Algarve Letters

Always Broke

I seem to remember a youth spent mucking about; doing all sorts of amazing things, but there was one constant, I was permanently broke.

I remember pushing cars up hills; wondering how to catch animals in the woods because I couldn't afford to go and buy food; going everywhere with a can of petrol in the car in case we ran out. We could only afford one gallon at a time, and didn't like to put it in the tank until we absolutely had to.

I hitch-hiked round half the world, met all sorts of amazing people, and did insane things. I laughed a lot, got chased by hordes of nasty people and hid in the top of a tree for three days. I slept in sheds, under trees, and got stuck between two frontiers once for six whole days with nowhere to buy food.

Then one day I got a weird attack. I thought I'd better make some money. I was getting older. I had passed that awful age of forty, and I thought I needed some sort of security. I spent years working all hours to make myself solvent for a change. Now I live in a nice house, with a river running through the garden, and fields with cows jangling away. The cellar is full, the fridge is too, and I have several cars scattered about the grounds.

The odd thing is, I am still penniless. Is it a state of mind? Is it hereditary? I just dont know, but I always seem to be broke.

It's an odd thing, but here I am living on a farm, so we have our regulation quota of rats scurrying about and shitting everywhere. These rats have a perfectly good rubbish heap of a car to move into, but the blighters insist on breaking into the Lexus and chewing the cables.

There must be a principle here. I also note that one of the most satisfying experiences in driving my Lexus is to motor sedately down the middle of the street at 25 mph. Heck, I not only have acceleration that takes me from zero to the other side of the planet in half a dozen seconds, but I have this little switch which is some kind of warp drive which will allow you to put your foot down and overtake Concorde. But…. and this is important, I do get a kick out of sauntering down the road at 25 miles an hour. What's it all about?

And it isn't just the fancy sports car. Every morning I select a shirt from among no less than three cupboards full. I carefully go past all the really nice shirts and put on one that is just about okay. I think there is a fear that if I put on a really nice shirt I'm bound to drop breakfast down it, so I'd better keep it safe for tomorrow.

I was probably traumatised by going to college when I was eighteen. I was in this train full of college students. They were in some kind of catatonic state of shock, so I moved to the dining car. I was being very careful to keep my clothes clean because I had three sets of everything, and I reckoned I'd have to be careful not to get them dirty because I'd have to lug them down to the bagwash. Ghastly thought.

I bought a drink, and some stupid girl turned round, banged my arm and sent half a pint of beer all down my clean shirt. I dont think I've ever recovered. I just stood there in horror.

"Oh sorry, I'll buy you another."

I was too stunned to say 'no', and the next thing there was this replacement beer on the counter. Naturally I picked it up and took a sip, just at the same time the bloody train lurched, and my beer went straight over the counter and someone else's washed all down my back, ruining the other side of my shirt and soaking my jacket. Trauma, trauma. Now the clean shirts stay in the cupboard unless I'm hassled by harrying females.

But I digress. On the other hand, I dont eat the best plums, or the juiciest oranges. I keep them for tomorrow. I reckon that's because I once spent those frightful days in no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And do you know, there are no restaurants in no-mans-land. No shops, no take-outs, no nothing. And there I am wasting away, with typhoid to the left of me, and smallpox to the right of me, and no-one will talk to me. More trauma. And now I have this strange relationship with food. Heck I even ran over a pheasant with my bicycle. I know you dont believe me, but it's true. I was going to Warminster for something. I couldn't afford the petrol, so I went on the bike, and there was this nice fat pheasant. I rode straight at him and swerved at the last moment and fell on it. I wrung its neck and hid it. I picked it up on the way back, and it tasted amazing with a bottle of Nuits St George.

Hmmm, that's where the money goes. Never mind. I do like good wine.

But I digress. I had intended to do a christmas letter, and it has not quite got to the point. So, here we go.

All those years without proper food; sleeping under hedges as I tramped across Europe; sleeping in windowless peasant huts as I tramped across Spain; cadging food where I could….. Gosh, I remember meeting this guy in some town in Tunisia. It must have been Sfax, or some such place. (Good lord, I dont believe this, my spellchecker has not highlighted Sfax, what does it mean? Remember that word, folks, you'll need it next time you play scrabble.)

