If I had to sit down and make a list of this week's achievements I would have some difficulty reaching double figures. Come to think of it, even single figures might prove challenging. That's to say, questions would soon arise about what might or might not qualify as an achievement.
For example, does getting the three orphans back into the pen count as an achievement? It can certainly take a great deal of effort. The two girls are pleased to dash back inside as soon as they catch sight of the food dishes. But Paleface is reluctant to enter the confines of the pen when he can career around the whole of Espargal.
As you might have gleaned from previous blogs, the printer has to go to Lisbon for repairs. And since my sister, Cathy, is arriving in Lisbon from Berlin that day to stay with us,
I thought I might kill two birds with one stone (a poor metaphor, forgive me!). I had considered driving up to meet her but it's so much more expensive than train travel when one adds tolls to the fuel bill that it's hard to justify.
If I can think of any more achievements in due course, I shall add them to the above.
The workers didn't come last Saturday. I put them off because there was a gale battering Espargal, laced with occasional showers.
The weather was wretched, really unsettling - a world out of kilter. Several days later the wind is still blowing and I'm getting twice-daily warnings from the weather bureau about the "tempo frio" that has descended on the Algarve this week.
For us that means overnight temps close to freezing. Given the added wind chill, it's finger numbing (although in the sun and out of the wind on the south patio is heaven). The boys and I waste no time, I can tell you, when we take ourselves outside for a late-night leg-lifter.
After brunch on Sunday Jones and I took a leisurely drive through the green valleys on the far side of Alte and Benafim. These are still picture-book vistas, spotted with occasional houses and small white villages. They seem divided by 100 years rather than just 30 minutes from the burgeoning tourist colonies on the coast.
There is no industry or development to speak of, which is a treat for ecology and the eye if not for the economy - for sadly, the beauty of the valleys is not sufficient to retain young people.
On Monday - a May day - my English class discussed Portugal's plans to make amends for its treatment of Jews some 500 years ago (when Jews were among its more illustrious citizens). At that point the country's Christian rulers, following Spain's lead, gave Jews three options - to convert, emigrate or die.
Now Lisbon has announced that descendants of those Jews who were driven out of the country will qualify for Portuguese nationality, providing that they can furnish convincing evidence of their ancestry. Somehow I doubt that the measure will serve to swell the country's modest Jewish community. At least one may argue that it's a move in the right direction.
The cynic in me reflects that there's a great deal to be said for gestures that tick the right boxes without generating expense, effort or future problems. Unlike its European neighbours, Portugal has a tiny Muslim population and few concerns about domestic religious extremists of any hue.
Tuesday Jodi and I reflected on the perversities of the human body while she was massaging mine. As I explained to her, it's as though there's a baby fast asleep in the small of my back and while it's asleep, life is good. But when it's woken, life is miserable - and there's no knowing what might wake it.
Jodi said that if I thought this was tough, I should try waking her two-year old son; I might soon wish that I'd stuck with a troublesome back. I didn't argue with that.
This year's meeting was more complex than most because under the capital gains rules we have to submit the figures for the purchase and sale of properties. The complications arise because we divided a property after buying it and before selling part of it, in the course of which its registry number changed - causing enormous confusion, yet to be cleared up.
After the meeting we took a slow drive through the tourist developments that lay sleeping in the winter sun south of Guia. Come the spring, shutters will be pinned back. Come summer the area will overflow with holidaying humanity, before the gradual onset of hibernation once again. I can see the point although I couldn't imagine living there. I can't think what one would do all day. Mind you, boredom does occasionally seem quite an attractive proposition.
PS. I was delighted to see my former BBC colleague, Peter Greste, freed from an Egyptian jail and returned to bosom of his family in Australia. I hope that his Aljazeera co-workers may follow in his footsteps. He and I were once told off by a bitchy female editor whom we'd annoyed - and we took a great deal of schadenfreude in her removal from office some years later.
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