Smarties

Good morning!

It`s a sunny day in Bogotá and beside this internet cafe they are painting the radio station building. From a drab streaky grey it`s being gradually transformed into a radiant yellow and blue beacon of colour in the main street. Every day as i walk to work from the motorway where i get off the bus (hello mad Colombian traffic laws, it`s the beginning of the road that connects Bogotá and Medellin yet it´s fine for the bus to screech to a halt and let me stumble out the back door, giant patent red handbag and folders of disorganised bits of paper flying in the wind) there´s an old geezer sitting on the wall outside this building, a right smart old buffer in a suit and a hat that makes him look like a Texan. Who is the auld dude? Maybe he´s an old school preacher on the radio, i can imagine him being quite into gospel music. On the other hand maybe he´s on the run from the law and it hiding out in sleepy Minuto de Dios neighbourhood. Next stop - getting the truth from the auld buffer...

This morning i had a string of rather nice classes, one was in the other building of the uni which is a 30 minute hike away from the usual place. It`s in an old school building and has those kind of draughty classrooms with shoogly chairs and a view of a playing field which my school had. However it does have a cosy wee shed where an old couple sell tiny sweet cups of tinto, empanadas and cheese toasties to the chilled staff and students. I went in with my colleagues to sneak a tinto between classes and the old man greeted me in English, shook me by the hand for 5 minutes straight and then gave me a wee packet of Smartie-like sweeties of the most patriotic variety, the ones that only come in red, yellow and blue (like the Colombian flag, pop-pickers!). It´s something that happens a lot here, people are so intrigued to meet a foreigner and so proud of their country that they treat you unbelieveably well, partly i think because Colombians are very hospitable people in general, and also because they want you to feel welcome. It was lovely, to experience that hospitality again after a few months of a pretty joyless slog getting back into everything, it´s lightened my heart again. Thanks Señor Tinto and your patriotic Smarties.

Ships/rooms

Though I love this travelling life and yearn
like ships docked, I long
for rooms to open with my bare hands,
and there discover the wonderful, say
a ship's prow rearing, and a ladder
of rope thrown down.
Though young, I'm weary:
I'm all rooms at present, all doors
fastened against me;
but once admitted I crave
and swell for a fine, listing ocean-going prow
no man in creation can build me.

- Kathleen Jamie

Liberal ladies love Galan!

Yesterday i was off work with a sort of low-level flu, today i feel better but i'd quite like another day off work. Not happening but. Yesterday was quite relaxing, i spent the day in with Patty the parrot reading daft articles on how to train parrots to ride bicycles and the like. She sat on my shoulder for a while and we watched a documentary about the linguistic abilities of parrots. Best was finding Sparky (Youtube that bad boy), an African Grey parrot who lives in Kilmarnock and can say "I'll kick your baws son" and "Sparky wants a chocolate biscuit and an Irn Bru". Superb.

Colombian news is rather thin on the ground, i've not been up to much due to some cash-flow issues on behalf of those stingy priests my employers. However i did go to see an excellent exhibition of Mexican art and its relation with Colombian art at the Museo Nacional, they had lots of murals and woodcuts and sculptures, excellent stuff.They also had a tiny but interesting room stuffed full of memorabilia relating to Luis Carlos Galan, a politician who was assasinated at a rally in 1989 in Soacha (a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bogota that used to be a village before being swallowed up by the city, also you may remember the place where i went sometimes last year to teach wee guys a bit of English and have my owl hand puppets licked by wee lassies). They have the suit he was wearing when he was shot, and lots of election propaganda (he was the Liberal presidential candidiate at the time and apparentlhy a sure thing to win the election) among which my favourite by a mile was the sticker showing him all wavy haired and charming with the slogan "Liberal ladies love GALAN!". Definetely worth a visit, Bogota readers. The building famously used to be a jail and a convent (not at the same time, obviously):
This weekend i will hopefully have the finances under control and will have rather more interesting things to report than that i sat in the hoose all day chatting up a parrot (who behaved extremely well until a pal dropped in to see me and then shat on my nice maroon jumper) (of course, the parrot shat on me, not the pal) and eating Chocoramo, glory of the Colombian snack industry. It's a sort of rectangle of cake covered in chocolate, a lunchbox classic for 50 years (but only in cold areas of the country otherwise they melt). I really do not know what i'm going to do when i live in a country where Chocoramos are not easily available. It doesn't bear thinking about. Maybe you can get them imported?

