I´ve a feeling we´re not in Wakefield any more

A correction to my theory that Manaus is the Wakefield of the South. Strolling along the hugely popular Ponta Negra beach the last two evenings, it´s clear that this is a very different place to spend a Saturday night. And I don´t just mean the temperature. Although a feature of Wakefield - and indeed of so many other parts of Britain that it could well come under ´traditional local customs´ should an Amazonian villager come investigating our way of life - is the determination to dress for Saturday night as if for a Brazilian (or at least British) beach however inclement the weather. One of the reasons I always feel a bit too camp for central Birmingham after dark is that on an autumn or winter evening I like to wear a coat or a nice sweater outdoors when the sun goes down. Whereas real men parade Broad Street in shirtsleeves whatever the season (and they´re wrapped up compared to the ladies). Can it just be an avoidance of cloakroom charges? Or is it some traditional survival ritual?

Back at the beach... Although there is plenty of passion in the air - sport, music, sex - the groups who line the beach are (again unlike English town centres on Saturady nights) entirely unthreatening, even as two of the gringo-est gringos you could imagine wander through the crowd. The groups are much more mixed: in age, male and female, different skin tones - than their counterparts back home. And I got no sense that the lads who were parading themselves felt it necessary to intimidate a middle-aged couple sat in their midst, or the excited children running in and out of their space. (I´m also intrigued to see that a children´s street entertainer with a Michael Jackson themed routine remains extremely popular with all ages.)