Letter from Espargal: 12 of 2007

It’s a case of “hold the front page”. There’s great excitement in the village. A digger has been brought into to uncover an “ancient well”, which the villagers are now busy clearing of accumulated dirt. Jones and I saw the digger at work yesterday, ripping up the surrounding cobbles. We thought that it was merely part of replumbing work that was happening in the background and paid little attention.

Today, as we returned from a morning walk, we chanced on a group of villagers gathered at the spot. Closer approach revealed the mouth of the well (at ground level) and Zé Carlos a couple of metres down, hard at work with a hoe and shovel. Each time he filled a bucket with dirt, an assistant would haul it up with a rope and dump the dirt into the back of a tractor. Zé Carlos said he intended to dig down until he struck water a metre or two lower.

The villagers explained that the old well had been covered up in 1935 when the local authorities had built a new well close by to serve the village. The “new” well (still) has a hand-operated wheel that drives a pump that spurts water out of a pipe – a great improvement on rope and bucket. In the intervening years people had forgotten the exact location of the old well.


The council has now decided to expose the old well and to build a wall around the mouth. It’s an historical feature. The villagers believe that the well dates back to the Romans. In evidence they produce a haul of ancient ceramic shards found in the fields as well as – if anyone were still in doubt - a coin dating from the reign of Augustus Caesar. The also point out that the walls of the old well have been worn smooth by the passage of innumerable buckets down the centuries. Who knows?

In another significant development, we have picked, cooked and eaten our first beans of the season. The beans, as always, are excellent even if the crop itself is poor and the rodents have had their share; in fact, more than their share. The plants that I sowed in Sarah and David’s field are dotted with chewed pods. We worked our way along the bean plants, plucking the larger beans. The small ones may yet take heart from the promised rains and swell in size.


At Jones's request I have set up a bench in the south garden, placing it in the shade of a carob tree and using a spirit level to get it exactly right. Jones is very particular about having things level - especially her pictures.

We have head-scratched over a minor puzzle. It concerns a chap who lives in a nearby hamlet and who leads his dogs out each afternoon on a quad-bike. The dogs trot along behind. (A little dog, equipped with doggy goggles, sometimes sits astride the petrol tank). The rider turns off the dirt road that runs through the orchard below us, along a track that, we presumed, must lead him back home. It’s one of the few routes that we’re not familiar with. So we thought we’d follow it.

It led us for a couple of kilometres towards a distant village (Esteval dos Mouros – the Rock Rose plot of the Moors). The area was clearly popular with hunters, whose cartridge cases lay scattered all around. We also came across some spectacular orchids. But we couldn’t find a turn-off that might have led our quad-biker back home. It was as though he vanished into thin air.

The puzzle was solved when I encountered the rider one afternoon and asked him. It appears that he goes for miles, all the way to Esteval dos Mouros and then back by another route. His dogs must be the fittest in the Algarve. Jones and I are resolved to follow the route one day, equipped with the necessary refreshments to see us home.
Alternatively, we might consider hiring the quad-bikes which (the rider explained) he wants to rent out to visitors – although I doubt that the dogs would approve. (Jones, checking my letter, says I can count her out as well.)

A rep came along one afternoon to demonstrate new technology for accessing the internet via the mobile phone network. I had been making enquiries about it on behalf a neighbour who has dial-up internet access. The technology, different from the 3G Connect Card system that I’d been investigating earlier, still depends on the strength of the available signal. Although it’s much slower (and considerably cheaper) than broadband it proved to be 3 times as fast as dial-up here in Espargal. Every so often when I have to use a dial-up link I find myself tearing my hair out in frustration. How did we ever get by?

We’ve had some welcome showers along with an unrelenting, exhausting, nerve-wracking wind. The first of the showers arrived last weekend as I was preparing an evening barbecue. I was able to pull the barbecue cart under the lee of the upstairs patio and to continue grilling without interruption. I was quite pleased with myself. The rain continued overnight – although only a measly 7 millimetres registered in the morning. We need more rain before the onset of the hot months. Already the soil has dried out. Big cracks have opened along the tractor tracks – and this is only March.

