An ABC Of Curiosities

Ambergris
I have been given a lump of ambergris by a whale-and-squid specialist

Ambergris is made in a whale’s stomach, it is the sharp parrotty beaks of many squid mixed up with the whale’s intestinal fatty juices. Sometimes this mélange is burped back out of the mouth like a fur ball but more usually it passes through the other end of the whale, the lump bobs to the surface of the sea where the process of salt water and oxidisation turns it into ambergris – it smells like whale poo and is used in the more expensive perfumes.

Bloody Kit
No sooner does one thing start working properly but another thing breaks down. We finally got a knob replaced that had broken last week - one full day of filming with everything working perfectly, by the following night the Giant Cable was broken...

Capes
The Faial cape is celebrated as an island icon, its distinctive outline is scribbled as grafitti on walls and picked out in stones on the pavements. Made from very heavy fabric, the hood is disproportionately large and is made to sit above the wearer’s head by means of a wooden frame which is apparently very uncomfortable. Could this have been the inspiration for Darth Vader?

Strange Behaviour

A Camera Boy has just turned up to help us find a giant squid somewhere in the big wet area in front of our house. He is fresh in from Indonesia where he was filming slow lorises (sounds a lot like slow lorries).

The slow loris in the wild is nocturnal and it is the world's only venomous primate; they excrete venom from their elbows and when threatened they lick their elbows to make their bite poisonous.

Before they were brought to my attention by the Camera Boy's filming trip I knew nothing about this animal but now I know that it is cute, furry and big-eyed so they are captured to sell on as pets*. They are also endangered.

*To get round the venom thing their teeth are snapped off.

Split Shifts

Now that half the team are out filming at night our mealtime structure has fallen apart. These days at noon 3 people will be eating toast or a full-on fry up while the others are half way through their working day.

Somewhere in the early afternoon a 'proper' cooked meal is ready, it would be nice if we sat and ate together but now we're never hungry at the same time so it gets eaten in shifts. Sandwiches and snacks are packed for supper on the boat and those of us left behind have a bread and cheese supper sitting at a table outside our house watching the sunset and wondering if the specks we can see on the ocean are 'our boat’.

I think we are all feeling a bit disjointed.

Ant Hoovering

Today I finally hoovered the ants.

During any given summer many ants launch themselves on doomed nuptial flights wherever it is that I am staying. It seems futile to try and do anything about it until the stream of bodies stops but I’ve been here for two weeks now and still they are pouring out from under my window frame, heading straight for any electrical items and then dying. Drifts of little black bodies had piled up too high to ignore any longer.

After hoovering I rediscovered the product that I bought last week in the Azores. I haven’t dared use it yet, I think it is moisturising cream but then again my translating powers might not be all they should be.


I prefer my body lotion not to smell. A few years ago I endured a harrowing journey to London when I boarded a train after rubbing my knees with cocoa butter. The train was packed and I took a seat behind a family with a little dog, the child started on immediately and loudly that there was 'Someone eating chocolate’ and the dog spent the entire journey scrabbling at me through the seats.

Despite the train-and-cocoa-butter experience, I ended up buying this product mainly because I was intrigued by the words on the bottle. 'Love Lotion’ promises 'sexy and attractive skin’ which is what one might hope for in a moisturiser but it also explicitly claims in words written around a pair of kissy lips that it 'seduces 9 out of every 10 men’ on the back of the bottle this claim is reinforced with the words 'in tests 9 out of every 10 men ...

I need more information about this testing: at what distances does Love Lotion work? Does it work on any particular sort of man?

The claim states that 90 per cent of men are seduced by Love Lotion but was it applied to women or, like cigarettes and other cosmetics, was the testing done on beagles and mice?

If anybody reading this is a tester for Love Lotion will you please supply answers to my questions.

The Odyssey

I have been informed that it is a legal requirement to install one television set per 20 square metres in every public place in the Azores, I haven’t verified this but I have seen a lot of screens - all showing what appears to be the same continuously running soap opera featuring swarthy men and heavily made-up women in dramatic and emotive situations.

We appear to have been caught up with the drama, our days now cycle through a series of fairly predictable lurches from tragedy to triumph and back again.

Last Monday afternoon a lorry turned up with our Giant Cable which made us happy, but then we couldn’t get it off the truck which was awful … but then we did something terribly clever with poles and leverage - haha.

We celebrated our possession of the cable while choking on the smell of burning clutch left by the Giant Cable lorry who spent an hour trying to leave our property.

As the lorry finally heaved itself away an Austrian lady appeared with a truckload of dry wood, the wood was unloaded and we were very happy, the wood lady wanting to return home to her starving children got into her truck … which refused to start, we pushed her in her vehicle sending it cascading down the hill but still it didn't start - I hope her children are ok.

The principle location for our drama has now moved down to the harbour where our boat is moored and we are building a system for managing our equipment on the boat, a system that would gladden the heart of Heath Robinson - a knotty affair of pulleys, winches and fly-wheels, that has needed endless modification. Several days after we should be in the water we are still trying to make everything strong enough and balanced enough and not too heavy.

Our efforts would not have succeeded this far without the genius of the boat’s skipper and his friends who have pitched in on the whole glorious affair. To counter-balance all of this practical brilliance and to stop us feeling too positive we are also dogged by a Greek chorus of shaggy old men who stop by, often for hours at a stretch, to shake their heads and tell us that what we’re doing is rubbish and it’ll never work.

Our island is a very decorated place, wall paintings and mosaics are everywhere, the picture I’ve posted here is on a wall outside a restaurant where one can eat and watch the weeping/smouldering soap opera. Interpretations welcome.

Here We Are Then

Friday

Arrived Azores at lunchtime, it is damp and it is a bank holiday here. Shops shut. Luggage still in Lisbon.

We hear that our giant cable, housed in a crate the size of a small apartment and the major component of our filming kit – the one that was freighted two weeks ago - has not arrived.

Seven of us are occupying two adjacent holiday homes, most of us are sleeping in the upper house, the lower house has become the camera-cable-computer-nerve-centre. The upper house has a wood oven and I have ordered wood which can’t be delivered until Monday.

Saturday

Starts misty, gets rainy … then torrential

Mosquitos don’t like being out in the rain, the island’s entire population of biting insects appear in our house looking for food and shelter. At breakfast time the youngest Camera Boy, fed up with the attention, took his can of man perfume, pointed it at 'flying stuff’ and pushed his finger down on the sprayer until the can was empty.

Someone called with the information that they spoke to a man who is almost certain that our cable is in his cargo-collecting place on our island – he will check first thing Monday when the cargo place opens.

Sunday

The sun is out, steam-drying the landscape - colours are supersaturated

A veteran cameraman-oceanographer is part of our team, charming, handsome and fishy – it’s like we have found a synthesis of Clark Gable and Jacques Cousteau. He goes out to sea in a kayak that he pedals rather than paddles. When he sees something interesting he gets in the water and films it. Today he filmed a baby whale playing near the surface of the ocean, the footage is very beautiful.



Monday

No-one has any idea where our cable is until lunchtime when it is tracked down in Lisbon.

The man with wood for the wood stove is called to find out the time of his delivery, he tells us that he has not had time to go out and chop down any trees yet.

Praying To Edna

Miss Whiplash and Girl Wonder have organised our squid-hunting trip. Without them there would be no expedition.

I have talked about Whiplash in previous posts, she is very tall and good at sums and when she is not in trouble with the police she runs our film company with a rod of iron. Miss Whiplash also sings in a band. This weekend she is off to play at Glastonbury and somewhere between handing me the call sheet for the trip and telling me that she had ten packets of Betty Crocker mix at home which had to be turned into hash cakes by the morning she advised me to pray to Goddess Edna, I misheard this before I looked it up, so forever in my mind we will be asking Edna's help in our quest to find a Giant Squid before the end of July.

