Letter from Espargal: 3 May 2014

It's been a funny sort of week.

On Thursday morning, we went on a hike, that's Jones, Llewellyn, Lucia, Prickles and I. Here we are!

Jones thought we were going on a big hike that began in the hills around Cortelha. I thought we were going on a medium hike across the great rise of Rocha da Pena in the distance. I'm not sure what other people thought.

Prickles didn't care, as long as he got an outing.

ESPARGAL HILL FROM ROCHA DA PENA

In the event, we trekked around Rocha da Pena. The circuit takes about two hours. It was a lovely day with views forever, especially across the valley to Espargal hill - under blue skies close to 30*C.

We were relieved to find that the cafe at the bottom was still open, even if the Alsatian chained nearby wanted to eat Prickles.

I took off my shirt and vest at the cafe to look for a tick I suspected was crawling up my shoulder. I was right. Llewellyn did it in.

AT ROCHA DA PENA CAFE

It was my second tick of the day. I wasn't so lucky with the first. We were en route to Rocha da Pena when I felt a sharp pain on my tummy. After pulling the car over, I tugged up my clothing to find a tick just settling down to breakfast.

I removed him carefully and crushed him on the road. Benafim's pharmacy was closed for Labour Day and the best I could find was some betadine from the supermarket, which I dabbed on to the bite. Tick-bites swell and itch for days on end.

On Wednesday morning, Jones and I went to Lisbon by train to renew my passport. Sorry, said the lady at the passport office, examining my application form, you haven't got an authorised person to witness it.

But, said I, I'm here in the passport office in person with my passport. Why would I need a third party to confirm that I am who I and my passport say I am.

Sorry, said the passport lady, but we don't witness passport applications. You have to take your passport and application to the notary up the road to attest that you are who you say you are before I can

accept your application. (I may be putting words into her mouth.)

So that's what we did. The notary lady was very nice; there was no queue at her office.

She looked at me and at my passport, swore that I was who I said I was, and charged me only 13 euros so it wasn't too bad.

And then the passport lady was happy that I had proof of being who I claimed to be, as evidenced by the notary's stamp.

AT DINNER

Another time we were at dinner with friends at a restaurant. As often happens, I rose from the table during the meal to use the loo.

I turned on the light to the men's cubicle and opened the door to find that a) I'd actually switched the light off and that b) the place was already occupied by a large gent.

Making my apologies, I switched the light back on and closed the door, to await my turn in the narrow passage outside.

As the minutes ticked by, I began to feel the pressure of circumstances.

It occurred to me that the gent on the other side of the door, who was making loud hawking noises, was not in any hurry to emerge.

So, swallowing my misgivings, I turned on the light to the vacant ladies' cubicle and nipped in there instead. After all, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

THE SOUTH GARDEN

No sooner had I bolted the door and set about relieving myself than the gent next door exited the men's and tramped off down the passage, turning off all the lights, including mine, as he did so. There's more to be said but it might lower the tone.

The complications didn't stop there. On Monday we fetched May and her visiting nephew, Ken, for lunch. Ken was not in the best of moods. The house water had run dry, the Sat TV hadn't been performing and various Portuguese workers, who'd turned up - late - to sort things out, had failed to understand his (Edinburgh)

English in spite of his loud, slow and careful pronunciation.

Worse, he left his key inside May's front door while he came outside to show me the marker posts he'd set up at the corners of the property, using my borrowed paint and stencil.

As he did so, Jones escorted May out of the house and closed the door behind her, trapping Ken's key inside and preventing us from opening the door from the outside.

LABOUR DAY DECORATIONS IN PENINA

In short, we were locked out - not for the first time!

Over a somewhat strained lunch we phoned various contacts - in vain.

Having finished my meal, I set off for the house with Ken to try to force the door by sliding a flexible plastic card under the latch, as I'd seen a locksmith do on a previous occasion. No luck.

Shortly afterwards May's Man-Friday, Fernando arrived, followed by his all-purpose brother, Sergio; the latter had the door open in two ticks after sliding chisels in between it and the frame. I noted Sergio's details for future reference. He's a useful fellow.

Tuesday we had spare keys made for May's side door and the outer security grill before embarking on another session with our lawyer. The recent death of a friend has brought home to me the importance of having one's affairs up to date. Llewellyn and Lucia went to the beach. The weather could hardly have been better.

ALFA PENDULAR EXPRESS

Wednesday we took the early train to Lisbon to renew my passport, as described above.

A first-class return ticket for the pair of us cost less than 60 euros, great value for money. The road tolls alone would cost double that.

