square eyes

just taking a break from watching oprah reporting on the ‘yearning for zion’ ranch in texas – it’s a sect of the latter day saints religion (there is a church of theirs near the albert hall in london and it is really nice architecture – all white and with lovely stained glass), they are something to do with mormons i think. anyway, what a bunch of weirdos, it’s this ranch community, all the women wear those big puffy sleeved old dresses, like from little house on the prairie, and the children aren’t allowed to play, nor do they want to, oprah asked them if they had heard of mickey mouse, or the little mermaid, or cinderella, and they all looked at her really puzzled and blank. their leader is currently in prison for marrying a 12 year old girl, and in one of the houses, there is one man, 3 wives and 9 children – they say they live in a christ-like love, not a human passion like love. there was a big raid on the ranch a while ago and they took the children away from the parents and investigated them all, and there were lots of claims of abuse etc. anyway all of this is by the by, and has nothing to do with anything else, other than an explanation of what i am watching on television at this moment.

the above does actually relate to a point i wanted to make that there are so many advert breaks on tv that really what it is actually is a large advert with bits in between the adverts that aren’t adverts, but are programmes, but you only get to see the programmes for a little bit of time until the adverts come back again. and the adverts advertise things that you didn’t think you need, but oh my god how did you live without them? like a clothes hanger that holds 5 clothes hangers then magically tips forward and saves you a fifth of your wardrobe space!(it comes with a stick-on wardrobe light so you never have to fumble around in the dark in your wardrobe again (unless of course you want to and you could leave it switched off)!); or a magic large box that goes under your bed and is all segmented and you can store all your shoes in so you never have to look at them again!; or a whole set of cds that teach you how to use your computer, and how to buy and sell things on ebay – send me proof of your first ebay transaction and i will send you $50! or 1-800 dentist that will match you with a dentist you get on with! (probably you get some free false teeth with the offer). i mean really, how did i get through life this far without these things? god only knows. given that i only have 3 pairs of shoes, about 5 clothes items that need hanging up, nothing to sell on ebay, and my teeth are fine, i have managed to resist these tempting offers, but it’s a only a matter of time until i crumble and call for my trial dvd of the ruben brothers’ introduction to self defense: street style (think napoleon dynamite, the kung fu training scene, but this time it’s for real).

aside from these fascinating insights into contemporary televisual culture and the impact it has on the psyche of the world, what else have we been doing, you are wondering? well, if you call 1-800-blogupdate i will send you absolutely free a beautiful leather bound book of my entire life story, and future predictions, complete with engravings and colour pictures of the inside of my brain and one of my feet, and if you call in the next 7 days, i will send you also a transcript of every conversation i have ever had, including conversations i have had with imaginary people. don’t miss out on this stunning offer. (price does not include shipping and handling, and sales tax, actual price is $100, no refunds or returns – this last bit is said really quickly by a midget).

thursday 9^th july

it rained, and the house filled up with flies – they were no trouble, ie they didn’t bite or buzz, they just sat around languidly and a little bit horror-film like, then they fizzled up and died and the next day we swept them up and pushed them outside. they are flood flies i think, or may flies (2 months late if so), they came out because of the rains coming. like a kind of biblical plague i suppose.

friday 10^th july

we had a meeting with civil aviation in belize city. we stopped at belmopan on the way to renew my passport for another month. we wore our smart clothes (i wonder when civil aviation will notice that i only have 1 smart clothes outfit, or maybe they have already noticed, but they are too civil to point it out). the meeting went positively, they liked our regulations we have been writing, and made some comments and we noted the comments, and generally it went like that. we said we would make amendments according to the comments they had noted, and we would send them the next draft for their approval. mr jose contreras, who is the director of civil aviation, who is a nice man – his office has very cold air conditioning – i mentioned this to mr carter when we were in mr carter’s office – he laughed and said mr contreras does it so that people never stay long in his office. what a neat trick. i said i would bring a scarf next time, then mr torres asked if i would like the air conditioning turned up a bit, i said yes please – so it went from winter to spring temperature. then you go outside and immediately want to pass out when the wall of hot air hits you. someone should invent clothes that keep you at a consistent temperature no matter what the outside temperature, kind of like a space suit but not so bulky. i shall work on this and then advertise it.

