I had noticed the grey haired old lady at the local Cafetaria for some time now. She seemed to be a regular customer and I hadn't given her much thought other than to observe that she invariably arrived after we did, and that she was always on her own. Sunday was slightly different. She had managed to get in earlier than we did for our Sunday afternoon break, and was sitting at a table that was laid for her, or so it appeared.

Unusually for that time of the day, around 3 p.m., several people wandered in and started to occupy the free places. That was about when I observed a subtle change in customer behaviour. The old lady jumped up with her plate of soup and stepped up to the bar. The bar, as are most in this country, is about chest high to a person of normal height. She is short and slight, which meant that only her upper shoulders and head were above bar level. But she managed to get the plate and bread roll and spoon onto the bar, then turned around to retrieve her plastic bags that she had placed by the seat that she had been recently occupying.

The drama continued to unfold. The owner-brother that was serving customers (the other owner-brother was tending bar) grabbed her plate and roll and spoon from off the bar and placed it all firmly back on the table that she had vacated only a few moments before. He then wrested the plastic bags out of her hand and placed them, equally firmly, by the chair that he was pointing to fiercely indicating that she sit down. All this while castigating her openly and volubly!

I am not well-versed in the Portuguese language, certainly not familiar enough with it to follow the machine-gun rapidity of the exchanges, so I did what I usually do and turned to Maria for an explanation. I noticed she had a whimsical half-smile on her face, not the expression I expected from somebody observing an altercation of such apparent magnitude. The explanation was not what I expected either, but it all made sense.

The old lady, somebody's grandmother, mother, sister, is a lonely old lady who lives on her own in the neighbourhood. She visits the Cafetaria daily, usually after the lunch-hour rush is over and the place has emptied. She is served a bowl of soup and a bread roll which usually has a slice of cheese inserted into it. She eats this gratefully, gathers up her bags, thanks everybody profusely, bids good afternoon to any customers present, and leaves in a dignified manner.

No mention of payment ever arises!

I wondered for how long this had been going on. "Forever!" was the noncommittal reply from her that sits by my side. The owners of the Cafetaria are also local residents and are aware of her circumstances. They do not find it an imposition to serve her a bowl of soup each day, nor do they find their actions unusual in any way. Neither brother would even consider accepting a congratulatory comment, and would probably be offended if their actions were considered a 'charitable' act.

It is just something they do!

What was the commotion about? It appears she felt that she was unnecessarily occupying a perfectly good seat in the establishment that had suddenly, and unexpectedly filled up. To ease the seating problem she decided to move to the bar, finish her little repast, and take her leave as quietly as she had arrived. But Jorge (pronounced George), the younger brother, was having none of it. He insisted loudly, for all the customers to hear, that she was as valued a diner as anybody else, and that she was going to finish her meal at the table at which he had served her. So, there!

Her meal over, I observed her carefully wrap half the bread roll in a diffidently retrieved paper napkin, gather up her belongings and with a nod and a beatific smile to all, take her leave.

Kindness manifests itself in so many ways.

I think I should let Martin Luther King Jr. have the last word. He once said, "Life's most urgent question is, what are you doing for others?"

P.S. I am in the process of closing down several of my websites and thought it was worth rescuing some of the posts from other 'blogs' I've run in the past..

This post is one of them.

My sincere apologies to those who have already read it. 

 

Seeking means to have a goal; you are perhaps indeed a seeker. And in striving towards your goal, you perhaps do not see many things that are under your nose.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

 

 

The hunt continued apace, but the results were disappointing. We were now visiting friends and family in the Algarve so frequently that they were getting worried about us. And perhaps even a little tired of hosting our regular visits. Hey, that's the price you pay if you class us as close friends or family!

Nothing. Nada! Not even close to what we wanted, or could afford. Seemed as if we had a better chance of winning the lottery. Now, there was a thought!

Maria was also regularly hurling herself up the motorway in a northerly direction to take care of business at Quinta da Cardiga (roughly translated, The Cardiga Estate), an old estate that has been allowed to deteriorate for reasons that I shall not go into here. Suffice it to say that the estate has stopped producing anything for which it was once famous. It now consists of vast tracts of agricultural land, a run-down Palace, a whole host of run-down estate buildings and the tidy little village called São Caetano that houses the ex-estate workers. The residents live in rent-free accommodation, a sort of feudal tied-cottage scheme that continues to be honoured by the company. When the current occupants pass on, the house they occupy will revert back to the company as it cannot be passed on to the children. The occupants, all pensioners and without any income except for a fixed state pension, are secure in the knowledge that they will always have a roof over their heads. Even if the company sells the property out from under them, it is their entitlement to remain as sitting-tenants.