The early morning express to the capital is a brilliant high-speed tilting train (unlike the bone-shaking mid-afternoon return).

We lunched on toasted tuna sandwiches at an open-air restaurant overlooking the broad Tagus estuary.

Llewellyn and Lucia have been with us all week. (Most of the better photos are his.) They love beaches and they love Portugal. We met them at the airport and then continued to Faro Island for an informal supper of toasted sandwiches at a restaurant shack overlooking the estuary.

It was cool and windy and there were few diners. Waitresses waited to pounce on those who appeared.

Llewellyn brought with him a new Skype phone and a separate handset to replace our ailing model.

Over the next several days, between visits to the beach, he set up these two phones, transferred the SKYPE base station from my upstairs landline modem to my downstairs booster modem, hooked up the booster and my printer unit to my new Satellite Internet modem, set up a portable wifi hotspot on my smart-phone and proved himself generally very technically useful. (Never mind if you haven't followed the details!)

If this all sounds like a fairly normal week, it hasn't been. More a case of the show must go on.

For we have struggled, both of us, in spite of the consideration of our guests, to come to terms with the death of Mary.

She meant so much to us. She lurks in the corners of our minds, still barking down at the fence and hiding under the table.

We really had no idea of how big a part she had come to play in our lives.

It will be some time I fear before she leaves us in peace.

To those many readers in four continents who have expressed their sympathies at her passing, we can only say a BIG thank you.

Although we have lost family pets before, their deaths have not been so unexpected or untimely.

Most of our dogs and cats have lived out their lives.

While we try to focus on the joy we had with Mary, we still find ourselves often on the brink of tears. How sorely we miss her!

In the meanwhile, we lavish additional affection on her companions and wonder whether they are aware of her absence.

Barbara is planning to remodel part of the garden as Mary's garden. If there's a NO Dogs sign at heaven's gate, I might well consider going elsewhere.

Letter from Espargal: 26 April 2014

POPPIES IN THE FIELD

Today (Friday, as I write) is April 25 - the 40th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. In Portugal there is no bigger day. There isn't a town that doesn't have a main street named Vinte Cinco de Abril.

Even the estrangeiros, who know little of what's happening beyond their enclaves, know what this public holiday signifies.

The nearby town of Alte is holding all kinds of festivities over the weekend. We shall probably go along. First the rest of the week!

Monday began badly. Mary hadn't been eating over the weekend in spite of the delicious meals and morsels with which we tried to tempt her. So we took her to the vet first thing, stopping once to shake out the plastic cover she'd sicked up on.

The vet diagnosed hepatitis, reassured us that she had a good chance of recovery, put her on a drip and shut her into one of the wire kennels at the back of his recovery room. There, with heavy hearts, we left her. I don't think I'd have made a good father trying to cope with a sick child. You can't explain why to a child or a dog. I can barely imagine what those South Korean parents are enduring.

It is raining and May has decided not to come to lunch. Her nephew, Kenneth, is due down tomorrow.

Tuesday I tried to walk through the front door - rather than the doorway - and bounced off painfully with a great clang. The door is made of steel and doesn't give. The nick on my knuckles in no way reflected the hurt in my hand nor the sense of injury that I felt.

What made that noise, asked Jones as I came upstairs to seek a patch. I did, I told her, holding up my bruised hand as evidence.

Still, it was a lovely day and we'd had a most refreshing walk through the fields. The wild flowers are truly in their glory. The vet said Mary was improving although she still wasn't eating. We had coffee with Mike and Liz at the Ponto de Encontro (Meeting Point) in Benafim. Telma, who is behind the bar, makes the best coffee in town. She really goes out of her way to please. We try to return the compliment.

Wednesday: Mary is said to be still improving but not yet ready to return home. We hold thumbs that she's back by the weekend. We miss her.

I spent an hour combing the veld and peering up into the branches for a sign of the missing Cusack helicopter, reminding curious locals of its loss.

No luck, even if the western views across the valley to the sea alone justified my wanderings around the hillside.

Another hour went on strimming the heavy growth around the trees and the field edges beyond the plough's reach. Much of the greenery is waist high.

We lunched beside the river in Alte, mainly to stay out of Natasha's way as she mopped and hoovered downstairs.

(Her house purchase has fallen through. The risks of buying a place with unlicensed extensions were just too great.)

I threw olive pips at a bold tabby cat that was trying to muscle in under the table, under the noses of three of our dogs, if you don't mind.

I've killed off today's crop of gmail spam. Google helpfully dumps it all into the spam folder for me.

I quite look forward each day to seeing whether the spammers have thought up any new lines.

