In the Land of the Giants

Ill

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:15:00 GMT

I seem to have ill people all over the place at the moment: my father-in-law suddenly unable to withstand the myriad ailments which have plagued him for years (oversized heart, knackered knees, high blood pressure, fused vertebae and now anaemia and seven gastric ulcers); my wife's great-aunt in the final throes of cancer in Buenos Aires; and my old pal Brooksie doing his best to scare the pants off everyone every once in a while but still going strong after how many years of leukaemia?

Why do they always come in threes?

El negrito

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:19:00 GMT

So everyone's chuffed about Barack Obama winning. Well, pretty much everyone.

In fact, Mrs P went to the hairdresser's yesterday and it was the hot topic of conversation beneath the hair driers.

"¡Ganó el negrito!" they were saying ["The little black fella won!"]

Oh well, at least they weren't slagging him off. And to be honest, "El negrito" is infinitely more affectionate than "El yanqui" which is all George Bush ever amounted to round here.

Witch hunt?

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:31:00 GMT

Hahaha - now I remember why I emigrated: all that false morality channelled through the red tops and dished out to the Big Brother generation.

Russell Brand has.....RESIGNED! wtf? The mob can drive a person out of his job over a display of poor taste.

He was paid money to be juvenile. That's what he does. He can't stop himself; just listen to the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7IHJ66wj9g

I think it's hilarious. In very poor taste, of course, and I would have wanted an apology if I was Andrew Sachs; they were totally out of line. But I think the person who should be out of a job is the BBC numpty who decided to broadcast it.

Can't say I blame Russell Brand for quitting. But while I always thought he was a moron before, I've come to rather admire him now. At least he's got the backbone to walk out. To be honest, Ross should quit too - his wings'll be so clipped after this, to carry on would be to sell out.

They cocked up, but I can't understand the strength of reaction. Is there honestly NOTHING else of importance going on in the world just now?

As an afterthought; no, it's not possible for something like this to happen in Argentina. Showbiz is far too puerile, cosmetic and honest about its two-dimensional content to get up in arms over a tasteless joke.

IGCSE

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:18:00 GMT

My first batch of students takes their first IGCSE today, so I'm cacking bricks.

Which probably explains why my cholesterol is off the charts.

Anyway, it's English as a First Language today, the reading paper. If anyone fancies trying their hand at ONE of the tasks from a sample two-hour paper, I've included one below. Remember, this is just HALF the exam (copyright UCLES, obviously, and freely available here: http://www.cie.org.uk/qualifications/academic/middlesec/igcse/subject?assdef_id=852 )

Appropriately, the practice paper is about Patagonia :)

Have fun, and while doing the exam, imagine how hard it must be in a foreign language!

Read Passage A carefully, and then answer Questions 1 and 2.

Passage A

In this passage, the writer describes a visit to a town, a village, and out into the desert in
Patagonia. The desert is not one of sand and gravel but is covered with grey-leaved, thorny
plants.
A visit to Patagonia
Bahia Blanca is the last place before the Patagonian desert. Bill dropped me at the hotel near the bus
station. The bar-room was green and brightly lit and full of men playing cards. The owner’s wife
showed me a hot airless room, painted purple. The room had no window and the door gave out onto a
glassed-in courtyard. I did not sleep that night.
So next day, as we drove through the desert, I sleepily watched the rags of silver cloud spinning
across the sky, and the sea of grey-green thornscrub lying off in sweeps and rising in terraces and the
white dust streaming off the saltpans, and, on the horizon, land and sky dissolving into an absence of
colour.
Patagonia begins on the Rio Negro. At mid-day the bus crossed an iron bridge over the river and
stopped outside a bar. Here I disembarked, followed by an Indian woman who was with her son. She
had filled up two seats with her bulk. She chewed garlic and wore real gold jangly earrings and a hard
white hat pinned over her braids. A look of abstract horror passed over the boy’s face as she
manoeuvred herself and her parcels on to the street.
The permanent houses of the village were of brick with black stovepipes and a tangle of electric wires
above. When the brick houses gave out, the shacks of the Indians began. These were patched out of
packing cases, sheet plastic and sacking.
A single man was walking up the street, his brown felt hat pulled low over his face. He was carrying a
sack and walking into the white dustclouds, out into the country. Some children sheltered in a
doorway and tormented a lamb. From one hut came the noise of a radio and sizzling fat. A lumpy arm
appeared and threw the dog a bone. The dog took it and slunk off.
Outside the village there were irrigated plantations of maize and squash, and orchards of cherries and
apricots. Along the line of the river, the willows were all blown about and showing their silvery
undersides. The Indians had been cutting slender branches from the trees and there were fresh white
cuts and the smell of sap. The river was swollen with snowmelt from the Andes, fast running and
rustling the reeds. Purple swallows were chasing bugs. When they flew above the cliff, the wind
caught them and keeled them over in a fluttering reversal and they dropped again low over the river.
The cliff rose sheer above a ferry-landing. I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream
towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of
emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind,
whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a
black beetle easing over white stones.

