Saturday, 25 April 1998: Another lovely day
My dear folks,
There's a different feel about the Witbank Benson household on a Saturday morning. Bren still gets up fairly early as he goes to fetch one of his company employees who spends the day in the garden. Micaela will sleep in if she gets the chance, something for which - like music & horse-riding - she has a gift. Other guests do so at their own risk for Brendan loves nothing more than to fling open their doors & order the dogs to wake them up. The dogs need little encouragement. They bound into the room & leap upon the bed where Rose (the Rotweiler) cavorts while Lily (the Dalmatian) does some face licking & ear nibbling. Since they're both heavyweights, it's not an experience easily to be forgotten. The dogs love the weekends too for it's their only real chance to spend any time with their humans.
There are two modes of dog behaviour, one when Bren's at home; the other when he's away. Both dogs acknowledge him as the undisputed master of the house. They know exactly which tone of voice spells trouble & how much. Both have mastered to the millisecond how long they have to spend lying down - at his instruction - before they can safely move again. He doesn't allow his dogs to beg at the table or relax on the furniture. Micaela tolerates a more lenient regime, one that Lily especially prefers. It means that she can lie on the sofa with her head resting on the armrest while she watches proceedings. The sound of a car in the driveway has her leaping across the room where she balances on the armrest & back of the opposite sofa in order to peer through the curtains. She's so bright, it's scary. Unlike Rose, Lily has been known to steal from time to time. A tray of pies disappeared one day & there was little doubt about the thief, especially as Lily gets conscience-stricken & the family immediately know what she's been up to. It's just a matter of establishing what's missing.
Bren still goes across to the office of his company, FGM, on a Saturday to let in a book-keeper. Until recently, he had a secretary who did the books but she departed under a cloud. He was pleased to see the back of her as relations had become frayed but less pleased to go through the books afterwards & discover why she'd resigned. Brendan's language at the office is frequently colourful but on this occasion it hit the deep purple register. I was with him at the time, so I know. In fact, I've spent two mornings helping him to sort out his end-of-month accounts. This is a fractious business as the phone interrupts his labours almost as much as people do - & it's hard to concentrate. What's more, finding the appropriate files & invoices is frequently time-consuming. My heart went out to his unfortunate assistant - the young & immensely willing Deric - who bore the brunt of Brendan's frustration.
FGM, I ought to say, occupies some two acres on a site which backs on to the motorway. Affixed to the high, electrically controlled gate are various signs discouraging callers. One reads: "No pedlars, agents, salesmen or other such pests." There is no bell at the gate. When I asked Brendan how visitors announced their arrival, he said they hooted. (I'd had to climb over the wall after arriving on my bicycle one day & failing to attract attention!) There are two air-conditioned porta-cabins on the property. Brendan has his offices in one which he shares with a foreman. In the other live the accounts, the files & the long-suffering Deric. The secretary's departure has meant there's a vacant desk there. Behind this desk is a mini-kitchen with a few cupboards, sink, fridge & dish-washer. Outside, beyond the dying flowers & the array of cigarette butts that Brendan hurls through the open door, is a washroom. There are half a dozen sheds & garages fringing the property - filled with plant machinery. At a central open workshop, labourers are busy painting, cutting & welding hundreds of metal bars for the stone-dust barriers & stoppings required underground.
Covered parking is provided for half a dozen vehicles. Most of the time, it's occupied by assorted bakkies. The alarm company that Brendan employs has installed various beams that are triggered by anyone entering the property. Until they did so, break-ins were frequent, in spite of the huge (& terrifying) rotweiler that used to guard it. Attempted break-ins have continued but have all been frustrated by the prompt arrival of security guards. The company, Winning Alarms, is really good. Bren had no sooner arrived at FGM last weekend than the company rang to check on his right to be there. A couple of check-calls followed during the day. Similarly, when his home alarm has gone off accidentally - last time when Lily's wagging tail whacked a sensitive window - there's just been time to make it to the phone for the inevitable check call. Security is big business & little wonder. The pages of the newspapers are filled with an endless round of brutal murders & robberies. FGM's uncompromising view on this is announced from the notice-board in one of the porta-cabins: "If you steal something from FGM, we hope you die."
I have cycled across to FGM each day from Plumer Street where Brendan's house is situated in one of the older parts of town. It's a comfortable 30 minute ride through the suburbs. The first day took me 90 mins but that was my own fault. The streets are wide & free of the vehicles that line both sides of the road in London. Cycling here is a joy by comparison, especially in the sunshine we've basked in all week. There's a footbridge over the freeway that enables cyclists to avoid the worst of the main roads. School pupils & the occasional black were my only fellow cyclists. Few whites walk anywhere. Car travel is the norm. The nearby down-town area is very black. Parking is limited & the fear of crime is highest there. So most white shoppers head for the several big shopping centres that dot the suburbs. These all have guards, some well armed. Security elsewhere is lighter.
Down at the Nelspruit shopping centre where Bren has his restaurant, it is negligible & a source of constant concern to restaurant staff - as incidents are frequent. The restaurant managers go armed, in spite of protests of the centre manager, a woman, with whom Brendan has had a couple of heated exchanges. He is livid about the lack of security & is not a person to hide his feelings. He's told the manager that if Conal is attacked as a result of security failings, he - Brendan - is coming after her. I suspect that she will be as relieved at the Bensons' departure from Nelspruit as they will be themselves.
During my cycle expeditions here in Witbank, I have been fascinated by the acres of sports grounds to be found all over the town with hardly a soul on them. The luxury of space just isn't appreciated. The churches, dotted about the suburbs, are big business. This gets Brendan's goat as a syndicate which milked FGM of large sums of money was made up of some of the area's more prominent church goers & elders.
Brendan had hoped to take Micaela horse riding on Friday p.m. but found himself tied up so I went in his place. It's an hour up the motorway to the outskirts of Pretoria where Micaela stables her mare - which is just old enough to be ridden - & takes lessons from a leading teacher. I watched Micaela riding for the best part of an hour. She's a splendid horsewoman & made the exercise look effortless - at least until the horse she was riding suddenly refused to take a jump & threw her rider. Micaela landed on her face on the wooden beams of the jump, suffering grazes & bruises. I thought she was a hospital case but, after recovering from the fall, she resumed the lesson & jumped the horse over the same jump half a dozen times.
Last night, I took her, a friend of hers & Bren to dinner at the best restaurant in town - our thanks to Mum; it was a fitting way to wind up the week. Bren has shot up to Johannesburg today. Sunday we go down to Nelspruit before I fly back to London in the evening.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
21April1998
Tuesday, 21 April 1998
My dear folks,
The British would kill for the sunny days that roll out effortlessly and endlessly here in Witbank; blue skies, green lawns & peaceful suburbs filled with bird-song & flowers. If all you wanted from a holiday was a chance to relax in the sunshine, Witbank would do very nicely. Ditto if you wanted a look at a typical working South African town. The suburbs remain overwhelmingly white - high fences, alarms & fierce dogs offering some protection against the high levels of crime. But most of these things you know so I’ll leave them alone.
The Benson residence at 59 Plumer Street is a typical old Witbank property. During the day its sole inhabitants are Lily the Dalmatian and Rosie the Rotweiler, except for the three mornings when Evangelina comes to clean. Lily and Rosie are an integral part of the household & worthy of some attention. Lily has green crocodile eyes & is about as astute as they come; she reads her humans like a book & knows exactly how far she can go. She is full of tricks & can be utterly charming or lapse into sulks. She has become a little stout since "her operation". Rosie is a softie whose muscular torso & blood-curdling howls hide a pacifist heart - not that passers by would get any inkling of this. She hates the threat of domestic violence & growls in dismay if Brendan raises an arm. She soaks up all the attention she can get. Unlike Lily, she is not a clever dog, but she is bright enough to know that Lily is the star performer & she gets very jealous. Both dogs sleep in the scullery except on rare occasions when they can be found on Micaela's bed.
Micaela attends the convent, just around the corner, where the majority of pupils are black. (White pupils almost became extinct but have recently been returning there in small numbers.) Micaela is not a morning person; during the week she rises reluctantly at 6.45 for the start of classes at 7.30. Sometimes, she walks the 100 yards to school with friends; at other times, Brendan drops her. He will not allow her to walk alone. She is fetched from school by a young woman teacher who (is currently raising a family &) oversees Micaela's homework & coaches her. Bren picks his daughter up from the woman's house in the evenings. The arrangement seems to work well. Micaela is going on 17; she is in the 11th grade & hopefully will finish school next year. She is an accomplished horse woman & has a flair for music but she is not academically inclined. Her hope is to do something with horses.
Conal is down in Nelspruit where he & another manager take it in turns to run Brendan's restaurant. We drove down on Sat. Brendan curses the day he ever went into the restaurant business & so does Conal, who hates the work & being far from home. He was sent down there to try to stem the losses arising from continuing corruption & fraud. Brendan, having fired the crooked partner who cost him a fortune, found that he was still being robbed blind by all concerned. The restaurant has been on the market for some time & Brendan is now negotiating with a potential buyer for a knock-down sale. He will be deeply relieved to get the place off his hands. He makes the five hour round trip to Nelspruit at least once a week. As his sole transport is now a bakkie, it is not a comfortable trip & there is seldom good news waiting for him when he arrives. God willing, Benson's restaurant will soon be history.
