I’m BACK!!!

This poor cow OBVIOUSLY hadn’t been cleaning caravans for long when this picture was taken!

No Jamie.

This is the minging old poodle,  it barks when I’m trying to sleep in the afternoons. I HATE it!

I live with my Brazilian friend Carlos, who came to meet me at the 
airport; and he then showed me around our new crib! The house is fairly big, in a good location, and we share with a couple of other people including the owner of the house. Now this guy is elderly, he is pretty camp, and he always sounds like he is gagging on something whenever he talks….and boy does he love to talk! My Portuguese isn’t good enough to understand what he is saying, but that doesn’t stop him talking at me daily for at least five minutes at a time. And when there is nobody about he loves chatting to his scabby old poodle! 


This poodle is revolting, it stinks, and it follows my eccentric landlord around everywhere. Now this is the bit that is bizarre…the guy is a medium, and he has people round to the house to do spiritual readings for them, usually in the kitchen (This is actually happening in my place right now!) There are times when all I want is a cheese sandwich, but making it as some stranger is communicating with their dead relatives seems a bit inappropriate!


A few days after arriving back here I was in a bar and I saw an advertisement on the TV, from that I understood that the build up to carnival was well underway. 


In the UK we know Christmas is approaching whenever we see the Coca Cola advert. “Holidays are coming” is chanted over and over, accompanied by that big red truck driving through the snow. The advert usually features a child whose face lights up whenever they see a computer generated Santa on the back of the truck, swigging from his Coca Cola bottle. 

Corrie’s on in twenty minutes guys!

Well the Brazilians have a similar idea to mark the build up of carnival, as they too have an advert to remind you that the ‘holidays are coming’. There is no big red truck here though, just a naked woman sporting a bit of body paint, dancing the samba against a black screen (there she is, on your left! And let me remind you that I wasn’t in some strip bar when I saw this, this was in a regular bar, on a regular TV channel around six in the afternoon!)! And just like the child, this woman is equally as excited about the upcoming festivities. I know this because I have seen how ecstatic she’s been for the past two years now. She is REALLY excited to be dancing with no clothes on, as the channel’s voice over reveals their carnival programming.

We would wake up in the morning and head straight for the beach, and from there we would start drinking. Each day we could be found by one of the many beach bars, usually the one pumping out electronic music. When the sun went down, we would head back to the apartment to shower, and then we would head back down to the beach for more partying.