Letter from Espargal: 24 August 2013

Here is the news: A huge moon was witnessed rising over Espargal; relieving cloud brought some shade mid-week; a golden oriole was glimpsed in farmer Martins' field; Squinty's paw seems much better but Braveheart is still limping. Other stuff has been happening in the world but most of it is just depressing - so stand by for cosmos and canines. It's all we've got.

One of the things that I do in bed at night, apart from getting leg cramps, is to have vivid dreams. In effect I attend my own private nocturnal theatre. Most dreams I keep to myself or simply whisper to the dogs that come to the bedside at dawn for a reassuring nuzzle-up. But one recent dream I related to Jones, who concluded that I must be feeling insecure.

In my dream, I had carefully locked a bathroom door before seating myself on a bucket to commune with nature. When I looked up, I noticed to my great surprise that the bathroom had no back wall and that a stream of people was passing by.

So seizing my bucket, I opened the door and went through it to continue my session on the other side. No sooner was I was again seated than I saw that this room too lacked an exterior wall and I was just as exposed to the crowd once more.

I can only think that this was a variation of the popular "no pants" dreams.

It is possible that it was occasioned by the sight of my wife floating around the garden, hose-pipe in hand, clad mainly in one of my hand-me-down shirts.

I considered putting up a picture of this apparition but concluded that it wasn't worth the collapse of my marriage, even though she evinced greater modesty than some of the chiffon and bikini-clad shoppers who waft around Apolonia's supermarket.

Jones, for the record, has the knack of looking almost as good in my clothes as she does in her own although she often complains, especially as she frowns into the car mirror, that she looks a mess!

Like me, she has found the daily upper-30s temperatures difficult to cope with. My solution is to spend as much of the day as possible either in the fan-ventilated study or in the air-conditioned bedroom. Hers is to take herself into her garden in a bid to banish the heat from her mind. (It's not from my mind that the heat needs banishing!)

Five-ish, I follow her outside, whether to do a bit of pruning, mulching, carob-picking or whatever. I have again taken the electric clippers to Russ (aka the woolly mammoth) seen below left , careful not to strip him as naked as I left his sister three weeks ago.

She, happily, is looking quite respectable again, ready to be presented to my family, for whose visit next month we are making preliminary preparations.

It's just the twins that really need clipping to survive the summer. The rest of the dogs can get by with a little grooming.

Some time after seven, as the sun starts to lose its sting, I take the dogs into the park (the two-acre expanse of fenced hillside beyond the garden) to play hide-and-seek.

After a great deal of effort, I have taught the dogs to wait while I go off to hide in some distant corner of the park - whence I call them.

WAIT TILL I CALL YOU

That's the theory, anyhow. In practice the dogs quickly grow impatient for the treats they know that I'm carrying.

Either they sneak up behind a rock to see where I'm heading or Prickles barks to signal that the wait is over.

At that point they all come baying after me like the very furies. When this cheating is blatant, I deny them a treat and insist that they wait while I hide once again. At least I try. For they charge down upon me with such clamorous and expectant glee as is difficult to disappoint.

GOTCHA!

Doggy dinner follows around eight while Jones and I sit down at the table on the cobbled patio to reflect on the day over a baggy & coke.

If there's anything to watch on telly, it will generally be at nine. We often view one programme and record another.

Then comes a salad supper in front of the ten o'clock news - followed by a final leg-lifter with the dogs (perhaps that should be "for the dogs").

If there's a breeze, the front patio is the coolest and pleasantest part of the house and the after-supper temptation on mozzie-free evenings is to lie down on the warm tiles to reflect on the nature of the universe.

The dogs make a dive to get in beside me, the successful bidders defending their positions and the others whining and wingeing from the perimeter.

Braveheart (the black shadow behind my head), who must be one of the world's coolest cats, seems perfectly at ease in the heart of the scrum.

Natasha was saying that her household, apart from partner Slavic and son Alex, now includes a cat and rabbit - sorry; no pics. The rabbit was initially confined to a cage but was later granted the freedom of the apartment, faithfully returning to either its cage or the cat-box to do its business. It has become great mates with the cat.

I had rabbits when I was a kid, a buck and two does that rapidly became a family of 20. When I could no longer feed them, I tried to sell them. There were no takers and in the end, desperate, I gave them away.

ALL IN A HOT AND COPPER SKY

Towards the end of the week we will get a copy of the Portugal News, generally free at supermarkets, to see what's relevant to expats. The editor (like the SABC of old) believes in positive news and always comes up with some impossibly sunny headline: Hotel occupancy on the rise, he will inform us optimistically, or Strong drop in violent crime.

I can't think that anybody ever bothers to read the front page but the letters to the editor can be quite interesting and the ads are sometimes useful.

DUNNO FLOWER?

On Friday evenings I try to think of a novel way of informing the syndicate that we have again lost our stake in the Euromillions draw. Fortunately, members' expectations are not high. The Portuguese government now takes 20% of any wins over €5,000; many Portuguese are said to be placing their bets across the border in Spain where they already buy petrol and much else more cheaply.

Jones and I talked about the 9-hour grilling of David Miranda at Heathrow airport. She says that if you haven't done anything wrong, you haven't anything to worry about. I say that depends on who decides what is wrong. But this isn't a subject I should be getting into now.

This coming week promises to be a little cooler. That will be nice.