Blog recess. Sorry for the delay in getting any "proper" posts on here. There's been lots going on and I've had a few writing engagements elsewhere so promise to get it back on track this week.

For now, if you're a fan of Premier League football. you might want to have a peak at a blog entry I wrote for www.reallifenews.com on Brazilians in the Premiership. Click here for that.

Weekend away and adventures on the road. In part for Rach's birthday and in part for the chance to have a curry and a banter with some British blokes, we headed down to Joao Pessoa this last weekend. Rach got to see plenty of rellies all bearing gifts of chocolate cake and wotnot. Saturday evening was spent in the most excellent company of Andy Roberts, girlfriend Rosie and Marcus and Tamara Throup, Anglican missionaries to JP. As 3 British blokes of roughly equal age who like football and curry and are married to or dating Brazilians we all had a lot in common. The next day I was able to preach at the monthly English-speaking Anglican service. It was great to be singing songs in my mother tongue again and following the Anglican order of service was a treat; something I've missed from St.Mikes in York.

The weekend's major adventure came on the way back home. 2/3rds the way back to Natal and we stopped off at a petrol station to have a loo stop. We also changed drivers and Rachel sat down in the front seat only for the car to refuse her key and complete fail to ignite the ignition. Our spare key was in Natal, still some 45 minutes drive away, locked up in our apartment. Thankfully, my phone had 1 bar of battery so Rachel was able to make some calls. The people at the petrol station provided a number for a chaveiro (key guy) and it happened to be that he was driving past anyway (thank God!) and pulled up to see what he could do.

It transpired that our key had lost the coded chip which was unique to our vehicle - a security measure on Ford EcoSports cars. Amazingly, we found the chip on the ground outside - it had fallen out when I first stepped out the vehicle, but even after it was reinstalled the car still assumed we were robbers and refused to start up. The chappie got it working though and at a price too, but unfortunately we didn't have much cash with us with which to pay him. In the end, as the banks weren't taking Rachel's cards, we bought him petrol on credit at the gas station. Anyway, we made it home, and not too late - it could've been a lot worse and the two little ones behaved themselves very well considering. Also, how bad would this have been if we had stopped, as we often do, for a loo stop behind a bush in the middle of nowhere?

Rach is 28 today! Here's a short history of my exceptionally wonderful wife. Click here to see.

I'm outta here... The Maclure clan have a packed few days ahead. Today, directly after my Saturday lesson, its off to the airport and on a plane and down to Recife to see our good pals Mariano and Babi and their kids Miguel and Sofia back from Seattle. Should be great fun!

Finlay Joel Byrne. Awesome news coming out of York this week - another Byrne! A brother to Gracie and a son to Danny and Caz. Congratulations you guys!

A fuller post coming soon...

Elections, Brazil-style. Across the nation in October local elections will be taking place in Brazil. Already, our streets have been filled with the cocophany of Brazilian election fever where the reigning philosophy on electioneering appears to be (literally) "he who makes the most noise wins". More about that later. Following the advice of Rachel`s cousin Hebinho I tuned into half an hour of party political broadcasts on a local channel recently. The point being that the comical value of what people have committed to film in order to pitch their angle is priceless. And, as in the UK national elections, democracy has opened the door to the world`s crackpots and fruitcakes to have a go at elected office. I`m sure the Monster Raving looney party would garner a massive following in Brazil if they were ever to set up an HQ here.

For now though, feast your eyes on this - a compilation of the `candidatos bizarros` running in this election in Brazil. I suggest watching until the end to see the icing on the cake - Moura, the fighter of corruption... Click here for the video.

Good weekend, busy week. All in all I can chalk this last weekend down to being one of the best in recent memory. Here`s some reasons why:

1. Spoke to Mum and Dad on Skype. Managed to get hold of them on Sunday as they were sweeping up and moving out of their home of the last 10 years in Chad. They will stay in the mission guest house as their replacements take over their old home. Mum and Dad will be out of Chad by the start of October for good and then it`s a countdown to their visit to see us in December. As ever, it was great to speak to them.
2. I did a little talk at church in Portuguese and it seemed to go OK.
3. Rach and I managed to have not one, not three, but TWO take-away film nights. We watched Batman Begins (accompanied by pizza) and A Mighty Heart (with a generous helping of noodles). The latter, a Michael Winterbottom film about Daniel Pearl the American journalist captured in Karachi in 2003, is somewhat harrowing. The former was good but not as good as the Dark Knight.
4. Arsenal won and are now top of the league and Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd all drew. This makes it a close to 5-star weekend football-wise.
5. REM guitarist Peter Buck had his stolen Rickenbecker guitar returned (hooray!). And, in further REM developments, one of my favourite blogs of all time - popsongs.wordpress.com (a commentary on every REM song by fluxblog.org creator Matthew Pepetua) - is finally reaching its glorious finale. As an exciting conclusion to us loyal fans and commenters on the blog, Michael Stipe himself has been answering fans questions about REM lyrics. One of my questions got answered on Saturday so that made my day!
6. A few DIY things got sorted - no thanks to me, I might add, as I am not Mr.Fixit - but largely thanks to Sr. Joaquim from Cultura and one of the porter`s in our apartment block.

Anyway, it`s back to work now and a busy week ahead. I thought I`d post something now in case I don`t get a chance over the next few days...

Things I miss about England #35: BOGOF. Whilst once again perusing the shelves of Nordestão today I was struck by how few promotions there were. Sure, they label their discounts on each aisle but it's usually a saving of a paltry 4 centavos or similar. Only occasionally can you find something with a reasonable mark down but generally they haven't got the hang of it - at least, not like Tesco buy one get one free. The closest I saw to this was buy 2 bottles of olives, get the second at 37c less. Wow. Cash back. I'm sure, but I couldn't be certain, the vendor of pirate DVDs on the corner of the street tried to sell me 1 for 3R and 3 for 10...

SPECIAL POST: Polticial correctness

I need to be careful what I say here as political correctness does have it's place. Fighting demeaning socially constructed-language and systems is a good thing. You don't get to hang around left-wing historians and political scientists at York University to not see some sense in standing up to oppression in various forms as it exists in society and in the world. (Thank you, Rachel, for buying me the film Cry Freedom for my birthday. I love the scene in this film where Steve Biko is in court and is asked by the judge, "Why do you call yourself black? Surely, you are more brown than black...". Biko replies: "And why do you call yourself white? Surely, you are more pink than white...").

Things I love about Brazil #33: non-PCness. BUT, and this is a huge but, Brazilians seem to have got it a whole lot more sorted in SOME respects than we do back home. Blair's Britain, the New Labour experiment, has left us with a straight-jacket, ironically created in the name of tolerance, which stifles effective dialogue and open and frank discussion in favour of layers upon layers of meaningless (John Piper would say cornerless) language all designed to tread softy softly through the 21st Century landscape of religion, class, gender and sexual orientation (my goodness there was a lot of metaphors in that last sentence). Do Indians in London prefer to be called "Ethnic minorities" or "Minority ethnics"? Is the term "disabled" un-PC even when a wheelchair-bound professor chooses the name for himself? Political correctness fire-fighters are shunted out to every corner of society to pour water on fires that don't exist. Its soul-destroying at times and often a hindrance to the education of genuinely curious people trying to ask important questions.

OK, enough about that. Let's talk about Brazil. Let me not say that Brazil has got it all correct. The Paralympics finished this week and with it Brazilian sports coverage of the Olympics in Beijing. Brazil is a country learning about its own identity and trying to understand the identity of other countries, even rivals if you will. Generally, the Chinese are seen to be something of an object of quiet ridicule - buck-teethed and slitty-eyed. The international furore (led by a blustering section of the British tabloid press) that surrounded the Spanish Basketball teams appearance in an advert making slanty eyes hardly caused a ripple here. The reason being that Brazilians saw nothing strange about that. In fact, I've seen worse here. One of the culprits was (the American no less!) Sports network ESPN. Their Brazilian presenters ceaselessly dug away at the Chinese with the fascination of a small boy poking a frog. Presenters were sent out to find strange Chinese food to try and then ridicule. Back in the Braizlian studio, a goofy cartoon Chinaman doll sat alongside the presenters throughout (see pic above). In the centre of this was was a bonefide Chinese-Brazilian reporter Alex Tseng (of whom the doll was a caricature, I believe), an out and out Paulista who, because of his heritage, had been given the task of covering the Olympics from live in Beijing. Often the butt of his colleagues jokes, he seemed strangely aloof of and often complicit in this borderline political incorrectness going on. So, Brazil is still learning how to approach the people of other nations, especially other continents. Brazilians, for example, have very little to say about Africa and what they do have to say is mainly how much they would want to avoid a country [sic] like that...

