ANYONE FANCY A TRUCK??



Water arrives to top up my pool, depleted after weeks of treating and filtering my mucky well water......




And now a sequence I like to call "painted white"....








Well, nearly...
The nearest hut houses my enormous washing machine......
Old style, electro-mechanical controls.....mmmmmmmm.....

ART MATE, THAT'S WHAT THIS IS.....
ART & BARGES.....
....OR A PLEA FOR UNDERSTANDING IN
A MECHANISED ETHOS....?



Well actually me and Scott from Florida went for a day
out in pissing rain to Arraial do Cabo.....
Before you get there is an abandoned canal where the only
signs of life are the scrappers demolishing loads of enormo
steel barges....
It was late afternoon and very depressing, almost scary in
it's dourness....a place of slime and oil and snakes and rats....
Or was that just me???









How should I know what it means....
Beware all ye who enter here for beyond this
point madness reigns.....
In fact it reigned all fucking day....

AND HERE WE ARE READY FOR A LOVELY DAY AT THE BEACH......



This is the Beach of Angels in Arraial do Cabo.....no really.....



This is what happens when you press the mysterious
little red button on your infernal digital camera....
Always wondered what it did....



A lock gate....rustic, like the ones in Bath....



More slime.....


And that button again......

BACK TO THE NITTY GRITTY DAY TO DAY REALITY OF
LIFE IN THE TROPICS....



Xexeu the chippy up on the roof......



A nice shot of Xexeu's bum.....oh and the verandah roof taking shape....
All going well, assuming idiot boy doesn't knock any more of the support
columns down with his toe.....



I don't know how Sonia got here, but here she is.....
At Paddy and Collette's house for Indonesian din dins
a few weeks ago....



A night on the tiles haha geddit....
1400 roof tiles waiting to leap onto the new roof.....



I'm just glad it said KI and not KY......

I must have pressed the random button.....



This is Valenca in Bahia taken in 1987, and shot from a contact strip....
It's a burger van resplendent with the name " Big DuDuNight"....
I ate one and almost immediately, it was.....



Well, a couple of weeks ago I had one of those hangovers
where you know that it's the sofa for the whole day....no
pretence of usefulness, just get out of bed and hit the sofa,
and the tv of course.....
Of course, you know there's gonna be nothing on....
But lo, this day something stirred......
At 10.15 AM, in just an hour and a quarter, "THE THREE AMIGOS"
It can't be true....it just can't....
But it was....
And here's the proof.......
(Steve''s eating a batwing by the way.....)



My new kitchen....again....



Mmmmmm well I did say random....
Oh no, hang on, I found a link.....
No hang on you see, there was a shot of the washing machine
house earlier on.....so the link is this part of the house is the same erm, colour.
As the other. Part, that is.


Here I help Fabino to install the refurbished lamps which grow
on trees, by making him smile for the camera when he's up a
ladder fielding a large steel lamp and trying to twist live
wires ( very short ones) together.....
Think of it as a Health and Safety exercise.

PRETTY MUCH THE FINAL LAYOUT FOR MY MUD.



Or perhaps I should say, here are a couple of pix
of the pretty much final landscapingey
layout of the garden that will exist one day but
I'm beginning not to have any faith that it will ever
happen, nearly but not quite, because I am essentially
an optometrist....
Nope that should be optimist...
Nope, I was right the first time.....



More carefully landscaped mud....



The murder weapon.....nearly....
This is what the salt air does to stuff here by the ocean....
(Metal stuff that is.....)



Ooooooh link opportunity......metal stuff.....this is that as well....
The fencing and posts for the new fence over the wall by the road.....
It's actually for aviaries and such.....
Mebbe at the weekends crowds will flock to throw peanuts....
One question remains as yet unanswered....
To me , or at me????

Oh great link, what fluidity of imagery you're thinking.....
An Eisensteinian montage sequence rivalled only by the Odessa steps themselves....
Well haha actually, because the old chain link fencing could be strung along the wall here to support the growing of my enormous tomatoes......
Except I don't want to use it for that.....
But it is a link.....if I did that....which I don't want to....
And also " link" is a link because of it being chain LINK fencing....
So haha......hahahah!!???$$££&&****

MEZZANINE?
WHAT MEZZANINE??



I really had almost pretty much forgotten my mezzanine, ever since we took out the wooden stairs in May to make way for the incoming kitchen affair.....
So a couple of weeks ago ( in reality quite a lot longer obviously....this is Brasil, after all ), I ordered a spiral staircase to be constructed at a local workshop, run by the brother of a mate of mine....
So in true Brasilian fashion, it nearly arrived for several weeks,
then it very nearly arrived for a couple more weeks,
then it really did nearly arrive for another week or two,
and then one day completely out of the blue it actually really did actually arrive.
Then they nearly came and installed it for several weeks,
then they very nearly really really installed it for a couple of weeks,
and then this Monday they arrived actually in person, and actually went ahead and without so much as a by-your-leave began to actually really in reality actually before your very eyes definitively install it,
and then after a day and a half it was actually completely installed, complete down to the constructed-on-the-spot handrails.....
Unfortunately, it only works for midgets, or those who can bend double, as I wanted it at the side of the Mezz to save space, but where a roof beam hits you at chest height.....but it's my choice.....
I'm buying motorcycle helmets for mezzanine dwellers....
Health and Safety a priority here once again....
And I have a friend who is a masseuse.....

Trouble is,now it's installed and everything, I really miss having something to ( probably) look forward to.....



Ooooh here it is again......


Ooooooh and also please note there are now TWO light units over the counters....
Yes two....
My dream come true, twice.....
Didn't take long either.....
The second one nearly got made for a while....
Then it really nearly got made for a while longer....
Then.....
I'm sorry....
However hard you try, it does get to you after a while....



Oh, they do grow on trees....
This explains my comment earlier that they grow on trees.....
I thought I'd already shown this pic.....
Sorry.


Loook!!!!!!!!!!!
Verandah with tiles and marble edging and roof and roof tiles and everything.....
Didn't take long did it?????
Well.......?

Random people shots....



Me and Sonia and Ornella at me and Sonia's birthday bash....



Pamela being cutesy on the sofa.....



Scott, my buddy from Florida on the stoop of his mebbe house,
in a carefully guarded secret location.....( hint : it's near some lagoons.....)
In the background is a tree.



Paddy and Collette at Estacao Boqueirao the night
before flying home a few weeks ago...



A pic of me doing my laundry whilst wearing it,
after a particularly sloppy Italian pasta luncheon yesterday....
Well at least these days I actually do something about the stains, sometimes....

Years ago ( not that many actually) I use to wake up after clubbing and wonder what the yellow and red stripes were down the front of my normally immaculate T-shirt only to remember being slumped drunkenly up against the side of the My Van waiting for my double cheese burgers ( yes, plural) to be handed over......mustard and ketchup in stripes....very chic in it's day I'll have you know....
My plan was to never run out of cheeseburger all the way home.....so one to eat at the van because you can't eat and carry three, and then two to get me down Pulteney street as far as the flat.....
Ahhhhh those were the days....
Can you imagine eating one sober though???
Has anyone ever???

Mind you, maybe a Big DuDuNight you could....??