1 Imagine you are the writer of Passage A.

Write a diary entry in which you explore your thoughts and feelings about the trip so far. You will
be sending your diary entry to your friends and family.

In your entry include
• the impact of the landscape
• your reactions to people and places.

You should write between 1½ and 2 sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting.
Up to fifteen marks will be given for the content of your answer and up to five marks for the
quality of your writing.

[20 marks]

2 Re-read the descriptions of:
(a) the hotel in Bahia Blanca and the housing in the village, in paragraphs 1 and 4.
(b) the woman and her son in paragraph 3.
By referring closely to the language used by the writer, explain how he makes these descriptions
effective.

[10 marks]

If you want the second half, drop me a comment.

And if you want to be told when this blog has been updated, send me an email with BLOG UPDATE in the title to: my surname at neontribe.co.uk

Rhubarb

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:34:00 GMT

This whole "Cardgate" thing is causing me problems. I used to happily – ok, well, angrily – motor around town hurling abuse at anyone who didn’t rigidly adhere to my draconian set of traffic / pedestrian / littering / courtesy / supermarket trolley / tree pollarding rules.

It was easy – they did something I didn’t approve of, I could mutter / yell (depending on whether my car window was safely closed or not) a torrent of foulest opprobrium. I did it all the time, and I was getting worse. In the supermarkets, if someone did the classic local “selfish stack”, where an emptied basket is just tossed at the pile rather than carefully placed for the ease of future customers, I would have a lengthy one-sided conversation, in English, about the merits of stacking shopping baskets properly.

Tsss.

What.

A.

tw*t.

But now I’m in a pickle. The person who returned my card without stealing any of my cash did so anonymously, the swine. So anyone could have done the deed, which means I have to be nice to EVERYONE. I just can’t run the risk of slagging off someone who did something so generous to me.

Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Rhubarb.

Aye, aye, fishy pie!!

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:28:00 GMT

I know, I know, haven't been here for yonks. Sorry. I still love you.

I really have been meaning to come back for ages, but I'm lazy. And busy. Paradoxical, innit.

I had to post because I was getting really miserable back then, and it has been pointed out that I looked to be having a crap time. Actually, I was a bit down, tbh, but things are great now. And I've been slagging off this town something chronic, but something happened the other day that made me realise I should just shut my trap and be thankful.

Muggins here only went and left the cash / debit card for his UK account in the cashpoint machine. I then disappeared south for a few days (more of that later) and only realised when I got back. My account could have been wiped clean in that time, as a card left in the machine sits there with PIN primed and ready. And if you believe half of what's said around here, it would be a fairly standard reaction to take as much money as possible upon finding some dumb gringo's card still in the slot.

So what, apparently, did the next client into the foyer do upon finding my Lloyds TSB card? Why, take it out and chuck it under the locked door of the closed branch so it was safe and sound until bank employees opened up on Monday morning. Aren't I a lucky bastard?

And that's not the first time someone has been unfailingly honest when it comes to large amounts of my misplaced cash; i left my wallet with $1000 in it on the bar of a local pizza parlour. The owner returned it intact the following day; not knowing I lived here, he had spent the previous evening scouring the local hotels for a foreigner called Parker who had left his wallet behind.

So, I may get wound up here sometimes, but the people here are honest as the day is long, at least according to my experience.

I'll be back.