Accounts of Edna's life vary, she was an Inuit with an abusive father who was desperate to marry her off to the highest bidder. In some accounts, having realised that he'd married her to a 'bird creature' Edna's father tries to rescue her, this involves throwing her into the sea. Other versions have it that the father is so enraged by Edna's refusal to obey him that he throws her into the sea. Either way Edna always tries to rescue herself by climbing into her father's kayak and he chops off her frozen fingers. Edna falls to the depths of the ocean turning into a sea animal as she plummets. Edna's fingers grow into seals and whales and polar bears and Edna becomes the ruler of sea monsters.

the image is one made by my new favourite artist Ningeokuluk Teevee

Doodling

There is so much graffiti going on where I live that the shopkeepers have decided that, rather than fight it, they will go with the flow and many have asked the graffiteurs to artify their shop signs and shop fronts. I am filled with the urge to go out at night with my own cans to add to the decoration.

Does anyone else think that my plan to transform the 'Massage Club' front would make it more amusing?




This is all work displacement daydreaming, I pass the 'Sausage Club' twice daily but my waking hours are taken up with getting ready to go on a filming trip in the Azores which is why I have no time to blog let alone paint.

I'm off at midnight and will try to post from my far away island when I'm not busy trying to catch a giant squid

Man and Lady In Garden With Cat

Twenty years ago I bought an old Super 8 camera in a flea market and filmed everything that moved until I ran out of film. These masterpieces then languished in a drawer for years.

I made two attempts to get the reels digitised but neither time was the job done well. Bits of my footage have survived the process though and earlier this year I used them to practice using a video editing programe.

This first epic shows my parents playing in the garden

Some Azorean Culture

I have a new bff in the Azores, keen to educate me in the culture of the islands she has sent me this link featuring Azorean singer Zeca Medeiros. I love it.

Getting a Reputation

Bristol gets in the news now and again it’s always interesting to see which bits of information stick.

Miss Whiplash stayed late in the office last night, waiting for one of our cameras to be returned by a French company who had been using it to film bats in Nicaragua.

The camera was delivered by a handsome and underemployed young artist who was delighted to be in Bristol - our city was a holy place for him.

Where can I see ze Banksys?

Whiplash gave him a map and pointed out some of the places where the young man could see some of the artist’s best work. But the man looked concerned

Are zese in any of the bad places?

Whipash was puzzled - what do you mean by bad places?

for example, St Pauls I ‘ear it is full of how you say? ... toxicos

is there anywhere else you’ve been warned about?

yes Southmead are you telling me to go anywhere near Southmead?*

Whats wrong with Southmead?

The Nazis are living there


*The only reason that we know of Southmead is because of its hospital which has an excellent neurosurgery unit.

Whale Meat Again

I have just returned from the Azores, this was a recce for a forthcoming filming expedition which was arranged and executed with tremendous haste. I’ve spent the last four days meeting skippers and making lists, measuring things, making drawings and drinking a lot of strong coffee. The main things that have stayed in my head from the trip are these:

a) Portuguese as a written language clearly has similarities with Spanish, but when spoken it is full of soft szjujj-ey noises which makes it sound like a language being played backwards

b) There are a lot of sausages on the Azores, I didn’t get a chance to sample them all, but I can recommend Azorean black pudding.

c) The Azores is Whale World; former whale-processing stations line the roads to the harbours, bars are full of little whales carved out of their own bones, snack bars operate from whale-shaped huts and whales are woven into the in the pavements.

I saw 'whale’ on a restaurant menu but I didn’t find out if it really was from that animal, it might have turned out to be just a whale-shaped sausage.

Chasing John Lynch

We like whiteboards to keep track of what's to be done around the office. They get full of notes about jobs to be done, shopping lists, and about a million unresolved problems.

Next week we will be recording the narration for two of our films, Whiplash and I have been squabbling over who gets to chase John Lynch.

