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.
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