Pig Sty Avenue

_ _ _ After church, I went to find a film developing shop I'd noticed, just outside Dahra. That was after I had a burger - a real Libyan burger: a thin burger, (it needed to be, wait until you hear what else), a slice of cheese, a fried egg, ketchup, harisa, and a few chips thrown in for good measure. Last time I had one of them was on a hot Thursday morning in Janzur... Sometimes, you can see where Proust was coming from. And then I found the film developer's. The first good discovery was that they had the right batteries, A76, for the Chinon. Once I paid for the film to be developed, I learned that they didn't have a film scanner, and queried what I was getting for my Dinar (about 40p, mind): "So you can hold light, look at." I've never heard a better description of development only. It would take a couple of hours, so I'll go back later in the week. It still remained to get the rest of the roll I had de...

Footballing, as a "brand", is priceless. You pick up your loyalties at the pre-language stage of development when your football-mad relative gets you a 6-12 months size of the team's strip. And that's it for as long as you're spared, the next 80 years perhaps. (Think of someone who's changed teams, go on, and I'll guess that they're a shite). However, new geographical circumstances mean you can, with an adult's rational mind and all the baggage you've brought from your first team, choose a new side. So, let me see. I want a team that'll make me feel at home, and that must be Al Madina. They play in black and white and perennially flounder in mid table. Perfect. Another good thing about them, although they are unlike Newcastle in this respect, they are a team of mostly Libyans, with a Libyan manager. As someone said to me, the only thing that holds them back is money. They have a neglible web presence, at any rate in English, (I...

When first planning to come back to Libya, I made some preliminary researches (that is, a bit of googling ). There can be no question, now that I'm on the ground, of following the team mentioned in that post. On the ground, or IRL, if you prefer, one learns much, much more. One also learns a need to be discrete, so let's just say that that team is the one favoured by the Establishment. 'Nuff said.

And whilst I'm on the subject of the Chinon, I'll get on a lot better once I've got a battery for it, and I can stop guessing the exposures, (though doing without has probably been a good learning technique). Thanks to Michael Butkus Jr and his mine of Chinon information , I've learned that I need: PX76A/625A (Duracell), or A76 (Eveready), or KX625/KA76 (Kodak). I've guessed at and bought several in the last couple of months, only to find that they don't fit once you get them home and out of the package. Last night I took the camera to a shop that sold batteries and the man pointed out, not too unreasonably, that it would be better to get a serial number... Fair enough, really.

The D50 is gathering dust whilst I'm experimenting (with mixed results) at xpro with the Chinon CS . I've been doing this half-heartedly until I had a chance to check out what the film processing was going to be like in Tripoli, and I did that last night. The people in the shop were a bit freaked out by the quality of the pictures, but appeared quickly to accept the aesthetic of cross-processing when I explained it. So far so good, but things went a bit awry when the commercial film scanner they were using also freaked out. So only four of the roll was scanned. Still, this wasn't too bad: it only cost me 2LD (about 70p) and I've got the developed negs (and not chopped up into manageable chunks the way you get them in Blighty, but in one intact roll), to try again at another shop. Also, the scan is a relatively high res - each photo was about 1.4mb. So that's twice the size of what you'd get for at least a fiver in the UK. The owner of the shop told me that...

This is quite interesting. Not blogging much because not surfing much because of a slow connexion. Not doing much else either.

I gave up butter and chocolate for Lent, and I might treat myself later. Last time I worked in Libya, it was for fixed ten week contracts. So it was not coincidences perhaps that I fixed my own first break this time for ten weeks after arrival, (though I don't think I realised that when I plucked a date for my return ticket apparently out of the air). And so now we're coming up to five weeks down, five to go. The dreaded bend, which I've encountered before , and here , and here . It would explain why I've been so unsettled, and shouted at the "security" guys who've walked all over my garlic patch. I'm going to build a fence. This feels like a significant decision.

