Home at last.....
Having lived in and out of suitcases for the last seven weeks I have been looking forward to settling down for a little while. The desperate feelings of expensed vagrancy have grown, I am now actually homeless, a man of no fixed abode, which is not actually the same as not having a roof over my head, but is discomfiting. By late last week I resolved to find a new home. Marie has been a great help, searching out places as have a couple of others. Yesterday I had resolved to rent a modern three bedroom apartment near the office, it doesn't feel hugely latin American but it has the advantage of being walking distance to work. Not necessarily walking distance from work, as the gun toting robbers are normally working the five to midnight shift in the more affluent areas. I'm going to try and move in before leaving for Canada on Wednesday where Mary Kiss has found me an apartment in Toronto should it be authorised by the boss. So I will have gone from a man without a home to a man with two in the space of a week.

From the time I arrived in Costa Rica until about Friday last week, I had been amazed at just how awful the coffee in Costa Rica was, bitter and largely flavour free. Which is surprising given the awesome reputation. I had of course been buying my coffees from the ubiquitous mall coffee bars that use Britt Expresso. I bought a 10 dollar coffee machine from the cheap stuff shop in the mall that specialises in all the highest quality merchandise available from Asian sweatshop distributors. Leaving it a little late I then went out for the coffee. The pulperia (general store) had closed. I went to my regular coffee bar in the mall, where my temporary apartment is also located and asked for some coffee. The owner happily ground a cup of beans for me and I left with blissful thoughts of caffeinated beverages to come. I made a coffee. Awful! I thought it may have been the flavour of the new machine, but no a second brew revealed the coffee to have all the subtlety and delicacy of flavour that one normally associates with old engine oil. Time for an upgrade. The next day I bought a random bag of ground coffee from the general store for the princely sum of 950 Colones which is about 2 US Dollars. Absolutely magnificent, subsequent random purchase of other coffees have revealed to me that it is almost impossible to get coffee that is anything less than sublime unless you go to a coffee bar. I am now convinced that Expresso is actually Latin American for "That shit we sweep up off the factory floor and sell to Gringos in shopping malls".


My coffee machine overfills the permanent plastic filter and disgorges half the reservoir contents over the floor of the apartment unless I watch it. This doesn't seem to have upset the maid, who takes care of everything washing included. Earlier in the week she placed a laundered pair of Marie's panties on my beside table with a condom on them. I checked and as I suspected, this was maid humour rather than matronly rebuke. Speaking of Marie's panties, they encase what is one of the most perfect bottoms in Christendom. She can't keep her arse off my hands though, which can be a little embarrassing in the supermarket. I tell her to stop it, but she is forever catching one of my paws down the back of her jeans. It must be the latin blood! She is very pretty and looked great in her birthday present, perfume. However, a relationship cannot be purely physical, based on animal lust and base thoughts of unnatural acts no matter how much she'd like it that way. We'll see how things go, there are cultural differences but we have a lot in common.

As is the case whenever I'm here in Costa Rica, the blog postings are further apart as they make way for my life. Of course this can't go on. I'm back in Toronto from Wednesday for 10 days or so.

Don't eat the Staff!
I finally arrived at the company apartment in Costa Rica some twenty seven and a half hours after getting in a cab to Gatwick airport in the UK. My sleep patterns are so wrecked that I have not slept more than four or five consecutive hours any day in the last two weeks. Yesterday at 9:30PM the Airbus A330 lowered it's undercarriage on approach to the runway at San Jose, the pilot thought better of it and I was drinking coffee in Panama airport until reboarding at midnight for another attempt at the rain soaked, fog smothered airport in Costa Rica. I finally went to bed at 3:30am, woke at 7:30am and was in the office after half an hour or so.


Due to jet lag induced sleep deprivation the day had a slightly padded feel to it. Shapes slightly less distinct, voices less clear, my thought processes had slowed. I decided to quit the office about 3pm and try to sleep. I moved the last of my six suitcases up to the apartment in the same building and unpacked. I feel distressed about being homeless. I have no fixed base, no address as such, I have a job, but no contract. Together with the absence of any fixed timezone, currency, country or altitude. In short everything in my life is a little unstable, me included. I haven't spent more than 5 consecutive nights in the same place for nearly two months and I always seem to be packing or unpacking, I am not happy about it. I went back to the office to fetch a network cable for my laptop and was met by a young lad from the facilities management team, who informed me that there had been a mistake in the apartment booking system, they had double booked and that I would have to move to a hotel on Monday. There was a loud click as my incisors snapped shut between his 6th and 7th vertebrae.

