Letter from Espargal: 16 of 2011

It’s been wet. We should have known better than to bring Natasha in to clean the windows last Monday, ahead of our house-sitters arrival in a fortnight. Lest you think us indolent for failing to clean our own windows, you should be aware that much of the house is glazed and

Natasha is pleased to have an additional day’s work. Not only does she have a young son to support, she also needs to save for the six-week holiday that, she tells us, she will be taking in her native Russia in the summer.

Whatever the case, we have woken to heavy showers. The kitchen suppliers, who arrived early on Tuesday as promised, were grateful to lay out their stall in Casa Nada in the dry while my tractor stood out in the rain. The unit they were installing in the Bijou Ensuite was a display model that the firm was writing off. They were as pleased to find a buyer as we were to get a bargain.

For the uninitiated or the forgetful, Casa Nada – the Nothing House, because it doesn’t officially exist – is an old dwelling on the property, long used as a tractor shed cum workshop. The Bijou Ensuite is the smaller half of the house, which I have generously bequeathed to Jones for her cottage development.

As we have come to learn, Carlos is a meticulous worker. Everything has to be just right, and woe betide his plump assistant, Manuel (pronounced Mun-well) for the least imper- fection. Carlos trimmed the back of the units to fit the curves of Casa Nada’s old walls before fitting the cupboards and drawers, along with a sink and a two-plate gas-hob. Throw in the existing mini-fridge and an elderly freezer and you have a spanking new kitchen.

With all of these we were well pleased. The only drawback to the whole process was the cloud of sawdust that settled over all the shelves and tools which Jones and Natasha had so painstakingly cleaned the previous week.

So on Wednesday morning, as I sat down for an English lesson with Natalia, Jones launched herself afresh into a Casa Nada spring-clean. I found the place gleaming when I joined her shortly before lunch. Not that she was entirely satisfied for, as she pointed out, some flecks needed my attention. Jones, I may tell you, has a sharper eye for unseemly motes than an eagle for a mouse.

Also on Tuesday the fencers returned to continue building the fence. They weren’t best pleased with the weather as they slopped down to the field bearing fence poles. But little as they relished getting wet, they felt it a lesser evil than missing the deadline for completion.

Natalia and I could hear the cement mixer grinding away in the rain as we worked on her English pronunciation.

(She struggles with “v”s and “w”s as well as with “i”s and “o”s. Fit becomes feet and cost becomes corst.)

The day cleared up as things went along. The fencers finished cementing in the poles, ending the day much happier (and somewhat wealthier) than they started it. With luck, the fences – one around the perimeter and the other enclosing the garden - should be completed by the end of next week. It will be lovely to let the dogs run free at last.

Speaking of which, we have a notable success to report. We got the pups to the vet and back home without either of them being sick in the car. This accom- plishment we ascribe largely to their daily training outings, as insisted on by Jones. We’ve had them up to the Coral and out under the patio tables, getting them used to foreign faces and places. As they’re both verging on 17 kilos and powerful pullers, there is much to be said for such training.

The Coral, by the way, was the venue for an estrangeiros’ English breakfast last Sunday morning. Twelve of us seated ourselves for Brigitte’s eggs, toasted ham and cheese, sausages and fruit salad – and none was disappointed.

I am nearing the end of Michael Lewis’s THE BIG SHORT. I compliment myself that I have come to understand the reason for Ben Hockett’s anguished cry as he foresaw the imminent collapse of Wall Street. “How do you explain to an innocent citizen of the free world the importance of a credit default swap on a Double-A tranche of subprime-backed collateralized debt obligation?” How indeed?

For the third time in as many weeks I have had to donate an elderly pair of trousers to the ragbag. As my wife will attest, I do not willingly part with my pants. They really have to be coming adrift, as the donated pairs were, in spite of much patching. Because my cupboard is now growing bare, I will have to invest in new garments.

