Letter from Espargal: 6 of 2007

Several eminent residents of Espargal have spent much of this week gathered at the end of our road where Mario’s digger has been hard at work. It’s been levelling the middle section of a plot that Mario sold last year to a young Dutch couple. Like other properties on the hillside, the plot slopes quite steeply. Creating a level base for a house represented several days of work. In fact, it is a split-level base, presumably for a house with two storeys on the lower side and one on the upper.

Also present were the Dutch couple themselves, along with their dog (an Alsatiany sort of beast), and their German builder. Everybody kept a close eye on the digger as its bucket munched its way steadily through the soil. From time to time, Mario would reverse the digger and shove a pile of earth towards two hillocks that he had created at the bottom of the plot. One hillock comprised reddy-brown soil and the other a light brown type. All the soil in the area divides itself into one or other type. The reddy-brown stuff, which is what we have, is much stonier and harder to work.

If this seems like a lot of unnecessary detail, you may have little idea of how much excitement is created by the prospect of a new house arising in the village, to say nothing of new neighbours. It is a major event, the subject of much discussion. Such activity can keep onlookers happily employed for hours on end, providing valuable amusement at a time of year when there’s not much work to be done in the fields.

If one should grow tired of watching Mario’s digger, one can take oneself down to the bottom of the village. There, two council workers have been repairing dry-stone walls that were damaged during the road-widening exercise. Although both guys are nearing retirement, they remain impressively powerful. In view of the rocks that they are heaving into place with their bare hands, it’s easy to understand how they came to be such solid citizens. Some of the rocks are at least as heavy as they are.

From time to time they stop to pound a rock with a sledge-hammer in order to obtain stones they need to wedge big rocks into place. The final result is an object of beauty, a dry-stone wall that rises obliquely and evenly from a wide base. I have tried to build such walls and I can assure you that it doesn’t come naturally.

These walls are solid, long-lasting and virtually maintenance-free. They effortlessly withstood the earthquake that rattled much of Portugal early in the week (registering 6 on the open-ended Richter scale). We barely felt it here. Elsewhere people are reported to have fled buildings in panic. It was the biggest earthquake to hit the country in several decades, although a mere tiddler compared to the great Lisbon quake of 1755 that laid flat most of the city and much of the rest of Portugal.

As I write – Friday afternoon – we have been playing cops and robbers with the weather. There’s a low pressure system approaching from the Atlantic that’s promising us some serious rain. But so far all we’ve had is squalls. Each time we go outside to do a bit of gardening, a squall drives us back inside. As soon as we sit down inside, the sun comes out.

I hope the weather improves before Sunday, when the 3-day Loulé (winter) carnival begins. (There’s another carnival at the height of summer.) Loulé council closes down the main avenue for the occasion and decorates the route with rows of flags and bunting. All the shops close. One has to pay a small fee to enter the carnival zone. Floats - poking fun at politicians and personalities - parade along the route. On these floats shapely young women advertise their assets in spite of the often freezing conditions. No need to tell you how the lads are drawn from all around.

Beer kiosks do a roaring business among the adults while the kids amuse themselves hurling eggs and flour-bombs at each other (and often at indignant visitors as well). Jonesy and I went along once or twice and decided that we’d experienced as much of Loulé carnival as we needed. We are not natural revellers, either of us. On the other hand, we are easily persuaded to go along to the much smaller kiddies’ carnival at Alte, just across the valley.

At my neighbour, David’s request, I dropped into the workshop where his Lada Riva had been taken following a recent accident and arranged for it to be delivered to his house. It arrived a couple of hours later on the back of a rescue lorry – an ingenious flat-bed vehicle that uses a winch to draw damaged vehicles up on to its back. (It is illegal to tow vehicles on a public road in Portugal.)

As David wasn’t home I paid the driver cash and asked if I could have a receipt. The driver looked at me in mild surprise. He explained that if he made out a receipt, I would have to pay VAT – an additional 21%. Clearly, not many of his clients require receipts. We compromised on a scrap of paper that he tore off an envelope, bearing his signature and the amount. David is considering the purchase of another (equally used) Lada and of cannibalising the damaged vehicle for spares.

On the home front, I’ve been working at erecting a new section of fence, using only poles and wire that I had removed from another fence. Jones thought my initial efforts a bit Heath Robinson but she softened as work progressed. The final product, she accepted, was almost professional, even if one of the poles was a foot short and had to be lengthened with a piece of stick shoved into the top of it.

We have both been working in the garden, removing barrows of wide-leafed plants that explode all over the place during the wet months. Each can easily occupy a square metre or more. They are all over the surrounding fields as well. Unless the earth is tilled, it goes jungle green under a waist-high carpet of vegetation. Dani spent a day clearing the wild growth along the fringes of our newly acquired (Graça) field. There’s been no sign for a few weeks of the owners of another adjacent plot, which I want to purchase. They were due last weekend when, I suspect, the rain put them off.

Letter from Espargal: 5 of 2007

(February sunset over Espargal)

I have discovered that I own a chunk of land of which I was ignorant; what a stroke of good fortune! The man who enlightened me is the owner of a contiguous property, a man, as it happens, with a slightly shady reputation for moving boundary markers. He is a resident of a nearby hamlet who has long been trying to sell me his property and probably would have done if we had been able to agree on a price. But he wanted 20,000 euros (he now wants 25,000) and wouldn’t negotiate. I’d have been more tempted if it were the only property we wanted to acquire. But it was merely third on our list – behind two other plots that are closer to home.

Anyhow, this fellow has recently been very keen to sell. He drove up on a marketing exercise and, when I again declined, asked me to approve a new marker stone that he wanted to put in on the edge our land. This was speedily done. Afterwards I asked him about the ownership of some 400 square metres of uncultivated land adjacent to mine. This land was also mine, he informed me; and he proceeded to show me the exact boundaries. I can tell you that I was chuffed.

If only one could begin all one’s letters with such welcome news. Still on the good news front, we have had some soaking rains, the first in two months.

The other news of the week, even if it’s not our own, is of the sale of the company that my Canadian brother, Kevin, has been running. I was most surprised to hear of it in the BBC business slot. So let me wish Kevin and Ann all the best in whatever lies ahead once the sale and handover are completed.

Our own lives have continued in a much lower key. On Friday evening, we dropped Dani (back for the first time in months) and Natasha off in Loulé and then continued to Faro for supper and a Beethoven concert. His first piano concerto was followed by his first symphony – both lovely works, close to my heart.

Thursday meant the usual English lesson. Spare hours went into cleaning up the recently-acquired Graça plot, which is still covered with a carpet of branches awaiting attention.

Wednesday we had to present the results of our Portuguese grammar homework to our teacher. We had recently requested more grammar instead of extended conversation classes, as much as we enjoy the latter. I had left my homework till the last morning when I tried to fill it in at the breakfast table. Jones, still a diligent pupil, had carefully completed the exercise earlier. She refused to allow me to copy her answers, even if she did assist me with my own. I thought this a bit mean.

After the lesson we took David and Dagmar to lunch to celebrate the birth of their first grandchild. We chose a little country restaurant that did us proud on the tenderest cuts of wild boar. I hoped that we might similarly salute the arrival of their next grandchild, due in the summer. In the event of a stream of heirs, I warned them, we might have to limit ourselves to tea and biscuits. They didn’t seem to think this likely.

