Letter from Espargal: 17 August 2013

As I may have mentioned before, it's hot. For the last few days we have cut short our walk, doing just the first loop in our customary figure of eight. This shortened excursion takes 35 minutes rather than the usual 60. That's partly so that I could be back promptly to work with Slavic and partly because August is bearing down on us.

Daily I get half a dozen advisory emails from the Portuguese Met Office (to which I subscribe), warning me of "tempo quente" - hot times, or rather, hot weather. (The Portuguese word "tempo" can mean either 'time' or 'weather'. If you find this strange, consider the horrors of the English word "bow".) When there's no relieving breeze, as there hasn't been for much of the week, it's oppressive.

GARDEN WATERING

I find the Ancient Mariner's words: "All in a hot and copper sky..." echoing through my head as we tramp around the hillside, dripping with perspiration. The dogs pause in patches of shade to catch their breath. The only sound to be heard is the amplified rasp of cicadas and the intrusion of an occasional early plane to or from Faro airport.

Not that all have been suffering. From the next-door swimming pool 50 metres away comes the sound of children's laughter and screams as his guests make the most of it. What they may also be making the most of - Jonesy certainly is - are the figs on trees along the public right of way. They are delicious - large, ripe and juicy - and they go down a treat with a generous splash of Greek yoghurt.

In spite of the heat we have been working - mainly. Slavic has continued with our structural garden improvements and pruning in the park, I have tractored him (chain-saw, branches, stones, sand, cement, cement mixer) around and Jones is nearly always to be found crouched in a corner of her garden.

At her suggestion, we have filled the old decorative fountain with water in a bid to entice the wasps and bees away from the dogs' water bowls. She even laid a small plate of honey at the water's edge. A few insects have made the transition but most are happy where they've been and not in a hurry to move.

Today - August 15, Feast of the Assumption - is both a public holiday and the start of the hunting season. Happily the heat has discouraged any potential hunters; we haven't heard a single pop. Long may it last - the absence of pops, that is.

The Feast of the Assumption (which always takes me back to my days in the Marist Brothers) is one of the religious festivals to escape the chop that has been required as part of Portugal's austerity drive - this after discussion between Lisbon and the Vatican. In all, four public holidays have been cancelled, reducing such days-off from 14 to 10.

Workers and unions are inevitably displeased. But then they would be. We "retired" folk hardly know the difference, except that on public holidays there's no postal delivery. To be sure, now that most letters, bank statements and utility bills come by email, we find the post box empty more often than not.

I was on the tractor with Slavic one morning when Barbara rang me. She had taken a call from a neighbour whose printer had run out of ink in the midst of printing boarding passes for his visiting family, who were about to return home with Ryanair. Could I please help?

I could. We knew that Ryanair charged passengers for printing boarding passes - but not how much. So, out of interest, I googled the subject and came across the report of a British woman who'd had to pay the company €300 for printing off five boarding passes at the check-in desk. She claimed that there was no facility for doing this at her Spanish holiday venue and subsequently asked Michael O'Leary to compensate her. But he, charming as ever, scoffed at the claim and said she deserved the charge for being so stupid. Not that his manners have done his airline any harm. It's thriving.

On Monday, leaving Barbara to finish lunch with May, I drove into the Algarve Forum shopping centre on the outskirts of Faro to talk to Vodafone about an SMS they'd sent me. This related to new legislation regarding pay-for services of which I wanted to know more. I was relieved to find no queue at their desks because the underground garage was so hot and thick with fumes that I had hesitated to leave the dogs in the car.

JONES SAID I COULD PHOTOGRAPH THE HEART BUT TO LEAVE HER OUT!

Both on the way in and out, I passed a young woman trying unsuccessfully to persuade passers-by to cough up €5 for charity - in return for one or other bauble. These money-raisers generally don't approach foreigners (who stick out like sore thumbs) because they're not confident enough of their English.

So the woman was surprised when I stopped at her stall and addressed her in Portuguese, and she was delighted to learn that I wanted to contribute all of €10 to her charity. I sympathised with her task. Truly, convincing an indifferent public of the worthiness of a cause is about as thankless as it gets. I wasn't enthused about the baubles but, at her insistence, I came away with a rubber heart and a plastic fan.

Several times, both Jones and I have paused at fairs and fetes to purchase some unwanted item from a young (obviously disconsolate) stallholder whose wares have found no favour with visitors. Life in business is tough.

Two other visits have been to our regular jeweller in Loule (the city has at least a dozen such) to have Barbara's lost-and-found bracelet reduced in size - and to her Ukrainian dressmaker to have a jacket taken in. The woman concerned operates from a shop in the back streets of Loule. She's quick, exact and inexpensive - and always busy.

Jones has made use of her services half a dozen times and never come away displeased.

Natasha is doing a shift with us in the garden. She's a good gardener, and used to spend much of her day keeping the extensive garden of another client in order. We are still cleaning up the garden perimeter, an area that until a few years ago had succumbed to decades of wild growth.

To get up from my desk I shall have to disturb the five dogs that are laid out like stuffed animals under and around it. They like to be with me - and I've no problem with that. I enjoy their company.

The remaining two dogs don't come upstairs. They tried it once or twice in the early days but wouldn't descend the stairs, having to be ferried down again, clutched on my lap as I bum-bounced down a stair at a time.

This is a picture of a gift that Jonesy got from Marie and of my efforts to make it twirl. The idea is that the glass ball sitting in the circling steel frame appears to rise or fall as the frame spins. But the frame won't spin of its own accord.

Thus you are looking at the TB spinner, Mark Four, which catches the breeze (when there is one) quite successfully and spins the device beneath it. After all, one has to find something to pass the time during these hot days.
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