However, I am reluctant to do so until I have shed a few pounds. My formerly athletic profile has sagged somewhat and is no longer attracting the admiration it once did.

Determined to beat the bulge, I have forsworn all liquor and put myself on a sensible diet. Already I can glimpse that wash board tummy.

Jones, who has seen it all before, is not entirely persuaded. Like much of spoiled humanity, the difficulty I have it not losing the pounds, but subsequently keeping them at a distance.


On Thursday, while Jones went to a ladies’ lunch, I took myself to Faro on a double mission. I was very pleased with myself for getting several shelves cut at Maxmat and acquiring a data simcard for (my brother-in-law) Llewellyn, who is due down this weekend with his wife on holiday. My only failure was to walk through a plate-glass door. I was grateful that just one small (rather puzzled) child witnessed my attempt.

Letter from Espargal: 15 of 2011

We have been half watching a series on BBC TV about the state of Europe’s great cities in the 18th century. I say “half-watching” because there is a limit to the amount of blood, guts, urine and excrement that one can assimilate over supper, when the series is transmitted. Muck, stench and poo-strewn passages were the order of the day, as the presenter has been anxious to demonstrate by recreating scenes over lurid readings from the time. Special clogs, attached to one’s shoes, helped to lift the more fastidious citizen partially above the unspeakable mess.

What brings this to mind was our attempt to complete the inoculation process of our pups last Monday afternoon. The pups are suspicious of the car at the best of times and generally sick on any journey lasting 15 minutes or more. (Loule is 20 minutes away.) Jones yells as they’re about to throw up but there’s never a place to stop in time. Although we take along numerous old towels to contain the damage there’s generally a generous splash of dog-sick on Jones’s clothes.

As you may well imagine, such outings are stressful as well as yucky. When we do arrive the pups are excited and difficult to handle. We managed to manoeuvre them into the surgery only to hear from a less than sympathetic receptionist that the vet was performing a complex operation and wouldn’t be free for at least an hour. Rather than hang around awkwardly, we retreated to the car.

This mini-adventure came at the end of a long day’s clean-up of Casa Nada, mandated by Jones and executed largely by Natasha. Jones had decided, now that she has a proprietary interest in half the building, that the other half should be cleaned from top to bottom as well. Admittedly, a fair bit of dust and dirt had accumulated there over the years and not everything was in barrack room order. But at least I knew where to find things, however many sacks they lay under.

No longer! Every single item was taken outside to be wiped down, tossed out or given away. I got a say in these decisions and was able to dissuade my wife from scrubbing my tools with soap and water. But that and a cuppa was about all I got. Jones concentrated on strategy, Natasha decided how items should be repacked and I gophered feebly about, trying to look important. So much for being created in God's image.

The fencers, who (fortunately) had postponed their arrival on Monday, began work on Tuesday. They are Steve, a large South African, and Luis, his Portuguese sidekick. From their truck they unloaded a cement mixer and their ultra-useful muck-truck, a motorised barrow that can convey a full load of cement across rough ground.

It took them a sweaty morning to dig holes and plant the corner poles for the remaining section of fence. In the afternoon I induced them, at Jones’s suggestion, to add several steps to the steep right-of-way that will replace the existing path across the property. Idalecio had already greatly improved the new passage with a number of steps but after watching old Zeferino (88) staggering down, we thought it expedient to upgrade them.

Wednesday morning we took all the dogs walking the in valley as part of a policy to get the pups accustomed to travelling in the car. From there we continued on to Benafim to fetch Natasha. Of Natasha we found no sign. Instead I discovered an SMS message (that had pinged during the walk) informing us that we needn’t worry to fetch her as she was bringing herself. Her partner has gone back to Ukraine on holiday, leaving his car and (more importantly) the keys at her disposal.

Thursday took an unplanned turn. Our friend, May, had joined us for lunch in Loule - as she does each week - when she had a funny turn. Jones and I supported her while the restaurant called an ambulance. Fortunately, there were very few diners about.

