Letter from Espargal: 22 February 2014

It's been a sunny, cloudy, drizzly, breezy kind of a week when we were glad to have a fire. Let me begin my recollection of it last Friday, an evening when we attended a classical concert at Loule's cine-teatro. I could have done without the opening piece ("Re-entering" by António Pinho Vargas) which was reminiscent of sound effects for an underwater movie.

Jones applauds such compositions on principle, if only to compliment the players; I refuse point blank to endorse such stuff for fear of encouraging more. However, these reflections are by the by.

LET'S GET GOING!

For what made the evening regrettably memorable was the devastation we encountered on the back patio on our return. Our doggies had dismantled two of Jones's favourite cushions. What a mess!

The patio looked as though a flock of geese had exploded inside a sponge-rubber store. Both cushions had been ripped beyond even a Jones repair. A third cushion, victim of an earlier assault has been lovingly restored, despite the gaping holes in its cover.

The culprits - the three pups - know better than to touch the cushions while we're around. But anything is fair game when we're out. And unless we catch them red-pawed, which is difficult when we're not home - there's not much we can do about it other than to put our possessions away.

An old, though still perfectly wearable, Jones shoe also underwent a little canine re-modelling during the week. One leaves things lying around at one's peril.

On Monday my English class discussed the disappearance of UK television from expatriate tv screens. Although they were interested to hear about expat woes, they didn't seem too bothered.

The only issues close to Portuguese hearts right now are weather, football and the economy - mainly the economy. Come to think of it, they're the only issues that are ever close to Portuguese hearts - well, maybe apart from family and a good meal.

BJ WITH A BOTTLE OF MOONSHINE FROM A LOCAL STILL

Monday evening we joined the locals at the Hamburgo to celebrate the restaurant's reopening. Manuel has spent the past two months in Germany - where he used to live - because it doesn't pay him to open over the depths of the Portuguese winter when so few visitors are around. The lamb and chicken dish that his wife and cook, Graca, prepared for us in advance was as good as ever. So was the wine. It's a relief to have the Hamburgo open once again. For its combination of price, quality, service and location, it's unbeatable.

On Tuesday we stopped by the house of a former neighbour to talk to a technician who, I'd ascertained, was installing a new satellite TV system there. The system exploits a back-up satellite transmission that the UK broadcasters keep in readiness for any signal failure of the main satellite. The only downside is that the back-up transmissions are encrypted to stop people like us watching them.

The technician, a perfectly pleasant and credible fellow, explained that the company which supplied the digibox also supplied a software key to decrypt the signal. When the encryption was changed, the company would obtain the code and put the new key on the internet, to be downloaded on to a USB drive and plugged into the digibox. He urged me to stay to see the quality of the picture for myself. I declined as I didn't doubt it; the question mark is simply over the dependability of the hackers!

BRAVEHEART & SQUINTY (WITH WHITE MUTI OVER A BURST BOIL ON HIS CHEEK)

On Wednesday morning we left the house and animals to Natasha, taking the opportunity to run a load of dog-food out to the rescue-kennel we support on the far side of Loule. Our arrival is greeted as enthusiastically by the residents as by Marisa and her assistants. I have the greatest admiration for the latter. Truly, they perform a labour of love - 365 days a year. We helped them to unload the boot, offering titbits to dogs from the adjacent sanctuary that popped around to try to their luck. Marisa's kennels are on one side of the fence, Jan's (an English woman) on the other.

We lunched (sandwiches and a glass of wine) at the Eletrico snack-bar on Faro Beach, where great piles of sand were occupying much of the public car park. The storms of the past fortnight have certainly left evidence of their passing.

In the afternoon I presented myself for a long-overdue dentist's appointment, aware that morsels of food forever getting trapped between a couple of lower molars boded ill. I was right. Two-and-a-half hours later I emerged from the surgery with three temporary crowns - a great deal poorer.

FARO BEACH CAR PARK

Jones, who'd left her mobile phone at home (not for the first time) was pacing the courtyard, fearful that I'd died of a heart attack but reluctant to confirm her suspicions . She didn't have to worry. The tears in my eyes were not provoked by my sufferings. Paulo the dentist, a Brazilian, is both high-tech and excellent; he's backed up by a technician who works in the next room on rapid prostheses.