Another welcome 7 mms arrived later in the day as we set out to see The Painted Veil. We both liked the film – although I hated the usual distractions. Three English women a few rows away were conversing in stage whispers and consulting their mobile phones. They were clearly irritated when I asked them to turn the phones off. I didn’t point out that they shouldn’t have been on in the first place. A screen announcement at the start of each movie asks the audience to disconnect mobiles and not to converse during the film. It gets about the same level of respect as the speed limit. Dad used to get really bothered by any such distractions and I fear that he passed his botheration genes on to me in their entirety.


Dani and I continued our attack on the Park when he and Natasha made their usual Tuesday appearance. The timber we brought down gave us to two tractor loads of firewood, including half a dozen hollow trunk bases for Jones’s flowers. She uses these as containers for live plants, packing the hollow space with soil. We use them to line the fence and they look superb. Jones spotted several large such bases on the property that Vitor, the mechanic, has been clearing and Vitor was happy for us to have them.

At the end of the day with Dani I found that I would have to take him and Natasha back to Loulé because the evening bus service didn’t run during the school holidays. If I wasn’t best pleased the dogs were thrilled. They love nothing better than a ride in the car. When we got back Jones complained that she hadn’t got a single thing done the whole day. All she had done was to look after her workers - toast and coffee on arrival, followed by morning tea and cake, lunch, and afternoon tea and cake, generally served wherever we’re working.

Apart from this Jones had found herself drawn into conversations with several passing neighbours. It wasn’t that she minded the conversations. She just felt frustrated that she had nothing to show for the passage of the day. She hadn’t even finished digging a hole for a plant. I hugged her and assured her that from our point of view, her day had been a most valuable and appreciated one. Isn’t it strange how we still feel the need to justify our daily existence, even by digging a few holes or picking up some stones.

p.s. The villagers have just come to borrow my submersible pump. I took it and several metres of hose along to the well on the tractor. Last I saw Zé Carlos he was five metres down with water up to the rim of his gumboots.

Letter from Espargal: 11 of 2007

BENAFIM FROM ONO'S PATH

The news this week is of discoveries. Jones and Ono have discovered a path running from the western edge of the village around the side of the hill to the carob trees at the back. And I have discovered two new groups of tongue orchids – serapias - on the fringes of the road leading down to the river.

The path, judging from its overgrown state, is little used. I wasn’t with Jones the afternoon that she came across it. She says she followed Ono until the path reached a tractor track that runs to the bottom of the hill. Accordingly, we’ve called it Ono’s Path. (All our routes have names.) I later spent an hour with secateurs cutting back the bushes. We think the route was once used by farmers and the donkeys required to bear the sacks of carobs back to the village.

As for the serapias, the discoveries are quite exciting. Until now, we’ve been aware only of a single patch of them, growing in the shade of a tree on the far side of the valley. Serapias are probably the rarest of the varieties that we come across. Those we’ve found are hard to identify exactly. A glance at the orchid book lent to us by the Mackrills (regular visitors and orchid experts) shows numerous similar flowers. We did note that ours came with three distinct markings.

After a warm spell and the unwelcome arrival of a few mosquitoes, our weather has turned dry and cold. A wicked wind has whistled down from the Spanish mountains (where truck drivers have been caught in heavy snow). The benefit has been the bluest of skies and the dispersal of the pollution haze that normally hangs over the coastal plain. Jones agreed that we should have a fire in the evenings, even though it means that she will once again have to scrub the glass panels of the wood burning stove.

Last weekend we had a brief thunderstorm as I was putting together two garden benches on the front patio. Thunderstorms were a frequent and unwelcome part of our lives when we lived at the Quinta - a real menace to our electrical systems. Now, for some reason, they seldom occur. That on Sunday, although brief, was a cracker.

A feature of such weather is its effect on Stoopy, our small black bitch. Stoopy has become Jones’s dog as Ono has taken to me. Where Jones goes her shadow is seldom far behind. At night, Stoopy curls up on Jones’s side of the bed. But in the event of any explosive noise - hunters, thunder or fireworks - Stoopy abandons Barbara for me. During the storm she followed me out into the rain when I went to look for a drill bit in Casa Nada. Her switch of allegiance is quite blatant and unapologetic –a bit like the Vicar of Bray’s. She simply turns to Jones for love and me for protection.