Disappointing, dad

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:31:00 GMT

There’s an exercise I do with new students based on a Kelly Osbourne Q&A I lifted from the Guardian Weekend magazine. They have to match her answers to the appropriate question, then give their own responses whilst interviewing me. Whenever we get to the question “What has been your greatest disappointment?” I always reply, “My dad,” which is a bit sad really.
It wasn’t always like that. My dad was a bit like Danny’s dad in Danny the Champion of the World. He could make stuff, fix stuff, invent stuff and solve things. He knew which bit of a motor did what, and he made model Spitfires which really flew. He was big, strong, brainy and not a little athletic. He taught me cricket – at the same time transferring some of his unrealised dreams to me, I am sure – and unfailingly supported each one of my sporting endeavours. He was nearly always on the sidelines, no matter how misty, cold, wet or scorching the day. When, at the age of 10 and in the early throes of whooping cough, I entered the 1500m on sports day, he was there to cheer me on. I had no idea about middle-distance running, so I just ran until I couldn’t feel my legs. I was beaten by Barley Norton, who was about to go to the upper school and looked surprised I should have led for 1420m. My dad carried me from the winning line where I had collapsed melodramatically, and no father could ever have been prouder of a son coming in second. He used to remind me of it during my time as a disappointing teenager.
He also supported my music, no matter how loud it got. He bought me my first guitar, my second, my third and even my fourth. Ok, the last one was never really mine, but he promised it to me in his will, so it was as good as. It was beautiful, a 1971 Fender Telecaster. I played a feted blues jam on it on my 21st birthday and learned how to tinker with the string gauges to make it sing.
But it’s what became of that guitar that most sticks in my craw. It just disappeared one day. I had by then moved out of home, but I noticed its absence like one would notice a sudden change in the smell of a familiar house. I asked my father where my inheritance had gone and he had sold it. He didn’t explain any further but I knew it had undoubtedly been flogged to make an urgent payment on the car he couldn’t afford. Or the computer. Or the extra phone line for that wildly ineffectual company he said he was setting up in what used to be my bedroom. Or, more probably, he had sold it for more vodka.
And really it was downhill all the way from there: the drink driving incident when he nearly died in police custody; the 50th birthday trip to see Dylan at Wembley Arena where he insulted me throughout (dad, not Bob) and then had to be helped to the car by me and a marshal because his legs refused to work; the visits to see him in London once he had moved back in with his father and the two of them would sleep through our knocks on the door and the ringing bell, though this was in a way a relief because by then I found too much time in his presence a gut-wrenching torment.
By the time we found out he had cancer, he was 10 days away from death. After his terminal breath, we cleared out the house now father and son were gone. His mattress stank of putrefaction and under a blanket in one corner of his room lay a heap of empty vodka bottles and some porn. I gave the porn to one of the house clearance guys and we threw the vodka bottles into the skip along with 1001 other relics we had no space for in our own home. What we kept filled the back of a VW Golf. None of it contained any of the essence of the inventor, the fixer, the maker. The man who had picked me up after the greatest race I never won was nowhere to be found. He might as well have died 20 years before.
Still, by the time we’d unwound his catastrophic finances and settled his estate and that of his father, there was a healthy sum which we invested in bricks and mortar first in England and subsequently over here. The house I love so much and in which the grandchildren he never met have so much room to run would not have been possible without my father. That he gave up his paternal role in favour of such an overwhelming dedication to alcohol, that he was ill but sought no treatment, that he worshipped me in no small way but dismissed my constant appeals to recognise his alcoholism – that’s what disappoints me most. Perhaps in the end I am disappointed not with him but with my own failure to save him from himself.

Three years

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:14:00 GMT

So it’s three years since we arrived in Argentina. I suppose I could’ve started this blog with the words, “So it’s three years since we left England,” but that would be too retrospective. Onwards and upwards.

So it’s three years since we arrived in Argentina, and I wouldn’t go back for all the opium in Afghanistan. It’s been very hard at times. I’ve felt like the only one who sees the world a certain way, and I’ve thought myself terribly isolated as a result. I’ve felt lonely, angry, lost, ridiculed, inadequate, depressed, unfaithful to my friends and untrue to my English family. It’s taken me three years of adaptation, six months with a psychologist and a recently started bout of anti-depressants to get me to a state where I can begin to accept the things about living here that drive me crazy. Mostly the problem was with me, not with the way things work here. Or don’t work here.

