Letter from Espargal: 22 September 2017

Friday evening we joined the Espargal expats and the Cusack family at the chicken shack for a celebration. The banner says it. Like the cake, it came from the "kids", Erik, Neil and Lisa, who had all flown in for the occasion.



Saturday: Our main task was to extend the earth surround of the big almond tree beside Casa Nada. Although almond trees are hardy, they have their limits. This one's thinning leaves were an indication of distress. The fault was ours. We hadn't considered how severely the surrounding brick paving would restrict its water supply. Slavic notched the bricks with an angle grinder before breaking them evenly and replacing the reinforced concrete kerb on the enlarged base. The tree now has a good square metre of earth to collect water.



Sunday: We asked Manuel at the Hamburgo over brunch about the body we'd seen sprawled on the pavement in Benafim the previous week. He said it was that of an epileptic woman who had suffered a fatal attack. I thought that at least one of the onlookers might have covered her with a sheet.



Monday: Lisa came along on our walk. A cool, crisp autumn morning complemented the panoramic views across the hills to the white-splotched towns along the coast. At the viewpoint we stop to admire the scenery and consider the day. On lucky days, the dogs get a titbit here (as well as a snack on our return). Jones decides which days are lucky.



We had arranged for Neil to meet us at the house with his drone. He had already used it to supply us with superb photos of the house, prompting us to ask for pictures of our adjacent field.



The field comprises four plots that we have acquired from neighbours down the years. As you may see below, it's bounded by tarred roads right and bottom and by a wall at the top. On the left a steep right of way (leading to the talefe) separates it from our house. The curved white ribbon (upper left) is our driveway circuit. Casa Nada and the two carports are visible bottom left and the photo-voltaic panels bottom centre. The electricity generated is fed directly into the national grid.



The white construction upper right (above) is the municipal pump-house cum water deposit. Water is pumped up from two boreholes at the base of the hill and in the flood plain (below). Benafim - 3kms away - is spattered across the slopes of the far hill. The white dots mid-pic represent the hamlets of Birrao, Cotovio and Estiveira.



Speaking of Casa Nada, I received the photo (below) from the lawyer who is trying to assist us to register the old house. We obtained it from the Loule council archive as part of the attempted registration process.  Might the old house pictured be Casa Nada, was the question. I fear not. We certainly didn't recognise the building or the surroundings, neither did any of our Portuguese neighbours.  Very frustrating!



Returning to our visitors - Bobby, who is fairly fussy about who enters the property, made it clear that Lisa was at the top of the welcome list.  Even the orphans, who treat all visitors with the greatest suspicion, found her acceptable - albeit they kept their distance. Jonesy took the pics. The heap on the cobbles is a tangle of old carpets and clothes beloved of the dogs.



When the cobbles are cold, they either perch on it or, in the case of the orphans, use it as a base to play-fight. Jones is forever adding new strips to it as the old ones disintegrate. I know that there are an awful lot of dogs in the pictures but, as you see, it's jolly difficult to take a photo of anywhere that a dog isn't.



The dogs aside, we are also the servants of three cats (who have featured from time to time); Apart from these, Jones also feeds a stray whom we call Not Robbie. Not Robbie is so named because he was briefly mistaken for a look-alike named Robbie. Barbara meets him each afternoon when she makes her way down the narrow lane below the house with bones for two neighbouring dogs, Maggie and Blackie (that's another story).



She gives the cat a plate of meat and biscuits on the way down and she she tops it up on her way back. Not Robbie was all skin and bones when she first started feeding him several years ago. Now, he's quite a handsome cat.



One night I had a vivid dream - that follows. Immediately afterwards I woke and, retrieving my iPad from the bedside table, wrote it down while it was fresh in my mind. My subconscious would seem to be trying to reconcile various episodes in my life:



[We were walking up a dark road. After passing a building, we allowed ourselves some light even though we were meant to observe a blackout. When we arrived, we reported to the senior officer, a short stout man.



"Lieutenant Benson reporting," I said, saluting him. He replied: "Shall we continue this conversation in the bar?". We thought that an excellent idea. I was aware that I was wearing tight, calf-length jeans. A door down the passage on the left led into the bar. The room was large, with a billiards table in the centre and a dozen or more monks in white cassocks standing around. I too was wearing a white cassock.



