Letter from Espargal: 39 of 2010

We have embarked on a project to renovate Jones’s room in Casa Nada. For the uninitiated, Casa Nada (the Nothing House – because it doesn’t officially exist) is an old house on our property. It was gradually falling into ruin until some years ago we put a roof on it and shored up its shakier walls. That’s to say, our all-purpose neigh- bour, Idalecio, did so, with a little help along the way.

Jones would love to turn the building into a guest cottage. This would be problematic. It was never registered (to avoid tax) and our efforts to get it legalised have so far come to nothing. So although there would be no problem bringing in builders to restore it, that money might well be wasted in the long run. Nothing exists here in Portugal unless you have a paper to prove it - notarised, stamped and registered.


For my part I was not unhappy to leave the building as it stands. It’s the perfect place to keep the tractor, our tools, paints and a great deal else. But the deal I did with Jones was to cede one room to her. It’s not a deal that she’s been satisfied with, partly because this room tends to accumulate as much (of my) junk as the rest of the place and partly because she wanted to do the room up – to add a wooden mezzanine floor and a tiny washroom.

It was a project we discussed with Horacio the builder. But Horacio has a list of clients longer than the great wall of China waiting for his services and there was no prospect of his tackling it soon. Fortunately for us, we have been able to interest Idalecio in doing the work. It’s quite a project as it involves stripping the (stone and mud) walls of their old plaster, taking up the floors (tiles on bare earth) and then lots of carpentry, electrics and plumbing.

Idalecio, who has restored a couple of cottages on his own property, is equal to the task and has set about the project with his customary energy. That’s meant clearing Jonesy’s room of its contents and spreading these around the rest of the building, along with the sacks of cement needed for the job. Like all such projects it has involved many discussions about how, where and what. (You know the kind: “But I planned to put the stairs over there.” “Yes, Jonesy, the stairs would fit there but nobody more than 4-feet tall would be able to climb them.” Jones would naturally have a different take on these conversations.) Inevitably, the project’s taken up a fair bit of time, both Idalecio’s and ours. As always, it’s fascinating to watch a familiar place changing visibly hour by hour.

Equally time consuming has been the continuing care of the puppies. The larger of the two, the black bitch, has doubled in size as has her appetite for milk. Her brother is doing okay, even if he is lagging behind. We've decreased the frequency of the feeds as we’ve increased the dosages. We’re also trying to introduce the pups gradually to alternative foods. Their eyes are open now and they’re becoming daily more active.

The pups have been housed this past week in a basket (ex Marie and Olly) in the bathroom downstairs and they have bonded with a teddy that came with it (thank you again M&O). As to the future, both immediate (they can’t live in the shower for much longer) and medium term (no requests so far from our readers to take them over), we’re trying not to think too hard about it. Jones said she had names for them. I warned her that to name them was to keep them. Do we really want six dogs?

HAVE A WEE

Last Saturday morning we got a call from May, an old Scottish friend from our Quintassential days asking us if we could visit her husband, Harry, in hospital in Faro as she had a bad cold that she didn’t want to share with him. We did. At least, I took Jones along and she spent some time with Harry. He was very short of breath as a result of severe pulmonary problems.

On Monday morning we got another call, this time to say that Harry had died. As fate would have it, neighbours who had been helping the couple for some time were out of touch. So we went around to assist May, first to retrieve Harry’s belongings from the hospital and later with the funeral and other arrangements. In the process I have learned a great deal about the relevant Portuguese bureaucracy – and it’s very relevant indeed, especially the laws relating to the bank accounts of deceased people, which are liable to be frozen.

The couple had no children but a nephew has flown down to support his aunt and help her sort things out. For us Harry’s death comes as a jolt and a reminder of the human condition. We sometimes discuss with neighbours here their plans for the years ahead. Do they intend to stay in Portugal, to move into town, to look towards one of the (very few) retirement communities? This is a great place for active people to retire but it’s very lonely when you don’t have family support, especially if you can’t get around or speak the language.

Another outing was to a dental practice where I needed to have an itinerant tooth cemented back into place. I usually wait for the arrival of a travelling South African dentist who visits for a day or two each month. But in his absence I had to fall back on the assistance of who-ever might be available. This is inevitably a guy who might have been better suited to knackering bulls. Fortunately, having a tooth cemented back into place is a relatively quick and easy procedure so I shan’t bleat on. The field across the road from the practice had disappeared, to be replaced by a hypermarket where we stocked up and tried the coffee bar – okay if not great.