On Tuesday, after my English class, we drove to Faro where we were due to have check-ups with the dermatologist mid-afternoon. Our first assignment was to find a Sony shop near the hospital where, according to Natasha, we might obtain a cord that she wanted to link her video camera to a TV. Although we found the shop it didn’t stock the item. Nor did a big electrical store in the city. So we gave up and walked the dogs down to the harbour, where we found a rough fisherman’s eatery for lunch. On the 8-metre high walls of the old city opposite us pigeons scuffled for the best nesting places. We dined handsomely on salmon and salads.

A Portuguese diner at a neighbouring table was much amused to learn the meaning of the English caption on the back of his t-shirt: “Does not play well with others”. So were his companions.

The dermatologist’s waiting room, when we got there, was choc-a- block. After an hour, Jones gave up and went to walk the dogs. I eventually got to see the consultant, who blamed the delay on two fellow doctors, a married couple, who – she said – were obsessed with their health and waste her time in a fruitless pursuit of disease. As she spoke she subjected me to 20 minutes of cryogenic zapping. It left me with a new respect for St Sebastian.

At least I got to see her after just two hours. Most people, according to media reports, now have to wait up to 18 months to see a dermatolgist on the national health service. The consultant told me that 4 of the 6 dermatologists at Faro Hospital had resigned. If they are doing as well in private practice as she is, they’ll survive well enough.

(Chico and Dina)

Shortly after we got home, the barking of the dogs announced the arrival of old Chico and Dina. She was clutching yet another large plastic container of fig liquor – the third they have delivered. He grasped plastic bags holding rice and a chunk of animal fat. This tribute was presumably in return for firewood I had delivered to their cottage.

It was pressed upon us in spite of my protests that we already had more fig liquor than we could drink (15 litres to be exact; 16 if we count a litre received from Leonhilda).

Chico said that he was feeling better, which I was very pleased to hear. Then, because it was beginning to drizzle, I escorted them home under the golf brolly. They walked hand in hand, he 82 (he told me) and she 46. It was really quite touching.

Not so touching is our growing tendency to nod off in front of the telly in the evenings. It’s jolly irritating, especially when we have made a point of sitting down after supper to watch a documentary programme. When I’m not watching Jones nod off, she watching me drift off instead. She at least has the excuse that she rises at five in the morning. I’ve none.

While I confine myself mainly to local news there are occasions in which titbits from other parts of the world call out from attention. One such was from the Caribbean island of Grenada, where Chinese and Grenadian dignitaries assembled to celebrate the opening of a splendid Chinese-funded sports stadium.

This was a reward from Beijing to Grenada for breaking off relations with Taiwan two years earlier. As the suits stood stiffly to attention they heard the Grenadian police band salute them with Taiwan’s national anthem instead of China’s. If ever there were any proof required of the universality of Sod’s law, that must be it.

(On the road with neighbours Sarah and David.)

Letter from Espargal: 4 of 2007

A cursory reflection on the events of the week brings little to mind with the potential to become great literature. Still, I’m reading The Life of Pi at the moment and, if Yann Martel can do it, I don’t see why I can’t.

Let’s start with today - Friday. At breakfast Jones reminded me that I had an appointment with the dentist at 11.00. It was fortunate that she did because I’d forgotten all about it. Although I keep a computer diary of all the events that we need to bear in mind I don’t check it every day.

So we had to keep our morning walk short. We detoured down a new road that the council is carving from a right-of-way that runs through the fields half a mile below us. The work has been keeping a digger and several workers busy for a week or two. A large truck deposits regular loads of gravel for the digger to spread around. Jones doesn’t approve. She can’t see the need for a new road when the old roads suffice.

What the old roads won’t suffice for is the traffic that will be generated by the “rustic village” that is due to rise in the adjacent field. But it's better not to mention that. If Jones disapproves of the road, she positively loathes the idea of model houses sprouting on the fringes of our village. To be honest, I’m not enthused myself.

Idalecio points out that the council workers building the road do not strain themselves. He feels that with a little exertion they could construct several additional metres of road each day. While I didn’t disagree with him, I voiced the opinion that when one gets paid the same daily wage – and not much of it – for building 25 metres of road as for 35 metres, there’s much to be said for not rushing the job.

The dentist’s assistant called us as we were leaving to say that he was running late. So we went first to look for a new pair of walking shoes for Jones. My wife is particular about her walking shoes. She likes ones that she can slip on and off, even if they have laces. My preference is for sturdy shoes. After some browsing around the big outlet store at Almancil she found a pair that looked both rugged and comfortable. She actually fancied a lighter pair but I don’t think they’d have lasted on our stony roads and told her so. In her position I’d have bought both pairs. But she’s too thrifty to approve such wanton spending.

Thence to the dentist for the completion of my umpteenth crown. The guy is very good and I’ve no doubt that he’s worth the money he asks, even if the bills sometimes hurt more than the dentistry. I’ve needed to replace a mouthful of crowns that were installed 15 to 20 years ago. I wondered aloud to the dentist whether the new series would last me until the end of my life. He hoped so. So did I.

We’ve spent much of the week waiting for the rain that’s been tantalising us by not falling. We did get a couple of mills once or twice. The star turn was the appearance of a glorious rainbow, so big that the camera could take in only a third at a time.

On Thursday afternoon Idalecio came over to assist me with some heavy pruning. Just as he arrived, I took a call from an Irish neighbour who was anxious about the state of health of old Chico and asked if we could pop down the road to have a word with the old man. He and Dina had been missing for several days and our enquiries as to their whereabouts proved fruitless. He was rumoured to be in hospital.

When we went around to their (very basic) cottage, we found him seated on a bed, his pants around his thighs, looking frail and miserable. Dina looked on. The place was in a state of confusion, with stale chunks of bread and pieces of firewood scattered about. We asked him about his health. Chico is very hard to understand at the best of times. He not only mumbles, he does so almost entirely without the use of consonants.

But he confirmed that he’d been to hospital. We couldn’t make out if he’d been admitted. He said they'd be grateful for the cooked food that his English and Irish neighbours were offering to bring. I gathered that the Irish neighbours not only took the pair supper but also spent some time tidying up the cottage. We are doubtful that Chico will be able to take care of Dina much longer.

Idalecio and I then returned to attack the old olive and almond trees on the field that I recently acquired. We pruned the almond trees lightly; they are already in blossom. Idalecio said it was really too late in the season to prune them back severely. But the huge old olive trees were a different proposition. They had received no attention for years. One of them towered over the electricity lines that ran to the house.

Idalecio clambered up the ladder that I held against the trunk and took the chainsaw that I passed up to him. Then he carried out some serious surgery. Great boughs came tumbling down on to the field. Olive trees are renowned for their longevity but they tend to over-extend themselves, which leads to poor harvests. Also, the older boughs are liable both to die off and to rot from the inside. The trees can be cut back severely without harm; they then launch themselves on a new life.

It took us 90 minutes to do the pruning and as long again to carve up the wood into usable lengths. It will have to spend a season drying out in the sun first. As fast as he cut I piled the chunks on the back of the tractor and carted them off to the woodpile. There's still lots left to do. It’s work that Dani might easily do if he wished but Dani seems for the moment to be occupying a parallel world.

After English classes earlier in the week, I dropped into the Social Security office in Loulé in response to a letter I’d received from the department. Happily, there is one really efficient young woman at the office, whom I’ve come to know. She phoned up the Faro headquarters – whence the letter had come – to discern the problem. A brief conversation followed during which my young woman assured her Faro colleague that things were in hand. Whatever the problem was, it was resolved by my writing across the contact that Natasha was entitled to receive unemployment compensation.

Tonight we are going to Idalecio’s little restaurant for supper, along with David and Sarah (who is still a bit fragile after her accident) and two other expat couples.

