BIG IN BRASIL

2010-06-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

RioChic's new blog has moved to http://riochic.typepad.com/blog/

RioChic's new website is

http://www.riochic.com/

This site will continue to be

Big in Brasil...

and as such it may have occasional RioChic blog posts and updates, but not the ongoing fashion newsfeed which I create & post to the RioChic blog.

Hope that's all clear and straightforward.

I certainly wish I was...

2010-06-14T08:21:00.001-07:00

RioChic on the Runway - a models blog.

One of our models, Mel, writes about appearing

in our first runway show at the

Bath Fringe Alternative Fashion Show

on June 1st this year

http://ping.fm/EPhi

2009-04-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

ORANGES, ORANGES, WHO'LL BUY ME BLEEDIN' ORANGES????

Well, hopefully in about a year's time, middle class Cariocas who like to squeeze 'em into juice...

Here's Marco, testing the oranges for, erm, orangeyness, a couple of weeks ago at our plantation in Palmital.

They are looking really big and healthy, precocious even, and full of plumptiousness, which is a good thing.

The whole landscape seems quite different, now it's inundated with thick bushy trees, instead of wimpy plantlets.

We now have a Dept. of Agriculture inspector who visits every few weeks, and offers advice.

Very helpful.

If we stick to poo as fertiliser, we can be certified organic.

Well, not us, the oranges, obviously.

Although, personally, I never use anything else...

Oranges, typo Seleta, probably a bit sour this year, so not a saleable harvest, but looking good for next year.

Brasilian farmers tend to plant orange trees and leave them until they are harvestable, without tending them, and the resulting trees, if they survive, tend to yield 3.5 boxes of fruit per tree.

Because ours are continuously tended with medicines, fertiliser, water etc.(we have 3 full-time staff, 2 of whom live onsite, plus tractor with water tanker etc.) it's reasonable to expect a much higher yield. However even at the low figure based on 3.5 boxes per tree, I look to profit around 40% per annum on my investimento.

All I gotta do is wait, and survive on bugger all in the meantime!!

As a result of which, I also have some more immediate ventures under way...see below...

2009-04-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

2008-11-21T06:07:00.000-08:00

WELL, ITS ALL HAPPENING HERE FOLKS!!!
Or is it?
Lots of rain and cold weather.
Flooding.
Finally an election result, a month and a half after the election...this takes 'manhana' into a new sphere entirely, and then factor in 24,000 discounted votes!!!
Corruption a-go-go!!!
Thats Saquarema for you. And most of the rest of the country too...
Unlike Britain of course where Democracy is all above board and fair square.
Did I say Democracy....sorry, I meant Mockracy, the system by which all Pretend Democratic Countries are actually run.
So finally, Franciane Melo, (co-incidentally) wife of the state legislator Paulo Melo is in the mayor chair.
Which presumably means hubby will release funds to improve Saquarema (see previous post for his petulant refusal to do so when his wife was outvoted!!!).
(That's hubby on the left of the poster.)

Meanwhile Dalton Borges, the actual winner on votes, has been disqualified and his votes, all 24 thousand of them, consigned to the bin. He has 13 charges of wrongful behaviour against him, including buying votes, so how he ever got to stand and be voted for in the first place is as mysterious (read corrupt) as everything else.
One might have thought, mightn't one, that a new election might have been in order, but no,
the judges in Brasilia deemed Franciane the winner.
And that's that. Sadly, it's probably the best thing for the area, but it's a shit way to get improvements...

MY NEW BIZ
I'm now involved with some buddies in a new business venture called Disk Comida...no, not as in vinyl disks this time..'Disk' over here means 'Dial a'...
Here's the link for the website...only a mockup at the mo' and in Eenglish temporarily...
http://diskcomida.blogspot.com/
And here's our logo which I accidentally nicked off the internet...

And no, it's not me...
Actually I keep telling Fernando, our chef, that it's him...well, he does have a moustache.
So basically, it's a home delivery meal service, plus event catering.
We're also offering my pad with it's massive living room and swimming pool for events, and also discussing the idea of a restaurant here at weekends.
The restaurant idea scares me somewhat, ( lack of privacy, being kept up to unearthly hours by drunken foreigners, as well as by the guests haha) but it's been on my mind for over a year, and this seems to be the perfect opportunity to have a bash...the high season starts soon, which is the time to do it so we'll see what we shall see...
...the delivery biz starts next week, we're just waiting on leaflets, then once they're out, just waiting for the phone to ring...beans and rice anyone?????
Herewith some pics vaguely related to our new venture...

OK this is a view of the scrappers where we went to buy spares for the
deliverymobile...it's a regular Aladdins hole...

On the right is Fernando, our chef, and behind the counter is the humorous scrapper boss...he has a nice line in pricing...you ask how much, and with much deliberation he goes, hmmmm, twenty two, thirty seven, plus fifteen, fifty two, and eighteen....how about twelve reais???

Here we all are at the printers, agreeing the final version-ish of the leaflet...
Blue ink on yellow paper...
Actually blue-ish ink on yellow-ish paper...

Long Shot.
Sums up my life actually...

CORSETS
(There, you weren't expecting that to happen, now were you????)

Check out my mate Fleur's new biz site...she makes amazing custom corsetry (and just about anything else you can wear, including a fine line in fairy wings as I remember...)

She did some great stuff for me too.
No, not corsets, you big stinkypants, and not Fairy Wings neither...
It was upholstery, alright???
Marvelous...good luck chuck!!!
That's a Gurkin on the left by the way...

http://www.fleurtyfairy.com/

MONORAIL ?
OK, now of corsets time for some boys stuff... (see what I did there?)
So I was watching a Brasilian movie on Sky called "Um Homem sem Importancia", 'An Unimportant Man', shot in Rio in 1971, and the main character and his mate head off on the famous old tram across the aqueduct and on up to Santa Teresa.
They then appear again on a different and much smaller tram (?), which appears to be a monorail...huh? Only with three wheels...huh?
I was always intrigued by peculiar/obscure transport modes, and this was obviously as pec/ob as they come...so, onto Google...and thence to a very helpful gent in New York called Allen Morrison whose made a massive study of all things tramlike in South America, the Universe and Elsewhere...
After I stayed up a night and photoed a rerun on Sky, he identified it as the Vila Jardim Santa Cecília Monorail, which provides the only access to about 45 houses with about 200 residents, upside a big hill in Santa Teresa.
This community is also known as the "Bairro Suíço" (Swiss Quarter) or "Morro do Alemão" (German Hill) because of its German-speaking population.
The 150 metre long 'monotrilho' was built by the residents in 1949, and is still there and as far as I know, is still active to this day.
The traction is provided by the tired road wheels at the rear, and the small wheels at the front grip the single rail and guide it.
It is undoubtedly both the most obscure monorail and one of the most obscure railways in the world.
Below are my pics from the movie, (complete with my TV!), and then pix of an almost equally obscure monorail in India...almost equally obscure but not quite!! (It has driven wheels running on a centre rail, and the big wheel you can see in the pic trundles freewheelingly along the roadway, just to stop it all falling over!)
Here's a link to Allen's page with more recent photos of the monorail...check out the rest of his site...it's amazing and absolutely massive...
http://www.tramz.com/br/rj/vj/vj.html

BOAT
OK so here we have some pix of the boat what I used to own and then half own and then not own at all.

Motor Yacht Glala.

Interestingly when you own a British registered vessel, you own 64 shares of it.

Odd number, I thought...why sixty four?

Why not a hundred...normally when you own all of something, you own

a hundred per cent of it.

Ho Ho.

Guess what.

There are a hundred shares.

You only own 64 of them.

You can only own 64 of them.

But guess who owns the other 36 shares.

Of your boat.

Whether you like it or not...

The fucking Queen!!

Actually, it works to your advantage, as she regularly chips in a third towards mooring fees and maintenance, which can all be crippling on an old boat.

And, luckily I know how to spell the word gullible.

Do you?????

So Glala now has a new owner, (well, he owns 64 shares of her at least!)

Below is a link to his website. He seems to be planning a big restoration, and talks about our work as having not been up to scratch in the late 80's. In fact the poor work he refers to was done by the guy I bought her from, who was somewhat of an idiot.

I'm about to send the new guy an email and fill in some informational/historical gaps.
http://www.ceze.net/glala/index.htm

This is Glala lying off Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo in 1940, the mass evacuation of the BEF and other allied forces back to Blighty.

Due to her shallow draft, Glala was able to get in close to the beaches and tow off whalers loaded with soldiers to the destroyers standing further out to sea.

She had an engine blown out during a Stuka dive bomber attack and had to head back to England for repairs.

The first 2 pix below were taken on the day of the relaunch in September 1989 after a year and a half of restoration on a slipway in Woolston,Southampton.

The bottom one is in Lulworth Cove in 1985, when she was a great deal less than seaworthy. She had just taken part in a Dunkirk Little Ships reunion.

Top photo below is M.Y.Glala the day I discovered her in early 1988, in use as a houseboat on the River Hamble.
Below that, a pic of her on Stem to Stern Boatbuilder's slipway, in Willment's shipyard, Woolston, Southampton, where we lived (on the slipway!) for a year and a half.
Phil Godard of Stem to Stern ran the entire rebuild and become a great friend of mine.
Anybody know where he is now??
Below that is Glala docked in the Isle of Wight, after relaunch, during sea trials/piss up. That was the day I bought a battered jam sandwich in a chip shop and nearly threw up. Seemed like a wicked idea at the time...the sandwich that is, not the vomitting...

MY BIRTHDAY MONTAGE CARD FROM HANNAH...thanks Spud!
Here it is.
My naughty childrens!!
All montagey!

CITRUSNESS..NICE PIC THEREOF.
Here is a picture of citrusness...one day these will be mine, all mine...
In fact my 1500 trees and all the rest are doing very well, after months of weather varying between rain and shine...perfect for citrusness...my trees are two meters or more now...must go and see them again soon...in fact I will save upo and go and wee on them...they like that...(as you will know if you saw The World's Fastest Indian...great film!!)

ETIQUETTE????
Now a Section on Etiquette...
Bet you weren't expecting this one even more than the other one you weren't expecting ...haha

How to greet a proper lady.

How to greet (or restrain) a not very proper lady.

ESCONDIDINHO
This is a new and very short section.
In fact, that was it !
No, ok...escondidnho is my new fave dish..
...basically if you boil up aipim, cassava, manioc, tapioca, gari, whatever you wanna call it, and then mash it up with cream and milk and cream cheese, (it goes transparent like wallpaper paste and all weird and gloopy...) and then bake it with prawns or carne seca or any meat or whatever underneath and some parmesan on topperneath it makes this sort of gooey with a thick crust kind of slightly cottage pie-ey mmmmm Yorkshire puddingy cum lasagne-ey comfort foody kind of yummy thing and basically...I like it.
I've made a rough version just with cream cheese and skimmed milk which was fine...
When I told Hannah about it she said she'd just seen some Indian cook knocking out almost exactly the same thing but currified...small world innit? No actually, it's really big but everyone eats one of the same three things pretty much...cassava or rice or pasta or bread...ok four things...actually Brasilians eat pasta, rice, potatoes, toasted manioc flour and chips at the same meal all the time...ok five things...

This is a picture of Escondidnho.
Obviously, really, isn't it???
It goes thick and crusty round the sides as well...mmmmmmmmm.

TOONI ON THE TELLY!!

How marvelous!
Tooni who used to work in the Bell in Bath is now one of the presenters on the BBC2 series 'Ocean'. Here she is in the Arctic. She trained as a marine biologist whatever that is but only so she could get on the telly I expect!
She told me once she was called Tooni because her mum'n'dad liked...you guessed it...cartoons!
(By that logic, my name should be Citroen Theatre Groupie)
By the way, for any Brasilians looking in, the white stuff in the picture is called 'snow' and is what we call 'cold'. It's very similar to 'hot' but not as.
The big white thing hiding in 'the snow' behind Tooni is 'a polar bear' and is very dangerous and very hard to spot, and behind that is a thing we call 'a boat'. It gets stuck in what we call 'the ice', as you can see here.
Tooni will be stuck there in 'the snow' with 'the polar bear' because 'the boat' will probably remain stuck in 'the ice' for what we call 'quite a long time'.
Good luck with the TV presenting Tooni!

LAFER
Well isn't this quickfire diversity at it's most diverse and quickfire!
I feel quite proud and all encompassing!
OK my fave Brasilian furniture tends to be by a firm called Lafer.
They also make or made glass bodied copies of the old MG, and are most famous for building the fibreglass Earhole phone boxes you see all over Brasil.
But sod all that, I like their seating...and here are pix of my absolute fave design...
One day it shall be mine, oh yes, it shall be mine...

Absolutely stunning, I reckon.
I search for these and other goodies every day online and off.

I have a couple of sections of this, the YOKO by Tok &Stok...the Brasilian equivalent of Habitat. I'm constantly searching for more. It's a rip off of Michel Ducaroy's TOGO design for Ligne Roset, which featured on the Big Brother set a couple of years ago, and which is closely related to my beloved Cinna Sandra set, which now lives at my mateToby's house in Batheaston. Hello Tobe! Hello Sandra!
It's illustrated in black leather below, and you can see mine in my ex apartment on the last bunch of blog, belower down.

This is another gorgeous, though tatty Lafer, upholstered over a
fibreglass shell on a wooden base. I'd love to find a set of these with the armchairs an'all.

OTHER STUFF
Odds and some sods...
This is a stunning 1960's piece by the American Paul Evans from his Cityscape series.
I doubt I'll ever find one of these.

Guess what you flick to turn on the lamp...

Old audio cassettes type lamp!

VARIOUSER AND VARIOUSER

Amanda, Sonia's niece, has now gone back to a life of evangelism
in Rio with her dad, the minister.
God help the church.

Wicked T.
And another shot of the Gurkin.
And the Anna.

Well, when I first opened my record shop, I bought crates of pristine stuff from a guy up the road, most of it on US labels. And the wooden crates had these weird stickers on them, but no address or contact, in fact they didn't make it clear what Liquorice Pizza actually was even.
So, the other week, after fifteen years, I trawled the net for clues, and there it all was.
LA and environs, a chain of record stores, all very fondly remembered by punters and staff alike.
Great name, and great graphics tambem. Ooooops. I mean as well.