after this, we went to visit a nice man called jay, who has crystal auto rentals just outside belize city, as we are thinking of selling our truck and going to the states for a while while things are slow here, and we wondered what he could tell us about vehicle buying up there, at auctions etc, as that is what he does. what he doesn’t know about cars you could write on the back of a really small postage stamp. he has a big yard full of cars and vans either for sale or rental – mostly they are brought down from auctions, ie they have been damaged and the insurance people have reclaimed them, but really there is no big damage to them – maybe water damage, or a bump on the roof, but the original owner decided to make a claim and get a new car. he buys them super cheap, and denis belini, who bert drove down from america with in january – and they picked me up in northern mexico – brings them down to belize for him. he told us people just aren’t buying things in belize at the moment so we may struggle to get a good price for our truck. he told us tons of other things but my brain doesn’t retain car-related information very well, that is what bert’s brain is for. armed with our information, and a few nasty bites from an orange fly that had been buzzing around us, we set off back to cayo. bert had taken some anti-histamine pills as he got an allergic reaction to the orange fly and his finger swelled up like a sausage, and soon he was asleep so i took over the driving (before he fell asleep). i really dislike driving in belize in the dark – i figured out you have to look to the right, to make sure the right hand side of the road is always in the same place, and you are still on the road, instead of looking forwards or at other cars etc. there are always people walking or cycling that you spot right at the last minute on your right too, there are no pavements here just a rubbly bit at the side of the road. the western highway was supposed to be a big 4 lane super highway apparently ha ha i’ll believe that when i see it belize.

saturday 11^th july

we had pancakes for breakfast – we allow ourselves to eat pancakes each weekend, having had porridge religiously throughout the week – it’s the most economically and energy level efficient breakfast food (that wouldn’t sound so snappy on an advert). how come some things you never see adverts for? like porridge? or socks? maybe some things are so inherently necessary to our existence that they don’t need advertising. the worst advert we saw was for life insurance – hey! got people that care for you – like a wife, children, grandchildren – well, how will they cope when you’re dead, how will they afford medical bills!? how will they go to school anymore!? – was the basic premise. we had orange and sugar on our pancakes, and the last bonus pancake that we share (we make 5 altogether), we have banana and chocolate on. it’s very exciting, thus i am writing about it here. but one thing i just can’t do is get those annoying floury lumps out of the mixture – what i need is a special device for getting annoying floury lumps out of pancake mixture. there must be an advert for this out there.

we then tidied the house and bert mowed the lawn – this is a big deal actually, we have a lot of lawn to mow. then we went to the car wash and traded them a cd of aerial photos of their car wash for a car wash inside and outside (or in and out as they say in the car wash trade). we talked to diane, who owns the car wash – her husband mike wasn’t there, but he owns it too. mike also has a large water van with a big pump on it, and one day when we were at the river mike and the van turned up and sucked up a load of water from the river, which he then took away to sell. ha ha this is great. i guess he cleans it first, but i really would not be surprised if he didn’t. i’m sure most bottled water is just rain water or river water, it’s a big scam, created by advertising executives. in belize they didn’t have bottled water until 6 years ago. we drink our tap water here, but luz told us they don’t, and they have been here for 20 years. we are fine, but that night i woke in the night with strange stomach pains ohmygod it’s the water the water. barry bowen, the richest man in belize, sells all the bottled the water here, it’s called crystal water – he also has the coca cola distribution rights, and makes belikin beer which is the most popular belizean beer (of 2). we might ask him to invest in our business, as he likes flying too. he owns chan chich, the resort in the jungle and near the ruins where we flew to a few times.

