annual report

update as of friday 22 may of recent events, in no particular chronological order

given my recent upgrading from not-particularly-important-person, to director and 20% shareholder in the company ultralight adventures belize ltd (see below for further information), i feel it would be appropriate to write today’s blog update in a rather more formal manner, as is befitting of a director. hencetoforth herewith whither whence points as follows in alphabetical order notwithstanding:

work permit paperwork
continuing. as part of above, business name was unregistered due to technical matters as follows: bert requiring sole proprietorship as a non-belizean was not possible, nor could a willing belizean or otherwise with belizean citizenship be found, thus creating a what shall be called catch-22 position. consequently, the hithertofor registered business of ultralight adventures belize became deregistered and incorporated as a company with mr robert combs and ms lucy pickles as co-directors and shareholders. ms pickles currently confused as to what is involved in holding such an intangible object as a share. money and time wasted: considerable. though on one of the trips to belmopan, a delightful coffee selling establishment (aka café) was found and approved of. herein was found a national geographic magazine with a fascinating article about the andes in south america, which at the adjacent establishment, a stationers, was photocopied and stapled and taken home for further perusal. outcome: aforementioned coffee and magazine article compensated for frustration involved in business/company related nonsense. further actions arising: both ms pickles and mr combs to practice and perfect their business related behavior. at the moment this consists of using a huge effort to appear professional whilst in a meeting at international services limited in order to register the newly formed company (which incidentally seems to mainly consist of handing over fairly large sum of money in an envelope whilst wearing posh clothes to posh lady in an office, and signing a form and waiting for an incorporation certificate to arrive by courier), and then as soon as leaving the building changing immediately into old denim shorts and flip flops and having some inane argument about what type of pasta sauce should be purchased for dinner. status: ongoing. outlook: hoping to hand in actual work permit paperwork this wednesday in belmopan and with the help of people in high places (not god himself, though this is another contentious topic in the pickles/combs partnership) have it hurried through the laboriously slow belizean administrative system and be legally working at soonest convenience. any other business: it was commented (via the means of electronic communication) between ms pickles and mr pickles her brother, he being of the same parentage, that wasn’t it a most unpredictable and peculiar situation that both should now be directors and share holders in their own companies, given that 2 years ago they were part of what is colloquially known as ‘the rat race’, and spent their evenings sitting eating mashed potatoes and baked beans and wondering if there was more to life than a desk, a spreadsheet, 3 letter business acronyms and middle managers who were so uninspiring and intellectually lacking that it made one want to shove biros into one’s eyeballs, and furthermore, brain. conclusion: yes there is.

long multiplication
ms pickles has recently taken to doing some volunteer work 2 mornings a week for a local charity called cornerstone. it is suspected that this is part of the ongoing campaign to acquire enough points to get into heaven (see earlier blog where she gave a lift to some local people who were going to church). this is confusing given ms pickles’s intransigent atheism, but can be perhaps put down to having had a good moral upbringing bashed into her. the volunteering entails tutoring 4 children (siblings), of differing ages and abilities, whose father is not around and who were found with their younger sister and mother in belize city and are now being sheltered by a charity in san ignacio called mary open doors (nb: this charity is run by the wife of david the fish shop man referred to in an earlier blog who talked to us for a long time one day in the fish shop and had been a policeman in yorkshire). the children are alexis, 4, shane, 8, michael, 10 and monique, 12. they are doing reading and maths and other arbitrary topics such as the solar system. (did you know that jupiter is the biggest planet, and that saturn, if a suitably large body of water should exist , would float as it is so light). it was discovered by ms pickles that her long multiplication leaves a lot to be desired, and she is strongly hoping that long division is not on the syllabus or she may have to hand in her notice. they will continue to be tutored until they can re-enter the school system in september. they are very sweet but i am glad i am not a primary school teacher as i certainly wouldn’t have the patience full-time. on tuesday we took them to swim in the river after class which they loved and would do all day if it was up to them, which is generally why children do not make high powered decisions about educational policy. it is hard to know if they are getting fed properly at home, which is a big factor in concentration levels, acquisition of knowledge, and general intellect. talia, one of the other volunteers who organizes this particular project was going to investigate this matter, as mary open doors supposedly gives them a chicken each day i think, but there was general wonderment as to whether it was being eaten or sold on etc.

baked goods
it was decided to use some of the treacle to make some flapjacks. given the lack of suitable measuring equipment for baking ingredients (ie there is only a measuring jug in the house which is perfect for measuring half a pint of milk for example, but not 4 ounces of flour or butter or sugar), some of the ingredients were, it can only be concluded, incorrectly measured. outcome: inedible concrete like flapjacks that on falling accidentally out of the fridge managed only by sheer good fortune and divine intervention not to smash the kitchen floor tiles. further comments of note: mr combs for some reason enjoyed the challenge of attempting to eat these flapjacks and intimated that he actually liked them. it was agreed by ms pickles and mr fleming who was visiting at the time that this was a blatant lie to protect ms pickles’s feelings.

