How I nearly climbed Adam's Peak....

On Saturday, 7 of us set off at midnight to climb all 2243m of the holy mountain Sri Pada (Adam's Peak), with the aim of seeing in the dawn from the summit. In the event, the pilgrim crowds of all ages and (lack of) abilities were so dense that, in spite of clambering round and over the aforementioned pilgrims of all ages and (lack) of abilities we got completely hemmed in within 10 minutes of the top and had to sidle back down again. In spite of the disappointment, it was nevertheless quite an experience: more physically challenging than anything I have done before (remember those pilgrims....)and my legs have never hurt so much for so long.

I just have to try again.

The Night of the Cockroaches....

(With apologies to those of a nervous disposition!)
Now I am not averse to a cute spider or a nifty beetle as a rule, but there's something about cockroaches which really makes my skin crawl. It doesn't seem to matter that at 4 cms (the cockroach that is) I have something of a size advantage, and that I come armed with WMD such as stout brooms and cans of Certain Cockroach Death. So picture 2 grown feisty women the other night screeching and flailing at the sight of 4 large cockroaches partying harmlessly in our bathroom around 11pm.

Actually the one in the picture escaped and hid slyly at the bottom of my mosquito net for 3 days, for which courageous piece of guerilla warfare I chucked it out the door rather than down the shower hole.

I must say that there are only 3 forms of insect life I deal death to without mercy -the mosquito, the slugs in my garden and cockroaches. I wonder which one I will come back in my next lifetime - I'll give you 3 guesses.

Galle Literary Festival

The Galle Literary Festival last weekend was a great success. Colin Thubron (The Silk Road) was elegant and erudite and attributed his stoicism to his years at public school, Edna O'Brien was still beautiful and spoke lyrically, and Thomas Keneally (back of head seen here signing books - it was too hot to move to the front!) was funny and wise and an all-round good guy. I almost offered Germaine Greer a lift in my tuk tuk (she was haggling with a seedy-looking chap and I was going her way) but she looked cross and flustered and given her reputation I thought I'd leave her to get on with it :-)

Michael Morpurgo the children's author was moving about his childhood and discovering his father. He and his wife are staying at the hotel where my Sinhala teacher works and taking the opportunity to get to know the island a bit better. She thinks he is a wonderful man and treasures a signed copy of one of his books he gave her for her little boy.

Romesh Gunasekera, the Sri Lankan writer, talked about the Arab traders' name for Sri Lanka -Serendib - apparently it was Horace Walpole who from it coined the word serendipity. Gunasekera gave the example of finding your long-lost keys when looking for something entirely different. And of course, many scientific discoveries - amongst them Archimedes' Principle and Newton's Law? - could be described as serendipitous . Me, I just like the sound of the word!