17June1996

My dear folks, 17/06/96

I'm London bound & none too pleased about it. Nor was Jones pleased when I saw her off after final coffees & almond croissants at The Gates of Heaven. These goodbyes get ever more reluctant. Not too many more now. If we'd won the lottery, I informed Jones, she could expect to see me back next week. Otherwise, it might take a little longer. As a last morning, it wasn't bad. We got in a long-postponed walk around the valley, Jones unwisely baring her legs to the horse flies which are pestering the region. I carried my habitual swatter but I wasn't fast enough to zap a couple of mean bastards who swooped in on her ankles from nowhere. She pointed out her favourite wild flowers & we stopped to admire a superb house & garden whose owners, on discovering that we spoke some French & Portuguese, insisted on showing us around. There's still much old world hospitality in this part of Portugal.

Forgive my silence this past week. It has been a very constructive week & a very busy one. Maria's husband, Manuel, had agreed to join me for 5 days of labour in the garden. I've worked with him before - a comfortable arrangement in which bursts of hard labour are punctuated with Manuel's recollections of the bad old times under Salazar & some homely philosophy. Day 1 was devoted to laying strips of black plastic over a section of the upper terrace, covering the plastic with last season's crop of weeds & grasses and building a new path around it. The aim was to divide & rule the wastelands & to reduce the task Jones still faces in taming parts of the "garden". We also replaced the artistic but ankle-threatening stone pathway below Jones's cottage with a much blander but safer surface of paving stones.

Day 2 witnessed the delivery of more paving stones, 100 of them, solid concrete slabs, each half a metre square. As usual, the elderly delivery lorry stalled halfway up the drive. With Manuel's help, the driver & his mate unloaded a third of the consignment on the road side, groaned up the drive with the rest, & then came back to fetch the remainder. It was the same story the following day, first with the gravel & later with the sand - except that the piles that were tipped off by the road side - to lighten the load sufficiently for the lorry to ascend - remained there.

On Day 2 we built a patio around the washing lines on the lower terrace. With up to 15 people filling the place in the high summer, the washing machine & washing lines work hard - to say nothing of Maria. The method of patio-building is simple. First we clear & roughly level the ground; then we cover it with strips of black plastic to block growth. Next comes a layer of sand on which the stone slabs are laid & roughly levelled. Around the slabs comes a fringe of gravel held in place by a border of stones. If need be, a fringe of new cement is slapped around the edges. It's quick, stable & looks good. Moreover, it's easy to redesign later if need be.

Day 3 saw the creation of a similar patio below Jones's cottage, with chessboard squares of cement slabs & old tiles resting on gravel. It look surprisingly good, especially when Jones set down a number of her pots & old stone-carved bowls in artistic poses. On Day 4 we added the finishing touches to all of the above & on Day 5 - a half day - we filled in holes in the drive way & built a flight of steps between two of the terraces. All in all, it was a fulfilling week. It was also very hot & thirsty work. I got through about a gallon of water each day for the first part of the week & - when it ran out - about the same amount of beer.

The only drawback with the latter was that it tended to detract from my aim in the war against the horse flies. The bastards are persistent & make no bones about their intention of making a meal of you. I reckon I whacked 10 a day & missed about the same. I fed their corpses to the ants who removed them gratefully. It never occurred to the ants that it was ridiculous to try to drag off a creature 100 times their own size. Ants are very single-minded insects. One day, I saw 2 equally-matched ants waging a fierce battle on a concrete slab. They were still at it when I returned an hour later, clasped in a deadly head-on embrace. I let them get on with it.

Jones was busy with her own assignments throughout this time, both in the garden & in overseeing the arrivals & departures of guests. The place has been full & most of the change-overs have been same day. Casa 4 has been occupied by a party of 5 people, one of them an old friend of Jones's from NBC, & Casa 2 by a related couple. Most of them know Andries from previous visits & they follow an enviable routine of breakfast on the patio, a day around the pool, sundown’s on the patio, supper at a restaurant & night-caps on the patio. The weather, I may add, has been hot - a mite warmer than I'd have chosen but absolutely perfect for your average toasted tourist. Indeed, Jones has herself gone a dark shade of brown, on her back.

Most evenings we would work until sunset, spending the last hour watering those plants beyond the reach of the irrigation system. The Algarvean sunsets never failed to disappoint us. If our guests were around, we'd turn on the garden lights & then retire to Jones's patio for a supper of something simple & a bottle of wine. At the same time, we'd try to catch up on the day's news, courtesy of the BBC World Service but as often as not I'd nod off to sleep against the window, lulled by the disasters of the day. The nights were hot, relieved by a fan & frequent recourse to handy bottles of carbonated water. Even so, the sheets & pillows would be perspiration soaked the next morning. We'd put the pillows out each day to dry.

Sunday - my penultimate day - was given over to a braai hosted jointly by Jones & our former tenants, John & Olive, who - after the worst kind of experiences with (English) builders - are now settled in their new home some 15 minutes away. In spite of their experiences, it's a fine home. Their garden for the moment is 2 acres of sandy wilderness but there's time enough for them to cultivate it. For the occasion - Olive's birthday & the christening of the new barbecue - they had placed 2 circles of tables & chairs in the available shade & spent many hours preparing the cordon bleu dishes that Olive does so well. I had taken down loads of frozen sausages for the occasion which we supplemented with further loads of turkey kebabs. Jones added a huge salad & her own Jonesian supplements. It was a good day - 20 folks, much food & talk & not too much booze - with dips in the pool to relieve the heat. Even so, we agreed that we would both be satisfied by one or two such days a year.

Noite was much in evidence & appeared to be working on a fax to Mavis & Shadow. We shall have to see what comes of it. There, that's 2 pages full & I'm nearly home. Let me get this off to you & see what mail & faxes await me.

Much love,
T