The benches (that I was putting together) were a bargain from a big hardware store, Like much of the stuff on sale, they were made in China. Jones wants to put one under an olive tree in the south garden. I want the other to go in the wooded area that Dani and I have cleared of excessive saplings, at the top of the Graça field. We have called it “The Glade” – a place to linger over a baggy on a summer evening.

THE PARK

This week Dani and I turned our attention to The Park, an acre-plus of rugged hillside, that rises above the house. It takes us about a week each spring to trim back the trees, strim the terraces, rip out the thorn bushes and generally make the place presentable. It’s an area I love, with little dells to be found among the boulders, trees and bushes. It would be the perfect place for children to play hide and seek.

In its efficient use of space, nature doesn’t waste even the little holes and fissures in the rocks. These collect dust and droppings in which, after a time, seeds sprout and plants spring up. Sometimes trees establish themselves in the rock. Their roots must find a way through to the earth below.

One evening I watched a BBC TV documentary about the mis-selling of products to bank customers. The pictures were filmed secretly by a journalist who got a job at Barclays, which failed to check her credentials or those of a colleague of hers. As a Barclays customer, I was fascinated to see managers and trainers instructing recruits how to cold-call, mislead clients and generally flog the bank’s products. What counted was simply meeting sales targets and making commissions, especially by persuading customers to change to new fee-paying accounts. For this change no signature was required.

Some customers found that their accounts had been changed for them without their knowledge or consent and arrived to confront the bank over the unexpected charges that appeared on their statements. I understood for the first time why, when I recently called Barclays, the woman who handled my inquiry said she was going to change my account to a better one. I insisted that she leave it alone. I have since written to Barclays, recounting the incident and expressing my unhappiness.

Naturally, the corporate PR exec, who was given the opportunity to reply to the revelations, disowned her employees’ tactics. Barclays was a service oriented establishment and any rogue elements would be weeded out, she assured us.

JASMINE IN BLOOM

Another evening we went with English neighbours to a garden exhibition in Faro. It was the opening night and there were almost as many exhibitors as visitors when we arrived. Jones is interested in installing a small swimming pool, a number of which (fibre-glass models) were on display. I was more taken by the Jacuzzis, some of which were almost as expensive as the pools. An enthusiastic salesman hurriedly put out his cigarette to explain the benefits of the 2-person 10-thousand euro model (made of the very best Canadian components). I brought Jones along for a look but she’s not into jacuzzis and thought it unnecessary for me to have raised the salesman’s hopes.

The night was cold and after 45 minutes of looking around, we took ourselves to a on-site restaurant with some welcome radiant gas heaters to warm our bones. There were few other diners, excepting a scrum of VIPs from Faro Camara, tucking into tables of snacks. Apart from Ollie’s rather tough smoked-sausage, it was a good supper. And the dogs were grateful for the remains of the sausage (although we did wonder later whether it was the cause of Ono’s vomiting up his supper in the corner of the bedroom some time after midnight.Yuck!).

A two-man team has started work on the foundations of the house that the Dutch couple will be building at the corner of our road. A perfectly carved trench marks the limits of the house, with deep holes to take the bases of reinforced concrete pillars. (This is earthquake country.) Watching the progress is going to keep much of the village busy for months to come.

Letter from Espargal: 10 of 2007

VIEW OF THE HOUSE

I was reflecting this week how different people are. (I do not expect to win any prizes for this insight.) The immediate cause of my reflections was a BBC TV series about a cooking competition. The final programme had been drawn to our attention by passing neighbours, one of whom had been following the series and was anxious to be home in time to prepare dinner before the final.

Jonesy turned it on out of interest (although she awarded it only 3 out of 10 for compulsiveness). We watched three earnest finalists trying to outcook each other, among a flurry of “amazings” and “incredibles” from the judges, along with a “brave choice” and even a “miraculous”. I confess that watching people cook and eat does nothing to jangle my genes. Given the choice I would have preferred the finals of the snail-racing championships.

Immediately after the programme came the 2nd leg of the Uefa Cup clash between Benfica (one of Portugal’s top football teams) and Paris St Germain. The match was played in Lisbon before tens of thousands of passionate fans. They were desperate for their beloved team to overcome the deficit acquired during the first leg in Paris. Now this was unmissible television - incredible feats of skill, amazing passes, brave tackles and miraculous saves. When Benfica won with a late penalty kick the fans went absolutely delirious. I was rather pleased myself. (Jones had left me to it and retired to bed.)