This country is up the creek, there’s no doubt about it – prices are going through the roof, basic commodities (tomatoes, milk, beer, beef, antibiotics) become scarce at a moment’s notice and their prices seldom return to their pre-shortage levels once the emergency has passed. The economy minister’s just resigned, spawning a fresh round of “let’s not panic, but” stories. Inflation was at 13.5pc [http://devdata.worldbank.org/external/CPProfile.asp?SelectedCountry=ARG&CCODE=ARG&CNAME=Argentina&PTYPE=CP]in 2006 compared with 2.4pc in the UK [http://devdata.worldbank.org/external/CPProfile.asp?PTYPE=CP&CCODE=GBR].

As previously blogged, the roads are a nightmare. We’re killing each other at the rate of 20+ a day and no one seems to think it might be a good idea to put on a seatbelt, slow down and get the car MOT’d every once in a while.

People here are angry, pushy, rude and aggressive if you believe what you see on the streets and in the news. And there’s a depressingly entrenched but unacknowledged apartheid at work which keeps anyone not a part of the white ruling classes holed up in grim ghettos on the outskirts of towns.

And yet I wouldn’t go back to England if you paid me. Everywhere has its faults. According to what I read online and in the paper, England’s awash with overweight, unhappy credit junkies and disillusioned depressives, and while property prices may be falling for the first time since Thatcher’s menopause, I couldn’t afford to buy anything bigger than the teeny tiny terrace we used to own. I’d be back in an underpaid treadmill existence, fretting through life squashed up next to 40 million other binge drinking drones crammed into a space the size of one of Argentina’s smaller provinces [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Province]. Anger is apparently endemic [http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/information/news?EntryId17=57716&p=7] and the kids are very far from alright [http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/24/mentalhealth.children]. Somebody tell me why I might possibly want to go back.

Whenever I start pining for Norfolk, something you might find hard to believe happens after the above invective, I just watch my kids run across our immense living / dining room and remind myself that it just wouldn’t happen like this in the UK. This house cost us £30k two years ago and is worth twice that now. My kids have a lovely garden to play in and we have a pool for the scorching summer afternoons. I might get a stomach ulcer every time I get in the car and drive to work, I might get on a downer about some of the finer points of etiquette apparently missing in many of my new neighbours, I may not have two pennies to rub together by about halfway through the month, but I have a lovely home in one of the world’s great wildernesses, and that goes an awfully long way towards compensating.

Touch

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:09:00 GMT

Well, I'm glad to see I haven't entirely lost my touch.

I dropped my old pals at the EDP a line last night to ask if there was any truth in the Norfolk connection to this story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/21/ukcrime2

Got an email in my inbox this morning saying that, as far as they knew, they didn't even know about it yet.

Still got my finger on the pulse, even 14,000km from the Broads.

Soledad

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:38:00 GMT

Soledad is 18 years old, funny, beautiful, bright and paraplegic. She’s been bed-bound for more than three months, since the car she was travelling in was involved in a head-on collision at a black spot outside Buenos Aires shortly before Christmas. I mentioned it at the time. Her elder sister, Florencia, perished in the accident. Soledad’s twin, Guadaloupe, sustained some spinal injuries but has made a marvellous recovery. Their mother, Mercedes, is on the mend, and their father, Fernando, is still using a wheelchair, but his badly fractured femur is expected to heal well, and he will walk again in due course. What is not known is the likelihood of Soledad ever making use of her legs again. It is, as her devout mother says, in God’s hands. Little short of divine intervention is likely to get her walking.

Sole and Guada were private students of mine. In fact, the last pre-accident image I have of them in my mind is of the two of them walking away from my house after our last class together. They were about to finish high school and had chosen courses at universities in Buenos Aires to begin after the long Christmas break. Soledad had been voted Best Classmate, a high accolade and an accurate reflection of the person she is. All in all, as she and her sister strolled happily away from my house, the future looked wide open and full of possibilities.

I can’t stop thinking about her walking off that evening. It’s painful to contemplate her present reality when only three months ago she was so full of beans. It gets worse, too. The operation performed on her in Chivilcoy, the site of the accident, was of the emergency, life-saving kind. It didn’t quite do all it was supposed to, not that the surgeons can be blamed, given the circumstances. Sole is still with us after all, but a small fissure in her spine means she’s losing cerebrospinal fluid which accumulates near her kidneys leading to problematic infections. She has to be operated on again, a five-hour procedure to remove all the metalwork which was inserted in Chivilcoy, insert a bone graft to stop the fluid loss, and then put all the nuts, bolts, screws and plates back on again. It is an operation which is not without its risks.