For the other six days of the week, for at least 11 hours a day, he has been struggling to keep his Witbank business afloat. It has been an exhausting, debilitating process. The problems have arisen as a result of widespread fraud & a downturn in the economy; sadly, his generally useless legal partners give him no backing to speak of. The problems have been exacerbated by the tedious bureaucracy that now hedges labour relations. No doubt that it protects employees interests; it also means that disgruntled employees can tie him up in hours of protracted hearings with labour officials - and they do. It drives him mad.
He came across mounting evidence of a syndicate to defraud him & eventually caught the main perpetrator red-handed. He reckons he was taken for hundreds of thousands of rands. The same is true for the restaurant. To stay afloat, he has mortgaged his house to the hilt, knowing that the collapse of the business would cost him his home as well. It has been a deeply worrying time. He has no friends to speak of, no social life, no holidays and no days off work. His entire efforts have been concentrated on trying to survive. A severe blow came some weeks ago when the coal mines - around which all his work is concentrated - indefinitely postponed a major project of his without warning.
The hardest part is that he has had no-one to turn to. His legal partners, with problems of their own, have been of little assistance. "I was trained as quantity surveyor and builder," Brendan pointed out, saying that these skills did not equip him for the legal, bureaucratic & economic minefield he walked. "I wish Kevin had been here," he said, speaking of Kevin's experience in these things, "he would have known what to do."
A month ago, he was close to despair. I am very pleased to say that things are looking up. First & foremost, he is hopeful of getting rid of the Nelspruit albatross shortly & of getting Conal back up to Witbank. He has also recently had welcome contracts for both underground and surface work. The latter entails the maintenance of hundreds of mine-owned houses. It is straightforward & pays it way but makes little profit. Underground is where his hopes lie.
His underground teams are involved in two specific tasks of which I knew nothing until a few days ago. In both of them, Brendan has been at the forefront of new technology & he has a patent pending. Several other mines have expressed interest & asked him to demonstrate the process which involves "stoppings", a means of blocking off passages for ventilation purposes. The other task involves "stone-dust barriers". These are bags of a fine, inert chalky dust which are hung in their scores in the tunnels behind the coal face. In the event of an explosion, they burst and the dust stops the flame which otherwise threatens to race through the entire mine. Because the coal cutting machines throw up a firework display of sparks from the rock interspersed with the coal seams & can hit a pocket of methane at any moment, fire prevention is a major exercise. Brendan waits day by day for a particular contract that would see him right out of the woods. He also has great hopes that his patent will be lucrative although the patent will not come through until next year.
As I indicated, he makes an early start. That meant that I found myself at home this week with no means of transport. Witbank does not run to public transport & distances are impratically large for walking. Nor is the visitor encouraged to walk. So I went out & bought a bicycle. If that sounds a bit extreme for a brief visit, it's not. I managed to acquire bike, pump, helmet, lock & gloves for less than the equivalent of £100. The bike easily gets me to the several shopping centres - or nearby downtown - as well as to Brendan's porta-office, situated on a site on the other side of town. Micaela has asked to inherit it & I have said that she is welcome to use it, at least until my next visit.
My arrival did provoke a small crisis. Brendan spent much of Sunday searching for the bank cards which I left with him & which give me access to my account & Mum's. He hunted through the numerous files which littered a desk, taking the opportunity to open dozens of statements which had lain untouched for months - some for years. Over a period of several hours, he went through every single file in vain. We then hunted around the house before Bren remembered another box housing Dad's old files - & there the cards were. At least, he got up to date with his mail. I have since brought him a simple hanging file system & installed his files in it. He is pleased & grateful.
My dear folks,
The British would kill for the sunny days that roll out effortlessly and endlessly here in Witbank; blue skies, green lawns & peaceful suburbs filled with bird-song & flowers. If all you wanted from a holiday was a chance to relax in the sunshine, Witbank would do very nicely. Ditto if you wanted a look at a typical working South African town. The suburbs remain overwhelmingly white - high fences, alarms & fierce dogs offering some protection against the high levels of crime. But most of these things you know so I’ll leave them alone.
The Benson residence at 59 Plumer Street is a typical old Witbank property. During the day its sole inhabitants are Lily the Dalmatian and Rosie the Rotweiler, except for the three mornings when Evangelina comes to clean. Lily and Rosie are an integral part of the household & worthy of some attention. Lily has green crocodile eyes & is about as astute as they come; she reads her humans like a book & knows exactly how far she can go. She is full of tricks & can be utterly charming or lapse into sulks. She has become a little stout since "her operation". Rosie is a softie whose muscular torso & blood-curdling howls hide a pacifist heart - not that passers by would get any inkling of this. She hates the threat of domestic violence & growls in dismay if Brendan raises an arm. She soaks up all the attention she can get. Unlike Lily, she is not a clever dog, but she is bright enough to know that Lily is the star performer & she gets very jealous. Both dogs sleep in the scullery except on rare occasions when they can be found on Micaela's bed.
Micaela attends the convent, just around the corner, where the majority of pupils are black. (White pupils almost became extinct but have recently been returning there in small numbers.) Micaela is not a morning person; during the week she rises reluctantly at 6.45 for the start of classes at 7.30. Sometimes, she walks the 100 yards to school with friends; at other times, Brendan drops her. He will not allow her to walk alone. She is fetched from school by a young woman teacher who (is currently raising a family &) oversees Micaela's homework & coaches her. Bren picks his daughter up from the woman's house in the evenings. The arrangement seems to work well. Micaela is going on 17; she is in the 11th grade & hopefully will finish school next year. She is an accomplished horse woman & has a flair for music but she is not academically inclined. Her hope is to do something with horses.
Conal is down in Nelspruit where he & another manager take it in turns to run Brendan's restaurant. We drove down on Sat. Brendan curses the day he ever went into the restaurant business & so does Conal, who hates the work & being far from home. He was sent down there to try to stem the losses arising from continuing corruption & fraud. Brendan, having fired the crooked partner who cost him a fortune, found that he was still being robbed blind by all concerned. The restaurant has been on the market for some time & Brendan is now negotiating with a potential buyer for a knock-down sale. He will be deeply relieved to get the place off his hands. He makes the five hour round trip to Nelspruit at least once a week. As his sole transport is now a bakkie, it is not a comfortable trip & there is seldom good news waiting for him when he arrives. God willing, Benson's restaurant will soon be history.
For the other six days of the week, for at least 11 hours a day, he has been struggling to keep his Witbank business afloat. It has been an exhausting, debilitating process. The problems have arisen as a result of widespread fraud & a downturn in the economy; sadly, his generally useless legal partners give him no backing to speak of. The problems have been exacerbated by the tedious bureaucracy that now hedges labour relations. No doubt that it protects employees interests; it also means that disgruntled employees can tie him up in hours of protracted hearings with labour officials - and they do. It drives him mad.
He came across mounting evidence of a syndicate to defraud him & eventually caught the main perpetrator red-handed. He reckons he was taken for hundreds of thousands of rands. The same is true for the restaurant. To stay afloat, he has mortgaged his house to the hilt, knowing that the collapse of the business would cost him his home as well. It has been a deeply worrying time. He has no friends to speak of, no social life, no holidays and no days off work. His entire efforts have been concentrated on trying to survive. A severe blow came some weeks ago when the coal mines - around which all his work is concentrated - indefinitely postponed a major project of his without warning.
The hardest part is that he has had no-one to turn to. His legal partners, with problems of their own, have been of little assistance. "I was trained as quantity surveyor and builder," Brendan pointed out, saying that these skills did not equip him for the legal, bureaucratic & economic minefield he walked. "I wish Kevin had been here," he said, speaking of Kevin's experience in these things, "he would have known what to do."
A month ago, he was close to despair. I am very pleased to say that things are looking up. First & foremost, he is hopeful of getting rid of the Nelspruit albatross shortly & of getting Conal back up to Witbank. He has also recently had welcome contracts for both underground and surface work. The latter entails the maintenance of hundreds of mine-owned houses. It is straightforward & pays it way but makes little profit. Underground is where his hopes lie.
His underground teams are involved in two specific tasks of which I knew nothing until a few days ago. In both of them, Brendan has been at the forefront of new technology & he has a patent pending. Several other mines have expressed interest & asked him to demonstrate the process which involves "stoppings", a means of blocking off passages for ventilation purposes. The other task involves "stone-dust barriers". These are bags of a fine, inert chalky dust which are hung in their scores in the tunnels behind the coal face. In the event of an explosion, they burst and the dust stops the flame which otherwise threatens to race through the entire mine. Because the coal cutting machines throw up a firework display of sparks from the rock interspersed with the coal seams & can hit a pocket of methane at any moment, fire prevention is a major exercise. Brendan waits day by day for a particular contract that would see him right out of the woods. He also has great hopes that his patent will be lucrative although the patent will not come through until next year.
As I indicated, he makes an early start. That meant that I found myself at home this week with no means of transport. Witbank does not run to public transport & distances are impratically large for walking. Nor is the visitor encouraged to walk. So I went out & bought a bicycle. If that sounds a bit extreme for a brief visit, it's not. I managed to acquire bike, pump, helmet, lock & gloves for less than the equivalent of £100. The bike easily gets me to the several shopping centres - or nearby downtown - as well as to Brendan's porta-office, situated on a site on the other side of town. Micaela has asked to inherit it & I have said that she is welcome to use it, at least until my next visit.
