From the City of Aquatint 13 I obviously enjoyed the production of Oedipus much, and all that went with it, but that was sadly my last experience of a good play. The Union results I mention had to be annulled because of gross cheating, the main culprit being the eccentric Leofranc Holford Strevens. So the only undergraduate to stand, Patric ...
I am pleased to have been asked to speak at this event, because over the last few years I have grown increasingly conscious of the strength of our friendship with Australia. Perhaps the most intelligent new friend I made in the last couple of decades was one of the Australian High Commissioners to Sri Lanka. I also found enormous sympathy ...
After 20 posts about Sri Lankan travels in the last decade I move through time and space to Oxford in the seventies. These letters are about the transition from undergraduate work to a postgraduate degree, which I was fortunate to be able to do, and with funding, since I did not work hard enough earlier. Indeed, reading this first letter ...
The third country I visited in June 2014, in that period of quietude when nothing was moving in Sri Lanka except for an increasing sense of decline, was Jordan. I did not count it as a new country, for I had stayed overnight there in a hotel, when I was traveling to Turkey early in 1989 to join the SS ...
Today’s pictures are from the one before last journey I undertook, at the end of January. A meeting I was due to attend was cancelled, and a smaller video conference arranged, but I thought I needed to be present in person, so I paid for the ticket and saw the friend I had already arranged to stay with. And then ...
I move now, in this account of travels in Sri Lanka while I was a government official, to 2009, an intense year when the forces finally achieved what many had thought impossible, the eradication of the LTTE within Sri Lanka. But the year began with the killing of Lasantha Wickramatunga which as I note the British suggested was under the ...
Based on a talk given at the SF training centre in Kilinochchi – Part 1 A few weeks back I was asked to speak at a workshop arranged by the Kilinochchi Special Forces Commander on ‘Information Operations and Civil Affairs’. It seemed an excellent initiative, and the concept paper sketched out several areas civilian administrators should also have thought of. ...
This post looks at two other initiatives I embarked on, one of which was immensely successful. This was the English Writers Cooperative, which we set up at the Council, but which survived long after I had left and the Council ceased to support such initiatives. We had an admirable editorial board to begin with, and I was glad I had ...
Today, Monday, the pictures are not of a country but of Madola, the estate I part owned. But I had no money to develop it, so it was sold four years ago. Before that the English Association used to have English teaching projects there, and when those folded up the building was given to the couple, former students, who ran ...
This account is cursory about some work which was in fact very important, the efforts made by those I had put in charge of what were termed Confidence Building and Stabilization Measures. Bindu Urugodawatte, a most imaginative archaeologist, was in charge but had roped in some of her environmentalist friends who did a great job in promoting cottage gardens amongst ...
The roof garden was not doing quite as well as the balcony, and certainly it presented nothing like the cornucopia of flowers that I have shown towards the end of last year. But there were several flowers there on the different rose plants in the different beds. There were also roses in the first basin, the one with the temple ...
I returned from Azerbaijan on June 23rd and had to go that morning to Parliament for a COPE meeting. The report on the Bond scam was being drafted, and it was clear that it would show that Arjuna Mahendran had interfered egregiously with bond placements to the great detriment of the economy. The Opposition was feeling quite confident, but this ...
I have showed orange and pink roses on the balcony in the last two weeks and I move now to the red ones. The two bushes with red roses also did well in April. The little bush in the little bed against the west wall abutting on the staircase produced two blossoms together, which is unusual, and I show these ...
Only the ambarella tree and the mango tree survived of the five plants I put in at the end of 2021, a most welcome Christmas gift. Both of them did well, though as I said I worried for a bit about the ambarella tree when almost all its leaves fell. The mango tree moves more slowly, with spurts about twice ...
Today’s theme is lions, beginning with those seen on my first overseas safari in Tanzania in 2014. Then there is one picture from a night safari in Zambia in 2016 followed by two in Mozambique in 2016. Three then from Kenya in 2018 and finally nine from two parks in South Africa, the last trip abroad I made, in February this year before the world stood still.
From the City of Aquatint 19 These letters are from the end of the vacation, in Russia where I joined a parliamentary delegation my father was on. They have a romp through what I had done earlier, spending some weeks in Yugoslavia using the homes of our friends Milan and Helga Kovac as a base, but exploring much. And I ...
Today’s pictures are from my recent visit to Barcelona at the very end of January. I have been there often over the years, but this was the first time that I was able to get good pictures. The first three are from Gaudi’s fabulous Sagrada Familia, and then we have the archaeology musuem and the arts museum with its wonderful ...
This post recounts my first meeting with Kithsiri, when he took me to two of the AUCs I had not known before. The pictures are of the AUCs in the south, transformed now into the Agriculture Faculty of Ruhuna University and the National Vocational Training Institute, Niyagama A first serendipitous trip Fortunately I knew something of the GELT rogramme already ...
After a glimpse of Ravenna on Wednesday, I move now to the rest of the city. I seemed to walk incessantly that day, which made me feel exhausted at times, but I soldiered on, as I used to do when first seeing the wonders of Greece and Italy, determined not to miss anything. A long day in Ravenna From the ...
There was only one girl amongst the big four, and she was easily distinguished for she had little white tips to her back paws. Neither Toby nor Lara has any white on them, though the light brown on Toby’s legs does shade towards white as it goes downward. I think she was the second to be born, for she was ...
