Letter from Espargal: 30 January 2015

Once again the blog starts on Saturday morning, as it happens, a slightly anxious Saturday morning. We were awaiting a call from the vet to say that we could come to fetch Mello who had been spayed the previous evening. We'd heard nothing and had to assume that all had gone well.

As on previous Saturday mornings, the "boys" had arrived, this time to put the finishing touches to the "pen" (let's call it the "playpen" my wife says) and to lay down two concrete strips at the re-engineered entrance to the field. I tractored the cement mixer and supplies across to the field to get things going; then Jones, who'd been in touch with the vet, and I headed into town to fetch the little dog.

Luis, the new assistant vet, carried her out to the car in Sonia's dog transporter box and placed her in the boot, whence she howled her dismay all the way home - a most dismal sound. We took her directly back to Idalecio's driveway where the pups (as I call them) or the orphans (as Jonesy calls them) - had established themselves.

It was a joy to watch Mello rejoining her companions, Sparky and Paleface - those are the agreed names - tumbling over each other in blissful reunion. Of the surgery she had undergone Mello showed no signs. Carlos the vet uses internal stitches that do not have to be removed. Equally important, the dogs he neuters do not need to wear those infernal plastic collars intended to prevent them from getting at the wounds, which cause them to stagger into objects of every kind.

While we were busy with the orphans, the boys got on with the concrete strips, digging out foundations in which to lay them and reinforcing these with lengths of fencing wire to underlay the concrete. One could not ask for better workers.

At the end of the day when work was over, I took the tractor around to Idalecio's place to see if we could attract the pups back up to their new home on the Casanova field opposite our gates. The plan was to lead them up the short-cut between our two properties, rattling their dishes with the promise of a meaty meal. Assuming that we were successful, I intended to bring their kennel back on the tractor.

And so it came to pass. The three pups followed me into their enclosure and tucked into their food while I went to fetch the kennel. We had a keen sense of achievement. In a country where one is well advised to attempt only one thing a day, we had accomplished three - we'd had Mello neutered (she'd been heavily pregnant), we had parked the pups in the pen and we had built concrete ramps at the entrance to the field.

The following morning we discovered Sparky, the leader of the group, larking about outside the pen. As she was happy to demonstrate, she was perfectly capable of scrambling up the stiff 110cm high fencing and over the top. So we spent an hour covering the fencing panels with light wire fencing to block any such exits -

before heading off to brunch with the locals at the Hamburgo.

Each morning and evening since then - and occasionally at lunch - we've let the pups out 15 minutes before we feed them. They rush off on high speed circuits of the field, hurtling past our six who are nose to the fence and hardly know whether to be amused or outraged at the performance.

In due course Jones brings across three plates of mixed biscuits and tinned meat to tempt the orphans back inside the pen. They've excellent appetites, all of them. We would hope to give them a lot more freedom as time goes on, possibly even in the distant future to merge them with the gang.

Does this mean that we are now the owners of nine dogs? Well, we don't think of it that way. We own six dogs and we care for three more.

Saturday night proved to be exceedingly damp - on my side of the bed, that is. I must have lain on my hot water-bottle, which wasn't sealed as tightly as it should have been.

I wasn't aware of the leak until I awoke in the early hours, feeling a mite chilly and finding myself soaked to the skin. I spent most of the rest of the night changing towels on the mattress and night-clothing at hourly intervals.

DUSK FALLS OVER ALMOND BLOSSOM

Natasha worked an extra day during the week, arriving on both Tuesday and Wednesday with Roslan in tow. She, poor thing, had picked up the bug that has been going around the village and that I by some miracle appear to have missed. She was feeling as miserable as other sufferers have done in their turn.

Roslan spent the a day burning off the heaps of cuttings that dotted the field - the remains of the compost heap - and separating the useful compost from the many bits that failed to rot down. The hot, dry Algarve climate does little to promote compost.

