Apologies to anyone waiting for a postcard from the Amazon.

I bought stamps in Rio in anticipation but the merchants in neither Santarem nor Afua have invested in postcards. Given the number of tourists they get this is a sensible decision.

Now Cayenne, where I am today, is awash with postcards but this being Saturday afternoon the postoffice is shut and the French even in their distant possessions have not freed themselves from the idea that selling stamps anywhere other than a postoffice is something almost immoral.

That apart Cayenne is an interesting port of call. It's got a few grand colonial buildings and lots of decrepit ones. It's very strange to be in the middle of the tropics driving along roads marked exactly as they are in France and supervised with the same intensity by the Gendarmerie.

More later

Just spent the afternoon releasing baby tortoises into the Amazon. It was all part of a project to conserve and protect Amazonian wildlife, or more specifically various species of tortoise.

We steamed off on one of the large river boats full of a cheery mass of wildlife enthusiasts, or maybe just enthusiasts with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon. We sailed for about an hour, during which there was a draw for tortoise preservation tee shirts, (I got one but so I think did 90% of the passengers - some of them, unlike me, even got an appropriate size) until we came to a large island where we had to be ferried ashore by small boats.

There were a number of vats full of baby tortoises and an area of beach fenced off and lined with small crates. Several posters were on display explaining the tortoise's problems and how they were being sorted out thanks to the public authorities of the region. One had an English translation of the "rotdogs sold here" variety. There was a loudspeaker system set up and an awning under which stood representatives of the various bodies involved in this project. There were speeches from each of them, about six in all I'd say. And then various votes of thanks. You didn't need to be able to understand much Portugese to know what was going on.

I expect the speeches were boring because before they were finished some enthusiasts got hold of a few tortoises, put them on the sand, pointed them towards the river and wished them luck. Eventually there was a more substantial release when the crates were filled from the vats and hundreds of tortoises were given their freedom. Some of them didn't quite understand and went the wrong way but amazingly the vast majority made straight for the river. How on earth did they know which way to go? Maybe they are geared to go downhill.

When it was over we all clambered back into little boats, got aboard the mother ship and enjoyed a snack and a cold drink on the way home. All this courtesy of the various sponsoring bodies.

We're now in Afua near the mouth of the river after four days chugging down from Santarem. I was a bit surprised that we did it under power but there are apparently good nautical reasons. On the whole the river was pretty calm although we did have a spell of heavy weather yesterday with waves crashing over the deck in real Titanic style. I was doing the washing up at the time - not too easy when you can't stand still.

Mostly the sailing was relaxing to the point of nodding off. Plenty of time to observe the river traffic and spot occasional dwellings on the river bank while marvelling at the immensity of it all.

The night stops were when it got up close and dirty as we explored little streams and creeks in the rubber dingy. I saw lots of lovely vegetation and quite a few birds but with the exception of water buffalo in their waterlogged paddocks no animals. Disappointing on one level not to see anacondas slithering by or crocodiles sliding down the bank and into the water but it meant that I felt a fraction safer when I jumped off the back of the boat for a wash.

Afua is an absolute jewel. The town is built above the water or rather mudflats. The narrow streets are edged by shops and houses all supported on wooden piles often with little bridges to get to the front door. There is not a powered vehicle to be seen or heard. What is not transported on the river from one pier to another goes by bicycle van. The streets and quite grand town square are constantly occupied by streams of cyclists. There are cycle taxis, four-wheeled family cycles, lads speeding along with a girlfriend on the pillion holding a parasol and even a cycle butcher.

The peace that you might imagine a consequence of no cars is somewhat tempered by loud music from bars and by the good news of Jesus being yelled out through loudspeakers mounted on - you've guessed it - a bicycle.

We're here for four days then it's out to sea, this time with the sails up. Next port of call is in France. Cayenne is not too handy for Paris but it is in France since Guyane is a DOM.

This is probably my last chance to have internet access for a couple of weeks. We set sail tomorrow morning and although we are 1000 kilometres up-river we officially leave Brazil here. There is nowhere else between Santarem and the sea where exit formalities can be carried out. One chap is somewhat concerned. He arrived yesterday to join one of the boats and fears he may never be able to enter Brazil again because officially he won't have left, no office being open on Good Friday to do the business.

In fact I am not yet on the Amazon. Santarem stands on the Tapajos where it meets the Amazon. It's a bit more impressive that the confluence of the two Creuses. The town itself strikes one at first as a typical third world dorp, all potholed streets and smelly gutters. But it's a bustling lively place. The waterfront is jammed with boats carrying cargo and people hither and thither. Passenger traffic seems to be mostly at night and as you walk along you see people settling into their hammocks on board these high two or three decked vessels ready for a trip to some even more remote settlement.

