Letter from Espargal: 4 January 2019

The blog starts well before sun-up on the last Saturday of 2018. In mid-winter, dawn lingers until 7.30. A series of motion-triggered solar lights illuminate our nocturnal passage from the house to the carport beyond the gate.



The early rise was to give the dogs 15 minutes for leg-lifters in the park and to get them fed before Slavic's arrival at 8.



Our task was to finish the base for the pool, a job we'd begun the previous week. Slavic fired up the cement mixer beside the heaps of sand and gravel beyond the fence; I tractored the wet stuff in.



And this is how the finished base looks. The spray-painted circle has a 5-metre diameter. It should be just sufficient to accommodate a circular 4.6-metre pool albeit with precious little room to spare. I'm still considering how to get an electrical feed across the cobbles to the pump.


AT A CAFE IN CASCAIS
Barbara, meanwhile, was enjoying her last day with Llewellyn and Lucia in the Cascais area west of Lisbon.



The couple have rented a spacious house, with pool, in the attractive adjacent suburb of Estoril while they look around for a permanent residence.


MAAT: OFFICIAL PICTURE
Barbara joined them on a visit to the MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) on the banks of the Tagus in Lisbon. She was most impressed.



One exhibition, arranged on a suspended net, comprises hundreds of items of flotsam and jetsam assembled by a Japanese artist, Tadashi Kawamata, to draw attention to the pollution of the seas. I wonder how many polluters are likely to visit the exhibition.



Another visit was to Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point on continental Europe. Next stop America - although you can take a mid-Atlantic breather in the Azores as many sailors do. The Azores airline also stops over in the islands en route from Lisbon to Boston.



Most outings were to the local beaches, always accompanied by Douglas and Roxy, who must think they have landed in doggy heaven. Upper left one can glimpse the sea pool at Cascais, similar to (but smaller than) the pool we love at Porto Moniz in Madeira - our holiday retreat these past several years.



Jonesy returned home on Saturday night. This time the train ran as scheduled. On the Sunday we joined friends for brunch on Faro Island. The wind was up, churning the usually tranquil estuary into green and white furrows. It wasn't a day for boating although the kite-surfers were out in force.


JONES: DOVES AT THE BIRD FEEDER
As Barbara had been unable to use the first half of her train ticket, I set about seeking compensation online as advised by the clerk at Loule station. Although the railway website sets out all the rules for claiming compensation in some detail, nowhere could I find the form to actually make a claim.


JONES: PIGEONS
Finally, close to midnight, I tried the railway chat-line. Either a wakeful person or a helpful computer advised me to fill in the claims form (that I'd been seeking all along) without telling me where to find it. The only resort was to examine every sub-menu and sub-sub-menu on the site. I eventually came across it under "Perturbations". Now we see.


TRY TAKING A PHOTO OF YOUR PHONE WITH YOUR PHONE
As you may have gathered, I have invested in a new phone, having waited for the Boxing Day sales to make the purchase. (Portuguese advertisers actually call them Boxing Day promotions, ignorant of the name's origins but happy to exploit its marketing lure.)


JONES: WINTER NARCISSUS
"I thought you'd just bought a phone," said Barbara when she learned of the "investment". (Usually she asks what was wrong with the old one.) "That was at least two years ago," I replied, hurrying on to enthuse about the new model's mind-boggling bells and whistles. No joke; I'm slowly making my way through the manual.



The moon continues to hold a special fascination for my wife.



Which brings us to 2019. New Year's arrival at Valapena was pleasantly peaceful, that's apart from the ritual dispatch of sundry villains by James Bond - not that villains appear to be in short supply.  Barbara then withdrew from the fray, sleeping soundly through the chimes and a few celebratory bangs an hour later. I stayed up long enough to admire the TV fireworks displays before squeezing (beside the misnamed Mini) into bed.


A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME....