Sweat,sweat,sweat and more sweat......and even more sweat.....sweat after sweat......day after day......
......and whenever it gets this hot, we always go one better and go to the hottest place we know, the nearby town of Bacaxa.....
........it seems that whenever we can't take the heat any more we automatically have an urgent errand to run in A Town Called Sauna.
Xmas shopping por exemple. What fun with your clothes a'drippin.
Even sweatier than Bath on a humid day.....and at temperatures around 100 degrees, that's, well, sweaty.
So that was today......going to pick tiles for the new pad.
Then we found out we would be better going out to Sampaio Correa to a big tile warehouse run by the same people as my regular hardware store in Bacaxa.
Yes I have an account there.
How flash is that.
Sampaio however is for another day as it's at some distance, back towards the mountains that you drive through on the way in here from Rio.....it's distinguished by two large factory chimneys starkly standing out from the landscape in the middle of some fields.....slightly out of place.
There used to be a brickworks there.....a long, long time ago. Whooooooooo.
But that's tomorrow we go there.

Talking of sweat, which, come on, we were...... brings to mind one of my lesser known and more unlikely ventures-in-my-head, namely Sweaty Betty's Sweat Site.

OK, it doesn't actually exist as yet, but then neither did me in Brasil a few months ago.
You see, through all of my foreign plotting, one particular question has been on my lips throughout, and yet has remained unanswered.
I've tried scientific sites, meteorological sites, BBC educational sites, How Things Work for Idiots sites, even good old Wikithingia....
I've found out what relative humidity means.....
I've found out about the Dew Point.....
I've sussed out pressure and wind chill factors......
YET STILL NOBODY, NOWHERE, NOHOW CAN TELL ME THE ANSWER TO MY QUESTION....

It's a simple and straightforward question.....
I can ask it in any one of several languages including Esperanto and the Language of Love......
I can type it, print it, handwrite it, speak it, shout it, laugh it, yodel it, signal it with flags and even sign it in Braille in Welsh if necessary.....
I have requested an answer by email, on chatrooms, spammed it around the information superhighway, posted it on newsgroups, pasted it on billboards, pissed it into snow and scraped it into peoples scalps with a rusty razor blade.
Nothing. Absolutely nada as they say in these parts.

So you see that's where Sweaty Betty's Sweat Site comes into it's own.
I can't be the only person who wants to know.
OK, when you're off somewhere for whatever reason, there are a number of questions.....is it nice, is it built up, is it expensive, is there nightlife, are there snakes, what's the murder rate in comparison with Baghdad, and of course what's the weather like.....then we get to is it windy, does it rain, do they often have tsunami's, is it hot.....yes you can get an answer for all those, and understand it.....but there's another question....and this one, you cannot get a straight answer for.....
Yes folks, the big question is.......
I am going to ____ for my holidays.
How sweaty is it?
Sweaty Betty's Sweat Site would give you the answer in user friendly how-discoloured-will-my-t-shirt-look kind of on-the-ground no-bullshit should-I-even-bother-venturing-out-the -door-today kind of terms of one syllable.
For example, graded one to seven.....

1/ not sweaty at all..... (anything can happen day)
2/ fairly sweaty....... (take a deodorant)
3/ very sweaty ........ (take a deoderant and use it)
4/ very sweaty a lot...... (take a deodorant and use frequently)
5/ really fucking sweaty...... (take deodorant, use frequently, take spare T-shirt and avoid posh cafe's and restaurants above 3 stars)
6/ really unbearably fucking sweaty..... (take deodorant, towel, use frequently, take spare T-shirt and avoid shops, cafes and restaurants above 2 stars)
7/ really unbearably fucking sweaty like you wouldn't fucking believe..... (stay in, remain naked, avoid all people with whom you don't have sexual relations, shower every 20 minutes and try to avoid hypothermia from overuse of aircon....)

Sweaty Betty's Sweat Site would have the answers for you graded say, between 1 and 7 and explain it all to you in simple accessible terms.

Of course none of the above gradings would have prepared you for Bacaxa this afternoon.......