Letter from Espargal: 29 March 2014

This is the state of play. A dry month is coming to a damp end. We've had coffee and toast (we take our own jam) at the snack bar in Benafim - along with a wondrous dram of medronho from Jose, the tractor man. The snack bar was crowded as lots of people were walking back into town from the funeral of a young woman who had reportedly died of cancer. The cemetery, as usual in Portuguese villages, is located on the outskirts and the church in the centre.

I am being forced once again to dictate my blog as tendonitis still possesses my elbow like a determined demon. And I am not a natural dictator.

For inspiration Beethoven tinkles away on the Apple TV. Jones is outside endeavouring to repair the damage that the dogs have done to her garden before the rain starts. They seem to have engaged in wrestling matches before trying to dig out a couple of (imaginary) moles. (We discovered long ago that dogs and gardens did not go well together. I offered to fence off the garden but she declined.)

What you see here is Barbara's peony. It is the first flower from a plant that Olly and Marie dug up from the river bank and gave to her three years ago. Ann (Benson) says peonies take a year to sleep, a year to creep and a year to leap; only in their third year may you hope for a flower. This one has certainly brought my wife a great deal of pleasure. She loves it when her plants thrive and is pained when they die.

Before sitting down to talk to my iPad, I built a fire and used a warm cloth to rub off most of the poop that Russ has been rolling in. Russ seemed puzzled after all the trouble he had gone to. Some things are hard to explain to a dog.

WELCOMING COMMITTEE

On Monday, I plucked the first tick of the season off my neck, fortunately before it had bitten in. On Tuesday I put new tick collars on all the dogs. The recommended Seresto flea and tick collars are wickedly expensive, even from the pet discount store, although not as expensive as losing a dog to tick fever. The manufacturers say they are good for 7 to 8 months. The ticks that I subsequently removed from Russ and Raymond were clearly not aware of their potency. Jones says maybe the little biters were already feeling ill. Maybe!

IT'S JUST ME

Our morning walks of been accompanied by clanking noises from a large site across the valley where machines have been clearing an area of rocky scrubland. The rocks are piled up in great heaps. There are a number of citrus farms in the parish and I suspect that it's going to be another one. (More likely carobs, says Jones.) This is not a good time to go into citrus production. Farmers have been complaining bitterly about the low prices they're getting.

Also on Tuesday, I took Jones to the dentist to get her new tooth fitted and Slavic came to work. He's been building a series of steps up through the terraces in the park. That's meant trekking into the countryside on the tractor to look for rocks and ferrying supplies of sand, gravel, cement and water to the site.

Slavic's steps are a great improvement on the stepping stones that I had previously embedded in the steep earth. Going up the steps wasn't too bad; coming down could be a bit hazardous, especially in wet weather.

It's a great advantage that I have only to tell Slavic what I have in mind and then safely leave him to it. The results have never disappointed us.

MIRROR ORCHIDS

For lunch, we joined May and Ken at the Angolana. The salmon steaks are unbeatable. I left an extra tip for our young waiter, Tiago, who had been there only two weeks and did very well. By the way, Jones is happy with her new tooth and even happier, after two tough sessions, that the fitting was brief and easy. The receptionist had re-completed the (previously reversed) claims forms, which should help us recover a morsel of the mega outlay. Not that I'm moaning. Crowns don't come cheap - and my three new molars eclipsed her single canine.

Jones gave vent to her irritation with our new bed when she last changed the linen. She found it a struggle to stretch the fitted sheet over the heavy mattress. (Thank you Cathy; it's a lovely sheet.) My offers of assistance did nothing to assuage her frustration. For myself, I continue to be delighted with the new queen-sized bed, particularly the mattress. At least most of us now get a good night's sleep. (Jones says she's as little space as ever.)

I'm aware that the proximity of humans and pets may give rise to certain health issues. The animals seem prepared to take the risks involved.

I am also pleased to report that following the various expensive installations earlier this month, all our new technology is functioning well - unlike my elbow. At Llewellyn's suggestion I've downloaded several new apps onto the iPad.