Last weekend’s storms have blown themselves far away, to be followed by a week of gentle sunshine – mid 20s by day, lower teens by night. Tourists could hardly ask for more. But the garden has been drying out and Jones has taken to watering her more delicate plants again. To her distress, the rain that was promised for early next week has disappeared – from the screen at least.

She has continued with her gathering of carobs, olives and pomegranates. Jones loves pomegranates and spends hours scraping the fruit from the hard shells, to go into yoghurts or salads. She is also spending more time at the computer and gradually finding her way around it and the browser.

As ever, she has more things she wants to do than time to do them in. And that time has shrunk with the shortening days. It’s dark now by six. The evenings are long and we check each day what programmes we want to watch and what to record for later viewing.

I have with great regret given up my habit of taking a glass (or two) of red wine with supper to avoid the leg cramps that this inevitably provoked in the early hours of the morning. (No amount of magnesium supplement proved up to dispelling the cramps.) I have found single malt whisky rather more forgiving.

Letter from Espargal: 38 of 2010

Jonesy expressed her frustration this week that she simply didn’t have enough time to attend to everything on her “to do” list. My suggestion that she curtail her list was not considered helpful, nor was my observation that she should be grateful for having such a varied and interesting life. Her problem is that she goes to bed each night wishing she'd done several things that she hasn’t.

One of the reasons for this (overcrowded list) problem is that new items add themselves to her list as fast as she ticks off the old ones. Another is the expansive nature of some of the items. Take olive picking and salting, for example. Everywhere you go in Portugal, olives are served with meals and drinks. Most places and neighbours prepare their own. Olives, unlike apples and oranges, cannot simply be plucked from the tree and eaten. Among other things they have to be slit, soaked in salt for days (weeks or months, depending on the process) and then repeatedly rinsed.

During visits to Portuguese neighbours (which she makes regularly) Jones has learned the art of treating olives and her first experiments have been most acceptable. Edible olives come from grafted trees, of which we have a number on the property (along with lots of ungrafted ones). Jones has been raking down the olives into nets spread out beneath the branches and gathering up the fruit. The many defective olives (stung or bruised) go into buckets - to be delivered to a press and traded for olive oil).

The virgin fruit is collected separately, to be treated, stored and later served. The question with this process is when to stop. Jones has spent hours at it – with a little help from myself – and could easily spend as much time again. The same is true for the crop of nuts on the almond trees. To our shame, both these crops have gone largely to waste over the last several years (although we have faithfully garnered our carobs). We are only now getting around to them.

Equally time-consuming has been the feeding of the two puppies, the ones that disguised themselves as kittens last week. We’ve moved their little box into the downstairs bathroom, a venue to which my wife conducts herself several times a day, milk bottles in hand. (So occasionally do I.) The bigger of the puppies, a black bitch, is quite a good feeder and pee-er. Her smaller brother is much harder work. They both tend to wriggle about furiously at feeding time, as if competing with unseen siblings for the mother’s teats.

To overcome this, Jones has taken to wrapping them in swaddling cloths when she feeds them – a hint she gathered from a friend who raised 4 kittens in similar fashion. Any day now the pups’ eyes will begin to open and then we’ll have a whole new ball game. Other members of the household have so far shown a restrained interest in the sounds and smells emanating from the bathroom. That interest is likely to become much more intense in the weeks ahead. Lest you be in any doubt, we should be delighted to hear from anybody who might be interested in adopting a puppy or – even better – two puppies.

WEE WEE TIME

I too have had a busy week. Apart from the usual stuff – English lessons, socialising, shopping, banking, boot repairs (2 euros) by the old man who sits in his little room near the senior university – I’ve spent hours ploughing the fields (ours and neighbours) ahead of the rains due this weekend. As I write, the skies are grey but of the wet stuff there’s no sign yet.

I’ve sown an early crop of beans and peas and fertilised/ forked over the fruit trees. The afternoon weather’s been warm, we’ve perspired profusely as we worked and we’ve been pestered by small, persistent flies. From time to time I remove a glove the better to whack the most irritating ones. A mid-afternoon cuppa delivered to the tractor has been a real treat.