I fell for one a few weeks ago. When asked if I was the Terry Benson who lived in where-ever, I replied in the negative and promptly got an invite to pop round nonetheless.

Apart from occasional invites to improve my education, it's sex and riches on offer. Lines of busty babes proclaim themselves anxious to share their all with me, while semi-literate West African philanthropists fall over themselves to shower me with riches: to wit -

Mr Mark wish to notify you that his Late client made his inheritance in your favour. He needs your urgent attention. Please contact him as soon as possible via this email: osbornefmark@outlook.com

How about this one, hot off the press:

Attn My Dear ,
I have been trying to reach you on your telephone about an hour now just to inform you regarding the delivering of your fund with the dhl company Benin agent, he will need your information to complete the delivery of your package Email and call diplomat Mr. Kevin Anthony with this email(d_k_a33@yahoo.gr) he is in john f Kennedy international airport new york with your {ATM Visa Card} worth of your $3.8m you can email him with (d_k_a33@yahoo.gr) also call him with this (917 )503 0037 Reconfirm to him for verifications

Thursday: Jones went for a haircut. She looks good. Fatima always does her hair to perfection. While she was in the chair, I walked the three dogs, one at a time, around the island in the Avenida.

Russ (below) has decided that he wants to be a car dog like Ono and Prickles. The only trouble is that he takes up a lot of room.

Prickles gets squeezed on to the floor or, more often, upgrades himself to a front seat where he insists on getting his head scratched.

We dropped off paint and stencils with May and Ken - for the latter to do the former's boundary marks - before going on to lunch with David and Dagmar. The vet phoned. We'd been hoping desperately that Mary would be back for the weekend but she's still not eating or drinking and it's not feasible to bring her home. I think of Michael Schumacher's family and the long wait they're enduring.

Natasha has worked an extra day to prepare the house for the arrival of Llewellyn and Lucia this weekend. She had barely finished cleaning the windows a second time when a shower arrived - for the second time - to mess them up again.

I stopped off to pick up four bags of cement from Quim Quim in Benafim. Slavic is due back this weekend. Jones wants him to work his stone magic on a couple more of her heavily overgrown beds.

Friday: I've tried to see what plans the cruise companies are making for scheduled Black Sea cruises - having booked one for October (before Mr Putin decided to annex Crimea). So far, they seem to be simply reserving their options.

FRIDAY MIDDAY: The vet has called to say that Mary did not survive the night. I did not know we had so many tears inside us.

Letter from Espargal: 19 April 2014

I was lying on the bed earlier this week, fondling Mary's head and reflecting on her style. (She remains cuddlesome, even after the short back-and-sides she and her equally hairy brother received from me as summer bears down relentlessly upon us.) Mary is highly-strung, smart and an insinuator. Like the other dogs, she hates the wind that batters the house on stormy nights, when nature seems so ill at ease with itself. One such night she insinuated her way on to the bed in search of comfort and reassurance.

And since she found a sympathetic reception on that occasion - it was a horrible storm - she's been insinuating her way on to the bed ever since. As long as she lies at the foot and leaves Ono to occupy the middle ground, we all get a fair night's sleep.

May was in good form on Monday. Although her short-term memory is rather shaky, she can still remember all the verses of the many old songs she loved to sing - and still does, given the opportunity. We lunched at Campina.

Our favourite restaurant, Cassima, is still being refurbished, not that there's anything wrong with Campina. We are spoiled for choice. Monday lunches are May's big thing, the highlight of her week, or so she tells us. The highlight of her summer will be the arrival from Scotland shortly of her nephew, Ken. May has no children of her own and Ken is the apple of her eye.

Tuesday was complicated for several reasons, phone problems not the least of them. There was so much noise on the land-line that it was impossible to hear what callers were saying. I reported it to the PT fault line (which subsequently sent around a man who climbed a pole and sorted things out).

Our Skype phone has also been playing silly buggers. It's one of those that hooks directly into the router. Although it rings, neither we nor the callers can hear each other. I tried resetting the phone - to no avail. Using the computer rather than the phone, I was able to Skype Llewellyn - my guru in such matters - to discuss the problem. Looks like the phone has given up the ghost. He's ordered a new one and will bring it down later this

month. So if you've been trying to phone us or Skype us and we haven't answered, please blame the technology.

Still on this theme, I spent an hour with Marie, trying to help her resolve a computer problem. She was very frustrated because her newly-installed high-speed internet-by-satellite was arriving at her computer at a fraction of the expected velocity.

