Wednesday 6th February

Wednesday 6^th February

A beautiful hot summery day… And all of the kiddiewinks back at school, with the temperature about to top 30… I am sure this won’t hurt them at all; they will all come home exhausted, looking like tomatoes, with happy memories of sweltering school days.

One small school boy, closely related to me, went off to Grade One quite happily, all kitted out and ready for the year.  He is an obliging, law-abiding sort of person, and thus he was The Chosen One.  Chosen to introduce to the school a new boy, Jayden… I asked him after school how he had found this task.  “Impossible!” he said, sadly.  “Jayden is VERY rough.  And he didn’t pay any attention.”  I do hope he is not in charge of Jayden for the rest of the school year…he would much rather associate with his equally law-abiding and studious friends…

India #81

Cartoon in Bombay Times:   We loved this one: two women sadly chatting, one saying to the other, “The trouble with men is – when they’re not drunk, they’re sober.”

While we were waiting at the airport I found some very young Australians huddling over bottles of coke in the cafeteria.  They said they came from a place I wouldn’t have heard of called Hobart.  They were finding India very confronting and overwhelming; they were only 20 and hadn’t seen much of the world beyond Blackmans Bay and Lenah Valley.  They both work for the Flight Centre and had come to India for ten days, but I think they were ten very long hard days.  They spent most of their time looking out of taxis in horror, winding down the windows just a bit and thrusting 100-rupee notes at the beggars.  Their very happiest moment was finding in Agra not only the Taj Mahal but also a fully functioning McDonalds…