Whereas the professionals of ESPN should probably know better, up here in the north-east away form the big cities the average person's exposure to things from other countries is minimal. Brazil is so big, you have to travel thousands of miles to even get to the border of another country. Television coverage on the national stations of world affairs is not great either. I am, to many of my students, their primary contact with a place that is not Brazil. In Joao Pessoa for Rachel's Granny's 80th in June we saw this first hand. During the church service the local Presbyterian pastor welcomed all the family who had come from different parts of the world. He noticed Rachel's Uncle, originally from Taiwan. The pastor started to dig a hole: "Welcome everybody! Including people from as far away as Japan... I mean, China... I don't know. They're the same thing right!? No, wait. China has the Olympics.... er.... everyone watch the Olympics!"

But, and finally I arrive at it, my main point is this - Brazilians are happy to talk about all this and seem genuinely interested in acquiring new points of view with which to approach the world. I have had far more constructive discussions with my students on a wide variety of taboo or controversial subjects - Jesus, hell, gender equality, immigration, sexual orientation, regionalism, Catholicism, corruption, abortion, Western tourists, US foreign policy etc - than I did back in the UK. I distinctly remember (and will never forget) a "social" at the pub I had with my MA colleagues back in 2005 in York. It was to be a quiet night of jazz. Rachel came along too - and simply on account of being Christians (stupid and irrelevant) who had got married (an out-dated and oppressive institution) and were deciding to have children in a home where Rachel wanted to take time out to care for them (sexist!) while I worked (so 1950s!) we were almost ejected from our seats by a hoard of hostile, muttering lefties. The Brazilian youngsters I meet are so remarkably free of assumptions and preconceptions (or at least preconceptions they would stubbornly hold onto) that I honestly wonder how I'll ever survive back in the UK again. There is real liberty in being able to speak openly here and share your lifestyle choices, faith experiences and eccentric opinions, however quirky they may be. Nobody seems to want to hit you with sticks for having an alternative point of view. On the contrary, they'd like to sit you down with an acerola juice and hear you out…

Dave mistaken for a native shock! OK, I was at the mall last night with my good buddy Dyego. We were about to go and watch the new Morgan Freeman/Angelina Jolie film when I decided to nip over and get a Pretzel from Mr.Pretzels. We're frequent visitors to the finest (and only) pretzel-making establishment in Natal and perhaps because I was devoid of screaming children or Rachel, the guy serving didn't recognise me. Anyway, I placed my order and then he asked me: "Então, tem Mr. Pretzel lá no Portugal?"... Strange, I thought. It sounds like he's asking me if they have Mr.Pretzels in Portugal. How would I know that? I probably misheard. "Como?". Back came the question, followed by "Voce é do Portugal, não é?". "Am I from Portugal? No, I'm English!". He shrugged his shoulders and said he thought I spoke very good Portuguese but that my accent was European so he thought I was from Portugal. I almost hugged him and wanted to take a picture of the moment! So, I may not sound authentically Brazilian, but it seems as if my accent is slowly creeping out of the British Isles, traversing Europe and is now poised on the shores of Lisbon. How many more months, before my accent sounds authentically Brazilian! I pray for the day...

Things I miss about England #75: luxury cars (or how to get a Porsche to Natal). It was one of the first things I noticed about being back in the UK last summer. When Mum and Dad picked me up from the airport, Dad had parked next to a blue Aston Martin and by the time we got to London luxury cars were two a penny - in all shapes, colours and makes. For a guy, it just makes life more interesting if there are some interesting cars to look at...

In Natal, the major popular car manufacturers have outlets here - Toyota, Fiat, Nissan, Ford, Chevrolet, VW and Honda. All of there cars are either black, white or silver. You have to look back to some of the pre-90s bangers that still clutter the roads here to see a bit more variety - namely, in the form of Brazilian-built box cars or VW Beatles and Kombis. In the case of the latter two they are often painted in a variety of startling colours reflecting many years of replaced panels at dodgy back-street garages. There are of course buggys for riding on sand dunes - and it is said that Natal had a big factory for these a while ago. You see a lot of SUV and pick-up trucks too. According to the Cultura driver Natal has the highest proportion of new cars bought and pick-ups bought for anywhere in Brazil - a statement of the new wealth that this town has in recent years of economic prosperity. So, there is some variety of cars on the road, but not much. I suppose I don`t really care too much but I know it would make Nelson very happy if we had a few more interesting cars that looked a bit like racing cars.

So, what is there here? I once asked my students and they immediately named (while counting on the fingers of one hand) the luxury cars here in Natal. There`s a yellow hummer (owned by an American), a Porshe, a Chevrolet Firebird and a handful of Mercedes and BMWs. The fact that all my students knew where these cars were, who owned them and how many there were highlights the first problem of owning anything "out of the ordinary" here - you draw unnecessary attention to yourself in such a small city. And then there`s the roads - Natal`s only Porsche is owned by a man whose daughter goes to Nelson`s school. (I hope we get invited to her 2nd birthday party!). I saw her Dad driving up to the school recently and seeing his flat-as-a-pancake Porsche struggling with the potholes and sleeping policemen. And there`s the traffic. Being rear-ended or (instigating rear-ends) seems to be a regular part of life for most Natalense drivers - when most buses and trucks don`t pay much attention to the vehicles around them, hiding in a sportscar that probably rides below the view of bigger vehicles` mirrors (if they have them) can`t be a good idea. When I asked my students how a man would get a Porsche to Natal, I suggested the answer myself "Perhaps he had it driven from Rio?". They fell off their seats laughing. "Drive a Porsche to here from Rio!?!". The 3000kms trip, they clarified, would, thanks to the roads, absolutely tear the vehicle to shreds. They also thought that based on the crime-rates of cities that the Porsche would have to pass through, there would be nothing left but 4 rims, an axel and a brake light by the time the car rolled into Natal. In other words, the Porsche would need to be shipped by sea... an expensive and time-consuming venture in its own right. This is probably how the chappy in Natal did it - and it`s a valid question to ask if it was really worth it.

Sports bloopers. Brazil are still stuttering in their World Cup qualifying campaign - drawing 0-0 with Bolivia in Rio which is not on really. I was so bored I literally nodded off during the first half. For once, I can be proud to be a football fan of England after their 4-1 drubbing of Croatia last night... Other sports bloopers this week come from my students in their tests this week. Complete this sentence - "The person in charge of a football team is a c_______". Answers ranged from captain and coach (both correct) to the more surreal cheat (possible I suppose!) and champion (also possible). Or, "If you do a lot of exercise you will g___ f____". Get fit was the answer we wanted here, but one guy imaginately put great footballer whilst another put got fallen which is just a bit bizarre. Lastly, for the question "Mexican food is sometimes hot and s______" most students responded with the correct word spicey but one guy wrote strange. Well, if in his opinion Mexican food is strange, he deserves a mark.

Street Evangelism. On Saturday Rachel and I and the kids joined our little church group for a spot of street evangelism around the Ponta Negra tourist area. Now, street evangelism can be undertaken by Christians in ways ranging from the frankly bizarre to the downright offensive, so both Rachel and I were a little trepitious about what we were getting ourselves into. Brazilian Protestants, in part due to the freshness of relatively recent revivals and also because of a desire to distinguish themselves from traditional Catholics, have sometimes drawn hard battle lines between themselves and mainstream society. There`s nothing wrong with that - in fact, to an extent it`s quite biblical - but it can mean Christians can come across as mean-spiritied rather than loving. My fears were not wholly allayed when the pastor rang me on Friday to ask for my and Rachel`s shirt sizes - the idea being that all involved would have matching uniforms. I pictured a ragbag bunch of guitar-playing, bibles-poised-for-bashing, sandal-wearing, fixed-smile-sporting believers dressed to the hilt in lemon shell suits descending as one on unsuspecting tourists or joggers or coconut water vendors. In the end, and as is almost always the case with me where my fears are never fully realised, the whole thing passed without a fuss. It was quite fun and I`d do it again. Our shirts were very tasteful, we simply politely approached people to hand out flyers and spoke further with them if they were interested and had the time. In the end, we ended up at the quiet end of the beach away from the tourists, prostitutes, tarrot readers and had a sing-a-long and ate hot dogs. It was a good time - a time to bond as a group - and an important first step in publically displaying our faith in appropriate ways. I even felt a niggling feeling we could have done more - next time, let`s get up the busy end of the beach!

