Varon’s birthday, so went out gift shopping with Lulu to find a present or two. My job was pretty simple, as I’d decided that a “man-bag” would be useful and stylish. Lulu was aiming for a t-shirt, but ended up with a cigarette lighter inside a small leather boot. Sunday, the main square gets closed to traffic and people set up little stalls selling food and Mayan dolls. Imagination is not a strong point here, the stalls all fall into three or four categories, then all sell the same thing at the same prices, if I didn’t know better I’d say this had been organized.  You get many stalls selling chips and sausage. This seems to be exactly the same as I had for instance when I visited the bull ring last year. The chips are pretty awful and dry ( so you must buy a drink, usually Coca-Cola ), and the “sausages” really seem to be made out of some foam rubber type substance, and no, I am not joking. Still, the same people are there every Sunday with the same food, so, someone is buying it. Other stalls sell cakes, some sell traditional Yúcatecan dresses, and other sell dolls, cigarette lighters, beads, and rugs. The bead and rug brigade come from Chiapas, and without exception are dark skinned skinny women each with a one year old child on their hip. Again, cynical old me I suspect there’s a creche where you can go rent one of these sorry looking doe-eyed kids for a few pesos per day. The locals are pretty dismissive of these immigrants, and often say “have you ever seen a man from Chiapas”, well the answer to be honest is “not as far as I know”. “Ahah! They’re at home drinking beer and watching TV”. Well, it is Sunday after all.

Merida Sunday, complete with pale skinned Gringo couple from central casting.

In front of City Hall, there is always something for the kids. It’s a street show, and it’s very good of its kind. A sort of Tiswas with the rude bits taken out.  Somewhat like a traditional British pantomime, but outdoors in 25 degrees of heat ( and no Sally James I’m afraid ).

Old dog

Sally James

On the way back to my house to wrap up the gifts we had to pass a dead dog, that had lain in the street on the corner since yesterday. Buses come around the corner with the assumption that nothing can ever be there that they didn’t expect. Well, this poor beast didn’t expect the bus it seems.

The flies were beginning to dine on his eyeballs, but thankfully the next day someone ( maybe that little guy who sweeps the streets round here ) had taken away the stinking body.

So, Sunday night a large party at Varon’s house? Well, just the Gang of Four, as usual. The dog was very pleased with the leftover food. It’s an ill wind eh?.

Gratuitous photo of  Sally James for those of a certain age.

After all to much ado, we now have posession of the premise in the center of town to open a chip shop. It’s been fun planning the menu and trying out the batter mixes. I’m pretty close to a perfct chip shop batter. Together with the potatos, and the fish the shop will live or die by the quality of the batter. My Méxican friends have been very kind in tasting for me, and the only thing not to go down well was mushy peas. Real mushy peas cannot be had, so I mashed up a tin of processed. The rest tho seems to be liked as Lulu asked me yesterday when the frier was next coming out of the cupboard.

I mentioned the deep fried Mars Bar concept to them and it was like a drop of blood in a shark tank. Marsh mallows, deep fried cheese etc. I told them about “scraps”, if you remember those. We used to beg fo them when we were kids, but Varon say we should make them on purpose and sell them as they would be a real winner with lime and chillie.

While preserving the traditional fish and chip shop values, it is appropriate to update the concept I think with some modern marketing. As part of a broad base multi media aproach and a demographically targeted campaign I am currently trying get a robot parrot made up. Seems we have a man for the job, and i will meet up with him on Sunday to discuss how the beast can be engineered. I am very excited, as you can imagine.

Best news of all, an icecream machine has been identified. It has a high production rate of several liters an hour and is of the “Mr Whippy” ilk.

“99″ anyone?

Varon and Lulu need some extra cash for christmas, and so they decide to make up some gift baskets and sell them for profit. Seems like a jolly wheeze and I´m joining in.

It’s not as easy as you may think. You have to do a lot of footwork, and know where to go, and speak Spanish, and not look like a Gringo. This is fine for Lulu, Varon has a problem since everyone will speak to him in English, charge him double, and eventually ask him where he is from. I hear the same conversation every day, and when he tells them he is from Mérida they alwasy say “¿En serio?”, i.e.” you got to be kidding!”. Poor guy has “Gringo” written all over him. Anyway, Lulu is a star and comes back with lists of goods at wholesale prices and photographs, so we are chosing what goes into the various baskets. There will be 4 or 5 standard offerings. We needed sweets and so we bought some sample typical Mexican candies from the market. Here’s a photo.