A monk asked me: "Are you still with us then and not in Manchester or Monmouthshire?". He obviously knew about my monkish uncertainties. "So far, so good," I replied. I had a class to teach and hadn't prepared a lesson. I thought we would just have to read a passage from a set work.]


FOUR SOUTH AFRICAN NOVICES, MITTAGONG, AUSTRALIA 1963 - ALL WERE TO LEAVE THE ORDER WITHIN A DECADE

Footnote: I was once a part-time lieutenant and for some years wore a white (summer) cassock and taught schoolboys. After leaving these "employments" behind me, I vowed never to wear a uniform again.



The remainder of the week has been devoted largely to getting the house and garden ready for the arrival of our house sitters. I belong to the school that believes in allowing visitors to see us as we live; Jones likes TV ad perfection, which isn't easily achieved in the presence of 12 live-in animals. But if it keeps her happy, I don't mind.


CUTTING BACK

NOTE: We are preparing to go on holiday. This will be the last blog for several weeks!

PS: Two chicken thighs that were cooling on the patio table appear to have got up and walked off. Either that or one of our beloved little doggies has purloined them. No-one is saying a word!


WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE CUSACKS

Letter from Espargal: 15 September 2017

Friday: We took another load of carobs down to our farmer neighbour. We generally manage a load a week. When the carobs lie as thick as this beneath the tree, we can fill a tub in under an hour. The farmer looked at the carobs we had gathered and supposed, correctly, from their slight purplish hue that they had come from trees in a property we'd acquired from another neighbour. Clearly there's more to carobs than meets the casual eye.



It's not only the farmer who appreciates carobs. The dogs love them too - along with the rodents who often get first crack at them. No problem; there's enough to go round; ditto almonds. Most of ours have now been picked by other grateful neighbours. We've more than enough left for ourselves and the dogs. The latter work the nuts round in their teeth until they find a weak spot. Then crunch!



Saturday morning: Dawned windy and delightfully fresh. It was welcome. My heat-bumps and rashes have been getting the better of me. For the first time in months I donned a light jersey. Slavic and I - mainly Slavic - created more stepped paths. You might think that we've now made quite enough. But they serve both to provide easy access and to eliminate the explosion of winter weeds in corners of the garden.



In the afternoon, Neil Cusack (son of commuting neighbours) and Franziska brought baby Emerson along to say hello. We don't get many baby visitors.  Jones has had a few on her knee but not for long and not for a long time. Below is a better picture of Franziska. Never mind Prickles displaying his wares!



Sunday: On our way to brunch in Benafim we passed a crowd of people standing around a figure sprawled on the pavement. No one was making any attempt to render assistance. It didn't look good - and it wasn't. On the way back we saw the police talking to onlookers and a hearse drawn up beside them.  We speculated that someone had been struck down with a heart attack or stroke.


VALAPENA LILY
Half way home on the agricultural road one passes along Oak Tree avenue. The road is lined with spectacular cork oaks, huge old trees that are stripped for their cork jackets every ten years or so. One sees huge flatbed trucks carrying mountains of cork off to where-ever it's processed. These days it's turned into a variety of domestic products.



We like to park the car in their shade and spend a few minutes wandering along the verge with Pricks and Ono. It's a restful place, imbued with its own inner peace and quiet.



The lane is situated on the fertile flood plain that lies between Espargal and Benafim. We've never seen it flooded although it can get pretty wet. Some of these plots are home to small vineyards or orchards. Others are sown for summer produce or simply lie fallow - good places to look for orchids in spring.


Memorial to Dona Antónia, Benafim
Much of the area once belonged to a wealthy woman (Dona Antónia Provisório) who divided it into numerous plots that she donated to local residents. There's a small monument to her memory on the traffic circle in Benafim.



Monday: Neil brought friends, Laura and Glen, along with son, Aaron, to visit. Aaron - 18 months - has a particular interest in dogs. He certainly got to know a few before the afternoon was out. His other interest is vehicles. He loved my tractor, sitting in the seat and making appropriate engine noises. Dad and Neil secured him in the tractor box as we went for a ride around the property.



With him Neil brought his new high-tech drone. (The old one, after an unplanned dip in the pool, took itself off, never to be seen again.) The new device comes with a gimbals-stabilised camera and is guided via a mobile phone that slips into a remote control frame. The pictures speak for themselves.