Map of Portugal showing the
various Districts.

A good rule of thumb, if you
don't know and want a palatable
red wine, is to buy one that
comes from the Alentejo region.

Beja and Evora Districts make
up the Alentejo.

The estate is located in the Santarem District (the pale yellow one in the middle of the map) and is about 120 kilometres from where we live. Not too far for Maria to hurtle up there late morning and return early afternoon, having completed whatever it is she needs to do. On one particular trip she had a late afternoon appointment with a couple of legal-beagles closeted in the nearest town, so she took the opportunity to walk the village and chat with the residents. They love these visits as they can get all their complaints off their chests, something they would never dream of doing face to face with the owners. For her part, Maria loves the visits because she has a close rapport with most of the residents, some of whom she has known for more than 25 years. She uses these sessions to catch up on all the latest gossip which is essential for her to be able to 'administer' things without causing too much upset to the old dears. Since this meeting was scheduled for late afternoon her return trip was delayed a tad. She phoned ahead and I produced dinner. Please note, I did not say I cooked dinner. I trotted across to the local Cafeteria and snagged a couple of portions of one of their specialities and two helpings of their 'out-of-this-world' soup. The wine I already had! Maria arrived home, all wound up like over-stretched knicker elastic. I assumed her meeting had been a success and I waited for her to recount the events of the day. We had a late, but pleasant meal and the conversation and wine flowed in equal measure. Then came the "I have something to tell you." moment.

I listened intently. What else do you do when somebody has "... something to tell you."? As far as I recall I don't think I uttered a word, and moved only to top up the glasses with a fine red Borba.This particular wine from the Alentejo Region is a blend of mainly Trincadeira, Aragónez (Tempranillo) and Castelão, with some Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Bouschet.

The grapes are treaded by foot in lagares (the stone troughs that are traditional in the Douro for Port production) for 30 to 45 minutes twice daily until the end of the alcoholic fermentation.

The wine producer likes this method because it provides a large surface ratio of solids to juice, because the open top prevents heat from collecting in the juice and because the gentle treading pressure assures no destruction of the seeds, and therefore no leaching of bitter tannins into the juice.

The wine subsequently ages for a year in new French oak barrels.

We still reminisce about that evening 3 years ago, and it still brings a smile to our faces. Her "I have something to tell you." shifted gear into a series of rapid questions. Did I have my heart set on moving to The Algarve? Had I considered alternatives? What did I think about a possible move to São Caetano? And then it deteriorated into an even more garbled rush. She'd seen a lovely old house in the village. Did I remember seeing those houses on the edge of the village on the bit of road that ran down to the river (of course I didn't remember - I'd only visited the village once before)? Well it was one of those. And just think, only two hundred metres away from dangling a worm in the river. And oh, could we go and take a look, together, in a couple of days? Please. Pretty, please?

She then produced her 3G-phone and proceeded to flick through the various images she had taken. They were in no particular order, but I've reproduced a few of them below to give you an idea of the disjointed take a viewer has when faced by a series of camera-phone (or is that 'phone-camera'?) snapshots. Click on any one and it will give you an enlarged image and a slideshow feature.

 

  
  
  

 

Attractive enough, despite the low-res snapshots. I guessed I'd have to go see for myself. But I had a few questions of my own. Was that house going to be large enough? How much did it cost? What were the neighbours like - apart from almost certainly being 'old'? How much garden space could we expect? How much did it cost? Did the adjacent farm throw off nasty country smells (as compared to nasty city smells)? How soon would it become available? How much did it cost - errmm, had I asked that before?

Most, if not all the questions were deflected with noncommital answers and a cheshire cat Lewis Carroll's famous cat that appears in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

At one point in the story, the cat disappears gradually until nothing is left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat!

smile. It was becoming apparent that I would have to get off my butt and go take a look for myself.

I think that the quotation by Herr Hesse that I've used at the start of this post was aimed specifically at the two of us!

'Till next time ...