we took our clean shiny car to spanish lookout (where the mennonites live) to get it valued at the car dealer. i like the car dealer place because they have free high speed internet, we once spent 5 hours there using it while the car got re-aligned and looked at. they gave us a kind of acceptable offer, but we wanted more (that’s what all those adverts do to you, they make you want more). we met up with frank plett and his wife and 3 of their children for dinner. frank is a mennonite, he lives in spanish lookout where the mennonites live, but they were in cayo that night as their daughters had a volleyball match. we all ordered grilled chicken breast for dinner, not on purpose like it was a planned event, it’s just how it happened. except eva, who came a bit later, she is from switzerland and she ordered pork. is there a connection? i asked her if she went back often to switzerland, and if she missed it – she said she prefers the higgledypiggledyness of belize to the order and restraint of switzerland. for her first 6 years in belize, 30 years ago, she had no power or running water. she doesn’t like going back to switzerland where everything’s the same, there’s no room for development it’s all been done already, the malls are there, the streets, the houses, everything’s in its place. she has an interesting point, but at the moment i see that as a positive and the belizean style as a negative – it’s frustrating, i want a latte and a muffin and a happy meal and a mall and ordered clean paved streets and trains and law and order and justice and stiflingly normal normality. i wish i had a little start trek machine and i could zap over to europe for a day to remind myself that i actually hate all those things and that is fundamentally why i left. anyway, she liked her pork, and we liked our chicken. mary, who is frank’s wife told me that the mennonites speak low german, it is german but not as they speak in germany which is high german, and they wouldn’t be able to understand each other – mutter, kannst du dis confirmen zug ab auf? i guess it would be like if i spoke old english – it is english but nothing like modern english. in fact old english is inflected, ie they used verb endings to specify what person it is, like in french/spanish/german etc, which is interesting that that got totally lost, so that now we have to use i/you/we etc. also the reason that shops that want to be shakespearian call themselves ye olde shakespeariane gifte shoppe – the y symbol was in fact pronounced th, so it is still just the word the, not ye.

after dinner we watched the volleyball game – the other team had cancelled lots of times already, they are wussy it seems, so the girls were thankful it was finally getting done. it had rained a lot during dinner and there had been a flurry of rain related volleyball text messaging and a small wave of panic, but the court was ok apart from a big puddle at one side. frank told us about prophecies, and how some prophets came to see him to say that america is heading towards destruction and civil war, and cities will burn and people will scream and flee. there are lots of americans apparently now living in tents outside cities, having lost everything in the economic crisis. there are lots fleeing to places like belize to start their lives again. many people have had dreams of civil war and fire and terror apparently, some of these people are renowned prophets, i presume in the mennonite world – which i think is a branch of christianity. this was interesting, and also scary, and i’m not sure how i feel about that kind of talk. frank and his wife and family are really lovely people, very genuine and hard working, as are mennonites generally, which is why the belizean government gave them the land at spanish lookout and the other communities they have, because they wanted them to work here and help the country. there are 2 types of mennonites, ones that are like amish people and ride horse and carts, and don’t have electricity etc, and ones that are modern and drive cars and do have electricity. frank is the modern type. the old school ones have long beards and long hair and tall hats, and tend to be tall themselves. there was once one in the waiting room at the doctor’s, and i remember he was very tall.

sunday 12^th july

we sold some cds of aerial photos to places in the area. one of them was of a house with a green roof which is being built just off the road. the guy whose house it is owns the shell garage, and drives a wingle like ours. he showed us round his being-built-house, it’s really nice. he has a games room with a table tennis table – turns out he’s ranked 6^th at ping pong in belize, and recently won the national championship. wow cool. i got on the ping pong team at university, and had to go on a first aid course ha ha, what to do if a ping pong ball hits you on the head. i never actually played in any games as i decided it was really geeky (er like studying latin wasn’t?), plus there was a weird boy in the team who kept sending me emails with pictures of big teddy bears and things on and i thought he might ask me to marry him or something. we sold a cd to inglewood campsite; greg the owner pretty much told us his life story, which was interesting, but i was standing up the whole time and i got foot ache. plus he pretty much told it to bert and not me, which annoys me when people do that, but perhaps he just didn’t like me. he has a nice campsite nonetheless, but he doesn’t like belize anymore and wants to get back to inglewood in california. we sold a cd to rumours resort, a large red and blue and yellow building off the road on the other side, which always looks empty, and indeed was empty. i think they have functions there a lot, but never any actual guests. perhaps it’s money laundering. we went to the owner’s house there to show him the pictures on his tv, he liked them. he asked if that was really how you spelt rumours, when he saw how i’d spelt it on the cd. i said well i think so, that’s how we spell it in england, but perhaps you would spell it without the u like in america – do you? he didn’t know. i thought that was strange, it was his resort after all. we said we like your resort (we didn’t really but you have to say things like that), he said thanks – do you know anyone who might be interested in it? to buy we said? yes. er, no, but if we hear of anyone we’ll point them in your direction. as we drove off i looked at his sign, and it was spelt rumours. we sold a cd to cahal pech resort, they have a great view of san ignacio town, we told them, and they said well it’s not as great as the view from your plane though. no i suppose not, but different. we talked to the owner and he told bert repeatedly that he was mad to fly that little plane, just mad, mad mad mad. perhaps he is. what if he actually was though, i mean clinically mad, and how do you think that would make him feel you pointing that out? (he’s not, but still it’s a valid point).