At Llewellyn’s instigation, I have taken out some tickets in the Euromillions draw. If my next letter should come from a luxury suite in some exotic location, we’ve hit the jackpot.

Letter from Espargal: 3 of 2007

I had no sooner airily dismissed winter’s rigours in my last letter than an Arctic air mass descended on western Europe and has had us all shivering in our boots. It’s been a button-up tight week, with a dusting of frost here and there and a wicked wind straight from the North Pole. I retrieved our little-used gloves from the cupboard for our dog walks and we’ve been grateful for them. Out of the wind and in the sunshine it’s a different world. Yes, I know that North America has been deep in negative territory and that South Africa has been cooking.

For the life of me I can’t remember a thing about the start of the week except that we wanted to see Flags of Our Fathers on either Monday or Tuesday evenings and didn’t make it because we were running around. Our preferred cinema evenings are early in the week when there are fewest fellow viewers whose chatterings and popcorn chewings have to be endured. In the end we got to the film and were most impressed by it. How the producers concocted the vast naval scenes I’ve no idea. There was no hint of computer wizardry.

Speaking of computers, Natasha asked if she could spend a morning using mine to access the internet. She needs to renew her passport and wanted to swot up on it. I sat down with her for half an hour while she got the knack of using the browser. Initially she pointed to the headings that she was interested in on the website of the Russian embassy in Lisbon. The site was both in Russian and Portuguese. Natasha naturally preferred to read the Russian version. The headings were in Cyrillic script and might as well have been in Japanese for all I understood of them.

Midday I got a call from our lawyer’s assistant to say that she was in the land registry office in Loulé where she was trying to register the plot we’d recently purchased. Before being able to do this, she’d had to go back to the notary to get the deeds initialled in view of the plot’s last-minute transfer by the Finanças from the parish of Alte to that of Benafim. I had to sign the amendment before the plot could finally be registered. So I drove in with Jones and the dogs to append my signature, Ono peering through the windscreen from the centre of the back seat as always.

Hardly had we sat down to lunch when I got a call from our commuting neighbours, David and Sarah, who had arrived down from the UK two days earlier. David said they’d had an accident a few hundred metres from the Quintassential. They’d hit a wall after braking hard to avoid a car that stopped suddenly in front of them. Sarah had been taken to hospital with possible spinal injuries. David was waiting with their car for the tow-away lorry.

I met him a little later at the garage where his vehicle was taken for repairs. The nose had been battered and the car was clearly in for a lengthy stay. Leaving it behind, we continued to Faro hospital to see how Sarah was doing. The information desk at Accidents and Emergencies advised us to come back in an hour or two. So we went to the airport, where David hired a car. Sarah was discharged the same evening, bruised and sore but, from the x-rays, apparently without suffering damage to her spine. She was walking and sitting very gingerly when the couple joined us for supper last night.

(I passed on to her the “trans-act” medicated strips that you left with me at Christmas, Lucia, and she was very pleased to have them.)

I have spending my spare hours finishing off the repairs to the roof ridge of Casa Nada (left). Idalecio had helped me replaced two metres of ridge panels that had been ripped off by the wind. To prevent it happening again, I bought two canisters of foam and squirted foam into all the gaps between the ridge panels and the corrugated roof panels on which they sit. It’s a filthy job. The foam is glue-like until it hardens and flies around in the wind. Once it had hardened, I cut away the excess and then painted the new grey panels the same terracotta colour as the rest of the roof.

Half way through the painting, Jones came to say that Idalecio had called to warn us that the owners of the property we really want to buy were looking around it. This is the property that juts like a slice of tart into the heart of our own property. The plot is both steep and rocky and would be of little value were it not for the ruin that nestles at the bottom of it, close to Idalecio’s house. This ruin, never mind that it’s just a few tumble-down walls around three former rooms, is registered under two separate urban titles. That’s to say that it could legitimately be turned into two new houses.

I hurried down from the roof and went to meet the half dozen people who were wandering around the plot. Idalecio was there too. We introduced ourselves as neighbours who were interested in buying the property; he the urban titles and I the rustic title – assuming that the price were right.

We had a 15 minute conversation during which it emerged that question of the sale of the property (in the absence of some of the heirs) was due to be decided by the court in a few days. Assuming that the court permitted the remaining heirs to sell, the vendors agreed to contact us first. A valuer had placed an initial value of 43,000 euros on the property although this included the land itself and one of the two urban titles. The other is owned by a local man and will have to be bought separately.

Idalecio later confided to me that he had overheard the family expressing their disappointment at the steep and rocky nature of the property and the very poor access. So they must have been delighted at our expressed interest. It’s not so much that we want the property as that we don’t want anybody else (a) building a house right next to ours or (b) carving a road through the bottom of our land to reach it. I still have bad dreams about the way our rural idyll at the Quinta came to be overshadowed by a neighbour’s 3-storey house. (Jonesy says that I exaggerate.)

If my letter contains little news of Jones it’s because she has been doing the usual things – making the bed and the meals, cleaning the glass panels of the wood-burning stove before I make another fire in it, doing the washing-up, taking Serpa for a walk along with our dogs in the afternoon: all the little things that help to oil the machinery of the day. I joined her when she was summoned around to tea at a Portuguese neighbour one evening. We crowded into the little old kitchen, along with another English neighbour and our hosts, and drank herbal tea brewed from local plants and sweetened with honey.

As I conclude my letter, the sun is shining through the clouds over the valley and lighting up the white-walled houses in Benafim on the opposite hillside. This is rather disappointing because we were promised rain today and so far there hasn’t been a hint of it.

Letter from Espargal: 2 of 2007

As I paused for breath in the shade of a leafy carob tree half way up Puffer Hill, I reflected that with ice storms sweeping the US and tempests tormenting northern Europe, there’s much to be said for wintering in Portugal. Jones panted beside me in t-shirt and trousers, having taken off her body warmer and wrapped it around her waist.

The dogs were equally breathless. They’d chased a rabbit on the road and then dragged us up Puffer Lane in pursuit of a grouse that was doing a speed waddle up the path ahead of us. I had Ono and Serpa Fish on their leads. Jones was holding Stoopy, who had flopped down on the ground to recover her breath. Clearly the time had come to shave off a layer of Stoopy’s winter coat. Our winter, such as it has been, seems to be over. We did have one frost down in the valley as a nod to the season and, to be honest, we still enjoy a fire in the stove at night – just to take the chill out of the air.

But the the signs of spring are all too visible. The almond trees are already in blossom and the fields are filling with flowers.

This week has seeped away between the cracks of the days. As so often it’s hard to know where it’s gone. Thursday brought a return of my English lessons. Jones came with me to Loulé with a view to having streaks put in her hair. Instead, she had a regular hairdo from Fatima, whose empty chair was too tempting to resist. Fatima is actually a men’s hairdresser but is happy to do women’s hair as long as they don’t need any fancy stuff.

Twice we’ve dined with a friend, Gary. He and his partner, Malcolm, had considered buying and settling in Portugal. After taking a villa for several months while they looked around, they decided against it. Malcolm has returned to the UK by car, surviving a stormy ferry voyage and the tail-end of the gales that tore across most of Britain. Gary and their two cats are due to follow by air.

Idalecio came around one afternoon to help me replace panels that had been torn from the roof ridge of Casa Nada some weeks ago by our own mini gale. We drilled holes through each of them to take fasteners that grip the supporting beams. As an additional measure I need to intrude expanding foam in the gaps between the panels and the corrugated sheets underneath them.

