Once again the burden of story-telling must fall upon the pictures. Before Cathy flew home to Berlin last Sunday, she accompanied me to Mary's salon in Benafim to have her hair washed and dried. Cathy is blessed with an abundance of hair and having it tended by someone other than herself is a real treat.
Here we are on an outing to historic Silves, the old Arab capital of the Algarve, wandering the high cobbled streets around the castle and cathedral. Jones hangs on to our two regular travellers who concentrate on the tree trunks while the ladies gaze into the branches.
Identifying trees is a shared interest of my wife and sister. The latter insists that this is just an hobby, with easy access to books and the internet. More important, she says, gazing at Barbara, is to make things grow. Whatever the case, the pair of them spent a lot of time peering into the foliage, stretching up to pluck the odd leaf and saying things like: "It looks like a member of the bottle-brush family." Err, yes! Well, if you say so.
While they were thus occupied, the dogs and I settled down at a shady cafe table to watch the passing show. Shorts and sandles-clad tourists strode the cobbles, cameras in hand. It was hot. Cathy had remarked at the beach on the number of gutsy men with glitzy wives. In Silves there were more glammy guys with glumpy girls. No idea why!
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On the way home we encountered this broken cork oak at the end of the oak tree avenue in the valley below Espargal. It's a road we have often walked in the shade of these splendid giants. The trees must have taken decades to reach full height. Young oaks planted nearby are barely inching up. They are seeds a father sows for the sake of his sons - (sorry, daughters doesn't alliterate) .
On Cathy's last night with us we came upstairs to the north patio to admire the sunset and the views across the western hills. There was scarcely a breath of air. Nor did we have much to say. The scene spoke for itself. On such an evening it's hard to improve on nature's palette.
Here's a story. The diminutive figure in the centre of the picture is Lisa Cusack, daughter of our commuting Irish neighbours, Tony and Annette and a newly-qualified pilot with Aer Lingus. On a recent flight home, Tony and Annette were summoned by the captain to the cockpit to find their daughter co-piloting the plane. They remained on jump-seats in the cockpit throughout the flight - an experience never to be forgotten. (We did it once on a trip to Canada, pre 9/11.) At the end of another flight, Lisa, standing at the cockpit door, was addressed by an astonished woman passenger: "Don't tell me that you flew this plane?" As Napoleon illustrates, there's more to stature than size!
As usual, I assisted Slavic over the weekend with the continued touching up of tired paint surfaces. If I look awkward perched on the first rung, it's because the ladder was unsteady and I had to grasp the post with one hand in order to paint it with the other. As an unwilling septuagenarian, I am not as agile as I used to be; not that I was ever exactly graceful. Some of my proportions came out wrong.
When Slavic returned to his car at the end of the day, he found two small birds that had trapped themselves inside. He returned to the house with one in either hand. I feared that they might be fledglings and in danger from our beasts. But they flew off happily enough to rejoin their many companions.
This is Vicky, a former colleague of Barbara, with her spaniel puppy, Mabel, who was the hit of the recent NBC reunion in London. Jones said the dog simply lay peacefully in whatever lap it was placed. Now there's a lesson for our lot. Prickles has woken us twice in the early hours in full shriek. Once he'd caught his dew-claw in his collar. The second time who knows? Maybe a bad dream! Prickles is not a dog to suffer in silence.
The real sufferer has been Jones who had a third dental appointment midweek with two more to come. She staggered back to the car after a heavy session and was restored only with the help of a large Faro beach baggy. Baggy - bagaceira, a liquor distilled from pomace - is her tipple.
We are back at the NBC old-timers' gathering in London. Here you see some of the "gals", rather older than I remember them but then they'd probably say the same thing of me. Male colleagues are elsewhere in the pub. I should add that I got to know many of the staff while working shifts at NBC prior to getting a job with the BBC.
Thursday brought a physio session with Jodi in Alte, followed by my first pedicure in Benafim. Mary trimmed my hair as Nelia worked on my feet. It certainly passes the time. For once I didn't take the dogs; there was no shade to be had. Jones says Ono sat on the patio and watched from the moment I left until my return.
This blog may be the last for some weeks. Our house sitters are due here next Thursday. We drive to Lisbon on Friday and fly to Madeira on Saturday for a week. We spend a second week relaxing in the Alentejo. That, at least, is the plan.
Back soon!
Blood Lilies - that emerge with the first rains each autumn