On Thursday a small device (a Lightning Digital AV Adapter) that I'd ordered from Amazon, arrived in the post. It connects my iPad Mini to the HDMI cable that links up to the lounge TV, allowing us to watch on TV whatever we select on the tablet.

After a few minutes' experimentation, we had it up and running. It works brilliantly - both for radio and TV. To view the BBC's domestic channels, I first have to activate the Virtual Private Network - which locates us in the UK and thus entitles us to view such programming.

I felt quite pleased with myself. (Even) Jones was impressed.

APPLE TV

At the same time, Llewellyn, has been testing out an Apple TV (box of tricks) on our behalf in London. It's a bit trickier to set up but should enable us to link our tablets wirelessly to the TV rather than by cable. The device is now in the post. Assuming that it works, we'll keep the cable as a back-up should we run into trouble.

What we have yet to ascertain is whether all the audio and video streaming we are now doing is going to impact on our internet costs. I guess something has to give.

The one screw-up of the week has been the delivery of the handheld hiker's GPS sat-nav that I also ordered from Amazon - or rather, of a sat-nav that I didn't order. The model that emerged from the box turned out to be rather fancier than that I'd selected and paid for. According to the accompanying invoice, it should have gone to a client in the Middle East.

I wondered whether anyone would have been any the wiser if I'd kept it. It occurred to me that the real buyer would be most unhappy to receive mine. Whatever the case, I contacted the suppliers by email to point out their mistake. They came back, apologising for a warehouse error for which the culprits had been "reprimanded". They say it's the first time such a slip has occurred and they're trying to work out how to get the right devices to the right buyers. I hope they sort it out soon.

Letter from Espargal: 15 February 2014

The only two issues this past week have been the yucky weather and our vanishing TV. The latter vanished even further when the two commercial channels, ITV and Channel 4, followed the BBC in pulling the plug, leaving us with Sky News, CNN and a dozen "don't bother unless you're desperate" options. The change-over also left us bereft of UK radio by satellite.

Warning: Stand by for a high tech letter!

The local English-language press has been full of adverts for alternative suppliers of British channels. As far as I can tell, these all involve paying entrepreneurial types a lot of money to install equipment that will download UK video via the internet for a monthly fee. That in turn assumes a robust broadband connection from an ISP that permits virtually unlimited downloads.

Until the dust dies down and the stronger contenders emerge, we don't plan to sign anything. But we have taken interim steps. After much consultation with my cyber guru, Llewellyn, I trekked around the major electronics suppliers in search of several items of equipment. In this I was moderately successful, coming away with a booster device for the house wifi (Devolo dLan 500 AV wireless) and a (Cambridge) wireless speaker that picks up and amplifies the iPad audio.

It's quite fascinating to sit with my half dozen favourite radio stations visible on the iPad (TuneIn) radio app while the audio from the chosen channel emerges from the speaker on the far side of the study. Apart from occasional buffering, the signal is as good as that we used to get by satellite. So at least we are able to wake and retire to our regular stations. To lose quality TV is unfortunate; to have lost radio as well would have been a real disaster.

What I couldn't find in my tour of stores was either the box of tricks known as an Apple TV or alternatively a cable - to connect our iPads to the lounge TV set. Every single stockist was sold out and awaiting supplies. It would seem that the English speaking community had descended like vultures on the electronics stores the day the BBC went down, stripping them naked of all such equipment.

One salesman commented that it was the same story across mainland Europe and that it could be some time before suppliers were able to respond to the demand. Given the uncertainty, I've turned to Amazon.

In the meanwhile we are using two avenues to watch UK TV on our iPads. The first is via the website, FilmOn, although how long it will be able to maintain this service (in view of legal challenges) is another question. The other, using the Virtual Private Network I invested in last week, is via the BBC's iPlayer site, which allows UK viewers a week to catch up on any programmes they may have missed. Both approaches are working after a fashion, if you don't mind the small image and a bit of fiddling around. The audio - through the wireless speaker - is more than adequate.

Forgive me if you should think this to be a great deal of fuss about very little. It doesn't feel that way to us. The great advantage for northern expats of migrating to sunny southern climes is to enjoy the best of both worlds, the culture of the old world with the climate and low costs of the new one. And to find oneself suddenly bereft of a medium that for years has filled one's winter evenings is like coping with the death of a friend.