the second attempt at baking was equally dubious. whilst having made many a worthy orange drizzle cake in the united kingdom, it seems baking obeys different rules here in the caribbean. the orange cake immediately overflowed the baking tray, which was potentially very much the wrong size, shape and consistency for cake construction. on removing the cake from the oven after the passing of the allotted time, the cake was approximately 5mm thick, way below acceptable thickness, but hitherto nonetheless and despite appearances it did taste like an orange cake should. it was iced with drizzle icing and taken to cornerstone for monique’s birthday which is the same as mama pepinillo’s who i had rung the day before to say happy birthday. (aside to mama p: monique was very excited that she had a happy birthday greeting all the way from england). on eating the cake, michael promptly ran out of the room and vomited on the street, and his tooth fell out. ms pickles has never experienced a reaction like this to her baking before. on further investigation it seems michael is prone to vomiting, for example on buses and in cars. as to the tooth it is to be supposed that this is normal for someone of his age? further action: no more baking shall take place until further notice and until appropriate baking equipment has been procured.

[i have decided to continue in normal non director-of-a-company style as it is very hard work]

bicycle riding
there has been lots of riding of bicycles going on with mr mick fleming of chaa creek resort up the road from our house (www.chaacreek.com). mick is a very nice man, who is originally from england too but has lived here for 30 or so years now with his american wife whose name is also lucy. bert has been teaching mick to fly and he has his own ultralight and a hangar which is where bert stores his ultralight too. he has an old dog called mzungo and a little new dog from guatemala, a pomeranian, called foxy. foxy is the cutest dog i’ve ever seen, just like a huge ball of fluff with a face, he’s tiny and has tiny little feet. mick and foxy got stung by millions of bees recently, and mick had to go on a drip in the doctors in town. mick picks me up in his truck and we drive out to the main road – the road we live on is very bumpy and not good at all for cycling on with a road bike – this is the hardest part of the whole procedure for me, balancing in the back of the truck and hanging on with our 2 bikes rolling around and trying not to fly out as we go round the corners and over the bumps. we get to the road and cycle to the guatemalan border then back and into town and then back to where we leave the truck on the bumpy road. this is around 18.5miles altogether, and is very hilly, nothing too steep but quite long annoying hills. i seem to have improved a bit in my hill climbing, maybe thanks to the ridiculous mexican bike ride making the hills here seem like nothing in comparison to what they were there. along the way we normally catch up with a nice man called hernan who cycles the same route every day too, he has really strong legs and never seems to change gear. some days there are loads of other professional looking cyclists out too, one of them cycled with me a bit one day, he’s on a team and he asked me when my next race was, ha ha i said i’m just doing this for fun, then he said belize needs more women cyclists on its teams – perhaps i should investigate. on yesterday’s ride mick got a puncture and then his bike computer flew off his bike and we had to cycle slowly up and down the same bit of road for a while looking for it in the litter-filled hedgerows, just when mick had decided to give up and it wasn’t worth bothering about it appeared right there next to us. weird.

last weekend bert and i drove down to the hummingbird highway which is a very beautiful road that goes from dangriga on the coast back up to Belmopan, which is roughly halfway between cayo and belize city. compared to the other few roads in belize, this one is very imaginatively named – the others are western highway, southern highway, northern highway, and coastal road. they are quite self-explanatory names, but let me know if you can’t figure them out. i presume there are hummingbirds on the hummingbird highway though we didn’t see any. it is very hilly in the middle and less so at either end, and it is considered the most beautiful road in belize, which it definitely is – there are rivers, mountains you can see in the distance, jungles, citrus groves etc. we stopped at the blue hole national park – a small swimming hole just off the road, and had a picnic on a picnic table, then drove on to the sibun river and had a swim there. bert told me there was an alligator at the other side but it turned out it was a man snorkeling along by the river bank – it definitely had me fooled for a long time though. i cycled back from the river to belmopan and bert followed as a support team in the car. i did 27k in 1 hour which is pretty good going given the hills, and when i checked the cycling results of the recent female cross country, the winner’s average speed was 28.5k, but this was sustained over 4 hours 6 minutes which i don’t quite think i could manage. anyway i am very much enjoying all the cycling i’m doing and also it allows me to eat lots of chocolate cake from the sweet shop without feeling guilty.

any other business
last week the 2 australian alaska-patagonia cyclists max and mike that we met in mexico came to stay on their way through to guatemala. they had been to cuba since meeting us in chiapas and then back to cancun then carried on down the coast past tulum and through northern belize, down the coast a bit here, then back up the hummingbird highway to cayo. they stayed with us for a few days and enjoyed being able to do their washing and not having to camp at the side of the road for a while. they had been cycling through the night in mexico to avoid the heat. it was really cool to have them to stay and me and bert are considering joining them down in peru for some of their cycling in september this year. all depends on how our business is going, i suppose you can’t just take a big holiday or phone in sick for a month when you are self-employed…

i have finished love in the time of the cholera, and started the baymen of belize, which is written by one of the original english (well scottish actually) settlers in belize, and the battle of st george’s caye which was when the spaniards attempted to get belize back off the english. the english government didn’t send any help at all, so if it hadn’t been for those baymen defending it, belize would most certainly now be spanish. i will keep you updated on any other facts that come from the book.

