1October1995

London and Portugal: 1st October 1995
My dear folks,

Strange how repetition gradually makes the exotic feel rather ordinary. After eight years, Portugal has ceased to be a foreign country. The Algarve no longer feels like abroad. Driving on the other side of the road requires no special effort. The hire car finds its own way to the Quinta. In short, it's become commuting. I guess you can't sustain novelty. But I don't mean to sound worldly or jaded. It is still lovely to be here, & watching a crimson sun set the western hills alight remains extraordinary. Jones says that one is supposed to be able to see a green flash at the moment the sun sets below the horizon. She thought she glimpsed it. I didn't & remain sceptical.

The place is full &, unusually, several of our guests have been ill. Andries in Casa 1 is recovering from a virus. Walter in Casa 2 (with wife & 3 small kiddies) was off his food. Caroline in Casa 3 (with partner, Ray) had a day in bed with what she thought was flu. Stash in Casa 4 fell down the stairs one night, doing himself a lot of damage. His wife and 2 friends (sharing the cottage) assisted him to a resident British physio who has worked wonders. Jones had a bad night after eating something that disagreed with her. Noite, an inveterate gulper, still needs to be fed small amounts at a time or she sicks her food up on the kitchen floor. Jones says she has learned to use her cat flap. (Right on cue, Noite started to cough & shot out through the flap as I went to eject her.) And there you have us all.

On Thursday Jones & I set out on a long walk through the valley behind us. There is so much always to do around the Quinta that one needs walks as a stabiliser. As always I find new houses going up & regret their appearance, especially those that blot the landscape. We have enough already. Eventually we met the Lisbon road & cautiously made our way down to Paixanito where we refreshed ourselves at a cafe before returning home. Caroline & Ray, who take their exercise seriously, indulge in "power walking" which enables them to get down to Paixanito in less than 10 minutes & back in less than 12. But I think this is silly & take the car if I'm in such a hurry.

On Friday we took Maria & family to dinner at a restaurant that opened just this week - name of Tia Nica. We arranged to meet the family at the foot of the drive at 7.30. We had considered whether two trips might be necessary to transport us - two men and four women - as our Ford Fiesta is not designed to carry six adults. But Mr Maria climbed in front and the 3 females squeezed into the back with Jones & off we went, slowly & carefully, down the dirt road, amid a muffled exchange of pleasantries.

Tia Nica is newly-built, large & very smart. We were met by the woman who is clearly the moving spirit behind the enterprise. She and Barbara had held a long conversation earlier in the week. We introduced Maria to her as our manager (little exaggeration required), which pleased Maria, & were conducted to our table. The norm down here is for paper table cloths but Tia Nica has set out to impress with real linen, two layers of it, an upper diamond of deep crimson laid across a dazzling white under-cloth. The cutlery was immaculately presented & two glasses were placed at every setting. I hope our guests were impressed. I certainly was.

Forgive me if I spend some time on our outing. It was a very special occasion. Like most such enterprises, Tia Nica is a family-run affair. Wife was in charge. Husband was a quietish Frenchman who rushed around serving guests. Elder daughter, with a sweet little décolletage, managed the bar; younger daughter oversaw the desserts & young son got on with his supper. Savouries & home-made bread were served while we ordered the main course. Senior Maria liked red wine & kept me fairly busy topping up his glass, filling it up himself if I was distracted. He remained reassuringly sober although he grew steadily more convivial. Maria herself, clearly accustomed to looking after her man, kept on hopping up to attend to him or to fetch some item from the further end of the table. It never occurred to her to ask.

Main courses were clearly individually prepared for it took some time before they arrived, in ones and twos - even then Jacqueline's didn't come. Barbara & I shared ours with her while she waited. By this time, the place was bopping & the staff had a hard time staying up with demands. Eventually it became clear that Jacqueline had been overlooked, a fact we drew to the attention of our hassled hostess. Much embarrassment! The plate duly arrived &, to Jacqueline's credit, she consumed her own meal at the same steady pace at which she'd already consumed much of ours.

Only Simone had a problem finishing a generous helping. Maria, never one to waste things, hopped up and scraped the remains on to her husband's plate from which they duly vanished. Desserts and coffees followed & a doggy bag to take the remains back up the hill. The bill was surprisingly modest. By all accounts an excellent night out!