Anyway, here I am sitting at a table in this restaurant thingie in the middle of Tunisia, and this bloke wants to talk. He's bought me a drink. I've accepted because I'm hoping we get something to eat to go with it. But no, he offers me another drink. I decline. "Actually I'm a bit hungry. Haven't eaten all day. I'll have a drink when I eat later." I thought he might rally round and buy me some grub. He slapped me on the back. "Dont worry, have another drink, I'll order you a meal to go with it." And he hassled the barman.

After what seemed like an eternity the guy gets up, shakes me by the hand, and says he has to go. "Your meal will soon be ready," he says, "everything's paid for," and he is off.

I'm sitting there, wondering where this phantom meal is, when at last the barman indicates the meal is ready. Great, but where the heck is it? This girl comes and shepherds me upstairs. Where are we going? She leads me down this corridor, and through an extremely shaky door. She shuts the door behind me, and there is my meal on a small square table with a single chair in front of it.

This is where I think I lost the plot. Remember, I was very hungry. Unfortunately, instead of waiting till I'd eaten, the wretched girl started taking off her clothes. I had some food in my left hand ready to chuck it in my mouth, and I stared at this scrawny bird emerging from swirls of clothes. To complete the picture she stood right in front of me without a stitch on, and grinned at me. She exposed a whole row of black rotting teeth.

As I say, I lost the plot. Instead of doing the sensible thing and finishing my meal, I just upped and left.

But I digress. The thing I wanted to home in on was the fact that here it is, christmas is here again. The days are short. The sky is usually blue, and although it's quite warm in the middle of the day, it gets a bit chilly in the evenings.

Actually I'm a bit annoyed about this. I had intended to flee the European winter. Here in Portugal, winter sets in round about the beginning of december. Portugal is an odd place. Winter comes in the summer, and spring comes in the winter if you see what I mean.

Okay, okay, you dont. I know. But look at it this way. In May it stops raining. It doesn't rain for months and months. The ground dries out, goes hard like concrete. The grass goes brown and wastes away. Flowers just give up and go to sleep. It's stop time, just like winter in northern Europe. We get a decent amount of rain, probably at the end of October, and everything starts burgeoning. The grass grows, the oranges ripen, and the jonquils come into flower, and hey, it's spring.

But I digress, what I'd meant to say is that I was supposed to be going to Brazil for the winter. I had meant to go there last year as well but I was, as usual, broke. This year I am only sort-of broke. So I answered this ad for a ship going to Brazil for a silly amount of money. The trouble is, by the time I'd answered the ad, and then asked about single person supplements, the darned thing was fully booked. So I haven't gone to Brazil. I'm still here having to cook my own meals, and gather firewood, and do the washing up.

But I digress. What I meant to say was, that here I am, doing well, supposedly, and yet after all this time I'm still broke. And it isn't just that. I mean, take last friday. Isn't it always on a friday afternoon that all the systems go down? It's too late to get the plumber out. The shops are just about to shut, and by the time you've sorted out what's gone wrong and worked out that you cant fix it, they are shut.

So, there I was, careering around the town looking for a shop. Sorry, I need to go back a bit, dont I? The problem was very simple. I turned on the tap and nothing happened.

I remember when I built my first house. In those days I still drove tattered old cars that kept going kerplut. The darn thing was up at the garage more often than not, and Douggie just about managed to keep it going for me. I'll have to tell you about Douggie one day. He kept four cows as pets. No dogs for Doug, he liked cows.

Anyway, there he was sitting on the sitting room wall (it was only three feet high at that time), and of course there were all the jokes about amateur builders. "I bet when you've finished building you'll have to turn on the tap to get electricity, and water will come out of the light sockets." You know, all that stuff we have to put up with. Well, the thing is I now live in Portugal, and when the electricity goes phut I cant get any water.

It's like this. I live up a track. In fact I'm about a kilometre down this track. And we have water from a well. The well water comes into the kitchen courtesy of some pipes and a pump, and the pump works by electricity, so when the electrics go down I dont have water.

