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!