Our evenings are starting to grow cool enough to warrant the first fires of the season. We’ve not made any yet although Jones has been pleased to have the electric blanket back on the bed. Our clocks go back this weekend – a week ahead of the Canadians (and I suppose the US).

On the banking front – as mentioned a few paragraphs back – I nipped into two branches midweek to renew savings deposits. All such deposits now are for fixed terms. The schemes I grew up with of simply putting extra cash into “the savings account” at a variable rate are long since gone. Now one must choose anything between 7 days and several years, with a list of conditions attached. For “no risk” deposits, rates are pitiful.

Most of the time I do such banking on the internet. But as the year-end looms, some banks here offer special 60 or 90-day deposits at much better than usual rates (not that even these cover inflation after the tax bite). The reason for this generosity, I gathered from a banker, is to flatter the bank’s bottom line ahead of year-end reports – not exactly reassuring. As in many countries, the Portuguese (minority) government guarantees savers’ deposits up to a certain amount. But that’s not saying much – not when it is going through the agonies of trying to pass an austerity budget.

Natasha’s friend, Slavic, joined me for a day’s work, a very useful one in which we completed a host of jobs that have long awaited attention. I gather from him that he works as a builder, with a useful knowledge of house electrics and plumbing. His cementing and rendering skills certainly impressed me.

Among other things we loaded the tractor with a huge pile of firewood to be cut into small sections. One of the branches caught in the fence as we approached the house and the whole load came tumbling off – which accounts for this second picture.

Soup for Friday lunch at that point, followed by a brief siesta. I was wakened by an express train whoosh as a squall hit the house and instantly soaked everything on the lower patio. Not that we’re complaining; rain is rain however it comes and right now it’s welcome. The garden is painfully dry after nearly three weeks of sun- shine. On the other hand, it’s the kind of autumnal weather that most people would die for and we’re well aware of it.

Letter from Espargal: 37 of 2010

This week we find ourselves the reluctant foster parents to two keening kittens. We heard kittens crying as we walked on Thursday afternoon. While I distracted the dogs, Jones went for a peep and found four of them scattered around in the bush. Of mum there was no sign. She went back to leave food for the mother but found it untouched the following morning.

So we ummed and we aaahed. Sadly, unwanted litters are all too common and we suspect that this one had been dumped, as often happens. In the end Jonesy decided that she couldn’t just leave the kittens to die and went back for them. She found just two - cold, tangled in foliage and trapped under a rock. With a tin of enriched milk powder from the vet – 21 euros please – we assumed parental duties, sticking milky teats into their kittens’ squalling mouths and tickling their tummies to make them pee. Other members of our extended household are curious to say the least.

Midweek we celebrated 31 years of marriage with a visit to Faro fair. We go every year although we’re not sure why – as much for a dog-free outing and a tasty supper as for anything on show. Apart from the cars and tractors (in which I’m always interested) and possibly some furniture and clothing, the stalls are packed with glistering tat.

I find them slightly depressing, ditto the blaring music that fills the adjacent fair ground with its whirling dippers and scare-yourself-stupids. Wrist-watches go for 5-euros and clothing (“new collection”) for not much more. In spite of bottom basement prices, few people were buying and stall-holders were looking glum. The food was good, mind you, and watching people watching one another was fun.

A great deal of my time has gone into acquainting myself with my new smart phone. It’s very clever indeed. Configuring it and updating it with contacts has taken hours. Every so often I pause to consult the lengthy manual (which I downloaded). The most fascinating bit is to have the internet and my emails at hand at my bedside overnight and in my pocket during the day.

Until I acquired this phone (an HTC Desire with an Android heart), I’d had bought only Nokia models. As you are probably aware the Finnish company is lagging behind the smart-phone leaders (I see that Apple has recently overtaken Blackberry) and paying a heavy price. It’s scary how a small slip in the high tech stakes can leave such a vast enterprise in trouble.

Also in trouble this week was me when my new MS Office Suite refused to open several important (to me) spreadsheets. I’d been updating these records using a Beta version of MS Office 2010 that runs out at the end of this month. To avoid being caught short I downloaded the least expensive final version of Office 2010, which would have nothing to do with the spreadsheets, nor could I restore them by other means. I suspect the cause of the trouble was the corrupted hard disk that I replaced last month. I had a bad morning as I sought out my most recent uncorrupted back-ups and re-entered the missing data.

