Wednesday, January 1

I got up late this morning, and everyone else got up later. I nonetheless managed to write a chapter from scratch, having decided yesterday afternoon that this would be simply than trying to juggle with what was already there.

Now, after breakfast, Naa and Auo have walked down to the beach to buy some trousers for Naa. She is going to meet Anu’s parents tomorrow and apparently her skirts will be “unsuitable”. I have accompanied them because I want to check that my website still exists. The account renewed at midnight and since I have not checked my mail (or gone online at all) since we landed in India, I have not received any confirmations that my payment went through.

The girls will meet me at Spoonbill, and I have decided to walk right down the beach from one end to the other. I have walked down Hawa Beach and now I am stopping one hundred metres past Leo, where I waved to Hari, Andy and Eileen. The sun feels hotter than any day so far.

The staff at Spoonbill will be very blurry from last night’s reggae party, and the wifi will be very slow. My email will refuse to download. I will leave the girls there and head back to Leo, where the paid-for wifi is ten times faster.

My site is still online, and I will download a number of updates, but all Arcada’s sites will remain unavailable – even the public ones. Either the Arcada servers are down or I am having unusual problems.

Andy will be having a massage from Hari when I arrive and the Eileen will be trying to Skype her family. The four of us will sit round exchanging Skype contacts and other modern fun.

Just as we are leaving the girls will turn up. We will be given a guided tour of Andy and Eileen’s hotel and an open invitation to come and use the swimming pool.

They will come to our house at 16:00, after swimming, and we will spend five hours sitting chatting, eating, and getting an informal reflexology session from Eileen, who is a masseur when she is at home in Ipswich.

We will go to bed early with especially relaxed feet.