My dear family & friends
We’re in Portugal. Right now the sky is mostly overcast and I detected a few drops of rain on the window a short while ago – but the temperature is still up in the mid-20s (that’s centigrade, not Fahrenheit for the Brits.) That said, the weather has been mostly of the type with cloudless skies and bright sunshine – just the right antidote for the British “summer”.
But we nearly didn’t make our flight thanks to Edgar after he managed to pull out some of the stitches in his neck last Thursday night, leaving a gaping wound. He had to be restitched on Friday morning – remembering that you have to give animals general anaesthetic to stitch them up. Then on Saturday morning, the day we had to take the dogs to the boarding kennels, Lucia noticed that Edgar developed some fluid under the wound. So we had to take him back to the vet to drain the wound with a syringe. While I was at the vet, Lucia was at home cutting up and sewing an old scarf to button up around Edgar’s neck to make sure that he couldn’t scratch the wound. Unfortunately, that was no guarantee that the fluid wouldn’t develop again and we had to decide whether or not to postpone our departure for Portugal. The vet, whose parents live in Napier in the Cape, assured us that it wouldn’t be a problem to attend to Edgar at the kennels. That was like tempting fate. On Monday I got a call from the vet to say the kennel owner had brought Edgar back because there was more fluid sloshing about under the wound and he had had to put a drain in. He also kept Edgar in the infirmary on Monday and Tuesday night. He went back to the kennel on Wednesday, but was brought back into the vet on Thursday because he had been scratching at the wound. I’ve just had a call from one of the other vets at the practice to say that everything seems to have healed, that they’ve removed the drain and the stitches, and that he’ll be going back to the kennel later today. I really hope this is the last of it. I shudder to think what the vet’s bill is going to be when we get home.
Apart from Edgar’s dramas, we’ve been having a wonderful holiday. I don’t intend to give you a detailed account of everything that we’ve done, but you can find pictures of our adventures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.
The flight from Coventry to Faro on Sunday was uneventful even if I am convinced that many of our fellow passengers proved Darwin’s theory of evolution. As I said to Lucia, “I think we’ve found the missing link?” When we landed, the skies were blue and the air was filled with the rich, fragrant aroma of the Algarve and that is all that mattered. We retrieved our hire car from Auto Algarve and headed for hills and Barbara and Terry’s (my sister and brother-in-law) home in the village of Espargal (which is in the freguesia [parish] of Benafim in the conselho [council] of Loule.)
Since then, we’ve been taking our days very slowly. Lucia always joins Barbara and Terry as they begin each day walking the dogs; I join them when I can motivate myself out of bed. The walks have to be early to avoid the heat of the day – even so, it is still a warm exercise. Back at home, we mull over what to do for the rest of the day after showering or freshening up. My favoured breakfast is to go to a village cafe for cheese and ham sandwiches, espresso coffee and a small glass of medronho, a local fire water that is distilled from the fruit of the arbutus tree, wild strawberries.
The advantage of having visited here many times is that we don’t feel we have to rush around and see everything because we’ve seen most of it already. So far, our excursions have mostly been to the beach and the shops. We’ve learned that the best time to go to the beach is at high tide because the water is much warmer having had a few hours to bake in the sun. I found a good website that shows the tide tables in an easy to understand graphic format to help us achieve that target, and a weather forecasting website that predicts the weather by the hour.
My one misadventure so far is to have been stung by a bee. I was paddling happily along in the pool belonging to Barbara's and Terry's neighbours – David and Sarah – when the little bugger zapped me right in the soft tissue between thumb and forefinger. I’m mildly allergic to bee stings and it still hurts like blazes although the swelling has started to go down.
As for the evenings, we have either had a barbecue or gone out for dinner to one of the local restaurants or cafes that Barbara and Terry know so well. More to the point, the evenings are warm allowing me to stroll around in shorts and a T-shirt, my favoured form of dress. Lucia and I broke the mould yesterday evening when we went to the feira (fair) at Fatacil, one of the biggest feira’s on the Algarve summer calendar. We spent a very pleasant few hours strolling around the stalls offering everything from local handicrafts, to property developments and agricultural implements. For dinner we shared the most delicious plate of cured meats and cheese over a couple of beers while we watched the passing parade.
Let me leave it there
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
