Letter from Espargal: 39 of 2012

Hello from Espargal on a damp Friday night in the lead-up to a wet weekend. Never mind that Jones's superb dawn doesn't fit the picture. Jones herself is down in the kitchen fixing a salad supper. On the TV behind me, six choirs are taking part in a competition in which five of them will be disappointed.

It's been a "more of the same" week, which makes for difficult blogging. So I'll let the pictures lead the way. The couch is ideal for taking a siesta - my first of the week - in spite of the persistent fly that's trying to sit on my face. Hence the hat. We got back from an Olive shopping trip in time to light the stove and settle down.

Most of the week was devoted to the great cutback with occasional interruptions by rain. Here we are tending to the trees around the house. In recent years the trees have started to overshadow us. The upper branches of the almonds have soared far beyond our reach to rattle against the satellite dish.

Jones complained that her view was being spoiled. I liked the privacy the trees offered. So, as in most things, we compromised, taking off the tops while leaving the branches to expand sideways. Two vast piles of firewood pay testament to our efforts. We've enough for at least the next two years.

Idalecio's chainsaw flickered rapierlike up and down the trunks of trees, taking off the lower branches. An old plum tree got some overdue attention. Perhaps the hardest job - Miguel's - was dragging the mountains of branches to clear areas where they could be set alight. At last the job is done.

One afternoon we took ourselves to the village of Alte, 15 minutes away, where the spring-fed stream had grown into a brown torrent. Benafim was originally part of the parish of Alte. Now, much to our distress, it seems doomed to be merged with two other distant parishes. We await the final decision from parliament.

We came home slowly via the agricultural dirt road, doing our best to dodge the multiple muddy potholes. Prickles took the opportunity to ride business class. He's the smallest of our seven dogs but he doesn't know it. In his head, he's as big as his ego and, to be sure, none of the others will cross him.

The hillsides between Benafim and Alte are lined with citrus plantations. Much of the fruit is exported - and Portugal sure needs exports. But unlike the traditional olive, carob and almond trees, citrus requires extensive irrigation, inevitably from boreholes. We fear the impact of global warming and a drying climate.

Back in Espargal, the cats await the fishmonger's arrival, heralded by the screech of the truck's amplified horn. The fishmonger buys his fish either from the market or the quayside early in the morning. The rest of the day he spends travelling from village to village to sell on the catch.

And he never forgets the cats. This is what they've been waiting for - although the meal is not always shared.

For ourselves, there's not much to add this week. We saw "Argo" and thought it well done, even if it spiced up history in the interests of drama. That's movies for you!

Jones was pleased to see that the rose she acquired in Ruth's memory rewarded her by producing a bud. We haven't yet had time to settle the pot properly among the rocks. I am becoming an authority on the history and complexities of English orthography. What a mess - and one with no chance of ever being resolved!

Letter from Espargal: 38 of 2012

Any fears we had of a painfully dry winter have been dispelled. As I write, the rain that's falling steadily shows a healthy inch brimming in the gauge. We are heading for the wettest November in years - and the month is barely half done. That's fine by us. In this community, winter's rains nourish summer's crops.

But the first half of the week was made in heaven. For the three days of gentle autumn sunshine, Idalecio and Miguel came to cut back our trees. There are scores of trees on the property, none of which had been pruned for years. We asked Idalecio to treat them as he would his own.

This he did, concentrating on the carobs, the olives and the almonds - the fruit-bearing trees which have long sustained the Algarve. While Idalecio wielded his chainsaw, Miguel dragged the branches away - the leafy ends to be mulched, the boughs to be cut up for firewood and the rest to be burned.

Miguel is an engineer who, like thousands of other graduates in Portugal, is finding little outlet for his qualifications. So he welcomed the opportunity of some gainful exercise in the sun. Among other things he is a personal trainer - as his physique attests. These days, he says, you have to be able to turn your hand to anything.

It was his first experience of driving a tractor. I advised him to take it slowly. The three stages of tractor driving are: learning nervously, gaining in confidence and then frightening oneself nearly to death. Several of our neighbours have had nasty accidents. Tractors have great power and no discretion.

