17th August FONTE DOS CLERIGOS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HENRY! XXXXXXX

Today we helped Pam and Mark collect furniture from an expat couple who are moving back to Britain. We managed to transport three beds, with mattresses, four large wooden chairs, a huge chest of drawers, fridge freezer, cooker, mountain bike, flower pots, carpets and some other odds and ends in the back of our truck, their Landrover and on their Landrover’s roof – it was fantastic the amount we managed to move in one go. It was a rather slow journey back to the village; but we managed it without mishap.

Tomorrow is Gary’s birthday (or it could have been yesterday, he said it was the day after Henry’s, or Henry’s was the day after his); anyway I made him a card.

This was the first draft which I rejected as it looked as if he's fallen into a chest freezer!

This was the one we sent - it was supposed to be a joke.

Our figs are finally ripening and Gary’s right there is enough for us and the birds. When you pick them off the tree this white sappy fluid drips out of the stem; we’ve learnt to break this end off, as when Brett licked it his mouth went numb and blistered (I think it must be like the stuff that comes out of Euphorbia that is an irritant).

We have so many grapes; kilos and kilos of them (as in hundreds of kilos), there’s no way we can eat them all and, as I hate to waste anything, I’m going to look up wine making with grapes on Google. I’ve been making ‘country wine’ (adding yeast and sugar to prepared fruit/vegetables/flowers and water) for years but I’ve never made proper wine, like you buy in the shops. All the equipment is for sale at the moment; we only have to buy it once, and we can share it with our new friends. We’re already talking about going halves on a fruit press, trailer (for Ute) and tractor; and we split the cost, with the other Mark, on the cement mixer – so we’re managing to halve the cost some of our larger purchases. It’ll be brilliant to have wine from our own vineyards; how cool will that be when we have visitors? We have several varieties of grape; with large and small, black, red and white fruits – so we should be able to make red, rose and white wine and hopefully some sparkling wine too.

We’ve already noticed that the nights are drawing in; we used to sit outside until gone 10.00 now we’re in before 9.00. And in the morning I was getting up around six, now it’s after seven; so our usable part of the day is getting shorter.