Adoption and Social Responsibility. Rachel and I are not considering adoption - at least, not yet - but Rachel saw an event publicised recently as a fundraiser for an organisation which works with orphans and sponsoring children and placing children for adoption. Generally, it is said that in terms of philanthropy and charity work Great Britain is far ahead of many countries in the world. This is due to our many years of wealth, our rich history of social action and mission work and also a sense of guilt following our carving up the world through our Empires. On the other hand, South Americans, to generalise massively, are focused on survival and aiding the family interest. Negatively, this exposes itself as corruption - the underming of communal values and laws or common goods for all and the neglect or marginalisation of the alien and the poor. Positively, it means an unswering commitment to the relationships of all generations within families - something lacking in contemporary Britain, in my opinion. Brazilians, however, of all South Americans (at least according to my friend Roberto from Chile`s MA) have the lowest levels of trust for each other outside the family. In other words, there`s no way I`m leaving a key with my neighbour when I`m away for the weekend because I don`t know if they`ll let themselves in and walk away with my DVD player. Even if I offered them my key, they would refuse it on the grounds that they may be accused by me even if they didn`t steal anything... you can see, I think, how this is different to the UK (although maybe this is changing for the worst back at home too!).

Knowing all this, Rachel and I weren`t sure what to expect when we rolled up last Sunday evening. Fundraisers are not so common here and we were expecting a low key affair. Not at all! The place the group rented was huge and was packed with well-to-do families emptying out their pockets for a good cause. It was a superbly run operation with clowns, presentations, slide-shows, oodles of cute children running about etc. We were really taken aback. Maybe, the next generation of wealthy Brazilians - of which there are many in Natal -are catching onto social responsibility. That, and Brazilians unswerving estimation (almost idolisation) of children, resulted, in this case, in an exhuberent outpouring of generosity.

Brazilian fruit juice company invents novel way to consume liquids.More examples of barmy English in my next post as I'll just have marked some student tests - huzzah!

The cake. Can you guess who the four characters are perched on top of the icing?

Surprise party for Rachel's parents (nearly) works! For obvious reasons, I wasn't able to mention this last week, but Rachel was cooking up a surprise party for her parents 50th birthdays (both this year). The party, billed as a 100 party, was in Joao Pessoa and Rach did a great job of rounding everyone up. I was particularly pleased to see old pal Andy Roberts (and seriel plagariser of this blog for his own newsletters!) and his girlfriend Rose for the first time on Brazilian soil. Andy works down in Recife at the extraordinary church project to Brazil's poorest - the residents of a dump heap in Olinda. Ruth, who was here last month, had been doing short term work on the project in July along with a team of students from Newcastle.

Anyway, about the surprise party. This is a copy of some of what I wrote about it this week...

We managed to keep the party a surprise for Rachel's parents up unitl about half an hour before the party (the decoy was that it was a 1yr old party for Rachel's cousin Johnny - even Nelson was primed to repeat ad nauseum "festa de Johnny! festa de Johnny!). But, for the first time in their lives (or in the life of any Brazilian), Rachel's folks arrived EARLY for something and so we had to stall them. I called with the "we've forgotten nappies for Gloria" excuse to send them off to a pharmacy. But they foiled us again when Steve decided to drop off Celia at the party and go and look for nappies just by himself. So, on seeing a bunch of family and friends who would not normally be seen dead at a 1-yr-olds do walk in, she twigged.

Steve on the other hand was left in the dark and his surprise was genuine - only problem was the diversion worked too well. He couldn't find nappies! He ended up driving 4 miles out of town to a 24 hour supermarket and got back a lot later than expected... But when he did arrive he was carrying a huge toy for a 1 yr old and was bowled over by the surprise. As he said "I love surprise parties and tributes - but only for other people!".

The "miss marple" prize for opportunistic sleuthing goes to Rach on account of her overhearing her Dad call his ol school chum last Sunday to wish this guy happy birthday - Rach got hold of her Dad's mobile, searched the "calls made" list on the phone and copied the number down of this old aquaintance. Later, she called the chap explaining she was Steve's daughter and could he come along to the surprise party and bring some other back-in-the-day school chums. Some of them he hadn't seen since his teenage years. It was the highlight of the night and Steve couldn't honestly believe they were there.

Things I love about Brazil no.94: hearses. Yesterday we drove past an undertakers shop (do undertakers have shops?) which was amusingly and perhaps appropriately-named "After-life funeral directors". It reminded me what we had seen on coming back into town from our road trip to Joao Pessoa - a long procession of slow-moving cars with their emergency lights on snaking their way through the city of Natal on their way to a burial. At the head of the long line of cars was the hearse. But, I honestly didn't recognise it as such until we stopped next to it at a set of traffic lights. What would you expect a hearse to look like? Back in the UK and Ì'm pretty sure in the States (and I imagine several other countries) a hearse is normally black. Sometimes the coffin is on display behind large glass windows for all to see. Not in Brazil, or at least not on this day. The hearse was a VW Kombi, completely white (except for half a dozen stickers advertising Sao Francisco Funeral Directors) and 4 orange lights flashing out from up on the roof rack. No windows. The image that came to my mind was of a 1970s hippy ambulance. Or, perhaps of a remodelled and retinted A-team van. If it wasn't for the stickers on the side, I honestly could have assumed the drivers were some kind of emergency decorators and the contents in the back of the van were tins of paint.

Things I miss about England no. something-or-other. I don't seem to be missing anything from the UK this week so I'll have to write this later...

One thing or another. It's probably going to be a busy weekend so I thought I'd write a short update now. Life's been pretty full on for us - but rewarding at the same time. My students are coming up for their first assessments next week. I still haven't learned all their names yet. Mind you, one group of 20 or so teenagers has an annoying mixture of people with very similar names - Gabriel/Gabriella, Graça/Jessica, Isadora/Isabelle, Marcia/Marcella, Joao Vitor/Joao Henrique. I mostly just point and say "you there!".

Olympics over but Paralympics anyone? Brazil did moderately well in these Olympics - they lost a bunch of finals to the Americans which they were pretty sore about but their women's volleyball team managed to get gold against the States, prompting scenes of delirious jubilation on the podium. See here for an awesome interactive medals table from all Olympics up to and including 2008 as done by the New York times. Also, Brazil won their first individual women's gold medal ever when Maggi leapt 7.04 metres in the long jump. However, Brazil were denied a chance to even attempt for a medal in the women's pole vault when the ladies coach misplaced the poles after qualifying. The competitor had to borrow somebody else's pole but it didn't work out too well - it was like something out of Cool Runnings.

The Paralympics start at the end of next week and we'll be keeping an eye out for two possible medal contenders - Adriano Lima and Clodoaldo, both from Natal. The first is a student of the language school and I met him and interviewed him last year and wrote a post about it here.

Things I miss about England #38: Match of the Day. So, the English Premier league has started again. Another season and another chance for me to miss all the goals. "If only I had Match of the Day!", I've frequently cried. Hansen, Lawro et al. may not be your cup of tea and you may think their razor-sharp analysis is as sharp as a toothbrush but they're a fair bit better than coverage here in Brazil. There are programmes which show the British goals. Only problem is you have to watch 2 hours of talking for 10 seconds of clips. And there's no consistency about when the programmes will even be on (TV guides may have been invented but it doesn't mean anyone has to stick to them!) or when in the programmes the goals will come. Even when they do show goals from the Premiership the editing is pretty shocking resulting in a speeded up 2 second-clip of a wonder goal followed by a 30 second repeated slow-motion clip of the referee falling over.

The absolute best (or worst) example of this dodgy editing came this very evening when my father-in-law was listening to an online radio commentary of a game involving his team Nautico (think Reading) playing at home ot the league leaders Gremio (think Chelsea). With 2 minutes left of the game and with Nautico winning 1-0 the commentator had to cut to a party political election broadcast. Left high and dry without commentary, Steve managed to get text commentary from a website only to find his beloved Nautico had let in an equaliser in the 90th minute. It was a double sucker punch (or should that be "soccer punch") for my already frustrated father-in-law.

Thank goodness for the internet which allows me to at least see the Arsenal goals (that's if they're ever going to score any!) from a dodgy, grainy Arabic website.

Things I love about Brazil #68: Football commentators. It's not that Brazilian footy commentators are good. It's more that they're just funny. They don't seem to take themselves or their jobs as seriously as Messrs Motson and Tyler. There's much more banter, much more speculating about what's actually happening, much less clarity about who is who... my top 5 Brazilian commentator moments so far:

1. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL. I have to admit, the way commentators announce a goal being scored is very handy. You can be anywhere in the house and know somebody has scored. It's a great way to make sure you don't miss the replay. If you're watching a game involving Brazil (in any sport), a goal for the mother country is not only announced with the customary drawn out shouting of "GOL" but a techie in the sound-box will put on a cheesy sound-clip of somebody (Rachel informs me it's Galvão Bueno) saying "Brazil-zil-zil-zil-zil!" occasionally followed by a 10 second clip of Brazilian samba music. It's truly extraordinary and one of those things that can only be fully appreciated if you're there at the time. But, thanks to the miracle of YouTube you can be. Click here to see what I'm on about.
2. The commentators of a Carling Cup match didn't know that the game would go to extra time. On seeing two teams who had just finished a match line up against each other for more, they were incredulous: "This didn't happen last year! What's going on?"
3. For half an Arsenal match, the commentators confused Eboue with Adebayor and vice versa.
4. The commentators pronounced the Birmingham player "Jerome" as Jeremy. For a short while, I though the former Chelsea player "Geremi" had moved to Birmingham. I was very confused. The pronunciation and intonation of some football teams is also a highlight: "PortsMOUTH versus FulHAM".
5. Commentating on the women's football in the Olympics, the two commentators on duty couldn't help but push their commentary to the edge of political correctness. Their commentary deviated from, well, commentating to the occasional piece of advice giving or melodrama. "Calm down! Calm down! Take your time. You didn't need to boot it out of defence!". And when Brazil conceded a penalty: "My goodness, that was a clear penalty! I have never seen such an obvious penalty in all my life! That was bad!".

