4 Apr 11am
Galle Face Hotel, Colombo

"Faded Glory" is a tough gig. The main problem with it is that without constant maintenance the glory just continues to fade and risks sinking through "Has Seen Better Days" to settle on the sandy bottom of "shithole". Anybody who has been to the Mitre Hotel in S'pore will know exactly what I mean by that final accolade. Maintenance would probably be more expensive than renewal and so the story goes. As it is with the Galle Face Hotel, which is currently in a state of HSBD.

Arriving at about 1am, all I really wanted to do was sleep. Andrea on the other hand, had the hump the minute she saw the room, which was admitedly less than expected. So, after demonstrating her newly developed prowess for negotiating with adults, we were moved upstairs to another room which, whilst being exactly as old as the first one, was truly enormous and slightly further from the construction site that is the South Wing.

Honestly, one must expect this sort of thing unless one has the sort of cash to stay in the "preserved glory" hotels exemplified by Raffles in Singapore. One, of course, must also have the attitude or pragmatism to mix with the sort of people who regularly stay in such places.

Power to the Galle Face, that's what I say.

Prata & curry for breakfast, mmm

Bomber out

4 Apr 11am
Galle Face Hotel, Colombo

"Faded Glory" is a tough gig. The main problem with it is that without constant maintenance the glory just continues to fade and risks sinking through "Has Seen Better Days" to settle on the sandy bottom of "shithole". Anybody who has been to the Mitre Hotel in S'pore will know exactly what I mean by that final accolade. Maintenance would probably be more expensive than renewal and so the story goes. As it is with the Galle Face Hotel, which is currently in a state of HSBD.

Arriving at about 1am, all I really wanted to do was sleep. Andrea on the other hand, had the hump the minute she saw the room, which was admitedly less than expected. So, after demonstrating her newly developed prowess for negotiating with adults, we were moved upstairs to another room which, whilst being exactly as old as the first one, was truly enormous and slightly further from the construction site that is the South Wing.

Honestly, one must expect this sort of thing unless one has the sort of cash to stay in the "preserved glory" hotels exemplified by Raffles in Singapore. One, of course, must also have the attitude or pragmatism to mix with the sort of people who regularly stay in such places.

Power to the Galle Face, that's what I say.

Prata & curry for breakfast, mmm

Bomber out

3 Apr, 8pm

On the way to B'kok (our flight stops there for 1/2 an hour to take on passengers)

Chose hunger over the horror of airline food. Why do they torture us with that crap?

The plane is a BRAND new 777 with more leg-room than your average Cathay flight so I don't mind getting a crappy seat so much.

On the ground in B'kok now so can post this

3 Apr, 8pm

On the way to B'kok (our flight stops there for 1/2 an hour to take on passengers)

Chose hunger over the horror of airline food. Why do they torture us with that crap?

The plane is a BRAND new 777 with more leg-room than your average Cathay flight so I don't mind getting a crappy seat so much.

On the ground in B'kok now so can post this

6.30

about to board

Managed to buy 3 watches in Duty Free, sadly none worthy of Elv

Currently on train to airport. Plane leaves gate 3 @ 645 which at least means no "long march" to gate 67 or other such nonsense

Burping sausages

Wife hungover. Pity me

Well

that worked, and not too heavy on the Kb either. I don't yet know if GPRS is even available in Sri Lanka, guess we'll find out when we get there. Definitely no laptop on this trip. May have to rely on Internet Cafes if the GPRS doesn't pan out. Hope not, they're full of smelly hippies.

