50+ and proud of it.

The beach near where we were staying was absolutely lovely, unspoilt with no one on it. This was possibly because of the remoteness of the area and probably because there are 4, 600 km of beach between there and Rio, so why choose this bit? Swimming was a bit risky due to the scattering of rocks, which, at high tide were hidden *just* below the surface - " sometimes dries " to use a nautical phrase. This did not deter my wife from launching herself into the breakers. Spot the shop? 1 Unfortunately, she caught her toe on a sharp piece of rock and it got infected the next day, which required a trip to the local hospital "just in case". We drove about 30 minutes to the hospital, which to be honest looked a tad tired on the outside. Inside however, was spotless and there were only two other people in the waiting area. The receptionist was helpful, but stuck religiously to the rules. She said (in Portuguese) " Foreign nationals must present their passport before tre...

In Brasil , in every village, on every road leading into that village, and, everywhere else for no apparent reason, there are speed humps. Now, in England there is probably a government document that lists the precise dimensions, materials and "rules governing placement thereof" of speed humps. In Brasil it's most likely "got a village?, have a speed hump! No, have ten!" Now these work - and the villagers love 'em. And the reason why they work is that they are so severe that hitting them at any speed more than "0" results in the vehicle leaving the ground and smashing the undertray . So, speed through the village is a sensible and safe 10 mph. This is a small training speed hump: Others I found ranged from a line of bricks cemented into the ground, one that looked like a small telegraph pole bonded to the surface and to a rather ingenious "reverse hump" which consisted of where a speed hump had been and there now was just the trench - t...

Here is a shower in a charming modern bungalow in Brasil. A self-contained, 7kw electric unit fixed to lovely slate tiles: Here is the electricity supply switch. I was told by the electrician, who came to fix the original DOA unit fitted at build time, "regue primeiro, então eletricidade!": Err, OK. We all had cold showers, and it's nothing to do with the Brazilians.

(This is long, stick with it). Part I. As I mentioned a while back, we've just spent the last 10 most fantastic days in Brasil with my sister, husband and friends (more on this later I suspect). While were in Ponta Negra my wife bought a carved armadillo as a present, which required some very carefully packing. We flew TAM Airlines and they were faultless in the way we were treated both in the air and on the ground. This leads me to what happened at Heathrow on the very last lap. We checked our bags in yesterday at Natal, at the start of the first of two legs home. "Make sure you tell 'em at Natal to check them through to Heathrow, and then you check the tags have GIG and LHR on them, so that they get forwarded to Heathrow at Rio! (de Janeiro)" "We'll still have to get them from domestic inbound to take them to international outbound though, won't we?" my wife asked a bit later. "I reckon so" I replied hopefully. After a two hour domest...

We awoke this morning to quite a bit of snow, which, to be fair was forecast... ...and they said 50mm to 100mm, which they got pretty well right... This reminded be of the female American news anchor to the weather man (who predicted a large amount of snow which never happened): "So Bob, where's that 8" you promised me last night?" Now, the fail bit seems to be that this is an urban legend. If you're really bored, pleased post me the YouTube link. :-)

I will ignore the obvious joke here... I am off to NE Brazil next week to see my family. I was asked to bring some woodworm treatment out to kill the little blighters that are scoffing the cane furniture. Now it may be that South American woodworm is more voracious than their European counterparts, but the message was "...the stuff we have just isn't cutting it, please bring some Rentokill..." Me being me, I checked the DirectGov website . Which says: Poisons and toxic substances, including rat poison no Ah, but, Permethrin isn't a poison to us only to woodworm. I thought I'd check with the airline (a Brazilian airline). *ring* *ring*, press 1, 3, 4, re-dial, press 2 "Hello, I have some woodworm treatment, can I put it into the hold of the aircraft?" "You merst speek to ze Customs an Exercise peeple, 'ere iz zee nummer." *ring* *ring* Press a few other digits. "Hello, can I take woodworm treatment out of the UK in the hol...