The monkey and the swimming pool-Part 1

So, this is the first of the stories about Pete and Gill, hippies of the Algarve. The first time I met them, they were introduced to me by Nigel, the original Algarve hippy, but more about him later.
Pete and Gill are simply put, lovely people and wonderful company. They have had some great experiences in their lives (including meeting each other, and if you ever wanted to see an example of soul mates you have to meet these two). Despite all of this, they are not combative people, and I don't think I have ever seen either of them drawn in to an argument. Hang on, thinking about it I have been told that Pete nearly spontaneously combusted when he was told in our local supermarket (motto: The client comes last) that he could not exchange a hi-fi he had purchased that week, even though it was faulty. The "assistant", and I use inverted commas because she should really be called the "I don't want to assist you at all I am a self important cow" but they could not fit that on her little badge, using Portuguese logic explained the hi-fi had to be sent away for repair, thus leaving one music addicted hippy without music for an indeterminate period. Bear in mind that in the Algarve when something is sent for repair it will be returned sometime between one week in the future and never, and you can understand Pete's frustration.
Fortunately, for the good of the world, and the physical safety of Senhora I don't give a toss, Nigel (the original Algarve hippy) arrived and intervened. Nigel speaks much better Portuguese than Pete, albeit in a Devon accent (imagine someone ordering clotted cream fudge in Portuguese and you have got the picture) and also does not mind a row with a snotty shop assistant. 5 minutes later, voilà, one new stereo and one nil to the customer. And, even better, I get to piss myself laughing about the whole thing the next time I go to lunch with Nigel and he tells me the whole story.
So, hopefully, you get the picture. I met Pete and Gill because they wanted to sell their house (and I am an estate agent). They had a very sweet converted quinta (farmhouse) which they wanted to sell as they had a new project to move on to in the middle of the MAMBA (Miles And Miles of Bugger All-Copyright Clive Stott 2005) because that is the sort of they thing do.
Well, we tried hard to sell their house, with little success. However, during this time it became apparent that there was some friction with their neighbour. One of their neighbours was apparently the illegitimate son of a Portuguese widow from the local village, and had all the trappings of Portuguese rural life, namely a very noisy, extremely slow motorbike of an indeterminate make, loads of smelly sheep (they have to be smelly to really qualify), permanent smell of alcohol and, of course, a hat. That is all pretty irrelevant as they had no problems with him at all, if you ignore the smell I suppose.
The neighbour on their other side was an English guy who had bought a property and refurbished and upgraded it. Unfortunately, he had employed one of the Algarves low life to "supervise" the works. Now the dictionary definition of supervise according to dictionary.com is "to oversee (a process, work, workers, etc.) during execution or performance; superintend; have the oversight and direction of." Sadly, this gent, known colloquially as The Monkey, for reasons that will become obvious, clearly either does not have a dictionary or can not read. If we were to ask him for his definition of supervise I think it would be "to create the maximum amount of chaos for all involved, to use all means necessary, including (but not limited to) blackmail, theft, lying and threatening behaviour, to gain the maximum possible, even if at the expense of everyone else involved in the process". Lets be blunt, I don't like him, in fact he will appear on the "Wankers I have met" post when I get round to writing it.
The monkey carried out a number of things that were pretty stupid, but did not affect his neighbours directly. He closed off a caminho, which is a public track, and this is considered very bad form in Portuguese rural areas. He "organised" the delivery of a fibreglass swimming pool, and this is the first time we really understood how few brain cells this guy has. He ordered the pool, and paid a deposit with his clients money, without checking the answer to one basic question. Now pause a minute, close your eyes, and imagine this for me. You are at Ikea (stop moaning their hot dogs are nice) and you are in that pick up place where everyone parks their car to stuff in their new wardrobe/alien space lamp etc. Now, imagine an idiot trying to buy a swimming pool and stuffing it into his estate car. He trys on the roof, in the back seat, he puts his wife on the roof and tries to flatten all the seats and still it won't fit. Ok, so its a metaphor but that is more or less the situation. This buffoon orders an 8 metre long pool, and then on the day of delivery realises that neither the lorry nor the crane can get anywhere near the house. So, plan B kicks in (lets face it this donkey doesn't plan anything so it should be "Idea B" really) and he orders a helicopter to deliver this pool. Now, this is a possibility, but he failed to check that they could get a helicopter close enough. I can imagine the quote from the pilot "Oi monkey this is a helicopter not a magic carpet". And the result? One damaged pool, one client out of pocket and Idea C-construct a pool in situ.
Part 2 to follow-now the arguing really begins and we go to court.