My arrival did provoke a small crisis. Brendan spent much of Sunday searching for the bank cards which I left with him & which give me access to my account & Mum's. He hunted through the numerous files which littered a desk, taking the opportunity to open dozens of statements which had lain untouched for months - some for years. Over a period of several hours, he went through every single file in vain. We then hunted around the house before Bren remembered another box housing Dad's old files - & there the cards were. At least, he got up to date with his mail. I have since brought him a simple hanging file system & installed his files in it. He is pleased & grateful.
17April1998
Kinshasa: 1330: Friday 17 April 1998
My dear folks,
It’s not every day that I begin a letter with a Kinshasa dateline - although I suppose that when it comes from a plane at the airport it could be described as a bit of a con. Still, I had great dawn views of the Zaire river as we approached the strip of concrete glued to the African veld - no fences here - & of the pondok fringes of the city. So, Kinshasa it definitely is. The captain put the plane down gently enough to win a round of applause & many of the passengers got off. I have had the rare luxury of an empty seat beside me from the start; I now have the privilege of an empty row.
Thursday was quite exciting, as days go for us retired folk. It began with Samson’s exuberant escape when I went to take him for his pee & pooh run first thing in the morning & then had to chase him across the Portuguese countryside. He ignored my breathless threats & pleas as he completed a blissful tour of his old pursuits. I wasn’t pleased by the time I eventually caught up with him; nor was he, the blighter.
Then came the obviously spectacular suicide of the chap who threw himself in front of the train shortly after it left Loule for Lisbon on Thursday afternoon. I confess that I saw nothing of it, concluding that the crunching beneath the wheels came from branches that had fallen on the track. But the train screeched to a halt & a passenger who clambered down to investigate came back with a first hand account from the shocked train driver. It was all of an hour before the emergency services had finished picking up the pieces & we got on our way again.
The ferry trip in a miniature storm across the Tagus estuary from Barreiro station to central Lisbon & the bus trip to the airport in the evening rush-hour were interesting as these things go, but not really exciting. However, negotiating the obstacle course between the airport bus stop & the terminal was as challenging as anything faced by Stanley. Lisbon airport, like much of the city, is a tip as the authorities frantically try to ready the place for Expo 98 in the summer. It was pouring & the area was a mud bath. The road I tried to take in the gloom suddenly turned itself into a building site. I made my way through deserted car parks & under the skeleton of a raised approach road until with some relief I spotted a route to the terminal building.
I called Jones from the airport. She had accompanied me to the station (courtesy of Mario, our taxi driver) & afterwards tried to take a back route home from the station, which is a couple of kms south of Loule itself. She was forced to backtrack as a river intervened to block her way. Her long walk did not prevent her taking Samson on his usual evening outing. The children of our American guests accompanied her & counted 21 canine pee stops. I had explained to them that dogs use urine as visiting cards & would be shocked at the thought of wasting it all on one spot. Even so, Samson excelled himself in demonstrating the point. He’s pretty good in the other department too & Jones has visions of her garden disappearing under a vast mound of dog droppings if he roams free.
After one day of purest Easter sunshine, the Algarve returned to the sun & showers formula that has so vexed our visitors & frustrated my efforts to get the place painted. One moment the horizon would be black as thunder & down would come the rain; next moment we’d be bathing in bright sunshine. In spite of this, the painting progressed. I got a 2nd 20-litre can of white emulsion from the suppliers & managed to bring an extendible 3-metre ladder home on the roof of the Rocket to reach the upper levels of the Casas.
On Monday we drove into Faro where I had been advised to talk to the Automobile Club of Portugal about matriculating the Rocket down there. Portugal still has a formidable jungle of bureaucracy to be negotiated by anyone moving themselves or their stuff to the country. The ACP were very helpful. However, it appeared that to register the car, we’d have to apply for residence permits ourselves. I got in touch with a small agency that we’ve used before who were equally helpful & who agreed to set the process in motion. In effect however, nothing is to happen until my return to Portugal, probably some time in June.
During a walk along our “fossil path” that evening we came across an old guy who was building a stone wall along the boundaries of his property. The wall was a work of art & I stopped to admire it & ask him if he’d be interested in building one for us. He said that he’d retired from the business but knew of a “padreiro” who might be able to help us. When I asked about obtaining stone, he offered us the rocks that littered the edge of his field. I was pleased to accept. But his field is remote from the road & by the time I came to leave for RSA we still hadn’t worked out a way of getting the rocks - some of them huge - on to the road & up to the Quinta; nor where to put them. So the project has been shelved for the moment.
Two projects that are to go ahead are the installation of an awning above the upper bedroom window in Casa 4, to stop the rain pouring through; & fixing of the Casa 4 shutters. The carpenter who made these (out of tongue & groove-joined) mahogany planks omitted to use a transverse strip to secure them. So the shutters have all slipped & none of them closes properly. A local firm is to attend to both projects. It would have been cheaper to find a carpenter to fix the shutters but the price-saving is inevitably set off by the hassle. Carpenters are happy to quote you date & price but tend not to appear if they have other priorities - as they generally do.
On Tuesday evening, when we’d arranged to hold a braai for our guests, the rain poured down & we retreated to Casa 3 which has a semi-protected barbecue. After the cooking was done we were glad to shovel the coals into the fireplace in the lounge. On Wednesday evening, we dined at the local where we’d been invited by the owners to be their guests - by way of thanks to the Quintassential’s contribution to their living. The British expats from the valley were congregated there in large numbers - it’s a favourite drinking hole. One of the questions we have to resolve in the months ahead is how to continue enjoying the company of neighbours without being drawn into the confined circle of social life that prevails.
Witbank: Sunday 19 April.
My battery ran out long before we took off again from Kinshasa where a refuelling problem led to a 3-hour delay. It was late afternoon before we landed at Johannesburg where a patient employee of Bren’s was waiting to meet me. Of Bren, Conal, Micaela, Lily & Rose, more in the next letter.
Blessings,
T
My dear folks,
It’s not every day that I begin a letter with a Kinshasa dateline - although I suppose that when it comes from a plane at the airport it could be described as a bit of a con. Still, I had great dawn views of the Zaire river as we approached the strip of concrete glued to the African veld - no fences here - & of the pondok fringes of the city. So, Kinshasa it definitely is. The captain put the plane down gently enough to win a round of applause & many of the passengers got off. I have had the rare luxury of an empty seat beside me from the start; I now have the privilege of an empty row.
Thursday was quite exciting, as days go for us retired folk. It began with Samson’s exuberant escape when I went to take him for his pee & pooh run first thing in the morning & then had to chase him across the Portuguese countryside. He ignored my breathless threats & pleas as he completed a blissful tour of his old pursuits. I wasn’t pleased by the time I eventually caught up with him; nor was he, the blighter.
Then came the obviously spectacular suicide of the chap who threw himself in front of the train shortly after it left Loule for Lisbon on Thursday afternoon. I confess that I saw nothing of it, concluding that the crunching beneath the wheels came from branches that had fallen on the track. But the train screeched to a halt & a passenger who clambered down to investigate came back with a first hand account from the shocked train driver. It was all of an hour before the emergency services had finished picking up the pieces & we got on our way again.
The ferry trip in a miniature storm across the Tagus estuary from Barreiro station to central Lisbon & the bus trip to the airport in the evening rush-hour were interesting as these things go, but not really exciting. However, negotiating the obstacle course between the airport bus stop & the terminal was as challenging as anything faced by Stanley. Lisbon airport, like much of the city, is a tip as the authorities frantically try to ready the place for Expo 98 in the summer. It was pouring & the area was a mud bath. The road I tried to take in the gloom suddenly turned itself into a building site. I made my way through deserted car parks & under the skeleton of a raised approach road until with some relief I spotted a route to the terminal building.
I called Jones from the airport. She had accompanied me to the station (courtesy of Mario, our taxi driver) & afterwards tried to take a back route home from the station, which is a couple of kms south of Loule itself. She was forced to backtrack as a river intervened to block her way. Her long walk did not prevent her taking Samson on his usual evening outing. The children of our American guests accompanied her & counted 21 canine pee stops. I had explained to them that dogs use urine as visiting cards & would be shocked at the thought of wasting it all on one spot. Even so, Samson excelled himself in demonstrating the point. He’s pretty good in the other department too & Jones has visions of her garden disappearing under a vast mound of dog droppings if he roams free.
After one day of purest Easter sunshine, the Algarve returned to the sun & showers formula that has so vexed our visitors & frustrated my efforts to get the place painted. One moment the horizon would be black as thunder & down would come the rain; next moment we’d be bathing in bright sunshine. In spite of this, the painting progressed. I got a 2nd 20-litre can of white emulsion from the suppliers & managed to bring an extendible 3-metre ladder home on the roof of the Rocket to reach the upper levels of the Casas.
On Monday we drove into Faro where I had been advised to talk to the Automobile Club of Portugal about matriculating the Rocket down there. Portugal still has a formidable jungle of bureaucracy to be negotiated by anyone moving themselves or their stuff to the country. The ACP were very helpful. However, it appeared that to register the car, we’d have to apply for residence permits ourselves. I got in touch with a small agency that we’ve used before who were equally helpful & who agreed to set the process in motion. In effect however, nothing is to happen until my return to Portugal, probably some time in June.
