Letters from the Algarve
English Ladies Abroad
When a bunch
of Germans get together they either start brewing beer, or
form a brass band. When the Welsh gang up they form a choir.
It is said the English will form a club. Abroad they will
undoubtedly form a tennis club, a bowls club, start a
walking party, or pretend to get deeply embedded in local
history.
This is all very well,
but you can tell the English have arrived anywhere in force
when you are stumbling through a dusty town that seems to
have gone to sleep in the bright mid morning sun and you
turn a corner, and there, across the street, is a charity
shop.
You know that somewhere just
out of town is a finca with a ramshackle yard. There will be
makeshift pens harbouring a rescued donkey or two. There
will be twenty-seven cats looking puzzled and wondering
where their essential parts have gone. Dogs will look up at
you with sad brown eyes.
Wherever the English go
they immediately set up an animal sanctuary. There is a certain type of English
lady who likes to make sure all animals are properly
domesticated. There are rules by which animals should live
when in proximity to humans. Animals must at all costs be
sanitised, sterilised, and humanised. Some even think they
should be baptised, and when they die, properly burialised.
Wild animals are
something different. Where I currently live, across the
border in Portugal, there is a brisk trade in cats. It goes
like this. Martha realises that the end of her garden is
getting a bit out of hand. There are no less than three
feral cats ranging across the land. Feral cats are NOT
ALLOWED! Only domesticated cats are allowed on Martha's
land. There is only one thing to do. She gets out the cat
basket. It has a portcullis on the front. When a curious cat
goes inside to see what it's all about, the portcullis is
tripped, and the cat is captured.
You can hear the
swearing from a hundred yards. Martha backs up the car, puts
basket with swearing cat in the back, and drives several
miles to the river, over the bridge, and then, just to make
sure, she drives ten miles back up the river on the other
side, and then releases a by now hysterical cat.
Martha then puts the
basket back on the patch of land at the bottom of her garden
ready to catch the next curious cat. Before long peace
reigns in the garden as all the feral cats have been safely
transported across the water.
What this doesn't take
into account is the fact that another Martha, who is in fact
called Mary, lives on the other side of the river bank, and
when she finds these feral cats roaming around the
countryside, attacking her peace-loving domestic cats, and
spraying everywhere, she immediately reaches for her cat
basket with the portcullis drop. Hubby is commandeered to
drive the station wagon ten miles downstream to the bridge,
and the cats are duly released a suitable way from the
bridge on the other side of the river.
A brisk trade in
ferrying feral cats develops, and keeps the cats thoroughly
confused, and the local English community busy throughout
the long years of retirement.
Gangs of earnest ladies
are kept busy doing what some ladies have always seen as
their most important role in life, catching stray grumpy
male animals and cutting off their sexual parts. There is
obviously some cathartic pleasure in this. It makes the
males harmless, gets the females a quiet life, and keeps the
population down to manageable levels.
To support the
lifestyle of the English do-good lady abroad there needs to
be some income. The ideal way to get the funds to pay for
the vet to chop off a bit here and a bit there, and to pay
for the fencing and the food, and the basket with the
built-in portcullis, is to have a bring-and-buy sale, and
then start a charity shop.
There is one just
across the street. In I go. There are shelves of books in
English, books in German, and the occasional French novel.
There are racks of clothes, and along one wall is a
collection of frightful furniture, on top of which are
spread some even more frightful nick-knacks.
On the back of the door
is a notice about rabbits. According to this notice I am
informed that one rabbit can produce a quarter of a million
rabbits in just two years. Odd, I always thought you needed
two to get things going.
English ladies abroad!
The locals must find them exceedingly odd.