After the red mist lifted and I realised that this was probably a mistake. I regurgitated his head and tried to pat the red soggy bits of his torso and neck together. I met my boss later who asked me to refrain from bighting other members of staff although he understood that my mental state was somewhat fractured.

Last Wednesday
Manda had very nicely let me use apartment while I was in the UK. I woke had a coffee and got in the shower. The streaming hot water reaching into my skull started to massage my brain into acceptance of the new day. I thrust an arm out and grabbed the only non-girly shampoo within reach. I always get confused when buying shampoo, because I am a man. This means that I do not know whether I have dry, normal, greasy, thick, thin, delicate or any combination of these types of hair. I just know that if I take my head to a special type of shop every two or three weeks, a nice lady massages my scalp with hot water and then leans over me a lot with her boobs at eye level while doing stuff with clippers and scissors. This makes me even more handsome, if you can imagine such a thing. I read the label on the bottle it said "SHAMPOO FOR MEN, FOR BODY BUILDING AND THICKENING". I used it anyway, but I was careless about rinsing, spilled some on my belly and when I got out the shower I was fat.

I needed to get a copy of the criminal record I haven't got from the police to help me apply for residency in Costa Rica. The police told me that I couldn't get a copy unless I had a proof of address, such as a bank statement or phone bill and that it would take forty days to arrive. I learnt several things here. My passport and birth certificate are no longer useful for verifying my identity and I should resort to carrying bank statements; people that do not have utility bills do not commit crimes; it takes forty days to find out if you have a criminal record, so policemen locking people up for anything less than that are just doing it out of spite.

I tripped into London via bankside, visited Thomas James, had a pint with Dave and then got back on the train to Waterloo, where something strange happened. The carriage I was on filled up with drunk people all wearing the same ties. They were very amiable and all started singing this song about some fellow called Father Abraham and taking their clothes off. I twigged, this was obviously a rugby club. Within 5 minutes there were a dozen stark naked rugby players dancing and singing on the train. I thought about joining in but as I didn't know the words and didn't want them getting jealous of my tackle, I wisely kept quiet. By the time the train arrived at Waterloo they were fully dressed again and on enquiry I discovered that they were Guys Hospital RFC which is actually the oldest rugby club in existence.

I met up with Manda and her bloke Rodge in Richmond and we went for a pint. After a quart of London Pride I stood at the bar panicking over whether last orders had been called, franticly gesturing to the barmaid that I was in medical need of more beer when a face from the past appeared in front of me:

bloke: Jason?
me: Yes
bloke: Jason Ellis?
me: Yes
bloke: Jason Ellis, Mile Low Club?
me: Yes

The face belonged to a chap Chris James, whom last saw about 10 years ago when we worked for a planning tools division of a major UK IT consultancy. The Mile Low Club thing he referred to was an incident in which The Sun newspaper ran a front page story recognisng me and my girlfriend of the time as the first people to have had sex in the Channel Tunnel.

After finishing my beer Manda dropped me off home and I caught a few hours shuteye in readiness for the marathon journey back to Costa Rica.

Last week at the airport I saw a metallic burgundy 1990s 3 series BMW with a 8 inch high, 6 inch wide spoiler on the boot (trunk). I have never felt the urge to urinate on a car as much as I did at that moment.

Not another baby post!
Although I have always wanted children, I have not actually made any. Not that I haven't practiced making babies, which I like very much, I just haven't actually made babies.
Most non-parents find the constant wittering of new parents about about how clever, active, fun, good looking, blah blah blah their new cabbage patch baby is, to be as much fun as bathing in warm vomit. Having to look at the photos equally tedious. Most of these photos are snaps, in that they serve as an aide memoire to someone present when they were shot. They are not art! If you are a bit of a photographer, which I am, you either have to shut down your visual cortex and grunt approving noises or you actually have to look at them. If you look at them you will get bummed about how the table is in focus but the kid isn't; how half it's head is out of frame or has a plant growing out of it and any number of other issues. You can't mention the errors in photography in case the parents think you find photography more interesting than their baby. Basically, other peoples babies are not interesting unless you are feeling very broody, even if you are a girl, who have higher interest levels in such things. Sorry but for the rest of us, they all look the same and especially so if you are a guy.

