Another Day in the Algarve
Another Day in the Algarve
Its grey, its murky, its dawn. Suddenly the deep silence is filled with a few twitterings of birds. The Algarve dawn is not like an English dawn, where the light thins slowly for almost an hour, and the first streaks of the new day are greeted by a great outburst of aggressive birdsong. In the Algarve the dawn moves with an unexpected urgency, and yet the birds are more subdued. A blackbird here, a whoopoo there, followed by a few indeterminate twitterings, and then it all goes quiet again.
I leap out of bed and open the window. It's going to be a great day today. There is a streak of high cloud to the south. It scarcely moves. The rest of the sky is a pale blue. It is obvious the weather has at last settled and we are in for a fine spell.
But this is the Algarve. We are right at the edge of a continent. To the north and east is a great landmass. To the south and west is the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean. Where the two meet anything can happen. I walk slowly to the other side of the house and pull up the shutters. As far as the eye can see are thick black clouds. Oh well, perhaps the weather hasn't calmed down just yet. For the past ten days the temperature on the news has been listed as 10 degrees minimum, and yet night after night the cold has been intense. They obviously dont bother to update the figures. Last night they forecast a fine day, so it will probably rain. What do I wear? This is as bad as being in the UK. Have I really come to live in the right place?
I do my office work before the day gets started, and then stop for breakfast. Some cereal with nuts and fruits, some yogurt, and some rather nice home made jelly from Monchique. It has a rich musty flavour. I spread it thickly on a fresh crusty chunk of baguette.
I eat it all in my special breakfast room, which consists of a chair placed on an old wooden bridge which spans the river that runs thru my garden. In front of me the water rushes round the corner, thru the elephant grass, and dashes against the stones, then past the seat I have constructed at water level. Bubbles wash under the bridge, and swerve round tufts of grass and boulders, and are carried on down to the estuary. At my feet the cat is breakfasting off the remains of last night's dinner.
I stand up and stretch, and watch the sun flickering on the new almond leaves, then walk down the path and pick myself a handful of oranges. Back in the house I cut the oranges into segments and squeeze them into a pint mug. Six or seven oranges fills the glass. I down half a pint in one gulp. The juice is rich and dark, and feeds as well as refreshes. You only have to touch the oranges and they bleed juice everywhere.
The clouds get darker and closer. There is a line of clouds just to the north of me where they swell over the Monchique hills, bump into each other and back up out to sea. Will they, wont they, come this way?
I go indoors. I need to work anyway. Let the weather sort itself out. I dont know what's going on. I've been watching it now for four years and still haven't a clue. My next door neighbour assures me it wont rain today. "Tomorrow afternoon," she says.
"But how do you know?" I cant notice anything different in the way the wind blows, or the smell of the air.
She shrugs her shoulders. "You'll see. It will rain tomorrow after lunch," she says. She will be right, of course.
I work all morning. From my window I can see the cat sitting in front of an empty bowl. Every so often she gets up and sniffs all round the area, then sits bolt upright guarding her sacred space. Great wafts of scent billow down from a hillside further down the road. The smell of the cistus is pungent and almost alcoholic, like a rich honey being turned to mead. I have found a small early sprig of orange blossom. It's scent gently drifts over the top of my laptop computer. An occasional small green frog in the river belches into the clean air, another chirrups from the top of a lemon tree.
That reminds me, I need my belated elevenses. I walk back across the river and pick a ripe lemon. In the kitchen I slice it, drop a wedge into a glass, and tip in some tonic water. On the shelf is some queijo de figo (fig cake) that I bought yesterday from a charming little shop that reminds me of a cream tea emporium in deepest Dorset. I cut a slice, and add a small Alfarroba (Carob) cake.
Outside my study is a patio facing a fig tree which is just coming into leaf. Beyond is the river, with white and mauve flowers tumbling down the old stone walls that line the banks. Beyond, the peach and almond trees are a light pattern of fresh green leaves and small white and pink blossom. Beyond is the pond and the vine arbour. I make a mental note to prune the vines next week as they start to shoot. Beyond that is the orange grove, then the field, and the trees in the distance. My eyes glaze over. The view is almost heart-rending, and yet there is a finer view from the roof terrace, as from there I can see right across the marshes down to the estuary and the sea.
The clouds are still shunting around the hills of Monchique. Perhaps they wont come down to worry me today. I get out the heavy duty clippers and walk down to the orange grove. Yesterday I pruned my first orange tree. Today I'll attack the second.
The tree is dense and the leaves are covered in some black substance. There is mould growing on the main trunk. This tree needs air. I attack it surgically, stripping the tangle out to leave a pattern of branches that will allow the sun and the air to get to the growing fruit. Around the tree is a tangle of discarded branches. I hope I have done it right. Armindo, who sold me the farm, said he would be back to show me how. But i'm impatient, and he hasn't been round.
I'm pleased with my day's work. It is one o'clock. I have done my office work, uploaded pages to my websites, done some writing, pruned an orange tree, and that should be enough for anyone for one day. It is time for lunch.
I have a salad with half the products coming from my garden. There is ham I have chopped into it. The ham did not come from the farm as the pig-sties are alas empty. There are nuts, some excellent olive oil, and some lamb marinaded in herbs.
There is a country table on the patio. Armindo made it, and the legs are small branches of eucalyptus held together with larger branches which have been sliced in half to give one straight edge. Planks are screwed into the supports, and there it is: a rustic table. (My chair, however, is white and plastic, and bought from Continente. It will have to go.)