The next day I got him to patch a section of the old stone wall separating our newly-acquired field from that belonging to a neighbour. Such old walls were built without any kind of mortar to bind them and inevitably start to give way after some years, generally after a good downpour. After clearing the resulting rubble Roslan cemented the stones back into place, hiding the mortar inside the wall.

While he was busy, Jones and I spent a couple of hours with our lawyer updating our wills. Portuguese law sees the world differently from UK law; since we have assets both within Portugal and beyond its borders, much head-scratching was necessary over the wording.

Once the wills have been finalised, the lawyer will make a date with the notary to register them.

Such registration isn't strictly necessary for the validity of a will but it saves months of the bureaucracy and expense on the part of the executor, not a legacy to bestow on one's heirs.

Friday brought an early departure for Faro where Jonesy was due to have the dermatologist remove a small growth from her back. That done, we repaired to a windy Faro beach for restorative coffee, baggy and cake. Beside the bridge that crosses the estuary, a line of camper vans was parked in the patchy sunshine. Across the water, planes zoomed into the sky on their way back to northern Europe.

Friday also brought Cesar, the delivery man, with another load of sand and cement for the boys to finish patching the wall tomorrow. With leaden skies threatening, I was grateful to have him unload the cement on to the tractor for safe-keeping in Casa Nada.

Friday evening we celebrated the occasion of the Chris Joneses becoming Canadian citizens by taking ourselves to the Hamburgo for supper.

Like my brother and his wife a few decades back, Barbara's nephew and family upped sticks from RSA a few years back to begin new lives in western Canada.

Here's the Whatsapp pic we sent them from the restaurant.

and here's the picture they sent back.

Good luck Chris and Jane.

We wish you all of the best.

Letter from Espargal: 23 January 2015

I'm quite pleased that this week is over - at least nearly over. It started well if one regards last Saturday as a start. The boys turned up bright and early and we got to work on the pups' enclosure. That required a lot of levelling, measuring, digging foundations, mixing concrete, pouring it and the like - the usual graft of building anything.

Idalecio had lent us a dozen planks to shore up the wet concrete base that supported the rigid wire fencing. As the pups have shown themselves adept at burrowing under inconvenient barriers, we've taken a lot of trouble to make the enclosure secure.

We chose a spot that is as close as possible to the house without putting the pups in danger of bumping into our lot, who do not welcome canine visitors. The tree cover should provide them with plenty of shade in summer although they could want for a little more sunshine in winter. I plan to line the windward side of the enclosure this weekend with two layers of protection against the warmth-sapping winds that blow down from the north.

The weather played along, giving us a cloudy day ahead of a downpour on the Sunday and a gale on Monday, a gale that thrashed the trees, shook the house and did its best to rip our shutters from the wall. We didn't like it or get much sleep, nor did the dogs, who whined their discomfiture and sought solace with us.

JONES SUNRISE

On Monday our English class talked about a British taxi-driver who retired to the Algarve with a partner of whom he was apparently highly controlling. Tiring of her company some time ago, (it would seem that) he murdered her and buried her body underneath a concrete slab in the garden, telling friends that she had returned to the UK for medical treatment. In the meanwhile, he "moved" a younger woman into the house (an expression used by the local paper rather than chosen by me)

When her children grew suspicious and made inquiries, the police visited the house. The man led them to the slab, telling them that he had buried her there after she had committed suicide - a death rendered highly improbable by the injuries revealed in a post mortem.

JONES PIGEONS

Tuesday I was reminded of a bout of diarrhea I suffered many years ago when our TV News production secretary christened me Squits B - a moniker that stuck long after the problem had gone away. (More appropriate was the nickname she earned, Jaws, or Jawsie-Baby although I don't intend to go digging up old history.) Anyhow, the problem proved minor on this occasion although it has prompted me to go on the wagon again for a few days. For her part, Jonesy continued coughing as she slowly got the better of the bug that she picked up in the UK earlier in the month.