However, this brings me to the point of this post.
Please let me introduce my new friend, Thomas James Maximus McSpirit whom I had the great pleasure to meet yesterday. He is the eleven week old son of my longest standing friend Dave, whom I have known since I was only one motorcycle old and his girlfriend Jenny. This makes him virtually my nephew and Dave introduced me to him as his uncle so that's cool. I now have uncle responsibilities. Which I think means that it will be my job to introduce Tom to vices and all the other stuff that Dave, is prohibited by Jenny from doing due to his dadness. We'll have a lot of important ground to cover, beer, girls, motorcycles, cigars etc. Maybe we can discuss the arts, cooking, philosophy and culture as well if we have time.

After his dinner, TJMax settled down for a nap in my arms. We had a bit of a chat as he drifted off to sleep and we already have a few things in common. We both like women. Tom is a boob man. Mostly he sees women as a source for food and comfort, so not much different from most men in that respect. When the time comes I'll teach him how to cook the fish he catches when us three men are out fishing. He was a bit tired after eating and a couple of burps finished him off. He slept happily for an hour or so, wriggling in his sleep every so often and then woke up ready for a bit more supper, so I handed him back to Jenny. It was nice spending an hour with the new little man.

Dave is very proud of having made Tom and hugely grateful to Jenny for all her help with the production. So much in fact that Dave says they are going to keep him and don't need to get a pet after all. Of course my moral support in the whole project is also worthy of note.


Dave and I went down the pub for a couple of beers to talk bloke stuff. We had a chat about the little fellow while I waited for my train. Anyway, I stand by what I said before, I saw this baby in a car the other day that could have been drawn by Gary Larson. They all look the same they all act the same, that's it. Except for Thomas my nephew, who is different, more interesting, better looking, smarter and all that other stuff that you lot not related to him would never understand!

Chance and Offialdom
Well, this was the day that every previous day in my life was leading up to. The same of course could be said on every day. This one was a little special though. I left Spain today. I came back to tidy things up and vacate my apartment and that is now done. My friend Manda flew over and helped me pack my things as she did when I left the UK in 2002. Today I woke from a troubled sleep around 8am. The only thing left to pack was my desktop PC, all my other chattels being boxed and awaiting the removal men.


After a coffee I cycled across the frontier and entered the Orwellian tax office in Gibraltar. Here I queued for 20 minutes to see an orangutan behind a door marked 'Information'. I told the tax simian that I had ceased to work in Gibraltar as of August. After retrieving a particularly stubborn termite from his chair and putting it in his mouth, he told me that I would need a form. I proffered a form and asked if it was the required item. He looked at me ponderously, swallowed the termite he had been chewing, defecated behind a waste basket and told me that I would have to queue again and go into one of the two doors marked 'Enquiries'.
In the waiting room ten people were decaying and ruminating over the sheer life sapping experience which is a visit to any government department anywhere in the world. Governments actually seem to seek out, not so much under achievers, but people that although they may have evolved physically along with everyone else, retain the cerebral capability of sea sponges. After another hour it was my turn and I entered a door marked 'Enquiries'. The chimp in attendance looked at the form I had shown the orangutan in the booth next door, asked me to sign it and I left for my next brush with officiousness.

I went to my bank, which is actually Norwich and Peterborough Building Society and saw a mortgage advisor about switching from an endowment policy to a repayment policy. All was very interesting and it well until I asked about redemption values for the endowments. At which point the mortgage advisor Janet told me that as I had only held these policies for about 3 years, there would probably be no redemption value as "they cost a lot to set up and are long term savings vehicles". At this point I felt I had slipped though a worm hole and Janet was confusing me with an innumerate labourer circa 1950, that didn't realise that it doesn't cost 20,000 pounds sterling to establish a savings vehicle and that thought that bankers were respectable people rather than liars, cheats and thieves conducting their fraud through legal channels. I left and will be speaking to one of their representatives in the near future.