I’ve seen Soledad twice since the accident: first when she was in a glossy, high-tech centre of rehabilitation on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. She was starting to get used to sitting up, had begun gym and was optimistic, if a little prone to throwing up. The second time I saw her was not so bright – she’d been transferred to a clinic because of the infections she had been getting and was confined to quarters, deprived of her internet connection and fed with at the lack of gym. She’s in the same place now, trying to stay infection free and building up her strength for the operation, which is due to take place at the end of this month. I have another visit planned to BsAs before that date.

The effect of the accident on me has been huge. It’s changed my life and my outlook on life. I’ve assumed more work responsibilities, calmed myself down, become more contemplative and less creative. I appear, outwardly at least, to be more religious. I’m not, it’s just that I go to mass every Sunday at the church where my devoted Catholic friend Mercedes was a chorister. I plan to keep going until the day she walks back through the church door, at which point she will no doubt conjure up an elaborate ruse to persuade me to stay.

I also don’t like the idea of anyone driving on the highway these days. I have a leaflet beside me on the desk which lists the bend in Chivilcoy as number four out of 16 of the most dangerous spots on Argentina’s roads. Florencia was one of the last of more than 8100 fatalities in 2007, a 7pc increase on 2006 and a figure which represents a little over 22 deaths per day. Argentina regularly eclipses other developed nations in terms of motoring mortality: in 2001, for example, there were 1058 deaths per million vehicles here compared with 181 in Holland and 196 in the USA. That’s not just down to bad driving, though motorists here are capable of some pretty shocking manoeuvres; a lot of cars are not as robust as they are in, for example, the States, and many are old and poorly maintained. There’s next to no control over who gets behind the wheel, so you could come face to face on a blind corner with a 70-year-old, partially-sighted farm labourer who never had a driving lesson and never sat a test. If you come out of the accident alive, frequently the other motorist is uninsured, so any medical and repair bills could well be yours to foot. On holiday weekends, the crumbling, single-carriage highways explode with activity, with 4x4s going head to head with long-distance buses and HGVs, turning the roads into racetracks where, inevitably and tragically, lives are lost or immeasurably altered in abundance.

Of course, there are two sides to every story. The tragedies of Florencia and Soledad are mirrored by the fate of those in the other car – three children orphaned, the eldest only five years old, when their parents died in the crash. Those children will grow up parentless because one driver decided to overtake on a bend and then mistakenly threw his car onto the gravel shoulder to avoid collision when he saw the oncoming vehicle. But it was, according to the law, up to the other driver to take evasive action. He did, and the consequences were terrible.

There but for the grace of God go I.

Drugs

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:58:00 GMT

I’m totally zonked out because I’ve just started a course of antidepressants, the first time I’ve done so in my life. I finally caved in last week to the depressing (he he) reality of my state of mind – shouting, angry, swearing, borderline violent (I kid you not) – and made an appointment with a psychiatrist. Actually, I’m a coward when it comes to the phone, so I asked Mrs P. She didn’t need to be asked twice.

I had been to see a psychologist for a while, something I had tried twice before: once when a friend told me he thought I had a problem (same friend who went on to become a wild-eyed semi-professional psyclocibin farmer) and again after my father died. Both courses of therapy proved short-lived (such is the English way – eight or nine sessions and you’ll be right as rain, you’ll see, don't be a wuss) and ultimately pretty pointless. Felt more like they were aimed at turning me back into a happy little worker as quickly as possible, not that I’m criticising the therapist, just the way the system seemed to be set up. Anyway, that was back in the UK. Deciding to see a therapist here was harder still, not because of any kind of stigma – quite the reverse as Argentina is a nation of therapy junkies – but because of the language barrier. I find it surprisingly complex describing how I want my hair cut in Spanish, so the prospect of plumbing my emotional depths seemed a challenge to say the least.

