If only to stem the tide of “What have you been up to since seeing them charros on Sunday” questions that have been filling up my inbox, here´s a summary.

Photojournalism classes: 2 per week, 4 hours each in the Hospicio Cabañas in the centre of town. Intriguing stuff, if a little long. I´m remembering why I gave up academia in the first place. I can´t deal with people talking in dark rooms for hours on end. But it has its highlights and the bloke doing the seminars has a lot to teach, definitely glad I signed up…

Yesterday, some fine tuning of the tequila pictures for G.Tulum tequila and a visit to the place where they´re making the bottles.

They’d actually already finished making the bottles for my client, but they were busy making bull and machine gun shaped bottles for someone else.

I’ve also been doing bits and bobs for www.sit2007.org and today and last night I had a go at designing a logo for the Flickr’s Vivir Guadalajara splinter group the recently christened El Lente Tapatío… Here’s the latest iteration, judgement tomorrow…

This morning I read Sita’s latest chapter and it’s excellent as usual, all about the neo liberal politics of tequila protection. And it’s actually hard to put down. Right now Sita’s watching Ay, Jalisco, no te rajes as part of her research and is gasping at every plot twist and loving it. I think I’ll join her. A bientot, mes amis.

I promised to take Sita to the charreria before we left the city, but in the end she couldn’t make it and I went on me own with my trusty camera and zoom lense. I’ve nothing more to add really to my last post about it when I went with Anne and Stu. I took 297 photos in 2 hours and then cherry picked the best 50 which are now over at Flickr… Best entertainment 1 pound 30p can buy you, I reckon.

This photo’s from one of the first events, where the charro has to gallop at full speed then do an emergency stop when the instructor taps his notebook on the dashboard within a chalked area. Then they measure the stopping distance. The shortest wins the charro a round of applause.

I start my photojournalism course today. I’m going to be networking to try and get some kind of press credential too… I might resend that email to the Gazette to another desk there as the sports people are too busy attending skittles and Great Mills League football matches to reply.

Had a nice soirée round Javier’s yesterday too, he lives in one of my favourite areas of Gwod (well, Zapopan technically) called Seattle and met a couple of new peeps. One of whom might want a website for their ecotourism business.

Mixup of the original.

In other news, I just opened the door to Sita’s office and was attacked by something that looked for all the world like some kind of crazed diurnal bat. I armed myself with my camera and went to investigate upstairs where it had fled…

Just a moth. A huge bloody great moth. Brooding on the window with murder on its mind. With big mothy mandibles. It’s still there… I’m sleeping downstairs tonight.

more here…

…when you recognise more than 50% of the following Internet People:

I rang the coliseo (Lucha Libre place) today just to check they wouldn’t let cameras in even with advance notice. Turns out you need an official press credential. I said, not from here I don’t… So I thought to myself, how could I get in touch with a quality paper who might be able to furnish such a thing…

To: The Sports Desk, Somerset County Gazette
BCC: Readers of this here blog

Hi,

My name’s Gwyn Fisher, I grew up in Kingston St. Mary and think I probably appeared on the cover in my primary school nativity play… My folks and sister have a subscription to the actual paper but you don’t appear to post to Mexico so I make do with the Gazette website’s RSS feed. Anyroad, i’ve been living in Mexico for a few years now but still come back to Taunton to visit my family and friends very often.

Here’s my question… I’m an amateur photographer and really want to take photos of the Lucha Libre wrestlers in the local ring. However they won’t let you in with a camera unless you have press credentials. Is there any possibility at all that you could email or fax some kind of one-off freelance press pass. There’s a fair chance they won’t even accept it, but I’d like to give it a try because there’s a very real chance of some spectacular photos. I’d be more than happy to relinquish all rights to the photos to the Gazette if you think there’s any chance the Somerset public would be interested in the slightest.

The Lucha takes place every Tuesday and Sunday but I’m actually leaving the country in a couple of months so it would be great to see if this is a possibility soon.

I have a blog (agaveweb.com/blog ) and photoblog (agaveweb.com/photos) and also a few poor quality photos from when I smuggled a small camera in last time (www.gwynunlimited.com/luchalibre.htm) if you have the time or the inclination.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this and look forward to hearing whether you can help,

Keep up the great work,

Gwyn

Fingers Crossed! I’ll post any news here.
I’m also signing up for a photojournalism course which starts in a week or so. Mexico rocks!

So yesterday we decided to stay another month, till the 2nd of December or thereabouts. I am very happy about this turn of events, it means we can fit in a trip to Mexico City, see the Day of the Dead properly, Sita can finish her interviewing relatively stress free and any other number of happy outcomes. ‘Cus is still slated to leave on Thursday though, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’m going to miss him…

Anyway by way of a despedida for Atticus and celebration of one more month we had some good friends round and did the usual grilled arrachera and tequila thang. It was a fine afternoon. All the “‘Cus has a posse” photos are at Flickr. Here’s Sita, Ana and Jorge holding up the cake with “Felicidades, 1 mes más” on it.

Also of note is the photo of Beethoven, the enormous St. Bernard that sends Atticus into a frenzy when he’s taken on his walk by our house at around 9pm every night.

Last night we went out to a sushi restaurant thinking a change from red meat would do us the power of good. The place we chose however specialised in some kind of deep fried battered sushi / tempura affair which was pretty heavy on the stomach, still we walked home from there and watched a few episodes of the American Office and today´s been quiet so far. Today I´ve been rebuilding my lightbox and retaking the photos since they changed the labels on the tequila bottles and need new pix. Which is pretty therapeutic work to be honest. Later I´m off doing Amour Fou´s tech support and then we´ll have a meal and head of to Chapalita where there´s some kind of mini celebration of the Grito. Last year´s was fairly hectic in the centre so we´re toning it down a tad.