Letter from Espargal: 27 July 2013

This week I can offer you only a gentle amble around the garden of our lives. At the same time you may admire some of Jones's brilliant skies and flowers. She really has excelled herself.

First thing to say is that we have a day Thursday)off, a very welcome one. When Slavic works, I have to work too, although not nearly as hard; and he arrives on the dot of 8.30. I had expected him to be with us four days in a row. But as he explained yesterday, while constructing a small retaining wall around a shrub, Natasha had no work scheduled for the following day and they had decided to visit a water-park. That was fine by me.

The Algarve has several sinuous, meccano-like water-parks towering beside the east-west highway and I've no doubt that our workers will be having a ball. Nor will they have to worry about sunburn. The pair of them are natural tanners, swiftly turning an enviable bronze in the sun. (Slavic reported later that they loved the water park but not the crowds they found there. There was a 30 minute wait for the best slides.)

Slavic labours away like many builders, hatless and t-shirted in the heat of the day, dripping with perspiration. At frequent intervals he gathers up the front of his t-shirt to mop his brow. Nor does he use any sun protection. He didn't need to, he told me, because he goes a protective brown after just a few careful days in the sun. I tried to warn him, in vain, that like us he might have to pay later for present exposure.

Anyhow, we have a day off. We didn't have to set off early on our walk, nor rush back. There was a breeze up and we tramped unhurriedly along our stony paths through the bush, stopping at intervals to gather the dogs or admire the views to the sea.

FIELD OF WILD THYME
At one point we came across the body of a fox right beside the path. I shooed the dogs away from it and resolved to go around later on the tractor to remove the corpse. Jonesy and I wondered aloud what the cause of death might have been. The worry is that it might have been poisoned. We had a close call a few years ago when two of our dogs consumed poisoned meat and we had to rush them to the vet.

SQUINTY & BRAVEHEART
As soon as we get back, Jones trots off across the fields to feed "sick cat" at David & Sarah's cottage, an expedition that she repeats again in each evening. "Sick cat" is one of several black cats that originated at the cottage. Two of them, Squinty and Braveheart, moved in with us. "Sick cat", so called because he was dreadfully injured in a fight and tends to cough up his food, at one point moved into Casa Nada. But he returned to our neighbours' cottage during their recent sojourn there and seems intent on remaining. And Jones, being Jones, sacrifices 15 minutes twice a day to take food across to him.

For the moment, I have taken over her other waifs and strays run (down the right-of-way that runs below our fence and through Idalecio's property) to give an evening bone to the delighted Maggie. Maggie, mother of three of our dogs, lives at the end of a long chain, guarding the entrance to Joachim's property. While we wish that she could run free, she can at least run around.

Thursday p.m.: We are back from a snack break at the cafe in Benafim, to the usual enthusiastic welcome from Bobby. We still call the place The Coral although it has evolved through "Le France Portugal" to become the Ponto de Encontro (meeting point) under Joao, the man who has taken over from Celso.

His assistant, Thelma, works the morning shift. She's got to know our order. Two coffees, an almond cake and a generous shot of medronho cost just 4 euros. In the summer heat the shade offered by the new awning is welcome.

Our two travelling dogs sprawl under the table. They know the routine well enough. Prickles likes to rest his head on his mistress's feet.

On the way home we stopped at Leonhilde's place to fetch the goat's cheese that she acquires for us each week. She and her daughter-in-law's mother were busy doing embroidery on the front patio.

As you can see, it's exquisite stuff, occasionally to be found at a price at craft shops. More common are the machine-produced imitations that are often flogged in the name of the genuine article.

We took an evening off as we do each year to visit the Loule summer fair. The main attraction is really to watch other people for the majority of items on sale have very little going for them other than price.

Even so, we came home with one of them, a painting by someone in the care of a charity for mentally challenged people. Ten euros was the price asked and we were glad to pay it. We have hung the picture in Casa Nada, where it seems well suited.

My spare hours today, blog aside, are going into loading music and data into the new computer. However, some of my old programmes from Windows XP are not compatible with Windows 7.

Among other things it won't accept my old Lotus Organizer programme. That means that I can't transfer across my address book. So (family and friends), PLEASE LET ME HAVE YOUR HOME/WORK ADDRESSES and PHONE NUMBERS.

SUNSET

I'll put them into my gmail diary, which will survive any future transitions.

After much research, I found a free French program, Eviedit, which reads the now incompatible Cardfile. The instructions are simple enough to follow, even for non-French speakers such as I.

MOONRISE

As I write, the news media are full of the dreadful train smash near Santiago de Compostella, a city where we spent several days last year. Unlike most such accidents, this one feels uncomfortably close to home. Its only mercy is to spare us the worst of the boy George gush that's been inflicted on the world these past several days. Just too much!