Back on the PC, so I can be wordy, I have placed Andrea in charge of packing the mundane items (pants, socks, jam rags, soap and the like) and I'm nominating myself as IT/boyscout survival-type-gear packer. Oh yes, this is going to be one tecchy trip. Get away from it all? Well, that's all well and good but when you've got all these gadgets you can take with you, it all seems more worthwhile. In the current itinerary;

P900 SE mobile phone

- for writing blogs on and avoiding both internet cafes and Cable and Wireless outlets with (for aforementioned hippy infestation reasons)

Ipod (20G)

- Got all my tunes in, none of that "traditional" music for me, no sir

Belkin Battery pack for pod

- Incase the pod's away from the juice too long

Creative battery powered amp speakers

- for pod

Seinheisser PX25 headphones, with noise canceller

- For pod, so Indon't have to listen to people tell me to "look at the cute tiger" or "have you got any toilet paper" or "I thought you were packing your own underwear" etc etc

Panasonic Lumix digi camera

- beach photos always make those poor wageslaves still at work so jealous, especially when they receive them delivered to their Dilbert cubes and they KNOW you're still on the beach

Mag Lite

- In case of (probable) power outage

Leatherman

- so I can build a tree house, or something

1st aid kit

- In case I cut myself or get a splinter building treehouse

That's me done, how's the knicker packing going, love?

OK

this will either be a new departure in blogdom or a complete failure. I'm making this entry on my mobile phone. If it works, I'll keep a travelouge of our trip to Sri Lanka this way which, judging by currenty experienced hand cramps, will be an exercise in almost Ballardian brevity

molvania.com - A land untouched by modern dentistry

Site advertizing a spoof travel guide. VERY funny.

A friend of mine, doubtless the only ever intentional visitor of my little corner of blogdom, recently noted that I have slipped away from writing here and instead simply post my half-baked commentary on the week's more interesting news stories. Of course he was too polite to say half baked. Any how, he's right, so here's a thing I did about a year ago in a fit of frustration at not being able to write anything purely imagined. All the other writing on this blog, save the news aricles, are travelogues and so the prose flows from direct experience. It's an entirely different challenge for me to create something purely from synaptic reaction to lager.

Anyway, here it is; an exercise in imagined reality. Sorry if it's a bit dull, it's my first.

Driveway

Rounding the corner, Josef quickly found the front gate. Not too difficult really, it had a sign on it in old metal that read No. 47. It was one of those signs where each character is a separate piece of cast metal nailed or screwed onto the wooden fence. This ensured that they would never be perfectly aligned with one another, an affect that time and gravity had only accentuated. The No., for that was all one piece, was lower than the rest and the 7 was lilting slightly to the left. If you grabbed any one of them, you could probably rip it clear out of the wood, the gate and fence that it was a part of had both seen better days. Having locked his bike to a convenient lamp-post (like that would stop anyone) Josef felt for the latch inside the little timber gate. Finding the bolt, he worked it open. It had been used regularly but hadn't seen any maintenance in a while and made loose with a grating protestation that scratched his soul as he twisted it free. Making a mental note to oil the latch, or just renew the whole damned fence, Josef pushed the little wooden gate aside and entered the confines of 47 Sycamore Road.

No.47 wasn't a particularly impressive property. If a man's home is his castle, mused Josef, then this gate is my portcullis; might stop a small dog, possibly not an invading army. The rest of the property was similarly diminutive; less castle, more ex-council house. In front was a roughly six metre stretch of lawn with a path leading the eye straight from the gate to the blue front door. It was tempting to say “little front door” but it wasn’t, of course, it was front door sized. The lawn itself was a simple affair, which could either be one's obsession and pride or, as in its present state, a receptacle for the off casts of Sunday strolls to the shops (crisp packets) and drunk Saturday nights on the way home from the nearby pub (beer cans, the festering remains of several kebabs and a shopping trolley). Although now overgrown it wasn't too hard to imagine it perfectly tended by its proud owner; a perfectly symmetrical little square of England, no flower borders or other distractions, only a perfect expanse of bowling green flat grass, six metres by four, bisected by the path from fence to door.

The house itself was terrace, one in a block of a dozen just like it; one from the coveted “end of terrace” that would fetch that extra 10%when the owner sold. Plain but for all that not unattractive, although again one had to look beyond the obvious to see what Josef saw; the pebble dash would have to go, for example, as would the gnome with the broken fishing rod and his resident collection of crisp wrappers beer cans and other detritus. The loose pebbled path could stay, although raking out the carpet of weeds was one task he was not relishing. The sound of those pebbles, crunched underfoot, accompanied Josef as he walked the path to the front door.