After some thought I also installed an anti-virus programme on my android smartphone, given the evils now threatening such phones and the personal information that an attacker might gain. Vodafone, my supplier, has been pestering me for some time to install its security software (€2 a month) but after reading critical reviews I thought better of it. Instead I opted for a free version from Kaspersky, whose security products I've been using satisfactorily on my computers for years.

I don't know about the electronic media in your part of the world but it seems to me that every time I turn something on, gender issues (or the weather) are under discussion. There is evidently a dearth of female company directors, investment bankers, members of parliament, government ministers, bishops and similar eminences. I do hope that satisfactory appointments to all these positions can be made soon so that radio and television hosts can talk about something else for a change.

THERE'S NOTHING TO BEAT A SLEEP-IN

Mind you, while on gender equality, I won no kudos from my wife for my "intolerant and grumpy" comments on four befeathered male ballerinas who were capering about a stage as alternative swans in some idiot's TV ballet production. (I tend to curse aloud at such lunacy, which - understandably - sometimes upsets her!)

Call me old-fashioned but I can't handle cobs in the corps de ballet, however many feathers they tuck into their tutus. When it comes to swanning around, I'm all for old-fashioned pens.

As to the weather, as you may have gathered from the pictures, it's been dismal. We've been encased in mist for much of the week. A fine unrelenting drizzle has penetrated every nook and cranny of the garden and the patios. A patina of moisture glistens on every surface.

Most of our old towels have been employed either to dry off the dogs after our daily slithers or to protect the hallway tiles against their wet paws. The sun is merely a distant memory. There are no stars for me to examine on my newly downloaded, much-lauded Star Walk app.

If this sounds like a complaint, it's not. I'm all too well aware how lightly we are getting off. Portuguese TV shows miserable people wading through inundated villages up north, UK TV is full of storms and floods and CNN carries on about the dreadful snowstorms in the US.

If the price that Algarvian hill-dwellers have to pay for global warming is merely a damp and misty fortnight, I can live with it. As so often, we give thanks for the central wood-fire that keeps the house so cosy, whatever the elements. The dogs, when not upstairs with me, just camp around it, giving little growls if any of their companions should intrude on their perceived private space. Fair enough!

Letter from Espargal: 9 February 2014

TINY DAFFODILS DOT THE WET EARTH

Friday dawned like the morn of the Garden of Eden, which was delightful, as it's been a grey, damp old week. For the first time this month, we really enjoyed our trek around the hills, in spite of a good deal of slipping and slithering on the sticky ground. I take it slowly and carefully; I have a gift for losing my balance.

Jonesy stopped to admire one of the miniature daffodils that dot the path. After that, we set off for the shopping centre at Guia, of which more later.

Friday afternoon has turned grey with the promise of more rain. With an eye on the heavens we got in an early walk. There's a wet and windy weekend in store. Northern Portugal has been taking a hammering.

We've half an eye on the TV, with the hope of seeing something of the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony but all that Sky is offering us at the moment is floods in Somerset, where the discontented locals are growing webbed toes. Not for the first time, I'm grateful to live up a hill.

During a walk earlier this week I suffered my first bout of hot flushes.

THE WIND HAS SCATTERED THE ALMOND BLOSSOM EVERYWHERE

I've no idea what brought it on. First I started shivering, then perspiring furiously. I stripped off my outer garments. The last kilometre home felt like a dreadfully long way. If that's what girls have to go through, I'm grateful to be a boy. It took a couple of stiff baggies to restore my equilibrium.

Thursday was the day that the world as we knew it ended. As ever, I turned on the bedside speaker when I awoke on Thursday morning to listen to the BBC's Today programme, my daily introduction to the world. Instead I heard just a faint hiss. Jones, who lay awake beside me, said she'd had equally little luck when she'd tried earlier - she gets up a couple of hours before I do. The satellite receiver had shown her just a "NO SIGNAL" message.

Then the penny dropped. D-Day had dawned. The BBC had finally moved its signals to the new satellite, with the commercial channels due to follow suit. Ouch! For 15 years we've woken to BBC satellite radio and gone to sleep with it, as well as enjoying free four BBC TV channels for which UK viewers pay. For hundreds of thousands of us scattered around Europe, it's no more.

