Letter from Espargal: 11 of 2013

Good Friday morning! The weatherman who promised us a thoroughly damp and dull weekend would seem to be keeping his word. Beyond the trees around the house the world has dissolved into the mist. The weather is at least in keeping with the religious mood of the day. There’s a small cheer-up fire in the stove, which helps to dry the washing hanging from a rack overhead.


The dogs, who normally agitate for their morning walk, are content to stay on their mats and cushions. (Note 1: our dogs are “who” dogs rather than “which” dogs; Note 2: we once brought home half a dozen usable cushions from a sofa dumped beside refuse bins, on which the dogs now lie. Barbara subsequently re-covered them and frequently washes the covers. In fact, she frequently washes just about anything that isn’t glued down.)

MY BEANS
The week has had its ups and downs. At least we got one thing settled after months of faffing around. It concerned medical treatment by the state. Time was when EU countries treated one another’s citizens medically without fussing about payment. Then a while back, rules changed and expats were required to perform a range of bureaucratic gymnastics in order to qualify for (semi-)free treatment.

BORAGE
Early in the year Jones got a letter from the Portuguese authorities saying that she was required to produce a form from the UK state pension provider. A first visit to the social security offices in Loule – dozy lady with a bad cold - led us on a wild goose chase.


A second visit – bald, better informed man - proved more helpful, although not much. We phoned the pension people in the UK who eventually sent Barbara the required form and on Thursday we took it in to social security, along with all the relevant documents we could think of.


On the advice of neighbours, we went to the department in Faro, the regional capital, rather than Loule. Faro has instituted an impressive “one-stop citizens’ shop” on the top floor of its renovated market, where all bureaucracy can be dealt with at a range of desks.

After a 30-minute wait, our number came up and a young man took a look at our file. One document caught his attention. “You already qualify for state medical treatment,” he informed Barbara, holding it up for her to see. “None of this new stuff is necessary.” So we came home again, muttering to ourselves.

JONESY SKY
I should add that we have not made use of state facilities, which are invariably crowded and under great pressure. We have limited medical insurance and visit a private GP who has sent us to private medical institutions for any tests or treatment. But on the “you never know” basis we thought it wise to secure the right to state treatment as well.


We came home via the Algarve Forum shopping centre on the outskirts of the city so that I could talk to Vodafone, our mobile phone service. While on my recent travels I ran into difficulties linking to “roaming” services, both in Germany and South Africa. And, alarmingly, I found my sim-card failing to accept my PIN after coming out of “airplane mode”. Vodafone have inserted a new sim-card (with the same number), which – they and I hope - will resolve the problem.

We enjoyed one evening with Celso and his two children at the Hamburgo. He is shortly to leave them behind when he goes to France to join Brigitte, who has found a house there but not yet a job. Elene, sixteenish, wants to remain in Portugal. Young Joey will stay here until the end of the school term. We are sad for them all, victims of the “crise”.

ROCK OF SUFFERING
During one of our damp pee and pooh outings in the park, while descending a shallow bank, I lost my footing on slippery ground and crashed painfully on to the rocks at the base. It took me several minutes to decide which parts of me were broken (none as it turned out), which bruised (several) and which merely grazed (my right arm), all while trying to dissuade the dogs from licking me to death.

JONES CLUTCHING WEEDS
Even so, in the sympathy stakes my horse was a non-runner. My wife continues to heal slowly and painfully from the canine attack that she suffered on March 8. It will take a few weeks yet.

Happy Easter!

Letter from Espargal: 10 of 2013

BARBARA SKY PICS
I got back home from South Africa last Sunday evening after 36 hours on the road to a warm welcome from my wife and a whirlwind welcome from the dogs. The plane from Frankfurt to Lisbon was 90 minutes late because of a snow storm at Frankfurt airport.


We had to sit around for most of that time waiting to be de-iced. And the train on the last leg from Lisbon to Loule was 40 minutes late because flooding on the line reduced it to a crawl. Still, I made it, in spite of the weather impediments.


PRICKLES - AVOIDING THE ANTI-DOG TRAPS
For the record, I got a lift from Bren’s assistant, Julene, as far as Pretoria. Then I took the fancy Gautrain from there to the airport. The train is something else.

It’s most impressive and should help to reduce the motorway crawl misery between Pretoria and Johburg. I could hardly credit the vast spread of development over what used to be veld separating the two cities.


