Letter from Espargal: 34 of 2010

Welcome to October. Did you notice, I wonder, how quickly September passed following the drag of both July and August? This may be partly because September has been such a busy month. (Although the passage of time is somewhat relative to the motion of an observer [Einstein] it’s seriously relative to pleasant weather and the amount of stuff one has to fit into it [Sole].)

Take this past week for example. Valapena has been a veritable hive of activity. Hard at work here, apart from ourselves, have been Dinis the metalworker, Nelson the painter and Steve & Luis, the fencers. Accommodating the trucks of all three one day was no mean feat.

Dinis and his sidekick arrived to install the safety rail that we ordered for the south patio. It’s somewhat stouter than I imagined because, as Dinis explained, thinner rails had bent under their own weight and would not have supported anyone leaning upon them. Even so, the rail is all but invisible behind the aluminium frame of the glass doors and takes a weight off my mind. I had visions of someone falling a metre or more on to the cobbles and the rocks that line them, with the most unpleasant results.

Nelson has been hard at work the whole week. It has not been the painting as such that’s taken the time but the patching of the tracery of cracks that spider-web around the plaster. Apart from this, there’s the finickitiness of using a different colour on the window and door frames, along with the molding on the platibanda (a raised design on the upper wall of many Portuguese houses).

Nelson’s method is to paint an outline around all such molding and then to fill in with a roller. He’s a meticulous worker, with an enviable eye for a straight line. I’ve never seen him spill a drop of paint. He doesn’t bother to put down plastic to protect the floor and doesn’t need to. The biggest problem he’s faced is the absence of his partner and the demands of other clients waiting for his services. I’ve been assisting him as best I can.

Along the borders of the property, meanwhile, Steve and Luis have been carrying on with the fence. They were grateful to pile the several rolls of fencing on to the tractor for delivery to the site.

All the poles are painted and capped and the fence along the (easy) eastern boundary is complete. The steep and challenging southern boundary remains. Jones doesn’t much like the sense of being enclosed. For my part, I can’t wait to have a large, fenced area in which the dogs can run securely to their hearts’ content.

At the end of the day, the workers gather for a beer and a chat. With afternoon temperatures still in the upper twenties, a cold lager makes for a refreshing finish to a day’s work.

Another project underway is to install a dish-washer and some new cupboards in the kitchen. For this we went back to the outfit that did the initial installation, a group with whose work we were well pleased. After some discussion of the options we’ve approved their quote and given them a firm order. Installation is due for mid-November.

Jones has spent hours fine-tuning two areas close to the house, the former pigpen and the old sheepfold. The raggedy and overgrown appearance of both have long irritated her. So with trowel, rake and pick, she has spent days levelling them, removing hundreds of stones in the process, and planting succulents around the borders. The sheepfold now looks brilliant and its soft surface is much favoured by the dogs for sunbathing. For its part the pigpen has been turned into a rock garden.

I regret to say that my wife has gone down with a scratchy throat and a cold. “Gone down” is not the best description as, in Jones fashion, she has carried on regardless. She doesn’t believe in being ill. I should add that picking up bugs (that she shrugs off) is my traditional role and for once (touch wood) I seem to have avoided the lurgy – thus far, anyhow.

We have stayed in touch by email with the German archaeological group that had been working nearby. They moved on a fortnight ago to another site, just west of Messines, where we went to visit them one hot afternoon. We stopped nearby to purchase a box of icecreams. They were a hit. The workers downed tools and piled into them with relish.

The team leader, Dennis Graen, explained what they’d uncovered – the lower walls of what appeared to be part of a Roman villa. Water channels ran beneath the former floor. The walls extended into the adjoining property whose owner, to their great regret, had refused them permission to dig there.

Their finds included numerous bricks and tiles, some ceramic shards, a coin (an ancient forgery said Dennis) and a small piece of fine glasswork. The real treasure was fragment of black ceramic, which was at least 200 years older than the coin, indicating that the property went back much further than the 3rd/4th century AD.

Back in Espargal, the annual expatriate boules championships were again hosted by Sarah and David. I can report, with due modestly, that Jones and I demolished the opposition and walked away with the trophy. In-between games we scratched the heads of the two huge and curious puppies in the adjoining property and treated ourselves to the fine lunch provided.

