Friday 26^th October

This week we had cause for celebration at the Republic. 

Celebration firstly of the long life of my friend Kathy’s mother, Norma MacAuley, who died, aged 93, on Monday.  And then celebration of the birth of Hamish Toby, Kathy’s first grandson, Norma’s second great-grandson, born on Wednesday.  As Chris said, in a textmessage affixed to one of our Words With Friends games, Isn’t life wonderful?  A death and a birth! 

Indeed…

India #2

In 2006 we travelled with our Hobart friends Vish and Mary Sharma*.  We all had extra photos taken for our Indian visas.  It seemed like a good idea to carry photos of each other on the back of our passports and notebooks.  My World Star Ashish Jumbo Exercise Book has glued on the back page photos of:

A murderess

Osama Bin Laden

A man you would not want to mess with

And they all have a photo of me looking like a sad person about to be executed.  So funny, these photos.  Mary is a very soft-looking, pretty woman; how did she end up looking like a murderess in her visa photo?  And lovely, smiley Vish – how come he is glaring out at the camera looking as if he wants to blow up the Western world?  Pete has an air of grim determination, which is not all that uncharacteristic, actually, and which is probably remembered forever in the nightmares of the German tourist he threatened to throw off the back of an elephant later in our travels… If I had lost all three of my friends and had had to wander the streets of Jaipur or wherever saying, plaintively, have you seen my companions, I imagine people would have recoiled and said, Are you SURE you want to find them?

* Yes I know these are not their real names…but maybe these lovely friends of ours don’t want their real names published in cyberspace…