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer — Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Hiya. I've been reading up on the shipping forecast after an afternoon's waiting for a tedious visa related meeting with a Cuban colleague led to the mutual nostalgia for coastlines getting cracked out. I love the shipping forecast more than many other things. More than toast and jam, for instance, and more than going into the close in my old house on a hot day and it being all cool and quiet and tiled, however less than a cup of coffee in a small yellow cup that says "Koffie" on the side and less than finding very wee and sweet mangoes in the fruit shop beside the park.

As regards the shipping forecast: in 2002 they changed the name of Finisterre to FitzRoy in honour of the guy who founded the Met Office. I always liked Finisterre, along with Utsires North and South and Malin. Here's a Seamus Heaney poem called The Shipping Forecast for ya:

Dogger. Rockall. Malin, Irish Sea:
Green swift upsurges, North Atlantic flux
Conjured by that strong gale-warning voice.
Collapse into a sibilant penumbra.
Midnight and closedown. Sirens of the tundra,
Off eel-road, seal road, keel road, whale road, raise
Their wind-compounded keen behind the baize
And drive the trawlers to the lee of Wicklow.
L'Etoile, Le Guiliemot, La Belle Helene
Nursed their bright names this morning in the bay
That toiled like mortar. It was marvellous
And actual, I said out loud, 'A haven,'
The word deepening, clearing, like the sky
Elsewhere on Minches, Cromarty, The Faroes.

Things are a little melancholy around here, the wind is howling against the window and down below the sad dogs in the vet's yard are howling too, and somewhere in the distance a plane's taking off. Bogota feels very empty sometimes, when you know everyone you fancy talking to is in their bed and everyone else you fancy talking to is on the other side of the world and also in their bed. I chose it and i don't regret it but sometimes i wonder about going home because it'll never be the same as it was. Even the shipping forecast isn't the same anymore.

Amendoim...

...means "peanut" in Portuguese.

Kindly observe the following video:

Eggs and Sausage from Jackie Lay on Vimeo.

Good, eh?

Apart from these digressions i have been up to the usual tricks. I'm sure you'll have seen the Facebook frenzy about my having driven a car 200 metres along a deserted suburban street, sounds naff but it was grand! I only stalled that bad boy once (or twice)...

This weekend was rather cultured, on Friday night i went to another concert at Los Andes (I recall mentioning the previous one and being worried it would be mime, it was actually opera and quite good as far as i can tell, none of this is really my are of expertise. Carranga now, that's another matter) which this time was a baroque dream team banging out the tunes on a recorder and an instrument called a laud (crassly referred to as a banjo at one point by one of the assembled company). What can ye say about 2 hours of chamber music really? The boy behind me was snoring pretty heavily from about 40 minutes in onwards, and the most entertaining thing about the concert was the whispered discussion about whether the duo were a ROMANTIC duo in real life and were off afterwards to whoop it up in one of the less salubrious nightspots along the Avenida Caracas. It was interesting to see right enough, the amount of time and effort needed to become a laud expert is pretty amazing, but in general i probably shouldn't be invited to these type of events for being a philistine.

After the baroque n' roll we went for some GOOD empanadas (on the road that leads to the Quinta de Bolivar i believe), they rocketed straight into the Bogota Empanada Top 5 that i'm mentally compiling. Uyy there's a place in Usaquen that does swanky ones with fillings like Serrano ham and tapenade, and let's not forget the incredible delicatessen on the Septima (with 14? 15? Between the Avianca buliding and the 19, Rolo readers) known as the Colombian Harrods for its brutal tackiness and sale of totally pointless overpriced gubbins. Hidden in this temple of crap dried fruit, flavoured tea and funny shaped rolls are the most incredible empanadas, respectively the Argentine variety (with chicken and a kind of pinkish tomato sauce) and my absolute favourite the Uruguayan effort (meat with olives, hard-boiled egg and raisins!), both sublime with a bottle of skoosh. Mmm. Here are some empanadas:
They are magic. That green stuff is aji, about the only hot sauce you can easily find in Colombia. It is also magic. To make it, take

2 hot red chilies
3 finely chopped spring onions
1 ripe tomato, finely chopped
finely chopped coriander, in the same proportion as the onion (likes, if the onion all cut up is half a cups worth then you want half a cup of coriander as well)
1/4 cup vinegar (it says fruit vinegar but i happily have never seen it in Scotland so choose another kind)
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp vegetable oil
salt

Cut up the chilies (ajies) really, really small and mix them well with the vinegar and salt. Elsewhere mix the spring onions, coriander and tomato. Add it all together with the lemon juice and oil and see if it's hot enough, if not get some more ajies on the go.