ON THE ROAD

I hope that I do not give the impression that I am a dreary football fan with no appreciation of food. This week I was the chef at a barbecue, the results of which were acclaimed by all concerned. What’s more, I can talk at length about the state of my beans, now reaching maturity in David and Sarah’s field. Jones has picked a few and we had them in a salad one evening. They are as tasty as ever.

However, and this is the bad news, there are very few actual beans on the plants. The locals tell me that the lean crop is the result of the poor rains this year (following the torrents that fell towards the end of last year). One would have thought that there isn’t a great deal to growing beans. But not only do the plants require the right amount of rain to perform, they require it at the appropriate time.

THE GRACA FIELD

One begins to understand why farmers are keener on getting subsidies than growing food. I was listening to a report on the radio about how the Scottish authorities have permitted farmers, who get paid for not growing crops, to sell the subsidy contracts while retaining the land that they get paid for leaving fallow. Crazy! Before I abandon agriculture, let me add that Barbara’s unsubsidised garlic plants and her new vine cuttings appear to be coming along well. Her flowers are a joy.

As I was saying, I had cause to reflect how different people are. Another reflection was that half a lifetime of living with Jones had not diminished our (mainly amicable) disagreements on all kinds of subjects.

It happens that I am a fast eater, someone who is disinclined to linger over meals when there is so much waiting to be done – even if it’s having a siesta. Jones has been trying to slow me down. When she offered the opinion that eating slowly reduced one’s calorie intake, I was understandably sceptical. Since calories are calories, I could see no rational reason why the calorie content of a given amount of food should depend on the speed of its consumption.

VILLAGERS

When I am particularly anxious to dismiss a Jones argument, I google the issue to prove the point. (After all, if one finds that one has the wrong end of the stick, there is no requirement to return to the subject.) Jones, who is not a regular internet user, is at a disadvantage here.

However, she is a great fan of a British magazine, The Week, copies of which she gets from a friend. When Jones comes across an interesting article she cuts it out and files it (her librarian instincts die hard) or leaves it on my desk. You may imagine with what relish she left me a report on the calorie reduction that could be obtained by slower eating.

It’s okay. I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong. As I tell her, if I were right all the time our marriage would be unbearable. How could you possibly live with somebody who was always right? There is even an argument for deliberately getting things wrong from time to time just to make one’s partner feel better.

Jonesy might have suffered a few doubts about the contents of The Week after reading an article on 10 other uses for one’s microwave. These included softening old mascara with a 40 second zap in the oven. She tried it and succeeded only in frying the mascara brush.

HARD TIMES

Dani and Natasha are making a double visit this week. He is trying to earn some extra cash before (hopefully) finding work with a carpenter. Natasha works an additional day each month to help her find the money that she now has to pay to the social services as part of her employment contract.

Dani and I have been using the tractor to clear young saplings from the heavily wooded small piece of land that I recently learned was mine. The trees are mainly wild olives and almonds. Unless they have been grafted they are regarded by the locals as little better than weeds or firewood. Dani winds a chain around the base of the young trees which I then rip out with the tractor.

Young as they are, the trees are well rooted. Several times they held fast while the tractor’s front wheels reared in the air at the strain. After a while the heavy coupling holding the chain broke and then the chain itself broke – three times. We have had to work with shorter and shorter sections. (As mentioned, there’s no point in just cutting the trees off at the base because they simply sprout again.)

Early in the week, Vitor arrived at the gate on his quad-bike, towing a small trailer to which he’d attached Olly’s non-functioning strimmer. Vitor showed me the cause of the trouble - the small plastic choke which had broken, causing the strimmer to cut out within a few seconds of firing. I had to persuade him to take a few euros for his troubles. A new plastic choke is on order.

I have also – finally – installed Fintan’s computer in his home in full working order. It took the expertise of Inforomba to sort out the virus update problem we’d run into. At the same time the computer shop added some extra ram and installed SP2 – so the visit was well worthwhile. To my embarrassment, when I first took the computer back to Fintan, it froze solid as soon as we tried to link to the internet. Another visit to Inforomba and an updated driver has resolved the problem.

Tonight we are going to Faro for a concert, the second in the series of Beethoven’s works.