I enjoyed a relaxing late breakfast at Da Paulos in Marina Bay with a copy of the Daily Telegraph. The UK Conservative party leadership elections are amusing in the extreme. I have always hoped that the Tories will ultimately bury themselves up their own collective arses, pulling up their pants on their way in and we will all be left wondering where all the spiteful, out-of-touch people have got to. It looks like I will get my wish as the only leadership contender recognised as human by the electorate at large is Ken Clarke and the rest of the Tory MPs are rejecting him for not having pointy enough teeth, not being able to prove his Transylvanian heritage etc.

I went home and had a nap. On waking around 5pm I did some important thinking lovely thoughts about Marie and packed away my PC. The removal guys turned up and emptied the flat, Kay came by to pick up keys and paperwork, Anas and Lourdes arrived to take me to the airport and Ken, who was already at the airport to send me off, called to inform me that the flight had been delayed and not to rush.

Ken waited with me until the delayed plane had arrived. He's been having a rough time of late what with his girlfriend dieing. He has been very morbid and speaking of giving up, which I don't like, as it's terrible to hear someone you care for chewing themselves up. I offered a couple of suggestions as to new direction, but with little success and then a mini-flash of inspiration. In my carry-on luggage I had a copy of the Messiah's Handbook. I handed it to Ken and asked him to open it and see what it said. He opened , the book, turned to it and read..

Here's a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:

If you're alive, it isn't.

So that was cool I had providence on my side and that seemed to cheer Ken enormously.

After arriving at Heathrow I queued for a taxi to take me to Manda's. The black cab driver informed me that as I wanted to got to Ashford, which is approximately 5 minutes away and that it was outside the metropolitan area, it would cost 48 pound. Sorry but black cab drivers are mostly tossers. They won't take you south of the water (The Thames) after midnight and only apply taxi rules as they see fit. "Sorry mate I can't turn around, I'm in a rush, on my way to a dental appointment, I only stopped 'cos I thought you might also have, one or maybe need to get some flowers from the shop next door." I called Manda to come get me.

It was late, I updated the blog, called Marie and fell asleep.

I would like to apologise to all of the great apes for comparing them to people who work for government offices.

The Unjust Persecution of Smokers
I haven't had a cigarette since last Saturday. It was about time I quit again. I was off the smokes for two or three months earlier in the year but stress and apathy conspired to start me again. In the last two weeks the toll of constant change combined with the Marlboro Lights has given me a cough, which is proving hard to shake off.

Cigarettes in Canada are punitively taxed, much as they are in the UK so I'll be a little better off financially too. I really resent the tax on tobacco. I have probably already paid for about four heart bypass operations and with a bit of luck I shouldn't survive more than two or three. Ideally of course I'll bypass the whole bypass thing by quitting now. Obviously in the UK, Canada and other enlightened places the state pays for healthcare, but it seems a little harsh only punishing smokers for their cost to the system. So for today's arbitrary attack on the innocent I am going to pick on lovers of winter sports.

Skiers pay no serious tax on their hobby and they're injured so much that in the US they get their plaster casts on 3 for the price of 2 deals. Snowboarders have selected more or less the only pastime actually guaranteed to cause wrists and elbow trauma. Both of these groups are also prone to liver damage caused by drinking far too much mulled wine while bullshitting themselves about how cool they are on the black runs. Not to mention syphilis and other social diseases acquired during the apres ski sex. How much tax are they paying in to the system for all the treatment they get? Nothing over and above the sales tax on their equipment. Skiers and snowboarders cost the National Health Service considerably more than stamp collectors and anglers yet they pay no more in to the government pot!

It's getting more and more difficult to find a place to smoke now. In Ontario you pretty much have to go outside for a cigarette, much as you do in Ireland and a lot of other places. Why? Because the government says non-smokers should not be forced to inhale smoke passively due to their choice of jobs or their choice of whether to go into a bar or not. I think they should stop people from driving cars because non-drivers have to suffer from exhaust emissions and people that work in gas stations are inhaling all that benzene. You have to smoke a lot of cigarettes to beat a Cadillac on toxic emissions!

