Thursday 7^th February

Today’s birthday person is: Leo, seven years old today!  And a very splendid seven year old he is.  Kind and helpful and…a perfectionist.  This can make life difficult for him; he likes to excel at all times, and…sometimes we have to struggle a bit as we learn new stuff… He is much loved by his three younger sisters, his parents, his plethora of grandparents, his friends and his extended family.

Leo doesn’t always greet the morning with a spring in his step… But today he was a ray of sunshine as he bounded around, opening his birthday cards, receiving phone calls, marching up and down the room to the tune of Happy Birthday.  A delight to see him so happy.

Bad news however, on a different note…a tsunami in the Solomon Islands.  It hit the little outpost of Lata, in the Santa Cruz Islands.  We spent a few very happy days in Graciosa Bay, with its friendly people, glorious banyan trees right down on the waters edge, long thin villages snaking along the shoreline.  Lots of people injured, at least five killed, many missing… This is such a remote part of the world it is hard to say exactly what has happened but I am very sad for them.

India #82

When we got back to Mumbai we were in a bit of a quandary.  We couldn’t remember what Amed’s club was called, the one where we would be reunited with Vish, Mary and Hana, the one where we were booked in… The taxi driver, ofcourse had no idea.  Mumbai is a very big city and most of the drivers don’t know anything much; added to this we found that most Indian taxi drivers can’t read maps at all.  They look at maps politely, scratch their heads and say, “yes, certainly, indeed,” but they might as well be looking at recipes for tuna mornay for all the help maps are to them.  So what were we to do??  Well we knew how to get to Colabar, and how to find the Mondegar Café.  That would be a good place to sit, sip a few Kingfishers, and take stock of our situation.  They might have a phone and we might be able to find a phone number and we MIGHT just find our way to our accommodation.  The driver dropped us off in more or less the right place and we lugged our packs in to our sanctuary.  And there, sitting cheerily in the window seat, were Vish, Mary and Hana!  Serendipity and synchronicity at work!