Chapada dos Veadeiros

horny issue

The building is supposed to represent a crown of thorns.

But what is thorns?

Well, do you know what a rose is?

Isn't it something sexual, something about sex?

Not quite, I think you're thinking of arouse.

toilet humour

Don't you think it's time you got that out of your cistern?

the locus of my focus is hocus-pocus

Last night I was in Glasgow, in George Square. It was late afternoon, overcast and snowing lightly. A man was straining up at the sky with binoculars in his hand. He turned to me and said, " Can you see that up there? That eagle? I can't make out what type it is." He handed me the binoculars and I pressed them to my eyes. I looked up and saw a rectangular form and I could make out a spotted pattern, unlike any eagle I'd ever heard of, never mind seen.

Within an instant it was coming in to land. Much to my awe and bemusement it wasn't an eagle at all. It was a flying lynx with flaps of skin between its legs like the sugar gliders and the flying squirrels. It came to land like a fighter jet settling on a warship. For a few precious moments it stood stationary surveying the square before padding off hastily towards the East End. Naturally, I pursued.

I'm not sure how, but I managed to keep it in sight, following it through some strange architecture; concrete passageways and tunnels confused with scrub and coniferous bushes, until eventually it paused on a gigantic flight of steps. I wasn't certain if the people around us were indifferent or simply oblivious.

Desperate to document the extraordinary beast, I reached for my camera, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it in focus.

I awoke thinking about getting up to see if I'd managed to capture anything on film. Gradually that thought gave way.

The UK is in Front, and The US are Behind

That's just a way of remembering where I am,
in terms of time zones.
A time zone can at the same time be a country.
China.
One nation, one time.

Mystery of Mansfield

Last Wednesday I was teaching a member of my student body: current body count: 14. At some stage in a conversation, this particular student began to extol the virtues of a writer, one Katherine Mansfield, and urged me strongly to familiarise myself with her prose. Now I always welcome tips, suggestions and dicas from students: restaurants, films, places of broad and places of specific interest, music, places to go to find stuff, bars, plumbers, slang, shortcuts, sound advice, etc, and I often write them down at the back of my notebook and forget all about them. Thus I wasted no time whatsoever in noting down this writer with a view to doing the very same. I left the house of this student, boarded my bus and headed on to my next port of call.

I always teach this student in her study, walled in by an impressive library. I seated myself, as I always do, and my eyes wandered casually around the giant wooden table while she searched out a cigarette lighter on which to fix her concentration, and I gathered thoughts in the name of education.

Something at once caught my eye. What should be sitting on top of a pile of books right in front of me but a collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield.

Now that in itself, I agree, is not terribly strange, but when I asked her about the book and what she thought of it, not only had she not read it, but she didn't have the slightest clue where it had come from, and claimed not to know who it belonged to. In other words, she assured me it wasn't hers. That's just the mystery of Mansfield.

under pressure (hermetically sealed pot)

The subject of today's ramblings: the panela de pressão or pressure cooker.

Now why would I want to talk about one of those, you might well ask? Why? Because they're all around me, that's why. Hardly flying off the shelves back in the UK, it must be said. What went wrong there? Maybe it's because most Britons only eat beans what 'ave already been baked and plopped into sweet tomato syrup. Brazilians, are unanimously horrified both by the idea, and when they encounter it, the reality of baked beans. I, however, still like them, over toast, cheesed up to the max, and injected with the most brutal chilli sauce to hand. It's just that now I've had my eyes opened and my stomach pumped full of gas, to a whole world of other beans. Maybe we'll look deeper into that world at some future juncture, but for now, let's press on.

The pressure cooker has been around in Brazil since the early 1800s. They were first worn as helmets, protecting the heads of the imperial army from runaway slaves who had established large self-sustaining communities in the remote and barren North East. Only much later was it discovered that the pressure cooker could vastly reduce the cooking time of beans, an integral part of the Brazilian diet. It quickly became a must in every kitchen and has now become a proud and integral tool here aboard the Visorbearer. The panela de pressão has weaseled it's way onto the worktop, and now it's here, and it's here to stay.

It's greatest asset? A pressure cooker has the power to reduce a large chunk of meat to gravy and have it falling apart* in little over 30 minutes.

Yesterday, I made this simple recipe using a pressure cooker. You will need:

• 1 pressure cooker (you can get a decent one for about £40/$60/R$80)

• 1 can of black beer (a sweet stout would do well here. In Brazil most black beers are sweet and I can't pass my lips with them - but this is gravy we're making, not beer sauce. I used this one, a favourite among Brazilian black beer buyers).

• 600 g of fine beef (the cut, again, is at your discretion here. The Brazilian butcher's bovine map looks quite different from the one lorded over by Britsh cleaver meisters. Ah, so many ways to divvy up an animal. Brazilian cows also have quite a different body profile compared with their Angus cousins - enormous white horned things with strange humps on their backs).

• 1 onion (cut into 4 or 8 depending on size).

