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.