One of the functions of our amazing iPads (they are truly amazing) is to wake us up to Today, BBC Radio 4's morning current affairs programme. I half listen as I lie back in bed, drifting in and out of Today-related dreams, trying to persuade Ono to move over and awaiting the arrival of my toast and coffee.
Jones, who rises early, takes her iPad through to the study with her. For some months earlier this year, after losing the UK satellite radio & TV transmissions - all our listening came digitally from our iPads.
This raises a problem. Because the iPads buffer, they are forever out of synch - both with each other and with the satellite reception. The resulting repetitions and omissions can be most irritating. You miss the bits you want to hear and you get a double dose of those you don't.
In the good old days I used wireless equipment to beam the digital signal from the study to the bedroom, equipment that I subsequently dismantled and stored away.
Do you think I can remember where? I have hunted high and low - in vain.
However, in the course of my property-wide search, in sundry nooks I came across and removed a score of dusty cardboard boxes in which items of equipment had been delivered down the years. Some of them dated back to London.
Using the tractor, I took them down to Espargal's recycling dump. Their departure has created a lot of space that we will have to fill in due course.
I also found a plastic bag containing dozens of old family photographs dating back to the 1930s. These I have scanned in to my computer and hoisted into the Cloud for the benefit of relatives, present and future.
It gave me great pleasure to behold Mum and Dad once again in their prime. As for their sexagenarian offspring, we were once the cutest kids.
On Monday I planned to fetch the documents that I had left at the parish office for the president (in Portugal mayors are called presidents) to sign and stamp - to obtain a Schengen visa for an SA visitor.
However, her assistant called to say that the documents wouldn't be ready for several days because the lady had taken leave. Fortunately, there's no pressure for them.
This does not hold true for a great many older drivers in Portugal who, from the age of 70, have to renew their driving licences every two years. Although one can put in a renewal request up to six months in advance - and I have - the licence office now often takes a year and more to dispatch the new plastic.
The delays are said to arise from new equipment and a lack of trained operators - to say nothing of the inevitable suffocating fug of Portuguese bureaucracy.
Drivers awaiting licences may use an interim piece of paper within Portugal. Beyond its borders, they are not permitted to drive; international licences are not valid beyond the expiry date. As in South Africa, it's only the tax department that's up to speed - submissions preferred online!
This year's included Zulu dancers with some uninhibited bare-breasted maidens. As entertaining as they were, one became aware of the advantages of modern female underpinning.
On Tuesday, I was knocking down carobs that a bare-headed Jones was picking up when a large carob landed right on her crown. I can still see it heading for her like a missile. Jones was not pleased. A carob descending from 6 metres really hurts. I tried to apologise as she rubbed her head but it's hard to sound sincere when you're laughing. So I gave her a kiss instead. Sometimes, the only way to mend things is to kiss them better.
It's been hot - very hot! I have received daily email warnings from the weather bureau about the heat-wave enveloping the Algarve. They spoke truly. Tuesday temps rose into the upper 30s. The dogs spread themselves out like mats on the tiles. We all panted. In the house the fans brought us some relief.
Wednesday - May day - with thermometer on 37*C, I was afraid to leave the dogs in the car, even with the windows down. Instead I left Jonesy and May to lunch inside at the Calypso while I sat outside with the dogs on the small terrace where there was at least a breath of air.
Thursday lunchtime, after a serious carob-picking sesson, I ran a tractor-load down to our famer friend at the bottom of the village. He and his family had also been out picking. I watched them return in a bakkie groaning under the 29 sacks they had gathered that morning. His large cellar is nearly full.
High-sided trucks from the carob-milling yards are already - the season is barely underway - taking in the harvest. Sacks from the farmers' storerooms are hoisted on to small conveyors that lift them up to topple into the maws of the truck.
The carob season is the most bountiful in years. That's important. It's really just carobs and tourists that sustain the Algarve. And here in the hills it's carobs.
Friday morning early my firewood supplier arrived with an additional ton to fill up the spaces I still had in the shed. He and his assistant turned down my offer of tractor haulage, preferring to use their wheelbarrows to shunt the wood through the gates and around the corner.
It's truly lovely wood, hard wood that burns long and hot and leaves little ash. I try not to think of where it came from. It may well be a luxury denied to the next generation.
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