Letter from Espargal: 9 of 2007

FEEDING THE CATS AT DAVID AND SARAH'S PLACE.
Quite a lot of stuff has happened this week, one way and another. For instance, one afternoon Jones put her pick-axe through the water pipe to Casa Nada. This happened as I was discussing a computer problem over the phone with a neighbour - and moments before I was due to run Dani and Natasha down to the bus stop. I can tell from the way Jones bellows “Terrrrryyyyy” that she’s run into an urgent problem. I made my apologies to the neighbour and went to take a look. The jet of water that was shooting into the air would have delighted the hearts of any budding public fountain engineers.

In view of the imminent arrival of the bus, I turned the water off at the pump-house as an interim measure before driving our workers to the bus stop (dogs in the back seat as usual; they think they now travel in the car by right). I got back to hear from Jones that she had confided the problem to neighbours, who were walking past the gate as they do on their circuit each day. Moments later, they turned up in the car with Fintan, another villager, who happens to be a retired plumber.

It so happened that Fintan had come along a few days earlier to take a look at a different plumbing problem, a leak in the pumphouse. It was only a small job, he explained, but he needed a couple of parts to fix it – which he subsequently obtained. Within five minutes he had cut and capped the holed pipe and in another five he had repaired the leak in the pumphouse. I was most grateful and said so – wondering whether the gentlemen would care to share a beer. They declined my offer although they accepted a large bar of Toblerone chocolate – our one and only, as I told them - that Jones offered them instead.

Happily, Fintan was slightly in my debt in view of my considerable assistance to him this past fortnight with his computer. He ran into a problem with a free security programme, which I resolved by stripping it off and replacing it (at his cost) with Kaspersky’s security suite. Well, I sort of resolved it because the new programme works fine but it won’t update.

NAKED MAN ORCHIDS. In fact, I was back at Fintan’s place this morning while John, another neighbour, who is a computer professional, tried to fix the update problem. In spite of much effort and cleaning up of the hard disk, he failed. As a result I will now have to take Fintan’s computer into my computer shop, which specialises in Kaspersky. At least, if I haven’t actually sorted out any problems, I have shown lots of good will – which, I think you’ll agree, at the end of the day, is what really counts.

I have also been helpful to another neighbour whose strimmer wasn’t working. After explaining to him what generally needs to be done – clean the plug and filter, replace old petrol etc – I actually went along, prompted by Jones, to help him. We did all the necessary and the strimmer fired first time. Well, it sort of gurgled and died. After that it just coughed uselessly. I offered to take it down to Vitor, the village mechanic, who nearly always manages to sort these things out. As I say, when push comes to shove, it’s the good will that matters more than results.

EARLY PURPLE ORCHID.
Jones – coming back to the damaged pipe – was most apologetic for her actions, especially as she had known that the pipe ran through the section of the garden concerned. I didn’t feel that the apologies were necessary but it was quite useful to have her feeling apologetic. This is because it would seem that not only had I inadvertently poisoned some of her favourite plants the previous week but I had also scarified a precious cutting while cleaning up the vege patch with the tractor.

This cutting, which had been given to her by Leonhilda - a Portuguese neighbour – was evidently a very special plant and likely to be irreplaceable. Jones was severely upset to have had it rooted up and she shared her displeasure with me. A couple of days later she later came across the cutting still attached to a clod of earth and has replanted it in the hope that it may sprout anew.

WOODCOCK ORCHID.
I reported the situation to Leonhilda, who has given Jones more cuttings as well as some eggs from her hens to thank the pair of us for my work in cleaning up her (adjacent) field at the same time as I was scarifying mine. Like most of the farmers in the village, her husband has an older (two-wheel drive) tractor that struggles on the steep slope. What’s more, he hasn’t been very well or felt inclined to tackle strenuous work.

Another gift, a bottle of olive oil, came from the strange couple (Chico and Dina) whom we encountered ambling along the main road in the drizzle last Sunday afternoon on our return from Hans the baker’s place in Benafim. After encouraging a reluctant Stoopy to join Jones in the front seat and an even more reluctant Ono to occupy the rear of the vehicle, we shoe-horned the couple into the back seat. Dina is a very large lady and Chico is a very old man. Neither of them is exactly supple.