More supermarket stories. I did the family shop today and Nordestao. Honestly, I've not come across a better supermarket anywhere. (Rachel calls me a big girl when I talk like this, but it's true!). The other day, for Father's day, they put on free live music (a man on an electric keyboard) and provided free breakfast. And that was at 8am on a Sunday morning! Today, I chuckled to myself at the checkout when the lady behind the counter suggested I use the toblerone-shaped devider-y thing between my pile of shopping and the lady's in front of me on the conveyor belt. Every supermarket in Brazil has them, but I've never seen anyone use one... until today. I wiped away a small tear. It was just like being back in Tesco.

All that glitters isn't gold. The nation mourns that neither the men nor women footballers will take gold away from the Beijing Olympics. The women's final was extraordinary. Brazil did everything but score and then they let one in to the Americans in extra time and lost it 1-0. Now, I hold an American passport but I can tell you I was cheering for the yellow and greens. The men's team went out under a cloud after a lacklustre display against Argentina in the semis, but the women showed real fighting spirit for 120 minutes. When they lost most of them collapsed on the field in tears. The cameras panned to the crowd to show their mothers weeping too. As the commentator said afterwords: "There has never been a more beautiful silver medal won by Brazil!".

Rachel's cousin Ren and her family have been in Beijing catching the Olympics. She's written some interesting entries on her blog about her experiences there if anyone's interested. Click here for those.

Maclure blog banned in China. OK, this was a weird story coming out of the blogosphere this week. MADDOGS&ENGLISH, just one of my many random blogs, has been blocked by the Chinese authorities. Even more surreal was that the person who notified me about it was a Mr.Thor May. Thor May is quite a name in the world of English Teaching and somebody I read and cited in a recent ET seminar I gave: I was astonished! I'm not sure what the point of this story is - it's just another yarn on how the internet is making the world a smaller place.

Learning from my students. I have a good set of students this semester and I'm excited about teaching 2 guys who are working towards the test to join the Brazilian diplomat service. One of the guys, a Mr. Daniel Dantas - a lawyer, wrote such an exceptionally good piece of writing about the problem of internet piracy that he not only convinced me my views were wrong, he used practically flawless academic English to say so.

Busy life and more people to stay. I seem to have a fairly packed teaching schedule again as the semester is really underway. I didn't realise until this week that one of my private students, Rafael, is the Governor's Grandson. His Mum also wants private lessons. With the local elections coming up, including Governor of the city, it will be interesting to see how interested the two of them are in an hour of English grammar when maybe they're expected to be making themselves busy electioneering.

Rachel's brother and girlfriend have come up to visit this weekend. It's been great to see them and we'll probably hit the beach this weekend. And with the football season starting back home, and a few more days of Olympics, there's plenty of ways to keep busy... oh, and I have to give a talk at church today in Portuguese. So, that's on my mind too.

Brazil shows Brazil. Natal has a large convention and conference centre situated on top of a sand dune overlooking the ocean. Rachel found out about an event there and we decided to get along as a family for an hour. The event was a fair, supposedly about informing Brazilians about the products their land exports. In other words, "educational". But, instead of a display of havaina flip-flops or a presentation on the export of Soya, the whole event, we realised as we got swept along by a tide of bargain-hunters, was actually a free-for-all time for sale shopping. Furthermore, we saw some decidely un-Brazilian things on offer - Nike T-shirts on discount, pirate DVDs of Hollywood films and most bizarrely some plastic, flashing, dancing crucifixes made in China as sold by an authentic Chinaman! As Rachel and I made our way back to the car after an hour of walking around we agreed - it was worth doing, but still the old addage remains: in Brazil always expect the unexpected.

Brazil @ the Olympics. I've never been out of the UK or the USA during the Olympics and it's interesting to me to see what the Olympics means to Brazilians and how it differs to being back home. Frequently over the last few days Rachel has been heard to exclaim to her friends and family how happy she is to be back here for this Olympics and not in the UK (in a holiday home in Cumbria to be exact) as was the case with Athens 2004. She says things like, "No more rowing! No more cycling! And thank heavens they don't show all 4 hours of the marathon like those Brits do!".

I, for one, would love to see a bit of the track and field but coverage of that has been reduced to the Jamaican Bolt taking the World Record in the 100m. Instead, the Olympics for Brazilians are about team sports and not individual performance - men's and women's handball, volleyball, beach volleyball and football occupy the most hours. The weight of expectation is on the men's football team who have never won Olympic gold - the only thing missing from Brazil's glistening record in football. Swimming and Judo make up the rest of the time. In the Judo, Brazil already garnered some bronze medals. In Swimming, Brazil won their first gold of these games in the 50m freestyle when the 21-year-old Cesar Cielo raced across the 50 metre pool in 21 and a half seconds beating his rival by 2 hundreths of a second or so. He, (blubbing away through the medal ceremony and for many hours afterwards) and his parents have featured endlessly on Brazilian TV stations since the impressive achievement. According to an article I read, President Lula himself called through to register his congratulations.

One more strange person: the under-cover cop. Last night, we took Rachel's brother and girlfriend to our favourite little tapioca place near Ponta Negra beach. On this occasion, we approached the establishment with extreme caution to see if we could spot the small, slightly chubby and extremely hairy man who had caused us a bit of grief at that exact same time and spot a week earlier when Ruth was here. If he was there I think we would've moved on, but he wasn't so we stayed.

There are many details to this, but the basics are...

Last Saturday as Ruth, Rach and I and the kids sat down for a tapioca we were joined by a man who wanted to practice his English with me. At first, we mistakenly imagined he was the restaurant owner welcoming us, but as time went on his manner went from very friendly (he invited us to his house for barbecue) to talkative (we covered some geography and politics and religion and Jesus) to oppresively talkative as he recounted intimate details of his life (he was a single Dad, his father had just died) and never stopped to listen to our responses.

The short story is he turned out to be an undercover cop (although, he kept assuring us he was a fair and honest cop, not given to taking bribes) and he was here to bust a night club on the street where there was a supposed paedophile stalking. He warned us not to stick around too late with the kids - we should take them to the "safety" of our home (don't worry, officer, we didn't fancy taking our kids to a nightclub where paedophiles stalk anyway!). He then emptied his utility belt on the table, stopping at one point to tell us he had a gun, then proceeded to under-pay his bill (the waiter didn't argue - they were more interested in getting him out of there as the restaurant had emptied!) and finally, we drew a line under our "friendship" when he called for police back-up and got up from the table with his badge to arrest a bloke seemingly innocently walking past outside.

Ruth, Rachel and I talked a while about how to respond to a situation like that. And I've been praying for the guy in question - he is obviously a bit lonely, very emotional (who knows what he witnesses/does as part of his job) and if he has had tragedy in his life recently then maybe he is struggling to deal with it. Even so, when his behaviour started to turn sour bordering on aggressive and there was a discrepancy between his words and actions (I am an honest cop / I won't pay all this bill!) and he has a gun - then, of course, getting us and the kids out of there has to be a priority, doesn't it? I think I still have his card - should I contact him? I probably won't. But, what would Jesus do?

The strange people we left behind: part 3. Above is a picture of Hugh, one of the Gillum lads who visited us this July. Hugh is the one nearest the camera, a rugby-playing, 6-foot-something, university student. He was accosted by a "strange" (read "drunk") person near our house when he was here. The fellow in question saddled up asking for money. But, before long, the older guy's earnestness gave way to a toothless grin which barely masked the stench of alcohol... Clad in a flourescent yellow football shirt, he positively embraced the bewildered Hugh exclaiming: "Zidane! Zidane! Ess aqui e Zinadene Zidane!". Well, in as much as Hugh was a tall foreigner, he was Zidane. Hugh says it's because the guy saw him play football.