The photo above shows the house and most of the (half of the) property that lies within the fence. To the right of the house are a car-port, a wooden hut (that Jones calls the work chalet) and Casa Nada (the Nothing House, so named because it doesn't exist officially).

The main house is anchored in the bedrock of Espargal Hill, 100 metres below the trig point (talefe), Barbara's favourite evening retreat. From the peak one looks down across a switchback of hills and valleys to the coastal strip, 40 minutes away.



And this final shot - rimmed by the mountain range to the north - shows the house overlooking the village that spreads out at the bottom of the hill. About half the houses in the village are out of shot or concealed by the trees.



The trees - mainly carobs, almonds and olives - conceal the bleak, brown, autumn landscape that waits - like Sleeping Beauty - for reviving rains. To our regret, there are none in sight. We continue to irrigate the garden each afternoon. Temps - still climbing into the low 30s - are at last forecast to dip a few degrees.


DEARHEART'S RIGHT EYE IS CAUSING US SOME CONCERN

Wednesday: We hear that a worker on the local construction team has committed suicide - to the shock of his family and all who knew him. We had a nodding acquaintance with the man ourselves as the team has done work around our property. He had earlier been hospitalised with cancer and it's thought the disease might have regressed. Much of Benafim, where he lived, turned out for the funeral. (Jones wonders whether his might have been the figure we saw lying prostrate on Sunday!)


TEXAN SAGE
Thursday: I have taken down suitcases with a view to doing preliminary packing for our Portuguese island holiday later this month. I carefully tried on all the trousers in my cupboard before separating them into those I could still get into and those I couldn't. It's time I did something about an overweening tummy. Jones blames it on muscles left idle by the back support that I habitually wear. I suspect that it's not the only culprit. There must be an app that allows other people to exercise and diet on one's behalf - on the new iPhone X perhaps!

~
THE ORPHANS ON GUARD
The planks visible at the base of the gates are to prevent three-legged Pally - in the foreground - from wriggling under the gates and going walkabout - his favourite activity. Despite his handicap (disability for the politically correct), the dog is both swift and agile.


MORE BELLADONNA LILIES

Friday has arrived with a cold wind from the north, with more such days forecast to follow. I think that we can finally close summer's chapter. Deo gratias!


THURSDAY SUNSET
 

Letter from Espargal: 8 September 2017

SEPTEMBER SUNRISE
Friday. During our walk my troublesome left big toe, which Jodi has been treating, let me know that it wasn't happy. I made another appointment with Jodi, anxious to attend to the problem before the weekend. Jones ventured the opinion that I was becoming more dependent on the medical profession than was wise or possibly necessary (not an accusation that anyone could make of her). Whatever the case, the toe proved to be infected once more and Jodi did the necessary to disinfect it. Seems to have done the trick.



Saturday: I worked with Slavic to build more walls, steps and paths. We have virtually completed the terracing of the front garden. I think it looks brilliant and Jones is quite pleased.



Next comes the repainting of the numerous gates - we have about 11, interior and exterior - and some work in the garden, to be directed by the gardener. The gardener is distressed that her numerous chores distract her from the serious business of gardening. "If only I could get an unbroken morning in the garden," she is often heard to complain.



One of the distractions is carob picking, a task that continues to occupy us for an hour or so most days. I took another load down to Armenio's yard where you see them heaped up on a raised and walled concrete floor. He points out that a little rain will not damage the carobs and may even add a little substance to the beans, which are priced by weight.



I returned home with several hollow sections of trunk from his mountainous wood pile, much prized by Jones as natural pots for her plants. In fact she often sighs as we pass great stacks of cork (stripped from the trees) and wishes that she might have just one or two of them.



Sunday: I swapped the sim-cards between my two phones. Both are HTC models, one a 16GB flat-screen device and the other an older 32GB. With the addition of new apps, the flat screen kept on running out of memory in spite of my frequent deletion of photo and video files. Annoyingly, it refused to allow me to move factory files from the main memory to the SD card. Exchanging the sim-cards was fiddly because one phone takes a micro chip and the other a nano chip. But it's done; Whatsapp has been migrated and all the software updated.



Monday: While making a number of online train bookings, I (may have) entered the wrong dates for a trip. I'm convinced that I entered the right dates and that railway computer preferred others. But that's beside the point. The good news is that Portuguese Railways permits one free change to a reservation, assuming that the ticket hasn't expired.