We saw the fish market yesterday morning where you can buy varieties of fish ranging from dinky little Piranhas about six inches long to vast Grouper like creatures five or six feet in length. The mystery is where do they come from because you see only the occasional fisherman on the river in a tiny pirogue or a dozen lads casting their rods along the promenade.

The yacht club where we are moored is a vast complex that has seen better days and those were long ago. But it's remarkable how they cleaned it up and filled the huge pool with sparkling water for the arrival of the Rallye des iles du soleil. Also it has to be said for the better off denizens of Santarem who don't muck about in boats much but like to have fun. I think that's the Brazilian keynote - having fun.

We had a certain amount of restrained fun in town last night pottering about the waterfront in that caressing warm darkness that is a delight of the tropics. There were lots of people about, walking, chattering, eating ice creams and sucking coconut milk through straws - delicious. There were kids playing basketball, kayak races on the river, mendicants with goods for sale - all in all a very jolly atmosphere. I'd say it was mediterranean life in spades.

We eventually settled on a restaurant terrace to enjoy the local hooch, the well known caiparinha, eat some food and relax. The food is excellent but served in mammoth portions. Three of us had in fact lunched off the doggie bag from the previous night's dinner and still had to throw some away. So I chose a steak sandwich and helped out with the finishing off of a huge pizza that someone else couln't manage. For most of the time we had musical entertainment from a keyboard and guitar duo who played and sang excellent latin jazz, bossa nova and so forth. Lots of what I took to be their own music but they didn't neglect to throw in the occasional standard. I expect that throughout the country and indeed the world their Girl from Ipanema was one of thousands played last night.

There's a great variety of people to watch and wonder about and one peculiarity I've noticed is that in the same street you find near slums and beautiful villas. Is this a sign of social cohesion or just of rich and poor rubbing along till the next revolution or military takeover?

At 3 in the morning Manaus airport is fully open for business; bookshop, souvenir shop, bar and obviously this internet service. I suppose there must be some good technical reason for night flying but it's not much fun for the passenger. I've another hour and a bit to wait for my connecting flight to Santarem and I'm dead tired.

Tuesday in Rio could have been a feverish tourist hell but I tried not to fit too much in. I spent quite a while relaxing by Copacabana beach. That looks exactly as it does in tourist brochures and lots of jogging and volley ball was helping the cariocas keep healthy.

In the centre of town where I was later some street theatre was going on to persuade the unhealthy that they should improve themselves - no mention of beach volleyball though. Just as well there was street theatre because the said to be magnificent Theatro Municipal which I had gone to see was under wraps for refurbishment.

But I did see the magnificent Sugar Loaf and the truly stunning views from its top.

Now that Cloud Nine is over I know what I got wrong with it.

When I read the play I was not very impressed by act 2. Indeed before starting rehearsals I had looked at various ways of expanding act 1 and doing without act 2. So I was somewhat surprised at how my appreciation of act 2 grew during rehearsal and at how well it played. I was immensely pleased with the result.

Act 1 on the other hand had seemed to me hilarious, holding promise of endless pleasure in rehearsal and on stage. In the event the hilarity became subdued somewhere in the process and we ended up with what I felt was a rather bland and stodgy result.

I thought it was a lack of pace and energy that was the problem but now realise, thanks to a brief adjudication and to feedback from friends, that we had drawn the characters too timidly. A broader more exaggerated portrayal was needed. I guess my desire to avoid making a pantomime of Act 1 was the primary cause of the blandness that took the shine off the production.

Hopefully I'll know better next time.

Anyway, off to Amazonia in the morning. I don't know how easy it will be to keep posting from there but I'll give it a shot.

Ate logo for now.

Readers of this blog would hardly suspect that since before Christmas I have been working on a production of Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine. I've kept quiet about it because had I posted you'd mostly have read a cheerless tirade about the difficulties and disappointments of the project, the unreliability and incompetence of others (my competence and reliability being above reproach of course) and the total inadequacy of our rehearsal facilities.

But last night we held our first rehearsal in the theatre. What fun it was. What a buzz to have a set, lights and sound and an enthusiastic cast getting to grips with the play in a proper space. That was our technical rehearsal so there was tweaking here and there, halts for fiddling with lights, re-runs of tricky bits and rushing past sections where nothing much other than acting takes place.

Tonight the dress rehearsal in which we aim to simulate performance conditions and then tomorrow we open.

Wouldn't it be lovely to have more theatre time or a really good rehearsal space. Don't sigh for Kitwe......carpe diem.

Someone asked me the other day what had happened to Pierre Levicky of Pierre Victoire fame. I didn't know but thanks to today's Evening News I learnt that he is running a restaurant called Chez Pierre in Eyre Place. In fact I think it was something I already knew but had forgotten.