Another job – one I signally failed to do – was to adjust the catch in one of our large sliding doors to allow it to close properly. I removed what seemed to me to be the obvious panel, with disastrous results. The aluminium firm concerned said it had a worker who could help me but that I’d have to fetch him from Loulé. This I was happy to do. The man kindly undid the damage I’d done and showed me the tiny aperture through which I should have adjusted the catch in the first place. He also checked all our other doors (there are ten of them) and windows at the same time.

Spare hours have gone into the care of our new field. I’ve been picking up the numerous stones that litter it, pruning the growth and reducing the substantial pile of old trees and branches lying in the centre of it. They’d been left there by the previous owner after the last pruning. It’s the custom to burn off such pruned material during the winter months. Most days one can see plumes of smoke arising somewhere in the valley, and then flattening out as they hit an invisible air barrier. (Global warming, I fear, doesn’t figure very high on the priorities of the average Algarvian farmer.)

At Jones’s insistence, I saved as much of the wood as I could, lopping off only the most useless twigs and tossing these on to the fire. The rest went on to the back of the tractor – to be delivered to the threshold of our strange couple, Chico and Dina, for whom it provides both heating and cooking fuel.

Dina had summoned us with loud cries earlier in the week as we passed by with the dogs. In her meaty arm she clutched a 5-litre plastic bottle of locally-distilled fig liquor, known as “water that the birds don’t drink”. This she presented to us, throwing back her head and indicating with her thumb towards her mouth exactly what she expected us to do with it. (Dina, you may recall, never learned to speak – although she shrieks and yells well enough.)

She knocked on the door of her English neighbours this week and made the sign of the cross to indicate that things were amiss. From our enquiries it seems that she is referring to an accident in which, if we have the story correct, a car driver reversed over an unfortunate man from a nearby village, killing him. It was, Natasha told us when she arrived to work on Tuesday, all the talk of the other passengers on the bus.

Returning for a moment to the fig liquor. The deal is that it’s in exchange for firewood that I provide to Chico and Dina and my ploughing of their fields. They absolutely insist on returning any favours and the arrangement was a compromise to persuade them not to turn up on our doorstep with large chunks of slaughtered sheep or goat. I asked for one litre of fig liquor per load of firewood or ploughed field but Chico insists on making it 5 litres.

As we passed the home of another villager, Leonhilda, she popped out with another litre of the same to thank us for the fresh bread that we take her from Hans the baker every second Sunday. When she heard that we were expecting a guest for lunch that day, she baked a cake and then called Jones to arrange to meet her half way to deliver it. A very good cake it was too.

Leonhilda suggested that we try growing some garlic, as well as beans, and explained how to go about planting garlic segments. They have to go just under the surface with their little pointy caps on top. She took a bulb of garlic and showed me which cloves to use, only those on the outer rim of the bulb. When I asked when we might pick the garlic, she said it was traditionally done on St Anthony’s Day (some time in June if I remember rightly).

Down the bottom of the village half a dozen labourers, a lorry and a digger are busy widening the agricultural road that winds down through the valley and up the opposite hillside to Benafim. We suspect that this is being done to facilitate the building of the “rustic” village that is due to arise on the fringes of Birrao, the neighbouring hamlet. Given a choice, we’d prefer to stick with the single-track road and the rocky field where the village is due to be built.

One evening we went to see The Prestige, a strange film about the rivalry that comes to destroy the lives of competing London magicians.

I am reading a book that I acquired in the bookshop at Calgary airport on my departure. The author is James Risen. It’s called State of War and it’s about the events in Iraq and Afghanistan and what led up to them. I am finding it very sobering; in fact, downright scary.

Letter from Espargal: 1 of 2007

'Tis Thursday evening in the departure lounge at Calgary airport, where the temperature inside is 40 degrees (Celsius) warmer than that outside. If I’m lucky, the airliner that I can see through the window will get me to London in time to catch the plane that ought to be waiting there to take me to Lisbon.

The past two days in Calgary have been cold, down into the minus twenties, cold enough to warrant the start to a letter. I mean really freezing-in-a-few-seconds, what’s-happened-to-my-ears depths of cold. When I foolishly stopped at a service station to put in petrol, without first digging out my gloves and scarf, I thought I had lost my extremities. Getting back into the car brought modest relief but the seat still froze my bottom and the steering wheel was too cold to grasp.

Others were having a tougher time of it. As I was leaving my apartment at Lake Bonavista Village one morning I bumped into a group surrounding a woman who worked there. From one of them I learned that her husband had been missing for two days, trapped in his truck by an avalanche and out of cell phone contact. He was back safe and well. I don’t know how near he came to perishing. I found it quite challenging enough driving a few kilometres home one night in a snow storm.

My visit was primarily about seeing mum, who lives in a care home 5 minutes down the road from my apartment. It couldn’t have been handier. Most mornings I would ease down the McLeod Trail around 10.30, sign mum out, wheel her to the car, help her in, park her wheelchair in the back and then take off somewhere for lunch. We enjoyed a few wonderful sunny days, with the temperature just into positive territory, taking leisurely drives into the country.

On colder days we’d head for nearby South Centre, a sprawling shopping mall. There we had the space and the warmth to idle our way around. New Year promotions were everywhere. Mother retains a keen interest in the sales and still loves to run her fingers through the coats and jerseys on offer. Two-for-one or three-for-one offers she found particularly tempting. She would gladly have bought me half a dozen garments had I agreed.

The last few days – the really cold ones - we stayed indoors at the care home, generally seated in the foyer, the only public space. Around us other residents did their morning exercises, still seated in their chairs, lifting their arms and legs in rhythm to the instructions ringing out over the taped music. Like mum, most of the residents are elderly, female and wheelchair bound. I was most impressed by the numerous volunteers who were on hand each day to assist the nursing staff. Some had been coming for years, until – as one volunteer confessed – they were barely distinguishable from the residents themselves.

Most evenings I was a guest at the home of my niece, Penny. I would settle down with her, husband Mike and elder son Jackson for fiercely contested card (or other) games. Where I could, I tried to introduce new rules that I thought should have been obvious to the inventors of the games – efforts that went largely unappreciated. To my Canadian family all may I add a brief word of thanks for their unfailing hospitality. It was all the more appreciated because many of the facilities of the retirement village where I was staying (including the heated pool – woe was me) had been closed in view of a touring tummy bug.

Here the scene changes:

It’s early Sunday morning. I am home. The house is still. The bright lights of Benafim dot the black hillsides. In half an hour or so we’ll hear the impatient cries of the hunters’ dogs and then the countryside will explode with the thunder of their guns.

I was fetched at Faro airport by the same kind neighbours who had dropped me off there a fortnight earlier. Jones was with them. I was the first through, having taken only cabin baggage in the knowledge that I would have a tight connection at Heathrow airport.

What a squeak that was. The plane from Calgary arrived in London late, having been delayed an hour on departure by a passenger who failed to turn up and whose luggage had to be dug out of the hold. I hastened down the long corridors of Terminal 3, caught the in-transit bus to the Connections Centre and there joined the crowds waiting to be searched before being allowed through to the other terminals.

Worse, two Stalinist ushers were refusing point blank to allow through any passengers carrying two bags, no matter how small – in spite of the fact that everybody had carried these bags on to their previous flights. The ushers insisted that one bag be checked in as hold luggage – an invitation to kiss one’s connection goodbye.

As it happened, I was carrying two very visible bags, one a backpack. But, with a measure of desperation, I walked straight past the ushers and wasn’t summoned back. I couldn’t believe my luck. From there it was a doddle. The Lisbon flight was less than half full and the final Faro flight had barely a scattering of passengers. I could have taken 20 bags on board.