We decided, after some experimentation with my laptop, that her computer's wifi dongle probably needed upgrading - and indeed this proved to be the case. It's nice to get a problem solved. She and I are now getting close to 20mb/s down and 6 up, which is brilliant by local standards.

To our surprise and dismay during a walk, we found that someone had tried to block our favourite paths with branches.

We were surprised because we had thought them to be rights of way - and dismayed because we had to either find alternative routes or clamber over the obstacles.

The question of access is always a sensitive one in these parts.

Watch this space.

One night we joined the gang at Paradise, a country restaurant, for a birthday celebration. The gang included the Cusack family whom we met in their entirety for the first time. Parents, Tony and Annette, have been commuting to Espargal from their home in Ireland for years. To celebrate the former's 60th birthday, the latter conspired with their three children - scattered around Europe - to arrange a surprise family reunion. (Son Neil works for Airbus in Germany; daughter, Lisa, is attending a commercial pilot training school at Jerez in Spain and son Eric, with H&M, remains in Ireland. Also present was Neil's partner, Franceska.)

After the meal, we led them home by the dirt road that links Alte with our village. Last time we used it, we came across two great wild boar having supper. This time we had no such luck.

THE WAY IT USED TO LOOK

Wednesday brought an early morning meeting with a lawyer concerning a house that Natasha and Slavic have been trying to acquire. Although the house and location are desirable and the price is attractive, the paperwork is not. The declared floorspace - a determiner of local taxes - is rather smaller than the actual area, indicating that the house has been unofficially extended. And the Google Earth street view of the house, taken several years ago, is barely recognisable.

As enticing it is to snap up such a bargain, the buyer of such a property could be left holding the baby if and when the authorities catch on. The authorities are not sympathetic to such impromptu extensions, common though they be in these parts.

That afternoon we went around to the Cusacks to observe the performance of their newly acquired quadrocopter. This is not a species that I'd come across before although a little internet research reveals just how sophisticated and versatile these devices are.

Under Neil's control, the little machine shot up into the air and whizzed off over the house. Its stability was uncanny. Powered by a single small battery, it could hover a couple of metres off the ground as effortlessly as it could power vertically into the air.

Although its control range was limited to a few hundred metres, the quadrocopter was configured to bring itself back to its launch point if it lost contact with its controller.

This story, or at least this chapter, has a sad ending. When Jones dropped into the house on Thursday afternoon, she found the family looking glum. The quadrocopter had gone awol. It had landed in the swimming pool, fizzing its circuits, and then shot off again of its own accord into the wild blue yonder.

I posted a reward notice together with a picture on the village notice board before joining Jonesy and the Cusacks on an extended (and fruitless) search. There's a jungle of greenery covering the hills and the machine could be anywhere.

As you may recall, I maintain an email correspondence with a group of (mostly former) Marist Brothers with whom I trained back in the 60s.They include a sprinkling of atheists, a host of agnostics and a handful of practising Christians, united - like soldiers - by the rigours of their monastic training.

After one of our online discussions, a Christian correspondent sent me a book that sets out to reconcile Christian belief with evolution - no easy task!

My first impressions are not favourable. The author seldom uses two words when five will do, or resorts to a small word when he can find a big one in its stead. Still, there's hope. I read on.

Easter looms. Our thoughts will be with you in your far-flung homes. First I must go around to Pauline's house for a session of reflexology that she swears will improve my complaining elbow. The elbow, as though cowed by the prospect, is feeling better already.

Note from Espargal: 12 April 2014

Sorry folks, there's no blog this week. I spent most of it in London assisting Ann-Christine, an old friend, and her son to arrange and conduct their husband/father's funeral, a skill I've been acquiring reluctantly. Jonesy, who grew up with her, stayed home to hold the fort.

One might also note that summer arrived last Monday. Duvets are gone till winter returns. The dogs pant around their walks. The ticks are biting, the flies are buzzing and the mosquitoes are marshaling their forces. On the other hand, the wild flowers are wonderful.

Letter from Espargal: 5 April 2014

It's been a damp week. April gusted in as wet as March swept out. Four inches of rain fell in three days, six inches in six. And the wind blew and blew and blew; it's still blowing.

It blew so hard that it blew down one of David and Sarah's almond trees in the field below their house. I didn't know that until David's Portuguese neighbour, Silvia, called me to say that the tree was lying across her fence and blocking her driveway. She needed their UK number.

I went over on the tractor to take a look. Silvia pointed out that it had fallen on the spot where her small son waited for the school mini-bus. Sensibly, he hadn't waited there in the storm and to be sure no harm had been done.

