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.