Well advised as bloggers are to exercise discretion in reporting the activities of their neighbours, there are things to be said. Our immediate ex pat neighbours, Sarah and David, are basking in the glow of a recent balloon flight in the Alentejo, a sprawling plain that lies beyond the mountains to the north of us.

Catching the balloon meant waiting (some time) for the right weather and then hightailing it northwards at sparrow-fart for a dawn take off. We were not around to witness the event. But the “Just landed, fantastic!” SMS from Sarah spoke for her elation and the pictures speak for themselves. The organisers provided an in-situ picnic at the landing site; i.e. wherever the balloon comes down.

Before I leave Sarah and David, let me report that we trotted over to inspect a wall that they have built to enhance their privacy. (They are great builders and seldom found without a trowel in their hands.) The wall obscures the view of their yard from the new house that has been built next door. It was at Jones’ suggestion that S&D included a number of coloured glass bricks in the wall, and an excellent suggestion it was, as you may judge for yourselves.


Sarah warned us when we went around for dinner not to lean against the structure as the plaster she had just applied to the bricks was still wet. A very practical sort Sarah is.

Still on the theme of neighbours, my tractor was called into use to remove a large quantity of gravel from the common entrance that leads to three houses - belonging to Chico & Dina, Fintan & Pauline and Olly & Marie.

The gravel, it emerged, had been ordered by old Chico as a mark of gratitude for the many favours done to him and Dina by his expat neighbours. It was intended to surface a parking/turning area which Chico had already had levelled in the field beside Fintan’s house – eliminating the need for the complex backing manoeuvre which Fintan has to perform to exit the property.

While I drove the tractor, Olly and Fintan did the shovelling. I would gladly have joined them at the oars were my back not so opposed to it. Not that I shirked! Driving a tractor backwards, while raising and lowering the box, is an underrated activity. Olly noted that the job might have taken less time had I been at the wheel of a larger tractor, a remark that I hastened to convey to Jones (who wasn’t impressed).

The post script to this report is that a day or two later Fintan got trapped in his own gravel and was grateful to be towed out. His SOS call arrived as Jones (the dogs) and I were attending the opening in Benafim of a small monument, constructed by Horatio, to honour a local benefactress.

All the council and parish bigwigs were there in their inevitable black suits, making speeches, uncovering plaques and being videoed for the regional news. Jones scrambled around taking some pictures of her own before retiring with neighbours to the Coral for refreshments.

The owners’ son, young Joey, was disappointed to learn that I wouldn’t be able to join him in a game of pool. Jones was hopeful that we might be able to return for the religious procession later in the day but with the kittens squalling to be fed every two hours and a host of tasks awaiting us, I have my doubts.



P.S. Our neighbours visited us this evening to admire the kittens at feeding time. After peering closely at the little souls, they informed us that the beasties looked more like puppies than kittens. And when we looked more closely we thought they were right. O Lordy! What now?

P.P.S. The following morning - at the sharp end of some emails asking whether we were going blind! Well, we were convinced from the start that they were kittens. And when you believe something, it colours yours perception......okay. No excuses! Will have to visit the vet again to some puppy food...ouch!

Letter from Espargal: 36 of 2010

Some weeks you know that you’ve been running around and pretty busy but you have to think really hard to recall where and why. That’s how things feel. It’s a lovely morning, disturbed only by the occasional bark of the hunters’ guns in the valley below us. The tree tops in the garden beyond the upper patio are waving around lazily in the breeze. In the distance, Benafim lies sleepy and white on the hillside.

The dogs are stretched out in their baskets after a brisk hour’s walk over the far side of Espargal hill. On the walk we admired, as we do each day, the thousands of tiny white flowers that now dot the hillside. Jones, unusually, couldn’t identify them so she looked them up.

Their popular name turns out to be “autumn snowflakes” (Leucojum autumnale) and that’s pretty well what they look like. They are glorious – and bring to mind the line from Gray’s elegy: “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” Here, at least, their sweetness is not wasted.

On to more mundane things; Steve and Luis arrived yesterday, as promised, to finish the fence – as much of it as can be finished until we are able to purchase the wedge of land beside us that juts into our property. They installed a gate beside the cisterna, intended to give us easy access to Banco’s Broadwalk, the pedestrian right-of-way that runs along the bottom of garden. They have put in gates at the fence’s other extremities as well so that we can get in or out at any of the paths that border the property.