Smoking is a more or less environmentally neutral hobby, the tobacco plant absorbs CO2 from the air which we release again by smoking it. But every government now seems anti-smoker while leaving other more harmful pursuits alone. Take hot air ballooning. Now this is a seriously environmentally damaging hobby. The balloonist drives off to the countryside in a gas guzzling 4x4 towing an enormous trailer. He gets to where he's going and burns huge quantities of propane to blow up his balloon. It takes off in a random, wind blown direction followed by the ground crew in the Land Cruiser so it can be packed up again after landing. All this for a couple of hours flying in a desperate attempt to persuade the girl he's taken along that he is an at one with nature sky master and that she should shag him in the basket. There are more honest ways to get laid. Fact: Ballooning is more environmentally damaging than either prostitution or masturbation.

Smokers as a rule die younger and are therefore less of a burden on the state, pension and insurance companies. They are actually helping to reduce population density issues and by virtually ensuring that their bodies die before their brains do ensuring that they do not contract Alzheimers or any of those other unpleasant old age brain malfunctions.


In Canada about half the surface area of the cigarette packet is devoted to the health warning, each pack has a photo of something highly unpleasant on it, a heart after a heart attack, a lung operation, some vile looking teeth after mouth cancer. I wondered if the picture was related to the tar levels of the cigarettes; ever so slightly yellowed teeth for extra lights; a gangrenous amputated leg for the full tar smokes; a smiling lady-boy prostitute for menthols. Apparently the warning is random which is a wasted opportunity. Not knowing one Canadian cigarette from another, I only bought smokes that lungs on them regardless of brand. If someone else offered me a cigarette I always checked the packet first, as I wouldn't smoke anything from a packet with an erectile dysfunction warning in case there was something especially dangerous about them.

Anyway, I don't have to worry about cigarette issues now, the cough is starting to go and the new woman in my life wants to smooch with me a lot more.

Winter Sports can seriously damage your health!

Queuing at the bank...
You know you are back in Spain when you go into a bar and the barmaid hands you a cold beer out of the fridge and a hot glass straight out of the dishwasher to put it in. Franco replaced modernism and thinking for yourself with suspicion and inefficient bureaucracy. Thirty years after his death, his legacy lives on. I went to the bank today. The Spanish Olympic queuing team are practicing at my branch for Beijing 2008. I queued up in line to make a deposit and in only enough to to shave, read Martin Chuzzlewit, finish The Times crossword and shave again, I had arrived at the counter. I slammed a wad of notes down on to the counter loud enough to break the peaceful slumber of the bank clerk and while waiting for her computer to crash, reboot and crash I pondered the difference in attitudes to waiting.

In the UK and the US making you wait for a service that costs you money is considered equivalent to stealing life.

"Excuse me but the usable bit of my existence has been reduced by 30 minutes since I arrived at this bank, if you added up all the time I've wasted here since I opened my account I have probably lost 6 or 7 days of my life you vampirical bastards!"

Spanish people think of queuing with a nostalgic romance, viewing it as an opportunity to chat with the other people in line, make friends and perhaps get invited around to dinner. Which it possibly is in the rural branches. However there are old men queued up in Spanish banks that hadn't reached puberty when they walked in and I don't like it!

To pay a bill at a bank here you must go in on a Tuesday or a Thursday, between 8:30 and 9:30, between the 10th and 20th of the month. Although I am prone to exaggeration for comic effect, this is in fact unadorned truth. The adorned truth requires much sobbing, a decease in the family and a flashing neon Santa Maria statuette.

The deposit complete, I asked the clerk to change my address. The clerk told me I needed to go and join the line of people waiting in front of a desk on the other side of the building where a three toed sloth ponders Rene' Descartes and occasionally deals with customer issues.


Please may I take the opportunity to apologise to those offended by my gratuitous defamation of a religious icon, it was thoughtless and quite possibly blasphemous. But I rather like it.

Wish I was here (Part 2)

Well the Dutch couple introduce themselves, Steyne (incorrect spelling) is a surgeon and his beautiful girlfriend Sanne a product manager for a watch company. Sick of admiration, adoration and sympathy from Americans, Steyne now answers enquiries about what he does for a living by telling people he is a pet hair stylist. A conversation along these lines ensued and by the end of the night we were running a successful pet cosmetic surgery and holistic healthcare centre. Steyne was doing nose jobs on bulldogs that thought they were labradors born in the wrong body. I was offering counseling for cocker spaniels depressed about their weight and the weight of their owners, while my partner was offering lyposuction for fat dogs and boob jobs for cats. As you can imagine the alcohol flowed freely and all three of us had a riotous time. As the night drew to a close the sad realisation hit us that somewhere, they probably already have these things.

