An Alentejan Lull

Dona Fatima and Harry try to feed the latest addition

The pace of our days has changed.  With Monty incarcerated in a garage at the local town, we are at the mercy of our host to go anywhere.  Mrs Fatima is putting a lot of energy into getting things sorted for us: finding us somewhere to stay, getting paperwork in order with the local parish council, finding builders,  materials and so on.  She is tireless in her pursuit whilst also trying to keep on top of her daily chores which mostly revolve around preparing food, making wine (see likes a tipple every lunchtime!), and feeding her various animals.  The relationship with the land and animals is what you'd expect in a rural setting.  She is offered lambs only a day or so old that for some reason can't remain on the farm (usually because the mother doesn't have enough milk) and rather than 'dispose' of them at this point, farmers offer them to friends and family, who then hand-raise them for food.  Currently there are two lambs, both male.  Apparently, hand-raised male sheep grow to be fearless of humans and can be very aggressive, even killing other farm animals or people.  The older lamb is about a week old and has been dubbed 'Pirate' as he has black patches around his eyes.  The other, which appeared yesterday, got Harry's attention (and affection) and has been named 'Fonsequinha', little Fonseca.  Fonsequinha is not doing very well.  He doesn't seem able to feed and earlier today the conversation around the dining table was that he was condemned to die.  I'm wary of getting attached but think it's a but daft to not try and help the little thing feed.  Harry and I found a needle and syringe in my doctor's bag, removed the needle, cut the top off the cover, taped the sheath to the needle and hand-fed Fonsequinha this evening.  He took about a hundred millilitres and we'll do the same again soon and see how he goes over the next few days.

Mrs Fatima has been taking us to various places to look at properties to live and/or work as well as to the bank and local parish council office.  Nothing concrete has come from these.  Mrs Fatima is a talker.  This afternoon we went to see a lady called Fernanda who has a house in the village closest to the quinta.  Location-wise this would be a great choice.  However, when we walk into the house, it's obvious in seconds that it's not appropriate for us.  It's tiny and cramped with no room for two adults and a large dog, let alone all that stuff we have.  Two hours later we're still at the kitchen table of the house with Mrs Fatima and Fernanda on one side and us on the other.  It feels so 'wrong' to me to spend so long on something that could be concluded in a few minutes.  I recognise I need to accept that things work differently here.  It's no bad thing to have made this connection with Mrs Fernanda.  She has land very close to our quinta so will soon be a neighbour and she agrees with me that her little studio flat would be a great place for family or friends to stay (HINT HINT).

The mishaps continue to sprinkle a bit of kerfuffle onto our days.  There's Monty's ongoing ailments.  The mechanic messaged me today to say that there is a problem with the alternator, whatever that means.  Dog walks are restricted and strained by the number of dogs on the loose around us and a nearby kennel with beagles that bark for Britain.  Yesterday I was filming with a drone from Mrs Fatima's house and she asked me to fly over to her parental home where her brother now lives.  I had warning signals that the battery was low but as it was still at 20% I manually overrode the 'fly home' manoeuvre.  Suddenly it was 8% and it told me to go get stuffed and it was landing where it was.  This was all minutes before we were meant to head out to meet our Airbnb owner and friend Andrea at her house.  Right, here we go again.  Luckily I had the exact co-ordinates, put these into google maps then Fatima, Harry and I walked at pace to her parental home.  I was glad to find the drone.  We also met her brother briefly who was an example of how their two different lifestyles have aged them.  She asked how old we thought he was and we were certain her was older.  In fact he's five years younger.  Decades of manual labour, sun, smoking and alcohol have allowed him to overtake her.

I'm wondering if where we are now, in the annex that keeps trying to electrocute me, surrounded by small things in a sparse landscape, is a forerunner for what life on the quinta will be like when we finally move there.  There is a local choir that help break my sleep up and get me up in the morning, but I don't mind.  Four cockerels (now three and Fatima threatening to reduce the number to two) cock-a-doodle-doing every few hours overnight and at 5.30am as well as the local dogs and beagle kennel.  Fatima keeps telling everyone we meet that she needs to find somewhere for us.  "The doctor needs somewhere quiet to work.  He has a problem with my roosters, the sound of the hosepipe, the kennel of barking dogs," at which point I chip in and defend myself saying it's not that, that the annex is too small for us to live in and for me to work.  She has also taken to introducing Harry as a Mexican chef with a Portuguese great-grandmother.  Again I pipe up, No, no no––Cuban, erm, chef...  I had told her that Harry knows how to cook well and she has turned him into a chef.

I continue to be surprised by the climate at Mrs Fatima's.  It never gets too hot and the breeze is always refreshing.  It gets very cool at night but we're tucked up in bed so miss that part of the twenty-four-hour cycle.

It's time for our evening snack and Fonsequinha's too.