6April1997

6 April 1997
My dear folks,

I have just spoken to Jones. It is raining in the Algarve. And as much as the Quinta needs the rain, Jones is not pleased. Her guests are not there for the rain. In particular, the two children are not best pleased. They’ve been in & out of the pool for several days. Loule’s indoor pool is opening at lunchtime & may provide some relief. I have faxed down to Jones CNN’s weather satellite map of Europe & its forecast for Faro for the next four days. The forecast is for showers. Jones says her worst fears have been realised. I opined that if those were her worst fears, she was doing okay. She reminded me that all things are relative. And so they are.

Saturday was a day of minor achievements & frustrations. On the achievements side, I took a deposit from two prospective tenants for the ground floor flat. That was the culmination of six hours of phone calls, visits & interviews. I also made phone calls to two delightful people who wanted the flat, to tell them that they couldn’t have it & that I was very sorry – which was true. That was the hardest thing I had to do. It was on my mind going to bed the previous night & waking up in the morning.

I also got the washing done. It’s been piling up all week. I wandered around to the health food shop for a loaf of three seeds bread & called in at the greengrocer on the way back for some more fruit. On impulse, I also got a couple of geraniums from him & planted them in the window boxes which have been looking rather bare. Most important, I replaced a washer in a tap whose dripping has been driving me to the edge for weeks. What sweet relief it was to turn the tap off & witness the instant disappearance of the flow – like an obedient servant. You say “go” & he goes!

In the afternoon I got down to some serious computing but it was a mistake. I have recently discovered a marvellous programme for creating Web Pages (AOLPress for those who might be interested) but I inadvertently loaded too many graphics on to my computer. It responded by launching a “go-slow”, taking an hour to digest them until, in despair, I had to resort to drastic measures to shut the thing down. I then spent another hour ruthlessly weeding my hard disk. Finally, after updating my Quinta site, I failed to persuade the software programme to put the new page on the Internet. So by midnight, I was very frustrated & irritated. Five hours of work & nothing to show for it.

I’m planning to meet cousin Judy in 45 minutes & go off for a long walk down the Thames to get some of the frustrations out of my system. It’s dull here but expected to show “bright” patches rather than turn to rain. England, in fact, is undergoing a rather nasty drought. The Thames is dangerously low & all kinds of water restrictions are waiting to pounce on us.

You will be aware that the Grand National wasn’t. All week the TV brought us pictures of alert looking policemen standing around Aintree with automatic weapons at the ready. Two phone calls was all the IRA needed to disrupt the security preparations & the race, forcing tens of thousands of people to abandon the course and their cars parked within it. Kinda rough & very expensive. I was grateful not to be an ardent racing fan. Mavis was not bothered at all. He’d been out on the tiles the previous night & spent the whole day kipping on the couch to recover. He didn’t even bother to come over & inspect the new tenants. Poor exhausted little beast!

Blessings!