She was taken to the local health centre and later admitted to Faro hospital for a closer examination. But there she apparently persuaded the staff that she was well enough to go home – and was fetched that night by a kindly neighbour.

Friday Nelson returned to tackle a range of jobs; the trickiest of these was removing a pile of sand from the old sheep pen without harming the numerous poppy plants that Jones was determined to keep. I have to say that the poppies are in their glory.

It would be wonderful if we could find a way of rooting out the weeds without damaging the wild flowers that bring so much colour to our spring seasons. Speaking of which, it’s been hot – going on for 30 degrees, and this in April.

A new flower bed that Nelson and I created earlier to Jones’s order has been expropriated by the dogs. It was intended to rehouse plants that Jones has been nurturing in pots. But since the bed contains the only soft earth in the property, it became the instant venue for wrestling matches and digging competitions. Jones has decided, wisely in my view, not to plant any flowers in the bed for the moment.

We have picked the last of our beans – 5 buckets full of them. It took the pair of us, with moral support from the cat, the best part of an hour to strip the plants of their pods, after which I brought in the tractor to dig over the area.

The greenery, a mixture of bean plants and weeds, was waist high and becoming hard to negotiate. One bucket of beans I’ll keep for seed. The rest we’ll eat or freeze. Jones generally boils up a plateful in the evening to mix in with the salad.

I have been reading an extraordinary book, THE BIG SHORT, by Michael Lewis.

The book gives an account how the US subprime loan bubble came to nearly cripple the financial world.

It has the reader blinking in disbelief at the mass “Emperor’s new clothes” syndrome that overtook Wall Street, doubly so that most of those involved had little idea how the obscure financial instruments they created really worked.

Letter from Espargal: 14 of 2011

LAVENDER WITH BEE

This week a vexing wind blew, Portugal asked for a bailout, Sergio installed the bathroom door in the Bijou Ensuite, tolls on the local freeway were postponed, I picked wild beans and we tried in vain to obtain our EU health cards.

Of these easily the hardest to deal with was the wind. It howled relentlessly around the house, toppled tables, stole hats, thrashed the trees, spooked the cats, upset the dogs, and left us restless and ill at ease.

WOODCOCK ORCHID

Even so, we got on with life. On Monday we reported to our local health centre on stage two of our mission to obtain European Health Insurance cards. (I shall spare you the whys and wherefores!) We’d accomplished stage one - getting a letter from UK authorities that we had to hand in here.

MIRROR ORCHID

With some difficulty we found the appropriate desk – unattended. Large signs calling for silence were ignored by the impatient throng that heaved around us. The single clerk tapping away on her computer made it clear that she resented inquiries. Just as we were about to flee the scene, an attendant arrived, peered at our papers and advised us to take them to the Social Security Centre instead.

YELLOW BEE ORCHID

We left the task for another day. More urgent was a visit to the travel insurance agent in order to beat the deadline for a renewal discount. The agent confirmed that we’d reached an age (66) at which the associated health premiums literally doubled. Lacking any means to grow younger and still wishing to travel, I winced, winged and paid up. But I have a sense of being wronged and I’m resentful.

POPPIES

Tuesday morning the fencers arrived to mark out the posts. This they did with the aid of a bucket of white powder that got dropped messily a couple of times in the course of the exercise, sending up plumes of dust. The fencers are to complete the green chain-link perimeter fence (that Jonesy so dislikes) and to move the interior sheep-fencing (that I so dislike). The latter is intended to keep the dogs within an area close to the house. We greatly look forward to the day when we can let them run free securely within the property.

HAVEN'T A CLUE

Our house-sitters, due down a month today, should find the fence a great asset. I warned Natasha midweek that we would again be away for much of May and a bit of June. She too was contemplating a holiday this year, her first, she informed me. She’d received an interim court judgement awarding her sole custody of her son, which means that she can take him back to Russia to meet the family. (Until now she would have required the permission of the long-absent father.)