If you flip back in my blog to March you'll find the guys from Bath's Jammadesamba staying with me for a break after drumming all over Rio throughout Carnaval.
Here the article in the local paper, in which Jackson says that Finnish girls samba harder and better than Brasilians. Tell it like ya see it son...and keep yer head down!
Talking of which, last night I thought I 'd been shot!

Whilst on the piss in my fave bar by the lagoon,my fullglass of caipivodkaexplodedwith a massive bang, simultaneously with me noticing a car pull up outside and then move on rapidly. I was so convinced, and lacking any other explanation, that i ran my hands over my body to find the bullet hole and ready for the pain to kick in! I still know nothing but I guess the ice erm, exploded!! (Does ice explode??)

Here's Sonia cooking up a storm at my place the other week.
I'm trying to put her in for 'Iron Chef'.
(Don't tell her.)
I told the estate agent I wanted to live by the Lagoon, not in it.

And here as a final finale, my road this morning after a certain amount of raininess
Which is why it really does matter whether Paulo Melo gets the hump as to whether or not his wife gets in and whose votes get thrown in the bin and who bribes who and all that shit...
Democracy, please, not Mockracy.

2008-10-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

Well, Saquarema doesn't often make it into the international news, let alone into Hollywood movies, but this time we scored on both counts!!!
The star of this story was busted in Lake Shopping Mall, where I go on the piss now and again, right here in good ole' Saqua'!!

Justices turn down appeal in 'Alpha Dog' case
Story Highlights
Jesse James Hollywood's lawyers say 'Alpha Dog' film publicity would demonize him.
Prosecutor in real-life case assisted movie's producers.
Case, and movie, involve a drug-related kidnapping and murder.
Hollywood could receive the death penalty if convicted.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court is allowing a prosecutor who helped in the making of the movie "Alpha Dog" to stay on the capital case on which the film was based.

Justin Timberlake starred in "Alpha Dog," the film based on the Jesse James Hollywood case.

Justices declined Monday to get involved in an appeal from Jesse James Hollywood, the accused mastermind of a plot to kidnap and murder 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz.
Hollywood -- his real name, says his family -- says publicity over "Alpha Dog" would unfairly demonize him before potential jurors.
The movie was released last year. Hollywood and his lawyers argue the power of popular films to influence the minds of the general public makes their upcoming defense all but impossible.
Hollywood is charged with heading a Southern California drug ring, and ordering the murder of Markowitz in August 2000. The boy's older half-brother reportedly owed Hollywood a $1,200 drug debt.
Hollywood faces the death penalty if convicted.
The justices' refusal to intervene now means Hollywood's criminal trial can begin early next year as scheduled.
While police were investigating Markowitz's murder and building their a case against Hollywood and his accomplices, the suspect fled the country. He was found five years later in Saquarema, Brazil, and extradited to the United States in 2005. He is now 28 years old.
Don't Miss
Chief justice shows his writing chops
During this time, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Ron Zonen was contacted by movie producers, and he agreed to turn over to them probation reports, police files and other "sensitive" information on the case. He was also an unpaid consultant to the film. Zonen defended his actions, saying he was trying to help publicize the international manhunt for Hollywood.
The movie starred Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Justin Timberlake and actor Emile Hirsch in the role modeled on Hollywood. The fictionalized plot deals with a young drug dealer (named Johnny Truelove in the film), with a circle of friends, one of whom commits murder on Johnny's orders.
In real life, four of Hollywood's associates have already been convicted in the case, including triggerman Ryan Holt, who sits on California's death row.
The state's highest court ruled earlier this year that Zonen can remain on the case, but it criticized some of his actions.
"This is not to say that Zonen can or should escape censure," wrote Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar. "We find his acknowledged actions in turning over his case files without so much as an attempt to screen them for confidential information highly inappropriate and disturbing."
Hollywood's attorneys said that Zonen was unethical and that publicity from the movie tainted the jury pool. In addition to Zonen, they want the entire district attorney's staff removed from the case. "What we're saying is, when you do something like that, that's a conflict of interest," lead attorney James Blatt said. "You shouldn't be on the case."

2008-10-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

AS IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY AND SONIA'S TOO WE HAD A PARTY SO I THOUGHT I'D BETTER POST SOME PIX...
And then I thought, well that's a bit sparse, so I've added some random bits too...
Latest news is that we've just had the Brasilian municipal elections all over the country...
I expect the goings on are fairly typical here in Saquarema...
...in which case WE'RE FUCKING DOOMED!!!!
In brief, 3 or 4 months of convoys of hundreds of nutters on momobikes, in cars, on lorries, beeping , screaming, shouting, waving, bannering, soundsysteming and anything annoying-ing...
Then 2 days of silence, then last Sunday, the voting...
The result...I think the polite term is "impasse"...
The winner is allegedly Dalton Borges...the previous Mayor...
But, he's been disqualified as he was found giving out food for votes (I heard it was cash actually, 10 reais (£3.00) per vote...)
So the Vice Mayor, Franciane Melo, who recieved a similar number of votes is in...or is she???
Supporters of both have been arrested for fighting in the streets in the last couple of days...
So last night, Paulo Melo, UN-coincidentally Franciane's husband, and State Legislator for Rio state, goes on his own radio show (on his own radio station no less) and announces that all the funds he was going to see diverted to Saquarema for much needed improvements (this included asphalting 250 kilometers of dirt roadways...have you seen mine???) are going to be RE-diverted elsewhere, because if the voters here in Saquarema don't want to vote for his wife Franciane, they're not getting any money for the town...
I ended up speechless, and had to go for a drink...
They're not getting my bloody vote...
Any of 'em.
I haven't got one.

Also on the corruption front, here's a pic of Pierry, my friend Sonia's 20 year old son who died, cause unknown, in his mother's arms in hospital here in Saquarema last October.

It now turns out that the Brasilian Navy, his erstwhile employer, had diagnosed him with throat cancer, but had not told him or his relatives, had not treated him for it during his time in the Navy's hospital in Rio, and had not informed the local hospital here in Saquarema.

Sonia is in the process of taking it to the courts, and has procured documentary proof, mostly through a sympathetic office worker at Navy HQ. The only possible reason seems to be budgetary, in which case there most be other similar cases, certainly in The Brasilian Navy, and possibly throughout the armed forces.

Oh yes, it's all one big fucking laugh here in sunny Brasil.

(It's actually been dull, cold and raining for weeks.)

2008-10-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO OR ANY RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER...
Some pix of my flat before, during and after renovs in 2004.

Living room strewn with derelict belongings...airing cupboard and kitchen beyond...with handy internal porch with three doors...but note the original Georgian arch and alcoves mmmmmm...

The open plan kitchen a la Bath city Council 1974 ish...very collectable now...
The quaint walled garden...I'm sure I remember having children...

I heard council contract scafflers out there one day discussing whether my flat was inhabited...
"Not unless it's that tramp in the old trainers..."
I don't wear trainers...
Demolition in full swing...the council had done a great job...they'd just smashed their way through any Georgian features and rammed in partitioning to hide the mess of pipes and conduits and stuff...
But open plan becomes a tangible thingy...

2008-10-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

RENOVATE!!!!

Living room, archway and kitchen...
I designed an epic kitchen, using Ikea boxes and bits, but with a custom built stainless top and a modular sink from Finland and all kinds of shit.
Everything came from eBay, from the fridge freezer, dishwasher, sink, taps,hob and ovens to the door handles and cupboard door catches.
Likewise the sofas, from eBay Belgium, the beds, the shower/jacuzzi/steamer unit and the Philip Starke knockoff bathroom sink.
And the dining table and chairs.
And my bum.

Here's Jonno pratting about in the kitchen whilst seriously overcharging me!

He used to moan on everytime I picked something up on eBay...
"More fucking eBay shit..." he'd quip.

And here's Graham in the not yet lovely bathroom...with the not yet lovely jacuzzi/steamer /everything thing...
Jonno really loved that one!!!
Late at night whilst showering, they say you can still hear him swearing as he takes the skin off his knuckles yet again...
"Fucking eBay shit..."

2008-10-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

BUT ALL THINGS MUST COME TO AN END, AND SOME ARE DISCRETE AND CHARMING OPEN PLAN MODERNIST STYLED GEORGIAN FLAT CONVERSIONS...
And , of course, some are not...

Hmmm, both discrete and charming!

ART!

And illuminated shelves...from eBay of course...

Kitchen still with blue wrappers on...

Bathroom...all from eBay but the bog (B&Q).

2008-10-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

MORE PONCED UP FLAT PICS...

CAN YOU TELL WHAT IT IS YET??

FAR OUT (DISPLAY CHEAPO) HABITAT STONE TABLE AND STOOLS (IN FIBREGLASS)

2008-10-07T14:47:00.000-07:00

BIG ART!

This is amazing.."Lee vs Lotus"....8 foot by 4 foot sheet perspex with vinyl overlays and texturing...
The lamp was a modification (by me) to an award winning Spanish design.
All the lighting for the flat was bought on eBay, mostly from Spain.

This I bought from the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath.
I was looking to ad some colorful art to my very "white in three shades" flat...but when I saw this it had to be...white art for a white flat...

2008-10-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

AT LONG LAST...SOMETHING NEAR THE PRESENT...
MY SPECIAL HAIRCUT FOR MY BIRTHDAY...
A MOHEEK!!!!

And a special dins on my birthday courtesy of Sonia and her niece Amanda who is now living with her...

I was ill once, (some would hold more than once) in 2002, and spent a couple of weeks sofa ridden and getting into modern design, paintings, furniture and architecture...(thence came shop and flat refurb)...
Eventually I was so taken with old Mondrain that I thought I'd have a go at abstraction...taking it down a little...so I bought some pastelly things and did a series of views of my view from my sofa...each a little more abstracted than the last...this was about as far as I got...entitled "STIJL LIFE NUMBER 3".

2008-10-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

OUR HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY!!!!!
Sonia and I are 100 years old!!!

This is the cake to prove it...
But of course it didn't prove it for long!

Here Sonia displays the people she has magically made appear before our very eyes..

Poufffffff!.

The Barbecue crew!!

2008-10-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

What a crazy party!!!
Outdoors, by the lagoon, barbecue...
Freezing cold, murderous winds, ice cold lager...
Saved only by the (my) introduction of frozen vodka shots...
Vodka, the winter warmer...
Now competing favourably with the other Russian import of choice here, the Kalashnikov.

Yes, that's what I'm talking about...
I made two enormous sponge puddings, one apple and one pineapple...
This lot ate the bloody lot...
I got a round of applause...
They got indigestion.

That's Lau (who used to work for me on the house) and wife in foreground...
I think he's already looking for the Rennies.
I have never seen this man before in my life.

Nor him neither. .

2008-10-07T13:02:00.000-07:00

PARTY GETS PROGRESSIVELY MORE RAUCUS.

Pamela is deep in thought whilst performing a modern ballet piece.
Either that or the vodka has gotten to her.
Either way she's definately free forming.
The sturdy Amanda on the left, Sonia's niece.
Group photo opportunity...
With drunken English twat messing it up...
"I've fallen..."

Well, it was very late by this point in the proceedings...

2008-10-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

FINALLY THE POOL IS WARM-ISH ENOUGH TO USE AGAIN...

This was Sunday last...
The pool has been really cold since april, anmd I've barely used it.
The temperature at night is always cold and the ground must retain it, and so the pool stays cold, even on days when the general temperature reaches 90 or 95.
But after a couple of humid days the pool was ok, though not how you say, warm...
Not enough for floating asleep in at least, one of my regular more strenuous in-pool activities.
The Naked Chef.
Well, partially.
Making a rice bol.

Ditto.

Carlos taking a few notes.

Like don't get really fat.

2008-09-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

IT'S BACK!!!!
After months of absinthe, no absess, no absence...due, actually to having nothing of any note to report...
But here we go, random jots and photes...

The Gerrits...with glass topped table...
I need an outlet for these...UK price around £750 a set plus shipping...
Outdoor variants available ( i.e. split hardwood back and seat to allow drainage), painted or wood, hand made in solid non-Amazonian hardwood ( and a couple of bits of ply obviously...), constructed with wooden pegs as per the originals, which are worth around £250,000 each in their red/blue version...
I loves 'em...

The estate as it was a few months ago when building work was pretty much complete...
Needs a few more trees and plants...

The shadey veranda, great for brekkies...
The nearest bush is now inundated with dwarf tomato plants...
The roof terrace roof is now further palmed up...just needs chairs and table...

My mates Sonia and Lu at my fave lagoonside
bar Estacao Boqueirao a while back...
Pinchico, the bar's boss, is standing for election at the mo'...which consists of him and hundreds of mates driving round and round the town every other night on small 'sickles and in cars and trucks, beeping horns, screaming , shouting, chanting, waving flags, blasting out soundsystems at a deafening level, letting off explosives and generally blocking all traffic and all attempts at normal day to day life... and everything...
(The candidates are allowed to donate petrol to supporters!!)
Meanwhile, all the other candidates and their supporters are doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time in exactly the same places, and there you have it....Brasilian politics.
I doubt that one in a hundred of the supporters has the vaguest idea about any of the candidate's vaunted policies, but this in fact matters little, as the chances of any of the candidates actually carrying out any of the policies if elected is pretty much zero anyway, and there you have it, Brasilian politics...

2008-09-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

Ooooh how random.
How unexpected....

OK my suite , taken from the en-suite...

How sweet...
My seat...

MMMMMmmmmmm
My shed...
How neat...

My Brasilian designed Eclipse lamp...
Just in case you hadn't had it forced down your throat by
me previously...
It comes in a pizza box which is erm, good...?
I have been working on a chair design based on this
lamp, but unfortunatelly it doesn't work...
Isn't life funny sometimes...
And then other times, not...

Random enough for you????

2008-09-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

OK, here's a twist you weren't expecting, I'll warrant...
HOMEMADE 100% WHOLEMEAL BREAD.
AN ANTHOLOGY.

Yes, since June , (when I hasten to add I did not suddenly become gay I hasten to add),
I have been baking what has gradually become wholemeal bread.
Look, baking, especially 100% wholemeal baking is actually quintissentially butch...
One isn't, after all, a BAKERRA or a BAKINNA, or a BAKINNI ...one is a BAKER...
You know, it's essentially very Masculine, lots of tough Kneading...and Cutting open bags with Tough and Dangerous implements like Scissors...with some pretty hefty Sprinkling and Pouring going on too...and don't forget all the Lifting as well...and the oven can be very Dangerous too as it is very Hot...
Well anyway, just fuck off...