Let me interrupt myself here to say that my niece, Micaela, who had fetched me from the airport the previous weekend, was attending a big horse show in the north of the country. To her delight, her horse, ridden by a top equestrian, won the open competition, an achievement that brought her an offer for the animal that she could hardly refuse.


As sad as she is to see the horse go, its upkeep has been painfully expensive and the proceeds of the sale will be welcome. Micaela runs her own business, selling upmarket equestrian equipment to the horsey community.

At the airport, I had the pleasure of catching up with Barbara’s brother, Robbie, and wife Carol, over a light lunch at a hotel. I was grateful to have Robbie as a guide. Little old Jan Smuts has morphed into a vast Oliver Tambo, reminiscent of the great European airports.

Outside on the apron there were jumbos lined up for Africa, preparing for their overnight flights northwards. The giant Lufthansa A380 bringing me home was waiting beside another belonging to Air France and somebody’s stretch 747.


It was good to get home. Barbara was particularly pleased to see me. No only had she been looking after the ranch single-handed for the previous week, she had done so with both legs in bandages after being attacked in the street by a dog. Kindly neighbours ran her into hospital twice for treatment in my absence. One of them, Liz, a former nursing sister, is changing her bandages twice a week.


Jonesy is still walking awkwardly on painful legs. The whole episode has been a most unpleasant one. From the owners of the dog, to whom I complained, has come not a subsequent word of regret or apology. LATER: We hear that the dog in question has killed a pet belonging to a family across the road. This is becoming serious.


UK friends, Mike and Lyn, are staying in one of Idalecio’s cottages, braving the showery weather as best they can. They’re camera enthusiasts who have been visiting the Algarve for decades and know more about the local bird life and wild flowers than we do. Like us, they love the orchids that come out at this time of year.

WOODCOCK ORCHID
In the park (our extended piece of hillside), apart from scillas, wild tulips and bluebells, we have found mirror orchids, woodcocks, early purples and yellow bee orchids, while in the fields around us naked man, sawfly and ordinary bee orchids abound.

SCILLA
Mike spent an hour one afternoon showing Barbara the finer points of our camera, the better to photograph these little beauties that bring us such pleasure each year.


During the course of the lesson, Mike and Jonesy took a few arty pics, as you see. The glass, by the way, is one of our recent acquisitions from friends, David and Dagmar, who are in the process of packing up their belongings in preparation for a move to a townhouse in Loule.


As comfortable as it is, it’s a tiddler beside their capacious villa in Cruz da Assumada. So they’re going through all the agonies of downsizing – deciding what to take, to sell, to give away and to throw away.


For his part, Idalecio invited us round to admire his newly completed swimming pool. And admire it we did. Apart from one or two days’ input from a concrete mixing assistant, it’s all his own hard work – and what a lot of work!

The pool is raised rather than dug. Idalecio built the surrounding walls and infilled the patio area as well as doing all the plumbing and lighting. He’s done an impressive job. The pool will be a great draw to his summer guests and ought to earn its keep within a few years.
THE SUN ON ROCHA DA PENA

Letter from Espargal: 9 of 2013

Hello from Witbank (or eMalahleni – place of coal - as it is now officially called). It’s morning – any morning – but it could equally be afternoon. My brother Brendan is sitting on the opposite side of the desk, reading out a complex list of figures to his assistant, Julene, who sits in front of her computer at her own desk at the far end of the room. (Brendan isn’t into computers)


Beneath Brendan’s desk can be glimpsed the ample form of Milo, his unpredictable Jack Russell bitch (who either loves you and licks you or hates you and nips you. There’s no telling. Happily, I’m loved - although her lovers have to endure a great deal of intimate dogginess).


Beside Julene, on her desk, is Charlie, her much-loved and manicured Pekinese, who goes with her everywhere. Apart from my visiting presence, the company in the room is completed by Maverick, Bren’s beloved, elderly Jack Russell, who lies on his cushion at the side of the room.

Bren used to have big dogs but didn’t replace those who died when thieves started poisoning guard dogs before attempting to enter a property. Now, most people keep small dogs that live inside.


Beyond the house, in the garden cottage, Elbie works at the complex, computerised embroidery machines. To do so successfully, one has to have both nimble fingers and brain, and to be both capable at artistic design on the computer and competent with technical repairs on the machinery. Elbie impresses on both counts.

On the back lawn, Frans is painting and welding lengths of tubing that are due to become balustrading to separate the bays in a vast warehouse servicing the giant vehicles that work in the open cast mines. Frans, like most of Bren’s workers, has been with him for years.