During a walk along our “fossil path” that evening we came across an old guy who was building a stone wall along the boundaries of his property. The wall was a work of art & I stopped to admire it & ask him if he’d be interested in building one for us. He said that he’d retired from the business but knew of a “padreiro” who might be able to help us. When I asked about obtaining stone, he offered us the rocks that littered the edge of his field. I was pleased to accept. But his field is remote from the road & by the time I came to leave for RSA we still hadn’t worked out a way of getting the rocks - some of them huge - on to the road & up to the Quinta; nor where to put them. So the project has been shelved for the moment.
Two projects that are to go ahead are the installation of an awning above the upper bedroom window in Casa 4, to stop the rain pouring through; & fixing of the Casa 4 shutters. The carpenter who made these (out of tongue & groove-joined) mahogany planks omitted to use a transverse strip to secure them. So the shutters have all slipped & none of them closes properly. A local firm is to attend to both projects. It would have been cheaper to find a carpenter to fix the shutters but the price-saving is inevitably set off by the hassle. Carpenters are happy to quote you date & price but tend not to appear if they have other priorities - as they generally do.
On Tuesday evening, when we’d arranged to hold a braai for our guests, the rain poured down & we retreated to Casa 3 which has a semi-protected barbecue. After the cooking was done we were glad to shovel the coals into the fireplace in the lounge. On Wednesday evening, we dined at the local where we’d been invited by the owners to be their guests - by way of thanks to the Quintassential’s contribution to their living. The British expats from the valley were congregated there in large numbers - it’s a favourite drinking hole. One of the questions we have to resolve in the months ahead is how to continue enjoying the company of neighbours without being drawn into the confined circle of social life that prevails.
Witbank: Sunday 19 April.
My battery ran out long before we took off again from Kinshasa where a refuelling problem led to a 3-hour delay. It was late afternoon before we landed at Johannesburg where a patient employee of Bren’s was waiting to meet me. Of Bren, Conal, Micaela, Lily & Rose, more in the next letter.
Blessings,
T
12April1998
Easter Sunday: 12 April 1998
My dear folks,
The day has dawned fittingly pure & bright (& jolly chilly) after a week of sunshine & showers; for the first time, we are free of the menacing clouds that have boiled up over the hills with their armoury of squalls. Time & again, they have tested the Quinta's defences with volleys that rattled the shutters & bent the trees; each time, my neighbour & I have fled from the roof to seek cover below, clutching our paint & brushes. In a perfect world, I'd have waited for the sunshine that CNN's Internet weather site promised us for Easter. But the helpful neighbour had other plans for Easter & I need to complete as much of the painting as I can before my departure for Lisbon & RSA on Thursday.
Our winter house sitters had intended to do much of the painting, or so they said, at a rate that would comfortably have paid most of their bills. They were on a tight budget, they explained, & eager to augment their income. However, they appear to have been seduced by the good life, which is not expensive in this part of the world. So although the critical interiors were repainted before the arrival of the season's first guests, the exterior was in need of lots of TLC.
I bought 5 litres of primer & 20 litres of the best white emulsion from the Cin depot on the main road & have been hard at it this past week. The pattern has become well established; scrape the walls, prime them, paint them & run for cover from the rain. The days have merged, piling up like a mound of washing at the foot of the bed. "The poor always have to work," I commented to our maid who has recently sold a property & has an unaccustomed few thousand in the bank. "So do the rich," she retorted. Maria is never short of an answer.
We rise around dawn when Samson starts whining to be let out of workshop. Jones has got into the habit of taking him on a brief pee-run before feeding him his breakfast. I should say immediately that little sign remains of the mangy, ribcage-framed cur we inherited. Instead, we now possess a handsome fleshed-out dog whose most ferocious aspect is his appetite. It's enormous. So is his need for exercise. Because he's a roamer, we've hesitated to let him off the long leash that tethers him, except for short spells. So, after breakfast, Jones - who takes her animal duties seriously - has been taking him (& herself) for his hour-long morning walk. By mid-afternoon he is desperate for his hour-long evening walk. He comes back from that desperate for his supper & then has to be enticed into the workshop with an additional handful of biscuits.
Jones was fearful of a clash between Samson and Noite who has spent the past 5 months with our house-sitters. The cat had made herself at home, warming herself beside their fire & sleeping on their beds. She had to be enticed back down to MCP after their departure. But within a day the pair had accepted each other & are content to share the same patio where the dog lies up on a thick, carpet-covered wodge of foam.
More to the point, both animals have accepted the presence of Tattycat, our latest arrival. To see Tatty is to understand his name. He clearly had a hard life before discovering 7th Heaven & gives the appearance of having gone 10 rounds with a wringer. One ear stands up; the other is mangled beyond repair. He is long-furred with three white paws & one black one. It was our house-sitters who took pity on him after he had stolen some frozen bread that they had put out in the sun to thaw.
He must have been ravenous. No longer! He now gets fed at least twice a day. That task has been taken over by the guests staying in Casa 4, an American couple - & their two kids - with whom Jones worked at NBC for many years. Tatty is on the doorstep in the morning where he announces his presence with a bit of yowling if food does not appear promptly. His suspicions of humans have dulled although by no means disappeared. He won't be touched or cuddled but he is now prepared to eat from a bowl placed at our feet. He has also discovered milk which he thinks is wonderful. Previous feline visitors have warred with Noite but she is prepared to lie up on the tiles with Tatty as though the pair of them were bosom buddies. So it looks, for better or worse, as though Tatty is becoming part of the family. That's ok, there's room for a 2nd cat - although not inside MCP.
Between meals & painting & walking & shopping, we have been fairly sociable. We met most of the valley residents at the birthday celebrations of a neighbour. Then we invited South African friends to supper at the corner cafe & also took our American friends there the night they arrived. Apart from that, we've had the pool man up to clean the water-softener, the pump man to coax the bore-hole pump back into life & a general man to quote us for the erection of an awning & the re-alignment of half a dozen shutters. The "painting" main is a neighbour who is happy to earn pocket money while he awaits a contract for a project he's promoting. We have also been attending to the needs of our guests, a couple in Casa 3 & couple with babe in Casa 2, as well as the Americans. So idle it hasn't been.
Sunday evening:
At that point, I joined Jones and Samson on a walk through the hills. We had decided to take Sunday off. A BBC friend who also owns a house in the area arrived middayish when we all drove down to a restaurant in the valley for a leisurely lunch of salmon steaks. From there we took ourselves down to Loule where the statue of the Virgin was due to be marched a mile from the beehive church in the hills to the central church in the town. It's half of an annual ceremony (the statue is marched back later this month). Thousands of people line the route and many march back earnestly behind the band and the bier carrying the Virgin. The only problem was the timing. We arrived mid-afternoon for a ceremony we expected to start at 1600. By the time it got underway 90 minutes later, the two children were chaffing at the bit. I had to lose a noughts & crosses series to 9 year old Walker (who won the Easter Egg at stake) & then negotiate an extended stay with him (at the cost of another Easter Egg).
On our return, we congregated at the pool where Walker went swimming in spite of the freezing temperatures. The BBC friend presented me with a set of crystal wine glasses "from the gang" plus a card bearing dozens of farewell tributes. They were so kind that I thought I might well have died & have been listening to my obituary from heaven. Sad that the nicest things are often said about the deceased, isn't it, and nice to be the exception. I was touched. Tomorrow, I have to try to register the car & do some more painting & pay our taxes & a dozen other things you don't really want to know about. As for being retired, we'll I'm starting to wonder whether it isn't just like working, except that you don't get paid for doing it. Question is whether there's a future in it.
Blessings.
T
My dear folks,
The day has dawned fittingly pure & bright (& jolly chilly) after a week of sunshine & showers; for the first time, we are free of the menacing clouds that have boiled up over the hills with their armoury of squalls. Time & again, they have tested the Quinta's defences with volleys that rattled the shutters & bent the trees; each time, my neighbour & I have fled from the roof to seek cover below, clutching our paint & brushes. In a perfect world, I'd have waited for the sunshine that CNN's Internet weather site promised us for Easter. But the helpful neighbour had other plans for Easter & I need to complete as much of the painting as I can before my departure for Lisbon & RSA on Thursday.
Our winter house sitters had intended to do much of the painting, or so they said, at a rate that would comfortably have paid most of their bills. They were on a tight budget, they explained, & eager to augment their income. However, they appear to have been seduced by the good life, which is not expensive in this part of the world. So although the critical interiors were repainted before the arrival of the season's first guests, the exterior was in need of lots of TLC.
I bought 5 litres of primer & 20 litres of the best white emulsion from the Cin depot on the main road & have been hard at it this past week. The pattern has become well established; scrape the walls, prime them, paint them & run for cover from the rain. The days have merged, piling up like a mound of washing at the foot of the bed. "The poor always have to work," I commented to our maid who has recently sold a property & has an unaccustomed few thousand in the bank. "So do the rich," she retorted. Maria is never short of an answer.
We rise around dawn when Samson starts whining to be let out of workshop. Jones has got into the habit of taking him on a brief pee-run before feeding him his breakfast. I should say immediately that little sign remains of the mangy, ribcage-framed cur we inherited. Instead, we now possess a handsome fleshed-out dog whose most ferocious aspect is his appetite. It's enormous. So is his need for exercise. Because he's a roamer, we've hesitated to let him off the long leash that tethers him, except for short spells. So, after breakfast, Jones - who takes her animal duties seriously - has been taking him (& herself) for his hour-long morning walk. By mid-afternoon he is desperate for his hour-long evening walk. He comes back from that desperate for his supper & then has to be enticed into the workshop with an additional handful of biscuits.