Above on the right is my most recent loaf, which was excellent, and on the left was my last one which was shit...

This was around number 4, back in June, with a large tub of Ornella's amazing homemade marmalade made from our plantation oranges...

This was Number 4 at breakfast with toasted cheese and pooched eggs, which is eggs steamed by shoving them up a hot dog's arse...or else I mis- spelled 'poached' and tried to cover up for it with a cheap and unnecesarily crude distraction...
And a mug of Tetley's, the makings for which, horror of horrors, have nearly run out...
( I really mean that.)

Has he made 100% wholemeal bread in the likeness of rustic cooking pots and burnt it, you say??
No...
These are cheap clay pots bought at the roadside for mere pennies, and which produce amazingly tasty food if stuffed into the oven after being loaded with, for example, ingredients...
Of course, the oven must be Hot.

2008-09-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, but I've started so I must finish...

Numbers 3, 4 and 5...
Which means the previous number 4 was probably number 6...
Does it really matter??
Of course it does...

Oooooh. this is Number ummmm, I'll say 9...
Loaf, rolls, and dwarf tomato bread, made with equal quantities of dwarf and tomatoes...
Homegrown of course, and a few samples from this years first crop from our orange plantations at Palmital...most get cut back so the trees put the energy into the erm, trees...

This is Number fuck knows....

Aaaah note the obvious use of a bread tin rearing it's
wholemeal head for the first time..., and more rolls...
Number ermmmmm...twelvety??

2008-09-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

This fashion shoot follows on from an early '06 post of me wearing underpants balaclava style on my head in an (admittedly unsuccesful) attempt to gain acceptance as a drugsoldier in one of Rio's infamous Favela drug gangs...
Here we try for some 'favela chic'...
Rather succesfully, I feel...

Pamela provocatively models one of Marks & Spencer's "Finest" range of single -sex multi-use garments in an 'over the shoulder' fashion, perfect for the more formal occasion...

Ariane, again with one from the "Finest" range, this time, still in blue...
Casual yet sophisticated, complementarily accessorised with a flower theme...

Pamela again, this time in exuberant mood...
Perhaps ready for the beach...
Or for that impromptu chic afternoon get-together
with friends by the pool...
Swinging!!!
Marks & Spencer have done it again!!!

And finally here's the lovely Ariane once again...
... this time in a teasing mood...
What is she thinking, we wonder...
Perhaps, "Oh Christ, they're in my mouth...
...I bet that fat pig didn't wash them ??"

2008-09-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well bugger me!?
If this isn't a bit of a hotch potch!!!

No it is...
Here a shot of Cabo Frio by the Sea-o...
When me and Rich Cooper were here in '87 it was two restaurants, a Bum Bum bikini stall, and a couple of houses struggling to reach the first floor...
Now just bloody look at it...
Look at the size of it...
It's Eeeenormous...

The sand hasn't changed much tho'...
Still so white and still the texture of snow...
Amazing...
Interestingly, back in '87, the waiter at the first restaurant was Radar from the TV series "Mash" ( not the film, I hasten to add, that would have been too wierd...), and the waiter at the 2nd restaurant was Jack Nicholson...
How odd...
And further up the road in a town called Valenca, we sold our fursca ( VW Beetle) to Phil Andrews of Moles fame. He was running a small cafe bar.
Funny old trip that one, always full of surprises.
We rented an apartment, in which the landlord's daughter was asleep on the bed.
He offered to throw her in at no extra charge.
We declined, not being sure what decorum required of us, and also she was asleep, after all.
Later Rich got caught in the rain and took refuge in a Bum Bum with two old ladies.
Alright, I was trying to be clever.
In a Bum Bum Bikini store.
But that was the name of the franchise.
Bum Bum.
There, I've said it..

Moving swiftly...
And extremely tangentially,
Here are some of my Dwarves growing...
The first seven are visible.
Grumpy, Dumpy, Lumpy, Swumpy (chained to the roots obviously),
Frumpy, Trumpy and Dave.
There's always one, isn't there?

These are my not-dwarves.

It's strange, but wherever I have planted or tended, there is nothing...
Like the Ukraine the Russians left for Hitler...
But wherever I do nothing, crops flourish, particularly in totally inappropriate locations like here on my path, within grabbing reach of the road...
Or round the back of my house, all over Nachman Reclamation Yard.
Ric wouldn't stand for it.
He'd shout and swear and kick the shit out of them until they
moved into a shop in Walcot Street called Nashers Fucking Tomatoes...
With a silent "Fucking" obviously.

(The real name of " John's Bikes " is "John's Fucking Bikes" in honour of just such tantrums by Ric.)

2008-09-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

My third trip to Buzios.
St Tropez of Brasil.
Discovered by BB in '64.
I love it.
So did she.

Ex Furniture store with post industrial interior...
Would make a beast of a night clube...

Another beast...she was my friend at the house I rented on my return last May...
She still remembered me this june bless her...

Here an ancient Galleon plunges through a shop roof into the street in Buzios...
Brasilian drivers eh...

Nice drapey things display a touch of colourful French design flare at
my fave pousada in Buzios run by my buddy Frederic.

2008-09-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

More Buziossing...

Here my Scouse mate Steve, still working at my fave bar in Buzios, although it's changed hands and Yank owner Ken is back in the motor trade...
Steve's been in Braz for 20 years and shows no signs of returning to the UK...probably cuz they won't let him back in...
Steve is a stout fellow.
And he calls me Nasher, not fucking Paul...

mmmm, nice bar...

Kubitschek, who initiated the moving of the capital from Rio to Brasilia, to open up the interior in the fifties. (What a dump.)
The Argentinian guy on the right said we should shoot all politicians just like this, but not with cameras...
Astute chap.

Graff'd cacti...not something I saw a lot of in Bristol...

2008-09-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

Here in complete disorder, some Arraial do Cabo pix, then back to Buzios.

The boat I should have bought, back in '87.

The boat we looked at, purely, and unfairly, just for something to do...
We pretended we were on the buy...

Aaaah Buzios...one of the 30 odd beaches around the isthmus(???)

View from a Buzios bar.

2008-09-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

Awright you lot, time fer some bleedin' art...

All I did was ask if I could take a snap, and this amazing lady gave us free reign of her house and garden, and we ended up chatting politics for about an hour...
Her stuff is amazing...Rosie Popay it was made for you, or you were made for it!!!
It's wire mesh based, then either papier mache'd or fibreglassed depending on how strong/waterproof the piece has to be...

She's based in Buzios, and her stuff, including some in cast statue form is all over the place..

The chairs really are...

Her understated living room.

2008-09-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

Nuff said...
Here's some more...
The cow is full size.

One of my faves.
If you're ever anywhere near Buzios, check these out.
Revel in them, gaze at them, buy them, and then get drunk on caipirinhas and dance all night.
Only if you want to, mind...

2008-09-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

Haha guess what this is...
Don't know?
Haha I'll tell you...

It's an experimental steam box.
There, now you know...

Yes, but why, you know what you know, for??
Haha to bend wood under steam pressure....
Yes but what why what for???
To make furniture of course, from bendy wood...hahahahaha
See the piece of dark wood in the foreground above??
You put it in the tube and blast it for an hour with steam steam and more steam and then you take it out and bend it quickly to any shape you want or could imagine...
What, but even Brasilian hardwood that is like wood but hard?????
Yes, even...
So why is the piece in the photo still, erm, straight???
Oh fuck off clever arse...
Just you wait for Mark II, that's what...

Ahhh thank God for that...
A beautiful yet reasonably priced hotel in Arraial do Cabo.
And no sign of steam boxes and bending etc.

Wow a sunken sofa area in the same hotel...
And still no more mention of steam bending etc etc.
I think we might be clear...
Let's make a dash for it...

2008-09-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

Well here we are, all clear and no mention of you know what in sight...
Rosario's restaurant on the beach a few weeks ago and his wifes birthday nosh up...

Here Rosario Junior, aptly known as "Junior"...
He has been my best mate and Number One Fan since I met him aged one month ish...no really...

A lovely dins, with much beer in progress...
The Gernan lady on the left and her bloke have a Farm Pousada
out the back of Saquarema...horses and stuff...looks lovely...

This is a bit horrifying, but this two year old is forced to wear this notice saying, and I translate: "It is not permitted to enter with Animals or Bicycles. Thank You."
People are sick.
Right there.
Sick.

I had trouble getting a Birthday Pic out of Luciane.
First she closed her eyes every shot, then she kept them open, but couldn't smile.
In the end I had to tell her to think of having sex, and then qualified it by saying that I meant having good sex...
That as you can see, sort of did it...

2008-09-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

This is not even Brasil!!!
Completely irrelevant...
Ridiculous.

But it is a pic of one of the most idyllic properties I came across when searching the world for somewhere to be...
In the middle of nowhere, on the coast of Ecuador.
Fourteen rooms and a bar/restaurant.
If you blow it up, you can read the menu on the blackboard...
I'd recommend the prawns...

Just in case you missed it...
Eclipse Lamp...
Bla bla bla...

My mezz with completed winders and computer etc...
Lovely, mountain views, breezy...
May move my bed up there when it gets a bit hotter...
...the nights are still cold at the mo'

The Mezz winders have really brightened up the living room too, as you can see...as has the white ceiling made of natural PVC forro.

2008-09-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

I love this photo, and this woman...
After that, you just have to forget the plot and go with me...
Trust me...

And her hair.
And her coat.
Man Ray took it.
The photo stupid, not the coat.
Le Corbusier held the saintly plate up behind her head for a laugh.
And she is Charlotte Perriand.
Most of the furniture credited to Le Corbusier she actually designed with Pierre Jeanneret, Corbusier generally only furnishing the basic concept...
Furnishing...geddit??
Eh?

Machine for Living

Ditto.

Icarai, Niteroi, over the bay from Rio.
What a view.
Oscar Niemeyer's stunning art museum and restaurant in the foreground.
I go here every month to pick up my meds...someone has to...
Not the art gallery, stupid, Niteroi...

2008-09-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

Oh God, it's getting too random even for me now...
Even I don't trust me any more...
OK...here goes..

My friend Rosangela loves my big drawers, no not the Marks and Spencer ones featured earlier, the kitchen ones...my kitchen...she loves my kitchen and asked me some weeks ago to redesign her kitchen for her and oversee the build...so I occasionally scribble on some graph paper and one day...anyway, here it is...
Alright alright, this is the 'before' picture, not the 'after' smartarse...

Well, you go out looking for a swimming pool, and you get offered this deal and that deal, and a free vomiting dolphin and free steps and someone offers you free lights and in the end you have to make a decision and what, really when you come down to it are you gonna actually base it on, I mean how much do you really know about hydrostatic pressure and breathers and filtration and pumps and bivalves and stuff...so in the end, at the end of the day...
OK I bought mine from Adriane.
We got on really well.
She's gorgeous.
Wouldn't you have??
And the pool?
The pool?
Fuck the pool...

Tree stumps.
OK.

They make 'em out of tree stumps.
Relevance?
What relevance?
One day a rains gonna come and wash all the scum off the streets...

2008-09-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

OK just to keep things real topical, here's Carnaval last February as it
manifested itself one night at my fave bar Estacao Boquerao...

Best waiter of all time Antonio serving it up to Sonia...
Ooooh whats that in the bottle I wonder...??
Dins looks like Frango a Milanesa with arroz, feijao, farofa, batatas fritas e puree de batata.
My fave.
Sonia's too.

Some attractive ladies having a competition.

And the winner is...???
The band were reallynervous as their stage is out over the lagoon...
I told them not to worry...the power supply's only 110V here...mostly...

And here is another fave waiter on the left, Pitt.
He has other guises of course.
The clues is the shoes.

2008-05-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

I GOT SENT THIS ON FARCEBOOK...IT'S MARVELOUS ...
IT'S CALLED 'DEAR PENIS'. (Thanks to Ry!)
You can view bigger and better direct on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ3lw-eNrFk

2008-04-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

AT LAST SOME REAL BLOG...
NOT JUNK ABOUT FILMS, BUT REAL BLOG STUFF...

First JCB loads of rubble, and now, great piles of sand...
Local council at work??
Nope...the rubble arrived by crossing the palm of JCB driver when loading rubble onto lorries from local house redo, and the sand was blagged from drivers on the dredging operation in the lagoon inlet...
Council my arse...

Well, due to Pamela's party and enthusiastic splashing (see below) my pool lost about a foot of water, so rather than pay for a truck load we diverted the next big rain from my drainpipe...

The mezzanine now has completed windows (which since the pic have had stay open stays fitted...). The whole house is a lot brighter and I'm shortly going to move my office and bedroom onto the mezzanine...at last a room with a view...

Looking the other way, a view of the other way...

2008-04-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

Now we head headlong into randomness....
Nothing new there then...

This is a quick shot of Remo's (partner in the Orange Co-op) mum and dad in laws house at the bottom of his garden.
Paradise!
My arse.
In-laws at the bottom of the garden...you're having a larf aren't you????

Nothing too magic about these either unfortunately.
There's hundreds all over my garden, but I can't even squeeze an omelette out of them.

This is my new mate Gil, fitting the glass into my mezz winders...we got hammered the other night along with one of his stunning "other" wives.
He's a big rock fan...in fact we watched a TFF vid at his place the other week with Andy Davis in it.
That's my mate, I said.
In Portuguese obviously.
Note the wooden pole which I insisted stayed in as long as possible to stop the whole roof caving in.
Now the glass holds the window frames up which holds the roof up.

Apart from the varnished wood finish as opposed to the lower black painted window frames, the new windows blend quite nicely.
And the roof never fell in, which was nice.
Not that I ever really thought it would.

2008-04-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

Two of my partners in the orange biz, Meike and Marc's new house under construction, near to our orange groves a few miles behind the lagoons in the rolling hills of Palmital.

The upper floor is all mezzanine along the back wall,
visible on the right of the pic.

The windows look out onto a valley with their own lake.

The front taken from the enormous floating terrace.

The lake and terrace .
It's going to be amazing.

2008-04-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

My mate Sonia's daughter Pamela's 20th birthday party on March 8th backwards.

Kids eating birthday cake at the end of the night.

Once more with attitude, from the boys at least!
Maturity in the shape of disdain emanates from the young lady.