Fuzzy Pictures: day 7

Since our 'riots' last month, my neighbourhood has been host to a continuing party, even in the rain people crowd the streets. Yesterday I was struggling home with my shopping and was so overcome by the glorious technicolour everywhere that I decided to photograph my favourites in the last 500 metres before I got to my door.

Fuzzy Pictures: day 6

I needed a photo frame and wandered into what looked like the right sort of shop. I didn't see a photo frame but I did see a clock on a suction pad which I thought might be useful stuck to our fridge (now that I've thrown my cooker out I have no kitchen clock). The suction clock was £4.

On the way to the till I saw some antlers shaped like mirrors which I had no idea I needed, I couldn't see the price on them so I took them to the till. On handing them over I noticed a ticket for £22 stuck on the back of the packet of antlers. At that moment the man at the till said

those antlers are 50p

Gosh, I said that's good do you have any more?

the man checked the computer and said that technically the one I had didn't exist and in fact the till price was not 50p but -50p, he rang my purchases up and I paid £3.50.

Bargain!

Fuzzy Pictures: day 5

I've been tearing out strange and interesting pages from magazine for decades, today I decided to decorate one of the edit suites with them, the parts are still being shifted around but they must get stuck down tomorrow.

I'm hoping the editor will enjoy it, this bit appears to be the animal cruelty section, it includes a photo of James Dean playing bongos to some cows and a pig, Emilio Zapata blowing smoke in the face of a night monkey and some images of a horse dressed as a zebra being ridden by a tiger.

Fuzzy Pictures: day 4

Darn fox - still evading capture

Fuzzy Pictures: day 3

Trying to round up the animals for treatment - panic ensues!

Fuzzy Pictures: day 2

I've just discovered that Hugh has carpet moth.

Treatment starts tomorrow

Fuzzy Pictures: day 1

My lovely Lumix has broken, just as I've got the urge to photograph things, but I shall not be deterred, my iphone 3 will stand-in and herald the start of a week-long 'Fuzzy Picture of the Day' feature.

Today's image shows you two things of which I am very proud:

Thing Number One = Brick-o-matic Bread, it might look a bit black but it's jolly nice and people have been known to pay a lot of money for this sort of thing in Paris.

I'm much prouder of

Thing number Two = this is yeast that I've kept alive for two whole weeks. Yeast must've inspired someone to make the Tamagotchi; one has to feed it, protect it and keep it happy or it dies.

I've never had a proper pet or looked after a baby (my sister is having one and might need my help), this is a sort of practise run.

Oven Shopping

The Brick-o-matic is all very well but a kitchen needs an oven and I'm keeping an eye out for something suitable. Yesterday I saw this one. I like the towel rail detail and the little warming box at the foot of the burning part (presumably it's for reviving/steaming cold mice). However that oven won't fit anything much bigger than a single cat*, I need at least a double-catter, maybe even a triple so I'll keep looking ...


*I'm not planning to actually cook any cats, but I have noticed that cats are an excellent unit of measurement

Baking A Labonne

When we moved into this house I threw out the mimsy fireplace that was blocking our magnificent chimney hole. Since my recent kitchen destruction I've been experimenting with different configurations for cooking in this space.

Please note the Labonne Patented Brick-o-matic Adjustable Height Grilling System, once I've finished my trials I'll be putting it on the market and hoping that you will all support me and purchase several - the ideal wedding gift!

My New Minimalism

I’ve been a bit stressed lately...

Normally I bake my way out of trouble but lately I've needed to get a bit more physical; I recently spent a happy weekend (I think it was happy) pulling up the nasty carpet in the living room and tearing off wallpaper, beating the room into submission until it was reduced to a bare shell.

When the thrill of that destruction had ebbed I turned my attention to the kitchen. The toy oven that never baked evenly and won’t fit a proper roast dinner, that and the leaky fridge were both hurled outside. Great lumps of wall cupboard that were stuck up on the walls taking up valuable air space, they came off ... so did the mimsy peach-coloured tiles.

All done, the next thing I needed was cake.