WILD TULIPS.
On our arrival at their cottage Chico insisted that I should wait outside while he hurried in to fetch me something. It turned out to be 5 litres of newly-pressed oil. It was, he insisted, very good. And he spoke truly. I would much rather have left it with them but you can’t argue with Chico. If you do something for him, he does something for you. We are still working our way gradually and pleasurably through the 15 litres of fig liquor with which he’s rewarded me for various other favours.

On Monday night we went to Faro to see Dream Girls. We thought it was very well done and that Jennifer Hudson deserved her Oscar. I can’t pretend that it was my kind of music or that I enjoyed the company of a gaggle of teenyboppers who spent most of the film chatting, munching popcorn and consulting their mobiles.

Another night, Tuesday I think, I woke Jones around midnight (at her request) to come on to the patio to admire the eclipse of the moon. It was a full eclipse, visible across the length and breadth of Europe. The media had spoken about a “blood-red orb” - a bit over the top although it was certainly a striking phenomenon. We watched as the moon’s left flank began to glisten as it emerged from the eclipse and the light crept ever so slowly across its face.

The main news of the week, I think, is the hardest to convey. It’s the onset of the orchid season. The dull orchids have been out for weeks. But Jones has now spotted the first mirror orchids. On the path below the house she found Early Purples and Woodcocks although the latter were outshone by a grouping that I found on the road out of the village.

DAWN OVER VALAPENA.
Orchids apart, the fields are ablaze with wild flowers. Some hide themselves under the trees or among the rocks. We never know when we’re about to stumble across some magnificent new specimen. I wish you were here to share some of our pleasure in these simple things.

Letter from Espargal: 8 of 2007

This has been a mainly agricultural week. It has taken me the better part of two afternoons to clean up the Casanova and Graça fields (named after their former owners), both of which were disappearing under a mass of winter vegetation. If you thought this was easy work you’d be wrong.

The first step is to remove the link-box from the back of the tractor and attach the scarifier, a process that takes (me) at least 15 minutes and a lot of effort – sometimes grazed knuckles. A scarifier is a plough-like implement that rips out vegetation and turns over the soil. Unlike a plough, it doesn’t create furrows. (It tends to hook on buried rocks and tree roots, leaving the tractor wheels spinning.)

I watched a TV programme this week in which three mega tractors attached and shed their implements in a matter of seconds - just a matter of click-on and click-off. Nobody in Espargal has a tractor like that. Here one has to physically detach the hydraulic lift bar and the lower forked bars that support the implement. It’s best done on a level surface (if you can find one). Once the non-required implement has been removed, one has to back the tractor slowly and carefully up to the item to be attached. Unless the tractor is lined up exactly, it’s all but impossible to fasten the scarifier (and it weighs a ton). Gloves and a heavy iron bar are advisable.

After attaching the scarifier and tensioning the supporting bars one is ready to get to work. In a perfect world the field to be “ploughed” should be free of rocks and trees and level. Ours are real world fields; they slope and are dotted with rocks and trees. That makes life awkward, especially as the protective bar over my seat cannot hinge down (as new ones can) to avoid catching low branches.

It’s toughest working at the top of the fields where the slope is steepest. It would be simplest simply to work from top to bottom but one is meant to plough along the contour of the slope to avoid dragging the soil down.
At times I lean over the side of the tractor like a yachtsman, a posture that provokes merriment among the locals. Even so, the results of my efforts have won me praise. “You plough just like a Portuguese farmer,” a neighbour, Maria, assured me as we met on the road. (Half the women in the village are called Maria.) This is no half hearted compliment.

We took the opportunity to ask Maria about a small building which is springing up across the road from her house. Any such construction is of interest to other villagers – i.e. us. Maria explained that it was a shed intended to take a machine either to shell almonds or to grind carob beans – it wasn’t clear to us.

Like the builders of other sheds in the village, the owner of this one has not thought it necessary to go through the arduous and lengthy planning process required by the authorities. Understandably, people hereabouts prefer to avoid such cumbrous bureaucracy wherever possible. It is slightly ironic, however, that the man concerned is suspected of tipping off the building inspector about a garage that a neighbour was erecting (after the neighbour succeeded in buying a small field that both men desired).