Jodi's Tuesday afternoon massage was welcome as always, not for any particular pain relief but because it leaves one feeling so good.

I am aware, watching her previous patients emerge from her rooms, of just how insignificant my own problems are in comparison.

Some are people suffering from advanced nervous diseases or dementia, people for whom there is no real hope of improvement and whose partners bear the real burden of suffering.

SPOT THE DOG

On Wednesday I dropped Jones the hairdresser while I ran our monthly supply of food up to the dog sanctuary in Goldra. There Ana greeted me with the news that her sister, Marisa, had just been discharged from hospital where she had lain gravely ill for a couple of weeks with blood-poisoning after being clawed by a cat that she was saving from some dogs.

Poor Marisa; she really has suffered more than her share of life's burdens of late. And her absence left her sister bearing most of the dog-caring duties.

I have remarked to Barbara that I would welcome a substantial win on the Euromillions in order to do a little much-needed good. No doubt that millions of other people would say the same.

Thursday, we took a slow drive around some of the beach developments that we avoid like the plague in the summer months.

There are areas I hadn't seen in years, areas that had changed beyond all recognition - wild coastal dunes into luxury resort territory.

We spent an hour just winding our way through this other world of manicured golf courses, wondrous houses, immaculate gardens, handsome walls and gates, well-surfaced roads and tree-lined avenues.

There was little sign of life and virtually none at the expensive restaurants that cluster around the area - the kind we never visit.

THE WAY IT USED TO LOOK

Thursday night I watched one of the best - if not the easiest - films I have seen in years - Headhunters, a Norwegian film-noir.

It's what Rolf calls a "crimmie". The plot has to be one of the most complex and carefully thought-out that I can recall. Jones watched half of it until the gore proved too much for her, and there was certainly no shortage of that.

There was no way knowing which way the plot would turn until the final sequence. I was most impressed.

THE TRANSPORT BOX COVERED BY A BLANKET

Friday - that's today - we had agreed to try catch the second of the stray bitches to get her spayed. We fear that she too may be pregnant and likely to take us by surprise. Once again we borrowed Sonia's dog transporter. I took a tin of meat down to Idalecio's cottages as bait and tossed small pieces into the carrier, trying to entice the bitch in. After some minutes, we succeeded. Idalecio loaded the carrier into the boot and off we went to Loule, the captive crying pitifully all the way. It seemed much further than usual. We fetch her again on Saturday morning.

The boys will be back Saturday to put the finishing touches to the enclosure and to the great wall of Espargal.

Quim Quim has already delivered the sand, cement and stone that I ordered this morning. Luis (the boss man) and Cesar (his driver) know well enough just to unload it at the base of the driveway. They cover the cement bags with plastic, tucking the bill in. I ensure that it's paid promptly. There's a lot to be said for local services and keeping them happy.

Letter from Espargal: 16 January 2015

This week is short and sweet, at least as far as the blog is concerned. I've few pics to speak of although Jones tells me that she's taken some and I shall scratch through them in a moment. The days have run away with us. Friday afternoon has arrived and with it a flurry of unpredicted showers. The rain is welcome even at the price of the paw prints trailed across the floors. The first half of January has been so dry that Jonesy has had to start watering again.

Fortunately, she saw fit to cover my newly-delivered bags of cement this morning before we set out under blue skies for Alte where I had booked my troublesome back in for another session with Jodi.

IN FRONT OF THE FIRE

That done, we took ourselves 15 minutes further down the road for a light lunch in Paradise - that's what the restaurant is called.

There's a formal dining room where the serious diners gather and the snack-bar where the Portuguese settle themselves down at tables around the TV. The main news - Islamic nutters aside - was of the snowfalls in the mountains and the subsequent traffic chaos.

Ahead of us this afternoon is a visit to our insurance brokers to fix up a policy for Natasha's flat.

Looking back: the boys arrived last Saturday, as usual, and together we finished the Great Wall of Espargal. It is a most beautiful wall, a strong contender for the wall of the year prize. Only Hadrian and some Chinese emperors have done better - although Sarah and David's new wall might be considered among the entries.