On the doggy front, we have acquired a Kong toy, a roly-poly biscuit feeder with a small hole in one side. The aim is to divert one’s pet by filling the feeder with small biscuits and encouraging the animal to extract them by pushing it around. Raymond, easily the brightest of the dogs, quickly got the idea and did well on the proceeds. The others looked on unenthusiastically, in spite of Jones’s efforts to educate them in its use.

Now it’s a cloudy Sunday with a promise of rain in the air. This morning we heard a 25-minute interview with Pastor Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who had threatened to burn 200 copies of the Koran. I listened in fascination. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009zklg Pastor Jones, author of "Islam is of the Devil" admitted that he hadn't read the Koran nor did he have any knowledge of the religion – he didn’t find it necessary. All Muslims (and adherents of other non-Christian religions) were doomed to go to hell – and much else in similar vein. Hoo boy!

Letter from Espargal: 33 of 2010

You will be aware that Espargal plays host to few world leaders; we do not often hit the headlines. The bottom line is that Espargal isn’t a place where a great deal happens, other than weather, flies and carobs. And, as I’ve said, that’s how we like it – apart from the flies and sometimes the weather. But, all that may be about to change. It depends what Dr Dennis Graen and his team uncover in Ermenio Palmeira’s lower field.

So far, it isn’t much – the excavation - two large holes - has revealed a few walls, a few ceramics and a few coins. What’s clear from the coins and the ceramic fragments is that the team is unearthing the remains of a Roman building – whether a villa or merely an agricultural store of some kind they don’t yet know. Not enough of it has been exposed.

Let me interrupt my flow to say that we went down last Sunday afternoon to take a look, having been advised by Ermenio that a team from Germany was at work on his land. We took the tractor because if we take the car the dogs want to come and because we were not sure exactly what terrain we had to cross.

For once, Jones agreed to ride in the box. She wouldn’t sit on a little chair like a good Portuguese wife but she did make herself comfortable on a towel on the floor, hoping like mad that nobody would see her. It’s hard to look dignified riding in the box of a tractor (although many Portuguese wives seem to manage it well enough).

First thing, of course, we bumped into neighbours, Fintan and Pauline and then Zeferino. All concealed their surprise as best they could as my wife tried to explain the circumstances and make casual conversation. It’s not every day that Jones is caught on the back of a tractor. (I was going to write in flagrante delicto but she objected!)

Anyhow, with the help of Eduardo – Ermenio’s grandson – we found the dig and introduced ourselves to the diggers. They are a team from a German university, under the direction of Dr Graen (an archaeologist whose extensive work in Portugal became clear with a little later googling on the internet).

The mountain of stones on one side of the dig and of earth on the other bore testimony to their efforts. They had dug down between one and two metres, uncovering walls, floors – one of them waterproof - and a recess for wine or olive oil. A detailed record was being taken of exactly where anything was found and everything lay.

Dr Graen showed us a coin and how the (frag- mented) roof tiles had been shaped to fit into and over one another to make a secure water-proof roof. He estimated that the ruins dated from the 3rd or 4th century AD (CE if you prefer). The hillside setting was typical for a Roman villa, he explained, close to a water source and overlooking a fertile plain.

We were fascinated and, not for the first time, I wished that I could understand German (in order to follow the convers- ations of other members of the group). To our regret, the team was preparing to move to another site before returning home.

Afterwards, Ermenio invited Jones to take a look at the mini-museum that I described last week – and then invited the pair of us into his living room. It is the first time we’ve entered the house and we were intrigued by its old floor tiles – reminiscent of those at the Quinta - and many antiques.

Also hard at work have been our fence erectors. They set themselves up in the park after I took down their cement mixer and half a dozen loads of sand and stone. Using a really handy little self-powered barrow – more accurately, a muck-truck – they delivered the fresh cement to the holes they’d dug earlier and erected a couple of dozen poles on the eastern field.

That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to dig holes in the steep, rocky southern flank. After spending a couple of hours trying to break rocks with their small jackhammer, they went away to hire a larger one – which did the job (as well as serving to destroy a couple of protruding rocks on the fringes of my tractor track). It was, they said, the toughest fence they’d ever had to erect, full of steps and bends. I believe them. It’s all I can do to scramble up the slope.

