Right now we are waiting for the rain that has been promised us these past several days. Not just rain, but wind, thunder and lightning. In fact, I've been getting hourly email weather warnings from the Portuguese Met Office, to which I subscribe.
The accompanying satellite picture shows a deep low pressure system enveloping Portugal like one of those vast alien craft in Independence Day.
Weather or no weather, the dogs insisted on their morning walk. After peering at the grey skies for several minutes, we set out on a short circuit that evolved into a longer circuit as the rain held off.
Even so, for the first time this season, we had to pause at the front door to scrape the mud from our boots and the muck from their paws - the result of 2mm of drizzle overnight.
Our visitors enjoyed the best that September in the Algarve has to offer, departing in the same sunshine that greeted them. We are still getting used to the silence that they left behind.
Their stay was as good as family visits get - relaxed and unstressed. The dogs made our guests equally welcome, albeit after a little preliminary excitement.
Bobby, ever suspicious of strangers, soon overcame his doubts and established himself as Kevin's great pal. It was quite touching to see him seeking out my brother's company and affection.
Cathy, who took over many of the garden watering duties, was upgraded from the guest room to Casa Nada when the Canadians arrived. The cats and the lizards didn't seem to mind her arrival and she declared herself to be perfectly comfortable in her new quarters.
She is a very accommodating sister. She also knows the scene, being a frequent visitor to Casa Valapena.
The Canadians, however, who were making their first visit, hardly knew what to expect, in spite of several years of blog-reading. They loved the house and garden and voiced their appreciation of the many preparations that we had made for their visit.
While Ann made the most of the early mornings, Kevin generally joined us on our walks, taking a stick in either hand the better to negotiate the steep, slippery and stony paths.
He had my full sympathy and support. As a frequent and much-bruised faller myself, I never exit the gates without a walking stick. In my left hand I bear a long, leafy twig both to discourage the flies and to break the spider threads across the bushes. Barbara, who like our athletic puppy, Barri, is little troubled by gravity, spurns any such aids.
I shall not detail all the goods, gifts, gestures, exchanges and services that went to make the family visit extra-special, other than to say that Kevin grilled Michelin-quality salmon steaks on the gas-fired Weber barbeque that appeared during their stay and remained behind when they left.
Friday afternoon: a call on my mobile phone came from a young woman who said she was waiting at the gates with a parcel from Amazon - the two iPad keyboards that I had ordered to fit our devices. The dogs would normally give early warning of any such arrival but with the shutters closed and the wind wailing outside, they hadn't noticed.
The keyboards attach magnetically to the iPads and talk to them via bluetooth, acting as covers when not in use. So one gets to see the whole screen when typing and has a tactile surface to type on rather than glass. I'm wowed - although Jones is dubious. She says she liked it the way it was. Well, nothing is compulsory.
Changing track: In a bid to discover who owns which bits of property, the Portuguese government has decreed that all owners have to declare their properties on a new register. This ought to be a relatively simple process. In theory, one takes the title-deeds and an up-to-date tax-document to the parish offices where an official records them.
However, when one owns seven properties, the boundaries and plot numbers of which have been changed in the course of development, it becomes a nightmare. It took me a whole afternoon to trace and download the relevant documents from the internet and then to match them up against the past and present records.
I have yet to discover what the official at the parish office makes of them. My intention was to make my way up there this afternoon but it's not a day for going out - not if one can help it. (The storm has now broken around us.) As a fallback, I have contacted the super-efficient legal secretary who assisted us with previous bouts of bureaucracy.
If there was a party that was in the business of reducing bureaucracy, I would unhesitatingly vote for it. But as that's too much to hope for, we shall probably cast our votes for independents who are campaigning to de-merge Benafim from the distant villages to which we've been attached as part of the austerity programme. Not that we're betting on that either.
No comments:
Post a Comment