Letter from Espargal: 12 of 2013

The house is restless. The trees are thrashing around in the wind. The met. office warns of gusts reaching 80kph. At least the sun is shining and the flowers are a delight. We have been taking pictures all week of the orchids to be found within the park.


They are in their glory, half a dozen varieties. In a week or two, when summer suddenly surprises us, they will wilt and die. Meanwhile, we try to keep the dogs away from the orchid patches during our afternoon ambles around the park. (In the mornings we roam the hills energetically for an hour!)

HONEYSUCKLE
The week has evaporated. The English lesson that I prepared last Monday – on “Emirates” recruiting cabin crew in Portugal – remained in my bag when we discovered that classes were due to resume only on Tuesday. That made it feel like the holiday that bankers and government workers were enjoying - a luxury that shop-keepers felt they could ill afford.

DULL ORCHIDS
After joining May for lunch and grocery shopping, I took my boots to the cobbler. The problem – I wish that I had taken a picture – was that our puppy had chewed off the upper lining of the left boot one idle morning, scattering the blue sponge innards around the patio.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
The cobbler is a busy man with little time for conversation. “It’s time you took that dog of yours in hand,” he informed me as he inspected the damage, adding - as he returned to his last - that I could fetch the boot the following day. I did. The repair was worth every cent of the €15 he charged me.

BARBARY NUT
That evening I phoned the TV repair firm to complain about their poor service. For three weeks they had been promising to come to fix our wireless audio-visual transmission system. We can’t transmit the TV signal to the downstairs set – which means that we have to cart supper upstairs if there’s anything we particularly want to watch.

WOODCOCK ORCHID
On Tuesday we went to the Hamburgo for a coffee break. The sun was out and sitting in it on the patio was an old acquaintance, Peter Kenyon, with his smart motorbike parked nearby. Peter’s daughters – now both at university - used to swim in the pool at the Quinta. We’d subsequently lost touch with him.

MIRROR ORCHID
Peter is a recently retired electronics wizard. It was he who had first installed an earlier transmission system. Naturally, I invited him to take a look at the problem. He would be happy to do so later in the week, he replied, if the weather held. Sensibly, he doesn’t choose to take his bike out on rainy days.

At the bottom of the hill, where the villagers gather to exchange snippets of morning news, the village cats await the fishmonger, who never fails to throw them a treat. I have to drive carefully around them.


STAR OF BETHLEHEM
On Wednesday Barbara felt a hankering to do something different. I was happy to go along with it. So we set out for Faro beach, stopping first for coffee at our favourite pastelaria in Loule and again at Honda to arrange for the car to undergo its annual service next week. The car is approaching 4 years old, the age when it is required to undergo its first inspection, which Honda will see to the same day.

EARLY PURPLE
Here in Portugal, drivers also have to undergo inspections every few years, obtaining a medical certificate to the effect that they’re fit to take the wheel. From age 70 licences have to be renewed every 2 years – a real bind!

CISTUS
As I was saying, we went to Faro beach, where we have three favourite venues. For sandwiches and a glass of red wine, if the wind isn’t blowing we repair to the Electrico (tram) - or to a snack bar if it is. For a more serious fresh fish lunch, it’s Ze Maria’s overlooking the dunes.

SCILLAS ARE EVERYWHERE
On Wednesday the wind was blowing and we chose the snack bar. The proprietor makes scrumptious cheese and ham sandwiches and his boxed red wine somehow tastes better there than it deserves to. Across the estuary, Ryanair planes were busy coming and going. That miraculous transition from ground to air utterly fascinates me every time I see it. My boyhood ambition was to become a pilot.

As we were leaving the beach, Peter Kenyon called to say that he could drop around that afternoon if it suited. It did. Any time after three, we said – and just after three he turned up on his motorbike to a great barking by the village dogs.

Like I said, Peter is hot stuff when it comes to electronics. It was his living, after all. It took him only seconds to diagnose the problem. I could say more but it wouldn’t be to my credit. What matters, as I emphasized to Barbara,is that everything is working again.

SPOT THE HUMAN
That night I spent an hour trying to console Russ who, like his sister last week, was much troubled by an itchy spot near the base of his tail. While trying to relieve it, he kept on giving subdued cries that I found most unsettling.

YELLOW BEE ORCHIDS & WOODCOCKS
The vet had attributed the problem to an allergic reaction (food containing meat protein) and had recommended a painfully expensive “sensitive skin” dog biscuit diet – at €70 a bag. It had better do the trick and soon. We also have a relieving spray although it's difficult to penetrate their thick fur.

When the dogs have nothing better to do, they steal almonds from the wicker basket and crack them noisily all over the patio. Almonds have impossibly tough outer shells but then the dogs have amazingly strong jaws. They spit out the shells and consume the innards.


MORE BEE ORCHIDS
Thursday morning, we visited Liz, a retired nursing sister neighbour, who has been changing Barbara’s bandages regularly. The injuries on her right leg are nearly healed; the other still has a way to go and continues to give her a great deal of discomfort. We shall get the doctor to look at them next week when she has to go back to hospital for another tetanus jab.

FIELD OF TULIPS
Next we took Russ into the vet. No meat, no bones, no chewies, no meaty strips said the vet. Just Eukanuba biscuits and maybe some dog rice. It’s going to be hard to explain.

WILD TULIP
A phone call brought bad news. Our good friends, David and Dagmar, had just learned that their house sale had fallen through. The French buyers had learned that the husband’s cancer had returned and that he needed urgent surgery.

CISTUS BUSHES
For weeks D&D had been getting rid of ornaments and furniture that wouldn’t fit into the much smaller townhouse they intended to move into. Now they have to plan their lives anew. Shattered dreams are hard to live with.
VETCH