in the evening we had dinner with luz and jan, and their son joris. joris is studying architecture, he goes to flores in guatemala for thursday to sunday to study, and comes back sunday to thursday morning. he has about 6 more years to do. luz made us something called flor de isote – it’s a flower that grows here and you take all the petals off and then in the middle there’s a little fruit thing, which you take all of them out and pickle them (i told her my surname is pickles), and the petals you cook a little bit with curry powder, and herbs and onions and garlic, then eat with rice. it’s a salvadorean dish, it was really nice, as were the pickles (as pickles always are, ha ha), she gave us our own jar of the pickles to take with us. we talked about columbia which is where luz is from, and holland which is where jan is from. they have another son called jan who is in holland, teaching, he comes back in august for a holiday. they are jehovah’s witnesses, and after dinner they showed us 2 videos about jehovah’s witnesses, which was interesting as i am always interested in things i know nothing about. the best thing was one of the people in the film was called ulysses glass, which is the best name i’ve ever heard. another was called mary christ, but i’m sure she made that up because of being filmed, though you wouldn’t expect a jehovah’s witness to lie like that so brazenly.

monday, tuesday, wednesday, 13^th, 14^th, 15^th july

worried about business things, and finances, and typed up regulations with amendments etc. watched the tour de france each morning (as we have done every day since it started on the 4^th) – we have to get up early to watch it, they show it at 830am eastern time, which is 730am central time, which is 630am here. (which is 7 hours behind france). some days they start at 430am our time, and we set the tv to come on at 5am – bert got up as planned, but guess what – i didn’t. even for watching lance cycle up mountains, i just can’t get up at 5am. it’s really exciting watching this whole race from start to finish (it finishes this sunday), and although it sucks we aren’t working much, it’s actually great from the point of view of watching the tour. so far, lance has done really well considering his age and that he’s been retired for 3 years. levi his teammate broke his wrist, and jens voigt from another team had a bad crash and went unconscious for 4 minutes and broke his cheekbone. the crashes are awful to watch, there haven’t been any big pile ups so far, just nasty little falls. bradley wiggins, the brit, is doing really well so far – as i write this though there are 4 more days to go, so i better not say too much. i don’t think lance can win, he is 5^th today overall, having been 3^rd for most of the race. tomorrow is a time trial which could ruffle things up a bit. i think contador will win overall. i still can’t believe they can cycle at that speed up those hills for that much time – i cycled today up one steep little bit in town and nearly was sick at the top. i know it’s their job and of course if you put that much effort into training then that will be the end result, but i still think it’s absolutely amazing and awe-inspiring. they do in miles per hour what i do in kilometers per hour – sometimes i like to fool myself when i look at my speedometer, and pretend it’s showing my speed in miles per hour, just for a nice little daydream to pass the time. like when i used to check my bank balance and knowing how bad it was going to be, i would pretend to myself that it was going to be 400 pounds worse than the terrible amount it already was, just so that when i saw it on the screen i would go oh that’s actually ok, it’s 400 better off than i predicted. slightly mental perhaps. but really - that hill that took me 10 hours in mexico, they would do it in around 3 – i know i’m pointing out the obvious but i just think it’s amazing. i think that’s what happens when you do something amateurly yourself, and then you see the professionals do it – because you know how difficult it is because you try to do it too, it makes it that much more impressive when you see it done amazingly. like because i’ve never tried pole vaulting, i have no idea how hard it is, therefore when i see someone pole vault a really high thing, it doesn’t bowl me over because i haven’t experienced the problems of trying to master it first hand. or like because i got grade 8 piano, i know how much talent you need to be really really properly good, so when i hear someone amazing at the piano it reminds me how limited my own talent is and makes me appreciate theirs all the more. if i’d never learnt the piano myself, i might assume it was easy and therefore nothing special to be amazing at.