On Saturday afternoon, we drove up the coast to a spot recommended by Andries & visited by Jones & Fregs during the latter's visit here last week. One takes the freeway (which has brought the Spanish border within an hour's reach), peels off at Tavira & then heads for Cacela Velha (Old Cacela), a postcard village overlooking an estuary and sited within a nature reserve.

It seems that the place was once a fortress - part of it has now been turned into a radar facility. One parks outside the hamlet and walks in. Its church, two cafes & several houses border a central square. At its heart, a hand-worked water pump still functions. Developers have mercifully been kept at bay & the place is a delight. Would there were more such!

After a spot of lunch, we drove to the misleadingly named "Fabrica" (factory), a fishermen's beach overlooked by two restaurants & some houses. One can take a small boat 200 metres across the estuary to the beaches on the far side. We walked down the estuary instead. Fishing boats were scattered about, their anchors buried in the sand. The tide was out and the mud-flats were dotted with holes, several per square metre, each the refuge of a crab. The crabs, in their thousands, sunbathe (or whatever) within easy reach of their holes, darting down as one approaches.

I was amused by one fellow who tried to take cover in what was clearly another crab's hole, his head just visible at the rim, clearly in the crustacean hope that we would give him a wide berth. As we got closer, he sensed his ruse wasn't working, shot up & rushed several metres to his own refuge, down which he dived in panic. Serves him right.

After some distance the beach yielded to low cliffs. We sat & watched the tide coming in, racing along in whirls & eddies & bringing a soup of vegetation with it. It might have been this, or possibly fish, that was occupying flocks of seabirds on the far side of the estuary. It was, as Jones observed, like Norfolk without the cold.

Sunday night was set aside for drinks with guests & neighbours who were invited to MCP. Jones spent a couple of hours preparing snacks. We had already stocked up with a flagon of red wine & several litres of white which I decanted into bottles which had previously held more respectable vintages. The guests rolled up, suitably thirsty, more than MCP's little patio could accommodate & we spilled over to spread ourselves around the big stones that are arranged under the fig tree. Jones calls them the secret circle. I call them the magic circle. Either way, they are the best place to sit with a glass of wine & several friends & muse on the nature of things. Mostly, we mused on the internal feud that has torn apart the association which represents foreign residents, a matter of great regret to us & our neighbours.

Every morning we rose in the hope of seeing clouds on the horizon & every morning we were greeted with the bluest of blue skies. There was no sign of the rain we longed for, to the delight of our guests, who lounged around the pool. Hardier souls plunged into the water, proclaiming it invigorating. That it was, too. The first length left one a mite breathless. After that, it felt superb.

Jones tended to swim in the early afternoon when the sun was at its warmest & she could recover from her bracing dips by spreading herself, lizard-like on the warm tiles.

On the Monday afternoon, we drove out to visit a friend who has settled in a valley some 40 minutes away. She is Sheila, a hardy widow who spent much of her life in Malaysia and Liberia. She has bought & is in the process of restoring a ruined cottage, achieving with will power what she lacks in other resources. The whole place is festooned with plants of every size, colour and description. We were most impressed. In the afternoon, as we drove back, clouds gathered hopefully in the east.

By evening, Cruz da Assumada was covered in a ghostly mist. Our residents said they had heard forecasts of rain and even thundershowers. We took Andries out to supper, hoping all the while to hear the sound of raindrops. On the way home, we stopped for coffees and brandies at the local bar where we were adopted by a drunk eager to pour out his life story. He recounted days in the foreign legion where he should surely have remained. Jones and I eventually escaped his clutches, extracting Andries in the process. Cruz da Assumada was still enveloped in cloud. There was no rain by the time we went to bed. And the next morning the skies were blue again.

As always, there were a million things to be done and we did about half of them - from getting the tube of the punctured wheelbarrow wheel mended at the bicycle shop - to digging up several collapsed tiles in Jones’s bedroom and recementing them. Fregs had left behind most of the linen from his newly-sold apartment in Spain - much appreciated. To hold these and similar donations from other friends, Jones & I toured the local furniture stores for a suitable cupboard to place in the laundry. We eventually found just the thing - twin cupboards in fact - at the second-hand shop, run by Brits. They didn’t offer us a receipt but they did deliver the cupboards & we didn’t complain. There is an understanding about the way these things are done.

And so back to a drizzling London to find that OJ Simpson had got off and was swearing to find his wife’s killer if it took the rest of his life. I spat. I guess the trial was about a lot of things - the last of which was justice. Wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last............!