By Margaret Brown
The runes having been cast by a local weather buff with inside knowledge and inspiration from a sky full of promising clouds, word came that we might be in for a drop of rain. After endless weeks of dry heat, the promise, even if not fulfilled, raised my spirits by a few notches.
Added weight was given to the prophesy by tingling fingers and aching bones, together with armies of ants busily moving nests on several parts of my land. To date the house has escaped invasion by their miniscule relatives, those that march like a black ribbon over kitchen worktops and inside store cupboards. A yearly event dealt with in the past at the end of June by watering round the exterior of the building with diluted insecticide.
As autumn draws near, there has been a distinct atmospheric change during the hours of darkness, something perhaps felt more in the country than town. As the temperature falls, there is refreshing moisture in the air, something which perks up those wild plants still green enough to benefit.
At the same time, the moon, through its phases from thin sliver to great silver ball, has been dazzling, bright enough to dull the stars and cast black shadows in passing. Inability to sleep has been blamed on the moon since time immemorial, and now the University of Basle has results from limited research that the moon may influence what rest we have at night.
I could have confirmed that. Vigils at such times are worth a lack of sleep, the countryside transformed into a wonderland of secret rustlings and other sounds of nocturnal mystery picked out in the still air. In the early hours last week, wide awake and listening to dogs from near and far exchanging local canine gossip, there came a loud hoot from within our old carob tree. Followed by another, then another and so on at equally short intervals, pitched around Middle C on the musical scale.
I replied likewise into a tangible silence but there was no response. After a couple of minutes, the bird called some more, an eerie hair-raising noise straight from a Hitchcock film. The sound resumed, but the bird was invisible. Next day I looked up “owl sounds” on Google and there, among half a dozen other recordings, was the voice of a long-eared owl to confirm what I thought I heard.
Other more pressing matters have made me realise how much one needs a man about the house: the small act of replacing a light bulb impossible, simply because I’m too short in the leg to reach the socket. Like Batman, but with flying ponytail rather than cloak, an excellent young man-of-all-work was at last free to answer my cry for help thanks to a break in his degree studies.
The original list of “to dos” has doubled in length since his last stint at the coal face and as I write, he is hard at it with his elderly father as mate. Differences of opinion rattle the rafters from time to time, the son shouting and the soft voiced senior responding quietly, never raising his voice, while the job in hand proceeds neatly and efficiently.
Half the work was completed by 5pm; the second and structural phase to be carried out when time and money permits.
Meanwhile, the rural area in which I live has again fallen victim to light-fingered merchants. The local substation was denuded of copper cables for the umpteenth time, plunging us into darkness and shutting down deep freezers already battling the hot weather.
As usual the house was without water and other facilities, something with which I have no problem for a short while. Rural life on farms before and during wartime was much the same with light from candles and oil lamps, water from a well, cooking by small oil stove and khasi in a small wooden shed down the garden. Neither was there internet to drive us up the wall because broadband was failing to deliver, which is the norm right now in 21st century Portugal that has made such strides in other ways over the past 25 years.
After a lack of response to my call for help from Lagos PT, I went there at 9am to ask for the Livro de Reclamações (Complaints’ Book) in the local branch. A pleasant English-speaking assistant asked me my problem being reluctant to hand over the book, which I never did have a chance to see. However, a technician was at my house that afternoon, tested my equipment and found everything in order. Next day broadband was working, a fault having been found in the external wiring from the road to the house. Now I need someone from PT to do something about the multitude of wires still hanging from a hole in the entrance hall.
At last a spell of steady rain has broken this long dry summer and my home is filled with the scent of herbs and quenched earth. Drops as big as 20 cent pieces were falling and a collared dove was in ecstasy, extending one wing and then the other while rolling from side to side to catch a thorough rain bath.
A dense woody plant, which I call ‘bush of barbed wire’ grows wild behind the house, a mass of half inch spikes and clouds of white blossom, the perfume of which overrides all others.
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Margaret Brown is one of the Algarve Resident’s longest standing contributors and has lived in the Algarve for more than 20 years.
