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Sunday, April 20, 2014

Letter from Espargal: 19 April 2014

I was lying on the bed earlier this week, fondling Mary's head and reflecting on her style. (She remains cuddlesome, even after the short back-and-sides she and her equally hairy brother received from me as summer bears down relentlessly upon us.) Mary is highly-strung, smart and an insinuator. Like the other dogs, she hates the wind that batters the house on stormy nights, when nature seems so ill at ease with itself. One such night she insinuated her way on to the bed in search of comfort and reassurance.

And since she found a sympathetic reception on that occasion - it was a horrible storm - she's been insinuating her way on to the bed ever since. As long as she lies at the foot and leaves Ono to occupy the middle ground, we all get a fair night's sleep.

May was in good form on Monday. Although her short-term memory is rather shaky, she can still remember all the verses of the many old songs she loved to sing - and still does, given the opportunity. We lunched at Campina.

Our favourite restaurant, Cassima, is still being refurbished, not that there's anything wrong with Campina. We are spoiled for choice. Monday lunches are May's big thing, the highlight of her week, or so she tells us. The highlight of her summer will be the arrival from Scotland shortly of her nephew, Ken. May has no children of her own and Ken is the apple of her eye.

Tuesday was complicated for several reasons, phone problems not the least of them. There was so much noise on the land-line that it was impossible to hear what callers were saying. I reported it to the PT fault line (which subsequently sent around a man who climbed a pole and sorted things out).

Our Skype phone has also been playing silly buggers. It's one of those that hooks directly into the router. Although it rings, neither we nor the callers can hear each other. I tried resetting the phone - to no avail. Using the computer rather than the phone, I was able to Skype Llewellyn - my guru in such matters - to discuss the problem. Looks like the phone has given up the ghost. He's ordered a new one and will bring it down later this

month. So if you've been trying to phone us or Skype us and we haven't answered, please blame the technology.

Still on this theme, I spent an hour with Marie, trying to help her resolve a computer problem. She was very frustrated because her newly-installed high-speed internet-by-satellite was arriving at her computer at a fraction of the expected velocity.

We decided, after some experimentation with my laptop, that her computer's wifi dongle probably needed upgrading - and indeed this proved to be the case. It's nice to get a problem solved. She and I are now getting close to 20mb/s down and 6 up, which is brilliant by local standards.

To our surprise and dismay during a walk, we found that someone had tried to block our favourite paths with branches.

We were surprised because we had thought them to be rights of way - and dismayed because we had to either find alternative routes or clamber over the obstacles.

The question of access is always a sensitive one in these parts.

Watch this space.

One night we joined the gang at Paradise, a country restaurant, for a birthday celebration. The gang included the Cusack family whom we met in their entirety for the first time. Parents, Tony and Annette, have been commuting to Espargal from their home in Ireland for years. To celebrate the former's 60th birthday, the latter conspired with their three children - scattered around Europe - to arrange a surprise family reunion. (Son Neil works for Airbus in Germany; daughter, Lisa, is attending a commercial pilot training school at Jerez in Spain and son Eric, with H&M, remains in Ireland. Also present was Neil's partner, Franceska.)

After the meal, we led them home by the dirt road that links Alte with our village. Last time we used it, we came across two great wild boar having supper. This time we had no such luck.

THE WAY IT USED TO LOOK

Wednesday brought an early morning meeting with a lawyer concerning a house that Natasha and Slavic have been trying to acquire. Although the house and location are desirable and the price is attractive, the paperwork is not. The declared floorspace - a determiner of local taxes - is rather smaller than the actual area, indicating that the house has been unofficially extended. And the Google Earth street view of the house, taken several years ago, is barely recognisable.

As enticing it is to snap up such a bargain, the buyer of such a property could be left holding the baby if and when the authorities catch on. The authorities are not sympathetic to such impromptu extensions, common though they be in these parts.

That afternoon we went around to the Cusacks to observe the performance of their newly acquired quadrocopter. This is not a species that I'd come across before although a little internet research reveals just how sophisticated and versatile these devices are.

Under Neil's control, the little machine shot up into the air and whizzed off over the house. Its stability was uncanny. Powered by a single small battery, it could hover a couple of metres off the ground as effortlessly as it could power vertically into the air.

Although its control range was limited to a few hundred metres, the quadrocopter was configured to bring itself back to its launch point if it lost contact with its controller.

This story, or at least this chapter, has a sad ending. When Jones dropped into the house on Thursday afternoon, she found the family looking glum. The quadrocopter had gone awol. It had landed in the swimming pool, fizzing its circuits, and then shot off again of its own accord into the wild blue yonder.

I posted a reward notice together with a picture on the village notice board before joining Jonesy and the Cusacks on an extended (and fruitless) search. There's a jungle of greenery covering the hills and the machine could be anywhere.

As you may recall, I maintain an email correspondence with a group of (mostly former) Marist Brothers with whom I trained back in the 60s.They include a sprinkling of atheists, a host of agnostics and a handful of practising Christians, united - like soldiers - by the rigours of their monastic training.

After one of our online discussions, a Christian correspondent sent me a book that sets out to reconcile Christian belief with evolution - no easy task!

My first impressions are not favourable. The author seldom uses two words when five will do, or resorts to a small word when he can find a big one in its stead. Still, there's hope. I read on.

Easter looms. Our thoughts will be with you in your far-flung homes. First I must go around to Pauline's house for a session of reflexology that she swears will improve my complaining elbow. The elbow, as though cowed by the prospect, is feeling better already.

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