Anyway, this example of another strange person reminds me of the man at the end of my road who was also occasionally inebriated and also had some severe dental problems. The chap in question did not seem to have a regular job, or rather, a job that earned money. As far as I could see, it was his "job" to pace up and down the street without a shirt on, occasionally have a tipple, then open his burger bar in the evening. By this I mean, he would wheel out an ampley-sized trolley from his house which had a hot plate attached. He would power the trolley (and a small TV too) from an extension wire that ran 20 yards up the road into his house. And at the corner he would pass the time between about 6 and 10 serving burgers to passers by. I never once had one despite frequently "promising" him that I would - I just couldn't risk the hospital bills. I later concluded this guy was some sort of big shot in the local mafia as everyone who was anybody eventually ate burgers at his bar. Perhaps he had a protection racket and this was how he earned his dosh. It felt like eating a burger from his bar was some sacred rite of passage into greater prestige and fame. Either way, we will be moderatley sad to say goodbye to him.

Round the corner from our friend's burger bar was a fantastic little restaurant called Matalao. I honestly regret not discovering this gem earlier - they served a buffet lunch of traditional Brazilian food at a fair price and before we left we were practically in the habit of going down there once a week, for lunch on Saturday. Nelsinho for one was a fan of their beans and farofa. The people there were utterly un-strange it has to be said - the place had the feel of a family business and everyone was efficient and courteous. It was the guy outside who was a little old. He was by far the best dressed "car shepherd" I had ever seen, at least from the ankles up. He set about ushering vehicles in and out of parking spaces with customary rigour. And, as an older man, with a suit and shirt and havaiana flip-flops, one couldn't begrudge him his 1Real even if he hadn't really done a lot to deserve it.

It would be unfair to say that the wacky people in our neighbourhood were just Brazilian. Brazilians don't monopolise randomness, I think they're just not ashamed to display it publically. Whatever, behind us and parallel to us lived Bob - a British man, easily in his 60s who ran a massage parlour and taught English on the side. I would sometimes pop round to chat to him as he seemed to appreciate somebody to speak English too. Generally, I found he didn't have a lot positive to say about anything and he inherited a 1950s political correctness which has never gone away. This is because he left the UK during that decade and has never been back once. Instead, he seems to have stumbled across half the world (he started out in Australia) making and losing and pilfering the cash he needed to live until he got to the place where he his now. He, like several missionaries and English teachers I have met, is an example of that strange animal: the ex-pat Brit who has a faded and twisted, but nonetheless prominant, version of Britishness which is carried and displayed with pride. God bless, Bob.

The strange people we left behind: part 2. We finally hand over the keys to our old house today and so it was with a forlorn wave to Rua das Violetas that we say goodbye. You already met the woman called Keith (scroll down two posts) who works in the shop near our old house, but it's also the colourful characters who lived on our road who, while we may not consciously miss them, we will certainly never forget. Above, holding Gloria, is Percia, the mother of Jercia (the other little girl in the photo). Jercia's Grandma is called Mercia. All 3 generations of -ercia's lived in the house opposite us.

Further down the road was the woman with the bug eyes and poodle (see here for a mention of her) - font of all knowledge on the street. Her wild and woolly stories to Rachel were often the stuff of legend. An excerpt: "Did you hear that a baby was left on the door step of a house on the next street!? The owners of the house took the baby in, but the next week my friend says she saw a mad woman roaming the streets looking for a lost child!". We never had anyway to verify the provenance of her stories, and we were always left a little unsure as to how to continue conversations... "É mesmo? Não acredito...".

Up the road was the small, quiet, whispery man (he featured in this story). Despite first impressions that he was a bit touched he turned out to be surprisingly lucid. I recently once chatted to him in the street much to the consternation of several of the neighbours who, with gaping mouths had all paused mid-whatever-they-were-doing to eye-ball the spectacle of a gringo speaking Portuguese. At the end, I turned to walk away and I think the whispery man felt that he should at least try to bring God into the conversation. The context for this being that our household was the only non-Catholic stronghold on the street and most of those around us assumed we were at best heathens and at worst devil-worshippers. Anyway, the small whispery man whispered after me as I turned to walk on: "Vai com Deus"(Go with God). Maybe he didn't expect to be heard (he must be used to this after years of whispering) or maybe he was surprised I had a response - but I turned around walked right back, placed my hand on his shoulder and said: "Vai com Deus, tambem" (You go with God, too). All I could hear as I turned to leave once more was the soft thudding of half-a-dozen jaws hitting the pavement.

Funnily enough, close to the whispery man lived a Sr. Wilson - a very friendly man who would barrel over to our plot, often sauntering through our gate to tussle Nelson's hair and have a chat from time to time. First impressions were - here is a pleasant and clearly on-the-ball man. However, he never learned our names (nor Nelson's) despite repeatedly being told and he never seemed to remember I was a foreigner. Every time I spoke to him he retained the same look of utter horror as the realisation dawned on him I wasn't Brazilian. We expected it was he, and not the small whispery man, who was in fact a little touched.

The Ruth is out there (and now she's back again). We're very pleased to welcome back Ruth Leckenby after her 4 week mission trip in Olinda. Ruth was a very welcome guest last year (see her excellent guest blog entries on here) and now with Portuguese phrase book under one arm, a plate of beans in the other she is confronting Brazil - and her fear of frogs - like a seasoned traveller. After an exhauting and at times hairy few weeks working with Brazil's most disadvantaged, Ruth is recouping (we hope) in sunny Natal. Ruth very generously brought us a bevvy of gifts from the UK, including specially selected food items based on the "Things I miss..." section of this blog. So, as the picture above testifies, I was able to have a more or less English breakfast with the essential ingredient of Baked Beans.

NB. Brazilians are very curious about the famous Heinz Baked Beans because Brazilians take their beans very seriously. Generally, on tasting them, Brazilians don't rate them too highly preferring to rapidly reach for a pot of their famous feijão instead. In other words - it's just like English football: We hear a lot about it, but the quality isn't a patch on the home grown variety.

July pictures. July was a packed month with a lot going on - some pictures here if you're interested. (Facebook people will already have seen these).

Nelson sleeps to 6.54am shock! By cutting our son's daytime naps down we have induced a spate of post-6 lie-ins. And, given that Gloria doesn't trouble anyone until 7.30am, my sleep silos are slowly being replenished, praise God!

Welcome Isla Kippin, sister to Esme and Scott. More baby girls in the Maclure side of the family. Congratulations to Anna and Richard!

A postcard from on the road...

Dear faithful readers,

Thanks for your patience with slightly slower blog updating. We've been entertaining some wonderful guests and we've also been on the move. All in all, time on internet has decreased greatly. Today, we saw off the extraordinary Gillums and their 5 kids and we're in Recife with Rachel's folks. All being well, we should be picking up Ruth Leckenby - back for more! - and taking her up to Natal for a well-deserved break after her mission work. Tomorrow, weather permitting, Rach and I and our chappy and chapette will be off to Porto de Galinhas for a 24 hour "relaxing" holiday.

Normal service to resume next week.
DM

The strange people we left behind: part 1. Moving to a new apartment block was definitely for the best, but I'm sure we'll be sorry to see the back of our neighbourhood as it certainly had some colourful characters in it. In particular, we will probably miss the employees of Palader Satanejer. PS is a small delhi which sells authentic Natalense meat, cheese, cakes, bread, alcohol, beans, nuts and sweets and a lot else besides. It's extremely well-run and is worth a visit just for the colours, flavours and smells. Nelson is always is in awe of the various things hanging from the ceiling - a stuffed cow's head, a bottled crab, a side of dried beef, a large bunch of some unknown fruit...

Anyway, the other day I paid them a visit and under the premise that as we had moved I wanted photos of the shop that I missed, I waltzed in with my new camera and after asking permission started snapping away. What I REALLY wanted a picture of, though, was the framed headshots of some of the employees that were propped up on the counter. The reason being, one of them is named Keith. Not so unusual, I hear you say. But, wait for it, SHE'S A LADY!!!!! Let me repeat that again. In the shop near to where we lived is a WOMAN NAMED KEITH!!!!! How funny is that? So, I was delighted I managed to get photographic evidence of a picture of the bizarrely-named female in question.

My father-in-law thinks that probably she is called Keith becuase her parents wanted to call her Katie but misspelt it - or rather, spelt it phonetically as you would say it in Portuguese. When presented with the written word KEITH a Brazilian would probably pronounce the name as KATIE.

Dad is 60, not out. Well done Dad on another milestone.

Danny is 28, not out. And congrats to my ol pal Danny "My Son" Byrne on becoming 28 yesterday. As it would happen the Byrnes sent us not one, not three, but TWO huge parcels from the UK which arrived yesterday too. So, now Nelson has a bowling game, I have a CD and curry and Rach has some cosmetics... we're very grateful indeed. In fact, seeing as I forgot it was Danny's birthday yesterday, I feel doubley indebted to our good friends from York. Voçes estão demais!