Friday I spent some time helping friends to renew their computer’s anti-virus program before accompanying them to Faro beach for lunch at a favourite fish restaurant. We sit on the patio, just a few feet from the (now largely empty) dunes, with the dogs under the table.

In fact, it’s been am unusually sociable week, with meals out on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It’s fortunate that in these parts such outings are generally as inexpensive as they are enjoyable.

Thursday brought an early morning visit to the coastal town of Albufeira to tie up some legal business. Albufeira, when we first visited it 20 years ago, was a pretty fishing port that was starting to attract tourists. These days it’s a maze of developments, highways and traffic circles – not our scene at all. Happily, we were following friends who knew their way around.

SORRY, NO PICS OF SLAVIC

Wednesday I spent burning off much of the clippings and cuttings that had been piling up all summer. These more than doubled in size as a result of the cutting back that Steve and Luis had to do to clear a path for the fence. Helping me with this task I had Slavic, a (Ukrainian) friend of Natasha. The leafier branches are mulched and the heavier wood set aside to be chain-sawed into useful lengths. But that still leaves piles of thorn bushes and impossibly tangled wild olive branches to be burned. There’s no other way of dealing with them.

Tuesday I joined Nelson to finish the house painting that had been interrupted by the weekend rains. The upper part of the house needed a second coat. To apply this Nelson climbed the ladder with a roller attached to a long extension pole. I remained below to take the pole from him and dip the roller in the paint before passing it back up. The system worked well. We chatted away as we worked, mainly polishing our Portuguese (me) and English (him). As a result of our efforts the house looks superb. Long may it stay that way.

We did have one hitch when an additional 15-litre can of paint that I ordered turned out to be the wrong colour – the fault of the supplier who had mis-keyed the colour code into the mixing machine. He apologised when we took the can back and replaced it. How often did that happen, I inquired. Not often, he replied; it was only the second time in some years. It was an expensive slip nevertheless - good paint costs a whack.

Monday brought my first English lesson of the new academic year. There was a good turn-out, along with a pleasing mixture of new and old faces. The class includes (once again) the sister of the state president, a woman who used to teach at a school in Loule. The president himself, Anibal Cavaco Silva, is expected to run for a second 5-year term when elections for the office are held in January. Portugal has an unusual political setup. There’s no upper house of parliament and the president, who is semi-executive, exercises a revising function.

After much researching I have acquired a new phone, a widely-recommended touch-screen model made by HTC. (I was not familiar with the manufacturer but a little googling indicates that it’s a serious player in the mobile market.) “What was wrong with your old phone?” inquired Jones, who doesn’t understand that there are more reasons for getting a new phone than replacing a broken one.

Anyhow, it’s a very clever phone indeed. I boldly transferred my chip across to the new phone only to transfer it back when I found myself completely out of my depth. Since then I’ve spent hours reading up on the technology and getting to know the thing. It’s one of these multi-purpose machines that maps, emails, internets and generally runs your life if you give it half a chance. I’m very pleased with it and will be more pleased still when I get to understand how the rest of it works.

We have acquired a wooden chest and two (Windsor style) wooden arm chairs from neighbours who are down-sizing. All three items sit on the lower front patio, the chest holding gloves, clippers and doggy-items and the chairs us. I find them really comfortable although Jones is in two minds about the fit of old-style chairs into a new-style setting. The (solidly-built) chest replaces a kit item that we bought a while back but which was not up to the job. It turned out to be made of mdf and especially didn’t like being sat upon. In fact it didn’t much like anything apart from being looked at.

Still on a wooden theme, I have created a large new shelf for Jones in the capacious pantry cupboard to take some of the kitchen items that will have to surrender their current lodgings to the dish- washer next month. Jones does not have a particularly high regard for my handyman skills, possibly because I do not exercise them as frequently or skilfully as she might wish. So I was particularly careful to measure the shelf exactly and to get the supports level.

BORROWING POMEGRAN- ATES

It looks good and will do the job. Jones has pronounced herself pleased with it (as well she might). If I haven't spent much time telling you what Jones has been doing, it's because she has as ever been oiling the Valapena machinery which would otherwise long since have ground to a halt.