Jones, for her part, has been labouring long and hard to remove poisoned triffids, the corpses of which have been piled on our burgeoning weed heap. “Triffids” is her name for the large broad-leafed plants that invade the place every winter. They grow to nearly two metres in height and simply take the place over (as per the next picture).

I spent two afternoons going around the property zapping them with Grammox. Two or three days later they started to turn brown and to droop – an ugly sight. Jones was disturbed (a) because we were expecting visitors and she wanted the garden to look its best and (b) because the poison had zapped a few desirable plants in the process – a case of friendly fire.

She pointed these innocent victims out to me at length, lamenting their sad state and emphasising the enormity of my actions. I know how those guys feel who sprayed agent orange all over Vietnam.

Just across the fields from us, my beans are slowly coming to maturity on David and Sarah’s plot. They ought to be ready to pick next month. Every time I pass them I resolve to return the same day to weed them and then promptly forget about my resolution.

A model example of how to tend a vegetable garden is set by elderly neighbours – a couple in their eighties - at the bottom of the village. The soil in their garden has been dug over until it has reached a smooth texture. Young plants nestle in a shallow depression of earth. Each pea plant is supported by a stick. Tender shoots are covered at night by upturned 5-litre water bottles. These are removed the following morning to allow the young plants to bathe in the spring sunshine. It is all very impressive.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday brought the usual classes. After each class I slipped down the road to Inforomba’s computer shop. First I went to purchase a Kaspersky anti-virus suite for a neighbour whom I’d talked into buying it to replace his freebie. (The suite promptly found a host of nasties on his hard disk and deleted them - satisfaction there.) But it was the Portuguese version of the program and the neighbour speaks little Portuguese. So back I went to try to replace it with an English one (easily done). What I couldn’t sort out – and Inforomba couldn’t help me – was a problem with the update function. I’ll have to take the neighbour’s computer into the shop next week.

I fear that not all is well with my subconscious, not to judge by my dreams. In one frequently recurring dream I find myself wandering around a huge building looking for someone or something – generally the newsroom. When I find it, either there’s nowhere for me to sit or the typewriter doesn’t work and I have to put a bulletin on air in an impossibly short time. In my last such dream, my boss said she was giving the workers lots of stick. “But not enough for some”, I replied. At this everybody laughed. I considered it a very witty reply, even when I woke up.

In another dream I was going to dine with several friends, only one of whom I clearly recall. (I shall let him remain anonymous.) He was querulous and accused me of “having a high regard for my own opinions”. Tired of his nonsense I proclaimed: “This is too silly,” and walked out, leaving him to dine alone. That was very satisfying.

If any readers can usefully play Moses to my troubled Pharaoh, their responses will be most kindly considered.

(Sunset - moonrise over Valapena)
Jonesy was walking the dogs the other day when she met an English neighbour who was walking hers. Suddenly, the dogs went for each other, pulling Jonesy over as they did so. I wasn’t there. She says she had the devil of a time trying to get up again and to separate them. She was not best pleased with her little darlings. Fortunately, little harm was done except to the owners’ nerves.

Letter from Espargal: 7 of 2007

It is not often that I can report a major development. Today is an exception. Let me come to the point. Both Casa Nada and the wooden shed (referred to by Jones as the “work chalet”) have at last been tidied up. This big project has been on the to-do list for months (years?), and its completion is significant. For as long as I can remember Jones has been on at me to tackle it. (“When are you going to …..” etc?) And I have been putting the job off for a rainy day. Except, that it was never done on a rainy day because it was impractical to move the contents out into the rain.

The wooden shed was erected at the same time as the house was built. Its purpose was to contain whatever would not fit in the house. However, the shed soon proved unequal to the task. As one object after another migrated inside it, humans became confined to the small remaining space just inside the door. (The rodents, whose poos spotted the floors and shelves, obviously still managed to get around.) The end result was that 90 per cent of the contents became invisible. If items could be found at all, it was only by tossing other items into new heaps. It was bad news.


This problem, we thought, would be resolved by the rehabilitation of Casa Nada - the Nothing House – so called because it doesn’t officially exist. It was once a dwelling on the property. By the time it came into our possession it had been reduced to four roofless walls over a pile of muck and the remnants of tiled floors. Idalecio and helpers restored it, creating two small rooms and one large room. For me, it’s a storage area – a barn. For Jones, it’s a dream guest cottage to be. She would love to install a small bathroom and other amenities.

