DOGS GATHERED AROUND THE FIRE
For several nights, while getting into bed, shoving Prickles and Ono over to Jones's side, I have listened to the UK shipping forecast predicting gales in all sea areas. Not just gales but seas raging at storm force 10 and violent storm 11. On Sunday those storms headed south across the Bay of Biscay to Iberia. Weather forecasters warned of 14-metre waves off Portugal's coast. Ports were closed. The Algarve caught the tail-end of the tempest but it proved to be the tail of a scorpion.
For 48 hours we were buffeted, blown, barged, tugged, torn and tormented. Everything that wasn't tied down outside the house, flew off. Trees thrashed about, spilling nuts and carobs. Weighty garden pots toppled over. The dogs' dishes skidded into distant corners of the garden. The beasts themselves huddled with us around the fire. To open the front door while the back was ajar (or vice versa) was to invite a million icy demons to shriek though the house. It was horrible, a world ill at ease with itself.
On Tuesday the winds abated and winter arrived, displacing an extended mild autumn. Temps dropped from double figures to shivery singles. We wore two jackets on our walk and needed them. For once the air was clear, purged of pollutants by the storm. From the hilltop we could see half the world. A pale blue sky arched across to a deep blue sea. It was as though order had emerged from the chaos in the process of creation.
MAY'S HOUSE
Monday was given over to shopping. For the first time in years May no longer figured on our Monday to-do list. She has already been cremated. Her affairs now lie in the hands of her nephew, Ken, who is back in Edinburgh. He plans to return to Portugal once the lawyer has completed death's bureaucracy - to put the property on the market.
MAY'S GARDEN & POOL
Tuesday saw my annual meeting with our accountants, half an hour away in the little town of Guia. It was brief and to the point. Our recent financial affairs have been mercifully straightforward following the wretched complications arising from various purchases and sales in the 2014 tax year. It took months to get the taxman off my back.
The sunny weather brought back Eugenio, the tree pruner, to finish cutting back our numerous almond trees. The branches lie scattered across our fields, the boughs bound for firewood, the twigs for bonfires. The fields themselves are knee-high in greenery, still too wet to plough.
BENAFIM SUNSET - TB
Tuesday also witnessed a celebration lunch at the newly re-opened Hamburgo to mark Dagmar's somethingth birthday. The restaurant had closed for a couple of months while Manuel brought in a firm to fit an acoustic ceiling, recessed lighting and much more. The hard wooden chairs have gone, replaced by comfortable padded seats. All in all, it's a great improvement - decor to match the venue's reputation.
On Wednesday we returned to the Hamburgo for Fintan's birthday. The restaurant is one of those places that I am happy to visit on any number of birthdays or, for that matter, for non birthdays. It combines a pleasant ambiance, a gracious host, excellent fare and value for money. More particularly, it is just across the valley from Espargal.
ESPARGAL SUNSET - BJ
Also on Wednesday we made two runs to fetch rocks for Saturday's wall building. That's Jonesy and I - or "myself and my wife" as they to say. The sun was out to take the sting out of the cold. On the road we bumped into two sets of neighbours; from their car windows they conversed with Jones who was perched in the tractor box out of the wind. Espargal is a place where this kind of interaction feels perfectly normal.
We had left Natasha busy in the house. She spent the weekend in Cascais with her son, Alex, who had been competing in a gymnastics competition. It seems he did well enough to please himself and his mother if not well enough to get through to the finals.
Speaking of pleasing "his" mother - on the BBC's Today programme on Radio 4, an announcer promo-ed a feature with the words: "Why does a person beat their wife?" My pedantic hackles rose. Radio 4 is supposed to have certain pretensions. So I suggested the announcer make it "HIS wife" - unless she was including lesbian "wife" batterers. The introduction was later amended to: "Why does a person beat their partner?", fractionally more tolerable.
Portuguese - with its inflected adjectives and pronouns - is little afflicted by these grammatical gender dilemmas. I wish that I too were less afflicted. Jones says I'm a bigot - although not necessarily in this context. I think it's more a case of Don Quixote, tilting uselessly at windmills.
NEW SKYPE PHONE
Following recent conversations with Portugal Telecom we now have working phones upstairs and down on the landline. They don't take messages. Skype users please note (that courtesy of Llewellyn) we also have a new Skype phone - one that takes calls via the router. Two previous Skype phones were zapped by lightning. We also have our mobile phones. Mine resides in my pocket. Jones's sometimes lingers on a table or window ledge.
Now that Foyle's War has gone the way of all good things, I - rather than we - have been watching movies instead. The first of these was "Sicario". Jones tried it before deciding that it wasn't her scene. In truth, the movie initially leaves the viewer almost as much in the dark as its protagonist. However events gradually come into focus for both parties and by the end I could see why it had achieved such good reviews - tough viewing though it was.
This is more than I can say for the award-winning Revenant. I had ordered the movie from Amazon - or thought I had - only to receive a DVD containing a different movie with the same name - a gory fest of ghouls and zombies that went straight into the waste bin. However, after watching the real thing, I wondered whether the zombies might have been an improvement. It seemed to me to represent two-and-a-half hours of murky, highly improbable, unrelieved freezing misery. While I take my hat off to the actors and crew who endured the stark, arctic conditions to make it, my award would go to viewers who sit through it.
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