Another visitor was Nelson the painter who, having done a great job on the house interior is now about to tackle the exterior. He came around to suss out the job and a second time to clean the paintwork with a pressure hose. There are some bad cracks that need filling and multiple minor cracks that need to be covered before the final coats are applied. We have made a couple of trips to our paint supplier to decide on colours.

We really liked the original colour that we painted the house but the formula for this vanished some years ago when the supplier started using a computer-controlled colour-mixer. We came home with a couple of 1-litre sample colours to try out on the walls before making a final choice.

MIST OVER ESPARGAL

Autumn – as I recently predicted – has arrived at last and I love it to bits. The shy autumn flowers are peeking and poking out of the soil along our trails. Our days hover around the mid-20s and our nights the mid-teens. If only it would stay that way! We’ve even had a day of (very) light showers, just enough to dampen the surface and assure the plants that the worst is over for another year.

MOONRISE

I have finished reading a book called “Jesus, Interrupted” by a biblical scholar named Bart D. Ehrman. Co-incidentally, I saw him interviewed this week in a TV programme about the many “gospels” that didn’t make it into the New Testament canon. The book was a fascinating read – intended for people who want to look behind scenes. I write (a bit like Ehrman himself) as a once devout biblical student who has lost the devotion but not the fascination – if that’s allowable.

GRAPES FROM ERMENIO

Now I'm onto Richard Dawkins' latest, The Greatest Show on Earth, (courtesy of Cathy) which tries to show doubters why evolution is not just a theory but a fact of history. Dawkins, whose writing skills I have long admired, gets irritated beyond words by the creationists and intelligent designers - and little wonder.

Letter from Espargal: 32 of 2010

This week hasn’t been without its excitement. Take Friday morning, for instance. At 2 a.m. my right thigh was seized with cramp; I groaned out of bed in the dark and made my way through to the study where I clung miserably on to the exercise bike until the cramp went away. (The bike is used more for hanging the washing than exercising but that’s another story.)

At 3 a.m. while my brother, displaying a toothless lower jaw, was explaining to me that he visited a Brazilian dentist for pain relief, Bobby rent the night asunder with a howl of protest at some passing animal. Returning to the study I managed to half fill a pail with water that I hurled down from the upper patio in the direction of the howl. Bobby, by that time, having set off a chorus of alarm among the village curs, had retired once more to his bed. Cursing his hide, I followed suit.

At 5 a.m. a distant thunderstorm (which had not been forecast) broke over the mountains, flickering and drumming against the sky.

At 6 a.m. , following a dazzling flash of lightning and clap of thunder, I arose again and pulled out the plugs for our electronic devices. We’ve lost too much equipment down the years not to know the dangers of electric storms.

It will not surprise you that I was barely in a state to enjoy the coffee and toast that Jones brought through to me some time after dawn. (Jones, as ever, has taken a number of pictures of the Algarve sky, which as usual, I share with you.) It was as I was consuming these that I remembered that I had left outside both the tractor and the mulcher, which were getting soaked in the first shower of the season.
Groan! I couldn’t even go back to bed as I was still in it.

The tractor was piled high with branches – the third such load - that I intended to mulch first thing in the morning. These had been cut the previous day to prepare the way for the fence being constructed along our as yet unfenced borders.

The fencers were Steve and Luis, who had finally got the project underway after a run of bad luck. This included trying to use on their previous job a tin of mis- labelled paint that promptly congealed when mixed with the thinners recommended by the suppliers.

They weren’t the happiest bunnies when they arrived here. But they got to work with gusto nonetheless, clearing the overgrown borders and digging holes for the posts. I've been trotting around the neighbours, explaining why the fence is being erected - dogs - and ensuring that I'm not treading on anyone's toes.


The garden is looking glorious. The yuccas are in bridal bloom and the pink lilies nearby are a joy to behold. I do not intend to gush. You may admire them for yourselves.

I regret to say that my desktop computer has been ill. Symptoms began last week when several programmes started behaving strangely. Then the computer started running the disk-check programme each time it booted – a warning of hard disk corruption.

