PHEW! I can breath the sigh of proverbial relief (or is that....? Oh never mind) My pa and step mum and niece have gorn after a tense two week stay. To say that my old man is a difficult person would be quite an understatement, he doesn't continually WHINGE in a whingey whiney way, he continually COMPLAINS and everyone has to know about it. Here's an example: night at Simon's, after being served: "I don't like the way they pile up the plates (...) a lot goes to waste."; the following day, we went to another bar for lunch: "They don't serve much on the plates here do they." And so on ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Also a great number of his conversational phrases start with, "When I was in the Gulf..." (in the 50's).
On the other hand my niece was a wonder, 13 years of energy and naughtyness. I learned some new English vocab which I shall be passing onto my students, such as:
"Wowoza?" normally (but not necesserally) followed by another word such as "noise".
e.g. "Wowoza noise?"
to which a possible reply could be "Dunno, probably a car back-firing"

On the day WALES BEAT ENGLAND, please to be assured I'm talking about RUGBY, can't get TV coverage here so we followed the progress through the BBC internet site, I had to click the update button every two minutes.

We had already arranged to go to a gaucho touristy barbie restaurant, not having any alternative celebratory venue. Ate lots of big drippin' chunks of dead bulls and watched a guy doing an impressive show swinging his bolas around at a very high rate of knots.

Took 'em to the airport this morning (my folks, not the guy's bolas!), must confess, despite being a might fucking difficult fella, he's me ol' da, and I love him, I felt sad to see them go, don't know when I'll see him again, 2 years, 3, 4, 5, maybe never.
Time for bed now.
Nighty night.

There She Blows!

I've started a discussion group at Book Tribes - spotting porn in classic literature. Apart from that fella, D.H. , Charles wasn't so bad himself, I posted up these ones a last year sometime, well worth bringing up again now. Then of course there's Moby Dick that I'm reading right now which has "Freud explains" overtones which I commented a coupla weeks ago. In fact, if one looks at literature from a Freudian point of view, porn is everywhere - if it's longer than it is wide, it's phallic. Hills and dark damp caves, wossat 'en?

Jiggin's! My folks are coming a-visiting tomorrow. It's not often they come and see me, this is the third time in 15 years in fact, and the first time since my divorce. The last time they came I lived in a large house with a swimming pool, lots of space and bedrooms, they had they're own suite downstairs, with a patio and barbie-area, and we had a maid who cooked and cleaned every day.
This time I'm in a two-bedroom flat, one bedroom is full of boxes and junk, I can touch the walls of the kitchen with outstretched arms, no maid. I've already warned them about this, but still it may come as a bit of a shock. Got the terrace though, they can sit out there under the blazing sun if the flat gets too cramped.
Coming with them is my niece. My step mum, who is in fact English from Brat'fud, many a year ago, had the sense to send her daughter, my halfsis, to a Welsh speaking school, and at the same time went to night classes to learn Welsh, luckily my halfsis continued the tradition and my niece is a native Welsh speaker. Blast me if I can only say "Shwmae, su't y'chi?" and "Bore Da!" every morning!

Tonight as I quaff a few pints of FBA and eat a raw leek or three I shall remember How Green my Valley was, and as I close my eyes I will be able to hear the Aberbachgenbach Male Voice singing "My Fanny", the FBA will become a full creamy pint of Feelin' Fowl Double Dragon, I'll be transposed to the backroom of the Mochyn Digywilydd Arms where Eli Jenkins, sitting at HIS table is smoking tea bags in his pipe and Dai is stood at the bar extrapolating in a loud voice, Llancunty's chances of winning the match on Sunday what with his brother-in-law being their new loose-head. In walks the man with the basket of cockles and muscles alive-alive-o, after him, the next sober person is Sally Army selling All Along the Watchtower (or was that Jimmy?). The boys from the Bryn are getting pissed again, there'll be trouble soon enough. Is there going to be a lock-in? There's always a lock-in at the Mochyn.
DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS!
What's the smell of parsley?

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.

KAMA WASIKILIZA SANA UTAWEZA KUSIKIA KIFARU KUFANYA KELELE!

I CADGED from me old dad some years ago, as an Item of Interest, a small book, first printed 1936, this edition (14th) 1958, entitled, "Up-country Swahili", (Jinkin's knows where my pops got it from and WHY for that matter). The author, in his intro, says: "To the ordinary up-country native, Swahili is a foreign language, of which he possesses only a very limited knowledge. This book aims at teaching, in a simple way, just that degree of Swahili that is understood and talked by the average intelligent up-country native."

It's laid out in such a manner of the classic language learning style, i.e. sections of grammar and vocabulary followed by translation excercises.

This is where the funny part starts. Again, like traditional language learning, it's pure translation. Lists of separate "useful" phrases with no apparent connection between them. So what phrases can be useful for the "settler, miner, businessman, or wife" (read, "oppressive, tyranical, domineering colonizer"), in colonial East Africa in the 30s to 50s?