Other news: learned about Mexican gastonomy at the Bogota Book Fair and got a cheeky sample of pescado a la veracruzana which is totally getting cooked in the hoose as soon as i finally get paid, this has been a rather long month in terms of dough and lack thereof.

Also saw a Mexican film about wee chaps in Chihuauhua riding horses around and eating Pot Noodles in rainy shacks, not a bad Sunday afternoon's entertainment really. Mexico-a-rama around here.

AIIIEEE yawn yawn it's not even that late but i'm knackered, i'm off to my Kip Keino. Tomorrow i've got a delightful Portuguese class in the morning followed by a horrible meeting with the Social Communication faculty to see if they'll design us some nice logos for the Languge Centre followed by a meeting about an online Masters (might do it if it's interesting) at some uni that has an agreement with my uni followed by class until 8. Yikes! At least i know the word for "peanut" in Portguese...

A weekend in Boyaca

Boyaca is a department to the north of Bogota which has lots of mythical lakes, very cold weather and towns with such delicious names as Siachoque, Iza, Tibasosa and Gachantiva. I visited none of these, instead heading for Sogamoso (home of hunners of cement factories and consequent amounts of pollution) and then Mongui.

Sogamoso is about 3 hours outside of Bogota on the bus. The bus journey is excellent, passing through the Sabana of Bogota and lots of wee towns and rolling plains. Thanks to said rolling plains i whipped out the camera to take a few scenic shots and somehow LEFT IT ON THE BUS LIKE A BIG EEJIT. Poor show. So you will just have to imagine the glories of Boyaca until i go on the rob from Mark's photos. In Sogamoso we stayed in a classic crappy 70's hotel with horrendous bedspreads and ancient telly, with no hot water in the showers and lots of odd figurines of fruit-sellers and things dotted around the lobby. Time spent in this hotel was kept to a bare minimum. We arrived quite late so spent the evening in a cafe tanning beers, i got IDed again which was undignified especially considering the vast droves of underage teens swanning about with Del Boy cocktails in hand, FLAUNTING the age of consent while perfectly innocent, positively decrepit 24 year olds get mercilessly asked for proof of age. Anyway the next morning we rounded up the delights of Sogamoso with breakfast in another superb 70's establishment, wood panelling and red melamine tables and sad pictures of Jesus accompanied our eggs with spring onion and tomato.

Cheerio Sogamoso (original Chibcha name Suamox meaning "City of the Sun"), hellaw Mongui. Mongui rocketed straight in there as once of the loveliest towns i've visited in Colombia. It's away up in the mountains, with steep cobbled streets and whitewashed houses with balconies dripping with geraniums and campesinos in ruanas (a poncho-esque blanket with hole for heid) leading cows over a crumbling stone bridge over a clear river. The air is clean and pure, and the whole village smells of flowers and eucalyptus trees.

Mongui is named after Montjuic, which if i remember correctly is a part of Barcelona reached by cable cars and funiculars and things. It is famous (no joke) for the manufacture of footballs, and supposedly somewhere in the town they have the biggest football in the world. We did not manage to find this. However as a consolation, here is a photo of a really big football made by the people of Mongui:
After such classic pueblo activities as eating a giant set lunch, visiting the museum of religious art and asking irreverent questions about Catholicism

(ah something interesting from the muesum: the extremely youthful member of the tourist police who gave us the tour showed us this giant nativity scene, once opulent and dripping with gilt and obese cherubs but now sitting rather dustily in the corner of a disused convent. For decoration the thing was inlaid with big pearly shells, mirrors and in pride of place at the top six inexplicable blue and white china plates. Our guide explained that the plates were from Japan and Italy respectively, and the mirrors from Arabia or somewhere equally exotic, and the shells from the Caribbean i think. I'm sure you know i'm not a religion hand but i found it quite touching, that the things of greatest value were those that had travelled the furthest from all corners of the globe, and here they were being very carefully plastered into a totlly kitsch nativity scene by some criollo monks in the 17th century. Can you imagine the difficulty involved in transporting a plate from Japan to Colombia in the 1600s?)