A very nice man at Loule railway station made the necessary alterations without charging me a cent. He did warn me that the booking was now final. Seniors - such as ourselves - enjoy a 50% discount on most rail travel. A 1st class return journey from Loule to Lisbon in the luxury Alfa Pendular express costs the pair of us just €60. That wouldn't even cover the toll-road charges, never mind the fuel, if we were to make the journey by car.



Monday night: I watched a TV documentary on 12-year old Alma Deutscher, a musical child prodigy (with whom you may very well be acquainted). I had earlier read a BBC report on the opera she had composed; to see and hear her in action was to be in the presence of genius, a different model of humanity, for which a whole new vocabulary (that I don't possess) is required. The wonderkind, who has several works to her name, has performed internationally and is often compared to Mozart. Her quite extraordinary talent and sophistication you may judge for yourself: http://www.almadeutscher.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/AlmaDeutscher



A new stray has arrived in the village, a large black dog that is being fed by a visitor (who is seeking a home for it). The animal drives our lot into a frenzy of impassioned outrage when it passes the gates. I dread a confrontation during our morning walks. Almost as bad have been moonlight barking sessions it provokes from the orphans. I stumble from my bed to hurl futile half-litre plastic bottles of water (Kim Jong-un style) from the top patio in the direction of the barkers. After several sleep-interrupted nights we have taken to shutting the orphans into the patio after supper.



Tuesday: After my weekly tune-up with Jodi, we continued to the Primeiro do Maio snack bar in Funchais for a sandwich lunch. Their generous cheese, ham, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, with a sprinkling of olive oil and a smattering of oregano,  are the best in the world. We sit at the end table on the shaded patio (above), just out of the sun, often with the dogs at our feet. Midday temps are still in the 30s. Leaning on the post beside us was an unlocked bicycle. We wondered who the owner might be as there was no obvious rider inside.



The owner turned out to be Bruno, part of the family who run the snack bar. We explained that we wanted a picture of the bike to show that in Portuguese villages, bike-owners might leave their property outside without fear of theft. At the same time we thought it sensible to take a picture of Bruno himself. As you see, he has a lot of tattoos and sports a substantial black beard.



After lunch we carried on to see what progress had been made at the nearby Quinta da Ombria development - midway between Espargal and Loule. As the project website makes clear, Ombria intends itself to be a luxury resort offering golf, a fancy hotel, a spa, residences and every kind of extravagance for the well-heeled.
http://www.yellowpages.pai.pt/ms/ms/quinta-da-ombria-hotel-spa-golf-resort-8100-746-loule/ms-90064589/



From the road the green fringes of the golf course can already be seen creeping down the hillsides; future housing developments are still just in the planning stage. What strikes visitors at present is the impressive bridge that has been constructed across the (dry bed of the) Algibre River to the resort.



The dam (top left of the map above) has taken shape downstream. Clouds of dust arise from large earth-movers that grind their way around the area, dumping masses of gravel and sand in the appropriate places and carving the hill into the desired shape. In a year or two, I expect that Ombria will be the resort of choice for the affluent and aspiring celebs. Jones dreads it. I shrug. We're hardly likely to go there and, once the dust has settled, it may bring a little badly-needed employment and prosperity to the area.


MUST PAINT OUT THAT BARCODE STICKER
Wednesday: Jonesy almost got her uninterrupted morning in the garden. I completed the handrail down the steep winding steps to the bottom rockery and picked up half a tub of carobs. Note the aloes populating the rockery (on the left) from which Jonesy has stripped off the dead leaves.



Thursday:  Jones has just completed the repair of a cushion cover that was remodelled by the dogs some weeks ago. She's done a great job. It looks better than new. She declined to show her face, explaining that she hadn't yet washed her hair or put on her make-up. It's a girl thing.


JONES MOON
We are lunching with friends and it's time to round off the blog. I find it takes the better part of a day to put it together. My neighbour says the new stray had been taken to a dog sanctuary. The poor dog had just started to settle in at his place. The prospect of adopting another dog crossed my mind but was firmly rejected. We are septuagenarians and we are full - never mind the canine chaos that would have ensued shortly before our house sitters arrive.


TB MOON
PS: Jones questioned my spelling of "wonderkind" as opposed to (the German) "wunderkind", which is more commonly borrowed in English. I pointed out that the former is Dutch/Afrikaans but, for any fellow pedants, I accept that it's much less common.