Not that this is entirely bad news. The radio channels are still available to us via iPads or other computers. And, like many people, we subscribe to a package of TV channels from Portuguese Telecom, a dozen or so in English. Nonetheless, most of our favourite programmes are carried by the BBC and these will be sorely missed.

That's unless we can get them elsewhere. I spent most of Thursday, with Llewellyn's help, experimenting with the "hidemyass" facility, one of several that enable users to obscure their location with the use of Virtual Private Networks. In our case this is not to avoid surveillance by the NSA but just to access channels that are otherwise unavailable in their countries of residence. Results so far are satisfying. Experimentation continues.

The rest of the week has been pleasantly unremarkable. On Wednesday, while Natasha was cleaning the living room, we went to town to have our haircuts.

(It sounds wrong to say "hairs cut".) All visits to Loule begin with a stop at the Reis do Pao (Bread Kings) snack-bar where we enjoy a coffee and share a rice cake. My proprietary diet permits the consumption of half a rice cake once or twice a week. Jorge, the manager, has got to know us well. To be served, we have only to nod in his direction as we take our seats.

Along with our regular order he brought us a slice of a new product, marble cake, to try. It was very good. Under the circumstances I thought that we were entitled to eat the rice cake as well.

But Jones thought it more sensible to wrap it up and take it home. In the event, she later gave it to May, along with the cat nibbles the latter had requested. That was fine by me.

I parked the car right outside the salon of Fatima, our long-standing (no pun intended) hairdresser, to avoid the worst of the showers that were sweeping across Loule every few minutes. (Not for nothing is it known as the pisspot of the Algarve!) When I informed Fatima that we had invested in a Queen bed that was 1.6m wide, she laughed and said her bed was 2.4m wide and was covered with a really fancy split latex mattress. That was so that she, her husband and their two cats could enjoy a good night's sleep. (He too suffers from a curmudgeonly back!) Clearly, I have not been ambitious enough.

When we got home I got Slavic to help me move our old guest bed and mattress into Casa Nada. It had been standing up against the cupboard in the guest room since we moved our former bed downstairs. The guest bed was really heavy and there was no easy way to carry it. We manoeuvred it as far as the front patio where I left Slavic supporting it while I went to fetch the tractor.

Along with the bed-board and the mattress, it now stands up against the Casa Nada wall, covered with an old sheet to keep the dust off. I have offered the bed to Natasha but she can't accommodate it until such time as she moves into larger accommodation - which isn't imminent. She's still on the look-out.

Now we're back to Friday afternoon. The dogs are letting me know that they haven't been fed. There's a fire in the stove and the remains of a fine whisky in my glass. On charge beside my computer is the pair of wireless headphones that I acquired from FNAC at the shopping centre in Guia this morning.

They're analogue, which means I don't have to go through the complex installation procedure required by the bluetooth headphones I'd first considered. I have plugged them into the back of the computer with a view to listening to our favourite radio programmes while on the move about the house.

They work superbly, which is a great relief. I thought after setting them up that I'd made a mistake as I couldn't get them to function. But the problem seems to have been just flat batteries. Barbara is pleased too. She loves to listen to the World Service early in the morning as she catches up on the ironing or correspondence.

So, there's our week, not a bad one, BBC or no BBC.

Letter from Espargal: 1 February 2014

If I were to construct a wind turbine in Espargal, I would site it exactly where we built our house. For there is no windier spot in the village. And when that wind comes whipping down Benafim hill from the north, still laden with Siberian icicles, it is as bitter as it is unsettling, scattering the almond blossom, freezing Jonesy's hands and spooking the animals. It's hard to relax when the environment feels so ill at ease.

Five minutes' walk away, on the far side of the summit with its glorious views to the coast, the Espargalian winter transforms itself into a gentle, sunlit spring. But that area is out of bounds to house-builders (which, come to think of it, may not be a bad thing).

UP YOURS, MATE!

On really windy days (and some not so windy) the dogs are a pest. Wednesday was such a day. We had returned from our walk and were preparing to go to lunch when I received a message to say that Prickles had turned up at Marie's place, 200 metres away - not for the first time.

The warning came from Natasha, who was working there before coming on to us. So I hastened down the road to fetch our little dog, whom I found taking his ease in the living room. (He's still getting out through the fence somewhere in spite of our best efforts.)

