18June1997

My dear folks,

Here I am in Jones’s little kitchen an hour or two short of dawn on Wednesday morning. I’d rather be fast asleep in bed but I’m still in transition after a week of night shifts. There’s a low moan of wind through the window while Vivaldi (I think) is humming away through the earphones, courtesy of Antenna 2, Portugal’s classical music station. Except on rare discordant occasions, it’s good company & we keep the radio tuned to it. Jones, having come downstairs to make herself a cup of tea & feed Noite, has returned to bed. Noite arrives in the bedroom some time after 0400 each morning for a session of silly buggers which gets increasingly energetic until she gets fed. There were biscuits still in her bowl but not the special goo that she craves. Apart from that, cat is accustomed to the ritual & carries on like a courtesan while the goo is being ladled out, squeaking & humping her back in an agony of anticipation.

Noite, as you know, is Jones’s constant companion & gets away with most things. However Jones draws the line at murder, which is what Noite had in mind yesterday when a fledgling came to earth in front of us. Noite was on it in the flash of an eye while Jones, almost as quick, shrieked at me to get her off again. I brought the protesting Noite inside while Piet – our fixer, here to redecorate the laundry – stuck the fledgling in a tree. It seemed little the worse for wear. I tried to convince Jones that cats were genetically honed to catch birds & not to lose any sleep if it happened from time to time. But Jones waved my protestations imperiously away. There would be no catching of birds in her garden & that was that.

Jones has long been tired of the ad hoc arrangement of furniture in the laundry & commissioned Piet – a large, retired South African – to line the walls with work surfaces & shelves for our substantial collection of paperbacks. Part of any such deal is coffee & croissants when he arrives, followed by lunch. I think he’s on a pretty good wicket although both parties are satisfied with the arrangement. He’s tackled numerous odd jobs that I’d otherwise have to spend all my time sorting out. The laundry’s all but done & looks much improved. It certainly pleases Jones which is the main thing.

She was at the airport to meet me on Monday evening when BA flew me in. I wish I could say that she’d put on a bit of weight but she remains painfully thin & I remain unhappy about it. Her “natural” diet lacks the calories she needs to compensate for a active life style. While I’m down here, we eat out lots but not sufficiently to hide her bones until my next visit. We strolled down to the local the same night for one of Madame ?’s superlative salads. I was a bit imprudent to order a bottle of red wine on top of the celebration bubbly & bruised biorhythms. However, little harm done.

The English gang was down there, clustered around a table full of beers. At their core is a Mancunian couple who live at the bottom of our driveway (sort of); their relatives are staying in Casa 3 for a fortnight. Their normal watering hole is the Café Ideal 5 mins further down the road. But the Café Ideal is being refurbished by new management. The old management was apparently thrown out for running a brothel on the side. I realise that this does not exactly impinge on your lives. But it’s the main news in Cruz da Assumada right now & enjoys a rightful place in my letter.

Old friends arrived from the UK mid p.m. to spend a week in Casa 2. Bill & Lynne, having spent his auditing years living in half a dozen different countries, are spending their retirement on a busy schedule of courses & exotic trips. If I tell you that Yemen was their last & the Silk Road is their next, you’ll get a flavour of what I mean.

We piled into the hire car last night for a 15 trip to Salir & supper at the Mouro Bar, situated on the hill where you can still see the remains of the castle that long adorned the heights. The views from the Mouro Bar are spectacular. As our hostess was the cook & waitress rolled into one, we had to wait a while for supper. It was well worth waiting for. We feasted for £7 a head, as pleased with the meal as the value for money it represented. In London sadly £7 buys you only a tacky bottle of the house wine which is why, we all agreed, we keep our eating out for Portugal. On the way home we stopped off at the corner for coffees & aguadentes, with the lights of the Quinta in reassuring view. The Portuguese police have been known to set up road blocks between the Quinta & Loule to check the papers & breath of passing drivers. But as Andries pointed out, if the worst came to worst, we could amble back up the hill & fetch the car in the morning. It was a nice if unnecessary thought.

The Quinta is full right now, a BBC couple in Casa 4 making up the complement. The weather has turned sunny after a long wet spell, although the wind rattles the leaves most of the day. The garden is stunning, such a palette of colour as I can hardly describe. You have to see it to believe it. It’s not a trim, domesticated garden but a wild one, with paths colonised by shrubs, morning glories running rampant down the fence, roses climbing the sculptured remains of former trees, succulents roostered with red crowns & fruit trees bulging with the summer crop. The palm tree is on anabolic steroids & the agarves are going bananas. All in all, a controlled riot. One couple told Barbara on their return recently that they never visited the same place twice, but had come back to the Quinta for the garden. It was music to her ears.

Dawn has by now long since dawned. I nipped up to the bedroom to cast an ear over the 0700 headlines but they were much the same as the 0400 & not worth reflecting on. We’ve got a representative from Simply Travel coming a little later this a.m. to chat to us about the possibility of their taking the Quinta on to their books. We talked about it before without coming to any decision. It would save me all the hassle of finding guests but it would also lose us our faithful clientele & we have mixed feelings about the prospect. We’ll see. We’re under no pressure either way.

I’m down here until next Monday. On Tuesday I have (another) board with BBC OnLine, this time for real. And that’s about as far as I want to think right now. Let me get this off to Germany. I’ll wait until later in the day before trying Canada.

Blessings
T