I hope whoever asked me reads this because I can't remember who it was. And I must check out the restaurant before I forget about its existence again.

I was sitting in a bus at the bottom of Dundas Street this afternoon when a man got on carrying a book and a Cloud Nine flyer. How exciting and unexpected was that.

Slumdog Millionaire was billed somewhere as "feel good film of the year" but now that I have at last seen it I couldn't disagree more strongly.

I'm sure I'm not giving away any secrets when I tell you that there is a happy ending. But that happy ending is for two individuals out of a cast of millions. The film as a whole presents an unremittingly bleak picture of poverty, squalor, inter-communal hatred, corruption, spite and cruelty. I'm not surprised that the Indian press were unhappy at the way in which their country was portrayed.

It's a good story and is well told but for me it's the "feel absolutely nauseated that anyone lives like that film of the year". Let's hope some of the millions made from it go back to alleviate their lives.

I saw a production of Shaw's The Millionairess last night by Edinburgh amateur company The Makars. I went primarily to distribute leaflets advertising my own show but the production was worth the journey.

I have a couple of vague memories of Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren in the film version, mostly to do with the song lyrics "boom diddee boom diddee boom, goodness gracious me". Now I've seen the play and refreshed my memory of the film thanks to the internet I feel that I am almost an authority.

The play like all Shaw's works is very wordy and the cast did terribly well to keep the text alive and entertaining throughout. The sets were fairly minimalist but captured the essence of the different locations and the transformation from the decrepit Pig and Whistle into the up-market Cardinal's Hat was cleverly and economically achieved. The costumes to my eye gave us the flavour of the 30s and The Millionairess in particular was beautifully dressed for the final scene.

The director made excellent use of the entire stage and gave us lots of variety and interest in how she placed the characters although much of the movement seemed to break the convention that a character has to have a good reason to move.

It was a lively and entertaining production so if you are at a loose end this evening pop along to Adam House for 7.30 and enjoy yourself. If last night is anything to go by the under 60s will be especially welcome, not least because they pay full price.

If you've nothing cheerful and interesting to say keep your mouth shut.

That's the reason I haven't been posting recently. But before I get out of the habit completely and my readership turns elsewhere for entertainment and stimulation I thought I had better at the very least display some signs of life.

Around ten days ago I did something nasty to my leg. The joints were swollen and painful. The muscles were in a permanent state of cramp. I woke up every few hours in pain during the night and couldn't find a comfortable resting position. I needed a stick to get about.

After a few days it didn't get better so I tried to see a doctor. I had to wait four days. That did nothing for either my condition or my temper. However I'm now on drugs, I've been x-rayed and my doctor believes he can sort me out in time for me to be an able-bodied seaman by April 6th.

But I don't feel a great deal more cheerful and resent having to haul myself out to conduct Cloud Nine rehearsals three nights a week. So I may keep my mouth shut for another ten days.

The widget that I put in the sidebar recently is providing me with a very varied selection of music. It's a bit tedious going through the process - not quite the one click and it's yours that you would hope for - but the end result is that I'm building up an eclectic little jazz collection featuring people I've never heard of. I dare say much of the rest of the world hasn't heard of them either and that giving away tracks is part of their marketing strategy. So far I've resisted the bait and have not bought.

I'm not always so strong-willed unfortunately. I went to KB last week, for what seems to me to have been the first time in more than 40 years, to a free lunchtime concert. Naturally the band were flogging a CD but I turned away despite having adored the music.

When I got home I looked on the web out of curiosity to see how much of a saving I had foregone by not buying the CD directly from the band. Only a couple of quid but I found that I could download all the tracks for only pennies more than 60% of the gig price. A CD to stick the downloads on runs at 20 or 30p so you'd be a fool to overlook such a opportunity to save money.

Listen to Haftor Medboe's New: Happy yourself and save.

I submitted my raffle conduct complaint but had to eat a slice or two of humble pie when I ventured into the coffee bar on Saturday night and saw that the prizes were all on display throughout the evening with full attribution to their donors. So they were getting publicity in spades.

But I stuck to the rest of my complaint and whether it had any impact or not I felt that the conduct of the reading out of the pre-drawn numbers on the Saturday was much livelier that it had been on Friday.

I still didn't win a prize though.

The fact that green 210 and not green 211 was a prize-winning ticket in the SCDA One-act Festival raffle last night has nothing to do with my displeasure at the way the draw was conducted.

If it was conducted at all. For instead of witnessing screwed up counterfoils being drawn by an innocent hand from a receptacle incapable of harbouring concealed compartments someone came on stage, informed us that the draw had already been carried out, that prizes could be collected from the coffee bar and read out a list of winning numbers.