i’ve not been impressed with mark cavendish’s attitude, he made some comment today about thor hushovd not rightfully having his green jumper, to which thor responded by cycling super fast the whole day and getting tons of points. mark is super fast, they say he’s the fastest cyclist in the world, but i think he ought to learn some modesty and stop saying that he’s so ace at sprinting even though he is. then again lance when he first started cycling was really arrogant and everyone hated him too. i suppose you need that mental strength of knowing you’re the best in order to keep going and keep winning. i wasn’t mad into cycling in those days of his early career, so i don’t know really what he was like, i just read it in his autobiography what he says about himself, but he is such a lovely man now and such a team player and so humble and so well spoken, and such an amazing athlete, and his life story is just incredible. he has really nice blue eyes too i have noticed. they match the astana kit well.

also during these 3 days, i attempted to make cold cake. for desert at luz’s on sunday we had what she called cold cake, which was really nice, and is basically a layer of plain biscuits like rich teas, then a layer of mixture which is made of a tin of evaporated milk and a tin of condensed milk blended together, with 2 limes squeezed into it. then another layer of biscuits, then another of mixture, then put it in the fridge overnight, or the freezer for a few hours. easy peasy! so i made one. i put the first layer of biscuits down in the tin, then poured in layer one of mixture, but the biscuits just floated up to the surface. hmm. i went to ask luz – how long am i supposed to mix the milks and lime, she replied only a little bit so they’re mixed. hmm, ok i said and went home. bert said, well it must be right then, so put another layer of biscuits on now. hmm, i don’t see how that will help, won’t they just float like the first layer did? well do it anyway and see what happens. so i put the next layer of biscuits in, and they floated like the first layer did. then i poured the next layer of mixture in, which just topped up the first ‘layer’ of mixture and made both ‘layers’ of biscuits float a bit higher. oh well, let’s put it in the freezer and see what happens. i don’t know what we thought would happen to it in there that would make it correct itself – like perhaps the frozen bagels and those 2 chunks of frozen fish would sort it out? yes, perhaps those frozen chocolate chip cookies will rise up and use their renowned culinary expertise to adjust the consistency of our cake and make it look like luz’s cake looked, and make those biscuits get in the right place and stop floating. well none of this happened, the bagels and fish and cookies didn’t do anything to help. we took the cold cake out a few hours later, the biscuits were now glued to their floating place at the top, by the scientific process of freezing. bert sampled it and said it was nice, but i think it was like when we said we liked that resort we didn’t like (perhaps this was karma coming to get us from that lie?) i think basically there are just some things that remain beyond my grasp, and i learnt this week that 2 of these things are making cold cake, and cycling up hills fast. i shall forever be in awe of people who can do these 2 things well.

thursday 16^th july

we had dinner with luz and jan again, this time i cooked. i made a vegetarian lasagne, and it went ok. it had aubergines, courgette, onions and pepper in. jan asked what is this black thing. i said, that would be a burnt aubergine jan. we took the dinner over to theirs, as jan had a stroke 6 years ago and isn’t very mobile. it was the right side of his brain that was affected, which affects mobility, so he still has speech and knowledge and memory, but he does speak very slowly. he told us the netherlands is actually just the low part of holland, i always thought it meant all of holland, like holland does. and that benelux was basically the first european union, belgium, netherlands, luxembourg. after dinner we had herbal tea, luz offered us apple and cinnamon tea but i remembered just in time that the last time bert had this flavor tea he went all strange and tingly and had to lie down and i thought i’d have to inject him with the epi pen he’d got that time he got bitten on that island and had to be shipped back to the mainland, all swollen up and itchy and with tunnel vision. thankfully, this near disaster was averted, and we had green tea with mint instead. i don’t understand it as bert is not allergic to either apple or cinnamon. anyway, jan told us a joke which was there were 2 fishermen on a boat, and they caught 2 fish, and at the end of the day they were sharing the fish between them, and the one fisherman said to the other well you can choose which you want, and i’ll take the other, and the fisherman said ok, and he took the much bigger fish and left the little one for the other fisherman, who objected and said that is very rude of you, you should always take the smaller one if you have the first choice, and the other fisherman said ok, which one would you have taken if you had had first choice? the smaller one of course, the fisherman replied, because i am polite. well that is why i took the bigger one, so you have the smaller one there which is the one you would have taken anyway.