After a quick breakfast and a little shopping I drove to the volcano. Unfortunately it was still cloudy, so for the most part the top of the volcano was obscured. The trail meanders through seas of 3m tall pampas and tropical grasses that are split by dried river beds of volcanic ash; under the jungle canopy crammed with mangrove like trees growing from squelchy earth and filled with loud bird calls and the barking of monkeys; over great igneous rock flows borne down the fire mountain by rivers of magma in 1992.
Unlike the Barbary Apes of Gibraltar, the monkeys here make the ooh-ooh-ooh noises you hear in Tarzan movies as well as a variety of barks and grunts. They do not attempt to rob you of anything that sounds like a packet of crisps. But the noise in darkness of the jungle can be disconcerting (Scared, not me oh no!)

Unfortunately I didn't have the time to see everything as I wanted to get back before nightfall. Driving across mountains on foggy wet unlit roads at night concerns me somewhat. Before arriving in Costa Rica I had been playing a computer game, which I do about once every year or so. The game was called Boiling Point and is set in a Centro American country. One of the most frustrating things about the game is the car driving. The other drivers in the game seem to operate their vehicles randomly, completely oblivious to other cars and pedestrians, leading to constant repair bills and injuries. Frustrating and ridiculous! Or so I thought. Now I realise it is a faithful recreation of the Centro American driving experience. Only having had roads and cars a few short years, they seem to pilot motor vehicles as if they are donkey carts. The realisation that a vehicle to vehicle interface feels different with a combined speed of 50-150kmh,to what it does when your burro nudges the cart in front seems to have passed people by completely.

I was home shortly after sundown and went for dinner with Marie at Cerruti. Her company was, as ever, invigorating and fun, I hope that she misses me while I'm away.

Wish I was here! (Part 1)
You will note that my posts are less frequent during my time in Costa Rica. This is because I have more of a life here. Some good pals, some nice haunts and nowhere near enough days free to see all the stuff I want to.

As I have to be back in Spain next week and London the weekend after that, I thought I'd have to go and do something other than hang out in San Jose. All of my girly friends are doing other stuff. Emms and Nicki have been to the beach and have no doubt been boozing and man-ising something terrible after endless hours of exposing their semi-naked forms to the sun. The lovely Marie was off to a ranch with her sister and her mother, something like a Centro American Macbeth I guess. Oh and Mary Kiss, whom I mention here only because I said I'd say something about her in my next post, spent the weekend in Toronto where she lives. Weekdays she organises everything and everyone in the office, weekends she is a demon shoe shopper and culture vulture.

So I rented a a little 4x4 and hit out for Arenal, which is an active volcano about 140kms from here. The journey itself is quite magical. Outside of San Jose Costa Rica turns into a patchwork of green hills, forests and jungles. There is a slightly unreal feel to the roads, which are perfectly clean due to the daily rain scrubbing and bordered by lush vegetation in greener greens than I have ever seen. My digital photo-editing experience makes me think that someone has overdone the colour saturation in the real world Costa Rica. The houses that dot the countryside are all brightly painted and each has a unique character.

I arrived in a little village called Fortuna a little way from Arenal around 6pm, by which time it was dark. Unfortunately, it was raining and the top of the volcano was hidden by clouds. You can just about hear it from Fortuna, there is a small explosion every few seconds.

The problem is basically that during the dry season the place will be overrun by tourists, so the ideal way to explore Arenal is during the occasional dry spell during the rainy season. After booking myself into a cheap hotel that smelled vaguely damp I went out to avail myself of the local rustic cuisine. Initially the vaguely damp smell of the hotel is depressing, but thinking about it, everything around Fortuna is damp. The bioactivity of the soil there must be phenomenal. It rains for six or seven hours every afternoon for six months and the mornings are hot with some great sunshine until the clouds roll over. I imagine dropped litter decomposing while you watch.

At the first place I get some reasonably priced yet very boring fare and decide to move on to a better bar. I find myself in El Rufino, sat at the bar next to a Dutch couple watching the football on the TV behind the bar. Costa Rica are playing the USA and even though I am not normally interested in the game, I watched so I could feel culturally aligned with the Ticos. Costa Rica won 3-0. Shocking that the USA can't field a decent soccer team and noteworthy that the only games the USA is really world class at, are those that are really only played by Americans ; American football, baseball, basketball. The scenes of jubilation after the victory are shot from Mall San Pedro and played out over TVs across Costa Rica. I tell my new friends that right now, I live and work 6 floors above the cameras, when I'm not in Toronto that it.