But after about six months of weekly sessions on the lumpy couch of a very nice, equally lumpy lady called Valeria, I got impatient and angry with the process and called it off. I had started to address some of the topics which have built up over the years – nothing tremendously exotic; just family stuff really, the same as anyone else could be expected to have. There was also quite a lot to do with the difficulties of ajusting to life here and the utterly different approach to even the most mundane things. I suppose what I truly lack is the ability to process the frustration that overwhelms me at times, the negativity that courses through me when I have too many days in a row seeing nothing but selfishness around me. Of course, that’s a blinkered view which leads to a self-sampling life experience and a rapid spiralling downwards to…well…shite really. I focus on the negative, which in turn makes me depressed, which in turn makes me focus on the negative, which in turn…you get the picture.

The thought of a pharmaceutical solution to my problems always filled me with horror. The idea that my brain needs a tweak in order to function makes me….hmmmm…worried, I think. Not that that’s stopped me giving it its fair share of recreational tweaks in the past, but God knows why, for some reason that’s “different” – evidence of enlightenment rather than instability, can you believe it? I’m sure I’m not alone in that – I’m sure there are plenty of drug users who are doing so because of a state of mind that might in fact require something backed up by a little more professional guidance.

The only other occasion I was ever prescribed anything for my mental health was shortly after my daughter was born. I was working for the Evening News.

Wow, that’s almost Capote-esque in the economy of its evocation. It really doesn’t seem necessary to add more than "I was working for the Evening News", but for clarity’s sake:

New journalist + evening newspaper + bitch queen from hell = tranquilisers.

Unfortunately, and this is where much of my fear of over-the-counter brain altering drugs comes from, the “mild” pills I was prescribed made me forgetful and dulled my focus – two extraordinarily unhelpful side effects for anyone working in a frantic newsroom with an evil, overbearing tart for a boss. I became more miserable and sweaty, and was basically only saved by a move to the EDP. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write, but for the record: Thanks Duzzer, seriously.

While in Dereham, I replaced meds with pasties, a talkative colleague and a smashing chief reporter for a boss, and I packed up me troubles in an old kit bag until the day my Mini Cooper hit a pothole on the A47 and the chassis cleaved in twain.

But as is the nature of these things, the cold, black cloud has a habit of blowing back over you as soon as the wind shifts. The process of moving over here seems to have been one of those experiences forceful enough to create a change of season – the sun may shine and the water may be lovely; the house may be perfect and we may, just about, have found the side of the fence on which the grass is noticeably greener. But the process of relocation is hard, and while it may be true that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”, in my case when the going gets tough, I get really miserable.

So here I am, medicated with a daily 20mg dose of Citalopram complemented with sleeping pills for the first week because the antidepressants work better when you kip, apparently, and I wasn’t sleeping worth a fart. I feel a bit brain dead – can’t stop sleeping at weird times, almost nodding off in private classes and generally not being in the sort of state to run the English departments of two schools (didn’t I mention that? Oh well, another day). But today, when my four-year-old daughter inadvertently committed one of the 276,000 infractions which a week ago would have had me bellowing to the rooftops, I felt the furious shouts rising in my throat, where they stopped. Which means I am doing the right thing.

* Before I sign off: apologies for the habitual delay between posts. In reality, my past five blog entries have been more widely read than the preceding 45 added together. I just haven’t managed to summon the effort required to sustain the momentum. Lack of inspiration combined with outright fatigue – I was too knackered to be bothered to write something just for the sake of it. Hopefully I’ve come back now with something a bit more honest.

How to unblock drains, Patagonia style.

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:21:00 GMT

I can’t believe how many people have read the “Carlos Soria ate my hamster” blog. Literally countless many of them. I only hope they are not all the legal representatives of litigious South American politicos. It does make me wonder what makes the difference between a popular blog entry and a lame duck. Is it the title, or the first paragraph? Or perhapse I’m being linked to by an influential blogger from the Wall Street Journal or Hamster Monthly. Who knows, or cares? This entry will no doubt get three readers and be forgotten within minutes. Still, I try.

The bloody sewerage thing’s a nightmare. It's a regular occurrence here, but now with a new twist. It used to be that you could phone the water company – you know, the one responsible for maintaining their own drains – and they’d come along with a big smelly rooter truck and unblock your passage for free. Well, free within the context of having to pay a monthly water and sewerage bill.

Most houses have an access chamber in the front garden. You can lever it up and allow a stranger to stare at your loved ones’ bowel movements. It’s all very personal and debasing.