and wandering around looking for a hostel in the blazing sun and attaining classic "quemaduras boyacenses" (the Boyaca suntan - a red stripe across the nose and cheeks sported by both locals and visitors alike thanks to the evil Andean sun) we settled in for some beers.

There was a fiesta in the town to celebrate the Virgen del Carmen (virgen of bus drivers, taxistas and all those who labour in the transport trade) and earlier on there had been a procession round the plaza with a Virgin carried on the shoulders of some locals while women sang melancholy songs and flung rose petals around while at the front of the procession a jaunty and extremely elderly brass band belted out the tunes led by a wee boy swinging one of those balls of incence in overenthusiastic 360 degree circles. So later on there was another band cracking out the carranga, typical music of the region. I haven't got the facilities to upload it but i strongly suggest you pap "carranga" into Youtube and experience this for yourself, it's great to dance to.

We'd gone to a shop in search of some empanadas and had bumped into a man who's given us directions to a hotel earlier. Delighted to see a crew of shifty foreigners, the wee dude starts us off on the best night ever and we have a beer with him and his pal before braving the nippy evening to head to the plaza for a spot of dancing. A number of speechless locals look on in horror as we dance away to the musica carranguera, Mark proving a particular favourite with the hilariously lecherous old ladies of Mongui. Hotel man then gets me to go up and speak to the whole town (through a microphone, beside lots of men in ruanas with tiny guitars), telling them i am Scottish and pure love small-town parties. Cue lots of toasts to The Scots! (Cherie and Mark were loving being Scottish for the night) who know how to dance sabroso!!

Yikes then we went to the bakery which had been transformed into a den of dancing and iniquity, all set to the background of twangy, incessant carranga. Here we were introduced to half the town and set about dancing with as many of them as possible, in between getting given free drink left right and centre. This went on until the police (among them our cheery guide from the religious art museum) arrived and turned the music off and suggested it was time for bed, but not before we had stggered our way up a cobbled street to a pizza parlour where Cherie's spirited argument with a chap (the cousin of the owner of the bakery, i believe) provided much late-night entertainment for the waiting customers. Finally we fall into bed, drunk and happy and adopted Boyacenses to the core.

Next morning, hangovers and bus journeys back to Bogota await, but before that we are treated to a cheery wave from one of our pals from last night, an old buffer who seems to have been in the pub non-stop and beckons us in to begin it all again. But like the responsible (and hungover) kids we are we had for the bus stop, via the baakery for some breakfast where everyone greets us as los escoceses and demands that we return as soon as possible. Mongui and Boyaca - i think i'm in love with you.

Another lucky break

Ah all is well in Locombia. Finally i've got a nice flat, with wee couches and radios and a coffeemaker and pals, this is what sharing a flat should be. Cherie and Mark are away to work so i'm sitting around listening to Paulina Rubio's tinny voice blaring out of the radio and working on coffee # 4 of the day. Gloriously enough there is free wireless floating in the air as well, cheers neighbours. I've spent all morning looking up recipes on websites like this and this. Mmm. It's a sunny day and light is pouring in the window now that i've dealt with the horrific net curtains, the walls are covered in photos and postcards and maps of the world and i feel right at home.
Our new neighbourhood is called Batan and is in the north of the city, beside a big avenue that has Ciclovia on Sundays so you can go out running past Plaza Garibaldi, a famous Mexican nightclub with mariachis and drug lords and what have you. It's a bit of a culture shock after a year in La Candelaria (good points: "The Auntie" who runs the shop opposite my old flat and who, whenever i go in for a quiet beer, leans over the counter and proudly gazes at me as if i was her ACTUAL niece, also the decrepit old buildings and plaza with hippies and cake shops. Bad points: crack addict-a-rama, walk home after work not pleasant, folk who came to visit sometimes got robbed, constantly hearing a sharp intake of breath when telling people where i lived) as it's really quiet and residential and you can walk home at night listening to music which is not something i would do in many areas of Bogota. All we need to do is find a pool hall in the vicinity and we're laughing.

