"i hear drums..." muttered the cynical plasticman, "either the natives are restless or my tinitus is having an identity crisis..."

I met the girlfriend's dad the other day. Nice enough chap, looking a little stressed and tired as do most of the SME business owners that I've encountered in this economy. It's kinda hard to make ends meet in this country, which is why A & myself have been talking about emigrating, once married, to somewhere where we can afford to buy a new pair of shoes at the end of the month if we need to...

The options are a little limited. A wants to go to Ireland or England and I want to go to Spain or Australia. Frankly, the thought of returning to England makes me want to hurt myself (or, on days when I'm thinking a little more clearly, to hurt small animals, orphans and mimes). I did my time and I don't want to go back, except maybe to visit some of the inmates.

We're spending the weekend in a hotel in Ciudad del Este all over again, as A's producing a commercial that's being filmed at the Cataratas de Iguazu. She's been hired by a Uruguayan production company, so she's being paid bugger all for the priv, but at least it gets us out of Asunción for a bit. The humidity's absolutely killer at the mo. I spend my days feeling like one big, sweaty testicle in the environmental equivalent of an underwashed & overused jock strap.

Clearly, my sense of humor is running a little strange at the mo. Money's been a bit tight and the missus has been unduly cranky due to her work & a number of known known, known unknown and unknown unknown factors, to misquote Donald Rumsfeld. Fortunately, after the closure of the swimming pool near my house last week, I managed to locate a decent, Olympic-sized pool at the Olimpia football club grounds about three kms down the road. It's a medio-fastidio to get to, but it's cheap and outdoors. I'll freeze my nuts off during winter, but at least I'll be in a good mood when I'm speaking in falsetto.

I rocked up at the club yesterday, pouring with sweat in the blazing heat and found my way to the Secretaria. The pool's for members only, they said to me, and you need a certificado médico to join. A lesser man might have wilted against such intractable unsouciance, but I stood my ground. "There isn't any way," I asked them, doing my best Christopher Walken, "that I could use the pool today. I'm dying, you see. The heat is killing me. I've come a long way. They took... (and here I choked up a little, tears in my eyes)... they took my pool away from me. A beautiful pool, with no roof. Blue, like the sky. A beatiful pool."

Anyway, that was more or less what I said, though I think what really convinced them was the fact that I clearly wasn't going to leave until I had swum, so in the end they relented and let me use the pool on the condition that I then left them alone.

I swam and it felt good.