Anizio attacks the bathroom wall with verve and gusto, two of my favorite bands no doubt....also with a sledge hammer and a cold chisel.....beyond the tiles and bricks he is pleased to find 2 inches of concrete lining the other side....bring on the big sledge!!!! And the brawn of Richard Ashcroft ......

The arch to the soon-to-be en suite bathroom is visible from the ex-kitchen, now bedroom..............Anizio labours behind the wall....he didn't half get a shock when the flashgun fired through the hole at him....

The stairs will go, replaced by a spiral staircase to the left of the mezzanine...

.....there will be a 10 foot kitchen counter against the wall, then a workspace, then a second 10 foot counter freestanding with a brekkie bar on this front side....

Starting from wall to left, first strip of wood represents counter width, the gap is the workspace, then 2nd to 4th strip represent width of freestanding counter and brekkie bar. Length of counters is from the near end of the wood strips back to the strip of wood running across in background.

Don't forget you can click on the pix and make them bigger.....

.....or just move much closer to the screen.....

....the effect is the same if a little less elegant.....

....of course you can also combine the two, particularly effective if you are smashed.....

.......we used to watch color tv static late at night when tripping when we was kids with our faces jammed up to the screen.....aaaah the sixties.......

Scale-ish plan of the house and grounds.....

....access road on left,

....front(?) porch on lower right,

....barby (Auschwitz) to right above centre line, floor of which will be base of Guest House Number 1.

Left side of building is,
...bottom to top,
social bathroom,
en suite bathroom,
bedroom ( ex kitchen) ,
and store room/spare room.
Mezzanine is above.
New kitchen will be to right of bedroom, open plan in the main living space.
Stairs, marked in top left corner, will be replaced by spiral staircase on other side of mezzanine, in front of now blocked door into what has become the en-suite bathroom.
Got all that???
I shall test you all.......


Same thing, but on graph paper.....medium squares are 1 metre.....whole plot is 30x30, so 900 square metres.
Living room is 170 square metres.
Bedroom is 20 square centimetres approx.
In fact the bathrooms are so small that they don't actually exist in any dimension we can sense as human beings, at least at this time in space....( or is that space in time??)
(I felt sure I could get the word " continuum" in there somewhere.....)


This is a lizard, similar to the one I ordered the execution of. This one obviously escaped a similar fate by little more than a tail's breadth.


This is a charming poster I spotted, well was in fact glued to(?) for some time, in an underwear shop in Bacaxa....(ok, I was there with Hannah who was buying undies.....)
Anyway, the buyline says.....
"You can't imagine what Rio is capable of...."
......more or less.....
......and it's true.....
......who would have imagined that the nice lady in the underwear would take the trouble to feed the hungry young man on the um,swan....thing....
.....and what is that delicacy she's feeding him for his lunch anyway.....?

It is with heavy heart that I am propelled at the speed of despair towards a date with British Airways 2 weeks today......it's a shit time to have to leave just as the rebuild on the house is in full swing, and carnaval looms like a massive cartload of ripening figs on the horizon.......
......I like the figs analogy.....I think I perverted it from a Jilly Goulden wine reference.....saw her once with a large dog, also a tv "star ", at Castle Combe Car Boot. Oddly, it turns out I know her brother, Alastair....... that's Jilly's, not the dog's.
.....so no doubt I shall be in the Bell the night of Sunday the eleventh of Feb, or if in a jetlag state, definately for the Monday night after.
Whichever, it's bad news for Gary, usurper of my stool. HaHaHaHa.

So the last 2 weeks have seen much progress at the former Tennis Club.
The dividing wall is now complete, so I can no longer see shit-head the House-Seller-From-Hell.
Most of the demolition inside is done, and there is an arch knocked through to what will be my en suite bathroom, and the original doorway from the living area is now blocked off.
I'm pleased to say we remembered to open the new entrance before we blocked the old.
That's British efficiency in action.
Or it would have been had I thought of it, and then told the Brasilian workers.
I'm rigging both bathrooms as wet rooms, with non-slip-ish tiles.
I wouldn't want anyone slipping and breaking my leg.
Chose the tiles for the place last week.....white with faded black squiggles on the floor throughout the living room and bedroom, and also on the bathroom walls, with black/grey textured on the bathroom floors.
The electric supply was connected from the mains last week, and the 30 foot well I had dug has produced lots of slightly brown, slightly smelly water. Fine for pool and washing, though not for drinking.
However it turns out that mains drinkable water is imminent on the street, as the supply was installed last year....just waiting for the mayor's helicopter maintenance costs to be covered, and then if there's any cash left, the local tax payers can be connected.
Without mains water, I have to install cisterns and pump it in from trucks.
Or perhaps the Mayor will airlift it in for me with his chopper if I bribe, sorry, ask him nicely.

Had our first fatality at the house recently, whilst demolishing the most heavily constructed kitchen unit in living history, and elsewhere. Tiles, bricks and steel reinforced concrete, and even the stainless steel top was filled with steel bars and concrete. The death occurred when ripping out the wooden cupboard, made of hardwoods of course.....what did you expect ? Balsa? Spruce?
The shelf detached itself and plummeted down inches and inches, gathering momentum as it fell, and unbeknownst to us, upon landing pinned a tiny lizard to the floor, crushing it's spine.
By the time we spotted it, amidst the settling dust, it was in it's last moments.
I was quite upset.
The locals nare batted an eye.
They did however erect a monument in concrete.
Well, they filled in the hole left by the kitchen unit.