"holy fucking shit, batman," shouted the cynical plasticman, "is nothing sacred?"

It's been a turbulent few days, these last four or five. My better half, A, came back from Ciudad del Este on the weekend & so things were pretty intense. On Sunday, we went out to an abandoned hotel overlooking the Rio Paraguay & had a picnic on the disturbingly (but only mildly so) well-kempt grounds. The conversation got a little deep, talking about feelings & shit like that, & so I got a bit het-up. I've tried to cultivate in myself a quasi-spiritual degree of emotional repression over the last few years and, as a result, anything that involves thinking about how I'm feeling, or - even worse - how I'm making other people feel, is pretty much guaranteed to make me flip out a little.

We'd kinda worked things through by the evening, though I was still feeling like I'd been ass-raped by a well-endowed & highly sexed... well, ass-rapist. A, Ozzie Dave & I went to an performance art piece being put on by some of A's friends. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I guess that what I had in mind was some of the amateur dramatic society plays that I used to go see when I was growing up in Zimbabwe. Good fun, but not exactly slick & professional. In the event, the performance was absolutely grand - it was put on in a small, bare warehouse, with the audience sharing the floor with the artists. It was all about the emotional & sensory impact - a thumping soundtrack, flashing lights & strobes, players running to & fro around, among & over the crowd. The performers all had harnesses & a lot of the piece involved them being suspended from ropes over the crowd. Any description of the work couldn't fully do it justice, but it was damn good. The part that stands out best in my mind is the image of two actors suspended from ropes running towards each other on a whitewashed brick wall, perpendicular to the crowd.

Like I said, any description wouldn't really do it justice...

By the time yesterday evening rolled around, the exertions of the weekend & previous nights out had taken their toll, & I'd lost my voice. This didn't deter the Vice-Directoress of the language school that I'm teaching at - I went there to observe a class & ended up spending three hours talking about the class & students (the latter being described by the VD as "difficult") that I was to teach the next day. "Don't worry about your voice," she said to me, "Just take some anti-inflammatories & I'm sure you'll be fine..."

(They're pretty desperate for teachers is what you should be reading between the lines.)

So this morning, I can't even talk. I feel shit, I go out, buy some medicine, go back home, dose myself & pass out. I awake to the sound of loud hissing. "Wha'fuck?" I think to myself, "Where the hell's that coming from?" So I drag my sorry ass out of bed & stagger into the flooded hallway, peering into the bathroom to discover that the inflow pipe into the toilet cistern has decided to rupture & spray water - at high pressure - absolutely fucking everywhere.

I'll tell you what, I felt pretty miserable then. I staggered out onto steamy, post-storm Asunción streets to find a ferretería open during siesta time - that's what you'd call the quintessential tall order in this town. My head was addled & fried, my Spanish gone, but I managed to find a place & get all the necessary bits & bobs to fix the loo & dry out the flat. When I got back & surveyed the damage, I felt something crumple inside - "Why me?" a little voice cried, "I can't take this bollocks..."

To which the slightly more assertive part of me said, "Rubbish. You've got the sniffles, a sore throat & a damp hallway. Dig deep."

But I called the language school & told them, in a firm whisper, that I'd not be coming in today. And then I called A to ask her about plumbers, as it turned out that I didn't have the right tools to fix the damn toilet. So she kicked my ass & told me to stop being a woman & to go to the language school. And she gave me the name of the building supe &, after he came up, we fixed the loo together.

So I went to the school, swaying, stumbling & making little apathetic mewling noises to myself. The time of the class came & there was no substitute teacher there & so... I ended up teaching the class. Utterly ridiculous, frankly, given that I couldn't speak above a whisper & it was my first day with that class. But the VD figured that we could just give the kids a test & so I had an easy time of things, though I felt like curling into a foetal position at odd moments during the class. Things went well. The kids are okay - a bit bored, a bit sarky & a bit too intelligent for the level that they're at, but otherwise they're not the demons that the VD made them out to be. Saying that, it's early doors. We'll see.

I feel pretty good now. Emotionally, that is ("What? What?" I hear you cry, "Did he say 'emotionally'? Is the man... Oh. Wait. He actually is in fact ill, isn't he..."). I'm glad that A gave me a kick in the pants to get me, well, kick-started, because otherwise I'd have spent the day mooching 'round the flat feeling pathetic & effete. Not very good for my self-esteem or my credibility at the League of Highly Unpathetic & Totally Effective Hombres...

'Nuff said. Paul out.