Dins courtesy of the boys from Jammadesamba ( my guests from Bath) at local pizza place Saquabella.

JCB deposits demolition rubble in my lagoon, sorry, road.

2008-04-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

Tailend of Pam's birthday party.

New econo bulbs at work.

Conceicao cuts the cake she baked.

More cake related activity.

In modern design corner, local design heads test out and discuss the merits of Gerrit Reitveld over the likes of Le Corbusier and Mategot.
As always, Gerrit shits all over the opposition.

2008-04-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, much earlier on, Jackson demos the art of batucada to enthralled Brasilians.
Next thing you know, they'll be playing samba here in Brasil too.

Go on my son, give it some welly...

Jackson tries drumming to a different beat...
Go on my son, give it some welly...

I help get some fluff out of Conceicao's ear...

Oooooooh it's getting late...
Actually it goes dark here at 5.30 at the mo...

2008-04-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Still going backwards at Pam's birthday do...

Let's face it, if it looks anything like a bar, and you can lean on it anything like a bar, then to all intents and purposes it is a bar...right?

A lot of people came on bicycles...

I show some guests around the newly planted ( that morning!) garden.

Robbie from Jammadesamba also shows some guests around the garden.

2008-04-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

OK, well I apologise for the going backwards thing, but everytime I upload pics they go on in the wrong order, so you get to see them backwards. Sort of. I tried to fix them but I get horribly confused.

Anyway, here's the barbecue region in full swing, though backwards of course. Anisio who has worked for me for the past year to the left, a bit pissed.

Oooooh more barbies. Anisio in the middle now, still a bit pissed.
My mate Debora's mum on the right, also a bit pissed, but a great dancer.

BIRTHDAY!!!!
Pamela and friends.

Pamela and friends.
Nasher and bottle.

2008-04-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

More party pics. Still in reverse order.
It'll be morning soon...

Laid back on the terrace.

The Municipal Baths.

Ditto.
In fact I saw this view from inside the house, and didn't register it was my house. Loads of people, new trees planted that morning and borrowed chairs was all a bit unfamiliar, as was the look of a more or less finished place.

Ariane and friends in the suco factory.
Sonia and crew produced gallons of amazing fresh fruit drinks (sucos) throughout the day.

2008-04-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

Preparations for and early stages of Pam's party.

Trees getting the finishing touches that morning.

All hands to the kitchen.
Big dins and tankerloads of sucos.

Decorating the set.
Birthday girl Pamela with arms in the air.

Barbie!!!!

2008-04-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of March, three young samba drumming guys from Bath crew Jammadesamba came to stay. They stayed on for Pamela's party.

Trees go in.

Jammadesamba pushing the envelope.

More trees.

Filho strapping up my tree. Well, one of them.

2008-04-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

Gerrit Reitveld chairs and Jammadesamba in da house.

The day before I broke my leg, two weeks after I got here in August '06, I spotted a Gerrit Reitveld red/blue chair in a carpentry shop near Bacaxa.
I determined to get me some of that, and finally a year and a half later, here they are.
Four handmade hardwood chairs and a matching table I derived from some of his other chair designs. (I now have a smoked glass circular top fitted...looks amazing.)
In the background a couple of the guys from Bath are having a sesh.

Robbie and Chris giving it some.

Lao and Anisio giving it some too.
Lao went down with mosquito borne Dengue fever a few weeks back. ( He recovered, for the time being at least...)
It's now reached epidemic proportions in Rio. They've deployed the military to assist in dealing with it.

Anyway, much more important, my mezzanine window nearly.

2008-04-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

Randomness updated randomly.

Lao and Anisio knock a big hole in my mezzanine wall. Fabino used to do this sort of thing quite often.
Lao had dengue, which perhaps can make people do weird stuff.

As it turns out, it was so they could stick this frame I had built in the hole.

Chris and Jackson debate the likelihood of breakfast.

Robbie is laughing, but he and I know he has just killed Chris in the face.
The world of International Samba is a tough place.
Ask Chris.

2008-04-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

The view from the Mezz.
And views of the PVC ceiling being fitted by Lao and Anisio.
Loads of pix of that because I like the pix.
The tile roof let through loads of rain mixed with muck from garden fires and dust and crap...so any time there was a bit of a wind or rain, the house and particularly the floor was filthy.
It also makes the place look and feel lighter and a bit mo0re like a house instead of a shed!

2008-04-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

Last chance to see what's through the round window...
The PVC ceiling is half way there, and when it's done, it's bye-bye round window.
The PVC forro comes in handy 6 metre lengths, which take some manipulating. Especially up a five metre tower or two or three.

2008-04-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

Asa break from PVC-ceiling-fitting here's a pic of Conceicao and Pamela
dong some kind of weird tropical taste-your-face test.
I think that's what they're doing.

Well, thank God that's over....
Back to the PVC and the guys...
At least I know where I'm up to with PVC, and guys...and stuff...

2008-04-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

Deep in the Jungle somethng stirred...

It's only me...
Leading an expedition to deepest Mombassa (actually spelt with a C cedilla but I ain't got one!!) in search of palms for my garden.

My newly restored and refitted shed.
I always wanted a shed.

Last glimpses of the tile roof before it disappears for ever behind PVC "planking".

Talking of which, the scaff goes up...

2008-04-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

Randomness...nothing but randomness...
I´m writing this on the 16th of February oooops thats bollox it´s the 16 the of April you twat of pissheaheededness... whilst extremely pissed in a hotel in Icarai in Niteroi, over the bay from Rio...I refuse to go to bed yet...why should i...there´s a perfectly seviceable and massively overpriced half bottle of wine in my frigobar and i see no fucking reason on earthe why I shouldn´t go there right now and fucking drink it...after all i~´s my fucking bill isn´t it ....????or fucking what??? Shuld´ve seen this before I corrrrected itt .....::!!??
Nighty nite!!!!! Somebody hep me>>>>>>>..
OOOH a lifty thing

Well this was supposedly my `Goodbye to Conceicao` dinner at the beginning of February but it's completely stupid as she didn't leave town ´til the middle of March. Her mum and dad are both ill and she hasn´t been home for years, so she´s gone. But she reckons she´ll be back here in June to live. She keeps ringing up in tears coz she´s miserable there.
Well, what did she expect....she´s there and I´m here....

Hurrah!!!!! The guest house has balustrades, and in fact now has a palm frond rustic roof, but you can´t see it yet as it´s a surprise, well in fact my batteries won´t recharge anymore so I can´t take any up to date pix....

Filho will not spare that tree...
But there´s a much nicer one there now...

Lost in the Amazon with my untrusty native guides...
Actually just a few miles away palm tree hunting...
The old gent is the owner of the land...
Very spritely for the oldest man in the world...

2008-04-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

Although I know without doubt that imitation is without doubt the sincerest form of flattery, I am at present in somewhat of a quandary.
I'm not absolutely certain where to draw the line.
Or even which line to draw.
The question is, am I still sincerely flattered when an imitator just nicks my stuff, tints it blue, adds a link to a commercial poker site and knocks it out to the public with their name slapped all over it?
Ummm, I have a feeling I am probably not.
Not sincerely.
I have, in fact, mentioned that I think I am probably not to the YouTube management on a number of occasions recently, it being the case that five of the six parts of 'Gordon the Movie' have been hijacked and so treated so far. (They, the hijackers haven't got to Part 6, the final part, yet...)
Certain YouTube so-called "users" are hijacking my bits, tinting them slightly, and then adding links to online poker sites, either by cutting them into the film, or by adding them in the "more info" section.
I wouldn't mind, but the tinted versions are more popular than my bloody originals. They're getting my hits, and comments like " Post More...."
I never got any comments like that on my, erm, version.
(And how come I have to write 'my, erm, version' when it's my bloody film in the first place?)
I just get comments like "AAAH" which only serves to make me feel nervous.
Like they've seen through my game.
And a thin, measly, transparent, pathetic one it is at that.

So I was forced to Declare War.
Well, initially it was more of a policing action.
UK style.
You know, death squads, torture, garotting, sensory deprivation.
That kind of thing.

But I've since been forced to pep it up, bit by bit.
Initially I complained formally to YouTube via the internal complaints section, which takes some navigating in itself.
No response from YT, and more hijackings ensued.
So I complained a few more times, citing copying, copyright and commercial mis-use as issues.
(And got quite a bit less formal, as it were...)
Ditto. Zilch.
Then I started flagging the individual hijacked vids, citing them as unsuitable due to copyright infringement and as commercial spam.
Normally a call to arms for the YT hit squads.
Still no response.
I've now written to anyone whose left a comment on the hijacks, and told them the situation.
I've also added a comment explaining the situation on all "my" vids.
See? I have to put quotes on "my" now...because there are other my vids which are not actually "my" vids.
See, their my vids don't need quotes on like "my" their vids do.
It's really out of order.
I tried adding similar comments explaining what's what on their ( the hijackers) "my" vids, but the "users" who have posted my "their" vids quickly removed them! ( My comments that is, not my "their" vids.)
And throughout (this has been going on for about a month!) no comment and no action from YouTube.
And it's not just happening to me...each of the hijackers (I have four so far) has a list of 50 or so movies, none of which they have produced, and all of which are now displaying advertising.
The Horror.
As I've seen noted elsewhere, YT desperately needs a users forum. And a complaints response unit that actually responds to complaints.
Of course apart from that I think YouTube's wicked.
But as we say round here, "A Luta Continua!"

We next move discretely into neighbouring Cambodia.
The Horror.
The Horror.

2008-04-14T16:00:00.001-07:00

FINALLY ONLINE, THE FINAL PART OF
"GORDON THE MOVIE".
FOR BIG SCREEN SATISFACTION, PLEASE USE THIS LINK TO VIEW ON YOUTUBE (RECOMMENDED).
(ON YT YOU CAN ALSO VIEW THE WHOLE FILM ONE LUMP AFTER ANOTHER AUTOMATICALLY).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBDViXweiS8
MUCH BETTER THAN HERE ON MY SHITTY BLOG.

ALSO BELOW, PLEASE CHECK OUT THE PROGRESS OF ROB AND GABI, SHOOTING THEIR FILM AND DOCUMENTARY IN THE ALPS.
FOR MORE INFO ON THIS AND OTHER OF ROB'S FILM PROJECTS CHECK OUT www.thelonefilmmaker.com

2008-04-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

LONEFILMAKER SHOOTING IN THE ALPS...
CHECK THIS OUT!
GOOD LUCK TO ROB & GABI!!
For Big Screen Viewing go straight to YouTube
with this link (recommended).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj47QXvEPvE

Please check out the preceding blogs too, this really is an inspiring story in the making. They deserve all the support they can get.
And thermal underwear.

2008-03-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

'GORDON THE MOVIE' : Part Five.
View it below or for big screen viewing (recommended) go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-QuiceqGew

2008-03-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

MY BLOG LEAPS FURTHER INTO THE REALMS OF TANGENTIAL
DIVERSITY... SEE CHAPLIN AND KEATON LIVE HERE NOW...
"Why would I do that?" I hear you ask.
OK, so I watched Chaplin's 1952 movie 'Limelight' on Sky last night and was amazed how watchable, even brilliant it was....I thought I hated all his post silent era stuff...
...and then to top it off, near the end, lo, this sequence (with Keaton on the piano), in particular the telescopic leg routine....I thought to myself, I have to see this again, it's so classic it must be on Youtube and lo, there it was...
...so forget the intro, and forget the outro (both also brilliant) and check out the midtro...it's amazing!!
... if I had the right trousers, and joints that still worked, I'd be at it meself...
As usual, if you prefer it big screen, follow this to Youtube and watch it there instead...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUpiD8vEw2Y

And honestly, I will post some Brasil related updates, any minute now...
And 'Gordon' part 5 will be online as soon as I can make it stick....I've attempted to upload it 7 or 8 times without suckcess...

2008-03-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

AMAZING!
CHECK OUT ROB'S BLOG!!
HE'S MAKING A FEATURE FILM SINGLEHANDED AND HIS GIRLFRIEND IS VIDEOBLOGGING IT!
SEE BLOG ONE BELOW...
HE'S NOW ARRIVED IN SWITZERLAND ...SEE BLOG 15 AND ALL THE REST ON HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL HERE...
http://www.youtube.com/user/thelonefilmmaker

FOLLOW THE STORY ON YOUTUBE...
(HE'S A REAL NICE GEEZER TOO... )

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD....ROB AND GABI NEED ALL THE SUPPORT AND PUBLICITY THEY CAN GET!!
...AND DON'T FORGET TO 'FAVOURITE', 'COMMENT' AND RATE THEM ON YOUTUBE...

2008-03-06T09:21:00.000-08:00

GORDON THE MOVIE : PART FOUR

...BY FAR THE BEST OPTION IS TO TAKE THE LINK TO YouTube BELOW AND THERE YOU CAN FILL YOUR SCREEN WITH THE MOVIE INSTEAD OF STARING AT A TINY IMAGE HERE ON MY APPALLING BLOG...However GORDON THE MOVIE : PART THREE
...BY FAR THE BEST OPTION IS TO TAKE
THE LINK TO YouTube BELOW AND THERE YOU CAN
FILL YOUR SCREEN WITH THE MOVIE INSTEAD OF STARING AT A TINY IMAGE HERE ON MY APPALLING BLOG...
However don't forget all the extra Gordon related jottings here that you won't find anywhere else...
Link direct to YouTube to view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uhFIJr09bE

NEW! Check out the 'Gordon the Movie' quiz on Facebook.

THE STORY OF THE AERIAL OPENING SEQUENCE THAT NEVER WAS...

