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Bom dia – Good morning!
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Senhora Fatima collecting figs
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| Behold... glass! |
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Monty back on the road
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There's nothing very funny about death. Hannibal had pulled the corners of his mouth down and shaken his bald head when he had taken a look at Sebastian and Fonsequinha a couple of days ago. Of the latter he'd said, "he needs a shot of amoxicillin. It'll set you back about eighty euros. It's not worth it." Neither lamb had had colostrum, the magical 'first milk' that newborn mammals normally get. To further limit their chances of survival, there is some kind of infection running rife amongst the herd at the moment killing mothers and lambs. Sebastian didn't make it to three days old and Fonsequinha was under a week when he died yesterday. The lamb that was here before we arrived, Pirata, did get colostrum and a little of his mother's milk before she died. He continues to grow and bounce around like a crazy Duracell battery. The younger two lambs wouldn't feed. Harry and I would give them milk with a syringe but this didn't seem to make a difference. They continued to tumble downhill, become more listless and eventually faded to nothing. By strange chance, on the same day Sebastian died, my mum sent me a photo of a condolences card for Caesar as our mail is currently redirecting to my parents'. It was from the veterinary hospital. All the vets and nurses involved in his care had hand-written something kind.
Mrs Fatima told of her crying when she had lost lambs in the past but how she has now become accustomed to it. Without emotion she dug holes in her allotment to bury these lambs and found the bony remains of the one she interred last year. A few days ago she showed us, proudly, a photo on her phone of a male she'd raised in Bernardos a year or two ago before taking him to another place she has in the Algarve. There he joined a lady-sheep and helped make baby sheep. I think I've said before that hand-raised male lambs grow to become fearless, aggressive adults, and this ram was no exception. When I asked what had become of him, Mrs Fatima pointed to our Sunday lunch.
Most mornings, Mrs Fatima scours the fig tree which sits nestled behind her house and beside the annex to collect any ripe fruit before the local bird bandits get to them. Our windows generally remain shut overnight to keep out biting insects. When I open them first thing, figs often sit on the windowsill saying 'Good morning!' As you might expect, Mrs Fatima uses her sister's old underwear and clothes to wrap developing figs in an attempt to ward off the marauding passerines.
Two days ago I went with Mrs Fatima to see another tiny house (the one we had secured before leaving Oxford) but this one came with black mould and no garden included as well. Again, and despite the obvious lack of appropriateness for us, Mrs Fatima managed to spend a good chunk of time with the owners out front discussing everything and nothing. Having seen a large three-bedroom house in Almodôvar already, I decided we should press ahead and secure this one instead. It had some drawbacks but then everywhere does.
Later that night I had a reply from the Almodôvar house-owner (who lives in London) to say he'd already given the house to someone else. I could barely bring myself to tell Harry. "Are you joking?" he uttered, hopefully. Earlier on I had sent him a video of the mouldy house and told him I'd taken it and we could move in tomorrow. I had been in the mood to pull his leg/pull his leg off as he'd not come to the viewing. Now he thought the sadistic jokes were ongoing but they weren't. It was already bedtime so I didn't get to tell Mrs Fatima the bad news until the next morning. When I did, she said something about the owner but my brain didn't compute and I had to ask her to explain or repeat it another way. "In Germany," she said drily in Portuguese, "we say he is an Arschloch". Oh, yes. I know what that is, I mumble.
Mrs Fatima will often switch between Portuguese and German with no warning she is doing so, making some conversations difficult to follow. Usually it's just a word or short phrase in German that's slips through but as she uses the same accent for both, I have to listen very carefully to detect this linguistic smuggling. However, out of everyone I've met, she has the most crystal clear Portuguese of anyone. For one, she rolls her double R's and ones that come at the start of a word (just as Spanish-speakers do) rather than making the cat-bringing-up-a-mothball sound that most (usually urban) Portuguese employ for this sound. She thinks the clarity in her speech relates to her being abroad for years and understanding what it's like to not understand the language. She slows things down and adds special effects. After any animal or creature comes the sound it makes. We had the fly demonstrated today. Mosca... bzzz. Then there are the many signs and gestures. She used to work with someone who lost their hearing to meningitis as a child and so learnt the importance of lip-reading and using hand signs to boost communication. I've found European Portuguese pronunciation bordering on the outrageous but won't rant about it right now.
To my surprise and delight, Herr Arschloch van London sent me another WhatsApp message yesterday morning. He has another house, in fact next to the one we'd seen, and though it needs some work and his two little dogs need to remain in the garden as a condition, he's happy to rent it to us (for more than the original house...). We don't feel we have much choice. Mrs Fatima is being very kind to host us but has not held back when discussing how disruptive we have been to her routine and the fact she has other things to attend to! Monty had been repaired and was ready for collection so we arranged to see the next-door house and collect the van during the same trip. I ordered dry dog food online days ago and the delivery company have been nothing but pants. The tracking page online suggests they have made it close to the pharmacy where I've asked them to deliver (Bernardos isn't on the map so not much point having it delivered to Mrs Fatima's) but I think it's all lies and they are pretending to deliver whilst it sits in the warehouse. The first time they 'failed' to deliver was during the one-hour lunch break the pharmacy is shut so yesterday, after collecting Monty, I stood outside the pharmacy doors from 1-2pm and gave myself heatstroke. Still no delivery. Giving up and leaving one of the pharmacists to look out for the parcel, we went to see the house with Mrs Maria Amália, Mr van London's mother. All I can say is that I hope to high heavens the renovations make a significant change as it's currently somewhere between a dusty building site and hotel from hell.
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| On our way to the monthly Castro Verde market |
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| Castro Verde with typical calçadas paving |
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| A Castro Verde street with the Alentejo countryside in the distance |
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| Castro Verde market |
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| Outside the entrance to the annex a bag of loaves dry in the sun and a new 7UP table and chairs appear |
Today we went to the monthly market held in the nearby town of Castro Verde. It was an opportunity to give Monty a longer test-drive and Mrs Fatima a break from chauffeuring us about. It had been her idea "for you to see" index-finger-pulls-lower-eyelid-down. As well as taking in the market and the masses of stuff (crap) for sale, we saw a few good products we might need in future, met Mrs Fatima's niece in her butchery and made a purchase, went into the vets and got a business card in case Ichiro needs unscheduled care at some point, and visited the log-burner shop, of course. For just 35 euros we can get Ichiro washed at the vets, which is a very tempting offer. Castro Verde is now a-movin' and a-shakin' place with its very own Lidl having opened just a week ago. Putting mild mockery to one side, the town is actually quite charming with its cobbled, organic streets lined with familiar commercial outfits. What hits my eye with freshness is the background of semi-wild Portuguese countryside glimpsed everywhere beyond and around.