The sun shines down on my patio. I kick out my heels and watch a small aeroplane circle round then head off to the airfield at Alvor. I uncork the wine. I have been exploring the wines of Portugal for some years. There are hundreds of them. Most are of indifferent quality. Most can only be drunk straight from the bottle. Even keeping them for a day doesn't seem to work. Many are sour and attack both throat and stomach. However, there are many which command high prices. I haven't tried them all, but I have now joined a wine club, where the tastings are great events, and the wines rather good. I must lay in a few crates.
The Lagoa wines are generally poor, the wines of the Alentejo are very uneven, some from the same estate being such that one may be fine while the next is appalling. The Douro wines are better, but at the moment I am discovering the wines of Estremadura. It is a hilly area to the north of Lisbon facing the Atlantic, named from the old Latin term for this part of Europe: Extrema Tierra, or the edge of the world.
The land is ideal for growing good quality grapes, and it should produce claret styled wines with ease. This one I am drinking is made from the castellão grape. It looks dark and brooding in the glass, the taste is strong and chewy. I will only be able to drink it with the lamb.
The sky is mainly blue, the sun is shining, the food is good, the wine is excellent, it is warm on the patio, yet it is still early march. This is how things are meant to be.
I'm dreaming. This wont do. I have matters to attend to. There are things to be done. I cant sit here wasting the day away in the warm sunshine. I need to get down to the beach. There are shells to be found, feet to splash in the waves, some rocks to chip into to find fossils. I must exchange my dreams in a country garden for dreams of the littoral.
It's a bumpy ride across the isthmus to the other side of the lagoon. "Unfasten your seatbelts," I shout.
"Why?" ask the kids.
"Remember to ask me that question again if I manage to tip the car into the sea, and you're up to your neck in water trying to get out," I say.
There is a rapid unbuckling of seatbelts, and the rear windows are suddenly closed. The kids fully expect me to wreck the car or land us upside down in the mud. I hurtle through the puddles. Mud and water flies everywhere. A group of Germans on the other side, waiting for me to pass, grin, and throw up their hands in mock horror as we hurtle past.
The sand dunes rise over the lagoon. "Just look at the state of this car," says my daughter.
I shrug. "But it's going to rain tomorrow afternoon."
"It'll need to rain for weeks to wash this lot off."
On one side of the lagoon you can squat and watch as the hermit crabs stick their eyes out of their holes, then suddenly lurch forward as if someone threw a power switch to mobilise them. Then they stop just as suddenly, survey the environment, then lurch forward again. There are dozens of them, standing there, one claw held aloft, like primeval traffic signals. I wave my arm, and they are gone in a flash, scuttling at breakneck speed back into their holes.
On the other side of the lagoon the sand is solid, then suddenly you find patches where you get sucked down inch by inch. In other places as you walk the sand breathes out, and dozens of tiny holes appear, like pores opening.
"I'll race you to the top of the dune."
We find a plank and try to turn it into a toboggan, but sand isn't snow, and we only manage to slide a metre before the front digs in and we all fall off.
I am standing up to my knees in water looking along the beach. I take a foto of the waves pushing a line of foam onto the sand and then retreating across a watery mirror when a sudden wave crashes into me, soaking me right up to my waist with the spray. It will take all of ten minutes for me to dry out, so I stand with my back to the sun, well clear of the waves, legs astride till my clothes dry.
Back at the farm it is time for supper. The light is fading fast. The clouds are still rumbling around looking heavy and threatening. They have hunched shoulders and look ready for a fight.
I get the barbecue going in the garden. Out comes the paella pan, it is two feet across. I tip in plenty of olive oil, and throw in some pieces of rabbit which sizzle away for a while. Meanwhile I cut the onions, the garlic, and some ginger (not exactly authentic, but who cares?). They get tipped in to brown. I push the rabbit around. When it has all had a chance to cook a little I add mounds of rice, and fill the pan with water. For the next fifteen minutes the mixture is twisted around, and turned, until it is time to add peppers, and a few bits and pieces that need using up. Finally the prawns and muscles are tipped in and buried under the rice for a minute or two. And then it is ready.
The estremaduran wine goes perfectly with this robust dish, and we sit on the patio as the moon comes over the trees disguised as a big orange pumpkin. As it rides higher into the sky it changes into a silver shilling and rolls higher and higher along an invisible highway. In the pond and in the river the frogs are belching with gusto, with the occasional chirrup from the top of the lemon trees.
I finish my meal with the last of the convent confectionaries I bought the day before. It is a complex orange-colored set of threads rolled in a sticky substance, and is called a Dom Rodrigo. It is delicious. I have opened a dessert wine to go with it. This is a dark, almost black substance that I found in a little town in Spain. It is a moscatel, but not like any moscatel I have drunk anywhere else. I comes from a private bodega wedged between a castellated ruin and the Atlantic ocean right on the edge of the province of Cadiz. There is no label on the bottle, just a card held around the neck by an elastic band. It says: Bodega El Castillito, Moscatel Pasa Puro Viejo, Chipiona, Cadiz.
It is heavy on the stomach. One small glass is enough. I let the juice ooze around my mouth, and slide slowly down my throat. The moon smiles. I wink back and take another mouthful. The moon asks me for a sip. I giggle.
The girls start to clear away the things. I decide to end the day with a bonfire in the orchard. Soon there are flames leaping into the sky as the orange-tree cuttings dissolve into ash. The light from the flames billows up and down the sides of the orange trees. A thread of smoke disappears up towards the moon, but the moon is not paying attention. The moon is wandering away over the night sky and dreaming of America.
I stare across the fields into the deeper dark. My eyes are moist (after all, I'm really an emotional old fool), but then I shrug my shoulders. What the heck! It's only another day in the Algarve.