• 1 packet of dry onion soup (sounds wholly unappetizing and i would never normally buy this stuff, but it's fundamental to the gravy, and less salty and overbearing than a stock cube, trust me here).

• olive oil (just enough to cover the bottom of the pressure cooker).

Well done. The hard part is behind us. You've successfully bought all the ingredients and you got home safe. Now follow these simple instructions and you're laughing:

Olive oil in pan.
Brown meat in the pan (3 mins each side - fat side 2nd if you have a fat side)
Throw in beer and onion powder
Boil for 2 mins to remove alcohol (if you are sensible you bought additional cans to drink)
Put lid on pressure cooker
Allow to reach pressure (the violent hissing of the cooker led early users to ascribe it's powers to witchcraft)
Lower heat to minimum
Leave for 30 minutes
Remove lid
Experience ecstacy
Add fresh onions and whilst still on heat, stir the onions around in the gravy until they attain the approval of your taste buds(prob 10-15mins)

Serve it with whatever carb-rich, gravy absorbent accompaniment you see fit. If you're thinking of anything other than mashed potatoes here, then I'm afraid you're wrong.

Now I share this meal with you because, unless you are a rabbit, it will go a long way towards helping you survive the oncoming Northern winter. Once again you will stave off that almost uncontrollable urge to enter into hibernation. All of this will have you wondering just why pressure cookers ever went out of fashion in the first place. Could it be because in the wrong hands it doubles as a shrapnel bomb?



* Falling Apart - incidentally is my, as yet to be patented, extra deep fill shredded beef sandwich in a tin.

the cut of your jib

Navigate away if you care to. I make no attempt to disguise that my aim here is to steal your attention. For short infrequent spells only, it should be said. You may have your attention back when I'm done. I wouldn't want it for good. But in the meantime we have need of it. For this is not a private chat. This is no inner voice. These matters are public, as public as they can be. And although this voyage will demand a great deal of patience and dedication, I assure you that if these qualities are strong in you, they will pay handsome returns. I am asking you now to abide with me, to strip free your main sail and cut loose with us as we plow through Sao Paulo's manifold concrete seas. To hell with the sails. Let the current carry us wherever it may. Ahead we will surely enter uncertain waters. We may be tossed mercilessly from great wave to great wave. Perhaps we might even submerge for a time, and be overwhelmed, only to bob up again, like flotsam, amidst a group of jousting narwhals. That's just the sort of stuff we can look forward to.

Look lively now crew. The tide turns, and the wind tugs anxiously at our rigging. Up anchor. Our great captain must call for us to push off. These dry docks have it that we've long outstayed our welcome. This particular port of call, wants us long gone. So you lot, get up, get about and push us well off! Empty those tankards you lushes! Look sharp. You, over there, are a drunkard. But we need you. Listen here, none of us aboard now is perfect, but together we man this ship. I have seen these waters through three winters now, and yet still I feel out of depth. For this very reason I call on your consul.

Perhaps first, I ought to introduce myself. But then why the rush? We have a long voyage ahead. We should hold back and be spare on details for now. Later the thirst will nag and we'll have something in store with which to quench it. For now I'll say this much. Presently I'm a hand, a firm hand, some would say, but first and foremost I'm a deck hand, aboard this, the good ship Visorbearer. And oh my, isn't she a beauty? Still being payed off don't you know? She came to us through a murderously complicated hand of cards, but I won't trouble you with all that. That's not your station.

Take a look up my friend. Damn it's bright, isn't it? But as your weary eyes adjust, you may just be able to pick out a figure way up there in the crow's nest. See it? That's me. That's my station. It's from up there that you hear me now. And it is I, more's the point, who catches the priviledged first view.

I am the eyes cast far and wide over these concrete seas and I promise to tell you exactly what these eyes see. That is, as and when and at my discretion. At the very least, something. When the sea mist comes down on us and sits as dense as all hell, and that will happen I tell you now, I will take it upon myself to look into my mind's eye. And then I'll tell tale of voyages, epics and intrigues from times well gone by.

And you? What's your place in all this? Why you, my friend, are our captain. No one saw fit to tell you? Relax. It's the same as any new job; new skills, new colleagues, new office politics, new office stationery, but hold true. All will come good. I don't mean to worry you, to place too much on those lean shoulders of yours, but you are fundamental to this trip. When I sight something and have good reason to call down from the nest, all of us here aboard await expectantly for your return. We need you here among us to look for meaning. We're calling for meaning as we cut an arbitrary course through concrete. And wherever words fail you, look for signs. And we'll hope that the current shifts us that way to earn a closer look. And I know you've never sailed before, and you have as much a notion of the nautical, as I have of a game of football. But that's of no real concern to this crew. Remember, this wonder has no sails, and we are all of us supremely content being here at the mercy of these seas.

So give the call to PUSH, captain. We all must push together. For the love of it all. Ah, that's it now. We're off. We're truly clean from shore. Our old and wounded hull licked clean once more. Visorbearer. You're in your element again.