Letter from Espargal: 10 May 2014

MOST PICTURES COURTESY OF LLEWELLYN & LUCIA

It's hard to know how to begin a blog in a week during which a bishop - in America, where else? - who had previously divorced his wife, announced that he was about to divorce his husband. You may need to read that again. (Full story in the Daily Beast.) That has to be an undisputed first for the Guinness Book of Records.

But since such fantastical phenomena are irrelevant to life in Espargal, let me concentrate on matters closer to home.

On Monday I forgot to take my English lesson with me when we set out to fetch May for lunch. Never mind, I told Jones, I can access it on the internet and print it out at the university. But the secretary wasn't there when I arrived and the spare computer, after taking an age to boot up, couldn't find a printer to print to.

So I apologised to my pupils and we just chatted instead - interrupted midway by a man from UPS who had arrived to deliver a hand-knitted scarf from my sister-in-law in the States, as I explained to my fascinated companions.

LUCIA & BARBARA BEACH WALK

Also on Monday, I phoned Felismina, a former legal secretary, to ask her to remind me how to obtain our property title deeds online - as she had helped me to do last year. I had found the website and tried to access our deeds. But the site was most particular about what information it required and where - and it positively scorned my efforts.

Felismina, bless her, was able to guide me through the maze, much to my joy - for I would otherwise have had to spend hours awaiting my turn at the crowded registry in Loule.

THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH TAKING A SIESTA

All original title-deeds are kept at such registries and copies, whether obtained online (€15 each) or on the spot, are valid for six months for sales or purchases.

Pause there to stick a hand down my trousers in case the tickle I felt on my knee was a tick. Negative! Better safe than sorry.

On one occasion, while lunching at the Angolana in Loule, I felt such a tickle in my groin and had to make a rush for the gents - just in time. The tick went down the loo with a curse on its kind.

Tuesday we joined Llewellyn and Lucia at a Faro beach snack-bar prior to their return to London that evening. The sandwiches were good. So were the beers, albeit at outrageous tourist prices. The beach was busy. The tourist season is underway.

Llewellyn took some pictures. In fact, he took a whole lot of pictures during the week, some of which you see dotted around the blog. I'm sad to add that he and his wife got home midnightish to find one of their cats desperately ill - and needing to be put down by an emergency vet.

LUCIA WITH THE GANG

Wednesday, while out walking in the bundu, where we never meet anybody, we suddenly saw a couple with a loose dog approaching us. We had a few anxious moments as I tried to bring our lot under control. They think the countryside belongs to them.

Happily, no harm done and matters were amicably settled. The couple, French visitors, are staying in one of Idalecio's cottages. We resolved to put our bigger dogs on leads for the next few days.

Still on walks - all week we have been dodging a huge machine that has been clearing around carob trees that had become heavily overgrown down the years. "Clearing" is perhaps the wrong word. The machine is simply devastating in its environmental destruction; it rips trees and bushes out willy nilly as it lays bare the earth.

It reminds me of the damage done by the vast mining cum war machines in the film, Avatar. I stopped to take a few pics. Jones is horrified at the damage done. The bottom line is that the carobs are income earners and the owner is clearly more concerned with access to his trees than preserving the vegetation around them.

A DESPONDENT JONES SURVEYING THE DAMAGE

Also Wednewday I went into Vodafone in Faro with Jones to ask them to put a new battery in my HTC One mobile phone. If you wonder why I didn't insert a new battery myself, it's because the HTC One is a sealed unit which, as much as I love the phone, is a pain. The phone has to go in to the workshops.

Now the story gets complicated. During previous repairs, I have merely transferred my simcard from the ailing phone to our spare phone in order to stay in touch with the world. But the HTC One takes a mini-simcard and the spare phone takes the ordinary sim. Moreover, the spare phone is a basic Nokia that doesn't talk to the internet, where all our info is backed up.

In short, I bought the cheapest compatible smart-phone (Samsung Galaxy Young - €85 with points), got Vodafone to copy my mini-sim details to an ordinary sim and inserted the latter into the new phone.

It's a beauty, even if it is just a starter smart-phone - really easy to operate and intended in due course for my wife whose own somewhat battered and dog-chewed device is gradually giving up the ghost.

In-between times I have strimmed our jungle, cut back the ivy that threatens to overpower the septic tank and read a book, Commanding Heights. The book was recommended to me by its author, Roy Andersen, whom I met in London recently while assisting with arrangements for the funeral of his brother, Julian.

Roy, a South African business leader who became a Citizen Force general in the old SADF, remains one in the new SANDF. When I remarked that he must have found that one hell of a transition, he said "read my book". So, after ordering it from Amazon, I did. It took me back to the days when I was working in SA TV news.

Some of our cameramen were called up to take army pictures of a war that South Africans were fighting in Angola, a "secret" war on which the SA media were forbidden to report in the interests of "security". Roy, who was in the thick of it, today works closely with fellow officers from the enemy he once fought. Strange world!

DO YOU RECALL THE RIVER SIRENS IN THE FILM, "O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU"?

Now it's back to Kevin Treston's half read work on how to reconcile scripture with modern science. This, I find, calls for even more imagination than Roy's account.

And since I've still got a bit of room to spare, my RSI-plagued elbow is much better, hallelujah! and I'm still intent on a (very) gradual slimming down. Six kilos lost in six months, which suits me - literally.