stone walls. Large stones are set in the earth as pillars, with smaller stones subsequently packed between them. There's no sign of concrete to bind the stones. Even so, the walls seem to shrug off the years.