We also moved the compost mountain from its long-established position opposite the tractor gate, heaving it load by load on to the tractor and strewing the contents across the fields, some for Jones' garden, some to burn and some to plough in. In the space it occupied we plan to build an enclosure for the strays, hopefully tomorrow if it doesn't rain.

Last Sunday, after brunch with the expats at Cantinho in Alte, we continued to the giant Leroy Merlin hardware store in Guia, looking for a catflap and other items. No catflap but we did find suitable posts for the enclosure and more wood preservative for Roslan to finish painting the pergola midweek. After his efforts with the gates the railings, the place sparkles.

That night I started on Hack Attack by Nick Davies, an account of the extraordinary behaviour of journalists on Britain's most popular weekly tabloid, The News of the World, until scandal and criminal prosecutions shut it down. For any media person who lived through those times in the UK, it's compulsive reading.

THE CATS BOOK THE BEST PLACES

Jones, who'd returned from the UK a few days previously, confessed to having a sore throat - a very sore throat - presumably from something she'd picked up there or on the plane. I found her some pills in my extensive (and often criticised) pharmaceutical stock. Thus far - fingers crossed - I haven't caught it from her. This is a welcome surprise as I am always more susceptible to these things.

We warned May that we wouldn't take her out to lunch on Monday as we didn't want to share the bug with her. Jones did her shopping as usual and we took her a hot meal.

JONES CLOUDS

I found time to visit the nearby workshops of the firm we have contracted to supply our new front door. Our contact there is Marco. We had already agreed on the price and design. The details hinged on the dimensions of the catflap to go in the side panel.

Marco directed me to a pet shop in Almancil where I found a cat flap that I delivered to him. We hope to have the new door installed some time in March.

In my English class we discussed an attempt by Spain to have the UN declare Portugal's southernmost Savage Islands to be merely a rocky outcrop. Although these tiny islands close to the Spanish Canaries are worthless in themselves, except to seabirds, at stake are the vast surrounding seas and their mineral wealth. At present these are Portugal's preserve. But if the islands lose their status, the valuable economic zone around them passes to Spain.

Monday night we celebrated the re-opening of the Hamburgo with Espargal's expats after five long hamburgoless weeks.

Barbara had a bad night, coughing, spluttering and feeling excessively miserable.

THE WATER OF LIFE

Tuesday Marco came to the house to measure up. On the back patio the dogs barked their frustration at being unable to see who he was or what he was up to.

After an afternoon session with Jodi, I continued to Gilde's hardware store to order the fencing panels that I need for the enclosure. Isidoro promised to deliver them the following evening (and did). He is brilliant. I don't know what we'd do without the Hamburgo or Gilde.

Jonesy is still coughing although she insists that she is better.

Wednesday Roslan came to give the pergola another coat of preservative. Fortunately the weather was kind to him. He had an hour to spare at the end of the day. We devoted it to clearing the space for the dogs' enclosure.

I reversed the tractor along the soft ground with the box lowered, digging up the earth and levelling it out - although it still slopes. Lots of work remains to be done. The boys will be lucky to finish on Saturday.

I had planned an area 5m x 7.5m but I think it might be just 5m x 5m. I doubt the pups will be pleased.

Also Wed, neighbours Mike and Liz and the Dutch ladies delivered a selection of toys to Benafim's community centre after making a collection among our expat group. The centre is always looking for clothing but on inquiry Mike learned that toys for deprived children were the priority - and were much appreciated.

Letter from Espargal: 9 January 2015

We were sitting with May in Campina's restaurant over lunch last Wednesday, sipping glasses of an antique port wine presented to us by the owner as long-standing clients, when I caught sight of a headline on the TV news about a massacre in Paris.

Now, as I write, Friday morning is tipping over into Friday afternoon and the TV screen in the study is showing pictures of the French industrial estate where about a million police have trapped the two Arab brothers apparently responsible for the shooting. (I guess it will be all over long before you read this.)