Absent are Conal and his team, who are working on the mines. What a visit here brings home is the immense amount of preparatory work that goes into any construction project. The tendering process is long and complex – and all jobs must be tendered for. The office is littered with the dozens of files containing details of such tenders, orders, supplies, invoices, tax filings and the rest of it. Apart from the actual business of building there is the tedious daily transporting of staff to and from the mines, generally on roads as potholed as they are busy.


On his left wrist Bren is wearing a bandage, evidence of a fall that he took on a mine while running through the rain. He fell hard and may have chipped the bone. The injury is painful and slow to heal. It has done nothing to improve his temper, which is not good at the best of times. During the course of our conversations, he has conveyed to me in language both passionate and coarse his views on various entities and the idiots running them.

The current objects of his ire are the local authorities, because of whose alleged ineptitude, Witbank’s water and electricity supplies are forever cutting themselves off. And he spoke truly. Both electricity and water are erratic. Five-litre bottles of water are scattered around the kitchen and the bathroom in anticipation. One has to distinguish between the back-up water supplies and the drinking water. Witbank’s water distribution pipes are made of asbestos, as Bren learned from one of the engineers, and he thinks it best not drunk.

Once a week Aggie comes to clean the house. Aggie has been around for ever and a day. She speaks several languages but she didn't want her photo taken as she doesn't trust cameras. Anyhow, you can glimpse her through the window.

As is customary in this country, all the doors to the house are protected by sliding metal grills while the windows and garden are littered with beam alarms and other security devices. Witbank has a severe crime problem. Numerous attempts have been made to rob the house, the last earlier this month. Muggers have twice attempted to assault Brendan at his entrance and been deterred only by the pistol that he habitually carries in a quick draw holster.

He recalls that the embroidery machines used to be operated by a rather innocent young woman and a black male assistant, both of whom were in fear of their boss’s irascible temper. The assistant wanted a day off to buy a car and discussed with the young woman the wisdom of entering the boss’s office to seek it. He had barely started presenting his case to Brendan when Brendan noticed on the security video that a thief had scaled his fence and was busy stealing metal bowls from the front garden.

Brendan stepped outside and fired a warning shot that first froze the thief in terror and then inspired a lightning leap back over the fence, minus the metal bowls. The young woman, however, who was working in the cottage, was convinced that Brendan had shot the assistant for having the temerity to ask for a day off. She locked herself in the office and refused to come out until she had proof that the assistant was alive and well.

Bren can tell you such stories all day – of hijacked colleagues, robberies, burglaries, assaults and the associated evils of living and running a business in this part of the world. But the long and the short of it is that during the day visitors are confined to the house and garden and during the night to those parts of the house that they are actually inhabiting.

To enter the wrong passage or room is to trigger an alarm. Going for a walk is seriously discouraged. One leaves and returns to the house only in a vehicle. It’s a bit confining but better than being mugged or dead. Elbie was saying that a friend of hers was shot dead at his home in a gated estate, the victim it seems of a misdirected targeted killing.

A delivery truck arrived one morning with a load of cement bags. Unlike in Europe where these must now weigh 35kgs or less, the delivery consisted of 50kg bags. These are brutes to move around, as I know well. I was fascinated to watch the workers load them on to their heads and carry them through to the garage.


The best time of the day is the evening when we retire outside to scatter seeds for the birds that flock down from the trees for supper. Doves are in plentiful supply, along with a few quelea and sparrows.


Bulbuls arrive for the apples spiked for them above the birdbath, while in the further corners of the garden thrushes and hoopoes peck a dusty living. The star of the show is a pin-tailed whydah, a pugnacious sparrow-sized bully, named Julius (after Malema) who dive-bombs the other birds at frequent intervals to drive them away from the food.

Our day outings are either to Witbank's extensive new shopping centre on the outskirts of town, the only place where one can walk in relative safety, or to a mine to fetch the crew. At Wolvekrans mine I was astonished by the size of the drag-line buckets.

At night we generally take ourselves to the Calypso restaurant to enjoy a fish and calamari dinner, washed down with a glass or two of white wine.

The missing member of the family is Micaela, who lives in a gated community in Pretoria, from where she runs a little business selling up-market equestrian equipment to the riding establishment. She is an equestrian herself and proud of her two horses.


Her business involves a great deal of travelling to shows. The very smart new 4x4 Ford pick-up is a recent acquisition to replace the saloon whose transmission system proved unequal to towing her trailer. If you ever need to buy a comfortable saddle, Micaela is the person to speak to. And the airport pick-up service she provides is unparalleled.