The Dentist´s friends.

My favourite is the swirley one, I have my name on it, but I’ve been told I cannot eat the merchandise as it would be a bad habbit to get into. Besides not to compromise my skinnyness.

So far, here in Mexico, life continues to be sweet.

Weather update. It’s been dank and miserable for a few days. Still t-shirt weather, and in a way a relief from the heat. Mexicans are putting on their thick wooly coats and scarves. “¿Que mal tiempo eh?” one of the workmen now remarks each morning. I agree with him, but not really. Stay good!

Xmas is coming.

Yes, no kidding, it will soon be here, unfortunatly the workmen show little sign of NOT being here. They are becomiing like family to me, that is to say at times very annoying for no reason other than their existance. One of them has a really silly annoying giggle, wonder if anyone ever told him, and several have developed a tuneless whistle that is a song with only two bars of music it seems. My dear old father had a similar thing, but we all knew it was from Oklahoma! It really annoyed Mum.

I set my mobile to wake me in the morning, but some damned bird has figured this out and can imitate the alarm sound to a tee, and takes delight in waking me up half an hour early ( at 6:00 ). At 6:30 sharp they troop in, annoying whistle and giggle and all, and one of them always says something garbled in Spanish with the word “cafe” in it ( coffee ). I always say “OK”, and off they troop to the patio to boil beans and plan their busy day digging holes and covering the inside of the house in chalk dust.

This is like house arrest, but now and then I sneak out to do some work on my little fledgling business. I always get back at quitting time to the smell of more beans and they troop out whistling and giggling.

“Mañana!” they shout. “Si mañana”, I say, and look forward to Sunday, my day of rest… except for that bastard bird, that never seems to take a rest.

Global warming, now politely remained “climate change”, to get over the fact that the warming has, at least for now, inconveniently stopped, is never out of the news and I was alarmed to read this headline today.

World’s largest ice sheet melting faster than expected

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/22/east-antarctic-ice-sheet-nasa

Meanwhile, the biggest story to hit the blogs for a long while is the hacking of the CRU email server and the revelation of the shenanigans of the cadre of scientists, including the conspiracy to delete data obtained at public expense lest it “fall into the wrong hands”. The mainstream media has concentrated on the data theft angle of this story so far, ignoring what is a criminal conspiracy to pervert the law by the “top scientists” at the CRU.

To long the public have been told that the science is “to difficult” for them to understand, and we must trust the researchers, ( at least the ones who receive their daily bread and mortgage payments from the global warming trough ). The whole history of this polemic has been mired in the hiding of data, and cherry picking on both sides of the argument.

Bishop Hill has an excellent post on some of the more interesting revelations-

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html

Still, we continue to be shown photos of swimming polar bears, deserts with the perfunctory dead cow skill in a dried out pond ( methinks maybe the camera crew turned up in their 4×4 with a skull specially purchased from the local butcher’s for the purpose).

Oh cynical me!

poor cow

So, it gets worse. In the chaos that is Mexico, at times, yesterday I got up at 7:00 to let in the workmen, but they did not come. Instead at 8:00 a motley crew arrived at the door with one BIG truck, and lots of pipes. They asked me where the “alberca” was, as they were coming to drill a “pozo”. Now, the alberca is the new small pool that is under construction, and a pozo in my book is a well, and a well is for getting of water. Seems a “pozo” is also for the quitting of water and this is where the old water will go. My understanding of the geography here is that there are few natural rivers or lakes and all water is drawn from underground springs and catchment holes that fill in the rainy season. and they are all connected, so the flushing of dirty water into that system leaves me uneasy. Granted, tho the water always comes out of the tap looking clean, it does not smell of chlorine and some folk say “sure you can drink it”, but they sell them big bottles of 25l of water in the shops for a couple of quid and most people will be drinking that.

So they wheel in all manner of machine, apparatus and tool and a well dressed young guy with a clipboard comes along also and points at stuff, so something is about to happen. A long´pipe runs through the house to the back and the hook it all up and put on ear protection. This is my sign to wheel out my copy of “Drum & Bass Arena 10th Anniversary” and crank it up to ELEVEN.