While the workers laboured away, I set about making a fire. This had to be one of the most unwilling fires I have ever lit. It mocked my efforts. The ground is saturated as is much of the vegetation. Time and again my sticks would catch alight, only to extinguish themselves again in a depressing wisp of smoke.

I wasn't ambitious enough, said Idalecio, who took the tractor to fetch the moutains of branches that Miguel had built up. One at a time, he backed them up to the fire, barely visible behind the shunted pile of greenery. In minutes my piffling little blaze became a roaring inferno. It wasn't a problem.

There was hardly a breath of wind and the surrounding trees were at a safe distance. This is the time of year for pruning trees and vines and for burning the offcuts. There's no other practical option. Around the valley plumes of smoke rise into the air as the farmers set to work. Officially one is supposed to notify the fire service.

For the first couple of years, I did - and a fireman came along to inspect the piles to be burned. Then, like everyone else, I just waited for the first rains before setting the offcuts on fire. This week I also did my share of carving Idalecio's severely pruned boughs into useful sections.

Load after tractor-load of wood found its way to the top of the property where a giant woodpile has taken shape. The wood will have to spend at least one summer and maybe two drying out before it becomes suitable fuel for our wood-burning stove. Right now the dogs are gathered around the stove

in a melody of quiet snores as Jones prepares supper and I type away.

So that's where our week has gone, along with dog walks, English lessons and outings for May and Olive. During one outing we came across a discarded sofa, several cushions from which are now dog beds.

Jones, who has taken most of the pictures - including this stunning dawn - remains behind the camera this week. But she's hale and hearty, busy with the usual chores, feeding the cats in Casa Nada before our morning walk and supporting the neighbourhood critters after our afternoon stroll.

Speaking of which, here you see Raymond crouched anxiously behind Dearheart as she laps away at a saucer of milk. Raymond hopes that Dearheart will leave some milk for him. But like a gentledog, he waits his turn. Would that there were more like him.

Next week our garden shapers will be back to finish the job. Meanwhile we have our heads down as the rain falls and the winds howl about the house.

Letter from Espargal: 37 of 2012

Monday:
It’s been a wet weekend. For much of it we’ve had our heads in the mist. After a restorative morning coffee in Loule, I dropped Jonesy at the Chinese shop (there are actually half a dozen) and drove to Sergio’s place on the far side of the town to have four new tyres fitted. Sergio had recommended Michelins instead of the previous Dunlops. That was fine by me. He knew more about tyres than I did and the price was much the same.

ROCKS ON THE ROAD

Although my wheel-spinning days are a distant memory and I treat the car like a real lady, she is heavy on tyres. I’m on to my third set in four years. After barely 30,000 kms the treads are close to the legal minimum and in the wet season it’s prudent to change them early.

THE FORD

In spite of the rain there still isn’t a drop of water flowing under the Algibre River bridge. The odd puddle is all that’s to be seen. The ford is little more than a rocky crossing. The earth must truly have been parched to have soaked up so much water.

We took May to the bank before going on to lunch. Orlando, the bank clerk, knows her well and is ever so helpful. May hands over a cheque, he fills it in and she has merely to sign it. Although the bank will accept cheques written out in English, we have found it best to use Orlando’s services as May’s numbers sometimes go a bit awry.

Tuesday:
I've been engaged in an exchange of emails with Thomson (holidays), with whom we have booked a spring Norwegian cruise. I was concerned because Thomson’s confirmation email omitted both the postal code and Portugal from our home address, threatening the arrival of the tickets that a rep said were to be posted to us in due course.

I was astonished to be told that Thomson's system didn’t accept foreign postal codes and that I shouldn’t have been able to make a reservation without giving a UK address.

Several emails and a phone conversation later it emerged that this was nonsense and that our tickets would arrive by email - a case of not knowing one's bows from one's stern.

RUTH, AS WE REMEMBER HER
Wednesday:
We had news from Cape Town of the death of Barbara’s older sister, Ruth, who had been ailing for some time. Her family had prepared us for the news which, we knew, might come any day. RIP Ruth. You were much loved.