Also i am now a REAL teacher since i've got my own class! They are total beginners from the neighbourhood around the uni and are going to finish the course with brutal Glaswegian accents. Gaun yersel wee man!

The RETURN

Hello.

It´s strange to be back in Colombia. Obviously it´s grand to see everyone again, but i miss home much more this time round. I wish it wasn´t so far, that you could just jouk back for the weekend and not have to think about months and months stretching out ahead of you before you see the people you want to see. Ach but that year there went by ludicrously fast, before we all know it it´ll be ta ta Colombia for good.

So far me and Cherie have found a flat but we don´t move in until the 25th, it´s grand though. It´s up north, on the 4th floor and out the windows you can see over the roofs of the houses up to the mountains. Moving is going to be brutal because of the beds, fridges, sofas which are scattered across the city in various apartments but once it´s all done we can all relax.
At the moment i´m staying in Mark and Paula´s flat in Modelia, it´s a bit of a bummer staying in someone elses flat, i just want to get into my own one and settle in.

However in spite of temporary homelessness i´ve been having a good time seeing all the pals again. Yesterday i´d a cracking English class with Oliver´s girlfriend Ana Maria, she is an art teacher so we worked out how to instruct a class of 15 year olds how to make a plaster cast of their own ear in English. Then i walked about 50 blocks to go to a cheerio BBQ for a chap who´s off to London for a year, just fancied a wee walk but i underestimated the brutal Bogota sun and got rather toasted in the nose region. Nice.

BBQ was a classic Colombian shambles, 5 o´clock rolled around and there was no sight of food, just crowds of men haplessly flapping at a pile of barely smouldering charcoal and the guy who´d been sent out for beer seemed to have disappeared. It was on a terrace on the 12th floor so had an incredible view out over the city, but most of us could only gaze at the people on the terrace to our right which had a family all sitting round a table tucking in to some delicious-smelling slabs of meat, or the terrace to the left which was full of giggly drunk teenagers waving tins of beer and bottles of aguardiente in the air. I gave it up as a dud and went off to meet a pal in Chapinero where we sat in a succession of chusos (crap bars) and drank some well-earned beers.

Today it´s all been a bit of a hungover write-off, however i am smugly celebrating 1 (ONE) week with no fags which i think you will agree is rather astouding. In fact i´m off to the supermarket to buy a pair of JOGGIES (classy) in order to actually do some kind of sports (shock) in the future. Yes it´s all go around here!

Tomorrow me and Cheeky Cherie Elston are off to a free concert in the Parque Bolivar to celebrate the independence of Colombia, hopefully i will be cracking out the dodgy salsa moves and showing these Colombianos what´s what.

I´ll be back with more interesting reports when things have livened up a bit around here, at the moment it´s a tedious quagmire of contracts, bank accounts, ID cards and moving house but in 2 shakes of a lamb´s tail normalk service will be resumed.

Live long and prosper, KM...

Mime revenge and lazy Sundays

Hello chaps!

Hope all is splendid with ustedes. Here i´m on my last week of work! Not that you can really call it work, i´ve got 2 classes and let´s face it they´ll be a farce, end of term and all that jazz. And then it´s hola Escocia!

This weekend i didn´t eat any udders, however i did buy a BIKE from my pal, wait til you see it it´s PIMPING - matt black with a subtle Bogotá licence plate sticker on it, and i´ve got a slightly kinky looking reflective vest to go with it. Magic. I also accumulated a pair of fake Ray Bans and a red Bakelite telephone, ah flea markets you are the best thing ever.

If you care to visit http://www.colombiareports.com/ you can read my article about the bike tours in the travel section, also in "Colombia News Lite" i am quote of the week! Colombian men have the unfortunate habit of giving you compliments but being unable to prevent themselves from adding "marika" or "guevón" (both insults but commonly used among pals as a kind of "mate" substitute) so you get comments like "eres muy hermosa marika" ("you´re very beautiful, gaylord") or "me fascinas, guevón" ("i really like you, bawbag"). How can anybody take this seriously?