I scoured the 249 pages of the Gambling Act 2005 this morning looking for rules on the conduct of draws but the closest I got was the duty of gambling licencees to adhere to codes of practice issued by the Gambling Commission for, inter alia, "ensuring that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way". Now the SCDA is not such a licensee and it seems escapes the need for any degree of openness under Part 14 of the Act that deals with "non-commercial gambling" and because its prizes amount to very little.

Should they mis-appropriate any of the raffle money however it's better done in Scotland since the punishment is six months in jail rather than 51 weeks for the same offence in England.

But leaving legal matters aside, for a drama organisation anything with less theatrical oomph and less entertainment value could hardly have been imagined. And if I had been a local business donating a prize I should not have been happy at the complete lack of publicity I got in return.

In fact I was very much in that position because the Grads donated two tickets to their next production which I am directing. The object of that donation being in large part publicise our show.

A stiff letter of complaint is required.

Thanks to a serendipitous switching on of Radio Scotland in the car this afternoon I became acquainted with this site.

If you've ever been curious about social kissing in France here's where to learn more. The map tells you how many pecks to give depending on where you are.

The "Statistiques détaillées" show the variation around the majority response in each department. The "Revue de Presse" contains an amusing video from Arte that adds a social class dimension to regional variation and in keeping with its Franco-German status sympathises with visitors from across the Rhine. Theres's also a link to a Guardian article that explores the ongoing development of British oscular habits.

You can even register your own customs. I was sorry to see that the Creusois were bottom of the league for number of respondents so as a part-time resident I registered my experience and was pleased to find myself in the solid block of department 23's 50% who maintain that two kisses make a greeting.

I came across a heavily armoured bunch of policeman and their paddy wagon underneath the North Bridge yesterday afternoon. They appeared to be assembling a pair of portable metal detectors. I simply couldn't imagine why.

By the time I left the Fruitmarket gallery dozens of teenypoppers were pouring out of the station in bumfreezers, frisking across the road, waltzing through the metal detectors and forming a disorderly queue outside a pair of large doors.

According to a constable I interrogated this is standard procedure and a necessary precaution for discoes aimed at the early teenage market. That struck me as terribly sad and also an extraordinary contrast to the laid back, open door, no check system employed at the school that I visit once a week and which surely some of those kids attend.

Listening to a phone-in show the other morning that tiresomely rehearsed well-worn arguments about Scots, its past and future the ether was brightened by a neologism rivalling bidie-in for humour and inventiveness. A modern Scots coining for sleeping bag - snorey poke.

Scots words can be heard aplenty in the co-op but it seems that a wider linguistic community shops in the branch at the bottom of the Walk. I was so surprised to see Sunday's El Pais there this morning that I bought a copy. They had one other foreign paper but I felt no need for a copy of the Irish Times.

But I did buy an Evening News, attracted by their headline about the Caltongate development which I will share with Alan who likes to know what's going on there. I found a couple of rather disturbing stories, one about a knifing 200 yards to the north of me and another about a murder attempt half a mile to the south but was reassured by this crime initiative from the Scottish Government.

On the day following the puff pastry find I checked the lift on my way out. No pastry. Following my “get fit for the Amazon” routine I walked down to street level. There balanced on the door-handle of flat 4 was a packet of reduced price puff pastry. On the carpet just inside the street door was another and on the step outside was a third.

Where are the other seven I wondered. I knew there were seven because I had noticed the price on the handle balanced packet was 45p and the receipt in the lift had been for £4.50.

I didn’t have long to wait before finding another outside the car-park level door when I returned. I thought at first that I was looking at the calling card of a particularly anaemic dog but realised that a packet had burst open. Another packet lay on the stair between floors.

Can this be territorial marking? Slightly less disgusting than peeing around the boundary or scraping musk glands along the carpet but definitely more animal than human.

Intriguingly flat 4 still boasts a packet on its handle tonight. Is the occupant away or is the flat empty or could this be the lift lunatic’s lair? I am scared to knock in case I am whisked inside, slaughtered, cut to pieces, stuffed into a Tesco bag and dumped. Where – where else but in the lift.

I haven't posted about the lift lunatic for a bit but he has not gone away and his latest offering reinforces my view that he is not a simple litter lout but someone with a problem.

Arriving home last night around 22:30 I opened the lift and there was a Tesco bag containing a number of packs that I took at first glance to be packs of pipe tobacco. In fact they were packs of puff pastry bearing reduced price stickers. A Tesco receipt for £4.50 for half a dozen packs lay on top of them dated 31/1/9.

If you were in your right mind would you buy half a dozen packets of puff pastry from the bargain shelf on Saturday and then dump them in a lift on Monday? I suppose the answer may be that he was out of his head when he bought the stuff and dumped it when he came to his senses.