A bad day at work. The only really difficult, impossible, even, problems in Libya are not caused by poor infrastructure or the different culture or entrenched attitudes - all of these things can be dealt with and even enjoyed. No, the real problems always come from your fellow Brits. The trouble is, this being a fairly unusual place to work, with therefore an attendant strange glamour, it will attract the adventurous and the unhinged equally. Someone at my work is in the latter category, and life is "interesting".

There's been at least one hoopoe around The Bungalows since we got here. They are lovely looking birds. Molly will appreciate them when she gets here because they feature in a musical scene in In The Night Garden ; (or maybe not - she tired of that programme quite quickly: it's very repetitive and essentially vapid; students on cannabis no doubt love it, and I do wonder if that is the intended audience). I spotted one in the garden this afternoon, and watched it pull out a grub from beneath the ground with it's long beak, and then, to my delight, saw a young bird run up with beak open to receive it's dinner. I watched them for a while, both parent and child probing the ground with their long beaks. The juvenile wasn't having any luck but every time the adult found a fat grub, the bairn would get it. A late night last night, mostly acting the fool in DMU . And then a long, long lie in this morning, (the first time I've stayed up past two, and slept past 11...

It took a bit of work, mostly on the part of Tarik, who's far more than a taxi driver. We got to the Post Office before nine, Tarik spoke to the lady, and filled the form in for me. Then we took a chit to the place where they sort the mail, to get the key. We got one, but it was only a small box, (just big enough for a little bird, observed Tarik), and went and got it changed for a medium one. It's still pretty small, mind, but all the big ones are taken by companies. They'll ring me if one comes up, apparently, but as the are paid-for by the calendar year, that's unlikely to be before January. So it won't do for books, but it will take newspapers, letters, cards, CDs... I've discovered leban, a yoghurt drink. There's a dairy within walking distance. Leban's great with cornflakes and jam.

I went with Tarik after work at 3pm to the central Post Office... There were three very unfriendly women behind the glass, looking at us as if we were sex criminals. Eventually, a man emerged from the depths of the building and I assume he was El Fitouri's cousin because the mood thawed immediately. But we agreed that this was a bit out of the way - I could never have found the building again without Tarik, - and so we went on to the post office in Meydan Al Jazyair in the city centre, which, we were assured, was open until 8pm. It was indeed, but the opening of new boxes closed at 12, so I have to go back tomorrow. Then tonight I got all geared up for the Birmingham v Newcastle game on BBC Radio Newcastle, listened to the pre match talk, charged up the pipe and got my beer chilled... And at the moment of kick off it went off for contractual reasons. The. Bloody. Bastards. So. I need to investigate paying for streamed PC football. Here are the search results . But not ton...

Thanks to Shhexy for this.

To Mass. It opened with the children, the Sisters and the Clergy coming in an walking around the church singing and waving palms and olive branches. The altar was decorated with palms. Seeing the bishop with his staff and mitre, looking dignified without pomposity, reminded me that this IS a see, and that St Francis' is a cathedral, even though the congregation is less than half the size of our parish church back home. The Mass was half and half English and Italian again. I'm getting the hang of it now. A wee nun next to me pointed out the responses in the Italian sections. The creed was in Italian only, but I was able to follow it by saying it in English, the two languages jogging along happily together on the tongue, and in the ear. Afterwards, Tarik the taxi driver was outside the church. We were both unaccountably chuffed at the fact that his prayers at the mosque had finished precisely in time for him to pick me up after mine. Then I went with Tarik to get a the t...

Well, I can only scratch my chin and grimace at last night's display of bad temper and language, ditto. Teaching this morning, and prepping. I've got an interestingly difficult but mercifully small class. During the course of the morning I was able to mull over what one of the other teachers told me about getting a post office box: he'd been to the rather grand post office in Algeria Square and learned that a medium sized box cost 70 LD for two years. What you need is your passport and a letter from your employer. I was going to go to management and suggest that they pay for a large box for all of us, and then I thought, one person will have the key and responsibility and the whole thing might get fractious. And management will take weeks to sort it and make up their minds about it. So I went to the Temporary Admin Block at the college and the charming woman there divined straightaway what I was after, typed a letter, put some kind of stamp on it, went away and got th...

