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