And so home to an hysterical welcome from the dogs. Espargal looked much as I had left it. The countryside was dry although the hills remained bright green. There’s been no worthwhile rain since the downpours of November.

(Picture: Shows the somewhat jet-lagged author catching a nap after lunch. Stoopy and Monsieur Tommie lend support.)

Yesterday I took a still recumbent Jones an early cup of coffee and a rather squashed muffin, one that had journeyed at the bottom of my knapsack. It still tasted pretty good. Then we packed a flask and sandwiches and walked 30 minutes to the summit of a favourite hill, where we sat on a rock and contemplated the valleys that crept down to the sea.

I knew that somewhere round the bulge of the earth, ever so far away, under an Arctic air mass, thousands of Calgarian motorists were hurrying up and down McLeod Trail, the green verges tinged with snow and ice. In fact, if I closed my eyes for a moment, I could see them clearly. I have come to believe in parallel universes.

Last night we took ourselves to performance of chamber music by a quintet from the Orchestra of the Algarve, an event to which supporters of the orchestra were invited as a mark of appreciation. Wine and snacks were included. The small concert took place in newly restored function rooms of an old Faro building on the fringes of the city’s new concert hall. For centuries, Arabs passed by here. Before them, Romans and Carthaginians held sway. I have to confess to nodding off once or twice as I considered these things. I hope that Beethoven will forgive me.

Letter from Espargal: 51 of 2006

(The Cork Walk through the valley)

The year-end is creeping up on us. We knew that it was near but not this near. We have been distracted. One distraction was the field that I’ve been trying to buy for the last several weeks. It has proved a particularly elusive field. In the course of our purchase attempts it emerged first that buying it as a couple married with a pre-nuptial agreement was all but impossible. To avoid the looming complexities we had to buy it in the name of either one of us. Okay, I said, we would buy it in my name.

The day before the sale was to be concluded in front of the notary, we were informed by our lawyers that the property was still registered in the parish of Alte and not in the parish of Benafim, whence it should have been transferred 20 years ago. That meant a last-minute dash to the Finanças in Loulé to beg them to amend the same day a document that normally requires a seven-day wait. It would have been impossible had not our lawyer’s girl-Friday been on excellent terms with the Finanças staff. I bought flowers for the Finanças clerk concerned - although only after the fact lest they be construed as a bribe.

So the 16.45 signing of the sales contract on Thursday evening went ahead, albeit at 18.15, because the notary had fallen hopelessly behind and there was a crowd of people waiting in her office to complete one or other bit of official business by the year-end. As a result, our lawyer had to kick his heels with me in the adjacent café for an hour. We drank coffee and talked about life in Portugal. (He said his wife was also a lawyer and they had become accustomed, however disagreeably, to the delays that were part of the Portuguese bureaucratic process. Their two young children are looked after by grandparents – thank God for grandparents – until the parents get home in the evenings.)

(Our favourite Faro Beach restaurant)

And thus we are the owners of another field, and I’m thrilled to bits about it. It’s a splendid field that forms a perfect L around a field we already own and that, I strongly suspect, will one day be reclassified as an urban property – where some undesirable person would otherwise build a big house in a spot where we’d much rather have a field.

For the record, we now own a clump of 5 plots here in Espargal. From above they would look a bit like the Canadian maple-leaf symbol, grouped around the house and more or less guaranteeing us an impermeable green belt – with one exception. The property that we most want to buy is not for sale because half of the heirs have disappeared into thin air abroad and can’t be found to sign the necessary paperwork. Long may they remain so.

On Tuesday Natasha came to work and, because my cyber-dictionary was seriously at odds with my Excel programme – for reasons which, after a harmonious three-year relationship, are beyond me – I took my computer into the shop when we drove her home that evening. I checked with the shop on Wednesday and again on Thursday morning (when I went to the Finanças). But in spite of their best efforts they couldn’t persuade the two programmes to get along. Nor, after uninstalling the dictionary could they get the computer to function without throwing up error messages. So they returned it to me with apologies on Thursday evening and didn’t want to charge me anything for their hours of labour. The computer still functions. It just isn’t very happy.

Also not very happy are our two kittens, Braveheart and Dearheart, which we took in to the vet in Albufeira to be “done” early this morning (Friday) and fetched again this evening. Dearheart appeared to be supine until the vet removed her from the recovery cage and tried to place her in her transport box. At which point she made a bid for freedom and scratched the vet when the latter tried to restrain her. Both kittens are back safe and sound and, willy-nilly, getting used to their neutered status. Jonesy is desperate to love them and feed them. She is finding it very hard to accept the vet’s instructions that they should get no food till the morning.

Between taking and fetching the kittens we accompanied Llewellyn and Lucia on a final 2006 walk into the valley and back through the orange grove. Thence we went to the airport to return their car, stopping only to tell old Chico that his mysterious letter from Social Security was to inform him of his old age benefit this year. I phoned Social Security in Faro to confirm this. (Like many older residents, Chico has never learned to read.)

Finally we headed to Faro Beach for a relaxed lunch in the sun on the patio of a favourite restaurant. The two dogs huddled down on a towel beneath our table and glared at the cats that were bumming crumbs from other diners. One or two other dogs came to sniff under the table at the intruders. Happily, all were friendly and there was much wagging of tails.

It was the last of many delightful meals that we have enjoyed with our visitors during their stay – including a spread at the Angolana last night, at which we drank (their) real champagne, to celebrate our latest acquisition. They will be in the air on their way home to Cape Town as I write.

Saturday I pack my own goodies and Sunday morning I fly to Dublin. There I have to wait before catching a flight via London to Calgary early on Monday morning. For reasons beyond my ken, the discount that I have obtained on this flight was available only if one boarded the plane in Dublin rather than in London.

Stand by Mum, here I come.

That’s about the size of it.

I do hope that 2007 is kind to us.

Happy New Year and God bless.

Christmas at Espargal

Happy Christmas all.

Here we are at breakfast on Christmas Day, from left to right, Jonesy, Terry, Llewellyn and Lucia.

Jonesy made pancakes to mark the occasion. After breakfast we moved through to the lounge to see what Santa had brought. The pictures speak for themselves.

Now we are going for a walk with the dogs. This evening we will all repair to Idalecio's little restaurant for Christmas dinner. That's it.

Letter from Espargal: 50 of 2006

It’s a cold, sunny day. The weather bureau warns us that lows in the Algarve will be barely above freezing; that’s cold for us. As if to make the point, heavy frost lines the valley floors. Not that I mind being cold. It’s almost a relief in this global warming environment, with Europe’s ski resorts reduced to despair by their verdant slopes.

I’m just back from a brisk hour with the dogs, which have now settled themselves contentedly in the sunshine on the back patio. Jones has gone off with Llewellyn and Lucia for a visit to Loulé. On their return, we are going to Messines for lunch with friends. One way and another this has been a very sociable week, following our guests’ midweek arrival from Lisbon..

Last night we met friends at Oliveira’s restaurant on the outskirts of Loulé. Ollie is the man who used to run our favourite and much patronised eatery, on the corner just below the Quinta. We’ve not seen much of him since his move into town some years ago. What has been clear is that he’s made a roaring success of the business.

His wife, Odette, still sweats away in the kitchen with one or two helpers. Their son and daughter wait on the tables, along with son’s girlfriend and a couple of hired hands. They had a huge party going, including the mayor and a big group from the council. Our conversation was limited by the amplified efforts of a singer-guitarist, whose presence we would much rather have done without. That aside, the meal was excellent.