I´m in the midst of getting all my gubbins packed up, horrendous how much garbage you accumulate over a relatively short time, specially boufin´clothing. Why did i ever think it was a good idea to buy a giant orange jumper with llamas marching round the yoke in the first place?

Tonight someone invited me to the theatah at Los Andes which is a very swank uni, hope it´s not shocking experimental gubbins...or mime...gads the possibilities are quite horrible. Although speaking of mime i was waiting for a friend yesterday outside the Museo Nacional and there´s a mime artist who plies his trade there, i´m not such a fan of them in general but the guy was a pure genius, had imitating people´s walks down to a fine art. So along comes this guy who was God´s gift to the mime artist, a big guy with a distinctive swaggery walk carrying two paper grocery bags. So them mime falls into step beside him and does a belter impression for a bit, til the man suddenly stops in his tracks. The mime stops too. The man takes a step backwards, as does the mime. Then the guy starts to take steps forwards and backwards in such a jerky odd sequence that the mime can´t follow it, so he throws up his hands in silent defeat and makes his way on to the next victim. Priceless.

ARF in a similar vein i was on the Septima in the middle of the Ciclovia when my parents called, so i gave my shopping bag with the red telephone to Karen to hold ( i may have also been eating some kind of dessert at the same time, what else are Sundays for if not cake and rummelling around second hand shops?) and she whips out the big red plastic reciever and starts talking into it, "No waaaay! No me diiiigaas!!" and all the Colombians practically falling off their bikes gawping at her, arf hilarious. Hah and we went to see the Life of Brian at the Uni Central, needless to say some of us were in tears at the Biggus Dickus bit, which was "Pito Largo" in Spanish and his wife Incontinentia Buttocks (ARF) was Incontinencia Trasero, i tell you they were rolling about the aisles when that subtitle flashed up. Magic.

Other weekend highlights included cheap beers in the terrace of the pizzeria in La Macarena with Adam, trilingual torrents of abuse being hurled at a shite Shreck Playstation racing game by me and Oliver (Pinocchio was getting it particularly tight, the wee bastard), Champions League final (´mon Barca) plans being laid for another glorious bout of afternoon drinking, a party at Tamara(Spanish pal)´s house with horrible wine and "La Pantera Mambo", and generally lots of fun.

ARF (this post is unusually arf-filled, think we´re going on number 5 here) one of my students just called me to have a picada for lunch before Conversation Club, hilarious. Picadas are plates of bits of meat, sausage, wee tatties, arepas, etc etc and usually imply chunchuyos, eugh, but there´s always a spot of black pudding in there as well to soften the blow. As long as it´s udder free i´ll be happy. The problem with this type of food is it really demands a beer to accompany it, and i´ve to whip up enthusiasm for English conversation immediately afterwards, probably not the best idea in the world to get started on the old Aguilas.

Ah well keep the heid readers, i´ll keep you posted as to whether the picada was delicious or a nightmarish chunchuyo-fest.

Dejémonos de vainas

The fruits of this weekend:

1. A bag of neatly wrapped barbequed udder and unwashed intestines.
2. Oil stains on my favourite checked trousers.
3. Sore feet.
4. A date.
5. The best birthday present ever.
6. A deeper understanding of the following words and phrases: derramar, roupa cheguei, cangrejear, comprar la tiquetera, no joda, lámpara.

Let´s start at the start. Number one is thanks to the vast portions served at "El Viejo" Argentine restaurant in La Macarena. A supposed picada for 2 people was too much for 3 hungry individuals, so we got it wrapped up ("pa´l perrito") and took it on our travels. This was the start of an absolutely disgraceful Sunday afternoon in the company of the ever braw Cherie and a pal called David, who i believe made an appearance in these pages PURE months ago. True to form we met this chap when we were doing a spot of impromptu mid-week boozing in a bar near the house. Cherie and him are good pals but i´d not seen him for months, given the borracheras of catastrophic proportions that occurs when we see each other this is perhaps not entirely a bad thing.