Jones was fearful of a clash between Samson and Noite who has spent the past 5 months with our house-sitters. The cat had made herself at home, warming herself beside their fire & sleeping on their beds. She had to be enticed back down to MCP after their departure. But within a day the pair had accepted each other & are content to share the same patio where the dog lies up on a thick, carpet-covered wodge of foam.
More to the point, both animals have accepted the presence of Tattycat, our latest arrival. To see Tatty is to understand his name. He clearly had a hard life before discovering 7th Heaven & gives the appearance of having gone 10 rounds with a wringer. One ear stands up; the other is mangled beyond repair. He is long-furred with three white paws & one black one. It was our house-sitters who took pity on him after he had stolen some frozen bread that they had put out in the sun to thaw.
He must have been ravenous. No longer! He now gets fed at least twice a day. That task has been taken over by the guests staying in Casa 4, an American couple - & their two kids - with whom Jones worked at NBC for many years. Tatty is on the doorstep in the morning where he announces his presence with a bit of yowling if food does not appear promptly. His suspicions of humans have dulled although by no means disappeared. He won't be touched or cuddled but he is now prepared to eat from a bowl placed at our feet. He has also discovered milk which he thinks is wonderful. Previous feline visitors have warred with Noite but she is prepared to lie up on the tiles with Tatty as though the pair of them were bosom buddies. So it looks, for better or worse, as though Tatty is becoming part of the family. That's ok, there's room for a 2nd cat - although not inside MCP.
Between meals & painting & walking & shopping, we have been fairly sociable. We met most of the valley residents at the birthday celebrations of a neighbour. Then we invited South African friends to supper at the corner cafe & also took our American friends there the night they arrived. Apart from that, we've had the pool man up to clean the water-softener, the pump man to coax the bore-hole pump back into life & a general man to quote us for the erection of an awning & the re-alignment of half a dozen shutters. The "painting" main is a neighbour who is happy to earn pocket money while he awaits a contract for a project he's promoting. We have also been attending to the needs of our guests, a couple in Casa 3 & couple with babe in Casa 2, as well as the Americans. So idle it hasn't been.
Sunday evening:
At that point, I joined Jones and Samson on a walk through the hills. We had decided to take Sunday off. A BBC friend who also owns a house in the area arrived middayish when we all drove down to a restaurant in the valley for a leisurely lunch of salmon steaks. From there we took ourselves down to Loule where the statue of the Virgin was due to be marched a mile from the beehive church in the hills to the central church in the town. It's half of an annual ceremony (the statue is marched back later this month). Thousands of people line the route and many march back earnestly behind the band and the bier carrying the Virgin. The only problem was the timing. We arrived mid-afternoon for a ceremony we expected to start at 1600. By the time it got underway 90 minutes later, the two children were chaffing at the bit. I had to lose a noughts & crosses series to 9 year old Walker (who won the Easter Egg at stake) & then negotiate an extended stay with him (at the cost of another Easter Egg).
On our return, we congregated at the pool where Walker went swimming in spite of the freezing temperatures. The BBC friend presented me with a set of crystal wine glasses "from the gang" plus a card bearing dozens of farewell tributes. They were so kind that I thought I might well have died & have been listening to my obituary from heaven. Sad that the nicest things are often said about the deceased, isn't it, and nice to be the exception. I was touched. Tomorrow, I have to try to register the car & do some more painting & pay our taxes & a dozen other things you don't really want to know about. As for being retired, we'll I'm starting to wonder whether it isn't just like working, except that you don't get paid for doing it. Question is whether there's a future in it.
Blessings.
T
1April1998
1st April 1998
My dear folks,
The rest of my life is continuing here in the card room of the ferry, Pride of Bilbao, together with the lives of a squabble of bridge players. There’s a convenient plug here for my computer. Jones has gone off for a wander. We are somewhere off the coast of Brittany, turning into the Bay of Biscay & heading for Spain. We upgraded ourselves from the bowels of the ship to a smart outer cabin on the 4th deck. There’s a wrinkly green sea down below us, looking flatter than it is. I was woken in the early hours by the pitching – & accompanying shudders & groans from the vessel - & I thought to see great walls of water at dawn. Instead I found the ship dipping deep into a steady swell with not even a hint of a white cap. Jones feels a little queasy. She does not have a sailor’s stomach.
The mist blew away mid-morning & a welcome sun tempted us out for a blustery turn about the decks. There were several other boats visible around us, ferries, freighters & trawlers. The Pride of Bilbao is a big vessel as ferries go, taking 500 cars, lots of huge lorries & 2,500 passengers. She is very comfortable, with three upper decks given over to thickly-carpeted lounges, play-rooms, restaurants & shops, to say nothing of casino, library & cinema. Jones hasn’t brought a bathing costume but she accompanied me down three decks to the pool where I followed a swim with a dip in the jacuzzi & a sweat in the sauna.
A couple with a young child came past us as we left and we heard the woman asking her man: “How are we going to fill the rest of the day?” I exchanged sympathetic glances with him. Nearly all the passengers appear to be English. The crew is largely Spanish although they manage well enough in English. We tried in vain to get a decent cup of expresso coffee from the coffee shop where a chatty waitress confessed that she barely survived the three-week-on, two-off stint of duty without the real thing. Only the watery English equivalent is available.
So far, I must tell you, I have found retirement perfectly agreeable. It has occurred to me that we pensioners are paid merely to stay alive. That’s a wonderful thought. We don’t have to do anything to get our money other than be. No more sitting through the farce of an annual interviews, no more anxious boards for non-existent jobs. Just wake up in the morning and your money’s there. I think I could get used to it. Part of Monday went on the continuing thinning out of our possessions. I hooted as I discovered half a dozen elderly copies of my CV in a file and joyfully tore them to shreds. Jonesy’s CV followed suit. A great many more documents and files were also shredded & dumped in the paper bin over the road. The printer’s tray, together with some trinkets & moulded wooden feet (ex Dad or Granddad) for keeping shoes in shape, went down to the bric-a-brac shop.
There, the Canadian owner, Peter, gave us £15 for the lot. On Tuesday morning I took the car down to the garage for a thorough clean & check before starting to pack the numerous boxes we’d been stuffing with objects all week. We aimed to be away about 1400 but it was 1530 before we finally staggered downstairs with the last load. My final act was to take the Westminster parking disc off the windscreen and post it back to the council with a request for a refund. I could just see out of the back window over the top of the mountain of cases & boxes on the back seat. The pair of us felt exhausted. I had hardly got out of London when I found myself nodding off & had to pull into a rest area for a 15 min kip. After that it was an easy 2½ hours down the motorway to Portsmouth.
Saturday 4 April at the Quinta
Samson is having a good scratch here beside me on the patio of MCP. He’s just been for his first walk of the day but it wasn’t half long enough for his pleasure. It was followed by a large plate of dog biscuits and goo which he demolished effortlessly. No wonder his ribs have disappeared beneath a comfortable layer of flesh. He also likes lots of attention and keeps on wandering over to stick his nose under my elbow.
The sun has just appeared, a welcome sun after the grey skies and strong winds that greeted our arrival in the Algarve yesterday. Our guests were not best pleased. We’ve couples in all three casas, two of them with babes. They were made at home in our absence by our house-sitter whom we are about to run to the airport.
The journey down was blessedly problem free. The hardest bit was navigating the freeways that we picked up on the outskirts of Bilbao harbour at the height of the morning rush-hour. Jones navigated with the aid of twin (large & small scale) maps of Iberia while I drove. It’s 1150 kms from Bilbao to the Quinta, most of which we covered during a 10-hour drive on Thursday. We ended up just across the Portuguese border in the little Alentejan town of Vila Vicosa where we waited as a crowd trailed down the main road behind a hearse. Jones turned down the offer of a five-star hotel in favour of a small ‘pension’ in the main street. It proved an excellent choice, comfortable & inexpensive. Its only drawback was its situation between two competing clock-towers. Jones said the bells stopped chiming about midnight. If that was the case, they certainly started again at 0345 when I awoke, clanging away (a minute apart) at every quarter hour.
Vila Vicosa is at the heart of the Alentejo’s marble quarrying industry & there is evidence of this everywhere. As far as the townspeople are concerned, marble is just the local stone. The kerb stones are made of marble; the broad pavements are covered with marble chips; the town benches are marble.
The town’s ducal palace is being restored and a vast square is being laid out in front of it, in marble of course. We visited the gardens of the adjacent pousada (a smart, state-run hotel) where I noted a few features, in particular the water garden.
We supped on the dish of the day at the smartest café in town, although such distinctions in Vila Vicosa are very fine indeed. To the untutored eye, they all look a bit like dives. The locals, congregated in the bar section of the restaurant, were fascinated at our presence and they accosted us politely on our way out to satisfy their curiosity. After a brief conversation, a local worthy marched us across the road to a gift shop where he invited Jones to take her choice of the marble ashtrays as a momento of our visit. She did. We were touched.