Friday morning I fetched Natasha from Loulé to accompany her on a mission to Faro. We had been instructed by the Social Security office in Loulé to take her employment contract to Faro to be endorsed - as part of the process of getting her legalised.

In due course we found both parking and the government office concerned and we settled down to wait in a lobby, along with half a dozen other people whose mobile phone conversations identified them as east Europeans. After 90 minutes of kicking our heels we were summoned upstairs into a large room occupied by two women and thousands of files stacked high against the walls. From the clerk at whose desk we seated ourselves I established that we had arrived at the Inspectorate of Labour.

The woman took one look at Natasha’s passport and declared that she lacked a work visa. End of story. No visa no contract. We patiently explained what Social Security had told us, that under new legislation a valid passport sufficed. Evidently, it was not so. Natasha was bitterly disappointed. Her chances of getting a work visa are minimal. Even if she did, she would have to return to Moscow to fetch it. The only good that comes out of the whole business is that she gets on to the national health scheme – although both she and we will have to make social security contributions in return.

On Thursday evening we went to a concert given by the Orchestra of the Algarve at a church in Faro. As we arrived a fire engine came wailing past us and stopped in front of a house just round the corner. Although no flames were visible, a cloud of smoke from the roof could be seen against the night sky. The firemen had to batter their way into the house to extinguish the fire. We had the impression that the place was unoccupied.

The concert took place in the Church of Carmel, one of several rococo churches in the city, with their ornate, dusty gilt-covered carvings rising unto the heavens. It was a good concert, ending with Mendelssohn’s lovely Italian symphony.

In-between such outings and our walks, the week has been partly taken up by neighbourly events of one sort or another, and exchanges of small Christmas gifts. Barbara has presented various friends and neighbours with flowers and received plastic bags full of fruit or eggs in return.

When we found old Evangelina shivering outside her small house one afternoon, we asked her why she didn’t put on more clothes. Because she had none, she told us. So we found her a coat and a warm jersey, which greatly pleased her. She thrust a dozen oranges into my hands in her gratitude. As is common, her house has no interior heating whatsoever. The only warmth comes from the fire she makes in her outside kitchen.

It was traditional to have the kitchen separated from the house. That way the kitchen fire did not add to the heat of the house in summer - while in winter everybody sat in the kitchen to eat before making a rapid exit for bed. The potty was under the bed for any nocturnal needs. It still is in houses like Evangelina’s.

And so we have arrived at the brink of Christmas. Our thanks go to the kindly people who have sent us yuletide cards and letters. Our own Christmas communications have been by email. Apart from catch-ups with family and friends we’ve been exchanging greetings and pictures with fellow passengers on Barbara’s cruise.

More hours have been stolen by a bit of software that went on the blink and started to play silly b.gg.rs with my registry. Much uninstalling and reinstalling has followed. Although the software manufacturers have been both prompt and helpful with their suggestions, as fast as I seem to resolve one problem another crops up. I suspect the computer will have to go to the shop for expert attention.

One or two afternoons have been occupied in collecting stones from the fields. I’ve been dumping these in a small ditch, across which I’m making a new access. There is something strangely satisfying about clearing a field of stones. It’s as though one is tuning into some ancient rite – paying obeisance to the god of agriculture. Next week, with luck, I’ll complete the purchase of another field. We hope the plot will grow in value and it will certainly grow lots of beans. But more than anything else, we want to prevent anyone else buying it and building a house there. After our painful experience at the Quinta we have come to put a great value on the space around us

There, I'm done. Our thoughts are with you - in South Africa, Europe and North America.

Happy Christmas.

Letter from Espargal: 49 of 2006

(The rear deck of the Marco Polo where Jones and Maureen would take refreshments.)

We have spent most of this week as we spent most of last, waiting for the arrival of the Portugal Telecom engineer, who has failed to turn up. Twice I have been into the PT office to implore the staff to expedite the repair but my implorations have been in vain. The engineer has remained elusive and we have (barely) survived a second week without a phone line or internet access.

The one useful feature of my visits to PT is that I have ascertained how to use the wifi facility that they now make available in their centres. One can at least catch up on the emails that one cannot access at home. The facility is being made available free for several months to clients of PT’s internet services. We have further noted that large wifi signs have been erected around the Forum Algarve shopping centre on the outskirts of Faro. It’s catching on. In-between times friends have been generous in allowing me the use of their home wifi.

I gathered that a local fellow was making use of a computer connect card to access the internet and arranged to meet him to hear how well it worked. I’m sorry to say that he wasn’t enthusiastic about its performance in this area. He reported that the signal was poor, downloads disappointingly slow and the connection unstable. Fifteen minutes down the road he got a great signal but not in Espargal. In the circumstances he didn’t recommend that I get one.

On Monday evening we went to the cinema to see Casino Royale. I was much impressed by Craig Daniel, the new Bond. He cuts an athletic figure and is much more convincing in the action scenes than most of his predecessors, especially the grandfatherly Roger Moore. In fact, I think he’s even better than Sean Connery. He brings all the necessary élan and sophistication to the part. Jones, however, did not think him particularly good looking (craggy, at best) nor did she like the movie’s graphic violence. You can’t please everyone.

Jones’s unused traveller’s cheques have been returned to the bank, where I took the opportunity of presenting the man who looks after our interests with a bottle of Christmas spirit. He in turn presented me with a diary and an imitation-leather cheque-book holder. He has been very attentive unlike the people at Barclays. The latter have not been able to find a way of insuring that our cash cards are not blocked again next time we go overseas. There is no facility for informing them in advance of such trips. We think this a very poor effort and have informed them accordingly.

What’s more, we recently received a letter from Barclays in Jersey informing us that we would in future be liable for an annual fee (for the privilege of allowing them to make money from our deposits) unless we kept a minimum of £2,000 in our account through-out the year. We wrote back asking them kindly to close the account. I hope that a few other clients do the same, not that it is likely to bother the bank unduly or to make a dent in its large profits. In my experience, banks are a bit like (some) cats – sleek, glossy, self-serving and liable to scratch. I hope that I do not offend any cat lovers.

During a visit to Loulé we arranged to meet Natasha at the office of an accountant who drew up an employment contract which, she hopes, will enable her to benefit from Portuguese Social Security. We didn’t have time to register it at the Finanças that day so I arranged to meet her at the Finanças later in the week. Great was my consternation when I arrived there to discover that the document I had carefully taken along was a similar-looking bank statement.

The dogs didn’t mind. They enjoyed the ride in the car and the leg-lifting opportunities at the adjacent park. They have become so fond of outings that, given the choice between a ride in the car and a walk, they choose to ride every time. Ono sits bolt upright in the centre of the back seat with his paws splayed out and peers unwaveringly through the windscreen. We often wonder what he thinks.

I have been in intermittent contact with our lawyers concerning our intended purchase of a plot of land contiguous with our own. This has been dragging on and was clearly not high on the lawyer’s priority list. He said the latest delay was caused by new legislation that required Barbara and me to petition the local council for some exemption in view of our being married in separation of property. I don’t pretend to understand it. (In Portugal, people get married in community of property.) Anyhow, it appears that we can circumvent this complication by buying the property in either my name or Barbara’s rather than jointly. We are hopeful (if not exactly confident) that the process may still be completed by Christmas. I shall be off to Canada shortly afterwards to see Mum and the family.

We have been in daily touch with (Barbara’s half-brother) Llewellyn and Lucia, who arrived in Lisbon from Cape Town at sparrows on Thursday. They are spending a week in the city before travelling down to the Algarve by train to be with us over Christmas. Llewellyn has impressed us by setting about learning Portuguese. He goes as far as reading novels in Portuguese, a step well beyond our own modest efforts at speaking the language.

