By PAUL MCKAY features@algarveresident.com
Teacher, Paul McKay, left London to live a self-sufficient existence in the Monchique hills with his partner Martyn. He keeps an assortment of animals and grows a variety of crops in an eco-friendly way – all on a limited income.
Saturday 9th April
Less than a 10 minute walk from our house, at the top of a hill, is a patch of land, overgrown with brambles and stinging nettles. It has been that way for at least 10 years with sunlight only reaching the soil for a brief few months after the forest fires that swept through the mountain a few years ago.
Incredibly, in a matter of what seems like days, but must surely be longer, a family have moved in, renovated the old house, chained up a manic dog and cleared most of the land with a tractor and sheer hard work. It is so refreshing to see good agricultural land being put back to work by people who I understand to be a Monchique family.
This is in contrast to the trend of the last 20 years or so. More and more of the agricultural land in the mountains has been bought up and then neglected by north Europeans who spend a huge sum of money replacing a traditional farmhouse with a concrete villa and pool, often to use it for just a few weeks of the year.
Perhaps this is the beginning of the effect of the recession. If so, perhaps it is not all bad.
Tuesday 13th April
In an attempt to save some money, as it were, we drove to Spain today to buy some big consumer durables we need. I say need – the term need is relative.
The items in question are a gas water heater (the EDP seem to bill us just for hovering near a switch nowadays), a new gas cooker (the old one is slowly disintegrating and only works with the help of a pair of pliers) and an air conditioning unit for the bedroom.
After a busy morning shopping in Lepe, in possession of a pot of vibrant geraniums and some ceramic pots, we stopped for lunch. Martyn did his usual umm and ahhhr faff outside a few cafes and the Andalucian sun had begun beating down.
He then stood outside a busy, very Spanish place and started the whole ‘What do you think…I’m not sure?’ routine again.
“Perfect” I replied and marched straight in and took a window seat.
It always amazes me how similar the Portuguese and Spanish languages are until you really need it. How can lettuce be alface in one country and lechuga in the neighbouring country?
Almost every fish and meat has a different name each side of the border – frango becomes pollo and on it goes. The waiter came to serve us in that inimitable, friendly Spanish style, speaking at breakneck speed.
Martyn, still stunned from having been denied his usual dithering time sat in silence while I did the usual trick of hooking onto a few known words and saying SI.
We eventually ended up with a fantastic chicken paella dish and a mountain of homemade bread. We were about 20 minutes into devouring this when we were alarmed to see our waiter bringing over the main course.
Pork and chips. A great meal at a bargain price – it always feels like such an achievement not to be ripped off when abroad.
Realising that an air conditioning unit could go wrong and considering the difficulties with getting it repaired if it were to do so, the price difference did not warrant buying it in Spain.
Instead we left Spain at around five o’clock and headed back to a huge well-known electrical shop in Portimão. Incredibly, we spent longer in this shop than it took to drive from Lepe to Portimão.
We waited 45 minutes to be served while the three salespeople dealt with the fussiest, most irritating customers ever to be encountered.
One lady idly flicked through a brochure, enquiring about every third item, whilst the apologetic sales assistant dutifully phoned up manufacturers to enquire about delivery times.
I immediately went into incredibly patient mode, knowing this is the only way to survive such situations. Martyn was a little less controlled and hopped around the store like a scalded cat trying to get me to storm out of the store in protest.
Saturday 23rd April
Having said it is pleasing to see a local family making good use of agricultural land, it does have its drawbacks, namely the shaming aspect of it all.
Each day I drive past these perfect weed-free terraces and am amazed to see the products of their labours. Potatoes seem to be ready to harvest overnight, cabbages emerge one day and are the size of footballs the next and favas, I didn’t even notice, are already being picked.
Our own favas are almost ready as are some fairly substandard looking cabbages and some weedy lettuces.
During the next month, we intend to build some new raised beds, enrich the soil with dung and start off all the summer crops. The weather has been very strange this year and the soil has not really warmed up enough. It seems that nowadays we have incredibly wet winters that suddenly give way to the heat of summer.
Whatever happened to the beautiful Algarve spring?
Saturday 30th April
I have the perfect incentive to make me go outside and do a little more weeding. Switch on any one of the UK rolling news channels and watch the politicians for 10 minutes.
Dreary Dave with his sleeves rolled up, Nice Nick being nice and Grumpy Gordon gaffing all over the place. It’s enough to make me move onto weeding a neighbour’s garden.
An interesting twist in this campaign has been that the leaders don’t even pretend to meet real people. They are unashamedly surrounded by people wearing and waving the party colours as if this is how the real world is.
On occasions, they have these people to ask staged questions, which, in their transparency, are an insult to our intelligence.
Most novel unstaged question of the election campaign has to go to Mrs Duffy of Rochdale, when she asked Gordon where all these East Europeans were coming from.
His ability to avoid the obvious, albeit sarcastic response explains why he is where he is and I’m not.