(to be continued)

Toronto, still not completely crap for beer!
Yesterday, I met up again with Deidre and Bryan for another night of boozement. We hit C'est What at 67 Front Street. An intimate cellar bar with five ales on hand pumps, which are all rather pleasant indeed. Rather shockingly though, they still think it's acceptable to raise some of the beers they brew with pressurised CO2 or Nitrogen, lending an unnecessary fizz and destructive coarseness to their beers. I noticed the same sad issue at Amsterdam on King Street West, they have ruined what would otherwise be acceptable beers. Anyway after C'est What, we hit the House on Parliament pub in Cabbage Town. It's a great neighborhood place, quaint and very friendly. But they had no real beer, so somewhat depressingly, I switched to Guinness.

A return to Caffe Volo tonight allowed me to acquaint myself with Black Oak Hop Bomb. As you would expect it was very hoppy and quite dry, a little cloudy, which I don't mind, being as I am more interested in substance than looks. I like my beer like I like my women.... err tasty, err 6 per night.... err, strong, dry and ever so slightly sweet. Strike that simile! I like my beer like I like my beer. Anyway, the food there is very pleasant too and it was served up by the deliciously confident and competent Allison who had a refreshingly intimate knowledge of the menu. My visit tonight, very much confirmed my previous experience of the place, the only downer being that you can't rent a room there.

On a different note, out roaming the streets of Toronto today, I saw a street in the financial district turned into New York immediately post the collapse of the World Trade Centre. Dust, litter, NY taxis, cop cars, fire crews, the lot. There was a rather unconvincing jet engine lying around wisely just off set. Toronto is often used as an NYC body double, as it rents out cheaper.

Expect to see these guys on a TV near you sometime soon

Toronto, not crap for beer!
My non-British friends and associates do not understand my deep-seated and heartfelt love for real ale. I have found the last 3&1/2 years to be a barren and soulless experience beer-wise. Although I have flirted with lager it has never been truly satisfying. An emotional dessert, I find myself waking in the middle of the night from fevered dreams of London Pride, Youngs Special, Spitfire and Hopback Summer Lightning. I often mull wistfully at the thought of hoppy, living bitters while supping distastefully at a bottle of lager, for it is not in need of the reverence of glass, the yellow, sterilised, pastuerised, filtered carbonated swill masquerading as beer, purveyed by charlatans in the bars of Spain, Gibraltar, France, Canada and Costa Rica. But these are emotionless dalliances with blondes of little worth. The brunette nitrokeg shams that are the Caffrey's and the John Smith's may look good in a glass, but they are cheap harlots dressed as ladies. I am looking for love, not a succession of one night stands.

So, romantic beer prose aside, I was in a pub the other night and drinking a fizzy, cold IPA and lamenting that there was no flat, warm beer about and the barman said they sold a drop of cask ale in the place next door. I drank my pint on the outside on the terrace, quickly and with great expectations of drinks to come. I briefly made the acquaintance of a very nice couple who are also not a little partial to a real beer or two. I finished the IPA, the attentive barman asked if I'd like another, I replied in the negative and beat a hasty path to the place next door, Caffe Volo, which strangely enough was an Italian restaurant. I asked the stunningly beautiful blonde siren working behind the bar if this tale of ale was in fact true. She replied positively and asked if I wanted a thimble full as a taster. She brought the shot glass of Granite IPA to me, I put the glass to my lips and what must have been two nanoseconds later a rapturous obsession overtook me and I was demanding a full pint. Absolutely magnificent a dry hoppy beer, raised from the keg by hand pump and served just marginally below room temperature. Perfection in a glass!

About half a pint later, or four seconds as time is measured by Canadians, the nice couple from the previous bar came in and joined me. A friendlier, more intellectual, gregarious couple you could never wish to meet. Deidre is an American Civil Engineer and her husband Bryan, a Scottish Biochemist. They were excellent company and we passed the night together chatting on the patio of the bar consuming some of the nicest ale I have had in many a year.