 Eventually up turns a cop. The truck is blocking the street. I’m told that here the cops don’t ever do anything. He shakes my hand and is very nice and tells me I must stop the work. I tell him it’s not up to me, but I’ll speak to the people in charge. He shows me some city statute and murmurs about permits. everyone ignores the cop, and he goes away.

By lunch time they have finished, covered the house inside and out in limestone dust, and drilled 16 meters, or so they say, though there is no proof of this.

Work on the pool now continues, it’s back to tap tap tap, and the smell of torillas and beans at lunchtime, and the sound of that tinny old radio cranked up to eleven that all workmen seem to carry as an essential tool of the trade.

Don't you find your work as a dentist rather boring?

The workmen came on monday and began to dig a hole. In the best traditions of workmen, they are still digging it, standing in it, discussing it, arguing over it, admiring it, and on occasion continuing to dig it. There must be something in the psychie. As a child I remember our gang digging its own hole at the bottom of the garden. We covered it with an old bedspring base and then put grass sods on top, which grew and gave us an underground foxhole. We called ourselves the “Hole Gang”, and had codebooks, passwords, punishments, the whole lot. When we left the house an old lady moved in. My dad did not fill in the hole. I wonder what happened to Mrs Spencer?

So there they were, a digging this hole, a hole in the ground sort of big and sort of round it was….but oh no! While digging this hole, they found another hole, where a hole didn’t aught to be, a bigger hole, so off they went to “look at the plans”, which could not be found. Still, they continue to dig hole number one. Let’s hope they don’t find Mayan ruins, they would have to dig up the whole street….

The right hole

and

wrong hole

Tigers have appeared on Montejo, or at least big cats. I think they are pumas or leopards or some such. Was walking down to see my attourney today. It’’s nice to have an attorney, makes one feel imporant. In blighty a solicitor will see you two weeks on wednesday, and charge the earth for his doubtfull advice. Here it’s “yes, come down today when you like and no charge”. The dog wags the tail, as it should be. My attourney nods his head like the churchill dog and says “no problemo”, you can meet at his office or at his branch office “The Viper Bar” where they still have ladies of dubious repute who come and drink with the customers, and you get a good pork dinner dinner for 50 pesos.

Still enuff, these things have appeared overnight.

crosby

stills

Oh deep joy, the workmen are back. Banging, scraping, digging, watching one another… oh yes, seems to be an unwirtten rule that one of them do something and the rest will watch. Always takes at very least three men to do any job. When they run out of work they just sit and look into the distance. Seems that even if they finish early, they are paid by the hour, so they will happily ( or unhappily, I don’t know ) sit and stare into space for hours on end.

The foreman is “Freddy”, he is the one in the sweatless t-shirt with a modest gold chain around his neck. The also rans wear yesterday´s t-shirts and are slighly darker and slightly shorter than Freddy. They will be digging a swimming pool first, which as far as I can see will be very small, just enuff to stand upright, a bit like a vertical bathtub. I am most intrigued. Unlikley anyone will be getting a certificate for a length of that bath.

Also on the back of the envelope is a sort of garden shed. The garden is already very small, and I killed all the weeds off with a few squirts of Roundup, so the tools required at the moment consist of a plastic spray bottle, and a knife to cut down the overhanging banana branches now and then. Since the garden will now be even smaller, the logic of building a shed to house the tools escapes me, but I’m sure all will become clear in due course.

I am now very involved with The Merida Project. A project to support the contemporary arts in Mérida, Yúcatan. The eventual aim is a fusion arts festival here in the city, but on the way we hope to support local artists in whatever medium. Dance, music, photography, painting… you get the idea.

The first meeting a couple of weeks back attracted one person, Lulu, so she is now on the committee. The second around thirty people, though not all had an interest, some were only there for the beer. There is a website now set up, and a blog and a forum. We also have t-shirts and bumper stickers, a lot of enthusiasm and the need to recruit mew member to help us. Currently we are looking for a head quarters which will double as a vegitarian cafe.

Here’s the link.

http://meridaproject.com

Here´s the logo

Un proyecto para todos