Letter from Espargal: 14 August 2015

This week has twirled around a few times, like a dog preparing to lie down or a plane uncertain whether to land. It began for blog purposes last Friday evening when we joined Marie and Olly with a view to visiting a snackbar newly opened by an old acquaintance in a village further into the hills.

When we found it closed for holidays - a common August occurrence - we repaired instead to the Cantinho in Alte where Filipe, the high-tech waiter, took this picture on his top-of-the-range smart-phone.

Saturday morning the boys were back to continue with our regular weekend tasks. The main job was to lay a concrete floor in the dusty nook occupied by the cement mixer in the pups' pen.

Also to create a low stone curb around the flower beds in which the pups like to rest, scattering earth and bulbs in all directions as they make themselves comfortable.

Jones had reached the point where she refused to clean the mess up, knowing that it would reappear the following day. For Jones, this is an extreme point indeed.

CURB AROUND THE FLOWER BED

Monday got off to a bad start and continued bad for much of the day. It would seem that after our morning walk Mello sneaked into the house, snitched Jones's phone off the table and went off to the pen to reconfigure it. We found the phone by ringing it. But ringing was all that it would do. The touch-screen was shattered and the phone useless. Jones was upset. It's the third or fourth such device to meet a similar fate.

En route to May's house, I got a message from Kevin, the swimming pool man, to say that there was no electricity in the pump room and he had been unable to clean the pool.

UNREPENTANT THIEF

We checked the fuses in the house and poolroom - nothing amiss - and then sought an electrician to look further. It was unpleasantly warm, as it has been for weeks. Poor Ginger was pleased to see us. He had obviously been in the wars again.

After visiting May, we continued to Vodafone in the Algarve Forum to find Jones a new phone. She insisted that she wanted the most basic of Nokias but I persuaded her to take the most basic of smart-phones instead, a model that cost little more but offered a much greater range of options. I got the phone at half price on our points with Vodafone.

Tuesday morning Horacio the builder called around at my request. A row of tiles towards the top of the roof has slipped, opening a small gap between it and the row above. The question was what to do about it.

Horacio said the only permanent solution was to take up all the tiles and relay them. This was a prospect that I didn't fancy. It would be a huge job that also entailed disconnecting and removing the solar water heater.

As an alternative he suggested that we fill in the gaps with a flexible fibre-cement that might offer a temporary solution.

That afternoon Jones appeared at the study window armed with a mop and bucket.

Twice in recent days we have had mini showers, barely enough to wet the cobbles but sufficient to stain windows and shutters with a million spatters of Sahara dust, fresh (like the week's migrants) across the sea from north Africa.

The car looked as though it had undergone some kind of hippy rebranding. I was about to take a couple of pictures of Jones at work when I was distracted. But she took this selfie instead - clever thing.

Tuesday evening we stopped at the postbox en route to supper with neighbours at the Hamburgo. To my astonishment Jones found that our annual income tax demand had arrived from the Financas. I thought that the tax department was still in dispute with me over the completion of my tax return. Their last communication had given me 15 days to furnish them with missing information - they didn't say what it was and I haven't a clue.

I woke in the early hours of Wednesday morning, as I sometimes do, and spent some time listening to the radio. After falling sleep again around dawn, I was drawn into the most graphic dream. In my subconscious mind I found myself in a brothel. Two women conducted preliminary negotiations and then led me to a room where clients were served.

We were just about to get down to business when a voice intruded on our tete a tete. It was that of Jones, informing me with exquisite timing that she had brought my toast and coffee - as indeed she had. So I had to be satisfied with breakfast in bed.

Dogs walked and fed, we went to town to look for the cement-filler for the roof and other items. From a Chinese store (there are half a dozen in Loule) we got different-coloured rolls of tape to mark the almond trees as either sweet or bitter. The crop is just about ready to pick. You can tell the nuts are ripe when the soft green outer shells burst open to reveal the hard brown inner shells.

We have numerous almond trees, most of which are picked - at our request - by the family of Ana, the cake baker, at the bottom of the village. The arrangement suits us both well.

It's a sin just to let the crop fall to the ground. The dogs love the almonds and work the shells around in their teeth until they find a susceptible sweet spot. Like our ancestors before us, we generally place the nuts on large rocks and bash them with small rocks to get at the prize within.

The bitter nuts are useful for making liqueurs but little else. Many of our bitter trees have since been grafted with a variety of fruits at our request by a kindly farmer neighbour. I water them each week. The grafted trees are doing splendidly and should offer us a crop of peaches and plums next year.

We have also begun collecting carobs, a crop that we exchange with the neighbour in return for fruit, veggies and favours.

I limit myself to an hour or so a day for fear of upsetting my back, either kneeling down to collect the carobs or using Marie's plastic grabber. The latter is particularly useful when it comes to retrieving carobs from thorny patches. Espargal gets its name from the hardy and thorny wild asparagus that grows everywhere.

Jones puts in what time she can. Most days we collect a tub each.

SUNRISE OVER ESPARGAL

Thursday dawned with the first hint of autumn in the air - and very welcome it was.

I was quite concerned when I came to do my regular weekly computer scan to find no trace of my Kaspersky security programme. Somehow it had been swallowed up by the conversion from Windows 7 to Windows 10. A quick search online revealed that this was a common phenomenon and that one had to redownload the security suite. This I did - and I was grateful.

For - as careful as I am about scam emails - I was fooled by a Portuguese email apparently from the post office express delivery service. It said that it had been unable to deliver a parcel to me because the address was incomplete, gave me a reference and a link to follow it up. In short, it was a scam - as I confirmed with the post office, but not before I had clicked on the link. I twice ran a full scan on the computer, one immediately and another after rebooting. Kaspersky assures me that all is well. I hope that it's telling the truth.

Thursday evening: I got an urgent appointment with our dermatologist, who excised a nasty growth from my neck. Between us, Jones and I have had half a dozen such pending carcinomas removed down the years. Praise be for modern medicine and means to pay for it.