friday, saturday, sunday the 17^th, 18^th, 19^th july

i finished the power and the glory by graham greene, and started a book by haruki murakami called what i talk about when i talk about running. it’s an autobiographical novel/essay collection (he isn’t sure himself what to call it) about him and his long distance running and marathons and triathlons that he does. he is normally quite private so it’s interesting to have such an insight into his life and thoughts. it made me want to do a triathlon again. he once ran a 62 mile race, an ultramarathon – crazy. he doesn’t like cycling and says how lonely it is going out for long rides on your bike with just you and the bike and the road. i don’t understand how you would see long distance running as not lonely but cycling as lonely and after this comment he lost some points in my mind, which is unfortunate as i really like his novels, and i tried to ignore what he’d said about not liking cycling because that would be immature of me to not like his books anymore just because of that, but i just couldn’t get rid of it. anyway. now i am reading the scarlet macaw book about the zoo lady and belize, the book that bert finished recently.

we saw a ferris wheel in benque and a fair, and thought about going there but decided that the idea of going to the fair was probably more enjoyable than actually going to the fair. it’s the benque festival, and that’s why the ferris wheel was there, and at 4am for several nights they set off fireworks, mr contreras had asked us if we had heard them but i didn’t until the other night, around 4am so it must have been that – at the same kind of time a rooster starts crowing too. which is good as it means it’s nearly time to get up and watch the cycling. i don’t know why they are doing fireworks at 4am, there must be some religious significance but i don’t know what it is.

i am also reading the art of happiness by the dalai lama, or rather by a man called howard cutler, who is american and a psychologist who spent a lot of time interviewing and conversing with the dalai lama, and the result is this book, which is an investigation in to how buddhist and eastern ideas and philosophy can influence and help western people deal with western type problems, such as how should we deal with suffering and conflict, and enemies, and relationships, and life in general. it’s very interesting and i’ve read it a few times in the past. i went to see the dalai lama in london last year and i have to admit i fell asleep for a bit of it, i was telling myself don’t fall asleep don’t fall asleep it’s the dalai lama, but the next thing i was asleep. the problem is that the albert hall is too big a venue for someone like that – you want to be close to him and just have a chat, he creates a really informal atmosphere, and he sat cross legged as is his habit, on the one sole chair on the stage, and he speaks in a very clipped english accent and it’s not easy to catch everything he’s saying. he is very enlightened, it’s his main purpose, and it was amazing to be in his presence even from so far away that i really could hardly see him, and i always find it nice to think that he exists in our world of wars and hatred and greed, as an absolute opposite to those things. after everything the chinese did to the tibetans, he cultivates a feeling of compassion towards them; he says that you should cherish your enemies for giving you the chance to practice patience and tolerance, as there is no virtue such as patience. he never let the tibetans fight back against the chinese, he wouldn’t let them sacrifice their beliefs of non-violence when faced with invasion and fighting, because if you can’t stick to your beliefs then what are you. lowering themselves to the level of chinese wasn’t an option for him and his people. it’s interesting when you think about religions because essentially, no matter what you choose to believe in, it all really amounts to the same thing – the bible is about humanity and love and treating people properly, and if you act according to the bible, you won’t harm others and you will live a good life; buddhism isn’t dogmatic in that sense, but teaches that you will decrease your own suffering if you realize that there are things about yourself and your mindset you can change to deal with life more efficiently and in less torment – the main tenets are that suffering exists but can be avoided by a shift in your perspective, and that happiness and enlightenment can be achieved – essentially the end result is that you live a good life and don’t harm other people. obviously there are differences, and i am expert in no religion, so i wouldn’t know the intricate beliefs systems, but it seems to me that essentially all religions are just different roads going to the same place. we don’t know what happens after we die, and we can’t really prove that god exists even if we choose to believe in him, but it doesn’t actually matter, because as long as we find something to believe in that makes sense to how we perceive life, and death, then we will be a bit more content.

