And I am in another city experiencing the flip side of the coin. We don't care what you do, where you do it is more important - when can we come and visit, and I am off again, giving impromptu lectures on the hideous cathedral, the food, the beaches and people are salivating to get there. For the first time in midlife I have become a hot property. 'The guy's work is a joke, but man look at the beaches'.

And I am Amsterdam, sitting snug in a café with the love of my life, making jokes about Brazil and our friends there, complaining about indifferent services and the lack of physical contact in Amsterdam - damn, if someone doesn't touch me soon I am going to die.

And then I am suited and booted addressing a company president about the chance to invest in the NE and he is reeling off a stream of facts about Sao Paulo and I am screaming that it's a different world and 4000 km away, and how we have it all in the NE and he asks me, 'do you have roads in the NE which are paved' and we are in a fancy restaurant and their eyes are lit up - take take take. They don't know, they don't understand. They have never even been to Brazil.

Fortaleza sunset

And I am up addressing a meeting in the UK again presenting a portrait of the NE, trying to convince a bunch of musty professors to come and expand my students minds, to invest in my dream and they are sceptical. They don't know Brazil, they don't love it, they don't understand the unseen magnetism which eventually drags us all home, back to this land. And I want to scream and shout - about the cold, the grey the lack of compassion, but I grit my teeth and field the questions like an old pro.

Is everyone black in Brasil...
Do you have supermarkets...
Can you buy cheese in Brazil...

And then disaster strikes...

I am in Poland and realise that next week is the 500th anniversary of Brazil. I am rushing all over Warsaw trying to change a ticket and no one knows how to do it, or why. And I am at Heathrow with a streaming cold, drinking brandy with an ancient oil-rigger who is on his way down to Mexico. He offers me $1000 for my ticket and then I am in the air, sandwiched between two nuns who look on in mild disappointment as I order scotch after scotch after scotch for my cold.

And it suddenly hits me, I am going home. The energy levels drop and my movements become more fluid. And then I am at Fortaleza, my friends are there to meet me, my cold miraculously clears, and we are in a restaurant and was it all a dream, I don't know, I don't care. I am home.

(R to L) Philip, Nick and our local guide

The next day I am edging my way through the town centre. I have my new 500 years of Brazil shirt on, as does my companion - who dragged me around the town all afternoon looking for one and we are cruising the bars, from beer to beer to beer waiting for the show to start. And then it does, late, but fashionably so, and with a slight drum roll the Portuguese MC steps up and welcomes us to 500 hundred years of Brazil, we cheer and clap, resplendent in our new shirts which clearly mark us out as fashion victims, if not tourists and the click click click of my friend's camera becomes almost hypnotic.

Questions?
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