After lessons on Thursday (plus another visit to PT) I drove to Almancil for a dentist’s appointment. The consultation had been made weeks in advance to fit in with the dentist’s occasional visits to Portugal. (He’s a South African who lives in Spain and consults in at least 5 countries on a rota of sorts – don’t ask me why).

He was due to fit a crown to a tooth he’d already prepared (and he did). However, I had been suffering pangs in another tooth for a week and asked him to take care of that at the same time. Regrettably, I have reached the stage where virtually any dental work is expensive. Most of my teeth have been mined for half a century to the point where there’s little left to play with. It’s all crowns and the like.

We have a friend who is close to retirement age and who confesses to having had only a single filling. Would that we had been similarly blessed. If I were able to order genes for my next incarnation, I would very much like to have black hair, an olive skin and faultless teeth. Good looks and a manly physique would be much appreciated as part of the package.

Jones has returned to her routine of taking both our dogs and the neighbour’s bitch (Serpa the spaniel) on afternoon walks. Sometimes I go along. At others, I load the tractor’s link box with stones from our fields and dump them on the side. The stones vary in size from golf ball to football. I estimate that in five to ten years, at the present rate, I should have all our fields cleared. oy them.Meanwhile, in spite of the stones, our beans are coming along nicely.

The woman who works at the local hardware store presented me with a rolled up calendar during my last visit. I asked her whether it had a beautiful girl on the cover. No, she smiled at me, adding that she did have some with beautiful girls if that was what I would prefer. I thought I’d better stick with the one she’d given me. I unrolled it to reveal a Christmas doggy with a bow – not exactly my taste if blandly inoffensive. Speaking of which – we have brought out our Christmas lights and arranged them in the shape of a tree upstairs on the patio railings and pergola. It is visible for miles around at night. Much as I have my doubts about the wisdom of having Christmas I quite like our tree.

Thank you to those correspondents from whom we have received Christmas letters. We greatly enjoy them.

Letter from Espargal: 48 of 2006

(Gisa: Jones loved Egypt and says she would gladly go back. She took lots of pictures but none of herself.)

Jones is home. She arrived at Lisbon airport early on Sunday morning. When she left I had promised to meet her and I kept my word. Having been rudely roused by my mobile phone alarm at 01.00 and, after showering and putting the somewhat surprised dogs in the car, I set out. En route I stopped in Loulé to fetch Dani, Natasha and Alex. Natasha had asked for a lift as she had business to enact at the Russian Consulate in Lisbon the following day.

The night was clear and moonlit and there was virtually no traffic on the toll-road north. The occasional BMW or similar cruised past me, scornful of my tortoiselike150 kph. We made a couple of motorway stops to take on refreshments and give the dogs leg-lifters. In spite of a wrong turn we made it on time to the airport where, because of a snail-like baggage service, we had to wait an hour for Jones to appear. When she did, her welcome would have warmed the heart of a queen.

The sun was rising as we returned home. The fields were green and frequently waterlogged on either side of the road. And the hunters’ guns were popping as we made our way back up Espargal hill. In spite of her tiredness Jones was unable to rest until she had restored the house to the shape in which she’d left it. That’s not to say that it was untidy or dirty. Natasha had laboured all the previous day to remove the last speck of dust. But there were objects out of place, pots unreturned to their rightful drawers and unusual arrangements of odds and ends. All of these had to be righted before, with harmony restored, Jones felt that she could begin to unwind.

I downloaded the 200 plus pictures that she had taken during her travels and got brief descriptions from her of the places involved. She gave me a rundown on some of her adventures, which were many and of which I’d heard little. For over a month we’d enjoyed only the briefest text message and email communications, followed by a couple of phone calls during her stay in South Africa. I have suggested to Jones that she write an account of her trip or at least dictate her diary to me. She feels that this is not near the top of her priority list.

On the Monday we walked the dogs 5kms to Benafim, sticking to the roads because the plain that separates our hill from Benafim’s hill was swimming. En route we encountered Zeferino (80+) who was on his way back after walking to the town himself to meet someone who wasn’t there. He stopped for a chat and welcomed Barbara back. Further along we bumped into more neighbours who gave her a further welcome. It took us closer to 90 minutes than the usual hour to reach the town.

After topping up on salads at a supermarket we made our way to Rui’s Café for truly delicious ham and cheese sandwiches, washed down with tall glasses of cold red wine. We sat at a table on the pavement, with the dogs tucked under our feet. Occasional scraps made their way down from the table to the grateful animals. The café itself was packed and smoky. Lunchtime news blared from the TV hoisted up on the wall. The local police parked carefully on the pavement and popped in for refreshments. It can truly be said of Benafim that what you see is what you get. Pretensions it has none. Jones said that she felt that she had really arrived back home.

Monday my internet link and the phone started to play silly b.gg.ers. Tuesday they gave up the ghost altogether. Portugal Telecom said they were treating the repair as urgent, given my status as a ISDN customer (paying twice the standing charge for a dual line). Tuesday, as promised was damp. We took ourselves to Alte, where the sun came out long enough to allow us a walk and a fig-and-almond-tart lunch at Luis’s place. In the afternoon we sorted through Jones’s pictures. Afterwards she took the dogs for a quick walk, just in time to run into a shower and to return with two soggy animals. Hardly had we lit a fire and dried them off when the area was shaken by a squall that bent the trees double, whipped shutters from their clasps and rattled the house. It’s the closest I’ve come to experiencing a hurricane and as close as I ever want to come.

Wednesday got screwed up by my efforts to stay flexible enough to attend within short notice to the Portugal Telecom engineer who failed to show up to fix the phone. (One has to arrange to meet the man at the local school and lead him back to the house.) So did Thursday. Still no engineer. Calls to the Portugal Telecom faults number brought only a computer voice informing me that the fault was being attended to. I’m beginning to understand the withdrawal pains that drug addicts endure, a case of cold cyber turkey.

Thursday afternoon our expat neighbours came around for refreshments and pre-Christmas conversation. They arrived half an hour before the vacuum cleaner demonstration man whom I’d agreed to entertain in order to assist friends - who’d already agreed to buy one - to obtain a discount. The appliance is a Rainbow, confidently described by the demonstrator as the best in the world. It’s certainly a remarkable machine. It’s also, undoubtedly, the most expensive of its kind – around 2,500 euros if one obtains the discount available by purchasing before the end of the year. The female neighbours wandered upstairs to watch bits of the demonstration.

At the request of the demonstrator, I pulled back the sheets on the bed to expose the lower section of the mattress. The fellow then ran the nozzle over the surface for a half a minute before removing a filter and revealing the mass of dead bed-mites and their droppings that the machine had sucked up through the surface material; at least, that’s what he said they were and we believed him. It was kinda scary. Even so, Jones does not consider the astronomical price worth the machine’s considerable advantages; it’s a dust remover, air purifier, and perfumer as well.

We have been letting the kittens into the house to try to introduce them to the dogs. They rush around madly, exploring every corner. There’s no problem with Stoopy. She just growls if they get too close. Ono is not happy about the introduction, especially as the kittens have no fear of him and run up eagerly to smell his nose (bad news) or his bum (worse). Yesterday, the kittens got into a noisy bust-up with their two muscular half-siblings, an encounter that the dogs rushed eagerly to disperse. It’s going to be a while before we can relax with a harmonious household.