The most impressive of these is an app called Multi Measures HD, a device that measures just about anything. Try it and see.

I have yet to work out how to transfer the Wi-Fi connection on the printer from my old router to the new one but that can await Lewellyn and Lucia's arrival next month.

Letter from Espargal: 22 March 2014

Let me start at the beginning. On Monday my English class discussed the Portuguese government's latest project to encourage citizens to ask for receipts for all transactions - thus constraining the informal economy. All electronic receipts bearing the fiscal number of the recipient will automatically be entered into a weekly draw with a luxury car as the prize.

As tempting as this might be, my pupils, all well retired, uniformly thought this a rascally scheme by a grasping government to separate hard-working citizens from their money.

I was quite surprised. They seemed convinced that paying unnecessary taxes merely fattens further the obese and corrupt pussies in government and they couldn't be persuaded otherwise. One offered to pay all her taxes when there was justice in the land, a tall order indeed.

On Tuesday Slavic arrived at 08.30 and Joao at 09.00. The former came to strim and labour on the road we are building in the park, the latter to link us up once more to UK television transmissions. You may recall that we were cruelly deprived of these when their satellite reception footprint was tightened last month to a narrow circle around the British Isles.

It took Joao two hours to retrain the existing TV dish on one satellite and to set up a second dish aimed at another satellite - and then to link them up to a magic box that he cabled to the upstairs TV set.

Hey presto! Back came a hundred TV stations and even more radio stations, most of the former in brilliant high definition. On the plus side, we have all our channels back - and more - with extra sparkle. On the minus side, we are "borrowing" their signal without official approval and depend on Joao's goodwill and contacts to update the cyber-key each time the encryption is changed.

Also, with four dishes - three TV and one Sat-Internet - now peering heavenwards from the sides of the house, we are starting to look a little bit like the NSA. After Joao had gone, Slavic and I spent the rest of the day labouring on the extended road (pictured below) and fertilising the fruit and carob trees.

I also took the plough to the knee-high greenery that covers our outer fields.

Also that day I heard from Burrows, whom I'd been trying to reach in vain regarding my GPS, stuck in customs in Lisbon. The Burrows man said he'd been ill and out of touch - and would follow things up immediately. He later confirmed that he'd contacted DHL, both by phone and in writing, and that the GPS would shortly be delivered to me. If he had, DHL didn't seem to know about it and continued chasing me for a decision on its fate. I thought of the New Testament injunction about keeping the left hand ignorant of the right's doings.

We celebrated that night with dinner at the Hamburgo. The restaurant had just reopened following the funeral of a relative of the owners and was about to close for another. From Manuel we gathered that four relatives had passed away from unrelated causes in the course of a week - a real shock to the family!

In view of the gradual progress that I am making with my continuing diet, I allowed myself a glass of wine or two. Manuel stocks an excellent range. Come to think of it, I have allowed myself several glasses of wine this past week and felt all the better for them. During a visit to the Apolonia supermarket, I peered through the glass at my favourite whiskies.

But I couldn't bring myself to cough up the huge sums being asked. This is an example of thrift that I hastened to point out to my wife.

On Wednesday I phoned the Internet by Satellite company to ask about the system I'd had installed. I'd been trying to measure by download and upload speeds but getting wildly fluctuating results. That, the technician told me, was because normal testers didn't work on sat technology. He also told me where to find one that did.

This bespoke model gave me pleasing results of 18mb/s down and 6 up, several times faster than I get from my landline link-up. Less pleasing was to hear that there was no way of getting a UK IP address (although Llewellyn is working on it).

The delay caused by VPN transmission via the (comparatively distant) satellite slows the recording of BBC TV programmes overnight to a walking pace. Mr Wikipedia explains exactly why. (Less technically-minded readers are welcome to skip this paragraph.) Hopefully, with our new TV system, we won't need to worry any more.

Thursday I took Jones to the dentist, who took an hour to insert a new post in her damaged tooth and to cover it with a temporary canine. She goes back next week to have a permanent one fitted. She wasn't very happy. She's not a fan of dentists.