The Portuguese road links with the Alentejo have been much improved since our last trip there and we were home at the Quinta by early afternoon. The Rocket sang all the way. What a pleasure it was to be pulled along by a decent engine instead of the 1100cc jobs we generally hire down here. The only drawback was the difficulty of seeing the oncoming traffic when trying to overtake. Jones would indicate to me each time whether I could pull out for a clear look. The Portuguese drive like people possessed; killing & maiming one another is a national pastime; it’s easy to understand why they have the highest accident rate in the European Union. Mainly, I stuck to the side of the road & let them whiz by. A stream of ambulances howled their way up & down the national road, fetching & carrying the unfortunates who hadn’t made it.
The journey through the Alentejo took us through fields stained in mauves by great sweeps of (wild flowers that Jones stopped to identify as) pulsatillas, yellow daisies & red poppies. The colours were wonderfully vivid. The countryside was brimming with new growth. There’d obviously been lots of rain. The Quinta looked as though it had run riot in Jonesy’s two-week absence. Most of the flower beds are bursting with colour. In every other available space on the terraces, shoulder-high beds of yellow daisies compete with jungles of blue borage. Dozens of plants have scorned the official driveways, thrusting themselves up amid the gravel & flowering madly. It’s gorgeous if a bit overpowering.
Also a bit overpowering is the task ahead. We’ll take a day or two to get a grip on it as we get used to the needs of the dog & the repatriation of the cat to MCP, to say nothing of the arrival of Tatty-cat, of whom more later. There’s lots of painting to be done, something I will make a high priority. Meanwhile, we are here and very pleased to be so.
Blessings ever,
T
My dear folks,
The rest of my life is continuing here in the card room of the ferry, Pride of Bilbao, together with the lives of a squabble of bridge players. There’s a convenient plug here for my computer. Jones has gone off for a wander. We are somewhere off the coast of Brittany, turning into the Bay of Biscay & heading for Spain. We upgraded ourselves from the bowels of the ship to a smart outer cabin on the 4th deck. There’s a wrinkly green sea down below us, looking flatter than it is. I was woken in the early hours by the pitching – & accompanying shudders & groans from the vessel - & I thought to see great walls of water at dawn. Instead I found the ship dipping deep into a steady swell with not even a hint of a white cap. Jones feels a little queasy. She does not have a sailor’s stomach.
The mist blew away mid-morning & a welcome sun tempted us out for a blustery turn about the decks. There were several other boats visible around us, ferries, freighters & trawlers. The Pride of Bilbao is a big vessel as ferries go, taking 500 cars, lots of huge lorries & 2,500 passengers. She is very comfortable, with three upper decks given over to thickly-carpeted lounges, play-rooms, restaurants & shops, to say nothing of casino, library & cinema. Jones hasn’t brought a bathing costume but she accompanied me down three decks to the pool where I followed a swim with a dip in the jacuzzi & a sweat in the sauna.
A couple with a young child came past us as we left and we heard the woman asking her man: “How are we going to fill the rest of the day?” I exchanged sympathetic glances with him. Nearly all the passengers appear to be English. The crew is largely Spanish although they manage well enough in English. We tried in vain to get a decent cup of expresso coffee from the coffee shop where a chatty waitress confessed that she barely survived the three-week-on, two-off stint of duty without the real thing. Only the watery English equivalent is available.
So far, I must tell you, I have found retirement perfectly agreeable. It has occurred to me that we pensioners are paid merely to stay alive. That’s a wonderful thought. We don’t have to do anything to get our money other than be. No more sitting through the farce of an annual interviews, no more anxious boards for non-existent jobs. Just wake up in the morning and your money’s there. I think I could get used to it. Part of Monday went on the continuing thinning out of our possessions. I hooted as I discovered half a dozen elderly copies of my CV in a file and joyfully tore them to shreds. Jonesy’s CV followed suit. A great many more documents and files were also shredded & dumped in the paper bin over the road. The printer’s tray, together with some trinkets & moulded wooden feet (ex Dad or Granddad) for keeping shoes in shape, went down to the bric-a-brac shop.
There, the Canadian owner, Peter, gave us £15 for the lot. On Tuesday morning I took the car down to the garage for a thorough clean & check before starting to pack the numerous boxes we’d been stuffing with objects all week. We aimed to be away about 1400 but it was 1530 before we finally staggered downstairs with the last load. My final act was to take the Westminster parking disc off the windscreen and post it back to the council with a request for a refund. I could just see out of the back window over the top of the mountain of cases & boxes on the back seat. The pair of us felt exhausted. I had hardly got out of London when I found myself nodding off & had to pull into a rest area for a 15 min kip. After that it was an easy 2½ hours down the motorway to Portsmouth.
Saturday 4 April at the Quinta
Samson is having a good scratch here beside me on the patio of MCP. He’s just been for his first walk of the day but it wasn’t half long enough for his pleasure. It was followed by a large plate of dog biscuits and goo which he demolished effortlessly. No wonder his ribs have disappeared beneath a comfortable layer of flesh. He also likes lots of attention and keeps on wandering over to stick his nose under my elbow.
The sun has just appeared, a welcome sun after the grey skies and strong winds that greeted our arrival in the Algarve yesterday. Our guests were not best pleased. We’ve couples in all three casas, two of them with babes. They were made at home in our absence by our house-sitter whom we are about to run to the airport.
The journey down was blessedly problem free. The hardest bit was navigating the freeways that we picked up on the outskirts of Bilbao harbour at the height of the morning rush-hour. Jones navigated with the aid of twin (large & small scale) maps of Iberia while I drove. It’s 1150 kms from Bilbao to the Quinta, most of which we covered during a 10-hour drive on Thursday. We ended up just across the Portuguese border in the little Alentejan town of Vila Vicosa where we waited as a crowd trailed down the main road behind a hearse. Jones turned down the offer of a five-star hotel in favour of a small ‘pension’ in the main street. It proved an excellent choice, comfortable & inexpensive. Its only drawback was its situation between two competing clock-towers. Jones said the bells stopped chiming about midnight. If that was the case, they certainly started again at 0345 when I awoke, clanging away (a minute apart) at every quarter hour.
Vila Vicosa is at the heart of the Alentejo’s marble quarrying industry & there is evidence of this everywhere. As far as the townspeople are concerned, marble is just the local stone. The kerb stones are made of marble; the broad pavements are covered with marble chips; the town benches are marble.
The town’s ducal palace is being restored and a vast square is being laid out in front of it, in marble of course. We visited the gardens of the adjacent pousada (a smart, state-run hotel) where I noted a few features, in particular the water garden.
We supped on the dish of the day at the smartest café in town, although such distinctions in Vila Vicosa are very fine indeed. To the untutored eye, they all look a bit like dives. The locals, congregated in the bar section of the restaurant, were fascinated at our presence and they accosted us politely on our way out to satisfy their curiosity. After a brief conversation, a local worthy marched us across the road to a gift shop where he invited Jones to take her choice of the marble ashtrays as a momento of our visit. She did. We were touched.
The Portuguese road links with the Alentejo have been much improved since our last trip there and we were home at the Quinta by early afternoon. The Rocket sang all the way. What a pleasure it was to be pulled along by a decent engine instead of the 1100cc jobs we generally hire down here. The only drawback was the difficulty of seeing the oncoming traffic when trying to overtake. Jones would indicate to me each time whether I could pull out for a clear look. The Portuguese drive like people possessed; killing & maiming one another is a national pastime; it’s easy to understand why they have the highest accident rate in the European Union. Mainly, I stuck to the side of the road & let them whiz by. A stream of ambulances howled their way up & down the national road, fetching & carrying the unfortunates who hadn’t made it.
The journey through the Alentejo took us through fields stained in mauves by great sweeps of (wild flowers that Jones stopped to identify as) pulsatillas, yellow daisies & red poppies. The colours were wonderfully vivid. The countryside was brimming with new growth. There’d obviously been lots of rain. The Quinta looked as though it had run riot in Jonesy’s two-week absence. Most of the flower beds are bursting with colour. In every other available space on the terraces, shoulder-high beds of yellow daisies compete with jungles of blue borage. Dozens of plants have scorned the official driveways, thrusting themselves up amid the gravel & flowering madly. It’s gorgeous if a bit overpowering.
Also a bit overpowering is the task ahead. We’ll take a day or two to get a grip on it as we get used to the needs of the dog & the repatriation of the cat to MCP, to say nothing of the arrival of Tatty-cat, of whom more later. There’s lots of painting to be done, something I will make a high priority. Meanwhile, we are here and very pleased to be so.
Blessings ever,
T
1April1998
1st April 1998
My dear folks,
The rest of my life is continuing here in the card room of the ferry, Pride of Bilbao, together with the lives of a squabble of bridge players. There’s a convenient plug here for my computer. Jones has gone off for a wander. We are somewhere off the coast of Brittany, turning into the Bay of Biscay & heading for Spain. We upgraded ourselves from the bowels of the ship to a smart outer cabin on the 4th deck. There’s a wrinkly green sea down below us, looking flatter than it is. I was woken in the early hours by the pitching – & accompanying shudders & groans from the vessel - & I thought to see great walls of water at dawn. Instead I found the ship dipping deep into a steady swell with not even a hint of a white cap. Jones feels a little queasy. She does not have a sailor’s stomach.
