DAWN ON WEDNESDAY
On Friday we did our good deed for the week - although I'm thinking of upgrading it to our good deed for the month. We took Maria and her little dog, Lucky, to the vet in Loule to have the animal inoculated. Maria is an elderly Portuguese neighbour who spent much of her life working in the fashion trade in New York, where her offspring still live.
MARIA AT A CAFE AFTER THE VET VISIT
We arrived at her house in the village well armed with towels lest Lucky should be sick in the car, a possibility that Maria discounted, assuring us that Lucky was well travelled. Well travelled or not, Lucky vomited up half her breakfast on her way into Loule and the other half on the return journey, the second time as Maria was clutching the dog to her chest.
LITTLE LUCKY
The mess distributed itself equally between Maria's fine black coat and my front passenger seat. After wiping up the worst of it, we dropped the coat off at the dry-cleaner and then took the pair back home.
Saturday the boys arrived on the dot of eight to repair the two sections of collapsed walling in the Inacio field. (We name our various fields according to the vendors.) They rigged the cement mixer up at the bottom of the drive where Luis from Quim Quim had earlier dumped a metre of sand and a pile of cement bags. With the tractor I ran barrows of fresh concrete 200 metres to the scene of the collapse at the top of the field, half way up the hill.
The original builders had constructed the attractive dry-stone walling that is still to be seen everywhere in the region. But over the decades such walls inevitably begin to buckle and, following a good downpour, they frequently give way. Our repairs, anchored in concrete, should last for centuries. The new sections look just as good as the old wall, lacking only the grey patina that comes with age.
MORE WEDNESDAY DAWN - WITH STILL MORE TO COME
On Monday we dropped in on the adega to top up our supplies of liquor. On previous visits we had found the man in the office happy to do heavily discounted deals with a minimum of paperwork.
Obviously things had changed for receipt books were now much in evidence, along with new tables of prices. Even so, we emerged with six litres of Jonesy's favourite tipple at a price well below anything available in the shops.
From there we carried on to see May in the nursing home just down the road. She was fairly cheery, sitting with a companion in the lounge and and looking forward to her 85th birthday the following day. I left Jones to chat to her. This is quite hard work as May tends to drift in and out of reality and one simply has to play along with whatever she has to say.
Before going to my English class, I wrote down on a piece of paper the name of a product that I asked Jones to obtain for me from the pharmacy. This she was kind enough to do. However, I had confused its name with the not dissimilar Portuguese word for a knife ("faca" - not a word that one wants to utter aloud in the company of English speakers). Jones said that the pharmacists - there are several - had been much amused when she handed over the piece of paper - although the desired product was quickly deduced.
Monday afternoon the dermatologist's receptionist phoned to say that the laboratory report was "good" following the excision of a lump from my head last week. This I was pleased to hear as you may imagine. Midweek I returned to the surgery to have the stitches out and a few spots blasted with a gas gun. I emerged more than ready for the glass of wine that we enjoyed with a tomato and ham sandwich at the Eléctrico (Portuguese for a tram) on Faro Beach.
From there we repaired to the Algarve Forum to top up on dog biscuits (3 large bags at a welcome 50% discount) and jeans, the latter for me. With me I took an old pair to demonstrate the style to the salesman at Levis' shop (here pronounced "levies"). The salesman produced two pairs that fitted me to a T.
When he told me the price, I whistled. "Well they are Levis", he responded, as though that explained everything. Feeling a bit guilty, I confessed to Jones that they were rather expensive. "So what's new?" she responded, or something equally indicative of my tastes and spending habits. There isn't time in this blog to present a decent defence of my frugality. The long and the short is that we came away with two pairs of new jeans as well as one or two Jones Christmassy items.
In the event, the jeans were a bit long (my legs are shorter than I would wish and my back longer - an unfortunate combination) and we had to ask Nadia, the seamstress in Loule, to shorten them. Nadia insisted that she measure them on me, so I had to disrobe behind the curtain in her alterations workroom while a loud Russian sitcom played itself out on the TV beside me - the new Portugal. My parents could never have imagined it.
Before I leave Wednesday, let me say that it dawned with the most remarkable inversion - as you may have been noticing. A great lake of cloud lay in all the valleys around us - painting a world much like the one that Noah would have beheld as he hurried to finish his ark. Hence the series of pictures. Any compliments to Jones please!
Thursday Feliciano the digger man turned up to create a track through the Inacio field and to bash some of the more stubborn and prominent rocks that poke up from our fields. The worst of them pretty much blocked the tractor's progress through our new plot. Note the white paint that I had daubed on rocky outcrops requiring his attention.
Protruding rocks do their utmost to grip the scarifier as it passes over them, releasing the metal blades with a shriek and a shower of sparks. So it was quite satisfying to watch them first shuddering and then shattering under the weight of the huge hydraulic hammer.
HARD DAY'S NIGHT
In-between times I have been making my way steadily through Gianluigi Nuzzi's "Merchants in the Temple", often in bed late at night. My iPad recognises the low light and reverses the print and background colours to reduce glare. Like my previous read, the book is thoroughly researched, with names, dates and verbatim communications much in evidence - little surprise given the mountain of confidential documents that were leaked to the writer.
What the book isn't is edifying; it's not one that I should recommend to the faithful, especially the good souls who contribute to the church's annual (Peter's Pence) collection (supposedly) for the world's poor". What really becomes clear is the battle in which the present pope is engaged to reform the Vatican curia - powerful and well-ensconced clerical administrators with multiple funds at their disposal and little inclination to be reformed. Little wonder that the pontiff's ineffective predecessor stood down in despair.
ESPARGAL VILLAGE FROM THE TELEF
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