The intended spectacular opening of 'Gordon the Movie' mentioned in the Venue article below would have been spectacular as intended, had it not been for the deteriorated condition of the meteorological balloons stolen for me from the Granada TV stores in Manchester by my cousin Chaz.
The plan was to open the film with spectacular high altitude wind induced zip pans of the Severn estuary and surrounds, then to descend a couple of thousand feet at a massive rate of knots coming to rest in a close up of the side of Gordon the Dummy's face.
From massive panoramic aerial vistas to extreme close up in one shot.
Eat your heart out, Orson.
This would be followed by a cutaway of the toxic waves of the Severn lapping at the Severn "beach", then cut back to a matching close up of Gordon the Man licking an ice lolly, sat on a bench. This shot we already had from before his death, obviously.
The shoot was planned for about a week before the well hyped World Premiere, scheduled for November 19th, 1982.
Cutting it fine?
Well, perhaps a little.
And we'd have got away with it too, if it hadn't been for those pesky meteorological balloons....
So the set up was, firstly the dummy, with sculpted painted head, and wooden framed flexible body, built by Annie Beardsley (here think 2 x 1 and wing knuts), dressed in typical Gordon attire, i.e. overcoat and scarf, seated on a bench on the Severn Beach prom.
Under the bench is stationed Vic, partner of my partner Sophie's mum Sally, wielding a large hammer on the wooden handle of which is mounted a large fishing reel, on which is mounted a couple of thousand feet of heavy duty fishing line. The line passes up through Gordon the Dummy's wooden thighs, and is then attached to a small lightweight super 8 camera, mounted upside down. Above this, the line is attached to a number of enormous gas inflated meteorological balloons.
The plan goes like this...the camera is held in a close up of Gordon the Dummy's face and the trigger is pulled and locked on....with camera running, the balloon and camera package is released...the package rises rapidly, eventually levelling at a couple of thousand feet, camera still running.....the wind hits the package and blasts it from side to side, giving us the zip pan effect. When the film is processed, it is projected in reverse. Because the camera was upside down whilst shooting, the shot is the right way up when it starts zip panning at 2,000 feet, prior to descending for it's close up....
The reality goes like this...the camera is switched on and locked, giving us the close up...the package is released, and rises according to plan...by about six feet, not according to plan, and then starts to descend...I give it a hefty bat with my fist, it rises again momentarily, and then sinks down over the sea wall to land in the toxic mud they call beach, with camera still running.
I have the resulting footage stashed somewhere in England.
It looks great. Such as it is.
Damn those pesky low flying low budget balloons.
So the film now opens with Gordon the Man scoffing an ice lolly. And not a dummy nor an aerial descent in sight.
Whilst shooting the above, we were asked on a number of occasions if "our grandad" was ok, as he looked a bit pastey. Talk about a concerned understatement.

WHY BITS OF FAMOUS DEAD PEOPLE?

Why does the star of the film sell bits of famous dead people??
And what does it have to do with the aerial opening that never was?

Well, I once had a most excellent friend (he really was!) called Silly Phil, back in my Stockport days.
He had previously been called simply Phil, but he succumbed to the temptations of far too much mescaline in the late 60's and his name changed accordingly.
Around 1970 some anarcho-freaks living opposite him blew up a drug squad car whilst he was being busted in his flat.
Silly Phil became hunted by both the freaks and the police...the freaks thought he'd later squealed on them ( he hadn't), and Det. Insp. Jackson ( his car ) wasn't bright enough to work out the unlikelihood of Phil blowing up the car whilst simultaneously being busted!
So Silly Phil went on the run.
The last time I saw him was in the mid 70's in a major railway station "somewhere in England".
He was still staying extremely mobile.
Then a few years later I heard he was in prison. He and a group of cohorts had been busted whilst operating a cross channel drug smuggling operation using enormous radio controlled cargo carrying model aircraft, controlled from speed boats below.
As a result my planned epic movie was going to have an aerial opening shot taken from a large remote controlled incoming model aircraft. However the idea of a cargo (and thus a plot premise) as mundane as drugs struck me as a bit stock.
Around this time, Charlie Chaplin's body was kidnapped from it's grave.
I needed something small and valuable but a little out of the ordinary for a model aircraft to be smuggling.
Not drugs. Not diamonds. Not money. Not nuclear materials. All too normal movie plot style.
But Charlie Chaplin? Not a whole body obviously, but there it was....famous dead peoples' body parts.
The customers??
Collectors, fans, perverts, those who might think to outlive their contemporaries by consuming them.
I remembered being shown pictures at school of Napoleon's testicles displayed as part of a priceless antique ornament, and off we went.
As time and the script went on, the opening and the model aircraft and the smuggling disappeared.
Only the body parts remained.
And at the last moment an attempt was made to shoot a rather different aerial opening sequence, but this was inspired more by a Dutch experimental movie I once saw, using a small camera attached to a kite.
The movie camera, attached to the kite, zip panned about spectacularly in the wind, only to descend at great speed to crash into long grass, which it showed in close up until rescued and switched off.
I liked it, so I nicked it.
Almost.

2008-02-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

GORDON THE MOVIE : PART THREE
...BY FAR THE BEST OPTION IS TO TAKE
THE LINK TO YouTube BELOW AND THERE YOU CAN
FILL YOUR SCREEN WITH THE MOVIE INSTEAD OF STARING AT A TINY IMAGE HERE ON MY APPALLING BLOG...
However don't forget all the extra Gordon related jottings here that you won't find anywhere else...

Link direct to YouTube to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhkaHcZmgtQ

NEW! Check out the 'Gordon the Movie' quiz on Facebook.

THE STORY OF THE AERIAL OPENING SEQUENCE THAT NEVER WAS...

The intended spectacular opening of 'Gordon the Movie' mentioned in the Venue article below would have been spectacular as intended, had it not been for the deteriorated condition of the meteorological balloons stolen for me from the Granada TV stores in Manchester by my cousin Chaz.
The plan was to open the film with spectacular high altitude wind induced zip pans of the Severn estuary and surrounds, then to descend a couple of thousand feet at a massive rate of knots coming to rest in a close up of the side of Gordon the Dummy's face.
From massive panoramic aerial vistas to extreme close up in one shot.
Eat your heart out, Orson.
This would be followed by a cutaway of the toxic waves of the Severn lapping at the Severn "beach", then cut back to a matching close up of Gordon the Man licking an ice lolly, sat on a bench. This shot we already had from before his death, obviously.
The shoot was planned for about a week before the well hyped World Premiere, scheduled for November 19th, 1982.
Cutting it fine?
Well, perhaps a little.
And we'd have got away with it too, if it hadn't been for those pesky meteorological balloons....
So the set up was, firstly the dummy, with sculpted painted head, and wooden framed flexible body, built by Annie Beardsley (here think 2 x 1 and wing knuts), dressed in typical Gordon attire, i.e. overcoat and scarf, seated on a bench on the Severn Beach prom.
Under the bench is stationed Vic, partner of my partner Sophie's mum Sally, wielding a large hammer on the wooden handle of which is mounted a large fishing reel, on which is mounted a couple of thousand feet of heavy duty fishing line. The line passes up through Gordon the Dummy's wooden thighs, and is then attached to a small lightweight super 8 camera, mounted upside down. Above this, the line is attached to a number of enormous gas inflated meteorological balloons.
The plan goes like this...the camera is held in a close up of Gordon the Dummy's face and the trigger is pulled and locked on....with camera running, the balloon and camera package is released...the package rises rapidly, eventually levelling at a couple of thousand feet, camera still running.....the wind hits the package and blasts it from side to side, giving us the zip pan effect. When the film is processed, it is projected in reverse. Because the camera was upside down whilst shooting, the shot is the right way up when it starts zip panning at 2,000 feet, prior to descending for it's close up....
The reality goes like this...the camera is switched on and locked, giving us the close up...the package is released, and rises according to plan...by about six feet, not according to plan, and then starts to descend...I give it a hefty bat with my fist, it rises again momentarily, and then sinks down over the sea wall to land in the toxic mud they call beach, with camera still running.
I have the resulting footage stashed somewhere in England.
It looks great. Such as it is.
Damn those pesky low flying low budget balloons.
So the film now opens with Gordon the Man scoffing an ice lolly. And not a dummy nor an aerial descent in sight.
Whilst shooting the above, we were asked on a number of occasions if "our grandad" was ok, as he looked a bit pastey. Talk about a concerned understatement.

WHY BITS OF FAMOUS DEAD PEOPLE?

Why does the star of the film sell bits of famous dead people??
And what does it have to do with the aerial opening that never was?

Well, I once had a most excellent friend (he really was!) called Silly Phil, back in my Stockport days.
He had previously been called simply Phil, but he succumbed to the temptations of far too much mescaline in the late 60's and his name changed accordingly.
Around 1970 some anarcho-freaks living opposite him blew up a drug squad car whilst he was being busted in his flat.
Silly Phil became hunted by both the freaks and the police...the freaks thought he'd later squealed on them ( he hadn't), and Det. Insp. Jackson ( his car ) wasn't bright enough to work out the unlikelihood of Phil blowing up the car whilst simultaneously being busted!
So Silly Phil went on the run.
The last time I saw him was in the mid 70's in a major railway station "somewhere in England".
He was still staying extremely mobile.
Then a few years later I heard he was in prison. He and a group of cohorts had been busted whilst operating a cross channel drug smuggling operation using enormous radio controlled cargo carrying model aircraft, controlled from speed boats below.
As a result my planned epic movie was going to have an aerial opening shot taken from a large remote controlled incoming model aircraft. However the idea of a cargo (and thus a plot premise) as mundane as drugs struck me as a bit stock.
Around this time, Charlie Chaplin's body was kidnapped from it's grave.
I needed something small and valuable but a little out of the ordinary for a model aircraft to be smuggling.
Not drugs. Not diamonds. Not money. Not nuclear materials. All too normal movie plot style.
But Charlie Chaplin? Not a whole body obviously, but there it was....famous dead peoples' body parts.
The customers??
Collectors, fans, perverts, those who might think to outlive their contemporaries by consuming them.
I remembered being shown pictures at school of Napoleon's testicles displayed as part of a priceless antique ornament, and off we went.
As time and the script went on, the opening and the model aircraft and the smuggling disappeared.
Only the body parts remained.
And at the last moment an attempt was made to shoot a rather different aerial opening sequence, but this was inspired more by a Dutch experimental movie I once saw, using a small camera attached to a kite.
The movie camera, attached to the kite, zip panned about spectacularly in the wind, only to descend at great speed to crash into long grass, which it showed in close up until rescued and switched off.
I liked it, so I nicked it.
Almost.

2008-02-23T06:10:00.000-08:00

TRANSLATE MY BLOG INTO ANY ONE OF EIGHT LANGUAGES RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW WITH BABEL FISH...

2008-02-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

GORDON THE MOVIE : PART TWO
PLUS: The 'Venue' magazine article which preceded the premiere...

THIS IS THE 'GORDON THE MOVIE' ARTICLE IN BATH AND BRISTOLS' 'WHAT'S ON?' MAGAZINE 'VENUE' WHICH CAME OUT JUST BEFORE THE FILM'S PREMIERE AT THE LITTLE THEATRE CINEMA IN BATH ON FRIDAY 19th NOVEMBER 1982.
BELOW THE SCANS IS A MORE EASILY READABLE TEXT VERSION OF THE ARTICLE.

'Venue' magazine were great supporters of the film, happily printing articles, giving me the front cover, ( a rare instance of a single Super 8 frame being blown up to front a magazine cover), paying for the film posters to be printed and loaning us their fly posting team.
My belated thanks to Dougal Templeton, the then editor and Dave Higgitt the film editor for their courageous support....neither ( luckily) had seen the film at this point. I also had great support from the (in)famous Johnny Walker on Great Western Radio, who did several live interviews and regularly plugged the film. True to character, his first words to me were "Hi...got any drugs man?"
Following on from this, one of the interviewees, a renowned and normally erudite local magazine editor invited in to give a review of the premiere, was inopportunely reduced to jibbering jelly when Johnny thrust a large fat one into his mouth seconds before the interview commenced.
The resulting interview went something like this... ( think Cheech and Chong here.....)
"So tell me about this film Gordon the Movie?...."
...." well, this guy Nasher maaaan, he's like made this ummm, film with, like absolutely nothing man....it's amazing, he's just like, done it man with like, nothing, no money man.......amazing...."
And on and on....etc etc....maaaan.

TEXT ONLY VERSION OF DAVE HIGGITT'S ARTICLE:

NASHERVISION

"You've heard of low budget - well, this is no budget!" Yes folks, it's finally here: the cheapest, wierdest feature film in the history of film making. Inspired by and starring a Bath piano-playing tramp who died before the film could be completed, 'Gordon - The Movie' is a home movie product with a big screen vision. It's tacky trash; plotless, bizarre and hauntingly surreal. Filmed in and around the less scenic parts of Bath and Bristol, 'Gordon' was four years in the making and is the work of a life time (so far anyway) by Paul 'Nasher' Nachman, part time philosopher and full time film nut. DAVE HIGGITT reports.

THE STORY behind the making of 'Gordon - The Movie' is a remarkable one, both tragic and funny. It was back in 1978 when Nasher happened to be out filming in the Walcot Village Hall. Well-liked down-and-out and pub pianist Gordon Robbins moved into frame and broke into an impromptu tap-dancing routine. Gordon had been in the Bath scene since the early sixties, dossing around, bashing key boards, sleeping rough and doing stints with the Bath Arts Workshop. He was a hard drinker but a man with a mind of his own. He enjoyed performing, Nasher enjoyed filming him...and the movie began.
"It had no real beginning as such," explains Nasher. "I had some ideas and images. I knew I wanted to involve Gordon and Mick Banks. I suppose if there was a moment of inspiration it was one winter afternoon when I was sitting in a hut in Victoria Park. I was freezing my balls off, it was getting dark. And I just sat there and hallucinated the whole film."