Manchester Barlows. We're entering a time of hosting wonderful people visiting us in Natal. Steve's cousin Paul and his family are across from Manchester for their first visit to Brazil. So, it was off to the beach today and they braved the infamous dune buggy rides. So far they all seem happy enough and not too sunburnt. Although, they did have a lot to say about the "style" of Brazilian driving.

Language ups and downs. As I've said before on here, I'm excited because (finally) my Portuguese is reaching levels of some fluency where I can communicate fairly freely. I took an online Portuguese proficiency test and was labelled as Advanced Intermediate level. But, seeing as that was only reading and grammar and not listening or speaking or writing it's a debatable grading.

Nevertheless, the language is on the up. What I've found, though, is a strange thing. Linguists probably have a name for this, but in familiar topic areas where I can speak without having to think too much I have become quite lazy with my Portuguese opting for the easiest and sometimes semi-accurate route to communicating. Steve says that his Dad arrived in Brazil, reached that level and stayed with it for 50 years. I'll try not to let that happen, but let me give you an example of a small slip-up that I made this week, which I shouldn't have made if I was trying a bit harder. We had some guests over for lunch but didn't have enough knives (long story) to set all the places so I suggested to Ana, the lady who helps in the house, that we use spoons. I kept saying to her "Pode usar coelho. Simplesmente, pode botar coelho". She returned a puzzled look. After a while she held up a spoon and said, "colher?". It was then that it dawned on me that I had said "coelho" when I had meant to say "colher". Instead of suggesting she put out spoons in place of knives, I was asking her to lay out rabbits on the table. Most peculiar and a timely lesson to me to keep thinking about what I'm saying in somebody else's language.

John Stauffacher. My mother's brother, an elderly and frail man in his 70s, passed away last night after a battle with cancer. So, lots of prayers going up for that side of the family. We feel blessed to have known this wonderful Christian man who served in France as a missionary with his wife for his entire adult life. Last summer we had the chance to visit France and introduce Nelson to his great Uncle - that encounter seems especially poignant now.

Huge bang. Rach and I sat bolt upright in bed this morning at 5.30am when we heard a huge explosion several hundred yards away. Given that our new home is within a kilometre of a military training base, and given that yesterday they sent 5 low-flying helicopters over our heads (which sent Nelson into conniptions) I was expecting to see the opening salvos of World War III outside our window this morning. But, thankfully, it was "only" an electricity power box exploding, cutting all the electricity (including traffic lights) in the neighbourhood. It's back on now, which is good.

The 16th Sertoes Rally of Brazil. Much to the delight of Nelson and his Dad, an off-road Brazilian rally finished in Natal at the end of June. Unfortunately, we didn't know about it far enough in advance to see the cars race on the dunes live (although we did catch a report on the TV) but we did see evidence of the rally around time. A trip to Camaroes restaurant to say goodbye to Aunt Amy returning to the UK suddenly became even more interesting when the car park was filled with the Mercedes rally team - lots of huge trucks with grubby, stickered exteriors was enough to inspire Nelson to a big "WWWOOOOOWWWWW". The drivers and team and some local press were in the restaurant enjoying an end of rally party. A few days later and Rachel and I went to a shopping centre and found the Mitsibushi team parked on the top floor of the car park (see pic). Cue another "WWOOOOWWWWWWWW" from Nelson. Oddly, there was also an exhibition of farm animals on the same level of the car park as well as a kid's theme park. Amazing what you can find in a shopping centre car park in Brazil.

Rachel's Granny Lali's 80th. Several weeks have passed but I feel I can't really neglect to mention the huge family knees-up that occurred in Joao Pessoa at the end of June either. Laulau or Lali is a larger than life character, mother of 6, grandmother and great grandmother to countless (see pic with her and Nelson and Gloria) and she expected, organised and warranted a huge party to celebrate a significant milestone. The focus of the weekend was a 2 hour service on Saturday evening at the 1st Presybterian Church of Joao Pessoa where Laulau is a faithful attender and member of the choir. All family were dressed for the occasion, which meant suits and ties for the men, and we were all paraded in as Laulau read out our names. The service included a 45-minute sermon from the pastor who exhorted us to shine brilliantly like Jesus and look to Laulau as an example of somebody who has lived this out. After the service it was downstairs for food and some "short" speeches by select members of the family. But, once Laulau herself took the mic there wasn't a lot of hoping of getting it back again as she regaled us with endless stories (she did the same last year it seems). It was a great night, but poor Nelson was absolutely exhausted when he finally collapsed asleep in the car at 11.30pm. At 5am he was awake and ready to play...

...unlike Gloria. Nelson's sister needs to teach him some lessons on how to sleep. She managed 22 total hours asleep last Wednesday, waking only for feeds. Last night both her and Nelson managed to sleep the whole night through without waking - Nelson woke at 5.30am, Gloria woke at 7am and went back to sleep at 8am until mid-day. We think her preference for sleep is partly inspired by being the daughter of her mother and because she's figured out being asleep is so much more relaxing than waking life when your brother is a poking, hugging, kissing, slapping, prodding, pushing, stroking, patting, picking, cuddling, pulling, shouting, screaming, talking, whispering, surprising kind of guy. She seems to take it all in her stride though and beams huge smiles at all of us now, including Nelson.

OK, OK, we get the idea. I'm carrying my new birthday camera around everywhere which means its handy for any slightly odd or obscure thing I see. Actually, Rach and I often chuckle at the frequent occurrence of random things we come across just from driving around - a donkey standing in the middle of the road with nobody around, a man taking 15 dogs for a walk, a man juggling fire for money at the traffic lights, a huge hole in the road when there wasn't one there yesterday, a strike or protest of something or other... Anyway, we saw this picture above at a petrol station. They seem pretty adamant about not accepting any sort of payment by cards, don`t they? I wonder if they accept cash? If so, I bet they don't have any change.

Legião Urbana (Urban Legion). Back in Recife, Rach managed to dig out two CDs for the Brazilian band Legião Urbana for me. I'd first heard their music when it was playing on the loudspeaker at the Maracajau water park. Rach rolled her eyes when I said I liked it. This was the band all of her friends were into at school but she obstinately refused to listen to. They're kind of the Brazilian Smiths, and I think some of their songs exhibit a heavy REM influence (no bad thing). In many ways the band were known for being anti-religious or anti-church, but my current favourite is the ballad "Monte Castelo" from their album Os Quatro Estaçoes (The Four Seasons). It's a well-known song of theirs from circa 1989 based on the famous words of 1 Corinthians 13 from the Bible. You can watch a performance of it here.

James Blunt. Speaking of music, one of the worst imports of music here from the UK has to be James Blunt's tepid and squeeky vocal performances as sung over the top of predict-a-chord dirgey songs. Unfortunately for us, (but darned lucky for him and his publicity machine) a James Blunt song is being used as the theme to a Brazlian Globo TV soap opera called Duas Caras (Two faces). Now, James Blunt can count among his fans every middle-aged housewife in Brazil as well as every middle-aged housewife in the UK. Ana, the lady who helps in our house, listens to a radio station that plays only Brazilian popular music and James Blunt. Caramba! The song is all over YouTube, but someone has helpfully put Portuguese subtitles over this video of Mr.Blunt perfoming the number in question.

(Small fact: did you know that the Globo's soap operas are so famous and widely watched and Globo is itself such a huge a corporation that they can insist on late kick-offs for any domestic or international Brazilian football fixture so the match doesn't cut into soap opera time. This annoyingly means all major evening games, including Wednesday's Libertadores Final, start at the ridiculous time of 9.50pm!!! If the game goes to penatlies, as it did on Wednesday, it finishes after midnight. I'm always asleep by the second half).

Congrats to cousin Simon and wife Katie on the arrival of Lucie Iona Payne.

Things I miss about England #71: General administrative competence. OK, so it's debatable if this is even such a good thing in England given the numerous horror stories we have in trying to secure VISAs and passports or sign up for a new phone deal or phone the DVLA, but Brazil, on average has to be a lot worse. Don't get me wrong - it's not all bad. My ID arrived in one piece (after 18 months) and we recently got Gloria her Brazilian ID relatively painlessly. But, trying to get Gloria registered as a British citizen is not proving to be easy given there is a postal strike on at the moment. Furthermore, moving house and trying to switch our cable and internet providers and trying to get a spare key from the estate agents is proving to be a jumbled mix of red tape, conflicting stories and loopy administrating for poor Rachel who is burdened with sorting it out.

