Letter from Espargal: 15 of 2013

Sunday: Armenio came up to graft some of our bitter almond trees. We'd cut off the trees at should height months ago to induce them to produce new shoots. Armenio cut a small notch into each shoot, introducing a tiny graft from a sweet almond twig and then binding it. Now it's a case of waiting to see how many of the grafts take.


Monday: We have our eyes fixed on next weekend when our house-sitters, the Ferretts, arrive. Usually something goes wrong just before their visit, a syndrome known as the Ferrett poltergeist. This year the poltergeist decided to strike the washing machine. It was interrupting its cycle, Jones informed me, and refusing to spin or drain.


I did the usual man things: clean the filter, check the outflow, pull the electric plug out and pull it back in again. At one point the device stopped working completely; then it started again. Maybe I’d inadvertently fixed it – or it had fixed itself.

PYRAMID ORCHID
While we were out walking, a bee flew into Jones’s hair and couldn’t get out again. It’s happened once or twice before and is quite distressing – for Jones, I mean; I suppose for the bee as well. I go to her rescue afap. This time the bee didn’t wait to be freed and stung Jones on the scalp. I pulled out the sting. Ouch!

TONGUE ORCHID
May decided not to come lunching and shopping with us. She wasn’t feeling her best. Instead, we had our hair cut, telling Fatima about our holiday plans while she told us hers.


We've been going to Fatima for years. She could probably cut our hair with her eyes shut. Although she’s strictly speaking a man’s hairdresser, she’s happy to do women as well as long as it’s just a wash and cut. None of that fancy stuff that girls go in for.

Tuesday: When I got back from our walk, I found a tick on my shoulder – the first of the season. Then I found another in the hair on Jones’s neck – and later a third on my thigh. Fortunately, none of them had got a chance to bite in. I crushed them. I don’t buy all that St Francis stuff about brother tick and sister mosquito. April inevitably marks the start of tick season. All the dogs are wearing tick collars, reinforced with Advantix drops.


Mid-morning I had to report to the hospital near Faro airport to have my dressings changed. One of the two young nurses waiting in the surgery had earlier assisted the surgeon. We greeted each other. She attended to my chest while her companion busied herself with my back. They were very pleasant but it was hard to make conversation.


Might I take a photo for the blog, I asked. They didn’t see why not. Having been re-patched (me), we (Jones and I) continued on to Faro beach for a leisurely sandwich and glass of wine at the Electrico, followed by a snoozette at the viewing point overlooking the runway. We watched the planes twitching in the wind as the pilots lined up before dropping down on the tarmac with a puff of smoke.

The dreaded Algarvian black mould had stained parts of the back patio during the damp winter. The stains come off with bleach. It's a messy job but nothing like as messy as it used to be at the Quinta, which lacked cavity walls.

Later that afternoon, we hit the garden. I attacked the yellow wotchies and shoulder high thistles that had invaded my bean patch, yanking out a pile that overflowed the tractor box.

Jones tried, as so often, to repair the damage done to her plants by digging dogs. Mary is the principal culprit but she waits – sensibly – till we’re out before getting to work. As I tell her often, it’s lucky we love her.


Wednesday: The washing machine definitely wasn’t working. I phoned a domestic appliances outfit in Loule to ascertain whether they could deliver a new one the same day. They said they could.

ALBINO POPPY
So I dragged an Jones into town – she didn’t want to spend money on another washing machine when the current one could be mended. But the following day was a national holiday. It might take ages to get the parts and we could find ourselves about to go on holiday while our guests made do with a non-functional washing machine. It was the kind of drama I didn’t need.


The new machine was delivered in the afternoon as promised. The guys gave us a quick and valuable lesson on how it worked. They took away the old machine for an examination, quote and probable repairs. I hope to set it up in Casa Nada


I found another tick, this time just biting into my soft upper, inner arm. He got crushed too but not before he gave me the itches! Now I strip off my clothes every time I imagine there's something crawling on my skin.

GAME TIME
We spent the early evening gardening and working on the bean patch once again. The beans are doing ok, recovering from a month of rain in March. They’re also recovering from the games that Russ and Barri love to play there. They’re delicious – the beans! They always are.

Thursday: Natasha is spending the first of two full days here this week. Today is window cleaning; tomorrow, house and garden.


While Natasha was vacuum cleaning upstairs, we slipped up the Hamburgo in Benafim for a coffee. The bar was crowded.


April 25 - Liberation Day - is a day to celebrate and celebrations start early.

Jones helped me get the hairy twins up on the patio table for a trim, their third of the season. Mary and Russ (on the left) both have thick coats and suffer in the summer weather as well as getting tangled up with thorny burrs.