I now spend a lot of time looking at the space where the oven was.

PS: I've just reread one of my old posts, clearly home chaos is a recurring theme in my life (and that of my friends)

Build It And They Will Come

I attended my first Pre-riot Party last Thursday, here's what happened:

5pm: Many police piled in to arrest some squatters living across from a newly opened Tesco store, these naughty people had been singing and dancing outside it all week handing out free cake to anyone who didn’t go in. They had a sign saying HONK IF YOU HATE TESCO - the cacophony of honking cars had been continuous for 7 days.

Tesco might have been getting a bit fed up with this, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with the evening's events.

Four people were arrested without incident and nothing happened so the police sent for back up. During the arrest the police discovered the squatter's cider supplies and made a statement to the press that they had removed 'suspected petrol bombs’

6pm: ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY police along with dozens of vans and horses have now arrived, they are in full riot gear. They try and upset people by blocking the roads and pushing them around but we’re on holiday, it’s Easter – Peace Man!

11pm: It’s a beautiful warm evening and I’m on my way home, but police and horses are blocking the roads around my house so I join the milling crowds, there are dozens of bars along the road where the police want the riot to happen. so the essential ingredients of many people and alcohol should get things going, but we’re on holiday and in no mood to protest.

This non-event is surreal, lines of police stand behind riot shields across the roads. We try and ask the police about what is going on but they stand on silently waiting for the riot to happen.

2am: The crowds in the bars have been tweeting away about 'something going down’ in Stokes Croft, hundreds of people have now turned up for a riot, the bars are closing, AND NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

Guess what happened next?

Yes I Understand You Words

Everyone is away filming - Whiplash and I are left in the office to sort out the remaining engineering issues that need to be resolved before the next trip. Glass tubes and lumps of metal are arriving at our offices and we need to tell other people what to do with them, Whiplash listened to a man who arrived with a large box and wrote down what he said to her, I've typed her notes up so we can all know what's happening:




electrical dome comments
2 x 4 ft connector leads with 12 way female one end and 4 way females at the other end

connect spheres to junction box spotex making (cameras have gone to spotex)
box of mashers large and small spring mashers coming tuesday item 2 on scan drainage or disc springs on nautilus draining

plastic mashers – 1 made big for dome electrics, 4 smaller ones for little domes
2 x 5/8 hole optics
2 x 1/2 “ hole electrics

2 optical connector with big one and one each little one

still havent got camera with large enough head so big dax

Kevin back on Tuesday

Dirty Arials

Bristolians don't like words that don't end well, they round off rogue vowell-y words with an 'l'. This can be confusing and entertaining such as this exchange I had today regarding the cleaning skills of someone I know as Tanya:

Me: Hi Kath how are you?

Kath: Not good - I've just had words with Tanyal, she's not cleaning the common arials properly.

Unravelling

I'm sorry, I seem to be slightly out of sorts these days

How To Deal With Snoring Chairs At Dull Meetings

The other chairs decided that it would be fun to wake Duncan up by dousing him with alcohol and setting fire to him !

Mega Super

I consider my main achievement on this trip to be the fact that I haven’t yet been arrested. This is despite several excellent opportunites;

Firstly there is my inability to understand the one-way system in the big town that I have to go to for batteries, timber, tools and the Mega Super.

This place clearly doesn’t expect to be visited by out-of-towners so the direction for driving is not posted on many of the roads. Having caused a massive klaxonage at every turn on my initial foray I now simply follow any moving vehicle and hope it will eventually pass a shop that has things I need.



Yesterday there was quite a big argument about whether the police should be called to arrest me in the small town that I go to for fuel. The petrol station has a Manboss and several women who run the place. I filled up with fuel before realising that my bag was empty of wallet. Seeing no child to hold as hostage while I made my escape, all I could do was offer a promise to return with money very quickly.