Washenzi weusi. - The savages are black.
Ninakupiga. - I am hitting you.
Safisha viatu yangu mara moja! - Clean my boots at once!
Mimi naogopa nyoka, funga milango. - I am afraid of snakes, fasten the door.
Huyu mchawi, ona chura katika kifuko yake! - That man is a witch-doctor, see the frog in his pocket! (I JEST NOT LADIES AND GENTS!)
BOY! tengeneza bafu yangu, na hapana kutia maji ya moto tele sawasawa ulifanya jana, napenda moto, lakini hapana moto sana. - BOY! Get my bath ready, and don't put in as much hot water as you did yesterday, I like it hot, but not too hot.
Mpishi anapiga muchawi. - The cook is beating the witch-doctor.
Napiga mulevi na miti. - I am hitting the drunkard with a stick. (PLEASE! I AM NOT JOKING!)
Choo inajaa ya kiroboto. - The latrine is full of fleas. (NO! PLEASE ENOUGH! ENOUGH!)

Perhaps more later?

A plot thicker than Mad Thick McThick, winner of last year's Mr. Thick competition (yes I know, plagiarised from Black Adder), what 'mI talking about? Charles Palliser's "The Quincunx". I'm now reading it for the THIRD time (minimum necessary), to use another of Edmund 's phrases: the plot twists and turns like a twisty turny thing. The BASIC story is thus:

John Melamphy / Huffam / Clothier and his mother are victims of devious scheming involving several families and an Estate. The scheming involves a codicil which, according to who holds it, and the state of the last heir (John), i.e. dead or alive, determines the definitive owners of the estate.

Smelly Pre-Victorian London is where John and his mother find themselves, manipulated from all sides as EVERYONE involved around them seems to be firstly their friend with offers of help then it turns out that they have different motives and in fact are deadly enemies.

This book EVERYONE must read, at least 3 times like I said, give it a year or so between readings. Read and make notes, who is who, who does what, and you'll begin to discover and understand lots of other clues and sub-plots that the author slips in.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.


PORTO ALEGRE has slipped gently into Summer with the normal cyclic weather of warm, to hot, to intense blacksmith forge to mutha of a rain storm, to cooling down and starting over. When I say "warm" that is relative, I'm talking 30c plus.
Today we're on a cooling down period, it's actually cooled from about 39c yesterday to 33c today! Don't think it's going to get much lower.

Normal for Summer, EVERYONE'S gone to the beach, except me. Can't afford it and haven't got a place to go anyway since my divorce. As a consequence of everyone having gone to the beach, I've got very little work during the week (= very little dosh) and I find myself at home trying to write, mostly failing and spending hours on internet crap, or reading. At the moment, and for the second time, I'm reading "The Quincunx" by Charles Palliser. This book is probably the best Charles Dickens book ever written, not by Charles Dickens. Palliser out Dickenses Dickens, er, I think, so to speak. "A literary classic...blah blah", just so. "Literary classic" usually means you have to read it two or three times to understand it. With JJ's "Ulysses" make that perhaps, four or five times, and with his "Finegan's", forget about reading it, just have it on your bookshelf to appear intellectual. Or try drinking 12 pints of Guinness THEN reading it, it works and everything makes complete sense.

End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the

BLWYDDYN NEWYDD DDA

First post of the year this. Porto Alegre is baking, my apartment is baking. The only solution is drink large quatities of iced FBAs.

LAST NIGHT. I opted to be alone. Towards midnight sleep was impossible of course because of the Brazilians' love for fireworks. I drifted in and out but the partying went on 'till the wee hours so I got up later, around 10am.

I'm puting together a blog about Porto Alegre for travellers, visit it here. If anyone's travelling through or if you're a newcomer to live here a while, you'll find stuff about what to do, where to go on a Sunday morning. How to avoid getting ripped off when when dring beers, and lots of other stuff. It's an informal thing with my own points of view, I add bits and pieces almost every day so it's increasing a lot.

HO HO FUCKING HO.

I think I can safely, and quite securely, say, without fear of contradiction or anyone disputing the fact or telling me otherwise, that I have finally and eventually, completely without question or doubt, finished, terminated and brought to a conclusion, my course on synonyms, no wait a minute...

THAT'S not what I intended to say, what I intended to say was THIS - I've finished my UNIVERSITY DEGREE! (Roars from the crowd, fanfares, clashing of symbols (sic - two semesters of semiotics!), fireworks whoosh into the air lighting up the sky). My final paper was a complete success (got a 10), now I believe I shall be invited to universities around the world to give my lecture on Greek Tragedy in The Tale of the Children of Húrin, maybe even the Nobel for Literature...

The dRUNK GerMan Guy in BEER ADvert in my previous post is NOT me. It's a very good friend who happens to be a Professor of Particle Physics at the State University. There is a certain resemblance to Einstein no? We regularly eat slabs of dead bovine beasts grilled over hot coals and drink large quantities of fermented barley, delicately flavoured with hops, and discuss The Meaning of Liff and what particles are the vogue.

SIX BLEEDIN' YEARS! Now I'm ready to do a masters' or even PhD. anyone out there got a job for me in Wales, Ireland or Scotland, or even, dam it all okay...England?!. I know everything about Greek Tragedy and subordinating conjunctions because I have studied thoroughly. Because I have studied thoroughly, I know all about subordinating conjuctions. HA HA mighty clever indeed.