4th december

I had the World Service on at 8am. It's 2pm on a Saturday in England so they had a sport special which covers the Football. Bliss! I sit in the kitchen, smoking and drinking coffee – my uppers and downers - just listening to the sounds of primeval England being broadcast halfway across the world.
I step outside with the intention of trekking into the rainforest to get a couple more plants for the balcony. I open the door and there is Negra in familiar pose, resting on her haunches, staring at me expectantly. It’s unspoken that she’s coming with me as usual.
Upon my return with said plants, I make the decision to clean the steps outside the door of thick, caked mud. It probably hasn't been cleared for the twenty years since Dave bought the property. I find that there is actually a concrete step beneath it (which was a surprise) that could not be seen before.
I check the solar power connections again, beginning with the battery in the tool shed and following the wires and cables up to the next floor and onto the roof as far as I can reach, checking the connectors along the way. Everything seems ok that I can see. I think the earthquake must have damaged something on the roof. Dave mentioned that the solar panel is about twenty years old anyway and has probably come to the end of its usefulness.
I go to the plantation to try to find some coconuts unsuccessfully. I find another orange that had fallen but this is pretty much green and I'll have leave it in the sun on the windowsill with the other one. The onion plant is sprouting already.
I’m sitting on the balcony on the bench and a toucan is perched in the scrawny tree in front of me, looking at me down its long nose. I take its photo and it turns his head away in disgust. It’s black with one of those beaks you would use to prise the cylinder head off your car when you’ve lost you spanner set. Darwin had a lot to answer for when he invented the theory of evolution. With a beak of that size, I'm waiting for it to go nose down and go spinning around the branch like a Catherine wheel. I hope it has a good grip.

It’s evening, and a bat just flown so close to my head I could feel the wind from its wings. Some batty fruit bat probably. I wonder if it’s my lodger who, incidentally, I have rediscovered. It now sleeps hanging from a nail behind my cupboard. What I can’t work out is that I thought bats to be very sociable creatures. Why isn’t it in a colony of bats somewhere? A battery or whatever it’s called? I hope all its mates don’t come visiting sometime soon.
I went to the toilet during the night. The sign on the door still says not to flush during the night in consideration of other people. I am on my own, but the toilet doesn't know that so I don't flush. I have outwitted the toilet … or have I?