i learnt that caye (as in caye caulker etc), means small island (kind of obvious), and that the reason that the area we live in which is san ignacio, is also called cayo, is because the mopan and the macal river go round it kind of creating an island, thus they call it cayo.

we watched these films:
the devil’s miner: a documentary about 2 little bolivian boys who work in the mines in potosi, where me and abi and laura had visited last year at the beginning of our trip. the boys are 12 and 14, and they work in appalling conditions down the mines, as do all the miners but it is so terrible for them being so young. they don’t have a father which is why they have to go to work, the 14 year old has been working there since he was 10. he earns i think $3 per day, which after a while goes up to $4 as he gets a new job in a much bigger but much more dangerous mine. they also go to school (only part time i think), which is a long walk down the mountain they live on and work in, but at school if people know that they work in the mines they get picked on. the film follows the older of the 2 boys mainly, and he talks about how he dreams of getting out of the mines and being a teacher, and travelling the world and seeing other places and countries. they have to save and save to afford school uniform, without which they will not be allowed to start school – altogether it costs $45 for the 2 of them, and they have to eat only bread for months to save enough for this. they also need to get a specific haircut, called a semi-mushroom, to be allowed to school. they aren’t allowed in if they have a full-mushroom cut. the mountain (cerro rico) has been mined so much that there isn’t much left there, potosi was a city once richer than both london and paris, where all the money was minted. it is now one of the poorest places in one of the poorest countries in south america. each year there is a festival of the miners and they dance their way down the mountain doing a dance based on mining. they are really proud to be miners, although they live in constant fear too – of dying when the explosions go off, or of silicosis, a lung disease, there is asbestos all along the mining tunnels, and so much dust you can hardly see. most miners have a life expectancy of 35 years old. they pray to a mining god called tio, and there are effigies of him in all the mines to which they take offerings of coca leaves and alcohol and cigarettes – they have to keep him happy or he will take their lives. the little boys are so scared of him they can’t look him directly in the face. they do regular llama sacrifices and splatter the blood all over the entrance to the mines. all in all it’s an amazing documentary for which the cameraman must have got awards for risking his life down in the mines. i only spent a few days in bolivia but did find it fascinating and beautiful and will definitely go back there in the future.

we also watched paris, texas by wim wenders, which is brilliant and strange, and australia, but i slept through most of it. it is by baz luhrman and is cartoony and features nicole kidman and hugh jackman who are both really good.

i learn that a league is the distance a man or horse can walk in an hour – ie around 3.5miles or 5k. 20,000 leagues under the sea therefore is a very long way. a fathom is the distance between a man’s outstretched fingers, around 6 feet, it comes from old english fathm, which means arms outstretched in an embracing position. and furlong means a furrow's length long, which i can't remember the distance now, i think around 660feet, which would be 220yards if i am not mistaken? an acre was originally a furlong by a chain. a chain is 22 yards. i don't know the etymology behind it, perhaps it was the length of a chain of people or horses that could walk a league within a fathom's distance, whilst under the sea.

i found a radio channel here that broadcasts spelling bees, this is pretty dull listening but sometimes i tune in if i’m driving in the car. we had the air conditioning in the car fixed which broke when we were in the guatemalan western highlands, possibly due to the altitude, or possibly due to the great wall wingle being not the best or most reliable car in the world. it is nice to have the aircon back but you really don’t need all these luxuries in your life – we have rivers nearby that we can jump in to cool down, and aircon means you use more fuel when driving. we are quite good at being environmentally conscious in our house here as we don’t have a washing machine (it broke and we don’t know how to mend it), so we do all our washing by hand and hang it out on the line on the deck; we don’t have tv connection, but do use the tv to watch dvds sometimes; we don’t have a dishwasher or hoover etc, and we buy local fruit and veg at the market in town, and from mick’s vegetable garden which is the best vegetable garden ever. this should be quite a few heaven points we are saving up.

and finally my last announcement is that we handed in bert’s work permit application yesterday in belmopan and had a celebratory lunch at the nice café we had found there with the stash of old national geographic magazines. we are picking up our posters and business cards today from the printers, and we have tidied and improved the office in the spare room in our house, it just needs a filing cabinet and the internet and printer to work again and it will be almost professional. we are working on a website and generally are ready to go once the permit is approved. this is a relief as it has been a long time sorting it all out and it is very exciting thinking about it actually becoming a reality and me being a director – ha ha – and us earning some money and my overdrafts being paid off and being able to save up for more exciting adventures. especially for bert it is exciting as he has been here over a year trying to make a living and things being up and down and relying on other people who turn out to be non reliable etc. watch this space for further business updates.

over and out – happy queen’s birthday on monday – here it is a public holiday, is it in england too i can’t remember? xx