SOME SKY!
Mid-morning Celso (from the Benafim snack bar) arrived on a tractor to fetch a disused wood-burning stove from the Dutch ladies. With him he brought - and needed – muscular help, for the stove weighed half a ton. My part was simply to show him where the ladies lived and to lend moral support.

BENAFIM THROUGH THE CLOUD

This is the time of year for firing up wood-burning stoves (known here as salamandras.) Although temps have barely fallen into single figures, it’s miz in the foggy wet and a small fire keeps the house wonderfully warm and cosy.

We dropped in on Worten’s mobile phone department to query the workings of Jonesy’s new Nokia phone. It’s meant to be a “swipe” phone but it doesn’t swipe easily. A saleswoman reset the screen sensitivity, which has improved things slightly. I would have exchanged the phone for a different model but Jones says it’s been hard enough to learn the ways of this particular model and she definitely doesn’t want to have to start over again with another.

She continues to make strides with the iPad, with which she now frequently sits down to check her emails. Her “what’s gone wrong now” appeals grow ever fewer. For my part, I use the iPad more for reading books and my weekly Economist. What a brilliant device! I’ll be most interested to see how the new Microsoft tablet with keypad shapes up against it.

Thursday:
It rained cats and dogs all night. The rain gauge was overflowing this morning. We had at least 55mms. Nicoline, at the bottom of the village, reported that she had recorded 59.2mms. She’s a retired meteorologist and still maintains a professional weather station.

We drove down to the river to see if there was any water flowing at last. There was – a gushing, rushing, muddy, swirling, frantic, turbulent torrent that swept past us in a race to the distant ocean. The far bank was 150 metres away rather than the usual 20 and the grove of trees on the river bank was waist-deep in water.

The riverbed on which we’d gazed all summer and where I’d stood with the dogs a week earlier, was just a memory. The torrent rushing over the ford offered instant death to any motorist mad enough to try it. Where the stream bed had stood forlorn, great lakes of brown water churned angrily.

Marie and Olly arrived, along with a couple of Portuguese neighbours. They gazed on the scene with equal wonder - a rare sight indeed. A Portuguese lad said the river was overflowing the bridge downstream at Paderne. Idalecio’s dad declared that in his 70 years he’d never seen the river fuller.

On the way home Jones stopped to take a few pictures of the pots gracing Natercia’s patio. The front of the house is a mass of pots and blooms, a delight for all who behold them. Barbara paused for a few words and returned to the car with a box of cuttings. My thoughts turned to the courtyard gardens in old Cordoba.... Memories! FIM

Letter from Espargal: 36 of 2012

Sunday:
For once I had left my phone at home as I set out on our morning walk with the dogs. I paused to see what they were barking at, and looked up to see scores of buzzards swirling low over Espargal hill but was unable to call Jonesy to bring the camera; she stops to feed the cats in Casa Nada.

These great birds gather here each autumn to begin their annual migration. They’re a spectacular sight. When Jones later rushed back to fetch the camera she found the birds largely departed, much to her frustration. At our Sunday brunch up at the Coral, our neighbours equally regretted that I’d been unable to alert them.

May & BJ - EARLIER
Monday:
May was saying as we watched the locksmith trying to open her front door that it was only the second time in her life that she had closed it with a key still inside. It wasn’t that she had forgotten to bring her “going out” key. The problem was that she couldn’t insert it because her “staying in” key was still in the lock.

Because May’s house is a bit like Fort Knox, it’s not – nor meant to be - an easy place to break into, even for a locksmith. After a while, I said it might be more sensible to drop May and Jones at the restaurant in town, where we’d been planning to have lunch, while the locksmith continued his endeavours.

By the time I got back, the locksmith had the door open. He asked for €40 for his troubles. I gave him €45 and thought it a bargain. So did May when she repaid me.

We barely had time when I returned from English classes to take the dogs walking before sunset. Since the clocks went back last weekend, it’s been dark by 18.00. Suddenly we’re back into long evenings around the fire and the TV schedule is important once again – of which more in a moment.