Things I love about Brazil #87: interesting city names. Our recent travels to Joao Pessoa and Recife and my plan to travel to Fortaleza this month have reminded me that Brazil has some excellent names for cities. Those three I mentioned translate literally as John Person, Reef and Fortress. Of course, we live in Christmas (Natal) which is close to the beach towns of Kite (Pipa) and Chicken Port (Porto da Galinhas) and down south there is Saviour (Salvador), January River (Rio do Janeiro), Saint Paul (Sao Paulo) and Happy Port (Porto Alegre). These names aren't like the ones we have in England are they? There ain't no Skegness, Cricklewood, Blackpool or Ponders End round here...

Oops, I've just noticed I have two entries for "fresh milk" in my things I miss about England list. Why didn't anyone tell me? I must really miss fresh milk to place it at both number 16 and number 48. In it's place (at number 48) I think I'll put celery, another food related item that I really miss...

This post has grown and grown to become another monster entry. Sorry folks.

I'm no longer in my mid-20s, although perhaps I'm still in my mid- to late-20s. Today is my birthday and I am 28 which seems like a frightfully old age in many respects. I`ve been having a great few days, mostly thanks to Rach who has been working hard to fix up a few surprises. On Sunday I was relieved of parenting duties (Rach's parents were here to cover) so I could relax at the beach and my favourite restaurant without having to worry about the chidlers. In the afternoon I got to see the Spain vs Germany Euro 2008 final and was thrilled with the outcome - well done you Spaniards!

Yesterday, Rach surprised me at work when she hijacked the end of my lesson with my pastors to bring me more cake. For lunch, the grandparents gave Rach and I a couple of hours off to go to Sal e Brasa - an eat-all-you-can meatery (churrascaria) where meat is delivered on spits to your table and is carved off onto your plate. As Rach pointed out, we witnessed probably the finest display of efficient and vociferous waiting we have seen in any Brazilian restaurant to date. These guys were pros, the Premier League of Natal`s food serving workforce. And after the quantity I ate, let`s just say I didn't need to eat any dinner in the evening. Today, my actual birthday, I have a day off and a meal with some students tonight and tomorrow one of the pastor`s wives has invited us round for lunch to eat homemade seafood. I've recieved numerous gifts as well, the biggest and most suprising of which was a fantastic new digital camera from Rach's folks. Schmancy pics to be posted here soon.

Everything else. I have a small library's worth of content to post on here following an eventful few weeks - Nelson's 2nd birthday, travelling, Rach granny Lali's 80th birthday, moving house to a new apartment (with the subsequent parting of ways with the wonderfully eccentric community where we used to live) and finishing off the semester, marking tests and wishing students well. I'll try to get the highlights on here over the next few days. For now, I`ll leave you with just one story...

The incident of the lost key in the night. The move to our new apartment occurred last week with Rach and the kids in Recife, and me up here in Natal abley assisted in the rearranging by 3 colourful characters from the Cultura Inglesa. I've mentioned on here before the extraordinary Sr. Ricardo and Sr. Joaquim and my problems at communicating with them, but we also had on board Sr. Jose, a man of action who thanks to his hiring a trailer for the pick-up was instrumental in getting our stuff moved across town in time for Rach and the young ones' arrival on Thursday. All in all we did OK together despite the frequent mis-communications and occasional differences of opinion about moving methodology. I picked up a few colloquialisms too and I am now well aquainted with the Portuguese vocabulary for moving a house.

However, it was on the Monday of that week that Sr. Jose stayed at our old house and I decided to sleep at our new apartment to keep an eye on our stuff. After a day filled with the strenuous shifting of bulky furniture I felt I was entitled to a dip in the condominium pool late in the evening when it was already dark. Down I went, with just my swimming trunks on and carrying only my towel and the apartment key. After a delicious 5 minutes in the vacant pool enjoying the fireworks in the night sky that accompany the Sao Jaoa festival at this time of year, I got out to dry off. As I picked up my towel, I knocked the apartment key off the chair where it promptly dissapeared between two slats in the wooden floor that surrounds the pool and fell with a disconcerting clunk several feet below. Uh-oh, I thought. I'm screwed.

The pool, you see, is on a raised platform so I spent a few minutes circling the pool trying to find a way to get down under it. With no door or entrance in sight I sheepishly went to find the night porter. Dripping in just my swimming trunks, I explained in my best Portuguese that I was new to the apartment block, was staying there alone, and had just lost the only key underneath the pool. How could I get it back? The Porter laughed - "Nao e possivel. Tem que procurar amanha". I explained that waiting until tomorrow would not be so good unless I was expected to sleep outside in just my wet swimming gear. I'd like to try and look tonight as I had no mobile, no spare key and I was far too far from the old house to walk and I had no car keys and I didn't even know Sr. Jose's number to call him to pick me up. The Porter laughed some more. Finally, I asked for a torch so I could look for it myself - I just needed directing to how to get under the pool. "Vou te ensinar", said the Porter. I'll teach you.

Round the back of the pool the Porter showed me a creaky, rusty grate which he opened into a dark underworld. To get through the grate required getting down on all fours, and the small space under the pool was only about a metre high, high enough to crawl in at least. He handed me the torch. "Tem baratinha, aqui?" I asked sheepishly ("Are there any little cockroaches here?"). He assured me no. That's good I thought, unless he meant there were only big cockroaches, rats, snakes and scorpions. This is just like the Crystal Maze, I thought to myself chirpily, or perhaps a scene from a b-horror flic, I thought to myself not so chirpily. No matter, the key only fell a few meters away from the grate. But, as I moved forward with bare palms and knees on the concrete the Porter shouted after me that I couldn't go that way, I wasn't allowed to climb over the pool's piping. The only way to get to my key was by crawling around the perimeter of the pool. Oh crumbs, I thought as I painfully turned around and shuffled off into the blackness hoping to dear God the torch had sufficient battery power.

Well, the story ends happily. 10 minutes later, I had my key and was out and the dungeon under the swimming pool was surprisingly clean and lacking in critters. I returned the torch (cue another chuckle from the Porter) and made my way up to the apartment, grazed knees and all. Once in, I called Rach. "Honey, you won't believe what happened! Come back, all is forgiven! I am clearly supposed to be married to you on account of not being able to keep myself out of trouble for more than a day...".

On the plus side, we later thought, this didn't happen when I couldn't speak any Portuguese. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my Portuguese is certainly of a level where I could survive given most strange situations, of which this was certainly one. Thank God too that the key was recoverable then and there, or otherwise I could still be walking the streets of Natal semi-naked to this day...

Can`t talk now. Moving house, having meetings, no time for internet. More news very soon!

Amusing uses of English: Lucas' test. I'm just marking tests from my Upper Intermediate 2 group and I came across a gem from Lucas, a half-Japanese, half-Brazilian teenager. I simply had to put it on here for a wider audience to enjoy. I've written it out all below including his errors. His answer moves from the amusing to the surreal to the sensible. I gave him a mark of 17/20. Some accuracy problems, but he was creative!

Question: Write about this topic - Men and women: differences and similarities. Mention personality, characteristics, natural talents, job situations, basic rights etc.

Women's bathroom, men's bathroom.

Men and women don't have many differences, both of them have legs, arms, nose and eyes. But what I can't understand is why the bathrooms are so different? The men's bathrooms are, usually, small have few toilets and sinks. Whatever the women's bathrooms have more of all of it and, sometimes, have chairs or puffs, to they relax.

Differences like this make our minds work in opposite way. Men have a global view, they can look and remind stuffs. They have a better concentration when working at one thing like reading or listening to musics. Women have a better close view. They can find the butter, when the man was looking it for a long time, and it was in front his nose, and their can pay attention in a lot of things: take care the baby, and the dinner and answer the phone in the same times.

Our culture doesn't use the best talents of men and women. In the job, men earn more than women, in spite of the fact they work together, in the same department. If we could be able to use the differences, probably the world will be better, very better.

Lucas

Proud parents of rapidly growing kids. Nelson had the party for his 2nd birthday at school. It was the earliest party I've been to (9am in the morning!) but it's a cheap way to have a festa. All his pals are already there, the school has a function room and we provide decorations and snacks. The theme for the day was, obviously, the Cars movie so Nelson was resplendent in McQueen shirt and cap and the walls were decked with figures from the film. All of us had a great time and Nelson seemed to be in seventh heaven with the unexpected coming together of his favourite things - family (his Aunt was back from the UK for it too), cars, food and friends. Some short videos of the festivities are here on YouTube.

I have to say, and I know I'm biased, but I was really amazed at how Nelson related to his peers. His best friend Rafa was there (the only other blondie in the school - perhaps the two of them are a support group) which he was happy about and of course the two of them had a great time together. But, it was also how mcuh more on the ball Nelson seemed and quick to pick up new tricks (he could blow bubbles, the other kids couldn't) or follow the lead in a new game. However, if we're worried about Nelson being a SuperKid we should probably take medication because Gloria is breaking records with her development. At the Doctor's yesterday and they weighed and measured her. She's in the top 5% for her age for weight and the top 2% for height at a whopping 56cms long already! She's a beast! Those 3 month baby grows are already looking like shrinkwrap on her...