For that matter, neither am I. As I explained to him, when he asked if I liked injections, I don't. But I dislike them less than being drilled alive. His receptionist helpfully filled in our medical insurance claim forms for us. But as she put my dental details under Jones's name and vice versa, it all has to be done again.

After lunch I fitted the new Wahl electric clipper blades, which had arrived in the post from Amazon, and stripped the two hairy pups. Even with the new blades this proved quite a challenging task, the more so as Mary, beholding her brother's fate, sought refuge beneath Jones's desk and couldn't be enticed out again. If I say so myself, the pair look a great deal better for my efforts. Even Jones thought I'd done a fine job.

We watched a brief news interview with the idiotic UK couple who won over £100m in the Euromillions lottery. They'll have no more peace in this life. As it happens, we enjoyed a small win ourselves, all of €4.32.

That brings us to today. This morning we went to the airport to fetch Ken, May's nephew, whom, after a brief shopping stop, we dropped at his aunt's. Then, having filled the car with diesel (€60) and paid QuimQuim for the sand and cement they had deposited outside the gate (another €60) we came back to our waiting and welcoming dogs.

I SHOULD CREDIT MY WIFE FOR THE LOVELY PICS

At this point Jones is going out to weed and I must finish my ploughing before Slavic returns tomorrow to continue working in the park.

What a busy life!

That's enough writing for this week, especially as my RSI continues to plague me.

Letter from Espargal: 15 March 2014

WILD TULIPS

I am not certain that there is room on my hard disk for a proper account of all the activities we have been involved in this week. Happily, you are not in danger. For the dreaded RSI, which has been hovering in the background, has returned haunt to me once again. Thus I am forced once more to dictate my blog; this I find very difficult, because I think with my fingers and not with my mouth, a failing that has prompted a number of unkind comments.

WOODCOCK ORCHID

So I may as well make a start. Sunday did not begin well, certainly not for Barbara. She discovered in the fridge a single tiny square of chocolate which, uncharacteristically, she decided to consume. It was probably an old and certainly a cold piece of chocolate for it immediately broke a tooth. This was no ordinary tooth but a crown which came apart, snapping the steel post that anchored it. Generously, I told Barbara that she could have the greater part of the appointment that I had booked with the dentist for the following Tuesday to repair a new crown that I had chipped myself.

ONO AMONG THE NAKED MANS

Monday brought the first English lesson in three weeks, following interruptions for the secretary's funeral and then for Carnival. I gave Margarida the biggest squeeze I could, wishing that I could bring her husband back. She was still too raw to say more than a few words. I gathered from a colleague that Mousinho had died, not of liver cancer, but of septicemia resulting from it.

GLORIOUS EARLY PURPLE

My pupils continue to discuss the efforts that English expats are making to obtain UK television coverage, of which more later. After classes we came home to tend the dogs and then went on to another funeral, this time in Alte. It was that of a long-ailing villager, Jose Maria, whose kindly wife had sold us a plot of land adjacent to our house. He was in his 80s, as indeed were many of the mourners - and the rest were not much younger.

CISTUS AND BEE

On Tuesday, we just had time to give the dogs an early leg-lifter in the park in order to get to the dentist for a nine-thirty appointment. In two minutes the dentist had whipped out my damaged crown, which he gave to the technician to repair. Then it was Barbara's turn. Poor Barbara! The dentist had to drill almost down to her tonsils in order to retrieve the broken spike. It wasn't an easy session. She came away with a temporary crown, with a permanent one to follow next week. A recuperative brandy helped to improve matters.

IRIS

On Tuesday afternoon I visited neighbors to inspect their Internet-by-satellite system. It offers four times the download speed that I am getting and many times the upload speed, although at a price. It's a system I been thinking about for some time. Tuesday night I put in an order.

