A Fat Bastard AND ....

... an uncle, to a baby boy called Sonny. My brother's kid finally decided to pop out on Saturday morning. 7 pounds. Seems a bit cheap to me.

I´m sorry to report that I´m going home on Thursday. I used my BA airmiles so only had to pay 50 squid in taxes, not bad eh? The downsides are that I have to go from Sao Paulo as the Rio flights are all booked up, plus there´s an 8 hour layover to my connecting flight to Malaga. I haven´t actually decided that I´m going to Spain yet, but it was the same amount of airmiles required to go to London or Malaga so I thought I´d choose Spain.

I called my brother last night. He´d sent me a text message with the good news on Saturday, but I didn´t receive it, so I called to see what was up. As well as the baby, he had some other good news...it seems like my dad has made great progress recently. He can now walk with the aid of a walking frame and his speech is much better. I must say, I´m stunned. He was in such a bad state when i last saw him, plus the prognosis from the doctors could not have been bleaker, they said he´d probably spend the rest of his life in hospital. He´s receiving great care from the nurses, but I´m highly dubious about the consultants. When I met with them, they were bizarrely defensive, and it now seems like they were being overly pessimistic to set my expectations low rather than give me an objective appraisal of his condition.