I checked that my backups were up to date and rushed the device down to the computer doctor on Monday morning.

It was as I suspected. The computer techies were able to transfer everything to a new hard disk but it took them hours to undo the damage done to various programmes by the corruption. Everything seems to be working again, albeit with the odd quirk. In the interim I had to borrow back the laptop that now resides on Jones’ desk.

I was troubled to hear on the BBC news that a drug I’ve been taking for years to reduce osteo-arthritis of the knee and hip has no more effect than a placebo. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11330747 It was mum who put me on to glucosamine and chondroitin, a combination that has served me well, or so I believed. In fact, I recently acquired a substantial new supply at a pleasing discount. And I have certainly thought that I felt better for taking it. The only consolation, according to the trials at Bern university is that the drug does no harm. I shall certainly finish my supply in the hope that the placebo effect continues to benefit me, even if the drug doesn’t.

A neighbour, Ermenio, invited me down to his wine cellar to look at the mini-museum of old cultural and agricultural objects that he has set up there. In a dozen unsealed barrels, the new wine was bubbling away, a process set to continue for the next several weeks. Hanging on the walls and standing on shelves were a host of the implements and traps by which previous generations have lived.

A solid box turned out to be an old- fashioned rat trap. Various wire devices on the walls were designed to do the same job. Some of them were intended to be concealed in the rodent’s burrows or niches.

An iron implement that looked vaguely like a set of handcuffs emerged as a hobble for horses or mules, intended primarily to prevent the animal from being stolen, according to my host.

And a strip of matted grass was identified as a sling. Ermenio demonstrated its use, whirling it over his head and shooting out a stone at lethal speed. They were used largely by shepherds, he informed me, people who had ample time to practise and were known for their accuracy with the weapon.

I was most impressed by the collection, a sentiment I shared as we celebrated my visit with a small glass of medronho – a most excellent brew.

As we left, Ermenio pointed out a group of German students who were excavating the ruins of an ancient building close by – of Roman construction, he believed. The Romans were certainly present locally; he has several Roman coins that have turned up in his fields.

Jones, for her part, has been excavating the old pig-pen in the corner of the south garden. She has hauled out barrowloads of soil and stones.

In times past every Portuguese country family kept a pig or two, to be slaughtered at Christmas. Some still do – and although only
licensed slaughterers are now (officially) permitted to do such work, the shrieks of the doomed animals can still occasionally be heard in the hamlets.

Poppy, (RIGHT) a small dog belonging to neighbours Marie & Olly, has spent a few days with us while her humans were away.

She passes the gate on a walk at least once a day and is by now thoroughly at home here, settling down with our lot within a few minutes, even if she sometimes has to share her basket with them.

It's a case of "into your basket" before goodnight biscuits are handed out - and the nearest basket serves the purpose.

Letter from Espargal: 31 of 2010

In the Espargal headlines this week:

Cooler weather expected any day now.
Nimble hare eludes pampered dogs in valley chase.
And leaning cypress tree border dug over and mulched.

That’s enough headlines. The bottom line, as opposed to headlines, is that life has continued pretty much along its placid pastoral course, with little disturbance except from the restless village dogs.

The latter included the brothers, Raymond and Bobby who, finding themselves locked out one night, barked in exasperation until I stumbled sleepily downstairs to let them in. I had forgotten to open the rear sliding door that we leave ajar. Ours are not pets accustomed to sleeping on cobbles at night.

Jones and I have spent much of our time in the garden and the park (an acre of hillside above the house) she generally cutting back and clearing under the trees - I bringing in carobs or mulching. She often works crouched down on her haunches in the shade,

hacking away at a vicious creeper (that she calls) vipers’ vine in a display of suppleness that I can but envy. Even the undemanding Lotus position proved beyond my powers during my attempts at yoga. To pick up the black carob pods that lie scattered under the trees I either kneel or bend over in a wide-legged stance.

Jones pointed out to me the appearance of crocus-like plants (sea squill) that spring up from bulbs each autumn. These bulbs, found all over the hillside, are huge and often appear to have been gnawed. But, however tousled, they shove out their plants energetically on cue as the sun loses its sting and the air freshens with the promise of moisture.

