Letter from Espargal: 31 October 2014

SUNSET AT SEA

This week amounts to a little ado about not very much. Life changes gear when the clocks go back, as they did last weekend. It's not so much the mornings that are affected; these feel much the same, a little lazier perhaps.

But an hour gets nicked from the afternoon, as if by some slick sleight of hand, leaving us feeling short-changed. Dusk now arrives at six.

That means we have to walk an hour earlier to get home before sunset.

While I feed the dogs, Jones slips down the path between our fence and Idalecio's to tend her waifs and strays. My wife does not favour the clock change. She's a creature of habit who was perfectly happy with the day the way it was. She finds that such biennial adjustments upset her rhythms. But the seasonal switch suits me. I'd rather have long evenings than late-dawning mornings.

In view of the long evenings, we've been checking the TV listings with additional interest. There's some great TV available on the 4 main BBC channels and a few programmes we follow on the commercial channels. One series, presented by a young physicist, concerns "man's place in the universe".

To illustrate the law of gravity, he was able to persuade the scientists at NASA's vast vacuum chamber to permit him to carry out an experiment there.

First he dropped a bowling ball and a bunch of goose feathers simultaneously from the roof of the chamber while it was filled with air - with the predictable result. Then, four hours later, when the air had been pumped out, he repeated the experiment. The feathers and the ball fell side by side, hitting the floor at exactly the same moment. It was quite astonishing to watch.

One is left is no doubt that the law of gravity applies equally to all objects.

IN THE BUSH

We've been varying our walks, exploring and establishing new paths through the vast tracts of rocky bushveld that surround us. Jones has an explorative streak. She has been looking for a short-cut between a track that we take home and the contour path that runs around the hill.

She bade me follow her one morning, declaring that she'd found a way through but we ended up in a prickly no-man's land, a shirt-snatching, skin-scratching thicket that wouldn't yield an inch. There was nothing for it but to retreat with the remnants of our dignity.

Even the dogs were challenged. The only animals that seem impervious to such obstacles are the wild pigs that bulldoze tunnels through the bush.

Since then Jones has found a route of sorts, strictly for the able-bodied. From time to time to take I take the big shears along to clear the most obstructive branches and the shrubbery that obscures the paths. Many of the paths we follow tend to be seasonal as nature forever tries to reclaim its own. As I tell Jones, when I can't see where I'm walking, I fall over. And I hate falling over. She's far more agile than I am and not sympathetic to (what she regards as) any unnecessary destruction of the wilderness.

One morning we encountered a terrific pong as we walked, I can only think from the spreading of slurry in an orchard.

Three of the dogs evidently discovered its origins for they returned home stinking to high heaven (why "high heaven"?), puzzled by our reluctance to allow them inside until they'd been washed.

Ours are not dogs that take naturally to water but with the juiciest of canine temptations dangled in front of their noses, we got the job done.

On the home front our new field has been taking up a lot of my time. For years I've been ploughing it as a favour to the previous owner. This was a difficult task as the field slopes awkwardly and the overhanging almond and carob branches did their best to drag me from the tractor.

So my first action was to cut back the most pernicious of these branches, using the shears from my perch on the tractor seat. Slavic and I then set about building a low wall down western edge of the field to retain the bank, which has been slipping into the road.

By backing the tractor slowly up the road with the tractor box lowered to ground level, it proved possible to produce a straight edge along the bank with minimum effort.

As usual we ride down to the valley to fetch rocks that are scattered in such abundance there. The hillsides are unfenced. Carob trees represent the only attempt at agriculture and the farmers, who plough around the trees to clear the undergrowth, are pleased to have us remove the rocks.

The last task was to remove Leonilde's initials from the marker stones at the corners of the field and replace them with my own before going to Benafim to record the change of ownership on the "cadastro" incorporating all properties within Loule council.

Loule is being used as a pilot council in this process in an attempt to establish exactly who owns which bits of land, much of which has been abandoned over the past 50 years as families migrated to the cities. One can still see everywhere on the hillsides the overgrown terraces where people long eked out an exiguous existence. Now only a few hunters and hikers are to be seen there - and the fire-service units in the heat of summer.

The next job is to continue the wall along the base of the field which stands about two metres above the road. Jones is anxious that we should not disturb two sites where she has found ladies' tresses orchids. So it's going to be delicate work, however we go about it.

Wednesday and Friday we joined May and her nephew Ken, down from Edinburgh, for lunch and banking.

We've been waiting to hear from our lawyer what progress she's made with the documentation she requires from the estate agents through whom we're assisting Natasha to buy an apartment. As the flat owners live in Australia and some of the documents are out of date, it's taking a bit of time. That's fine. We're not in a hurry.

The chef at the Hamburgo, Graça, and her daughter, Celina, preparing for Haloween