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, ...