The fence erectors made a brief appearance towards the end of the week after spending most of it taking arms against a sea of (human and mechanical) troubles. They hastened to assure me that they usually run a tight ship but had run into a few storms. After making a series of measurements they departed to do some preliminary post welding. Their sand and stone has already been delivered and they hope to start putting in the posts next week.

Other visitors included the local builder who came along to assess several jobs that we have in mind. He’s happy to do them as long as we’re prepared to join the queue for his services. Recession! Not as far as he’s concerned. Nor for his son, the local painter, who is due to repaint the house exterior before the onset of winter.

Equally busy is Dinis the metal worker, who dropped in one afternoon, apologising for keeping me waiting. He’s got just about as much on his books as he can handle.

SOUTH PATIO

He came round to measure up a safety rail that I want to install along the south patio. We often concertina back the doors in summer before sitting down for drinks with guests. But it’s a practice that I’ve felt uneasy about as anybody who unwittingly stepped backwards would take a nasty fall on to the cobbles below.

Thursday we made a leisurely visit to Loule. We popped into Teresa’s ceramic shop beside the castle to fetch bowls featuring the names of our latest Canadian great-nieces. Teresa was seated in a corner, painting designs onto bowls, as ever. We love her products and regretted that our display cabinets were already bulging.

Around the corner are two old-time clothing shops that I visited to look for trousers. Both were manned by elderly males who, on ascertaining my needs and relative fluency, plied me with everything in sight. I resisted the advances of the first but came away with two pairs from the second. Regrettably, they are not the same size as he had only one of each.

One pair fits perfectly; the other will do if I succeed in losing a little weight (as I have long desired – an aim that conflicts daily with my beer requirements). Jones urged me to take them back, declaring such “hopeful” purchases to be a waste of money. But I’ve kept them, if only because they’re nice trousers and I got them at substantial discounts – albeit without a receipt. I don’t think that either of the outfitters has much future. They belong, like the town’s retiring cobblers, in another age.

Loule’s main drag, which runs in front of the shops, has been closed off to be turned into a semi-pedestrianised area. In due course it will be very smart and popular and the shopkeepers will benefit but for the moment the place is a mess and customers are few.

I called in at the senior university to get the timetables for the next academic year. The secretary was pleased to see me and to confirm that I’d continue giving English Conversation classes. He put me down for lessons at 4 on a Monday afternoon once again. The term begins the second week of October. What’s not yet clear is whether the principal, who’s recovering from a stroke, will be able to resume his duties.

Another visit was with neighbours to the medieval festival in the town of Salir, some 15 minutes away. Salir clings to a hill, the top of which still boasts the remains of a Moorish castle. The turn-out on the third and final night of the festival was good. Visitors thronged past the stalls lining the narrow alleys of the old town although few stallholders seemed to be doing much business. Three camels and a host of folk in medieval dress, some on horseback, lent what flavour they could to the occasion.

I stopped at a display of Moroccan leatherwork and furniture where I took a fancy to a wooden and leather stool. It was priced, the vendor informed me, at 60 euros. But the amount fell rapidly as I shook my head until we agreed a price satisfactory to both parties.

You may (or, more likely, may not) recall my recent relative success in Spider Solitaire when I achieved a score I’d long been striving for. Since then, I have stuck to my decision not to play the game again. (It’s wickedly addictive.)

I have, however, occasionally played another computer game, Freecell. This is quite demanding, requiring both luck and concentration for success. I was pleased with a streak of 52 games – at least until I googled other people’s results. One player claimed a streak of nearly a thousand games. That’s hard to imagine as some are very difficult. Indeed, one of them, game 11982 has apparently never been cracked. I certainly had no success with it.

The Dutch ladies’ dog, Ermie, has been spending a couple of days with us while her mistresses make a brief visit to Lisbon. She is the most docile of creatures – until she goes walking when, unless kept on a tight rein, she demon-dives into every bush in sight and has to be hauled bodily out.

P.S. Ermie escaped 2 hours before she was to due to return home and had a glorious romp through the hills, ignoring our imploring calls for her to come back. Jones eventually bush-bashed to collar her.

P.P.S. Last night of the Proms! What a mixture of emotions, as always!