Tuesday:
I drove down to the postboxes to await the postwoman who, I hoped, might be bring one of the several parcels I was expecting. Unless the recipient is waiting, the postwoman merely fills out a form to the effect that the parcel may be collected at the post office the following day. To my surprise, after she arrived, she paused just a moment to deliver a single item and then sped off again. Could there be so little mail to deliver to the village, I wondered, even in this electronic age.

The most urgent of the parcels I am awaiting is a new set of transmitter/receivers to beam the TV signal from the upstairs (BBC) satellite receiver downstairs, where we prefer to watch in the evenings. Since one of us destroyed the downstairs receiver some weeks ago by inadvertently wrenching the plug from the wall, we’ve had to bring our supper upstairs to watch our preferred programmes. The old receiver has proved impossible to replace. So I’ve ordered another set online.

Mid-afternoon, to our consternation, the satellite box suddenly lost its BBC radio programmes. It’s been shedding channels for months, a most frustrating habit, and my attempts to redownload them have come to nothing. We can still go online to get our favourite radio channels but we can’t listen to them on our wireless headphones. Jones is most put out and I’m rather displeased myself.

LADY'S TRESSES ORCHID

We had arranged to join David and Dagmar for supper at a small restaurant in Loule, the Cantina dos Sabores, that serves superb inexpensive meals. We left early to give ourselves time to buy Jonesy another mobile phone nearby, to replace that consumed hours earlier by young Barri – her third in as many weeks! This time I caught her at it and let her know just how unhappy it made us.

AUTUMN CROCUS
Wednesday:
Rui Martins, the technician from the electronics shop in Salir, said he could pop in that afternoon to look at our troublesome satellite digibox. So we brought forward our get-together with May, who had asked us to join her to mark the second anniversary of Harry’s death. We took her to our favourite snack-bar in Loule, where cakes are served still hot from the oven.

When we got back home, Natasha said my new wireless keyboard/mouse from Amazon had been delivered.

JUNIPER
I barely had time to set it up before Rui arrived to attend to the troublesome digibox. He was puzzled by its loss of channels, which wasn’t typical of the problems caused by the occasional signal modification. First he tried redownloading the channels as I had. Then, after consulting with other techies, he deleted the existing channels from the memory before downloading them anew. The initial deletion did it. We have all our missing channels back, radio and TV, but the hard disk is still playing up. Bad news!

After he’d left, I set about installing my new wireless mouse/keyboard. These had arrived with absolutely no software or instructions, other than a pointer to Microsoft’s keyboard download site. Twice I tried downloading the indicated software, only to have my computer spit it out. While the keyboard is superbly comfortable and most of the keys function on a plug and play basis, none of the “F” functions or special keys work. I need to do a bit of googling!

Thursday:
November 1 is a public holiday, All Saints’ Day, one of several holidays that the state will be relinquishing in the name of austerity. Vast numbers of Portuguese still share the surname “dos Santos” – of the saints. No, I don't know either.

Down in the valley, the hunters’ guns were popping away. We proceeded cautiously, keeping both Prickles and Barri on the lead. Both are inclined to rush off, ignoring subsequent come-back calls.

I had agreed to take along the trailer to assist the Dutch ladies in the village to move some furniture. Hitching up the trailer is anything but simple. The steps required are as follows: Fetch the tractor from Casa Nada; remove the box from the back; attach the hitch; fetch the trailer from under the trees in the steep Casanova field; take the trailer down to the road; attach the hitch to the car; hitch up the trailer to the car.

These steps have to be reversed later – except that the trailer will in future live with neighbours at the bottom of the village. Will make life much simpler.

Friday
This is an Olive day - bank, post office, shopping, coffee and computer. By the time we'd finished downloading the last program and transferring the last file to the new laptop, it was mid-afternoon, grey and drizzling. From Almancil we nosed our way up into the hills where our wireless transmission set was awaiting us in the remote warehouse of a courier, who claimed he'd been unable to find the house. The weekend looks wet. That's okay with us. FIM