The mist blew away mid-morning & a welcome sun tempted us out for a blustery turn about the decks. There were several other boats visible around us, ferries, freighters & trawlers. The Pride of Bilbao is a big vessel as ferries go, taking 500 cars, lots of huge lorries & 2,500 passengers. She is very comfortable, with three upper decks given over to thickly-carpeted lounges, play-rooms, restaurants & shops, to say nothing of casino, library & cinema. Jones hasn’t brought a bathing costume but she accompanied me down three decks to the pool where I followed a swim with a dip in the jacuzzi & a sweat in the sauna.
A couple with a young child came past us as we left and we heard the woman asking her man: “How are we going to fill the rest of the day?” I exchanged sympathetic glances with him. Nearly all the passengers appear to be English. The crew is largely Spanish although they manage well enough in English. We tried in vain to get a decent cup of expresso coffee from the coffee shop where a chatty waitress confessed that she barely survived the three-week-on, two-off stint of duty without the real thing. Only the watery English equivalent is available.
So far, I must tell you, I have found retirement perfectly agreeable. It has occurred to me that we pensioners are paid merely to stay alive. That’s a wonderful thought. We don’t have to do anything to get our money other than be. No more sitting through the farce of an annual interviews, no more anxious boards for non-existent jobs. Just wake up in the morning and your money’s there. I think I could get used to it. Part of Monday went on the continuing thinning out of our possessions. I hooted as I discovered half a dozen elderly copies of my CV in a file and joyfully tore them to shreds. Jonesy’s CV followed suit. A great many more documents and files were also shredded & dumped in the paper bin over the road. The printer’s tray, together with some trinkets & moulded wooden feet (ex Dad or Granddad) for keeping shoes in shape, went down to the bric-a-brac shop.
There, the Canadian owner, Peter, gave us £15 for the lot. On Tuesday morning I took the car down to the garage for a thorough clean & check before starting to pack the numerous boxes we’d been stuffing with objects all week. We aimed to be away about 1400 but it was 1530 before we finally staggered downstairs with the last load. My final act was to take the Westminster parking disc off the windscreen and post it back to the council with a request for a refund. I could just see out of the back window over the top of the mountain of cases & boxes on the back seat. The pair of us felt exhausted. I had hardly got out of London when I found myself nodding off & had to pull into a rest area for a 15 min kip. After that it was an easy 2½ hours down the motorway to Portsmouth.
Saturday 4 April at the Quinta
Samson is having a good scratch here beside me on the patio of MCP. He’s just been for his first walk of the day but it wasn’t half long enough for his pleasure. It was followed by a large plate of dog biscuits and goo which he demolished effortlessly. No wonder his ribs have disappeared beneath a comfortable layer of flesh. He also likes lots of attention and keeps on wandering over to stick his nose under my elbow.
The sun has just appeared, a welcome sun after the grey skies and strong winds that greeted our arrival in the Algarve yesterday. Our guests were not best pleased. We’ve couples in all three casas, two of them with babes. They were made at home in our absence by our house-sitter whom we are about to run to the airport.
The journey down was blessedly problem free. The hardest bit was navigating the freeways that we picked up on the outskirts of Bilbao harbour at the height of the morning rush-hour. Jones navigated with the aid of twin (large & small scale) maps of Iberia while I drove. It’s 1150 kms from Bilbao to the Quinta, most of which we covered during a 10-hour drive on Thursday. We ended up just across the Portuguese border in the little Alentejan town of Vila Vicosa where we waited as a crowd trailed down the main road behind a hearse. Jones turned down the offer of a five-star hotel in favour of a small ‘pension’ in the main street. It proved an excellent choice, comfortable & inexpensive. Its only drawback was its situation between two competing clock-towers. Jones said the bells stopped chiming about midnight. If that was the case, they certainly started again at 0345 when I awoke, clanging away (a minute apart) at every quarter hour.
Vila Vicosa is at the heart of the Alentejo’s marble quarrying industry & there is evidence of this everywhere. As far as the townspeople are concerned, marble is just the local stone. The kerb stones are made of marble; the broad pavements are covered with marble chips; the town benches are marble.
The town’s ducal palace is being restored and a vast square is being laid out in front of it, in marble of course. We visited the gardens of the adjacent pousada (a smart, state-run hotel) where I noted a few features, in particular the water garden.
We supped on the dish of the day at the smartest café in town, although such distinctions in Vila Vicosa are very fine indeed. To the untutored eye, they all look a bit like dives. The locals, congregated in the bar section of the restaurant, were fascinated at our presence and they accosted us politely on our way out to satisfy their curiosity. After a brief conversation, a local worthy marched us across the road to a gift shop where he invited Jones to take her choice of the marble ashtrays as a momento of our visit. She did. We were touched.
The Portuguese road links with the Alentejo have been much improved since our last trip there and we were home at the Quinta by early afternoon. The Rocket sang all the way. What a pleasure it was to be pulled along by a decent engine instead of the 1100cc jobs we generally hire down here. The only drawback was the difficulty of seeing the oncoming traffic when trying to overtake. Jones would indicate to me each time whether I could pull out for a clear look. The Portuguese drive like people possessed; killing & maiming one another is a national pastime; it’s easy to understand why they have the highest accident rate in the European Union. Mainly, I stuck to the side of the road & let them whiz by. A stream of ambulances howled their way up & down the national road, fetching & carrying the unfortunates who hadn’t made it.
The journey through the Alentejo took us through fields stained in mauves by great sweeps of (wild flowers that Jones stopped to identify as) pulsatillas, yellow daisies & red poppies. The colours were wonderfully vivid. The countryside was brimming with new growth. There’d obviously been lots of rain. The Quinta looked as though it had run riot in Jonesy’s two-week absence. Most of the flower beds are bursting with colour. In every other available space on the terraces, shoulder-high beds of yellow daisies compete with jungles of blue borage. Dozens of plants have scorned the official driveways, thrusting themselves up amid the gravel & flowering madly. It’s gorgeous if a bit overpowering.
Also a bit overpowering is the task ahead. We’ll take a day or two to get a grip on it as we get used to the needs of the dog & the repatriation of the cat to MCP, to say nothing of the arrival of Tatty-cat, of whom more later. There’s lots of painting to be done, something I will make a high priority. Meanwhile, we are here and very pleased to be so.
Blessings ever,
T
My dear folks,
The rest of my life is continuing here in the card room of the ferry, Pride of Bilbao, together with the lives of a squabble of bridge players. There’s a convenient plug here for my computer. Jones has gone off for a wander. We are somewhere off the coast of Brittany, turning into the Bay of Biscay & heading for Spain. We upgraded ourselves from the bowels of the ship to a smart outer cabin on the 4th deck. There’s a wrinkly green sea down below us, looking flatter than it is. I was woken in the early hours by the pitching – & accompanying shudders & groans from the vessel - & I thought to see great walls of water at dawn. Instead I found the ship dipping deep into a steady swell with not even a hint of a white cap. Jones feels a little queasy. She does not have a sailor’s stomach.
The mist blew away mid-morning & a welcome sun tempted us out for a blustery turn about the decks. There were several other boats visible around us, ferries, freighters & trawlers. The Pride of Bilbao is a big vessel as ferries go, taking 500 cars, lots of huge lorries & 2,500 passengers. She is very comfortable, with three upper decks given over to thickly-carpeted lounges, play-rooms, restaurants & shops, to say nothing of casino, library & cinema. Jones hasn’t brought a bathing costume but she accompanied me down three decks to the pool where I followed a swim with a dip in the jacuzzi & a sweat in the sauna.
A couple with a young child came past us as we left and we heard the woman asking her man: “How are we going to fill the rest of the day?” I exchanged sympathetic glances with him. Nearly all the passengers appear to be English. The crew is largely Spanish although they manage well enough in English. We tried in vain to get a decent cup of expresso coffee from the coffee shop where a chatty waitress confessed that she barely survived the three-week-on, two-off stint of duty without the real thing. Only the watery English equivalent is available.
So far, I must tell you, I have found retirement perfectly agreeable. It has occurred to me that we pensioners are paid merely to stay alive. That’s a wonderful thought. We don’t have to do anything to get our money other than be. No more sitting through the farce of an annual interviews, no more anxious boards for non-existent jobs. Just wake up in the morning and your money’s there. I think I could get used to it. Part of Monday went on the continuing thinning out of our possessions. I hooted as I discovered half a dozen elderly copies of my CV in a file and joyfully tore them to shreds. Jonesy’s CV followed suit. A great many more documents and files were also shredded & dumped in the paper bin over the road. The printer’s tray, together with some trinkets & moulded wooden feet (ex Dad or Granddad) for keeping shoes in shape, went down to the bric-a-brac shop.
There, the Canadian owner, Peter, gave us £15 for the lot. On Tuesday morning I took the car down to the garage for a thorough clean & check before starting to pack the numerous boxes we’d been stuffing with objects all week. We aimed to be away about 1400 but it was 1530 before we finally staggered downstairs with the last load. My final act was to take the Westminster parking disc off the windscreen and post it back to the council with a request for a refund. I could just see out of the back window over the top of the mountain of cases & boxes on the back seat. The pair of us felt exhausted. I had hardly got out of London when I found myself nodding off & had to pull into a rest area for a 15 min kip. After that it was an easy 2½ hours down the motorway to Portsmouth.
Saturday 4 April at the Quinta
Samson is having a good scratch here beside me on the patio of MCP. He’s just been for his first walk of the day but it wasn’t half long enough for his pleasure. It was followed by a large plate of dog biscuits and goo which he demolished effortlessly. No wonder his ribs have disappeared beneath a comfortable layer of flesh. He also likes lots of attention and keeps on wandering over to stick his nose under my elbow.