At this point, Friday morning is heading towards Friday midday. It’s sunny and there’s a cold wind blowing. We have just returned from a long walk through the valley. We bumped into a Portuguese neighbour who gave us a bag full of lemons and a Dutch neighbour who was walking her dog to Benafim. The Dutch neighbour was not very happy because she made a mistake while filling out the forms required for her to matriculate her car in Portugal and she is now going to have to pay the full import tax. The customs authorities are not proving in the least sympathetic or helpful.

Before setting out on the walk I spent 20 minutes on the (mobile) phone to Vodafone finding out (a) how long it would take to activate a Connect Card if I bought one today [answer: 24 to 48 hours] and (b) what sort of signal strength I could expect if I tried to use one here [answer: pretty low]. So I cancelled my plans to drive to a shopping centre to purchase one and arranged instead to borrow a friend’s internet connection this afternoon.

On Monday I shall travel into Loulé to complain bitterly to Portugal Telecom about their service. What a bummer.

Letter from Espargal: 47 of 2006

(The Marco Polo arrives in Cape Town)

I have reason to be grateful that I live up a hill because many of those Portuguese residents who live on the plains have spent the week bailing themselves out. It has been a very wet week. Downpours last weekend raised the Douro River, which we so admired during a visit to Porto a few months ago, a total of 7 metres, inundating riverine sections of the city, including the famous port warehouses that line the bank. (During a tour of one of the warehouses, a guide showed us marks high on a wall, indicating the levels reached by previous floods. The staff had cut loose the port barrels, allowing them to float up with the water.) The story was the same for dozens of towns and villages across the length and breadth of the country although the Algarve got off lightly.

On Tuesday, it was the turn of the Algarve to get a dousing. It happened to be the day that I was taking the car in for a service at the Honda workshop on the outskirts of Faro. I fetched Natasha and young Alex on route, as she wanted to buy him a tricycle on a sale that was about to end. In teeming rain the Honda minibus dropped the pair of us off at the Algarve Forum shopping centre. It’s a very smart shopping centre, keenly aware of its upmarket status. But its drainage system was incapable of dealing with the torrents of water falling on its spacious inner courtyard. A large and growing pool lapped ever closer to the shop doors where fashionable merchants were trying desperately with mops and squeegees to repel the tide. There was something pitifully puny about their efforts.

At a perfume store I asked a shop assistant if she would guide me to a couple of 10 euro bottles of spray, explaining that I wanted to give small Christmas gifts to two delightful women who work in the Benafim parish office. The assistant explained apologetically that the cheaper perfumes started at 30 euros. I thanked her and retreated to familiar ground. In the Jumbo superstore I came across rather less expensive products although the two I chose were placed over the wrong price tag and I found myself paying double what I intended. (When I went back to check I found that the products were correctly priced – just misleadingly stacked.)

The rain was dying away by the time the Honda minibus fetched us again at 11.30. I assisted Natasha who was coping with Alex, his stroller, a large box containing a tricycle and several other purchases. How single parents ever manage alone, especially on public transport, is completely beyond me. The car was waiting and I got back home in time to watch the lunchtime news. It was full of the floods in Faro city centre and in nearby towns.

Rain apart, the week got off to a good start. Idalecio came over on Saturday afternoon to try to cure a longstanding problem with the chimney. Because of a gap between the metal chimneystack and the surrounding brickwork, soot has tended to drift down into the lounge. Jones found this extremely irritating. I found it quite annoying myself. I tried blocking the gap at the lower end of the chimney where it emerges through the ceiling but this solution was only partially successful. I feared that Idalecio would have to bash a hole in the chimney in order to reach the stack. Happily he found that the shaped top-section of the chimney was just a heavy piece of reinforced concrete that could be shifted aside to allow him to do the job.

Next we removed the netting that I had draped over the solar heater panels to keep the sparrows out. In spite of my efforts, the sparrows had long since returned, worming and squirming through the netting and building another series of nests in the hollows of the tiles under the panels. With the hose we cleaned the nests out. They were full of muck. I’d already taken steps to stop the water flowing into the cisterna.

Inevitably the sparrows will be back. The technician who came to replace a leaking valve earlier this month said the only solution was to raise the panels on a frame as we did at the Quinta. It means that the panels will be more visible but I think this is the lesser evil.

Between us, Idalecio and I got through a couple of other undemanding jobs that required two sets of hands. Within an hour or two we were done. I had a great sense of achievement and he made some easy money, reluctant though he was to take payment. I pointed out to him what it would have cost me to get somebody in – and that I would otherwise feel unable to ask his assistance in future.

When I bumped into some English neighbours later that day, I was taken back to hear that Vitor’s dad, stricken with cancer, had died and been buried two days earlier. I’d wanted to go to the funeral and was exasperated to find that I’d missed it. The usual practice is for the undertakers to stick up an obituary notice in the local hamlets but for some reason they’d failed to do so. I made my apologies and expressed my condolences to the widow.

I had a poignant moment the following day when, after buying several loaves of freshly baked bread from Hans the German baker, I dropped a loaf off with Portuguese neighbours. The front door to their house was opened, not by the wife as usual but the husband whom I mentioned in my last letter. He’s the fellow who has been stricken with some form of dementia and who recently attacked his wife. To avoid a repetition, his spouse no longer sleeps at home. The old fellow looked at me miserably and wailed: “I have no wife,” clearly uncomprehending of the circumstances. I gave him the warm bread and wished him well. I wish I had a wand.

On Monday I spoke to Jonesy for the first time in a month. She and Maureen were in Durban, being taken on a tour of her old student haunts by a friend. She was frustrated by her inability to respond to my text messages, for some technical reason. She’d tried various configurations without success. This frustration aside, she was having a nostalgic time in Durban and was looking forward to the end of the trip in Cape Town on Wednesday.

Subsequent calls have indicated that she’s been having a ball in Cape Town, where she has extensive family. She is staying with her half-brother, Llewellyn and his wife, Lucia. Jonesy flies back to Johannesburg and on to Portugal on Saturday. The dogs and I are planning a reunion at Lisbon airport early on Sunday morning. [For the two accompanying pictures on my blog, I have to thank Llewellyn (the ship) and Annelize (the dinner party)]

My email correspondence this week included a note from the Portuguese Financas, saying that I should look on their website for a response to our application for a temporary exemption from local taxes (a one-time benefit to the owners of a new house). Let me say that it is now possible to conduct all one’s normal fiscal business with the Department online. Parts of Portugal are rapidly going high-tech. After logging in and finding the response (in spite of misleading instructions) I was pleased to see that we had been given a four-year exemption – from 2006 to 2009. No reference was made to the two-year period during which we have been awaiting the Department’s response. Its conversion to high tech doesn’t seem to have speeded anything up

Wednesday and Thursday brought the usual lessons. Before classes, I went along with Natasha to the Social Security office in Loulé. Natasha had informed me that in spite of her illegal status she was entitled to sign on for social security if she had a valid employment contract. That didn’t make any sense to me, especially in the light of what a lawyer had told us a few months earlier. However, Natasha’s contact at the office bore out her story. The clerk said that recent changes to the law meant that foreigners were eligible to sign on as long as they were employed and had valid passports. Valid visas were no longer required. I was most surprised.

The long and short of it is that we have sought out accountants to draw up the necessary contract. The employer is required to commit him(her)self for a year to pay a modest monthly fee to the office plus 70% of the minimum wage to the employee. This (the minimum wage) is less than 400 euros a month. As a young mother, Natasha stands to benefit from the arrangement. She may even be able to legalise her status, something that she would love to do. Danny, I regret to say, has more or less disappeared off the radar.