I go out to the pump room. The trip has gone, but I cant re-set it. I come back in, and try to reset the trip on the main board. No deal. I unplug everything in the house. I switch off every single circuit breaker, but still the trip wont engage, and it's now getting dark.

First I find a torch and line up a row of candles on the kitchen worktop. Then I shoot off to the nearest shops. I need a longer extension cable. I already have three, but my next door neighbour lives about 150 metres away. The only way I am going to get active again is to run a cable from her house down the drive, through the gates, and into my place.

I go in no less than four shops before I find one with a suitable cable. It's the last one on the shelf. "How much? Streuth!" It's a good job I'm not totally broke, but if I have to buy many more extension cables I soon will be.

It's now pitch dark. I'm trailing this cable down the driveway. I have to break into next door because Julie is back in the UK, so here I am clambering over the tiles, and in through an upstairs window.

Blimey, this takes me back. The times I've had to climb in through her bog window back in the UK because she's come out without her front door key. The top light in the smallest room is just small enough for me to squeeze through. I'm going in head first of course, and one sort of wiggles down, arms flailing about looking for something to hang onto, but of course there is nothing. Why do they always fit the window over the bog?

Anyway, there I am wriggling through, nearly castrating myself on that nasty little spike thing that the window latch slots into. And now I have to go for it. I need to allow myself to fall onto the ruddy toilet. Julie! Julie! Will you get a spare key cut, and give it to me. I'm not doing this again.

Well, here I am doing this again. Luckily her lights work, and I plug in the extension cable.

I work my way back with the cable, chuck the end up over my balcony, and connect to a small extension lead that will take me some power into the living room. I plug in and switch on the standard lamp. Hooray. I now have power.

The trouble is I have a fridge in the kitchen and another fridge in next door full of figs, and lots of goodies from the garden. I have the power in the living room so I can work. Then I unplug and wander around in the dark (I've forgotten where I put the torch and cant see to light the candles). Eventually I find the table lamp that I put in the kitchen, and plug it in. Now I can cook my evening meal. A quick re-set of the cables when I've finished, and I can have the lights on back in the living room. Before I go to bed I change it round again, and plug in the fridge. Next door fridge will have to wait till tomorrow morning, when I'll give that a boost.

Okay, I dont need water or electricity for a kip, so let's fast forward to saturday lunch time. I'm having lunch in Alcantarilha with friends. We have a great time, but when it's time to leave, Graham asks me to move my car because he needs to bump start his. Apparently the starter motor's gone.

I give him a push. It wont start. Oh no. Here we go again. How many times have I pushed a car up and down hills?

I remember one frightful time when I took mother to Lulsgate to catch a plane to Dublin. It was mid winter. It was snowing. Luslgate airfield is the only flat field for miles around. The A38, or A37, or whatever it is that goes past the airport, swans nicely up and down. For some reason my car decided to simply stop. I tried to bump start it as it rolled down the hill. It wouldn't start so I let it roll for a short way up the other side of the dip.

You try doing a three point turn on the A38 in the gloom of a winter evening in the snow, and remember, I am doing the three point turn myself with no help from the engine.

Eventually I roll it back down the hill in third gear. The bloody thing wont bloody well start. So there I am halfway up the other side of the pesky hill in the whatsisname snow, bloody cold, soaking wet, pushing this wretched car backwards and forwards doing another push-pull three point turn with traffic backing up in both directions. God, I dont even want to think about it.

But I digress. Here I am on my back lying underneath Graham's car trying to find a hook to tie the rope to. There's one at the back but not one at the front. No problem. I back my car down, and now both of us are on our backs under the back of my car looking for my hook. There isn't one.

Now we're on our backs under the front of my car looking for a hook. There isn't one.

We are now on our backs under the back of my car looking for something else to tie the rope to. Haven't I been through this movie before? How old am I? How far have I come along life's highway? Most of the time without a tow-rope or a spare key. How….. oh to hell with it.

"Look, let's tie it to this," says Graham, and we get him hitched on. I pull him back up the hill and disconnect. And now he's in the driving seat and I'm running behind this car pushing the bloody thing. It's just as well it starts.

So I can now drive back to my nice home with no electricity and no water and think sweet thoughts about the coming of christmas.