Dear Geoffrey,

Here's a little postcard from the local desert, taken this morning — 10 am it says. I was owing it to you, sort of, but have been lazying around, which is the right thing to do here. It's wide angle, so that you can get the place's mood, which is the important thing.

Our house is one in that group you see on the right. We own under 2 acres of sheep pasture.

In that group of houses live a total of four couples. Being under sixty, we're the youngest. The rest are people who worked all their lives in the fields — only one of them can read — and are now near or past their seventies. Back then the work day for field workers began at sunrise and ended half an hour or one hour past sunset, in the summer. Two of these couples now own some land. Around here, field production shifted from wheat back then, to cows and sheep, and cork as always..

Best regards,
jm