The sun has just appeared, a welcome sun after the grey skies and strong winds that greeted our arrival in the Algarve yesterday. Our guests were not best pleased. We’ve couples in all three casas, two of them with babes. They were made at home in our absence by our house-sitter whom we are about to run to the airport.
The journey down was blessedly problem free. The hardest bit was navigating the freeways that we picked up on the outskirts of Bilbao harbour at the height of the morning rush-hour. Jones navigated with the aid of twin (large & small scale) maps of Iberia while I drove. It’s 1150 kms from Bilbao to the Quinta, most of which we covered during a 10-hour drive on Thursday. We ended up just across the Portuguese border in the little Alentejan town of Vila Vicosa where we waited as a crowd trailed down the main road behind a hearse. Jones turned down the offer of a five-star hotel in favour of a small ‘pension’ in the main street. It proved an excellent choice, comfortable & inexpensive. Its only drawback was its situation between two competing clock-towers. Jones said the bells stopped chiming about midnight. If that was the case, they certainly started again at 0345 when I awoke, clanging away (a minute apart) at every quarter hour.
Vila Vicosa is at the heart of the Alentejo’s marble quarrying industry & there is evidence of this everywhere. As far as the townspeople are concerned, marble is just the local stone. The kerb stones are made of marble; the broad pavements are covered with marble chips; the town benches are marble.
The town’s ducal palace is being restored and a vast square is being laid out in front of it, in marble of course. We visited the gardens of the adjacent pousada (a smart, state-run hotel) where I noted a few features, in particular the water garden.
We supped on the dish of the day at the smartest café in town, although such distinctions in Vila Vicosa are very fine indeed. To the untutored eye, they all look a bit like dives. The locals, congregated in the bar section of the restaurant, were fascinated at our presence and they accosted us politely on our way out to satisfy their curiosity. After a brief conversation, a local worthy marched us across the road to a gift shop where he invited Jones to take her choice of the marble ashtrays as a momento of our visit. She did. We were touched.
The Portuguese road links with the Alentejo have been much improved since our last trip there and we were home at the Quinta by early afternoon. The Rocket sang all the way. What a pleasure it was to be pulled along by a decent engine instead of the 1100cc jobs we generally hire down here. The only drawback was the difficulty of seeing the oncoming traffic when trying to overtake. Jones would indicate to me each time whether I could pull out for a clear look. The Portuguese drive like people possessed; killing & maiming one another is a national pastime; it’s easy to understand why they have the highest accident rate in the European Union. Mainly, I stuck to the side of the road & let them whiz by. A stream of ambulances howled their way up & down the national road, fetching & carrying the unfortunates who hadn’t made it.
The journey through the Alentejo took us through fields stained in mauves by great sweeps of (wild flowers that Jones stopped to identify as) pulsatillas, yellow daisies & red poppies. The colours were wonderfully vivid. The countryside was brimming with new growth. There’d obviously been lots of rain. The Quinta looked as though it had run riot in Jonesy’s two-week absence. Most of the flower beds are bursting with colour. In every other available space on the terraces, shoulder-high beds of yellow daisies compete with jungles of blue borage. Dozens of plants have scorned the official driveways, thrusting themselves up amid the gravel & flowering madly. It’s gorgeous if a bit overpowering.
Also a bit overpowering is the task ahead. We’ll take a day or two to get a grip on it as we get used to the needs of the dog & the repatriation of the cat to MCP, to say nothing of the arrival of Tatty-cat, of whom more later. There’s lots of painting to be done, something I will make a high priority. Meanwhile, we are here and very pleased to be so.
Blessings ever,
T
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
30March1998
Monday 30 March 1998,
My dear folks,
Good morning. We woke early and came downstairs for coffee & and a brief unspoken consideration of the start of the rest of our lives. This pleased Mavis no end. He comes upstairs in the early hours & either makes himself comfortable on the bed or sits in the nook patiently awaiting the signs of life that precede his breakfast. (For the benefit of those who have enquired about his future welfare, I can only say that we are giving much thought to it. Jones is worried that he may not like Portugal so we are casting around in London as a first resort!)
Yesterday went quite slowly in spite of several intervals for small celebrations with the shifts of TV colleagues on the far side of the glass panels that separate them from Online. I had taken pains to keep my going as low key as possible & with a few inevitable exceptions, they were in ignorance of my departure. So their surprise on my handing out glasses of bubbly corks was great. I was much envied & assured that I would be greatly missed. The testimonials started to sound, as I pointed out, like an obit, & I had to take refuge in a few additional glasses to restore my nerves.
At the end of the day, I walked down the familiar corridors, through the courtyard & past the television studios to the bike shed, with a sense of crossing a watershed. However, I have been importuned by both Online & TV News to let them the moment I am available for freelance shifts & in this world nothing is impossible. I could take my redundancy money & return in “foive Moondays” ‘World’s’ Irish roster organiser assured me, adding that he would be very pleased if I did. Although it’s reassuring to know, it’s not part of the plan. The thought occurred to me that I liked nothing so much about the BBC as the leaving thereof. But I’m not sure that it’s true because I worked with some splendid people & I shall really miss their company.
I had a small celebration with my wife when I got home, just in time to avoid a shower. We opened a bottle of bubbly that has long lain in the fridge awaiting the occasion. We kept half an eye on the TV where BBC 2 is doing a compelling series on evolution & the waves it created & continues to create. One of the first things I want to do in Portugal is to put in a satellite dish in order to enjoy the benefit of the BBC channels available by satellite.
On the Shirland Road front, after talks with my neighbours and the woman who owns two of the flats in the house, a deal has been agreed in principle. The neighbours, who live in the basement flat, are to buy the ground floor flat from the woman concerned. She, in turn, is to buy our flat from us. This will save the neighbours a lot of money & give them the benefit of owning adjoining flats in the lower half of the house while the lady concerned will own the top half. With any luck, all this will happen some time in June.
Jones has spent much of her last few days in London running around, where possible with Bevan, looking at flats. He was impressed by a superb if somewhat pricey studio in a fine block in St Johns Wood but turned up his nose at the much cheaper ex-council flat I described in my last letter. Jones & I continue to give consideration to purchasing another foothold somewhere in Britain after the sale of Shirland Road. Jones would like to stay in London: I would like to move out, if only for price reasons. So we’ll see.
That’s the state of play. For many good wishes, thank you. After some reflection, I have decided that I’ll probably be a YAP rather than an OAP for the next few years.
Blessings,
T
My dear folks,
Good morning. We woke early and came downstairs for coffee & and a brief unspoken consideration of the start of the rest of our lives. This pleased Mavis no end. He comes upstairs in the early hours & either makes himself comfortable on the bed or sits in the nook patiently awaiting the signs of life that precede his breakfast. (For the benefit of those who have enquired about his future welfare, I can only say that we are giving much thought to it. Jones is worried that he may not like Portugal so we are casting around in London as a first resort!)
Yesterday went quite slowly in spite of several intervals for small celebrations with the shifts of TV colleagues on the far side of the glass panels that separate them from Online. I had taken pains to keep my going as low key as possible & with a few inevitable exceptions, they were in ignorance of my departure. So their surprise on my handing out glasses of bubbly corks was great. I was much envied & assured that I would be greatly missed. The testimonials started to sound, as I pointed out, like an obit, & I had to take refuge in a few additional glasses to restore my nerves.
At the end of the day, I walked down the familiar corridors, through the courtyard & past the television studios to the bike shed, with a sense of crossing a watershed. However, I have been importuned by both Online & TV News to let them the moment I am available for freelance shifts & in this world nothing is impossible. I could take my redundancy money & return in “foive Moondays” ‘World’s’ Irish roster organiser assured me, adding that he would be very pleased if I did. Although it’s reassuring to know, it’s not part of the plan. The thought occurred to me that I liked nothing so much about the BBC as the leaving thereof. But I’m not sure that it’s true because I worked with some splendid people & I shall really miss their company.
I had a small celebration with my wife when I got home, just in time to avoid a shower. We opened a bottle of bubbly that has long lain in the fridge awaiting the occasion. We kept half an eye on the TV where BBC 2 is doing a compelling series on evolution & the waves it created & continues to create. One of the first things I want to do in Portugal is to put in a satellite dish in order to enjoy the benefit of the BBC channels available by satellite.
On the Shirland Road front, after talks with my neighbours and the woman who owns two of the flats in the house, a deal has been agreed in principle. The neighbours, who live in the basement flat, are to buy the ground floor flat from the woman concerned. She, in turn, is to buy our flat from us. This will save the neighbours a lot of money & give them the benefit of owning adjoining flats in the lower half of the house while the lady concerned will own the top half. With any luck, all this will happen some time in June.
Jones has spent much of her last few days in London running around, where possible with Bevan, looking at flats. He was impressed by a superb if somewhat pricey studio in a fine block in St Johns Wood but turned up his nose at the much cheaper ex-council flat I described in my last letter. Jones & I continue to give consideration to purchasing another foothold somewhere in Britain after the sale of Shirland Road. Jones would like to stay in London: I would like to move out, if only for price reasons. So we’ll see.
That’s the state of play. For many good wishes, thank you. After some reflection, I have decided that I’ll probably be a YAP rather than an OAP for the next few years.
Blessings,
T
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