SAWFLY ORCHID

On Wednesday Natasha came. We talked about a house that she wants to buy. Our lawyer is offering advice. I told Natasha that I would be seeing the lawyer the following day. That afternoon, I got a call from DHL in Lisbon. They needed more information about the GPS that had been sent to me in error and that I was sending on at the suppliers' request to the rightful recipient in Dubai.

BEES IN THE BORAGE

On Thursday I got more calls from DHL. The first was to say that the Internet-by-satellite system equipment had arrived at the DHL office. The other was from Lisbon to say that the GPS intended for me had arrived from Dubai and was stuck in customs. Money and information would be required for customs to release it. I wasn't pleased. This is meant to be the suppliers' problem not mine. I explained the position to DHL and emailed the suppliers. I've not heard anything back from them.

EUPHORBIA

We took May to lunch. Then we visited the DHL office to fetch a large heavy box containing the equipment. I found a technician who said he would install it the following day. He didn't seem to understand my Portuguese very well. This, as I discovered, was because he was Dutch and spoke much better English than Portuguese.

On Friday morning, shortly after Slavic appeared to strim the park, Kees arrived to do the installation. According to the suppliers, clients can do the installation themselves if they follow the instructions carefully. This is a bare-faced lie. It's strictly for the experts. Kees at first tried to install the new dish in the place of the old television dish down in the garden. It wasn't easy but he managed it.

But the distance between the dish and the router in the house was too great for the system's liking so he had to dismantle it again. He then set the dish up on the outer wall of the house outside the study. This time it worked fine, or would have if the suppliers had not forgotten to send us the activation code. I phoned to ask for it. The code arrived by email after lunch and everything is finally up and running.

LAVENDER

My aim has been to download programs from the BBC's iPlayer site overnight when there is no limit on data. To access the site I need to use a virtual private network to pretend that I'm in Britain. What I discovered this morning was that the download speed drops to a walking pace when it goes through a virtual private network. My downloading was not a success. Llewellyn and I have been discussing solutions. (Are you aware that using a VPN in cafe and restaurant hotspots encrypts your data and protects you from the hackers that now lurk in such places? Thank you Llewellyn for the warning!)

PINKS AND YELLOWS

All this installing required the removal of dozens of dusty files and books from the bookshelf holding the various devices. Barbara has heaps of unread garden magazines dating back to her time in London. I have urged her to get rid of them but she finds them companionable even if she doesn't read them - and has declined.

The study looked as if the bomb had hit it. I spent much of the evening tidying things up and dismantling the old TV equipment that sadly is no longer of any use.

ASPHODELS IN THE PARK

Midweek the flies and mosquitoes arrived with the sunshine. For the first time this year we didn't have an evening fire in the stove. Also for the first time I've been walking without a jersey or a jacket. I've hacked back the pups' heavy coats as far as possible, pending the arrival of new blades for the clipper. The flowers and orchids are glorious even if my beans aren't. I hope you've been enjoying them - the flowers!

Letter from Espargal: 7 March 2014

THE ORCHIDS ARE IN THEIR GLORY

I find it easiest when I sit down to the blog to begin with the present in the hope that immediate events will jog my already foggy memories of the previous week. The present is a sunny, windy afternoon. Beyond the study patio the upper branches of the wild olives are whipping around like a boxer trying to duck an assault.

We are back from coffee at the snack-bar in Benafim where Jose presented us with a small bottle of medronho as I admired the latest tractor on his adjacent stand, a 90hp - €41,000 McCormick, which I have undertaken to purchase if we win the Euromillions lottery - with €100,000,000 currently at stake. (If we win, I shall probably buy the whole stand!)

THE WATER OF LIFE!

Moreover, we are back from Rui Miguel's architectural practice in the town where he and his assistant have drawn up the necessary documents - photos, plans, topographical maps - for me to present to the Camara as part of our efforts to register Casa Nada. The pair of them spent an hour earlier in the week taking pictures and recording the details. They needed barely five minutes to get the interior dimensions, using a laser distance metre. Impressive!

