5th december

It hasn't rained for three days and the Creek and the marsh are very low. One or two fingers of stagnant water are appearing where the water has become becalmed, especially at the peripheries. I'm also a little concerned that the water tank may run dry. The dearth of rain is also indicative of the lack of clouds and I’m still having the problem that the clear starry nights have clear starry skies and it’s relatively cold in the early hours and my sheets are thin.
It’s a pervasive cold, chilling through everything and at three in the morning, there’s no escape. It’s not like December in the UK but make no mistake, it ain’t warm. I could use my sleeping bag but it’s too warm to use it when I go to bed, so it would just mean sliding into it when I wake in the earlier hours when all my body parts are withered with cold. If it gets bad enough, I will do that but it seems a palaver.
During the day, the heat is almost tangible, like a fog to be separated or blown away. At times, it is oppressive, smothering and that’s coming from someone who likes heat! The swamp seems to have been more still than usual, wearing the heat like a tight suit. Even the forest yesterday seemed to have its activity subjugated by the closeness with the usual warbling and rustling, calling and buzzing all seeming half-hearted and weary. It’s the humidity.
The sky has been an untroubled azure for several days now; a hazy blue sea with the occasional wispy cloud lazily floating by like a silky white thought, offering nothing more threatening than a fleeting shadow. It is stirring at the blaze of dawn to have early morning coffee and a cigarette on the balcony overlooking my sun-drenched realm, and then as the sun rises headstrong and confident over the wall of trees across the swamp. It’s nice to have it all day I guess. But at times, it’s … unfavourable.
England couldn’t have happened in Central America! There are far too many times here when it becomes too uncomfortable to work with any meaningfulness or motivation and then it’s just a question of working at a pace to suit oneself, or getting out of the heat. On the other hand, maybe we would have invented stuff and found systems of work to make the most of things in these difficult climates. Didn’t we do good things in the subcontinent, like the East India Company? Didn’t we put up the Pullman Cataract in Egypt?

We did all these things and more:
1 We helped build the Pyramids (they’ll look good when they’re finished!),
We made sure the Suez Canal filled with water to the same level as the seas either end,
And wasn’t it us who flattened Table Mountain in South Africa because the top was too spiky and poking holes in the sky?
We helped build the Great Wall Of China, basing it on the model of the wall we already have built by some guy called Adrian;
Helped mould Ayers rock into its current shape rather than the original silly asterisk shape thing left by the aliens in 845AD;
We made sure the North Pole was upright before we left the scene
We built the undersea city in the Marianna Trench that we will reveal to the world in 2035.
We towed the erupting overheating continent of Atlantis to Antarctica and left it there to cool down (It’s still there somewhere...)

I have done nothing today. I was going to finish clearing the packed soil from the step but it occurred to me that the packed soil all along that side of the house stops the puddles from forming and the soil itself stays dry anyway because of the overhanging eaves. Might as well leave it where it is to stop puddles from forming on the doorstep.
I did find some mouldy tree trunk cross-sections that I was going to use as steps going down the slope to the footbridge but they have been outside for so long that they are falling apart. While I was moving some logs closer to the door and under the eaves to dry, I uncovered a scorpion. I was barefoot so I went to get a stick or something to poke it with. I only turned away for a second and I lost it. It worries me that there is a scorpion so close to my door and I don't know where it is. I thought scorpions were orange, or red, or brown or some interesting colour with a tail that curls up menacingly. This one was a pretty boring grey colour and the tail didn’t do much at all. There was also a big fat-assed toad that was snoozing wedged between two logs and it obviously decided it was staying put – it opened its eyes lazily and then closed them and went back to sleep.
I have moved the kitchen table onto the balcony – much better. It’s a big, heavy wooden table but it comes apart into three sections so it’s quite easy to move. I tried cleaning it once but gave it up as a bad job - some things are beyond even me. It’s sturdy though, and at a good height for writing. I studied a bit of Spanish up there when I was set up.
It’s quite cool up there on the balcony sitting at my table. I can see all almost all around the house if I want to, across the swamp and down the road. Or I can work if I want to, write or read. And I have my big plant pots with plants in, planted. I am also going to rewire the radio antenna so that the copper wire from the aerial comes up here instead of down into the kitchen. I can sit at my table and listen to my radio. This is it! I’m really making myself at home now.
Ten things I can do at my table on the balcony
1. Read a book
2. Study some Spanish
3. Listen to the radio
4. Look across at the swamp
5. Watch my plants grow
6. Look down the road
7. Write something
8. Write something else
9. Dissect a black and green luminous frog
10. Plot my destruction of the world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha … (lots of evil laughs) …

I get the playing cards from downstairs and participate in a particularly competitive game of solitaire with myself. The cards seem to take on extra volume as I remove them from the packet. I can’t get the cards back in the box afterwards. Experimenting, I find I can just about get forty-six back in. Humidity strikes again.
Here's one for you - if I look at a star, I can see for light-years. No. The star might already be dead because the light takes so long to reach us. The same could be said of the tree in front of me. Just because I see its light, doesn't mean the tree is actually there. The only signal by have to rely on is when the light hits my eye which sends a signal to the brain - everything I perceive is usually perceived the same way. I can only see as far as my retina - the light comes to me! I don’t have a clue what is really out there.
I seem to have altered states of perception; it must be all this oxygen.
I am finding however that this table is not the thing to have up here on the balcony after dark. It is here that I write and I need light hence a candle. The solitary thin candle in its empty beer can holder seems to be a focus for everything that ventures out at night that has any kind of wings and all these weird and wonderful bugs buzz around me, annoying me. I take the table apart and retire back to the kitchen with its red concrete worktops and mach two fishing rod bugs.
… Ha ha ha ha (still laughing evilly) …