My tech challenge this week was to discover why my smart-phone was suddenly blocking reception of the codes the bank sends me to authorise transfers. This blockage came as an unpleasant surprise, bringing my online banking operations to a sharp halt last Friday evening.
MELLO AFTER A MUD BATH
The bank helpline assured me that the codes were still being sent out and advised me to talk to my network provider. Vodafone, who now subject callers to an horrendous helpline menu - in Portuguese - before allowing one near an operator, said the problem lay with my phone. They sent me a mysterious code that was meant to cure it. No luck!
PENSIVE DOG
Vodafone's technical adviser later dismissed the code as useless - intended for older models. The problem, he advised me, lay with a software filter and, as a precaution, he turned off the message filter on my security suite. It did the trick. The bank is talking to me once again.
EXPLORING A NEW GARDEN
I had the same problem some years ago with Barclays offshore. I tried all the bank's suggestions for resolving it before eventually being driven to close the account. Although it's possible to bank by phone, it's a pain!
SQUINTY ARRIVES
Monday's and Thursday's English classes discussed the rise to prominence of several women in Portugal's Left Bloc, a far left party that took 10% of the vote in the national elections and of the seats in the Assembly. Although Portuguese women are well represented in the professions and in government, party leaders have traditionally been male. So the spotlight has been on the women's performance as the Portuguese wait to hear who is to form their next government. The state president, whose call it is, is still consulting.
Still on politics - R W Johnson's book, How Long Will South Africa Survive, is gripping my attention. Although we have long followed the country's politics from afar, it's really only such events as the Pistorius trial and the Marikana massacre that get treated in any depth. Johnson's analysis of the parlous state of the governing party and its allies - that's as far as I have read - is as meticulously annotated as it is depressing. I don't suppose that this will come as news to most South Africans. But it certainly puts my Witbank brother's explosive rants over graft and incompetence into perspective. What a sorry state of affairs!
Tuesday we stayed at home. Jones gardened. I painted our two exterior tables. Both are metal and prone to rust. They looked pretty good for my efforts, if I say so myself. The only hitch was that scores of the tiny mosaic tiles came loose when I upended one table and I've spent some time gluing them back and grouting them in. As luck would have it, I'm one tile short and head-scratching over how best to disguise its absence.
I wasn't fussed about a few spots of paint on the cobbles but Jones thought the cobbles had looked much better without them and I had to go down on my knees to make amends.
Another paint job was to spray my initials on to the marker stones at the boundaries of our new plot of land - half a dozen of them. I had already over-painted the vendor's initials. To replace them with mine, I knelt beside the stones, elbowing aside the weeds, while I gripped a stencil with one hand and a can of spray paint with the other. Not an elegant pose!
The plot is looking a lot better after a second round of ploughing and the burning off of great heaps of off-cuts last Saturday. At last we can see the layout and drive the tractor from one end to the other.
Wednesday, after physio, we drove 30 minutes east to the mountain village of Cortelha where our neighbours, David and Sarah, were working on the house that belongs to their absent daughter and son-in-law.
In particular, they were painting a plastered wall on an upstairs patio with a water-repellent coating to block the moisture that was staining the interior walls. The product they were using is particularly effective. The local hardware store demonstrates this by displaying a treated cardboard box filled with water.
DAVID COATS THE WALL WITH A WATER REPELLENT
From the house we proceeded five minutes down the road to the village restaurant - a popular establishment - where we lunched outside on bread, cheese and ham. It was hot and grew hotter as the November sun edged around the protective garden brolly, prompting us to move indoors.
If the days are still fit for sunbathers, evenings are growing much cooler. Temps are set to fall into single figures overnight this coming week - don't gasp Canadians. So far our evening fires have been more of a luxury than a necessity. Once again the land grows dry and we pray for rain.
Thursday, after my English lesson, we went up to the Goldra dog sanctuary to see how Marisa and Ana were getting along. The answer was with more dogs than ever. Marisa also has a dozen or more dogs at home, animals that need special attention. She said that her English neighbour, whose property was on the market, was complaining about the noise they make. And since the two women didn't have a language in common, it was proving really hard to communicate. I could only sympathise.
The visit was our first in months. I stopped taking up food supplies when I ran into back problems earlier in the year although we have continued to support the project.
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