The Manboss wanted to call the police and the women spent about an hour trying to convince him otherwise, everyone got very heated and it nearly turned into a fight. Only when I chipped in (in my best Spanish) with assurances of my honesty and an offer to leave my Yves St Laurent sunglasses as security, did the arguing group stop and regard me with puzzlement.

Then one of the women said

See ... she barely speaks

and I was allowed to go haha

Camper Requests

Camper and The Lavatory petition for acceptance into the mainstream seating community

Help ...

It's all going wrong with the filming. The camera crew have been trying to untangle a camera out of a tree since 4am - it's nearly lunchtime and they're still not back ...

Rocky And Stumpy

This is Rocky he likes macramé and oil painting



He also likes hangin' out with his pal Stumpy

Out On A Limb

Coatis have double-jointed ankles - they point their feet backwards which makes getting down trees easier

I am suffering from Santa Rosa Fat Arm - apparently a high proportion of visitors to the Park get at least one Fat Arm for about a week.

The cause of Fat Arm can be mysterious and is often thought to be brought about by spider bite, I have Fat Arm because I leaned on a wasp who was pretending to be part of the table cloth.


Yesterday I went into a part of the forest where two of the Park rangers were working, one of the rangers was a small elderly lady, her large straw hat was secured to her head with a floral scarf, she was working with a young man. The rangers were repairing paths around a picnic area. I parked my car and the lady came up to me asking who I was - I showed her my papers, she asked me to go and see her to sign out before I left.

When I was ready to leave they were doing a spot of carpentry, I went up and said

Ok I’m off now

The lady looked at me, then stared at the young man who missed a couple of beats before quickly putting his left hand up as though it was a notebook, he asked my name, I told him and he tried to write it on his sweaty palm.

Then he asked me for my passport number.

That is in my car

The young man looked over at my car, he didn’t want to move, so he thought of another question
what is your driving license number?

That is also in my car

Neither of us were quite sure what he was supposed to do with this information so he put his hand away and wished me a good journey.

Chair Attempts Suicide

Today an Outlaw Chair was discovered by the Chair Police. This individual had heard about the crackdown on lawless chairs and tried to end it all. Only his indecisiveness got in the way.

How Was Your Last Seven Days?

The photo is an illustration of we sustain ourselves here, the food in containers is prepared in the park canteen – here we have a rice-based dish, potato and beetroot salad and black bean puree, you may also note our reliance on Tabasco, coffee and beer.


The days after the longest Monday went something like this:


Next Day – nothing worked, I spent a lot of money buying car batteries and got shouted at by the man running the battery shop because I didn’t want to buy his winch.


it is really hot here

Day After – some things worked a bit, but we didn’t have enough power - I had to go back and buy more batteries. The chairs refused to behave

More Camera People arrived hoping to use the cameras

Day After That - I bought wood to make a table and found some better behaved chairs.

The things that worked yesterday no longer worked.


it is really really hot here

Next Day – our main filming system relies on a pair of cables stretched over the forest, the cameras are all worked remotely. We finally got the cameras working and tried to launch them but the electronic systems interfered with each other and turned our cameras into Crazy Robots from Hell

I am asked to order more stuff to be sent over from the UK

Day After That – some people fell out with each other

it is really really really hot here

Day After That – one of the cables collapsed

Day After That – the other cable collapsed

it is still bloody hot

Where Do Bad Chairs End Up?

Chair Hell

International Chair Ambulance Arrives

A Flying Squad of chair medics arrived on the scene last night. After examining the wounded, a specialist chair doctor carried out major field surgery.



Those that survived were supplemented with specimens from the finest furniture store available. We sincerely hope that the influx of foreigners will integrate with the native chairs and co-exist peacefully for at least six weeks.

Chair Wars

Anarchy broke out among the furniture last night. Evil Chair and his cronies attacked the few remaining Good Chairs. This one has clearly had the stuffing knocked out of him and is bleeding profusely - will he survive?

Evil Chair

This is Evil Chair - Evil Chair sits around looking inviting, just waiting for someone to sit on him, then just as his victim has got settled with a beer, Evil buckles his legs and throws him backwards.

