MAY 2018
Ono is no longer with us. The old fellow lies buried 50 metres away in our field. He leaves a hole in our lives 18 years deep. A week ago he was still managing to stagger around the hills with us. But over the weekend he declined rapidly, unable to get to his feet unassisted. The last night we sat up with him. We were grateful to the vet for calling here on Tuesday morning and doubly grateful to neighbours who assisted us with the burial.
JANUARY 2004
We first came across Ono on New Year's Day 2001 in the veld a few hundred metres from our former home, the Quintassential. This is an excerpt (slightly shortened) from the letter that I wrote to my family a few days later.
Let me tell you about Ono. Jones and I were taking our usual afternoon walk about a week ago when we heard a strange wailing coming from somewhere down in the valley. We stopped to try to identify the location and the nature of the wailer but without success. Whether bird or beast it was hard to determine. So we walked on.
But we had only gone a hundred yards when we stopped again. The wailing continued all the while and the creature doing the wailing was clearly in distress. I looked at Jones and she looked at me. We agreed that we had better investigate. So we picked our way down a path towards the source of the noise. The wails were high-pitched and hard to pin down – like the rings of a mobile phone.
After some minutes we arrived at a large bush which appeared to be the focal point. Just then the wails ceased. When I had pushed aside sufficient branches to peer into the innards of the bush, I saw there, under my feet, a tiny little black puppy, its eyes still closed, clearly in need of its mother.
EARLY 2001 - Terry, Ono, Mum, Cathy & Sammy
“It’s a puppy,” I called out to Jones who exclaimed “Oh no!” a cry she continued to utter with great feeling. Her distress was prompted less by the misfortune of the tiny animal than the dread she felt at the imminent arrival of another pet – or that, at least, is my suspicion.
Ono he became and Ono he remained for a quarter of our lives.
NOVEMBER 2006
His nest for the first few weeks was the sleeve of an old fur coat, warmed by a hot water bottle. For the next few months, he accompanied us on our walks, zipped inside my jacket. Over the years he became an experienced traveller, sitting bolt upright in the middle of the back seat of the car, staring through the windscreen. "The navigator" we called him. He has shared our bed as he has shared our lives. Now we hold him in our hearts.
VITOR AND SON, BERNARDO, AT ARMENIO'S GALLERY
That drama was all the more complicated because I had previously agreed with Vitor, the village mechanic, to drop the Honda off at his house on Monday evening for its annual service and road-check.
VITOR'S IMPRESSIVELY NEAT WOOD PILES
Under the Portuguese system all cars are examined at government-authorised centres at 4, 6 and 8 years of age, and every year thereafter. The check is rigorous, conducted on large computerised rigs. So we were carless on Tuesday. Vitor dropped the car back that evening. much impressed with the vehicle, now in its ninth year. Indeed, it's the finest car I have owned or am likely to - and I've owned a few.
Dogs and cars aside, I've spent more hours down at Armenio's gallery hanging pictures and painstakingly filling in the outlined letters. The gallery's main problem is that the three-storey building - previously used as a storeroom - lacks any electrical circuits. The two floors housing the sculptures and the collection of agricultural implements enjoy little natural light and the question is how best to throw a little light on the display.
A MAN WENT TO MOW A MEADOW
It was pointed out to me that "liga" the word I'd used for "contact", was the informal form of the verb and that the formal form would be more suitable. Concerned to observe such niceties, I hastened to remedy this peccadillo by adding an "R" to the end.
REMOVING AN ENTRENCHED COLONY OF FERNS
For her part, Jones has plunged into her garden, which overflows with the largess of the late rains. A rock-enclosed area beside the house, known as the "secret garden", has been totally overtaken by ferns which, she has decided, now need to move on as they are suffocating the shrubs around them.
Some areas, like the old patio in front of Casa Nada, have surrendered entirely to wild flowers. Barbara's wheelbarrow groans under piles of redundant greenery and the compost heap grows daily more corpulent on the proceeds.
POPPY RIOT IN HORATIO'S FIELD
This week's English lesson sapped my energies. The different levels of fluency among English learners makes it hard work to teach a lesson that's useful to all.
Barbara snapped this picture of two snakes entwined in the path. At first I thought it was a romantic interlude but closer examination revealed a frog and a mysterious additional foot, as though of a monitor lizard. (Over to any naturalists!) I was on the far side of the hill with the dogs at the time (as Jonesy first takes the stragglers on a short outing). The pair had slithered off by the time I arrived with the gang in tow. We always come across a few snakes as the weather warms but they do us no harm and we return the compliment.
This picture is mine. The true owners of Valapena are the ants that burrow away in every corner of the property. This lot appeared to be transferring seeds into a nest in the centre of our driveway, not with much success as the entrance was rather small and the seeds appeared to block it.
This gorgeous bird belongs, together with a number of other exotica, in a garden at the bottom of the village but likes to rove noisily around. Indeed, with his piercing cries, he makes a serious racket, the more so when he takes up station nearby. Mind you, if I were as handsome, I might well strut about myself. As they say: if you've got it, flaunt it!
BUDDING PYRAMID ORCHID
Wednesday afternoon we left the house to Natasha and the dogs. After spoiling ourselves with lunch at Cafe Q we proceeded to the extensive new MAR shopping complex on the outskirts of Loule. At the sprawling Leroy Merlin store there we found a solar-powered light - a display model going cheap - that should help resolve the gallery's lighting problems. It's a store in which I could easily idle away a few hours - and come home, as Jones observed, with a number of items I didn't know I needed.
Thursday I spent another hour working on Armenio's gallery before taking myself to Jodi for a toe-trim. Her studio is in Alte, a pretty village on the tourist trail some 20 minutes away (clearly visible from the house). Temperatures are already climbing into the mid-20s and the tourists much in evidence. They stick out like sore thumbs in their sandals and shorts - often getting charred to a shirtless cinder in the back of the tourist jeeps. Our former maid used to call them "the salmons" for their burned orange torsos.
So that's another week gone, one in which our thoughts are drawn repeatedly to our absent dog. Maybe somewhere there's a heaven with flower-filled meadows where the pets of yesteryear still roam free!
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