One afternoon I took the box off the back of the tractor and wrestled the scarifier on instead. In the event I didn’t do much scarifying, mainly as I couldn’t bear to plough in the scattered bean plants that had seeded themselves from a previous year’s crop. I picked the beans instead and we had them for supper. They’re delicious and help to bear out my fantasy that as an occasional hobby farmer I’m entitled to look genuinely agricultural.

On Wednesday our out-going prime minister said Portugal (like Greece and Ireland before it) needed a bail-out. This surprised no-one. More alarmingly, the bonds of a couple of Portuguese banks, ours included, have been downgraded to junk status.

Also that day, Sergio called to say that the bathroom door for the Bijou Ensuite was ready. We are waiting, said I. He arrived half an hour later, at much the same time as Natalia for her English lesson. Fortunately, Sergio doesn’t require any supervision and Natalia is used to interruptions. Jonesy nipped out to take a couple of pictures.

By the time I got there, the door was installed and all that remained to settle was the bill. Now we await only the kitchenette. The kitchen firm has emailed us apologetically to say they’ve been busy. Good for them, I replied; there are many enterprises that would envy them. Our hairdresser complained that her builder husband hadn’t had work in three months.

Thursday Nelson joined us again. There’s plenty of work for him to do. Apart from the continuing clean-up in the new plot, Jones has half a dozen garden tasks for him of a sort inimical to bad backs.

Moreover, a quick inspection of our newly-repaired lower fossa showed that it was brim full. Previously, a slow leak ensured that the surrounding plants lived in perpetual clover, in a manner of speaking.

Now that we’ve fixed the fossa, we have to do something about emptying it. Ridiculous!

We left Nelson at work while we went to the Coral to enjoy a final cuppa with Mike & Lyn, prior to their return to the UK.

Jonesy took the camera along as she wanted to know how to take close-ups. Mike, a camera fundi, was pleased to show her.

She practised on the toasted sandwiches, somewhat to the surprise of the snack-bar patron, before going off to take pictures of the many flowers to be found on the property.

I'm impressed. You may judge the results for yourself from the pictures above.

The dog pictures show the beasts consuming almonds, which they love. We put a basket down for them to raid as we’ve made few inroads into last year’s harvest and the new crop is already heavy on the trees. Within a few minutes the pups too learned the trick of rolling the nuts around in their teeth until they found a vulnerable spot. The only downside was a patio full of broken shells.

I nearly forgot. I had an email from the expat association to say that new legislation is required to impose tolls on the local freeway – and this will have to await elections in the summer. Such news is hardly earth-shattering but in this climate all such titbits are welcome.

Letter from Espargal: 13 of 2011

This week has been pretty special. On Tuesday we became the owners of land that we have coveted ever since our arrival. It’s an adjacent plot that juts deep into our own property. The owners, a young brother and sister, have been as keen to sell as we were to buy but they’ve had to wait until the younger sibling attained her majority.

At 10.30 we gathered in Loule at the offices of the notary, the official who has to countenance all such transactions. She has on her computer a draft of the sale agreement, supplied by one of the lawyers, which she runs through word by word, checking numerous documents and making any amendments as she goes. The text is cast up on a large screen for all to see.

If she’s happy, the buyers pass over the cheques, everybody signs and you’re done – apart, that is, from paying the notary’s fee and, while you’re about it, the registration fee. We left with a deep sense of satisfaction.

For years we’ve traversed the plot, knowing that it belonged to others. We’re still finding it hard to believe that at last it’s ours.

And we’ve been pretty busy working on it ever since. Nelson (our occasional labourer), with a little help from myself, has been clearing the dense undergrowth, preparing a path for the team that’s due to start the fencing early next week. The jungle was almost impenetrable, having lain untouched for the best part of 50 years or more. So his task has been slow and prickly. We have burned off many of the useless cuttings, too insubstantial for firewood and two awkward for the mulcher.