Gordon and the very thin and very talented street performer Mick Banks made a commitment to be available for however long it took to complete the project, and a variety of musical and acting talent from Bath would be drawn on when the need or opportunity arose over the next few years. With such a grandiose plan, Nasher decided that a bit of funding from South West Arts would not go amiss. So he wrote a script of sorts, applied for a £1,200 grant and got back the inevitable rejection.
"I thought it was quite cheap for a feature length film, but the only comment that filtered back from S.W.A. was that the whole idea was 'nihilistic'. I looked the word up in the dictionary and thought - oh yeah, that's how I think, I suppose. I was quite surprised to see a description of the inside of my head in a dictionary!"
"Still, it spurred me on to produce the film. I thought, I've never been called an '-istic' before - so it's gotta be art, innit?!"
"The film had to be cobbled together in dribs and drabs with old film stock and borrowed money. I don't really regret not getting the S.W.A. money -except that if the film could have been completed earlier, there's a chance that Gordon might still be alive. He died at a stage when we'd completely run out of money. He gained an enormous amount of self-respect from his involvement in the film."
Surely Nasher is not accusing the much-maligned South West Arts of MURDER? "Heaven forbid, heaven forbid, yes -whoops - no, nothing like that at all!"
One of the most charming (or should that be irritating?) aspects of 'Gordon' is that it deliberately plays on the numerous pitfalls of ultra low budget Super 8 film making: handheld camera, different film stock, 'natural' (poor) lighting, muffled dialogue and so on. These are woven, with baffling disregard for such niceties as clarity and plot development, into the film's fabric. And when I say fabric, I'm thinking of materials like hessian rather than silk!
One material which caused some very tricky problems was a piece of archaic black and white Super 8 stock (reputedly the first type ever produced) which was used to film some valuable footage of Gordon having a day out at the seaside (at Severn Beach, poor chap). Nasher: "It came back from the processors completely black. We messed around with some chemicals to try and rescue something.. We tried everything from hydrochloric acid downwards. Hydrochloric acid produced clear film which was going a bit far! It was like retrieving material from the grave - very much so with Gordon being dead. We finally got the balance right - the image we came up with a peculiar yellowy black and white. A very wishy washy splodgy sort of effect. . . " (Which works a treat, by the way).
Nasher continues: "The messiness of the quality was very much a part of the plan. I've actually re-shot some of the film off a screen to make it look worse, more grainy, more sludgy." Other technological innovations which ensure the film's 'unusual' visual appeal never drops off include 'Sludgerama' and 'Nasher-vision'. Sludgerama involves sticking a wide-angled lens on the camera - this makes the whole image go slushy, a bit like looking at the world through a large fried onion! Nashervision is more straight forward - the public screenings of the film will be projected, cinemascope style, onto an oversize screen, with the top and the bottom of the image being unceremoniously lopped off. Apart from losing the occasional head and feet, Nasher assures us, this will not affect the film's quality overmuch.

Trying to glean some sort of sense from 'Gordon's' plot is a painstaking task. Gordon, it would seem, earns a living from selling bits of famous dead people (a warning to Elvis Presley fans - you may find this film offensive). Throughout the film he is haunted by a tall thin man (Banks) who pops up in a variety of disguises. It is never made clear if Gordon is persuing Banks or vice versa. Is Gordon's past catching up with him? What is the tall thin man's intention? Is he one man, or many? Paranoid nutter or innocent victim? Does it even matter?Nasher: "I'm not really into plots. There are hundreds of interpretations but I am as disinterested by the answer as I'm intrigued by the fact that I don't know the answer." Quite so. If Nasher doesn't really know what it's all about, what chance have we got?
Why, for example, is there a crazy, illogical car chase stuck in the middle of the film? Nasher: "Uhm. . . well, the link sequence which explains why, never got shot. But what the hell; if all those Hollywood films can have car chases, why shouldn't I?" In a sense, the budgetless, timeless manner in which the film was shot has created its own structure. As we go to press a number of scenes still haven't been shot -including the ambitious opening sequence. This little cracker will (hopefully) make Orson Welles and Cecil B de Mille look like shoddy B movie directors. A camera will hover like an eagle 500 feet above the barren wastelands of Severn Beach and then shoot down at alarming rate and focus in on the figure of Gordon. How it's done? Well it's got something to do with balloons, long pieces of string and a lot of luck.
But hold on. How can Nasher still be making footage of Gordon if that good gentleman died over a year ago? "Well. . . we made a dummy of him. It's pretty realistic; you can't tell the difference at 20 yards." But isn't that in rather bad taste? "No, not in the slightest. I think Gordon would have liked the film finished by whatever means possible. Anyway, I think we're ignoring 'taste'. We're not into taste, just into making a film..."

And by hook or by crook, he's done it. Four years of begging, borrowing, conning, stealing (yes, stealing). . . and two deaths in the cast aside from Gordon himself. It's parochial surrealism on an epic scale, the sort of grandiose lunacy which makes Herzog's 'Fitzcarraldo' look like a day trip to Margate.
'Gordon' also captured a lot of the energy and talent coming out of Bath in the last few years. There's a lovely hypnotic soundtrack from two excellent local musicians, Charles Dodgeson and JJ. Reble; some rare footage of the long defunct band Interview, featuring none other than Manny (Tears for Fears) Elias; and a superbly over the top cameo from Brian Popay in his last ever appearance as Elvis fanatic and part-time grocer, Rocky Rickets.
Something for all the family? Hardly. 'Gordon - The Movie' is a difficult, often frustrating experience; but if you're looking for something different, a film which has 'CULT' stamped all over it, you need search no more.
The last words go to Paul Nachman (who else?): "I don't really care if anyone thinks it's a good or a bad film. I think a few people at least will have an unusual or enjoyable or somethingable time. I'm not trying to con people into seeing a 'normal' feature film. It's a film made with no money and that alone should make it worth watching."

Public Screenings
World Premiere.
Friday November 19th, 11 pm, Little Theatre, Bath, £2. Gaze in wonder at the stars! Brian Popay, Mick Banks, Jenny Potter and Nasher himself will arrive for the show in a chaffeur-driven Daimler! Relax in comfort as the good members of the Natural Theatre Company (dressed for the occasion in red plastic mini skirts) greet you and usher you to your seats!
Further Showings.
Saturday November 26th and Sunday 27th, 1 1 pm Europa. Cinema, adj Holiday Inn, Bristol £2.
ALL Screenings...
Will feature LIVE entertainment! Tony 'Birdman' Durant will keep you amused with his bird impressions and one man interpretations of Star Wars and the Battle of Britain. A real local eccentric, this guy. And those loveable Bath doo-woppers, The Wimptones, will have you bopping in the aisles before 'Gordon' arrives.
Tickets.
Can be bought in advance from Rival Records, Music Market, Hat and Feather, Walcot Reclamation Yard Cafe, Bilbos Bookshop and the Little Theatre (Bath); Rival Records, Music Market, Revolver, Full Marks, Virgin, Europa (Bristol). Or get them on the night.
SPECIAL OFFER!!
An exclusive offer to VENUE readers- 20 pairs of tickets for either of the Bristol screenings at £3.00 a pair! Just pop into our offices Monday to Friday between 2pm—5.30pm.

2008-02-07T15:51:00.000-08:00

Gordon the Movie...
Where Daydreams are Nightmares,
and Death is a Way of Life...

Online for the first time ever...
Part One: the first 7 minutes.
More to come...

I posted this ages ago, but it's a bit more relevant here...
The story behind the movie, part one.
Of the story, that is, not of the movie.

"Gordon the Movie" grew out of my frustration with only ever filming documentary material.....only filming whatever happened in front of the camera, always beyond my control.....obviously I could choose the venue, and the event, and to an extent pick my shots, but always on the fly, and never with any say in the action or the content, or in deciding who did what, to whom, with what and when.
But alongside creative frustration, I had a few other problems.....for one, I was scared shitless of even beginning to attempt to organise anything or anyone, and so although the answer to my frustration was obvious.....put together a project of my own and make it into a movie.....I had another frustration to contend with....that of my own inability to overcome fears and anxieties about getting out there and actually doing it.
Of course, if I came up with a scenario of my own, quite deliberate and specific, with "I made this! " stamped all over it, yet another major fear rears it's ugly head......I'll be setting myself up to be judged......if I make a crap film everyone will know I really am crap, or even worse, make an alright film and people will know I finally pulled something off and start having expectations of me.
Oh No!.......The Horror........The Unimaginable Horror.......
And so far, I'd managed to get away with producing so little complete material on which to be judged, that I was quite safe from any of this. And when I accidentally did do something ok, like the film of the Nuclear Waste Train Ambush at Sharpness in '79, it could be put down to being a mere flash in the pan. "He'll soon get over the hump and settle back down to being crap again."
So there I was, hoist by my own, if I say so myself, not inconsiderable petard.
Safest place to be is, as always, in stasis.
Do nothing, risk nothing, remain quite safe.
Of course whilst getting nowhere.
But that's the object of the exercise, isn't it??
But in this funny old Universe of ours, things have a funny old way of turning around, so that even with the worst, the most negative intentions in the world, you can all of a sudden find yourself inadvertently being propelled screaming and shouting in the most unlikely of positive directions.
So dammit if one day shortly afterwards I wasn't out testing a new camera, running off footage around Walcot Village Hall in a cavalier, devil-may-care fashion, when out of the blue and into my frame danced one Gordon Robbins.
Gordon was in his fifties, and had been around the Walcot scene for years, doing stuff with the Arts Workshop and playing piano around the pubs. He'd even played toy piano live on stage with Bath's first punk band, "Discharge".
He was a talented but ne'er do well piano player, and liked a little more than a drop, as they say. He had only to hear a tune once in order to perform his own extraordinary version of it.
His renditions of "The Laughing Policeman" and of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" were legendary in these yer (those yer) parts.
So he and I sparred around the camera for a minute or two. I said how about doing this and he tried it out. He said he could try doing that and we tried it out. We threw things back and forth to one another, the camera acting as the focus point. I realised I'd found someone who would do what I asked them to in front of the camera, enhance it with their performance, and be happy doing so.
So I had a first element.
A character, albeit a real one, comfortable in front of the lens, but eccentric and not exactly a traditional romantic male lead.
So I started thinking....who else could I work with.....who else would consider working with me for that matter? Who was un-snotty enough to take direction from me? Who was un-snotty enough even to turn up, let alone turn up over and over again? I thought about the Natural Theatre Company stalwarts, but we're talking big egoes here, and I thought them unlikely to work ongoingly on a project of mine without ongoingly giving me problems.
Then I thought of Mick Banks, also a member of the NTC, but of a different breed entirely, and with another Theatre Group running concurrently for performing his and partner Corinne D'Cruz's material.
Mick and I had always got on well, there would be no ego battle to contend with there. So .......maybe I had two characters, well no, actually two actors, well, one character, one actor......in fact no characters, no plot, no story, just two people......basically two people who would allow me to boss them around, and who would also agree to be committed for the duration of the project, however lengthy. So something was possible, but what???
So now it's winter 1979.I have two people who have agreed to commit themselves to my will, well at least they have up to a point! But I don't have much else. A few images, ideas, snatches of dialogue, some fragmentary plot ideas, but nothing like a movie.
So I'm out for a wander around the town and it's freezing, snow on the ground and more falling.
I'm cold and wet and thoughtful as I huddle down in a shelter in Victoria Park.
I'm sort of watching people around me hurrying home in the dark, but sort of not. Definately more sort of not.
Images, ideas, memories all start to swirl around in front of me.....it's hard to distinguish one from another, remembered nightmares merge with ever present fears, a haunting gas hallucination from the dentists as a child merges with characters from a theatre production, all the more entangled with my worst moments in movies.
Gordon playing the piano becomes my own terrifying Lon Chaney in the original "Phantom of the Opera". Ralph Oswick wearing a massive rotting wedding gown is a decrepit greaving Miss Faversham in my own variation on "Great Expectations".
Mick Banks is now the terrifying plastic surgeon wheeling the restrained and horrified Rock Hudson off to the slaughter in "Seconds", and a vividly blood curdling encounter with my dead grandmother whilst tripping as a youngster merges with the recent news story regarding the kidnapping from it's grave of Charlie Chaplin's dead body.
Images of flames, blood, offal, blackness and death surround the characters, all these and many more, intertwined and interconnecting, flooding and billowing around me.......the reality of the park and it's passersby has diminished to nothing.....the vision is all encompassing.
I come to.
The park is back.
I'm frozen, but I have my movie.
There are some big fat gaps, but it's there.....I know it, I just watched it.
The directors first cut.
Always the deepest, as they say.
I realise that I have to start shooting immediately, otherwise the vision and it's feeling of being translateable onto film will fade.
I also realise that although I have lots of middle bits, and an ending, I am short of a beginning.
So I fix a day, and decide that the following Wednesday, I will start shooting.
And first things first, I'll start with the end.
First.
That way at least I always have an end.
Which has to be a good start. I think.
So now for the horrors of actually organising something......what if this? what if that? what if no-one takes me seriously? what if no-one turns up?The ending is based on a terrifying experience I had many years before, whilst still suffering the aftermath of excessive longterm LSD usage, an experience involving Lon Chaney as The Phantom of the Opera.
Chaney's image in the 1920's silent classic had terrified me from being a child. (It still does, I shudder as I write this now!).
So much so that I'd always avoided watching the film on the basis that if just the still image did my head in, seeing the movie would probably finish me off completely.
So it's 1973 and I'm staying up all night for a mammoth editing session at Bath Film Unit's HQ behind Great Pulteney Street, all alone but for some cold takeaway, as was my wont.
Somebody has kindly left me a roll of unknown ancient silent movie footage and an equally ancient projector, so I can scan through it for amusement when I need a break from editing later on. And about four in the morning, with a hangover and a cold chicken and mushroom pie lodged firmly, I proceed to run the mystery reel.
Oh what fun, I exclaim. Very dim black and white. Lots of flicker. Trailers....trailers for westerns from the twenties. Oh and trailers for dramas from the twenties.
Oh what joy, and, oh, something a little more substantial than a trailer, we're drifting slowly towards, what is that?.....the images projected by the 1930's home movie projector are none too clear.....yes, it's a massive piano, no, a theatre organ, and there's somebody there with their back to me, wearing a cloak, playing the thing, now we're closer............at this point, although I'd never seen the film, the hairs on the back of my neck clearly recognise both the movie and the actor, and they know exactly what's going to happen next..............as the camera closes in behind the figure, Lon Chaney, the Phantom of the Opera, for it is he, turns slowly round to camera and I'm face to face with the most terrifying image I've ever avoided in my whole life.
All the blood drains from my body....there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
I am not a happy bunny.
So this, according to my park hallucination, is my ending.
Easy.
Nothing to it.
Make a list.
Tick things off.
Cameraman? Me.
Sound man? Me.
Lighting man? Guess who.
Grand piano? Walcot Village Hall has a baby one.
The hall is available next Wednesday afternoon.
Wheelchair for the slow tracking shot? The Red Cross have one available for hire.
Someone to push it? Kitty from the Arts Workshop's shop agrees to push me in it.
The Pianist/Phantom? Gordon is available....( by now, I'm so efficient that I actually checked that one first.)
So Wednesday comes....I'm in a state of disbelief.....all the elements are there.
Everyone and everything arrives.
I station the props and set up the lighting.
I already know which piece of music, I hallucinated that too. It's the Third Man theme.
We take our start positions. Gordon begins to play.
The wheelchair borne camera tracks slowly along the floor, towards Gordon's back.
With a tungsten bright movie light pointing directly towards camera from beyond Gordon, in camera he is barely a silhouette, the white light flashing around him with each movement of his head and body, until as we track in closer and closer towards him, he abruptly stops playing the Third Man theme and turns slowly to camera.
We are now in close up as he throws his head back and starts to laugh.
With my prompting, the laughter becomes ever more maniacal, as he whoops and cackles to camera.
I signal to him to tip his head back slightly and keep laughing.
He does so.
The light flashes through between his jaws.
That image became the poster for the movie. We do one more take, but use the first.
We've used up nearly a whole 3 minute roll!
Damn the expense!
And I know the heavily outdated stock will overexpose the image like mad, giving Gordon an enormous flashing cloud sized halo.
Perfect.
I have my revenge.
I've made the Phantom of the Opera my own.