By the time I’d finished, they looked a lot better and certainly a lot cooler. Jones had suggested getting their coats trimmed professionally but she had to agree that I’d done a good job.

Letter from Espargal: 14 of 2013

More things have happened this week than will easily fit into one letter - and most of them have been bad news. A good starting point would be Sunday afternoon when a neighbour phoned.

FLOWERS IN THE PARK - MORE TO COME
Maybe I should explain first that the strangest couple in the village, old Chico and mute Dina (who makes a lot of noise but can't speak) have a little dog called Nuno. It is always hanging around in the road outside their cottage. It sometimes goes for a walk in the mornings with Marie and Olly and their dog, Poppy and it is learning to take a biscuit from us. Nuno is a harmless little beast that gets on with the other free-ranging dogs in the village. One day there was no sign of her.


Well, the neighbour phoned to let me know that he'd come across Nuno's body in the fields and buried the dog. Chico, who has a nasty streak with animals, had killed the dog, apparently for nipping another villager.

So, sadly I passed the news on to the expat community in the village, including our Irish neighbours, Fintan and Pauline.

On Monday we heard of the death in Dublin of Pauline’s brother, who had been ailing with cancer.

On Tuesday, while taking coffee at the Hamburgo, we learned of the sudden death of Celso’s father. Celso, you may recall, is the man who ran our favourite snack-bar in Benafim until recently when the financial squeeze forced him to shut the doors – and drove his French wife to seek interim work in France.

It would seem that, while eating, his father had sneezed and then choked. Although he was rushed to hospital, he failed to recover. A notice on the restaurant door said the funeral would be held the following morning.

WALKING TO THE CEMETERY
That proved awkward as I had a medical appointment (that I was unable to change) on the Wednesday morning. In the event, I dropped Barbara in Benafim to attend the funeral and continued on to the appointment. This was with a dermatologist whom I hadn’t seen before, a man who had been recommended by our GP. I wanted him to examine a new keratosis that I didn't like.


Let me interrupt myself to say that we have both been visiting a Faro dermatologist for years but she is semi-retired and very busy – and couldn’t fit me in prior to our holiday next month.

The doctor wasn’t too fussed about the keratosis but he thought that a nodule below my throat needed prompt attention and that at the same time he might remove a cyst from my back – something I have long intended.

So, on Thursday, having run May’s nephew, Ken, out to the airport, I found myself at the nearby hospital in Gambelas, lying naked from the waist up on an operating table, talking to a young nurse and listening to some horrible pop music from the radio in the corner.


The doctor arrived a bit late – his previous patient had taken longer than he anticipated – and proceeded to chop a cubic centimetre out of my chest and (turn over please) a cubic inch out of my back before patching me up.

BARRI - LISTENING TO BEETHOVEN
On the way home, we listened to Beethoven’s 7th symphony, which I found a vast improvement. The dogs complained loudly at our late return, saying they had more or less given us up. Even so, they had to wait for their dinner while we poured ourselves generous baggies.

Barbara’s wounds continue to heal slowly. She had the bandages changed again this week, hoping that she might soon be able to do without them. But it’s going to be a while yet. I’ve booked her in to see Dr Pedro as well when I go to have the stitches out at the end of the month.


One afternoon, commuting Irish neighbours, Tony and Annette came around for afternoon cool-drinks. We were expecting their son, Neil, as well but he had put his back out while turning around in the car and was in distress at home. I contributed something of my extensive range of back medication.

Annette told us that Neil had been scammed by his car rental company (Gold Car – don’t touch them) who now whack nearly €100 on to the bill as a fuel charge, regardless of how much the driver has used.

I promptly phoned Zitauto, the rental company that I’ve been using for years, to ensure that they haven’t adopted the same practice. They haven’t – but they warned me that it’s now quite common. Visitors to Spain and Portugal take note.

We got scammed by Hertz in the Azores – for a tiny scuff (on a much scuffed car) for which they held us responsible. Needless to say, I’ll walk before using Hertz again.

No blog is complete without a mention of the weather. Summer has arrived, pretty much overnight. The park is awash with a rainbow of wild flowers. Temperatures have soared by 10*. We now suffer mid-teens by night and bask in the upper 20s by day. Evenings are the best time of day, out at the table on the cobble patio.

MARIE, OLLY & POPPY
I’ve been strimming madly and Jones has been ripping out weeds from the garden. We’re trying to get the place presentable before the arrival of the Ferretts in just two weeks.

Letter from Espargal: 13 of 2013

Every now and then one has an extraordinary encounter, not of the third kind but of the human kind and, in this case, of the canine kind. That’s what we did on Wednesday – five of us: Jones and I, along with Helen and Rob, and Sonia.