Evil Chair is allowed to hang around because Good Furniture is difficult to find and there are too few Good Chairs to stand up to this bully.


Here is Evil Chair with his brother - they find Evil's antics so funny that Evil Twin has laughed his head off.

This is the Soggy Bottom Gang, anyone sitting on one of them gets sucked through the sponge at the back of the chair. The Soggy Bottom Gang don't want to kill anyone, they just want to be left to get on with getting drunk and falling over.

The Longest Monday

This is where I finally put my head down last Monday night, it is where I will be staying for the next couple of weeks. Our journey to this place seemed interminable because time kept slipping as we chased the sun round the world.

1am Monday: Got out of my lovely warm UK bed met two Camera Boys, collected 28 cases full of filming equipment and drove to airport.

8pm Monday (at least 24 hours later): Costa Rican customs lady does not have the correct paperwork for our trolleyloads of cases and threatens to impound it all for a few days.

10pm Monday: Arrive at Thrifty Car And Van Hire, we booked a van, it says so on our booking reservation, we have been given a People Carrier, it is full of seats, there is no room for our cases, Thrifty Man insists that a bigger vehicle does not exist and Thrifty does not do vans, I ask for a second vehicle, the laborious task of filling in documents goes on while the Camera Boys pack as many cases as possible into this first vehicle. When 20 cases are firmly wedged in, the second vehicle is brought over – it is bigger and has less seats – we can put all our luggage in this one.

I go back into Thrifty office, make Thrifty Man tear up all the documents and start again, meanwhile the Camera Boys unload and reload the cases.

12 midnight: Santa Rosa National Park, the road got distinctly lumpy as we approached our destination, it is very very dark and for the last ten miles, dozens of Nightjars chose to squat on the road, flying up in front of the vehicle only as it is about to drive over them, I am driving and getting confused about whether this is all part of my plane dream which involved machete-wielding octopi.

When we get to where we have been told to go, all doors are locked, no notes and no-one is around except for other visitors who are sound asleep. We creep around for another hour or so until we find a hidden section of buildings with our names on the doors and keys in the locks.

The next day I get the email telling me about the change of plan.

Getting Home

Those are my bags at 9.45am last Thursday. They are waiting for someone to arrive and put them in a taxi. Fifteen minutes earlier, my bags and I had been delivered there by a man in a tiny boat, the man in the boat assured me that a taxi had been booked, it would be there shortly to take me to the airport to catch my 10.20 flight to Belize International.

Just after I took that picture that guy who is also in the picture said

You need a car?

and I said

I have taxi booked, I should give it a little more time

at 10.00 I asked him how long it would take him to find me a car

couple of minutes

He ran off to a nearby house and returned with his friend in a beat-up car and we set off for the airport.

They drove right into the airport and checked my bags in for me - the following picture is the view from the taxi.

Belize Bars

That's Jet, he's four foot two, with a face like a chewed toffee. There he is behind his bar in Belize International airport, his bar is called 'Jets'. Jet works hard at being a 'character', toy planes hang off the ceiling and Jet's name appears many times around the place writ in neon and biro. The food option at 'Jets' is a cheese and ham sandwich for which you will pay dearly, there are no prices written up so you won't realise how expensive it is until he has given you a pack of chewing gum as change for the twenty dollar bill you just gave him.

Feeling pissed off and hungry you might then go round the corner and find something called 'Petit Café' where you will be served nice food by jolly women with great hair and clean t shirts who don't try and feel your tits.

Addendum to Previous Post

It has never occurred to me that the toilet flush could be operated as a pedal. When I first read that notice I imagined that people must be putting their feet into the bowl to treadle their faeces down the pipe.

Back From Here and There

I suddenly had to go off on a long trip, I went all the way there and then turned around and came all the way back again. I have been in perpetual motion for a week (the insides of my body are still rolling with the movement of the ocean).

