It is raining. It has been raining all night and much of the previous day – and the day before that. The drops are dancing up from the patio outside the bedroom. Beyond it the trees at the bottom of the garden are barely visible in the murk.
The dogs have resigned themselves to a damp morning; all, that is, except Barri the puppy, (here pictured briefly at rest) who was born with an inexhaustible supply of energy. She rushes around the house looking for amusement as she awaits her morning walk. It’s hard to explain to her why we aren’t going. Jones gives her a plastic bottle containing a handful of cat nibbles in a bid to distract her.
Like the old woman who lived in a shoe, we sometimes feel overpowered by our large family. Lovely as they are, they can also be very demanding. Dealing with mini-rivalries and jealousies, the endless feeding, the mending of ripped cushions, the replacement of dug-up plants, the mopping up of muddy footprints or Barri’s latest puddle. It all gets a bit wearing – especially on dull, damp winter days. 
In the study there’s the steady plop of a drip on to the tiled floor. We’ve never been able to work out where the water is getting in – maybe from around the chimney. The roof was properly sealed when the house was built and there’s no good reason for it. 
The drip is the only one we’ve ever had but no less irritating for that. Down on the valley floor, which is really a flood plain, the trees and vines are swimming. The farmers don’t mind. We need the rain. “Faz falta,” as they say; it lacks. We have had just over 600 mms so far this season. That’s about the minimum we need to fill dams and sustain the water table.
We tremble to think how Idalecio's guests have been coping with the mountain bikers whom they are meant to be conducting on tours of the Algarve's scenic hills. Jones caught a brief glimpse of them as they shot past her one evening.
The outlook for next week is somewhat sunnier, which should take a little pressure off Jones, who will be looking after the gang while I’m visiting my brother and family in South Africa. I depart early on Saturday morning and return the following Sunday, travelling with Lufthansa via Frankfurt.
I leave Valapena looking in good shape. Slavic returned last weekend to complete his repair of the bread oven and to finish strimming the thickest of the triffids in the area around the house. He’s a class act. As long as he gets clear instructions, he can safely be left to get on with things. We are delighted with his work on the bread oven.
Natasha, our maid and his partner, is also going back to see her family although, in her case, that means travelling to Russia. She has no choice, it would seem, as the Russian bureaucracy screwed things up when she was renewing her documentation at home last year – and she has to get it straightened out. 
BORAGE
From what one gleans, the Russian consulate in this country is less than helpful. It would seem to regard its citizens as just a bloody nuisance.
Jones, as you may have gathered by now, has been taking pictures of the many flowers, both wild and cultivated, that surround us. They speak for themselves.
WILD TULIP
Monday brought my last two-hour English lesson before Easter. We discussed the opening up of energy supplies to competition, which has become a requirement under EU legislation. Until recently, the state provider of electricity, the EDP, was the sole generator and retailer in a regulated market. Now one can choose between half a dozen different companies.
As we sell electricity generated by our solar panels to the EDP, we are sticking with them for our supply. In this regard I had to go into the Financas early in the week to take out a business licence as well as paying a fine for failing to do so earlier. 
Then I had to go to Social Security to seek exemption from making social security payments on my business. The bureaucracy really drives you to pull your hair out, especially as the staff are poorly trained and often come up with the wrong advice – or the wrong forms to fill in.
OSTEOSPERMUMS
You might be impressed to learn that more than half of Portugal’s electricity is generated from renewable sources – a combination of tidal, river, wave, sun, wind, biomass and geothermic. That’s quite impressive. And since the EDP improved the supply to Espargal a year or more ago, we have been well served. No more lights flickering and TV fuzzing over in the evenings.
BLUEBELLS
Still on the technical front, my computer is humming away happily once again but the TV link from upstairs to downstairs has yet to be repaired. And unless Rui from Electro Salir manages to fit in a visit before the end of the week, that’s how it’s likely to stay for a while.
BARBARY NUT
Rather more serious – although completely unconnected – is Jones’s loss of a gold bangle. It’s one of three that she habitually wears on her left wrist, and is slightly bigger than the other two. At some point in the last week it came off. She knows not when or where or how.
MIRROR ORCHID
We have retraced all our usual routes around the hill, we have searched high and low – to no avail. We may still come across it somewhere in the garden. We should celebrate such a find as the biblical shepherd rejoiced in the discovery of his lost sheep. Meanwhile, we can but hope.
A farmer neighbour, Ermenio, turned up at the gates one evening with five litres of his wine and one of his root sculptures as gifts. He’s the man to whom we give our crop of carobs and from whom we receive a welcome supply of fruits and veges in return. We were touched. The sculpture is to be attached to the exterior wall, near the door, both as an ornament and a hat-tree.
Another gift of wine came from his neighbour, the Faiscas. We had presented them with a mounted picture that I had taken of their house, to thank them for plants they had earlier given Barbara. As you see, the house serves as a frame for the flowers that Mrs Faisca cultivates with such care.
LATE NEWS: I leave Portugal for South Africa with a heavy heart. Barbara was bitten by a neighbour's dog while walking through the village on Friday evening. Although she makes light of it, the wounds are nasty. Friends are taking her to hospital to be checked out.
No comments:
Post a Comment