1April1998

1st April 1998
My dear folks,

The rest of my life is continuing here in the card room of the ferry, Pride of Bilbao, together with the lives of a squabble of bridge players. There’s a convenient plug here for my computer. Jones has gone off for a wander. We are somewhere off the coast of Brittany, turning into the Bay of Biscay & heading for Spain. We upgraded ourselves from the bowels of the ship to a smart outer cabin on the 4th deck. There’s a wrinkly green sea down below us, looking flatter than it is. I was woken in the early hours by the pitching – & accompanying shudders & groans from the vessel - & I thought to see great walls of water at dawn. Instead I found the ship dipping deep into a steady swell with not even a hint of a white cap. Jones feels a little queasy. She does not have a sailor’s stomach.

The mist blew away mid-morning & a welcome sun tempted us out for a blustery turn about the decks. There were several other boats visible around us, ferries, freighters & trawlers. The Pride of Bilbao is a big vessel as ferries go, taking 500 cars, lots of huge lorries & 2,500 passengers. She is very comfortable, with three upper decks given over to thickly-carpeted lounges, play-rooms, restaurants & shops, to say nothing of casino, library & cinema. Jones hasn’t brought a bathing costume but she accompanied me down three decks to the pool where I followed a swim with a dip in the jacuzzi & a sweat in the sauna.

A couple with a young child came past us as we left and we heard the woman asking her man: “How are we going to fill the rest of the day?” I exchanged sympathetic glances with him. Nearly all the passengers appear to be English. The crew is largely Spanish although they manage well enough in English. We tried in vain to get a decent cup of expresso coffee from the coffee shop where a chatty waitress confessed that she barely survived the three-week-on, two-off stint of duty without the real thing. Only the watery English equivalent is available.

So far, I must tell you, I have found retirement perfectly agreeable. It has occurred to me that we pensioners are paid merely to stay alive. That’s a wonderful thought. We don’t have to do anything to get our money other than be. No more sitting through the farce of an annual interviews, no more anxious boards for non-existent jobs. Just wake up in the morning and your money’s there. I think I could get used to it. Part of Monday went on the continuing thinning out of our possessions. I hooted as I discovered half a dozen elderly copies of my CV in a file and joyfully tore them to shreds. Jonesy’s CV followed suit. A great many more documents and files were also shredded & dumped in the paper bin over the road. The printer’s tray, together with some trinkets & moulded wooden feet (ex Dad or Granddad) for keeping shoes in shape, went down to the bric-a-brac shop.

There, the Canadian owner, Peter, gave us £15 for the lot. On Tuesday morning I took the car down to the garage for a thorough clean & check before starting to pack the numerous boxes we’d been stuffing with objects all week. We aimed to be away about 1400 but it was 1530 before we finally staggered downstairs with the last load. My final act was to take the Westminster parking disc off the windscreen and post it back to the council with a request for a refund. I could just see out of the back window over the top of the mountain of cases & boxes on the back seat. The pair of us felt exhausted. I had hardly got out of London when I found myself nodding off & had to pull into a rest area for a 15 min kip. After that it was an easy 2½ hours down the motorway to Portsmouth.

Saturday 4 April at the Quinta

Samson is having a good scratch here beside me on the patio of MCP. He’s just been for his first walk of the day but it wasn’t half long enough for his pleasure. It was followed by a large plate of dog biscuits and goo which he demolished effortlessly. No wonder his ribs have disappeared beneath a comfortable layer of flesh. He also likes lots of attention and keeps on wandering over to stick his nose under my elbow.

The sun has just appeared, a welcome sun after the grey skies and strong winds that greeted our arrival in the Algarve yesterday. Our guests were not best pleased. We’ve couples in all three casas, two of them with babes. They were made at home in our absence by our house-sitter whom we are about to run to the airport.

The journey down was blessedly problem free. The hardest bit was navigating the freeways that we picked up on the outskirts of Bilbao harbour at the height of the morning rush-hour. Jones navigated with the aid of twin (large & small scale) maps of Iberia while I drove. It’s 1150 kms from Bilbao to the Quinta, most of which we covered during a 10-hour drive on Thursday. We ended up just across the Portuguese border in the little Alentejan town of Vila Vicosa where we waited as a crowd trailed down the main road behind a hearse. Jones turned down the offer of a five-star hotel in favour of a small ‘pension’ in the main street. It proved an excellent choice, comfortable & inexpensive. Its only drawback was its situation between two competing clock-towers. Jones said the bells stopped chiming about midnight. If that was the case, they certainly started again at 0345 when I awoke, clanging away (a minute apart) at every quarter hour.

Vila Vicosa is at the heart of the Alentejo’s marble quarrying industry & there is evidence of this everywhere. As far as the townspeople are concerned, marble is just the local stone. The kerb stones are made of marble; the broad pavements are covered with marble chips; the town benches are marble.
The town’s ducal palace is being restored and a vast square is being laid out in front of it, in marble of course. We visited the gardens of the adjacent pousada (a smart, state-run hotel) where I noted a few features, in particular the water garden.

We supped on the dish of the day at the smartest café in town, although such distinctions in Vila Vicosa are very fine indeed. To the untutored eye, they all look a bit like dives. The locals, congregated in the bar section of the restaurant, were fascinated at our presence and they accosted us politely on our way out to satisfy their curiosity. After a brief conversation, a local worthy marched us across the road to a gift shop where he invited Jones to take her choice of the marble ashtrays as a momento of our visit. She did. We were touched.

The Portuguese road links with the Alentejo have been much improved since our last trip there and we were home at the Quinta by early afternoon. The Rocket sang all the way. What a pleasure it was to be pulled along by a decent engine instead of the 1100cc jobs we generally hire down here. The only drawback was the difficulty of seeing the oncoming traffic when trying to overtake. Jones would indicate to me each time whether I could pull out for a clear look. The Portuguese drive like people possessed; killing & maiming one another is a national pastime; it’s easy to understand why they have the highest accident rate in the European Union. Mainly, I stuck to the side of the road & let them whiz by. A stream of ambulances howled their way up & down the national road, fetching & carrying the unfortunates who hadn’t made it.

The journey through the Alentejo took us through fields stained in mauves by great sweeps of (wild flowers that Jones stopped to identify as) pulsatillas, yellow daisies & red poppies. The colours were wonderfully vivid. The countryside was brimming with new growth. There’d obviously been lots of rain. The Quinta looked as though it had run riot in Jonesy’s two-week absence. Most of the flower beds are bursting with colour. In every other available space on the terraces, shoulder-high beds of yellow daisies compete with jungles of blue borage. Dozens of plants have scorned the official driveways, thrusting themselves up amid the gravel & flowering madly. It’s gorgeous if a bit overpowering.

Also a bit overpowering is the task ahead. We’ll take a day or two to get a grip on it as we get used to the needs of the dog & the repatriation of the cat to MCP, to say nothing of the arrival of Tatty-cat, of whom more later. There’s lots of painting to be done, something I will make a high priority. Meanwhile, we are here and very pleased to be so.

Blessings ever,
T