The audio is muted. Barbara and I are only too familiar with these stand-offs when news channels feel compelled to stay on the story but there's nothing fresh to be said and the anchor goes valiantly from correspondent to expert to analyst, trying to sustain the lagging commentary. We both feel grateful to be well out of it.

As it happens, I have just finished Yuval Noah Harari's mighty tome, Sapiens, which tries to explain where our species came from, how it came to be what it is and where it might be going.

One passage in particular - in his section on religion - haunts me and reminds me how recently Christianity came to see the light. Forgive me if I transcribe it:

"On the 23rd of August, 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God's love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than 24 hours.

When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Georgio Vassari to decorate one of the Vatican's rooms with a fresco of the massacre. (The room is currently off-limits to visitors.)

More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those 24 hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence."

Food for thought!

Happily in Espargal nobody seems overly concerned about such differences or the terrible events that they give rise to. Certainly my concerns have been mainly with the local animals that kept me occupied over the weekend in the absence of Jones.

She was due to land back in Faro from London at 8.15 on Monday night. But when the aircraft assigned to fly her back from Gatwick developed a fault that couldn't be fixed, the passengers had to wait for a replacement; this got away at much the time that it should have been landing. My wife emerged from flight arrivals hall close to midnight, ready for a relieving baggy.

She reported that the airline, easyJet, had done a good job of keeping passengers informed throughout and that she hadn't heard a single groan from those on board during the two hours that they sat on the tarmac before being allowed back into the terminal prior to reboarding.

Tuesday Roslan came to paint the wooden beams of the pergola over the north patio with a penetrating varnish. Natasha conveyed my instructions to him, not that he required much briefing. (He and I communicate with sign language but it doesn't serve to ask questions?) The task took him most of the day. Afterwards he reported that the wood was very dry, had readily absorbed the varnish and could do with another coat.

We lunched al fresco in the sunshine on toasted sandwiches at Cantinho in Alte, with the usual suspects sprawled under the table. The restaurant is barely 100 metres from the consulting rooms where I had an appointment with Jodi (the South African physiotherapist),

whose massages are almost worth having a bad back for.

On Thursday I fetched a package from Benafim, ordered online from FNAC, my favourite electronics store. It contained the cable I needed to link the speakers on Barbara's desk to the audio-visual receiver that picks up the signal from the digibox. We have the same set-up in the bedroom and downstairs in the living room. It's less complicated than it sounds.

What it means is that we can select a channel - whether radio or TV - upstairs and then follow it anywhere in the house. This is particularly useful overnight when one or other of us often listens to the World Service during a wakeful hour.

Jonesy rises at 05.00 and comes through to the study where she listens first to Portuguese radio and then to the BBC's Today programme, before bringing me my toast and coffee two hours later.

Thursday was a run-around, with visits to two banks and two window/door manufacturers. We have been negotiating with the latter pair for a new front door (to replace the more traditional but drafty, uninsulated steel double doors). Normally this would be simple enough.

But I want a cat flap built into a vertical pane beside the new door so that we can close the kitchen window that Jones leaves open for the cats to come and go.

As well as cats, the opening caters for mozzies in summer and a gale in winter. The cats could easily enter and leave the house via the back patio but they don't like to run the gauntlet of dogs that lie in wait there.

Which brings us to Friday.

The TV screen tells me that there's been a shooting at a kosher supermarket in Paris. I guess it won't be the last.

More immediately, there are newly-delivered piles of cement, sand and stone at the base of the driveway, awaiting the Ukrainian brothers in the morning.

I would hope to complete the Great Wall of Espargal and make a start on an enclosure for the three strays. Twice a day we go down to Idalecio's cottages to feed them. The spayed bitch is in great shape, displaying no after-effects from the surgery she underwent. Indeed, she has been upsetting the second bitch by trying to mount her.