We are also back from Gilde's outstanding hardware store at Salir where I purchased a roll of 4.5mm strimming cord and some Spanish thingies that clean the chimney-stack if you add them to the fire. Jones is relaxing with the hounds on the sun-strewn south patio to the tinkling of a piano interlude from one of the many music stations available via the Apple TV.

SAWFLY ORCHID

The strimming cord is intended for the strimmer, which has been going through metres of the stuff as Doru and I try to reduce the knee-high sea of greenery surrounding the house to a navigable level. As things stand, one never knows whether one is about to step in a hole or on a rock - equally hazardous.

Doru spent Thursday with us, initially chopping off the seed-heads of the hundreds of alexanders that have overtaken the property and then using his jack-hammer to demolish a particularly stubborn rock jutting out from the tractor track that I am extending in the bottom field. It took over an hour to pound this rock quite literally into dust.

OUR VERY OWN EARLY PURPLE

Also on Thursday we drove along the N125 highway to find DHL's offices where I handed over the incorrectly despatched Garmin GPS that was intended for a gent in Dubai who is meant to be doing the same for me. And finally, after a quick stop at May's, I visited an old house very close to the Quinta that Natasha is hoping to buy. Natasha met us there, along with the owner and an agent. The house seemed to me to be both suitable and reasonably priced but rather beyond her reach. (That lottery win would come in doubly useful!)

At the moment she and Slavic are renting an apartment in Loule for much the same price as they'd be paying for a mortgage. She would very much like to own her own property rather than merely renting it. And because she's a hard worker, organised, resolute, clever and thrifty, she's achieved her ambitions so far of learning to drive and acquiring a car. She speaks excellent Portuguese as well as her native Russian, and gets along in Ukranian, Romanian and English. However, as admirable as all these achievements are, they don't count for much when it comes to buying a house.

That takes us back to Tuesday. I asked Jones if she could remember what we did that day (other than the usual walks and coffee outing) but she couldn't; neither could I. If a neighbour had been murdered and the police wanted our alibis, we'd be stuck up queer street. Jones has spent a lot of time patching her torn cushions but I doubt that she could tell you when. The days have a habit of merging one into another. It's only Fridays that stand out because that's the day when people typically wish each other a good weekend rather than just good morning or good afternoon.

IS THAT A PLANT THAT I SEE BEFORE ME?

One thing that I did do on Tuesday, as well as Monday and Wednesday, was to investigate the TOOWAY internet by satellite system that offers much faster speeds than those available to us in Espargal. Folks in Benafim on the far side of the valley enjoy 5 and 6 megabits but we're lucky to achieve half of that at the end of old copper wires. The only downside with satellite internet is the price. However, the buffering on our evening TV sessions is slowly driving me towards it.

NO, IT'S JONESY AND RUSS HAVING A LITTLE SIESTA

Unusually, Monday entailed neither a May lunch nor an English lesson. May was feeling out of sorts and the senior university was closed for carnival (an event that we leave these days to revellers; the weather is inevitably miserable and we've long since got over the novelty of being either egg-yolked or flour-bombed). Jones did May's grocery shopping and got her some lunch while I wandered along the main drag of Loule, peering into shop windows. It felt as grey and dull as the skies above; the shops still in business were almost as lifeless as those seeking new tenants.

THOSE MUCH-PATCHED CUSHIONS

For a number of years I have wished to visit Istanbul - Jones already has - and some of the historical sites nearby. If not exactly the cradle of mankind, it's certainly the arena. A cruise, I thought, would combine a relaxing holiday with the opportunity to familiarise myself with places where so much history has been played out. But suitable cruises never offered themselves at times when we were able to take them, not - that is - until this year when the timing, the itinerary, cruise line and the price fell into place.

Talk about timing!

I wonder if we shall need Russian visas.

Dictation from Espargal: 1 March 2014

EARLY PURPLE ORCHID

I am suffering from tendonitis and trying to avoid typing. this is an experiment tonight, a very wild and woolly windy Saturday night. I received a text from Flewelling asking me if I had been aware of the voice recognition software on the iPad. I haven't been aware of it and I am now using it in an attempt to give you an account of the week.