Weekend of chaos/fun. It's Rachel's granny's 80th and so there is a big shindig down in Joao Pessoa on Saturday evening and Sunday. I have to wear a suit - that's the first time anyone has insisted on this here in Brazil, but if you turn 80 you can call the shots at your party, I guess! I will come back to Natal alone on Sunday night and try to move us to our new apartment while Rach and the kids hang out in Recife. I'll be abley assisted by three salt-of-the-earth Brazilian chaps who I have trouble understanding and who have trouble understanding me.

Mum and Dad. Quick shout out for prayer for Ma and Pa in troublesome Chad. Rebels on the move again although so far they're far from the capital and there is no immediate threat.

Ninho and Gloria. Oddly, we have decided to name our children after Brazilian milk brands. For a while Nelsinho couldn't say his name properly, skipping the middle syllable, and so referring to himself as simply Ninho. Ninho, randomly, also means "nest" in Portuguese. Anyway, the powdered milk brand we use for Nelson is called Ninho and the regular milk we use for us is called Gloria. I can assure you this was all purely coincidental although if we were to have another kid in Brazil we've got the name UHT Parmalat semi-desnatado in mind, and for back in the UK we think Tesco 2L green top would do for either a boy or a girl.

Special thanks to Danny and Caz for sending us this pic this week. They took it here in Brazil when they visited in January.

Things I miss about England #27: toasters and electric kettles. For making toast and tea, obviously. I forgot to mention it in my last post about breakfast.

Things I love about Brazil #14: black beans, brown beans and green beans. Beans in all their colours and varieties are the staple and national food of Brazil. Many a Brazilian football player has bemoaned the lack of good beans in Europe. It is said to be the main reason Romario returned to Brazil early in his career. I have taken to beans in a big way (especially the green variety), although a week of just beans does extraordinary things to, let's say, one's "pipes". After Nelson was ill a few weeks ago his appetite returned with vociferous force and he got very grumpy one lunch time when we hadn't got round to fixing him his "almoço". So, we took him to the local Brazilian eatery round the corner and he troughed a man-sized portion of beans, rice and farofa (kind of floury stuff people put on beans), all washed down with some coconut water. How ever are we going to get him his favourite meal when we move to the UK?

Family. Rachel's Dad has been here helping us out with the 2 kids and Rach's Mum arrives tonight. Excitingly, Amy is coming back from the UK for 2 weeks so we'll go pick her up from the airport on Sunday night. Having said all that, Gloria is little trouble and not a cause for much concern. She has slept through from 11pm to 5am already much to Rachel's delight. I, on the other hand, have a son whose sleeping habits are more like mine than his mother's - what are mornings for if not to play? If Nelson wakes up after 4am it is difficult to convince the boy that going back to sleep is a better idea than drawing cars. The fun started at 4.45am today and I'm knackered. Rachel and Gloria were both still in the land of nod at 7am. Why I outta...

Things I miss about England #34: People know how to park (mostly). I've been wanting to post a picture of some of the abysmal Brazilian parking I've come across but I never really have my camera handy when I'm pulling up at a supermarket. Fortunately, today, I did. See above and take note of the direction of the painted car parking spaces and then laugh at the way the car is parked perpendicular to the spaces in question. I think I've quoted Prince Philip's infamous and unpolitically correct quip elsewhere on this blog: "That box looks like its been wired by an Indian" but I frequently find myself saying, "That car looks like its been parked by a Brazilian!". Altogether now, to the tune of "walk like an Egyptian" lets all "park like a Brazilian!". But then again, who said the English could park a car.

Things I miss about England #45: Breakfast. I just can't seem to find a quick, tasty and filling way to have breakfast here in Natal. When I ask my students in class about what they ate for breakfast most return blank stares and say coffee, water, milk or maybe bread and cheese. Breakfast just isn't done here like it is back home.

So, things I miss about England #s 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 and 52 are: fresh mushrooms (not available in Natal - surely, a crime!), baked beans, fresh milk (for tea and cereal), good quality cereal (the best cereal here is extortionately priced, doesn't even taste too good, especially with non-fresh milk), fresh bread (Brazilian bread is OK, but it still doesn't beat a loaf of Tesco no frills white) and lastly sausages (Brazilian sausages are in the Vauxhall Conference compared to English Premier League sausages). Like Mev used to say when he was here, the first thing I'm doing when I get home is having a real fry-up with real bread and a cup of freshly brewed tea...

Things I love about Brazil #46: Breakfast. OK, OK, somethings about Brazilian breakfasts are OK. In fact, I contradict myself if I say I dislike Brazilian breakfasts as I positively sang their praises back in November 2006. The main problem for me is that they it's usually accompanied by an inordinate amount of faff in order to get things ready and also fresh fruit, although nice, often goes off quickly. However, if one has the time one can make juice from frozen pulps (Things I love about Brazil #85: frozen fruit pulps) then you're onto a scrumptious start to the day, especially if the fruit in question is Açerola (Things I love about Brazil #30: Açerola) which, according to old Brazilian fishwives packs more vitamin C into one small cherry-sized portion than is present in a bag of oranges.

On the subject of food and drink but not breakfast, where would be without cachaça, the alcoholic spirit made from sugar cane, (Things I love about Brazil #67: Cachaça) to make caipirinha (Things I love about Brazil #29: Caipirinha), the national cocktail? A bottle of Pitú brand cachaça only costs R4 - about 1 UK quid. This filled me with glee when I discovered that such a famous drink could be assembled so cheaply (just add chopped limes and sugar for caipirinha) but as my father-in-law points out when spirits with 40% alcohol content are sold for less than milk, something is wrong and someone, somewhere is going to get hurt. Fair enough. As for caipirinha itself, I'm slowly discovering that this drink is somewhat viewed here the same way Guiness may be viewed in Ireland. Yes, we're famous for it but no we don't drink it ourselves - it's for the tourists.

Things I love about Brazil #88: Bolo de rolo. Quality traditional Brazilian treat of rolled pastry filled with guava jam. Good for breakfast, thank goodness.

Things I love about Brazil #98: Baton chocolate. So, it's not Cadbury's, but it will do.

Life... is pretty much going on as normal. Gloria is very uncomplaining and with Rach's Mum around everything is more managable. The weather has been mostly rainy - it is the season for it - and a lot of sickness has been going round. One of the Cultura teachers picked up dengue. Nelson got a nasty tummy infection last week which I caught, but thank God neither Rachel or Gloria have it. Nelson and I are over the worst now.

We've decided to move! This is without a doubt a crazy thing to do, but being a Maclure/Barlow family moving at the drop of a hat doesn't seem to be unsusual. We thought about moving prior to the baby but nothing came up at a reasonable price. Typically, with Gloria approaching her 1 month birthday, we find a great flat on the other side of town walking distance from Nelson`s school in a condo with a swimming pool, games room and acres of space downstairs for the little ones to tire themselves out in. I was the last to be convinced but on seeing the modern and spacious apartment on the 2nd floor I thought we should go for it for our final year in Brazil. The house where we are living now has been fine, but it is a bit decrepit, a bit exposed to thieves (see here and here), prone to ants, bugs, scoprions and mozzies. The apartment is better on all those fronts. Besides, the swimming pool is a great lure and might actually result in me getting some exercise... We will move in the holiday month of July.

More internet larks. It's likely I might be going to Fortaleza with some of the teachers in July for a conference. Several of us are giving papers and, if accepted, I'm to do a little workshop on English on the internet. I try to use the internet a lot in my English classes - setting homework online, using a teacher blog and I even gave my first e-lesson yesterday entirely on the theme of Garfield the cat. I have to say my normally surly teenagers loved that so I shall be trying it again soon. Through all this I discovered the handy website toondoo.com which allows you to create comic strips. It got me inspired and I am now penning the occasional 1 panel comic about the daftness of the English language. It's called MADDOGS&ENGLISH. Have a look (especially if the Far Side was your thing in the 90s). It's already picking up a fair few hits from out there in cyber space.

Nelson's toy car (click here to see pic). The problem with the design of Nelson's dinky buggy is that it is unlikely people visit Austria to go out into the "wild" and, indeed, I don't think there is a great kangaroo population there either. It's another amusing use of English where Brazilians cut and paste English-sounding phrases and words onto products to make them seem more authentic.

10 reasons why having a baby in a Brazilian hospital is different to having a baby in an English one.

10. The food. The food in the hospital was fine. It differed from the UK in that it was often traditional Brazilian food with a host of exotic fruit juices. As a live in spouse I got meals too which I enjoyed immensely!