Just back from the Christmas do at the school where I teach my last remaining English lesson of a Saturday morning. The pupils under my care sang a more or less recognisable
Danny Boy (not strictly Christmas, but
the only sheet music I had in English), then we sat outside in the sickly humid night chatting until the rain came and we had to pack away all the chairs and move the keyboard indoors.
I'm home now, alone apart from our Lhasa Apso, Shanti, who is lying beside me for a change, but only because I am the only other animate object in the vicinity. Show has gone to Campinas to fetch our niece, and pop-in-law is receiving an
homenagem for being a
founder member of the local Rotary Club. If there's one things Brazilians love, it's the
homenagem - all echoey halls and people in suits that are either a size too big or a size too small for them.
Incidentally, Antarctica have just released a new beer that I've felt motivated to sup on, "
Sub Zero", which, the can gushes, is "
doubly filtered below 0ºC" - through a Russian miner's underpants by the taste of the sour froth. Another alcoholic equivalent of a car accident hits the Brazilian beer market. But, as my glassy-eyed compatriots used to mumble in the toilets of the
Lord Nelson on Poole Quay, while Jimmy Pithe brought the house down with his inevitable rendition of
Has Anybody Seen My Cock?, "
Gets yer there, dunnit?" - wherever your
there may be.
I still can't quite believe I was
forty this week. Goes so quickly, seems like yesterday, blah, blah, blah, but it
is uncharted territory. At least I've outlived Jim Morrison by thirteen years, by my calculations. Missed my family a lot this time, a couple of continents away. Mater turned seventy-five less than a month ago, another milestone I wish I could have celebrated in her company.
But that's the price we pay for the sickly humid nights drinking piss water, I guess.
Labels: An Irish Blessing, Danny Boy, Dave Allen, Special Brew, Yubileynaya mine