The following was the draft blog that I had prepared earlier in the week before I spent a day gardening with our new Gardner and Suffered from severe RSI as a result. I need hardly say that it's rough and ready.

BABY DAFFS

"This week has had its ups and downs. Monday began on down. While preparing ourselves for the day with coffee and rice cake at at our favourite snack bar I received an SMS from the senior university to say that the secretary had died. I was shocked. he was a good fellow in his early 60s who had seemed hale and hearty when I chatted to him ahead of my lesson just two weeks earlier.

Over the years I've got to know him and his wife Margarita quite well. true he been absent last week but there was no suggestion that he'd been fatally ill. I wondered whether he suffered a stroke or heart attack, the usual killers in modern Portugal. when I arrived for my lesson at 1500 I found the front door of university locked along with a note of apology saying the classes were cancelled and that his funeral was to take place the next morning.

ALEXANDERS

so on Tuesday morning having walked the dogs and introduced doru, a new worker to the dogs, i set him to work, ripping out the Alexanders swamping the Garden. Jones and I went to Goulet to attend the funeral. Portuguese funerals have a lot to be said in their favour. typically the great majority of mourners wait outside the church in quiet conversation while an immediate family and friends attend the service within.

RIP MOUSINHO

then after the coffin is bought out and placed in the waiting hearse the crowds fall in behind it as it makes its slow way to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. traffic inevitably piles up behind the procession but for once drivers refrain from hooting as though in silent salute to the deceased persons final journey.

I gleaned from a couple of my pupils that the man had fallen victim to liver cancer. the disease must've been both advanced and very aggressive. as so often we give thanks for our own many blessings.

DORU

doru is the husband of Nadia the Ukrainian seamstress who has often served as well from her workshop in old loule. Jones had heard from her that her husband had recently returned from a construction job in Belgium and was looking for part time work ahead of another pending contract. for any such work I would normally have sought Slavic's assistance but Slavic had recently found himself in high demand and with the invading Alexanders threatening to overrun the garden there was no time to Delay.

so we agreed that Doru should tsckle the alexanders - after his formal introduction to the dogs. and take them on he did, creating great piles of Alexander corpses that he subsequently forked into the back of the tractor to be heaped up on the compost mountain.

Wednesday brought another visit to the dentist, this time for him to rip out last week's temporary crowns and fit permanent ones. paulo the dentist is both thorough and painstaking. the new crowns went next door to the prosthesis technician a couple of times during an hour-long session for fine adjustment before parlour was happy and cemented them into place. James and I celebrated my new teeth with a glass of wine and a sandwich at Farooq beach

also on Wednesday I spent an hour setting up the Apple TV box that Llewelyn had posted down to me from London. the initial phase talk just a few minutes and I was delighted to get the menu up on the large TV screen but I was blessed if I could link it up to my iPad mini in spite of printing of the instructions from the Internet.

BLUEBELLS

I New that Llewelyn had run into difficulties himself while configuring the same equipment for friends in London. he sent me a number of hints but to no avail. several Skype conversations followed as I try to follow his instructions. the problem was that he was seeing things on his iPad that I wasn't seeing on my. finally I hit the jackpot. now we can stream both audio and video from my iPad directly to the TV, in effect to watch TV via the Internet. the audio side works brilliantly amplifying the radio output. television pictures are watchable but can be a little jumpy with occasional buffering. our broadband just isn't fast enough."

That was as much as I had written by Wednesday evening before Garu arrived on Thursday and I spent the day working with him in the garden and screwed up my arm. it's improving after a session with the physio, along with ice packs and anti inflamatories..

I'm now looking down at what I've dictated. apple's voice recognition software is brilliant. it's truly an amazingly accurate, without any training, vastly more so than a program I bought some years ago and gave up because it simply didn't recognise my voice.

I'm now going to to email this to myself to tinker with it slightly and then to put it up on the blog more or less as it stands. I've taken a number of pictures for the blog that I'll try to stick up too.