NOT AS REPENTANT AS HE LOOKS

We returned to hear Jones gasp with exasperation as she entered the kitchen - one of those "I'm really upset" gasps. As sensitively as possible, I enquired as to the problem. The problem, it emerged, was Natasha's lunch or rather the disappearance thereof. Jones had barely taken it out of the freezer and set it on the work surface.

As she pointed out, the only remaining traces were a few crumbs on the plate. Our suspicions fell on Raymond but the evidence was circumstantial and he had taken the Fifth. So, with no other recourse and another sigh, Jones prepared lunch anew.

THERE'S NOT A LOT TO DO WHEN THE WIND BLOWS

She arrived at the car shortly afterwards feeling even more hassled. The wind was messing up her newly-washed hair and Bobby had also disappeared. I left her reassembling herself while I went to look for Bobby. I found him stuck behind a gate leading to the park and very pleased to be released.

Then we went to lunch. Some days are like that - out of synch.

However irritating these trials, we are aware that they are trivial. Rather more serious has been the death of Jet, one of two dogs belonging to Dutch neighbours at the end of our road.

After finding their pet badly out of sorts, they took him to the vet to discover that he'd suffered massive internal injuries, presumably after being struck by a vehicle.

His owners, to whom we expressed our sympathies, are really cut up by the episode - and little wonder. It's a dreadful thing to lose a pet in such circumstances.

Tuesday was busy, by our retirement standards at least. The morning brought the annual meeting with our accountants. I prepare a careful spreadsheet with details of our income and tax deductible outgoings. Expats are well aware of the awkward questions likely to be posed by Portugal's fiscal authorities who now have access to the Europe-wide bank accounts of foreign residents.

In the afternoon we rendezvoused with the local architect who introduced us to a solicitor in Loule who, he thinks, might be able to assist us to resolve a long-standing bureaucratic problem with our paperwork.

BARBARA, SARAH AND THE DOGS AT THE START OF THE HIKE

At lunch with May on Monday - I'm going backwards - we were joined by another neighbour, Nicoline as we chatted about a hike we'd taken the previous day. As it happens, Nicoline's partner, Anneke, is a great hiker. Nicoline told us that she'd bought a handheld GPS to guide Anneke, who'd sometimes gone off-route.

They'd downloaded the entire Via Algarviana trail on to the device so that even if Anneke did go wrong, the GPS indicated the shortest way back. They were both pleased with the results.

My ears pricked up as we had nearly gone astray ourselves several times during our two-hour hike with Sarah along a section of the Via Algarviana - a hiking trail that runs from the Spanish border to the west coast.

It was only Sarah's sharp eyes that spotted poorly-marked and unexpected deviations from the forestry roads along which the trail wound.

Many of the markings are small, faded and easily missed. Once or twice we had to leave the road to cross shallow streams where the choice was either to hop across stones or to take off one's footwear and wade.

I had the advantage of water-proof boots and hopped. My companions preferred to play it safe.

Last Friday was a red letter day. I got a call mid-afternoon to say that our new bed and mattress had arrived at the showroom in Loule and were ready for delivery. Within the hour, the van was at the gates. Jones was a bit taken back by the suddenness of it all.

I was more taken aback to find that the driver had no mate. I'd warned the shop that our weighty existing bed would have to be dismantled, carried downstairs and reassembled before the even weightier new bed could be carried upstairs to be installed in its place.

Carlos, the driver, strong and willing as he was, wasn't Superman; in spite of his "leave it to me" protestations, he needed a lot of help to manoeuvre the two heavy mattresses - one downstairs and one up - without knocking the paintings off the wall.

That aside, Carlos did a sterling job. Within the hour he had the last nuts tightened and the new mattress settled on the bed. It's a Queen-size as opposed to our previous double, designed with a similar wooden structure holding four drawers.

RELAXING AFTER THE HIKE

We are still watching the capers of our nightly interior designers. Another fascinating TV programme traced the reactions of two identical twins - both medical doctors - as one adopted a sugar-rich diet for a month and the other a fat-rich diet. The long and the short of it was that the outcomes were much the same; the real danger - as illustrated elsewhere - came from processed food containing high levels of both sugars and fats. Jones said we already knew that. It certainly made the point.

For my part, I am still intent on reducing my intake of both as I inch - should that be millimetre - down towards my 85kg target.