There's a sprinkler system in the garden, but it's only on a few minutes a day, and some days, like today, not at all. We know a very good taxi driver, Tarik, whose English is functional, and he's great for knowing where to find stuff (reasonably priced suits, and chickens slaughtered before your very eyes). But trying to explain what a watering can actually was , so that he could take me to a place that sold them proved to be a major production. He got the concept of water for the garden, but thought I meant a sprinkler system. And he understood about a little watering can for houseplants, but the idea of what I want isn't in his repertoire - and Tarik is no numpty, so maybe watering cans just don't exist here. So later, I went on my own to a hardware store near the Bungalows, (I notice Tarik's started calling it "The Complex", when he was talking to his pal Ahmed on the phone tonight in Arabic), and bought two cheap buckets. I filled the bottom...

I had a couple of hours in the garden in the early evening, (it's already getting too hot to do very much during the day, my patch of ground facing south west as it does). I raked over the garlic bed I'd cleared a few days ago. There's an ants' nest at one end of it: big buggers unlike anything we get in the UK. Anyway, I hope they'll leave the garlic alone. I planted just one row down the middle of the bed, the cloves about 10" apart, and planted so that only the sprouting green shoot was above ground. Then I planted "Russian Giant" sunflower seeds, that I'd bought back home, in two small beds, each about 2x4 ft. One of them I planted as per the instructions: each sowing a pair of seeds, and they were about 18" apart. This bed is under the kitchen window, and I'm looking ahead to a time when birds might be attracted to the seeds, and the flowers should be at a level with the window. The other bed I was deliberately more slapdash...

Apart from our friend the scops owl , every night I hear what I'm guessing are Egyptian Nightjars . I'm guessing because my bird ID book is imprecise on the call, and I can't find any sound files of the call on the web to confirm the ID. If I managed to see one that would be great. A photo would be astonishing. But I will try to get an mp3. There's very little about this bird on the web. Googling the latin gives us 55,700 hits, true, but most of them are brief mentions. So I can tell you that it's call is very loud, pew, pew, pew . I get the impression there are two or three calling simultaneously. It's never heard outsided the hours of darkness. It's sometimes very loud indeed, as if the birds were just a few feet from the houses. The call seems to be made in flight.

Having trouble with our internet connexion. It's a bloody bastard situation.

Yesterday I got into the garden, lifting turf to prepare a bed about 4x15 ft. I raked it and sowed it straightaway with fenugreek I’d had soaking in a bucket for a couple of days – too long because a few of the seeds were sprouting. That’s really a kind of holding crop to put nitrogen and organic matter into the ground. I’ll probably be using a lot of it here because it’s so cheap, plentiful, suited to the climate and useful. Then I dug another bed tonight about 1 1/2x15 ft. That’s for garlic, probably. I say probably because the garlic in the shops was actually pretty useless for eating, but a couple of days in the fridge and it was sprouting so would have made excellent seed. I’ve got about two dozen cloves in the fridge ready to plant, and went out tonight to get more, only to find the skinny perfect-for-planting garlic was off the greengrocers shelves and replace by string bags of fat imported stuff. Undeterred, I’ve broken up a couple of bulbs and put them in the...

The 6pm mass was different to the English mass I went to last week. It had the feeling of being an occasion. The congretation were, I would guess more than 100 in number. There were a number of families. There were a dozen or so nuns, especially Carmelites. One of them was at the front with a number of little girls, and I would guess that she was their teacher. The Epistle was in English, and the Homily was given twice, in Italian and English. Mostly, though, it was in Italian, which was fine: I already know the texts in English, so was able to follow the proceedings, though not to join in as much as I would have liked. Afterwards, outside, people were gathered in small groups, some of them smoking, all of them chatting in English or Italian. It was a bit weird to walk down the street and “back” into Libya, after spending an hour there.