At the same time, our neighbour, Idalecio, decided to replaster our side of what has now become our common wall. The previous (very old) plaster served to create a base for a new right of way that we are creating alongside the wall (from the upper to the lower village). This will replace the current right of way, which runs right through the middle of the newly-acquired property.

This new route is rather shorter and steeper. To facilitate the passage of its users, I asked Idalecio to build a series of steps in the steepest sections. This he did with his customary despatch and backup from Nelson, who scrambled up and down the path bearing buckets of fresh concrete. (As various assistants have discovered, Idalecio’s appetite for fresh concrete is vast.)

Because the pair of them had finished by lunchtime, we spent the afternoon improving the exit from the top corner of our existing property. This comprised a series of steep, uneven steps on which the dogs congregated as we set out on a walk, crowding the gate. Idalecio levelled the steps and built a platform just inside the gate on which the dogs could stand without blocking the exit.

Nelson’s part was to supply Idalecio with rocks (that we’d collected nearby) and numerous buckets of concrete. My part was to back the tractor up 200 metres of bumpy track with loads of concrete from the mixer at the bottom of the property.

That, I must tell you, is harder work than it sounds as the tractor lurches madly over the rocks and threatens to spill its load. Idalecio’s bitch, Serpa, (mother of our two big dogs) helped by imprinting her paws in the freshly plastered steps. At least half a dozen of them bear her signature.

We had to leave Idalecio and Nelson at it while we took ourselves off for our annual check-up with the dermatologist in Faro. Inevitably we returned, much squirted with liquid nitrogen for our youthful sins in the sun.

This treatment had to be reported, together with various other consultations, during the lengthy phone conversation about our medical condition that always precedes the taking out of our annual travel insurance. I have been careful to take out such insurance ever since an acquaintance of ours inadvertently bankrupted himself by having an uninsured stroke during a visit to the US. Until last year, the medical premium was merely expensive. But it seems that crossing the 65 threshold is a signal to the insurance company to double the premiums.

We had been puzzled by discovering that somebody in Florida had made several attempts to call us; we don’t know anybody in Florida. Several websites, offering phone-tracing services, pointed us to a town in the state but wouldn’t identify the actual caller unless I paid them, which I declined to do.

The mystery solved itself one morning when a gentleman with a pleasant American accent phoned – from Florida, he said - representing an upstanding company (we could check it on the internet) with a bargain offer of some kind. I asked him if he would be sweet enough to post the details over to us and promised to read them with interest. Boiler-room cold-calling is nothing new but trans-Atlantic is ridiculous.

And while we’re on scams – I have received a couple of emails advising me that my Facebook password has been reset as requested, and directing me to confirm the new password at a help-site. Since I cancelled my trial Facebook account years ago, I was doubly (and rightly) suspicious. Beware Facebookers! It’s a virus.

My beloved HTC smartphone is showing a worrying reluctance to open documents attached to emails. When I persisted with my attempts, it absolutely froze - and I had to remove and then replace the battery to give it the kiss of life. Mr Google indicated that the problem was not uncommon. Given that smartphones are really just computers with a phone facility, I guess the occasional hiccup is to be expected.

MIKE & IDALECIO

We have had a most sociable week. Monday we enjoyed our usual lunch with May. Tuesday we went to supper with our friends, Mike and Lyn, who are staying with Idalecio. Wednesday we celebrated Olly’s birthday. Thursday’s gone blank. And today (Friday) we lunched at the Coral, sitting out in the sun on the patio.

I ordered Brigitte’s truly excellent tuna steak, wondering as I did so whether I’d brought enough cash to pay for lunch. Faced with the bill, I pleaded poverty, pointing to my much-patched jeans as proof of my indigence.

“Trade in your tractor,” was the proprietor’s unsympathetic response.

“I’d rather trade in my wife,” I told him. This produced a great roar of laughter as, unbeknown to me, Barbara had entered directly behind me.
O well, some you win and some you lose!