Us you know well enough. Helen and Rob are long-standing friends who have bought and are restoring a cottage 30 minutes away, and Sonia is the partner of our immediate neighbour, Idalecio.

MARISA, SONIA & ME
Sonia is a dog person. Like us, she has several dogs, some rescued from the streets. It was Sonia who drew our attention to the work of a Portuguese friend, Marisa, who - with her sister - runs a dog rescue centre high in the hills straddling Loule and Faro.

THE OFFICE
We have long wanted to visit this sanctuary and on Wednesday that’s what we did, winding our way up the steep slope beyond Loule that leads up to Goldra.

Goldra boasts unbeatable views across the Algarve. It’s a great place to live in summer, with its cooling breezes. In winter, it’s frequently enveloped in mist.


There was no mist on Wednesday. The tarred road to the heights becomes a dirt road that leads to twin dog rescue centres, side by side. The first is run by Jan, an English woman whom we met at the gate and to whom we donated a couple of the bags of dog food that we intended for Marisa.

Marisa arrived shortly after we did, carrying a newly-rescued bitch half her size. Between tending her many pooches – she looks after about a 100 at any one time – Marisa told us something of her work.

She’d been at the centre for 15 years, initially as an assistant; later she’d taken it over herself and now ran it with her sister. It was a 24-hour, 365 day-a-year job.

The centre had obviously developed organically, spreading down the hill as need dictated. The dogs were housed in a dozen informal enclosures and a number of individual kennels. Our arrival was clearly the event of the week; we could barely make ourselves heard above the sustained din that greeted us.

More athletic inmates perched themselves on walls or gates the better to observe us and to receive the treats we’d brought along. How the two carers manage to run the place without help is hard to imagine.

According to Sonia, it’s on a wing and a prayer, with no official assistance, precarious finances and a borehole that's often dry. The intake is never-ending and new homes are hard to find. Over the last year, Marisa said, she’d housed about 60 animals.


I was deeply impressed by what I saw. All the enclosures were spotless and the animals were in good condition. Marisa addressed them by name as she showed us around. It’s a work of utter dedication and she has my admiration.


The rest of the week was a bit squiggly. Monday brought the usual English lessons and shopping. On Tuesday I took the car for its annual service and its first official inspection, marking its approaching fourth birthday.

In the meanwhile, I rented a car from Honda and took Jones along to a medical centre for a second tetanus injection. From there we continued to the airport to meet May’s nephew, Ken, who was arriving from Edinburgh to spend some time with her. And finally we fetched May from her house and took ourselves to lunch.

The one great virtue of an inexpensive rental, in this case a Mitsubishi Colt, is the appreciation it brings of the merits of one’s own vehicle. What a pleasure it was to get back into my serviced and inspected Honda CRV at the end of the day and to drive myself home, albeit several hundred euros poorer.

On the home front we are still trying to explain to Barri that she's a girl and Russ is a boy and this isn't how it's done. But this is the way that Barri likes it and Russ doesn't seem to mind. It's a few weeks since we've seen Barri's daddy, a local stray who's her spitting image. We do hope that nothing's happened to him.

Mid week Domingos turned up. Domingos is the local telephone repair man whom we've got to know. I’d reported the phone and internet out of order after a rainstorm the previous evening. Domingos has been to the house several times before and knows the routine. Allow the dogs to sniff him. Don’t pat Bobby – and then come in.

After ascertaining that the fault lay outside the property, he took himself off to find it. An hour later, we had the phone and internet back. Joy! Although these days I can fall back on an internet dongle and my smart-phone, the loss of my router still leaves me feeling disabled.

On Thursday Natasha returned to work, the first we’ve seen of her since her departure for Russia a month ago. From what we understand, she had a good holiday and got her (previously messed up) documents sorted out.

Friday we took May and Ken to Loule to renew her post office box and to Faro to sort out her electricity bill. Then we repaired to Faro beach for lunch and conversation at Rudy’s, overlooking the estuary. It was a near perfect day, sunny without being hot, breezy enough to tousle the trees.

Friday night we joined the gang at the Hamburgo to celebrate Mike's 70th birthday. Seventy once seemed so very old but getting there hasn't done Mike any harm. There's several of us rapidly approaching this milestone.


Here's his wife, Liz, being snapped as she snapped us. She's a former nursing sister who continues to change Barbara's bandages once or twice a week, a service that's greatly appreciated.

THE PARK
The met office says March in Portugal was the 7th wettest on record - some 220mms. The vegetation continues to explode around us. Wild flowers have turned the hillsides yellow. The first tongue orchids are appearing in the park. I've ploughed in the worst of the weeds. Now to see if our bean plants produce the goods.