Anyway, now the water company has suddenly discovered some previously unknown law stating that a backed up access chamber is the responsibility of the home-owner, not the drain owner. This sounds to me like one of those made up laws like buses must be allowed to pull out, no matter how badly driven by a half-blind, chain-smoking ex con; or London cabbies must carry a bale of hay in the boot and talk incomprehensible “mockney” gibberish about how “yewl never beleeeve ooo I ‘ad in ‘ere de uvver day, innit”.

So despite the fact that the blockage is nowhere near my house – I know, because I pushed 15m of thick plastic hose down the drain and under the street without once coming up against any obstacle, fecal or otherwise – the water company won’t touch it. They turned up this morning, took one look, sucked air in through their teeth, shook their heads and did something half-hearted and ineffectual via a drain cover half a block away.

A peeved Mrs Parker strode off to the company’s office in town where they assured her they were simply adhering to a law the rest of the country had been obeying since Darwin first sailed to Patagonia. But perhaps madam would like to employ the services of a private contractor. Certainly madam can be provided with a list of names. 'Ere y’are luv.

Lo and behold, the first name on the list turns out to be the teeth-sucker from this morning. He can come after two, just as soon as he knocks off working for the water company. That’ll be 40 pesos, ma’am. Come again!?

I haven’t yet managed to work out on exactly how many levels I resent this sequence of events.

Sweaty craic

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:59:00 GMT

Good God, it’s hot. It’s so hot I am discovering previously unknown crevices thanks entirely to unpleasant trickles of sweat. Species of parasitic worm which normally only flourish beside oceanic hydrothermal vents have established complex civilisations in my armpits. They have elections. And air con.

And frankly this is by no means the hottest summer in living memory. The coldest winter in two decades has been followed by the Patagonian version of an English summer – outlook: weedy. And yet we sweat.

Of course, the sewers have backed up, so there are turds where there should be begonias. Grey water laps at the underside of the personhole cover (wtf do you call a manhole these days?) in our front garden, and when you flush the loo, whiffy bubbles guff strange gasses at you for five minutes or more. We are washing up in buckets, showering at my in-laws’ and adhering to the kind of preventative diet normally followed by someone in the grip of amoebic dysentery.

We had New Year’s here. Just as me mam phoned at 11.30 GMT to tell us she was off to bed, we were getting ready to accommodate the Patagonian hordes. In the end we numbered a relatively modest 16. We ate cold cuts and salads, quaffed champagne, listened to Latin crooners very loud and went to bed absolutely rat-arsed.

As luck would have it, I’m on holiday until February 4. I’m going to Buenos Aires mid-January to collect mum and visit the twins, but in the meantime it’s potter around the house and drink beer at lunchtime. I use the pool five times a day on average.

Enjoy the January sales.

Accident

easterhay@neontribe.co.uk — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 18:41:00 GMT

I feel as though a milestone has been reached in terms of belonging to my new home. Sadly it’s not an agreeable one: a local tragedy has touched me deeply.

I have a lovely colleague, Mercedes. She’s been a mentor to me these past two years, doing at primary school the job I do at secondary, only with greater experience and charm. I love her very dearly.

In one of those peculiar circular motions of life, I learned of her family, indirectly, a decade before I moved here and met the matriarch. She sent two of her daughters to the language school in Norwich where I worked in the mid-90s. I met Jimena, for example, before even I met my wife. It’s a small world.

Contact continued, not just with me eventually finding work at the same school as Mercedes, but with Mer’s decision to send two other daughters, her twins, to me as private students. Two lovelier people you could not hope to meet. In fact, if ever a counter argument were needed for the numbskulls who moan about “the youth of today”, a five-minute chat with the twins would more than suffice. I had the pleasure of teaching them in their final year of school. I would have gladly taught them for free.

Mer’s husband, Fernando, is a stout fellow too. Smiling, cheerful, a proud father.

Mercedes, Fernando, the twins and an elder sister, Florencia, were travelling to Buenos Aires to visit family for Christmas. It was raining as they reached a notorious blackspot 100km from the capital. It was a head-on collision. Florencia died. Fernando and one of the twins are gravely hurt and undergoing surgery. I don’t even know which of the twins it is. Mer, too, is being operated on, I am told. The other siblings don’t yet know of the accident.

The town is descending into shock. The family is well loved and well known, and for the first time I am actively and fully sharing in a communal event, albeit one far sadder than anybody could have hoped for.

And it’s my wife’s birthday, so somehow I have to summon the will to make cake.