More to come.
Don't hold your breath.

2008-01-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

HURRAH FOR THIS REALLY IS THE UP TO THE MINUTE REPORT....PHOTOS TAKEN ONLY MINUTES AGO.
HURRAH!
Oh also I'd like to say goodbye to Jacquie who worked at the Bell from time to time, ( when it suited them!) and who died a few days ago...thanks to Colin Gnome for letting me know.
Me and Jacq had a strange relationship....for quite some time she was my stalker....I remember after the first Walcot Booze Selling Day she stealthily intercepted me on my route home at about three in the morning needing help with a broken heel ( shoe only!)....I suggested my sellotape would not be up to the job.... sellotape = euphemism for willy?
I then made a run for it.
The stalking continued but eventually we turned it into a joke and we became mates, albeit a little cautiously on my part.....part = euphemism for willy?
So goodbye mate...see you shortly!!!

Lao hiding in my bathroom earlier today.....
but my surveillance cameras tell the tale...

Eucalyptus.....
Mmmmmm.....
And if you've got the sniffles, just stuff
one of these logs up yer pillow when you
go to bed at night.
Doesn't do much for your nose, but certainly
impresses your partner no end....

Pool in rain.
These most recent photos are as shot....ie not adjusted so you can see how Saquarema has turned into Manchester the last week, just in time for Carnaval, which madness starts on Saturday, a couple of weeks early this year as this year Jesus got born two weeks early....
Do you understand this ??
I don't.
Anyway, continuous rain, not always heavy, and grey and cold for here.
That is, not very!!
Cold.
Ooooh, just looked out of door and it's brightening....and oooh it's 77 degrees.
Manchester no more.
Bathgate no more.
Linwood no more.
Methil no more.
Irvine no more.

Bless you Buddy Hollys.

Just needs balustrades and bob's yer unc.
Oh and lights and sockets and etc etc etc.

2008-01-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

HURRAH FOR UP TO THE MINUTE PROGRESS REPORTS.
THIS ISN'T IT THOUGH.
THIS IS YESTERDAYS.

The frame for the shady terrace comes along in leaps and bounds....
using eucalyptus logs and stuff.
The shade will be provided by great big palm fronds.
Some of my best fronds will be up there.

For some reason I've built a railway station.
Chicken Town.
You fucking wait and fucking wait....
The fucking trains are fucking late...
You fucking wait and fucking wait...
In fucking chicken town.

Bless you JC Clarke.

In my wet room
With black tiling...
It never drained properly so we're erecting a small wall.

Bless you Pete Brown...shared a floor with him once !

Hear my drain a-coming....
It works...water comes out da end....

Bless you Jimi.

2008-01-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

HURRAH FOR GUTTERING!
THERE'S NOTHING LIKE IT GOOD OLD GUTTERING!
THE SMELL OF SOLVENT, THE ROAR OF NAILS.
THE CLICK OF SNIPPING, THE PRIDE OF WALES.
HURRAH FOR GUTTERING!
EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS APPEALING!
ON THE FLOOR OR ROOF OR EVEN ON THE CEILING!
SO LET'S GET ON WITH THE UHHHH....GUTTERING INSTALLATION THEN!
OK, LETS.....

Lao installing the....I'm afraid to type it....

And again...keep it stum....

Fuck, not more....
Oh thank dee Lord, in the background we see the steadily advancing shady nook roof terrace above the quaint guest house with eyebrows....nearly clear, now runnnnnn....

I was very drunk.
And I sort of made some new friends.
Well I made them be.
And I appear to be scaring off opponents.
Or I'm just very happy.
I don't know do I.
It wasn't me alright.
And why is there a big wet patch on my t-shirt?
And who am I asking?
And why don't they know?

2008-01-30T09:15:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! WE'RE OFF TO MOMBASSA AT THE BACK OF THE LAGOONS TO LOOK AT PALMS TO BUY FOR THE GARDEN.
HURRAH!

Here's Filho.
He's driving the lovely car.

Here's Lao.
A rare shot of him not working.
Or playing football.
Or drunk.
( The drunk bit is a joke except on Sundays after the match.)

A lovely windpump.

A lovely road and a lovely tree.
And some other more nondescript trees.
But still lovely in their own nondescript sort of way.
Nondescript and just a little bit pathetic kind of a way.
With barely a stroke of individuality discernable amongst them.
Bastards.
What if all trees were as faceless...where would we be then eh?
Nobody would know would they....
They'd all breed and breed and all look exactly the same.
Everyone could be anywhere.
People lost without trace in massive faceless forests all over the world.
Massive faceless forests full of masses of lost traceless people.
Traceless, faceless people, with not a jot of individuality to distinguish one from another.
Bastards.
And then where would we be??
Massive unending masses of faceless faithless people blindly bludgeoning their pointless way through massive unending forests massed with faceless pathetic nondescript bloody trees. And what are they covered in?
Bloody leaves.
Are any of them tartan?
Any of them polka dots with candy pink metal finishes?
Any trace of gold leaf?
Diagonal striping?
Tassles?
Tiny throw cushions?
Are they bollocks my cock you fuck you not there are......
FUCKING GREEN.
FUCKING GREEN THE LOT OF THEM.
Bastards.
Eh?
Eh?
Eh?

2008-01-30T09:11:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! MY GARDEN AND GROUNDS AND EVERYTHING ARE COMPLETELY FLOODED!
HURRAH!

The guest house and access to it.....marvelous. What pratt designed this then??
Oh, it was me......
Actually it drains as soon as the rain stops. Honest.

Change the subject quick.
Look, a owl!

Palms we looked at in Mombassa when on buying palms for the garden trip last week.

An impressionist view of the street where is the bar what we went to as described below here.
I thought the bloke who painted it said he lived in a van and his name was Dave Gough, but he couldn't hear me very well, and he actually said he lived in a Dive and his name was Van Gough. No that can't be it. His name was Dave and his van's name was Gough. Dave's van Gough. Nope. Not getting this. I was very drunk.
Anyway, s'nice innit.

2008-01-30T08:57:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! A FABULOUS NIGHT OUT AND SOME NEW FRIENDS....
This is starting to sound extremely camp.

I got invited out t'other saturday night by some friends ( it does happen....)
to a recently expanded bar/ rezzy in Saquarema right by the bridge over the waterway between the Ocean and the lagoons....an idyllic spot.
Some friends of some of the friends were playing in the open there that night.
They were hot, but the night was not.
It pissed down so we retreated inside, where I got talking to Sonia, wife of Jean the guitarist/vocalist, and later to Jean his-self. Really nice people. They invited me to jam with them, and drunk as I was, I accepted.
Next day when I'd sobered up I shit myself.
We shall see what happens. Hopefully I'll have some kind o finger related accident in the meantime.
Might be best for all concerned.

Here you can see Lao dealing with the results of two weeks of me tending the pool on my own. He's actually hoovering. I thought it sounded a bit dangerous, but he assures me it's dddzzzzzzzzzzt what was that?

Filho hoovering the grass for some reason....I thought it sounded a bit dangerous, but he assures me it's dddzzzzzzzzzzt what was that?

Sonia tinkering with the electronic equipment in the wardrobe.....I thought it sounded a bit dangerous, but she assures me it's dddzzzzzzzzzzt what was that?
Just can't seem to keep the staff these days.

2008-01-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! HERE IS MY HOUSE ALL SUNNY
WITH IT'S FULLY OPENING CANTILEVERED
DOORS AND WINDOWS.
HURRAH!

Open plan.
Just as I planned it.
Open.

More open-ness.
In one side and out the other.
That's what they used to say about my head at school.
How right they all were.
Just look where I ended up.
Actually, my charming mother was called in to see the headmaster
in my last days at the Stockport shit-hole I was forced into, and said she'd sent him an above average eleven year old and he'd sent her back a fifteen year old moron!
This is the fantastic level of support I received from family and teachers in my formative years.
Thank fuck for shit loads of drugs and booze and rock'n'roll and occasional glimpses of sex.
Look, over there, on that hill, I can glimpse some sex....

The typical open plan living room and kitchen of a grown
up fifteen year old moron.

The typical open plan dining, lounging and ummm living areas of a grown up fifteen year old moron.
Oooooh look over there, beyond those palm trees, another glimpse of yes, it is, it's a glimpse of some more sex.....
I bless my education.

2008-01-30T08:47:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! CLEANING THE FLOOR WITH A HOSEPIPE!
GREAT FUN ON A HOT DAY!

Sonia loves this job.....she won't let me do it!!!!!!!
(To be honest I've never actually asked....)

My new fully opening cantilever door falls off....
Revealing the fact that it's secured into a gap of nothingness....hollow bricks! There's nothing in them! They're hollow!
The wind caught it and bang!
Bugger fell orfff!
Here you can see loads of nails and iron wire added to reinforce the new replacement concrete....my suggestion....sometimes I do understand what's going on around me!!
Sometimes!

Here I am having an inkling of what's going on around me.
I'm inkling in the pool.

More inkling.
My estates.

2008-01-30T08:44:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! MY NEW WATER TANK BURST OUT OF THE GROUND AT THE FIRST SIGN OF HEAVY RAIN, AND NOW HAS TO BE REIGNED IN!
Please note the two uses of a word that sounds the same. Even though it is spelled differently. And yet the meanings are different. But the pronunciation is the same. Both times. And in every way. Different.

Brick cladding goes in to isolate the hole from the surrounding earth.

The rebated marble sills go into the doorways..
Therein hangs a tale of woe and twattishness.
It finally took over seven weeks to get 9 pieces of marble delivered.
My fault of course.
I made the unforgiveable mistake of paying up front.
I didn't want them to deliver and catch me without cash as I have to travel quite a distance to get any.
So I paid the whole amount in advance.
Big mistake.
Only ever pay a deposit or less!
We phoned them dozens of time.
The stuff arrived in dribs and drabs.
And the last piece, for my bedroom doorway arrived 7 weeks and one day after I ordered.
And paid.
What they don't factor in is that I will never ever go there again, and will actively dissuade others from using them.
I have a black list!!!
Not all suppliers are like this here, some are excellent, but some are not!

More paths, this time for little cars....

Uh oh.
New problem. Need guttering along new verandah.

2008-01-30T08:41:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! MY ORANGE TREES ARE GROWING BIGGER!

Here they are....the lighter upper leaves are the new growth since planting in August....come on my babbers....I'm fucking broke....

Mother and day old foal grazing amongst the orange groves....rustic innit?!
Ok....the mother is grazing and the foal is drinking it's mummie's milk.
No need for pedanticismisticness is there?

Talking of which...some of the disenfranchised youth I
work with having an orange squash by the pool before
another gruelling jobseeking session.

Looks like they've finally found employment....
Where's me bling????

2008-01-30T08:38:00.000-08:00

HURRAH! FULLY OPENING WINDOWS AND DOORS ARE PAINTED WHITE!

Look! All White! All White!
Oooooh there's a dead man in my pool.....
(English popular tv joke)
(or is it....now I'm not so sure....)
( Am I mixing up Michael Barrything and
foppish tv chat show host.....)
(I've been away so long I hardly kow the place.....)

And fully opening!
Doors, that is....

Mmmm, ditto.

A crab. You weren't expecting that now, were you?
This is the second time after a storm there's been a crab in the pool.
What the connection is I have no idea.
I was so taken with it being there that I let it stay and then it died because of the chlorine.
Oooops.
More great Karma.
So there was something dead in my pool as well, after all...

2008-01-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

HURRAH!!! A NEW BAR RESTAURANT HAS OPENED JUST AROUND THE CORNER FROM MY HOUSE......
Only trouble is they only sell beer on draught which oddly here is much more expensive than the usual bottled stuff....
And their food prices are expensive.
But my mate Leonardo is head waiter there, (he used to work at my regular bar by the lagoon, but they fell out) and their lasagne is excellent, and they do take outs in special round foil containers that have a machine to put the lid on that you turn the handle round and round and it has cogs and I want one....looks like it came out of a Victorian mail order catalogue for medical instruments....

This is Vania, Leonardo's missus on the left with nipper and the lady of the restaurant on the right with nipper.

Fabino and Lao keep having these strange get-togethers.....somethings going on, I can sense it.

The pool just after being topped up with water from a truck and it is now very full to the brim.
Yummy.

Leonardo and family get straight in it.
Excellent.

2008-01-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

HURRAH FOR THE STONE STEPPY PATHY THINGS!
New and interesting ways to trip over!
Just what I needed!

Pathways.

And more pathways.....

This time you're on your own.....

No, you're wrong....
These are the new foldy all the way back doors before painting.....

2008-01-30T02:47:00.000-08:00

INCREDIBLE!!
I'VE INVENTED MOVING PICTURES.....
Well, in fact I've managed to snatch a copy of the infamous Royal Bank of Scotland TV ad with me acting as a miserable no-hope record store owner.... (OK, so I wasn't acting, I was having a VERY BAD DAY)....and I've managed to stick it on my blog....amazing!