We have compromised. One small room is allocated to Jones. The other small room is my tool and paint storage area. One half of the large room accommodates my tractor. The other half has alternated between being an informal barbeque dining area and a space in which to keep my trailer. Jones preferred the former arrangement and I the latter. Well, the trailer has now been covered by a tarpaulin and thrust outside to take its chances with the elements.

What inspired the great clean-up – returning to my theme – was the need to find additional duties for Natasha, our once-a-week Russian maid. As the result of the labour contract the pair of us were led to sign in the erroneous belief that it would help her obtain legal status, Natasha has to pay 33 euros a month to social security ( I have to pay 66 euros). In short, she needed to earn some extra cash and we agreed that she would work an extra day once a month.

Thus it was done. All Friday long the pair of us laboured away, moving stuff in and out. Natasha swept, oiled and vacuumed. She also helped me sling some additional chicken wire over a section of the carport where the outside cats (Squeaker and Squawker) love to rest up on the shade-cloth – to the cloth’s clear detriment. Jones did her thing in the garden, as well as feeding neighbouring cats and taking a neighbour’s dog for a walk as she does each day.


Natasha and Dani were here earlier in the week as well. Dani and I continued clearing the Graça field, turning boughs into firewood, branches into mulch and the useless left-overs into ash. It was a big job and still awaits completion. We also thinned out the many saplings in the upper area of the field, the section that I only recently learned was mine. Most of the saplings were wild olives and almonds. It’s no good just cutting them down as they promptly sprout again. So Dani wound a heavy chain around their base and I hauled them out root and branch with the tractor. We must have extracted at least 30 and there are as many still to do.

On Thursday I fetched an elderly friend of Jones’s and took them to Alte for a catch-up lunch. While they dined, I repaired with the dogs to Luis’s café where Luis was kind enough to allow me to plug my (flat battery) notebook computer into the elderly extension cord that already bore much of his establishment’s electrical burden.

Luis’s is our favourite hide-away, slightly dog-eared and down-at-heel. Luis is to be found behind the bar and his wife in the kitchen. Among other things they serve excellent home-made medronho and the famous Alte fig and almond tart (of which none better). We normally seat ourselves outside under the orange trees.

We went there last Sunday, as well, to take in the Alte carnival. Such was the crush that Jones had to carry Stoopy. Participants had gone to great trouble to dress up in exotic costumes (rather than following the example of the bare-breasted Loulé samba dancers whose attractive figures are still leaping about on the front page of this week’s Algarve Resident).


While we sipped our coffees and medronhos I took a picture of a young English girl whose parents were seated nearby and who amused herself by jumping up to grab oranges from the tree. We have recently seen Flags of our Fathers and, you never know, I thought the right picture might lead to fame and fortune.

Some time is passed each day in conversation with the neighbours who stroll this way. Ollie and Marie come past twice a day with their dog, Poppy (and often with a neighbour’s dog in tow as well). Dona Catarina, well into her eighties, uses our road for her twice daily constitutional (it’s the only level road on the upper part of the hill). She never fails to inform us that she is not allowed to sit down for 30 minutes after taking her pills. With her are often to be found her daughter, Leonhilda (a grandmother herself) and Maria of the Conception (her cousin I think) and their various dogs. (Everybody in Espargal is related to just about everybody else.) We generally have a little chat and, if we’re not careful, we get invited back to Maria’s place for cake and fig liquor.

The German builder, who is to construct the new house at the end of our road, has returned to offload a truckful of equipment but hasn’t yet made a start, possibly because the intermittent drizzle this week. The ground is still muddy. Indeed, my tractor has been leaving a trail of mud from along the road from the exit of the Graça field to the house.

Now it’s Saturday, going on for lunch. The sun is shining gloriously across the valley, with a few big black patches beneath the drifting clouds. We rose late this morning after a concert last night to which we took our Dutch lady neighbours. After breakfast we did our “all the way round” walk. It takes an hour plus. We’ve done it in an hour but that’s a real rush and the dogs don’t get a chance to sniff anything. Today we admired the orchids (only the “dull” variety are out yet) and the bloom of the bee-busy hazy-blue wild rosemary that dots the hillside. We live in a lovely part of the world.

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.