After reading the local rag and finding out that apart from a few escaped sheep the most exciting thing to happen outside these four walls was a spat between the local conservatives and socialists or fascists and the saviours of the world as it often seems, about raw sewage ( as opposed to cooked?) leaking into the already not very salubrious looking Isuela river. I got the gist that all was in order and very punctual added the lefty considering it had all happened one night during the first of September. I take it that means we were very lucky indeed.

Reeling from this news I thought I had better get a fix of British TV and found myself watching a video about a documentary called Tribe and well, you can guess what it is about. At one point the bloke making the documentary found himself with the local soothsayer, a sort of Bhuddist Patrick Walker somewhere in the Himalayas, and going by the subtitles bloke was in his past life a bad monk and had monkey and chicken to look forward to in his next. Maybe the sage had got it wrong or the translation and subtitles were on the skew-whiff but bloke was not very happy and carried the gutted look of a man who realises his raffle ticket has been called out by someone who has had a skinful and forgotten their reading glasses.

Talking of animals, during one of my meanderings around the town I couldn't help noticing an ubiquitous photocopy posted on walls of a little West Highland Terrier by the name of Dana who had gone AWOL for a bit and the owner was desperate to hear from him or her. The worrying thing was where Dana had last been photographed. The little perisher seemed to have stepped onto a railway line whilst posing for the photo and I couldn't help thinking the worst. There he was, one foot on the rail gazing lovingly upwards. Or maybe it was just a dodge and the trickster had jumped on the back of the next train outta here giving the town the finger.

Yesterday the Dutchman called me a lazy Catholic bastard which is a bit rich coming from someone south of the Rhine and who once claimed the Protestant work ethic wasn't in his remit. The words 'the dead arose and appeared to many' are often fired his way when he gets up the following day after getting in 'three sheets to the wind' the night before.Yes, it is that time of year when I wonder how I survive on nothing but fresh air and a late awakening but in about a week or two we will find ourselves unable to say 'no' to the many offers winging our way in the shape of mothers who realise their little Fulanita won't get anywhere in the world unless she learns the language of us imperialist bastards.