Anyway so we had the picada which was unspeakably delicious, big steaks and ribs and chicken with chimichurri (hot herby sauce) and garlic mayonnaise, unfortunately the udders aren´t up to much (tastes like stinkin´cheese, Roquefort or something. Bleugh) and i think i may have already made my feelings clear about the unwashed intestines. Chinchulines the Argentines call them, which i think is quite a pretty name for something so rank. Number one bottle of wine of the day (you can see where this is going can`t you) accompanied this feast, followed by 2 bottles more in a hilarious old man bar on the 19 where the locals sat tanning red wine and cracking dirty jokes all afternoon. We were ejected from this bar at 6pm (closing time, not for unruly behaviour) and so went up to Bardo with Mark and Paula where a number of other pals were reading out extracts from some nihilistic Bogotá novel. Cherie had by this time sensibly stopped drinking, some others however were not so sensible and started on the tequila... and then went back to our flat for even more booze, what an absolute disgrace.

Number two! The oil stains were caused by the chain of a rather pimping bike i was riding across the old train tracks by Paloquemao (the gigantic and marvellous food market) falling off at an inopportune moment. I was riding the bike on Friday afternoon as part of a tour of the city about which i´ll shortly be writing an article for Colombia Reports. It was crackin´, zooming around the city through parks and round the back streets til we reached the Uni Nacional where there was Cafe Tacuba tunes blasting out a stereo and lots of hippy types sitting around campfires making huge vats of stew and drinking cheap wine.

3! Sore feet from going out with my hilarious colleagues on Saturday night in inappropriate boots to a crappy student bar where they played inexplicable techno and me and Cherie danced like a pair of total eedjits. Much hilarity regarding the incredible Colombian habit of pointing with the lips, this is absolutely the greatest facial movement in the world and is most commonly used to explain where the toilet is. The next time you see me in person i´ll demonstrate, it´s kind of difficult to convey in writing.

Four... arf last night some chap i met while i was sitting in the park (nothing better than sitting in the park in the sun talking to all the folk that arrive, tinto vendors, hippes making wire sculptures, general nutters) called me to see if i wanted to go out, poor guy phoned at 7pm and i was brutally steaming (after the 2nd shot of tequila) but i think i managed to arrange to meet up during the week. Hilarious.

FIVE FIVE FIVE Cherie gave me for my birthday this incredible book all decorated and filled with poems about knitting, onions, friendship, vergas and many other thngs besides, full of photos and drawings and pictures and it´s so excellent that it made me cry because i´m a sentimental old bastard. Braw!

The phrases collected under Number 6 were accumulated over the course of the weekend, first one on Friday night when i went out with Oliver (my pal who is teaching me to speak Portuguese with a Sao Paulo accent and who is being taught in return to speak English with a Glaswegian accent, guy´s a total champ although he rips the piss something awful) to his pal´s wee flat in La Macarena all full of weird paintings of Colombian icons done on toilet seats (i mean that they were actually painted onto toilet seats rather than the icons were on the toilet, just to clarify matters). There (what a surprise) we drank load of rum and listened to Calle 13 and shouted a lot, it was all extremely good fun. During the night i learned that derramar is to spill or to have an orgasm (whoa calm down, not from actual experience but because their band is called Derramoncito which is a mixture of that verb, some allusion to The Ramones said in a Colombian accent, and a character from a telenovela (called "Dejémonos de Vainas" which means something like "Let´s stop all this nonsense" but is a thousand times funnier in Spanish) called Ramoncito who apparently was a child star who turned to drink and drugs).

I also learned that roupa cheguei is loud embarassing clothing ("I´ve arrived clothes"), as in you get to a party and your clothes shout "I´ve arrived!". The equivalent in Colombian Spanish is to be una lámpara, someone who´s a bit embarassing and wears brutal clothes. I´ve been getting ripped a lot recently for being a lámpara.. Last week i bought a tan leather jacket with turquoise suede bits and silver stripes, it looks like the kind of thing Evel Knievel would be into so maybe the piss ripping is justified. Lámpara pride, entonces!

Cangrejear is to break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend then sheepishly get back together with them. No joda is just the best thing ever, a Costeño phrase which means "away ye go" or "aye right" or many other things besides. Comprar la tiquetera is to make an absolute arse of yourself, to just be the most embarassing thing ever. To say "How undignified" here you say "Que boleta" (What a ticket!), so it follows that if you´ve reached maximum levels of undignifiedness then you aren´t just a ticket, you´ve bought the whole damn ticket machine.

What a great weekend! One thing i´ll say about Bogotá, it´s never EVER boring.