other, more secular, things that happened: the men from cable vision came round and fixed all the channels, so we now have about 130 channels on our tv, and they are all a lot less fuzzy than they were before. it’s too many channels. but guess what, all these extra channels means tons more adverts. when bert has the remote control he likes to linger on each channel, and see what’s coming up after the advert break. it’s because he’s an optimist, he always thinks good things are going to happen. i am more pessimistic and prefer to zoom through all the channels at top speed until some amazing thing catches my eye – which it invariably doesn’t and thus i am proved right, that yet again everything on tv is rubbish. he says well if i would just be patient and wait to see what’s coming on then i might find something. pah. nonsense. there is one channel that is blue and has big white writing, saying ‘se busca un pitbull se llama rocky’ then goes on to describe the dog. i waited on that channel for more information of the missing dog, or other missing items to come up, but it seems that whoever lost their dog has basically taken control of that channel, as nothing else ever is on that channel. other noteworthy things i learnt on tv were than nelson mandela is 91 – and he is very active still, and there is a weather girl called jenny harrison, who is slightly overweight, and i wonder if it is the same jenny harrison i went to primary school with? could it be? she was overweight like this jenny harrison, she also played the trumpet (i don’t know if this tv one does), and she had all the famous five books in a little shelf in her room, custom built to hold them all. i never knew if her dad made it for her, or if they bought it in a special advertised offer for all the famous five books plus this amazing custo- built display shelf if you call in the next 7 days. anyway, she was sometimes a bit mean to me (like she wouldn’t lend me her famous five books) and we never stayed in touch, but i did hear that she went to australia at some point, so maybe she ended up as a weather girl, who knows, it seems as likely as any other scenario. nasa launched another space rocket, and it’s 40 years since they landed on the moon (the yearning for zion sect incidentally don’t teach their children about the moon landing – they said they don’t teach that it didn’t happen, they just don’t teach that it did either). apparently there is some amazing video footage of the moon landing out there somewhere, but nasa lost it, it had to come via australia, to western usa then to nasa, wherever they are (do they even exist they are so space age, they probably are all just atoms floating around an office), and it got lost on the way. quite clearly this is a very tall story – they can put men on the moon, but they can’t find the video footage. hardly likely. if you ask me it is just one more piece of evidence that they didn’t actually go to the moon. oops i must have learnt that during my time at the yearning for zion sect. or actually not learnt it.

we heard a cat meowing in our garden, so went to investigate as i really want a cat. we couldn’t see a cat anywhere, and luz told us it was probably the parrots making cat noises, as a cat used to hang out there and the parrots must have picked up its meowing. how cruel of the parrots to make us think we had a cat. luz has 4 dogs, one of them is ill at the moment and is taking anti-biotics which seem to be helping. it’s funny that you give dogs the same medication you give humans.

the tour de france finished one of the days in bourg st maurice, in the alps. when i was at my 6^th form school, we had a week at bourg st maurice doing things like white water rafting, cycling, walking, etc. at the end of the week they gave us little certificates – i got the death wish certificate as i had flown off my bike on a hairpin bend, narrowly missing going under a car coming up the other way; and also fallen off a catamaran into the middle bit and a rope went round my neck and our instructor had to rescue me.

monday, tuesday, wednesday the 20^th, 21^st, 22^nd july

cycled; swam in the river which was muddy and murky due to the rain; got a puncture and amazingly managed to fix it with my sub-standard belizean puncture repair kit – normally i have to repair the same puncture 3 times before it actually fixes it; bought some new inner tubes; made some aubergine and pasta sauce pasta – we eat this meal around 4 times a week, as we can get aubergines for free from mick’s vegetable garden – weirdly i never get bored of it; also cooked a chicken which was exciting and ate it with rice and beans like true belizeans; got bitten by a mosquito that somehow got into our tightly bug-screened house; made a ginger nut biscuit and frozen yoghurt and mango cold cake – went a lot better than the original cold cake; dreamt about ice trays, then luz told us she’d bought us some; found out we will have new neighbours in august, some professors are moving to the little house next door; had some spanish lessons with luz; ate some chocolate cake; checked my budget spreadsheet and found out i have spent 59.95 belizean dollars at the cake shop so far this month – that is 30 us dollars, which is about 25 pounds, which i actually think is not too bad, but perhaps my sense of perspective is skewed.

and my least favourite recently discovered fact is: btl (belize telecom limited, ie the phone company here), when they found they were losing money due to people making long distance calls from skype in internet cafes, stopped the skype connection so that people had to keep using btl from their home phones, or btl offices to make their calls. given the average belizean doesn’t have much money, but does have relatives living abroad (in the states mainly), this is very unfair for belizeans and very profitable for btl. luz told me it’s 4 bzd per minute to call holland to speak to her son. btl incidentally is owned by lord ashcroft (mentioned in a previous blog, a uk politician, and belize entrepreneur – invented the concept of offshore investment, owns the belize bank, and a huge citrus company, and other things - basically made zillions of money out of exploiting everything he could here in belize just for his own gain and fun. i will learn more about him in my zoo book so watch out for more information).

and that, fellow earthlings, is that. i’m going to watch some more adverts now and find out about all the things my life is still lacking…... xx