Our internet connexion here seems to improve over time, though not without the occasional step backward. Now I'm able to listen live to the BBC, (and I must get speakers today...). That's great, but when the connexion was slow, and listen live sounded like a dalek in a metal tank underwater, I got into BBC podcasts. It took some patience, a half hour programme could take 90 minutes to download, so one had to plan ahead. But once downloaded, I could sync it to my phone, put in the head phones, light up the pipe and look out onto the North African night, watching for the Scops Owl , and listen to Front Row , or Start The Week , or... The Archers . I've been listening to The Archers (which has got a comprehensive website , btw,) since I got my first radio at eleven years old, (my parents aren't Radio 4 people). Since then, I've listened to it on and off. Sometimes, several years will go by when I hardly here an episode, when I've been living abroad. But...

There aren't as many of them around now as I remember back in 2004-05. But then, I'm thinking back to when I was more off the beaten track, in Imsallata and Zawiya. If there are less of them, if the farmers are now wanting 4x4s with AC and Sat Nav, well maybe that will mean I can pick one up more cheaply. I've mentioned this to my students, and they were puzzled: classic cars are, perhaps, a developed world hobby... (And with the pace of change here, if I do succeed in getting one, maybe ten years from now the seller will think, "I wish I'd kept that old Peugeot... You can't get them for love nor money now!" I think that there's been a similar phenomenon with the Trabant in Eastern Germany. Anyhow, some links: Here's the wikipedia entry , which has the basic details. And here's the UK Peugeot Club's 404 section . There's a link there to a French site , (why are French websites so often difficult to navigate, quite apart from a...

...is a considerable photographer and virtual pal from DMU , so I've added the blighter's blog and website to the sidebar there. Enjoy!

pipe and book , originally uploaded by PSA: Numpty-in-Chief . That's me in what's becoming a customary pose of an evening: shisha pipe in the window, a can of alcohol-free beer, and a good book (though often a BBC Radio 4 podcast instead), and my bird ID book. It's not so bad.

I saw the scops owl tonight. Another teacher had said that he'd seen it last night, so I sat by the open window with my shisha pipe for an hour. Sure enough, around 10.45, something landed in a palm tree about 30 yards away. It started to call. It flew off, and then came back moments later. It stopped calling, and after ten minutes or so, flew down onto the grass directly opposite me, maybe 25 yards away: I could see it quite well because there was a low level light near there. It was about ten inches long. It appeared to pick something up, and then flew up to an electrical unit above one of the bungalows opposite. It was there a few minutes as, perhaps, it ate whatever it had picked up. Then it flew off again. Ten minutes later, as I type this, I can hear it calling again.

To Mass at midday, at St Francis church in Tripoli - though actually I think it may be a cathedral, as it has a bishop. It's very imposing from the outside. Click here to see the image in Flickr , where there's a bigger version for the curious. Inside, it was reminiscent of a parish church. The congregation were about 30ish souls, mostly (I would guess) Filipinos, with a handful of Europeans and slightly more black Africans. The sung bits of the mass were accompanied by a guitar, with a wee touch of atonality which made it difficult to join in. And the creed was raced through. At the sign of peace, it was good to get big smiles - and a lady near the front turned round and dished out V peace signs to anyone whose eyes she caught, which was novel (to me) and nice. What was interesting was, the way the same words and essential procedure feel different according to the environment. Everything went the same as it did this morning (no doubt) in St Aloysius, Hebburn, and yet ...

I thought I saw a Kestrel whilst in Tripoli city centre yesterday morning, and I'm sure (because it was hovering) I saw one near the bungalow in the late afternoon.

old peugeot and 4x4 in the medina , originally uploaded by PSA: Tripoli . Click on the photo to read about my madcap plan!