I passed through many ports and I shall probably say more about these places. Meanwhile here's my favourite notice seen during this trip - found in an airport lavatory

Home Wrecker

The business has moved out of my home which is great, the problem is that where there used to be people and desks there are now sad shabby spaces. For example I can now see carpet, a carpet that I've hated forever - I knew the carpet was hiding horrible, slightly damaged ceramic tiles and we couldn’t afford a new floor. A week ago I finally cracked and attacked it.

I became a thing possessed, ripping up the carpet, leaving shreds of stringy fibres stuck under the skirting, crumby carpet tape residue remained stuck round the edges of the room - it looked a lot worse.

On Friday I came home after a movie and a bottle of wine, I stood in the room and observed how my efforts had emphasised the way the wallpaper was peeling away from the walls. I picked at it and Lo! strips came away in my hands. I went at the walls as enthusiastically as I’d gone at the carpet. At 2am I stood back and surveyed the wreckage.

On Saturday I tried to escape the horror, I wandered into town, saw a linen tablecloth in a charity shop - sweet but a bit weedy, I bought it home and threw it in the washing machine with some dye to liven it up.

I went out again but when I came back the walls and floor still hadn’t repaired themselves, I took the linen tablecloth out of the washing machine - its delicate beauty was completely ruined, something had to be better by the next time I woke up - I found some rolls of lining paper.

By teatime yesterday I had painted over my badly hung wallpaper and the floor was scraped clean enough to throw a rug over it ... the tablecloth still has to be rescued, I’m feeling loads better but a bit tired now.

Immaculate Conception

My posts are getting too angst-ridden, I need to lighten up and share things that I find funny about the universe

Today a young man was doing some building work, he told me a long and involved story about why he was driving a 'poxy car' rather than a van - this was the punchline;

I had to swap it with my brother because his girlfriend went and got herself pregnant

His words inspired me to look for images imagining the annunciation - I found the one above here

Trying Not To Kill People

Once upon a time our business consisted of two Camera Boys, Miss Whiplash and a big pile of kit, our main concern was to insure against bad men running off with a camera or the film stock getting eaten by tigers.

Now that we have a proper grown-up out-of-the-house building and lots of people, the responsibility for not killing people is mine all mine.

Paperwork about Regulations and Compliance rain down on me. I’ll have just filled in a stack of forms for security arrangements or arranged fire warden training, when another hazard looms. I dream that a giant rabbit is living on my lap, every few minutes it burps and gives birth to several kittens and I have to keep them all within my capacious skirts - they keep dropping on the floor and some of them break and I have to scoop them up and hide the bits in my pockets and try and glue them back together when no-one is looking.


I’ve just subjected myself to some intensive coaching about how to be a good employer, my coach is patient. To deal with different situations, he suggests scenarios where I imagine putting on a succession of different coloured hats or confronting a series of doors, there are diagrams too - one looks like a hairdryer.


Yesterday afternoon I had set up a broad range of policies and contracts and insurances, I thought I had it all covered...

I had forgotten the rogue fourteen year old who I rashly said could come and do a week’s work experience with us in the summer. Today I got a phone call from the child labour inspectoriate demanding an interview, they want to come and grill me and my premises and look at my policies ...

Naughty Foxes

Having poured my efforts into sorting out the new offices, my home got totally neglected. Over Christmas I managed to attend to the insides of home, but its outsides are now a bit of a wasteland.

I didn't think this mattered much, I thought the plants would welcome a break from my pruning and grooming.

Wildlife has always passed through our garden; someone has been leaving it's fur-filled marker poo by the bins and I've often disturbed a mangey old fox who likes to sleep his hangover off in the daffodil patch, he clearly brings his chums over for mad parties now and again, they leave trails of licked-out-chicken-fried-box debris in their wake but now things have escalated:

This afternoon I came home early, put some coffee on and went out to see if spring was starting, instead of lovely crocuses I saw burnt out fireworks stuck in the flowerbed and our back gate is broken.

Have foxes developed opposable thumbs or do I now have a pest problem?