Last Saturday one of us got a little older and was spoiled by caring neighbours
with whom we had celebrated at the Hamburgo the previous evening. (I'm standing, not to make a speech, but to humour my back, which has been unusually well behaved of late - dare I say it?)
On the big day itself, a worthy bottle of wine was procured for an alfresco petisco supper. The front patio is the venue for supper most evenings, once the dogs have been walked and fed and the garden watered. We supp to the mournful howling of a neighbour's dog (whose mate had to be put down) with backing from the crepuscular chorale's strident stridulous symphony.
A birthday gift sent by express post from Lisbon took all of an impatient week to arrive but proved to be well worth the wait. The bespoke mask on her head was included in the parcel. In Portugal one is required to wear a mask in all public interior spaces, a practice accepted by the population with none of the US & UK's contentious hemming and hawing, bumbling and dithering.
Just up the road, the digger has finished levelling Idalecio's plot in preparation for his new house. Some two metres of land on two sides of the property have been surrendered to allow for future road widening.
The spider's real enough although the photo is a bit misleading. The brute was sitting on the bathroom mirror. Barbara brought along a glass and a sheet of cardboard to slide beneath him for emigration purposes.
I dropped him over the patio railings and watched him scuttle off into the shrubbery, none the worse for wear. Another visitor, this time in the garden, was a snake that slithered over the cobbles in front of me and disappeared into a flower bed. Such visitations are not uncommon in summer. My only concern is to keep a distance between any serpents and Pally.
Speaking of whom - with the new blades for my two electric dog clippers, I managed to shave a bagful of wiry coat from his flanks and back. Pally now comes to us daily seeking attention and is quite amenable to being clipped. He's the sweetest little dog albeit one of the loudest.
His disposition is not shared by his fellow orphan, Mello, who does her best to avoid being handled. We managed to secure her and seat her on the clipping table where she sat passively while Jones fed her treats and I took off her thick winter coat.
She is looking so much better for my efforts. I hope that deep in her heart she's grateful.
After such exciting canine developments, it's a case of treats all round. In fact after virtually all developments, it's treats all round. Russ and Barri have also had much-needed summer haircuts.
Monday morning Eluterio turned up from the council to install the piping for a second water connection. It was a really tricky job as he had very little room to work and some very stubborn fittings (first) to unbolt and (then) to replace in order to split the main supply pipe between the two boxes.
With the assistance of his Russian co-worker, he took the best part of 90 minutes to complete the job. The next steps, he informed me, were to wait for a bill, pay the bill and then apply to the council for a meter to be attached to the pipework. Once that's done, the connection to Casa Nada is up to us.
Tuesday we headed west for lunch and a catch up with Liz on the seafront at Cabanas.
Our little snack bar - with the red sun umbrellas - overlooking the water serves an excellent salad.
It was much busier than it has been on our previous two visits as holiday makers arrive and the summer season settles in.
Just below the boardwalk, scores of crabs were scuttling about in a shallow stream that filtered down into the estuary.
Wednesday afternoon I drove down to meet the driver of the delivery truck bringing the kit for our new shed. The truck was both much larger and longer than I had anticipated. The driver had the greatest difficulty squeezing his vehicle between houses on opposite sides of the s-bend on the road up the hill.
It took him all of 10 anxious minutes to crawl through the gap with centimetres to spare on either side. It was clear that the truck would not be able to manage the turns on our extended driveway loop. So we had the driver deposit the load of timber on the further edge of our field.
From there he was able to reverse the truck back into the road and return down the hill. The extra space provided by Idalecio's road-widening proved to be a boon.
For the next 80 minutes Slavic and I tractored the timber a careful load at a time up through the trees to the the edge of the slab which is to house the shed.
Friday: It's a stinker. My car thermometer registers C36*. Next week looks a little cooler. Meanwhile the pool is a life saver - although I was pissed off to be stung by a bee that I'd failed to spot in the water. I'm still sore - literally and figuratively.
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