The story went thusly....
On their first scouting visit, the ad producers said they were looking for an independent record store for the second run of "One Day..." ads for the RBoS "One Account".
They liked the look of the shop, and asked me to come up with a few "One day...." test takes of my own to camera.
I came up with some genuine positive stuff, like " One day, I'll finish renovating my flat, sell the shop and bugger off to Brasil.....".
I also did a version without the bugger.
They were very pleased and said they'd like me to be in the shoot proper.
After a few weeks, I got a call to say they'd be there the next day.
Great, I thought.
I expect the production company thought " Great!" too.
Little did they know.
The phrase " Many a slip twixt cup and lip " springs to mind.
The night before the shoot, as so often happens, I "accidentally" went on a bit of a bender. The worst of my hangovers, combined as they are with my seven lots of medication which all say "Do not combine with Alcohol" regularly end up rather twisted. The next morning, I was struggling with just such a hanging over.
And feeling good and twisted.
Then to add insult to self inflicted injury, Jonno, my over-paid, over-egoed, under-capable and overally under-whelming builder arrives at the shop. We have a par-for-the -course full on slanging match about the work barely in progress, and as he leaves I'm bellowing "You f***ing useless f***ing c*nt" at full wack after him, just as the TV crew pass him in the doorway and enter the shop.
As they do so, I see one of the crew motioning in my direction to the producer and mouthing silently, pleadingly "It's not him is it?".
The other guy despairingly confirms that indeed it is. Him.
Oh, the horror.
So it all went downhill from there, really.
I'm stuck there scowling like Bluto, in a filthy black mood.
Like the bullied GI who shoots himself in "Full Metal Jacket".
I call it "looking through the pigface".
I can barely grunt at the crew.
I refuse to look at the camera.
The idea of saying "One day anything ..." is outside my reality.
One day.... I'd rather rip the head off something.
They coax anything they can out of me.
That's not much.
The best line I can muster is " One day I'll be really happy..." but I spit the word "happy" venemously across the room.
You just know it's never gonna happen.....because the guy saying it knows it's never gonna happen.
It's just not on this guy's menu.

In the final cut, as seen on national TV, just in case you had any remaining doubts about this poor bastard's future, we cut to a shot of me monotonously labelling great piles of dirty old records, like I know I'm obviously going to do every day until I die, miserable, hopeless, resigned to my ignominious fate....
After the shoot, I knew it all went so badly that they couldn't possibly use any of the footage.
Well, perhaps in a commercial for psychoanalysis.
So I was amazed when people started telling me they'd seen me on TV.
It was fun at first....people saying they'd been sat at home stoned in front of the telly when they could swear I'd just been in an advert, and their missus saying don't be daft, your off your face, what on earth would he be doing in a bank advert?
Complete strangers would come up to me at half seven in the morning at car boots and ask " Are you happy yet then??" and I'd have no idea what they were talking about. ( Half seven in the morning is never good for me ....)
Old mates rang me up from all over asking me to confirm it was me...
Yes, if it looks like me and it sounds like me and it's miserable like me....it's really me.
Fame, like so many things, wears off after a bit, and I soon wished I'd never done it.
But it did raise the profile of my failing shop slightly.
And it's good to have a laugh now'n'again, eh?

Thanks to Andrew at visit4info.com for the ad.

2007-12-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

FANTASTIC START.....a view of THE SERVICE AREA COMPLETE
WITH NEW CAIXA......
Whadaya mean "Whadaya mean???"
Obvious isn't it???

Well, just to fill you in, every time we filter the pool water we have to dump some into the uh, dump area.
Alright, street.
Which means the pool is then increasingly less than full, which means you have to buy a truck full of water. ( see previous November post for picture of a water truck....only if you fancy it, obviously. )
So for reasons of economy and convenience we've installed a dump...the caixa or tank as you gringoes would say, for the water and whilst in it, the water gradually clears, leaving clean water which can be pumped back into the pool. Every now and again you pump out the remnants and clean the caixa, or tank, as you gringoes would say.
Of course it's not really that simple ....little funlettes like the pool pump is at the wrong level to do the job, so we have to use the well pump which is round the other side of the house, so we have to run pipes there and back and etc. etc.
So the pool and house plumbings are fairly complex ....still, nice to have a hobby ( apart from the obvious one.....).

2007-12-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

MORE EXCITING STUFF AS LAO CLIMBS THE
LADDER OF UPWARDNESS....

Well, for some reason, all the big doors and windows have four sections, but only two open. Even though there are bolts on the bottom, the outer parts remain shut, and have never been fitted with hinges.

Well, them days is over.
As of today, we have fully opening doors....
Its going to be like living in a field, as the doors and windows are massive. Anisio suggested we could use the living room as a car park from now on.
It's good to know my friends have faith in me.

This, pretty inexplicably, is a pic of figs growing on my incredibly ugly termite ridden prone to collapse , well, presumably, fig tree.
And that's all I have to say on the matter.
Apart from we're going to chop it down, as if it gets much bigger it'll chop itself down, and my porch roof with it.
Bloody termites.

So there, on the left, is the first fully folding back fully opening door.
Cool huh?

2007-12-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

DIGGING ANOTHER HOLE....
I can't stop Fabino....everytime I turn my back, he's off smashing concrete, shovelling up great gobbets of clay and disappearing off towards China.

To disguise his obsession from me, he stashes things in the holes, so as I won't notice.
"Oh, I'm building a drainage tank for the pool filtration system"
Or
"Yeh, we need holes for the Manilas for the guest house toilets...."

yeah right.
He tried to tell me this was a potty

And to prove it, he said, here it is full of wee.

Oh yeah, and the best one of all.....
"Ummm, this one's for, like umm, a swimming pool, yeh?....."

Yeah nice one Fabino....thanks a lot.

2007-12-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

WELL, DEPENDING WHETHER YOU'RE READING UPWARDS OR DOWNWARDS, YOU'LL KNOW WHO DUG THIS.
...OR, OF COURSE, YOU WON'T....

In the UK it's crop circles.
Here at my house it's fucking great holes in the mud.

One day, my girl, all this will be yours as far as the eye can see....
Needs a few well placed palms....and some more turf....

Talking of turf.....

Heres my new tank/caixa/potty.
Sunbathing on the deck.

2007-12-03T11:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just have to make sacrifices.
So every now and again, I give up my normally hectic weekends to work with local youth.

Out of the goodness of my heart I take them into my home and under my wing.....I try to broaden their horizons.....here we're making an omelette from eggs....

Here an exercise in comportment, vital for any up and coming young lady....

And here an exercise in overcoming self conciousness.....
They really are doing rather well... (under my careful supervision of course....)

Here a well received session is underway on dealing with foreigners....sign language; tips of the trade.

Well, I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, ( in fact I can't reach it).
But I have to say, from the results I've seen, these weekends are well worth my efforts, and d'you know, I've even come to enjoy them somewhat myself.

2007-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

TURF. SPRAY. FILHO.

Yes, you got it first time....Filho spraying the turf.

More turfing.

This time evidence of an additional element....tamping. And turf obviously.

Ummmm. Well it's another bit of montage innit.
Avante garde omelette preparation.
Isadora Duncan eat yer heart out.
Ooooh and mind yer scarfffffff luvvvv.......oops.

2007-12-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

NO MORE FLOODING.
WE THE NEIGHBOURHOOD HAVE RISEN.
MUCH LIKE THE FLOOD WATERS.

Here we see the neighbours and my workers and me ganging up to build a quebra mola.....a very small dam across the top of the road, where the rain water floods in torrents from the main road into ours, where it stops....see pic below.

Here is a road sign....that's my road.

Leonardo and family stop to lend their support....only lend it mind, we had to give it back after. Their daughter hates me. As you can see.

Well this is obviously this, obviously.
At least I assume so.

2007-12-03T11:22:00.000-08:00

40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS.
RAIN. RAIN AND MORE RAIN.

And then it just sits there, day after day....swallowing vehicles whole.
This VW had completely disappeared within an hour.
Somebody said they saw it driven off.
But I know they're probably in on the whole thing.
Bastards.

Fencing. I've got a new fence. It looks nice. And also looks like we have nothing to hide. Apart from maybe some monkeys or a giraffe.

The house from the street with new fence and stuff.

The final shot is of our dam.
Don't know if it works yet.
Hasn't rained for fucking weeks.

2007-11-15T04:26:00.000-08:00

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.....

2007-11-15T04:24:00.000-08:00

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....

2007-11-15T04:15:00.000-08:00

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......

2007-11-15T04:13:00.000-08:00

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......

2007-11-15T04:11:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-11-15T04:08:00.000-08:00

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!!???$$££&&****

2007-11-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

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.......?

2007-11-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

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....??

2007-10-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought I'd start off with some random pix.....
....but that's actually a complete lie....due to the appallling connection here,
any semblance of order whilst uploading gets decimated so I end up
gathering stray pix and posting them completely out of any planned order.....
so in fact here are some pix....some are random, some aren't , some are from
the archival depths, some aren't....
And one or two I suspect I've used before....
Well it's my age isn't it....

Before going further, I'd like to dedicate something or other to my mate Sonia's
son Pierre, who died on Sunday, aged only 20.
It doesn't get much shitter than that, really.
He'd been ill for some time, then had been in hospital here for the last 10 days or so...
Sonia ( mostly) had been with him round the clock throughout.
They ran and reran tests and suggested a different illness every day, you know, the usual ones they suggest when they've no fucking idea, like meningitis or pneumonia.
He just wasted away.
Whatever it wasn't, he died Sunday morning in Sonia's arms.
As is custom here, he was buried within 24 hours....in fact he was in the ground by 3PM the same day.
I guess the dedication really goes to Sonia and her daughter Pamela.

Anyway, now we're all morbidly thinking about our own mortality, here's the blog.

Taken by Sonia at Estacao Boqueirao, me and mates Bas and Leandra,
techno heads from Eindhoven....she organises parties and he is chef at my pals Paddy and Colette's Indonesian restaurant there...P & C own the groovy house I rented overlooking the footy pitch...the eaterie sounds cool.....motorbikes hanging off the ceiling and original 50's rock'nroll blasting out......

Talking of chefs......

This is Glasto '95.....with the lovely Anna Joy who brought oodles of , yes, joy, into my life.....
and above is me and her and Hannah and good 'ole Steve Rowboat.

This is a bit longer ago....Mr Higgins class at Didsbury Road Primary School, Stockport....everyone was terrified of him until they got in his class, when he became yer best mate. Brilliant teacher....that was the last time I learned anything (legal) at school.....I coasted the first year of Secondary school on his teaching, then retired age 13 to a life of crime and deception. It's going quite well so far, thanks for asking.

And which little cherub is me you might ask??? Second row from top, second from left.

Cringe.

I dreamt about Judith Fowler last week believe it or not.....haven't seen her since then....1965!!!!She's the blonde third row up, third in from the right....she was "advanced for her age", and after the dream I realised she was obviously iconic for me in that vein. I'm trying to be polite here.

2007-10-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

More Glasto '95....the epic Nashers Music Store mobile unit.....
actually not very mobile at all....
Visible are Anna Joy, Caron Elgey, me, Lee Streicher and Sarah,
and ex. Lost in the Mix Clayton.

Ooooooooooooooh we 'ad some fun.

This is me with a drip full of rat poison my first few days in Brasil in 1984,
being tended by the wonderful Polly MacDonald. She then worked as an outreach
worker for the hospital in Ceres, Goias, deep in the interior.
I had a fear of needles before this episode. No problem after. Ditto poisonous spiders.
The drip was treatment for a DVT that appeared after the plane journey, cunningly disguised as a cramp.
A Deep Vein Thrombosis set loose is the fastest way for a human being to die I learnt recently.
At the time of course, I employed a masseuse, which is the fastest way to set loose a Deep Vein Thrombosis.
You live and learn, eh, but sometimes only just.

Ummmm, no link, apart from Brasilness.
My regular barber in Saquarema, who is the leader of the local bloco, ( the Carnaval band)
evidenced by the stack of drums.
Eat yer heart out, Bath School of Samba!

2007-10-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well herein hangs a tail.....

This carefully and perfectly constructed column was destroyed by, well, by my left big toe.
I caught the level string between toe and Havaiana and demolished the whole damn thing....Fabino and I kept creasing up for a good half hour after.

This is a mosquito I slaughtered. That's it, really.

This is just in case you'd forgotten, as I had, that I have a lovely mezzanine.
I finally ordered the welded steel spiral staircase ( extra wide) and balustrade the other day. Then I'm having french window like doors put in to the ouside wall, and a guard rail, so it's like a not quite a balcony. It'll be a nice spot though, with a view of the street and so on.

I realised I'm going to have to clad the inside of the entire roof too, as the place is filthy within twelve hours of cleaning, and with high winds, burnt off plant waste gets blown between the tiles and the place looks like a bomb site in a few minutes.
So those two things, plus the perimeter fence, are pretty much the last big jobs on the menu.
oh and a couple more guest units....but I have some freaky ideas for those hehehehehhe.
More later.

2007-10-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

It's all up to the minute stuff here....
These were taken only a few moments ago....

The service area prepped ready for painting....mmmmmmm!

White, white, for as far as the eye can see....

Well apart from the tons of dirt of course.....more just
arrived so should have turf laid this week....

The view to the pool from the house....
The dirt suggests the landyscaping with a flagged
path leading to the pool steps....mmmmmmmmm!

2007-10-16T09:51:00.002-07:00

After weeks of chemical treatment and filtering the pool was finally swimmable weekend before last....

Last Saturday I spent a real "day by the pool"...
Dragged a sofa out into the shade of the unfinished verandah...
Sunbathed and swam.....
Had pots of tea and freshly baked empadas....tiny savoury pies.... bought
over the garden wall from the guy on the bike who comes past every day shouting
"....Ayyyyempadahhhh...."
Took me weeks to find out what it was he was selling, and even longer to
reach the wall in time....

The steps need cutting down, to make them longer,
well deeper in the....oh you know.....

Marble border and groovy non slip tiles on the guest house
terrace....
Just waiting to add bamboo railings and roof covered in shady
rustic stuff....
It's really nice and breezy up there, and it's the only place my
rotten mobile network works.....

View of the works....note the little drainage pipes along the parapet....ohhhh cute!!!!

2007-10-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

What, I hear you asking, has he put over the top of the pool pumphouse????
What?
A wooden door?
An aluminium door?
Polythene?
Some old bits of cardboard I wouldn't be surprised....
(I'm hearing this dialogue in an elderly male Jewish accent....)

What am I?
A mishuginah???
I had a steel door custom built?
What else?
?

More with the door yet....
And the banking.....yet with the banking....

What a view!!!!
Make it stop now.
I know, it's Eddy Murphy made up as an old feisty Jewish
guy in "Coming to America".

Don't ask.
OK...this is first wave of experiments with papercrete....hybrid
papier mache/concrete (no.....).....
Ideas for tube shaped building around inflatable former for my guest units....
More to come.....