TWENTY SEVEN years ago I was covered in zits and going through a selection process that would determine my future career: Morse code at higher and higher speeds until I was bombarded with 30wpm. And the ALAT, Army Language Aptitude Test which, according to the result obtained, would demonstrate if the candidate had a natural ability in learning a foreign language. Army Intelligence (which, as we say, is a contradictory term) at the time of the Cold War needed Russian "linguists" (in fact, after having studied linguistics for 6 years at university, I'd now say "Speakers of Russian as a Foreign Language, for, as I learned, a linguist is much more than just a bilingual). I got along fine with the morse. The ALAT I failed miserably, showing that I would be a total dumbo at learning any foreign language.

I now speak fluent Portuguese. A result of having lived in Brazil for over 15 years. So you see Army Intelligence got it all wrong, if they wanted Speakers of Russian as a Foreign Language, they should have sent the candidates to Russia for 15 years.

A FEW YEARS BEFORE twenty seven years ago, I was at Y PANT Comprehensive School, Pontyclun. Y Pant, like many schools in Wales at the time, had German, French and WELSH, as languages to learn. Only it wasn't compulsory after 14 years of age. And at 14 years of age, I was in no mood to learn another language, not even my own mother tongue! Dam and Blast, I'm a Welshman living in Brazil who speaks English and Portuguese. There are colonies of Welsh living in Patagonia, a couple of thousand miles south of where I live, that speak Welsh and Spanish and have names like Juan Evans and Dai Gonzalez. I'd love to be able to pop down for a visit and have a good conversation in Welsh. Get learning then butty! (but my ALAT results...)

Does Leek make my Breath Pong?

Next week I'll have to search the supermarket veggie section for that Welshest of vegetables, The Leek! Known here as "Alho Porro", alho is in fact garlick, nobody could supply me with the meaning of porro, so let's just say a leek is a Porro Garlick. The Humble Leek, not a favoured veg in Brazil, but can be found alongside the rocket amongst the greenest of edible plants in the supermarket. Am I to be the only person in PoA to be eating Raw Leek on Thursday? I'm considering wearing one in my hat or maybe sticking one in my button-hole. Point of fact is I don't wear hats and I don't have clothes with button holes, besides which I can't be bothered to explain to every passer by who asks, "Why have you got a porro garlick stuck on your head?"
The PoA Welsh community was once myself and a surfer lass called Kim from Swansea, Kim went back to the Land of Her Fathers (and mine too) and I'm left alone to wave the Red Dragon when we play football against Brazil, which is not very often to be sure.

Did you know that Pelé's first World Cup goal was against Wales?

Don't like football meself.

DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS!

Nantucket Sleigh Ride

A good decision to switch to Herman. A very humorously written first few chapters so far. Literary critisism analysts of the Freudian school doubtless have fun over this book, aside from the overtness of sleeping with the Indian Queequeg, it's full of symbolism: Queequeg and his harpoon, The Spouter Inn, hmmm...

"Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooner, I shan't sleep with him."! I can quite categorically say that I would also refuse to sleep with a male six foot ten Amer-Indian harpooner who spends most of the night selling shrunken heads. However, the only other choice being a draughty hard wooden bench, poor Ishmael ends up in bed with the harpooner, "Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner." YOINKS! What passed during the night, Ishmael does not tell. These sailor boys...

HUMBUG

Call me Ishmael. STUFF Dickens and STUFF Little Dorrit. I'm not going on to the end to see if Arthur Clennam does in fact do that.
I've turned my literary focus to the wide open oceans of Herman Melville, no more Charles' smoggy London.

Don't know how much the world hears about news from Brazil, violent crime is regular in the big cities. The latest atrocity: an armed gang of 5 teenagers between16 and 21 hi-jacked a car from a couple and their 6 year old boy. The mother tried to release the boy from the seat belt but couldn't manage, the boy was tangled in the seat belt OUTSIDE THE CAR AND WAS DRAGGED FOR 7 KILOMETRES before they stopped and abandoned the car. The little boy died. The gang knew that the boy was there and were joking about it they confessed when most of them were captured later.

I believe in an eye for an eye and some. An appropriate punishment? Drag these little fucking scabby low life shits behind a car for 20 or so k's. Their lives are worth FUCK, why should they be allowed to live after what they did to an innocent little kid of 6 years old.

I feel as a father of two great kids, a 10 year old boy and a girl of 15 and I'm PISSED OFF.

What's got me up, either the caffeine content of the chimarrão I drank at around 6pm or the fact that it's one of those blasted summer nights where the heat and the insects conspire to keep one awake. As well as the highly irritating whine of the mosquitoes, so much for the matinset device that's supposed to drive the buggers away, there's the 120 decibel buzzing hiss, or maybe it's a hissing buzz white noise of the cicadas in the trees outside, no use telling them to shut the fuck up, they don't listen.
It could be a combination of all these things, fact is I'm WIDE HOO HA AWAKE at freeking 1am.

A possible solution is to read Dickens. I've tried, again, to read "Little Dorrit". I now have to admit that Dickens is so excruciatingly boring in most of his books, that he could send me to sleep. I found "David Copperfield" and "Great Expectations" a little heavy going at times but they held me to the end at which point I thought "good books" (okay I'm not the best literary critic). "Martin Chuzzlewit" I struggled through but finished only with extreme persistence. "Our Mutual Friend" and "A Tale of Two Cities" I gave up after 30 or so pages, I have it on good authority of a friend of mine that "Hard Times" follows the same trend. I almost made it to the end of "Pickwick Papers" but kind of petered out with just 70 or pages to go. As I was reading "Dorrit" my friend was reading "Times", we both met up and asked ourselves and each other, "Why are we torturing ourselves like this?". Consequently I've given up on "Dorrit" again for the time being, I may get back to her later only if I suffer an extreme literary drought, not entirely infrequent, not sure yet of my friend's decision on "Times".

While doing research for my magnificent octopus, which I am currently working on, I came across this site and found it well worth perusing through. I found six gods of literature, strangely five Chinese and one Japanese. Wot no Western gods of literature? I could perhaps burn my Dickens books as offerings to the Eastern gods. One, in a hope that Dickens may become INTERESTING for me, but then again I won't have any of the books left, and two, that perhaps the gods will help me with my magnificent octopus, maybe I should write it in Mandarin.

RIGHT I'm off to bed.