Sunday 25^th November

I had lunch with my friend Kerrie on Thursday. I regaled her with Tales Of The Office – she is not in the least longing to be back there, I can tell you… Maybe I didn’t make it sound enticing enough?? She is very happy growing olives and berries in Penna, and spending a few days a week at various craft groups. Her Eastern Shore spinning and weaving group had their usual early Christmas function last week at the Shoreline. One of the members suggested putting together to buy a Keno ticket, with all 9 of them choosing a number. They did this happily enough and then set about eating and chatting. Kerrie noticed that her number had come up; so did Jutta…and then they all paid attention and were delighted to discover that they had won over $900! They each left the Shoreline with a nice $100 note in their pockets and went off to improve the economy of the Eastern shore shops.

India #27

We asked our driver to take us to some reasonable accommodation in Hampi. He immediately said, Padma’s, but other people had thrust cards in our hands in the melee at the railway station, so we felt we really should look and be careful about our choice. He parked right outside Padma’s, in one of the narrow little Hampi streets, and Pete said, “Well this is exactly where we stayed four years ago! This is fine!” And fine it was! Padma is a shrewd business woman, and is probably doing extremely well by Hampi standards – she had, for example, a colour television set in her living area downstairs, and seemed to be known to all of the villagers. We got rooms upstairs, with extensive views of the rocks, the temple, the hills. And all very cheap…


Pete’s and my room was excessively gaudy. The walls were painted a lurid but strangely pale shade of mauve, and we had a florid pink and purple bedspread to match a large cascading plastic floral arrangement. Vish and Mary’s room was red and white and slightly less garish. But…neither bed had sheets, just a bedspread, and the towels – oh dear… Mary looked at hers sadly, and said “I clean my floors at home with towels like this.” I said, “Well I use this sort of towel for oven mitts.” We were resourceful; we used sarongs as sheets, and also as towels.


Our bathroom had a fatal flaw. You had to step up to get to it, and then if you were more than 5’6” (I was fine, I am 5’5”,) you would smash your head into a smooth concrete lintel. Coming back the other way out of the bathroom, you were fine if you were under 5’6” but if you were taller you would smash your head into a jagged concrete lintel. Poor Pete…he spent his time in Hampi bleeding from various head wounds. As well as this the showers were COLD. I mean REALLY cold! It was very hot outside, and in our rooms, so the contrast with the freezing water was quite shocking.


But never mind these minor details; Padma’s was fine! We had a dear little balcony outside our rooms where we could dry our clothes, and sit and sip gin and tonic from our seemingly never-ending supply. Hampi is an alcohol-free village so we had to be circumspect about this. It isn’t illegal but – well actually I should stop, I have no idea why it is a dry village, never could understand what they were telling me about the reasons… And from our balcony we could see beautiful Hampi, and lovely grey arboreal apes swinging from the trees.