I was able to contact David and Sarah to let them know what had happened. Silvia's father promptly carved up the branches and removed the foliage.

JONES AND LEONILDE AT WORK

We visited another Portuguese neighbour, at her invitation, to dig up a couple of pine tree saplings that had sprouted from seed dropping from the tree above. My part was to drive the tractor across with bucket, spade and pick; digging is not my thing. I discovered years ago that it was anathema to my back.

Unashamedly, I left it to Barbara and Leonilde who, between them, dug the saplings out, crouching down beneath the branches of the tree.

We brought them back to plant somewhere in the garden. We will have to choose a spot with care; pine trees tend to grow pretty big.

During a break in the weather, we went down to look at the river, 3 km away at the end of the road that winds down from Espargal into the valley. The water was rushing single-mindedly past, busy and brown, although not exactly in flood in spite of all the rain.

Even so, it will be a day or two before the four-wheel-drive vehicles that conduct pink-skinned tourists through the hills will be able to cross the ford. The season has just opened.

More on our minds for the next day or two will be the Portugal Rally as high-powered cars rip through the countryside.

After very much ado about nothing and six weeks of jetting about the world, as well as hanging around in customs, my long-awaited hikers' GPS finally made an appearance. The device is very clever with a great range of functions.

Fortunately for me, my Dutch neighbour, Nicoline, is high tech and familiar with the product, having set one up for her partner. She downloaded lots of essential software on to mine and showed me how to make the most of it.

MIKE WITH THE GPS AT THE SNACK BAR

Garmin, the suppliers, make great hardware but the preloaded maps are next to useless, presumably because Garmin prefers clients to buy the expensive maps available on its website. (Nicoline has discovered where to get excellent maps for nothing.)

I spent a couple of days acquainting myself with the device before handing it over to our friends and frequent Portugal visitors, Mike and Lyn, who are staying in one of Idalecio's

cottages. They are great walkers as they go in search of birds and flowers.

Idalecio and Sonia invited us down to admire a cottage that they'd refurbished. It looks lovely, ever so much cosier and more inviting than the sombre interior that I'd remembered from a visit several years earlier.

A hole cut through the wall behind the woodstove in the living room allows heat to enter the bedroom and bathroom area, greatly appreciated on these chilly spring evenings. We particularly liked the cottage names, carved on oak plaques.

Monday, as ever, brought May and English classes. We took May to lunch at a favourite restaurant, Cassima. There we were surprised and disappointed to learn that it was the restaurant's last day under the old management.

It was being refurbished before being sold to new owners, and the excellent Russian waitress, who has long looked after us, was leaving to look for a new job. We wished her luck; we will miss her, along with the good food she served us.

Our theme in the English class was the new airport for private jets that Loule's fathers had been planning to build before the financial crisis struck - and is now on hold. Never mind that there is a perfectly good commercial airport at Faro, just 15 minutes away.

A Spanish regional authority had the same idea a few years ago when money still flowed like water. It actually built its new airport - to attract tourists - at a cost of millions. To date, no tourists have landed there. Unabashed, the boss man reckons one day they will come.

We've had to amend the route of our morning walk. The owner of land across which we took a short cut has blocked the route; fair enough, he obviously didn't like the track we were making across it and we now walk round it instead.

The amended route still takes us an hour and brings us back home along much the same path. More taxing is trying to avoid any neighbours with dogs. Bumping into people doesn't present a problem; but bumping into their dogs can be quite awkward.

RAIN CLOUDS OVER BENAFIM

One damp morning the dogs sounded the alarm as we were about to go out. I peered over the balcony to see a car in council colours trying to drive up the steep track beside our fence.

The car contained two officials, a man who remained seated and a young woman who was looking for Casa Nada. As you may recall, we are making yet another attempt to get the place registered and she had come to check it out.

I showed her around the outside and I asked her if she wanted to look inside. Happily, she didn't, although she peered carefully through a window at my tractor and the implements on the walls. She asked me a couple of questions about the borders and the extent of the property before leaving as abruptly as she had arrived.

What she'll make of it is hard to know. We can only keep our fingers crossed that the council doesn't put us through years of agonizing bureaucracy.

SUCCULENT IN GLORIOUS FLOWER

You may gather from my somewhat abrupt style that I'm still dictating rather than typing. I don't enjoy it. It doesn't come naturally. I can't get much beyond a comma before pausing to think what I'm going to say next. The software doesn't abide aaaahhs and umms.

But it's clear that my RSI has come to stay for a while. It's now affecting my left elbow as well as my right and there's no cure for it but to stay away from the computer. I find that almost as hard as going on the wagon.