Sunday Letter: figs, rain and a borrowed bicycle

Good morning from a damp balcony. The chair is under a tea towel, the geraniums are thrilled, and I’m writing this with the window open because the rain smells better than anything I could cook. Well, almost anything.

One story

On Tuesday my friend Inês texted to say the fig tree in her aunt’s courtyard in Benfica was “out of control” and could I please come and take some away before the wasps did. Benfica is a long way from Graça when you don’t drive. So I borrowed Senhor Abel’s nephew’s bicycle — a heavy green thing with a basket and one gear — and set off.

It started raining at Arroios. Not the polite Lisbon drizzle, but proper northern rain, the kind I grew up with. I was soaked by Saldanha. A woman at a bus stop shouted something encouraging that I didn’t fully understand, and I waved anyway.

The courtyard was worth it. The tree leaned over a tiled wall, dripping, the figs split and purple and smelling of honey. Inês’s aunt gave me a towel, a coffee and a carrier bag that she filled far past sensible. I cycled home very slowly, holding the handlebars with one hand and the bag with the other, figs bumping in the basket like a heartbeat.

I returned the bicycle with a dozen figs in the basket by way of rent. The nephew said it was the best deal he’d ever made.

One recipe

Roasted figs on toast. Barely a recipe, but the kind of thing that makes a grey afternoon feel like an occasion. Serves two, or one person who has had a long bike ride.

• 8 ripe figs, halved
• 2 tablespoons honey
• A few sprigs of thyme
• A pinch of flaky salt and black pepper
• 2 thick slices of sourdough
• Requeijão or ricotta, a generous spoonful each

Heat the oven to 200°C. Put the figs cut side up in a small dish, drizzle with the honey, scatter over the thyme leaves and season. Roast for 12–15 minutes, until they slump and the juices go sticky. Toast the bread, spread with the cheese, and pile the figs on top with every bit of syrup from the dish. Eat standing at the window if it’s still raining.

One thing worth reading

I’ve been dipping back into The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, in Richard Zenith’s translation. It’s not a book you read front to back; it’s a book you open on a wet Sunday and find a sentence that seems to have been written about your street. Pessoa wrote it as Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper in the Baixa, and it’s full of rain on rooftops and trams and the odd loneliness of a city you love. My copy lives on the balcony chair and is slightly warped from weather, which feels right.

That’s all from me. If you’ve got a fig tree that’s out of control, you know where I am.

With love, and slightly sticky fingers,

Millie