We are frequently treated to a similar display here when the energetic (female) Barri jumps the puzzled, but unprotesting (male) Russ. He looks up at us as if to ask what it's all about. There are some things one can't explain to a dog, even if one understood them oneself.

Letter from Espargal: 4 January 2015

Happy New Year! May 2015 be our year! I confess that the arrival of New Year was a non-event in this household. We were all (I'm including the beasts) in bed well before midnight. 2014 seemed to slip seamlessly into 2015, a few barks from Barri apart - presumably at the fireworks.

On the way home from the airport on Thursday morning I stopped to clean the car. There is no better way to begin a year than by cleaning the car. It sets things up. The vehicle feels so much smarter, newer, more impressive and better tuned when one leaves the wash bay - a therapeutic exercise for both car and driver. And no better time than a blue sky New Year's morning while the world sleeps off the previous night's celebrations.

The reason that I went to the airport was to drop Barbara, who is spending several days with Llewellyn and Lucia, catching up on friends, exhibitions and London in general. Jonesy loves London. Her visit also gives her the opportunity to escape for a few days from her overly-demanding animals.

Between us at the moment we are catering for nine dogs and five cats - plus the two local waifs that get an afternoon bone. Don't ask!

Most demanding of all has been the brown bitch (whom I call Brownie; Jones and Marie have their own names for her).

On Monday morning we managed to catch her. Idalecio and Sonia took her to the vet who spayed her, removing 10 pups from her womb at the same time. On Tuesday Idalecio brought her back. We thought to put her up in our heated downstairs bathroom for a few days until she was over the op. But she howled the whole of Tuesday night, excepting the hours that Jones or I sat with her. So Wednesday morning we led her back to rejoin her two pals, who greeted her joyously - and she them.

On both Tuesday and Wednesday I visited Jodi the physio in Alte for a massage, having put my back out on Sunday while trying to put my socks on. The episode came out of the blue and peeved me considerably - ditto my wife. Since then things have much improved.

Last Saturday Slavic and Roslan extended the great wall of Espargal by another ten metres. Here they are posing beside a monster rock that Slavic managed to tip into the tractor box. We have a great choice of rocks from the debris mountains to which local farmers have invited us to help ourselves.

We took a can of diesel around to Joachim Sousa to thank him for his generosity in this regard. Another farmer friend has presented us with a bottle of medronho that he made in the still that we gave him for Christmas a year or two ago. It's his first production, yet to be tasted.

Yesterday the Ukrainian brothers returned to continue their labours. By now we operate as a well-drilled team. The boys heave a few bags of cement on to the back of the tractor and load the cement mixer, which we trundle down to the pile of sand at the entrance to the property.

From there Slavic and I head down to the carob plantation five minutes away to load rocks from one of a dozen rock mountains that litter the property - as per the picture. Typically the rocks are bulldozed into such mountains before the farmer first plants out the trees.

Then it's home again, with the tractor's front wheels bouncing nervously, to dump the rocks and set about the wall. Slavic tends to work on the base and Roslan the top. It's seldom necessary to say anything. I reckon that we'll be done next week - that's apart from the entrance.

I've been hoping to come across a digger working in the village with a view to enticing the driver up to the field for an hour or two. That's all it should take to ease the slope from the road to the property.

Twice a day I slip down to Idalecio's cottages with a bowl of mixed meat and biscuits to feed the three strays who camp there. Morning and evening the brown job (here half-camouflaged) needs to take an antibiotic to see her over her surgery. She gulps down the spoonful of meat in which I bury the pill - and certainly shows no after-effects.

Idalecio has moved the kennel to beneath the tree at the top of his drive, where the pups have been sleeping. He tells me that all three now huddle down together in the kennel at night. For the moment the arrangement works well. But it has to change before his guests start arriving.

Finally, courtesy of Llewellyn, here are a few pics of Barbara with him and Lucia and the dogs in London.

This photo was taken in their lounge; the other two speak for themselves.