ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 262 Sunday 5 July 2015. Welcome to this week’s newsletter with a quest for animals and, as usual, good food. Zoo Search I have started to read a book recently acquired about Ceylon and am fascinated to discover that it details the unknown origins of the National Zoological Gardens at Dehiwala, Colombo’s zoo. Misplaced tiger It’s called ...
Fish first ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 261 Sunday 28 June 2015. Welcome to this week’s newsletter heralding a newly opened old restaurant. For the cognoscenti. Last week I was delighted to be invited to the opening of the revamped Sea Fish restaurant. I first began popping into the original Sea Fish about 30 years ago (it was founded in 1969) because ...
Tea with me ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 260 Sunday 21 June 2015 Greetings from Sri Lanka’s latest tourist attraction: me! Come for tea? Railway Mystery In my pursuit of unusual items connected with the railways of Sri Lanka, I acquired this curiosity: a match box label bearing the phrase “Made in Ceylon” and depicting steam locomotive and carriages. Plainly shown is ...
Rocking good time. ROYSTONS REPORTS Number 258 Sunday 7 June 2015. Thanks to those readers who sent greetings and especially to those who turned up to my shows in London on 29 May. Rock Poetry It is because of the marvellous organising and enthusiasm of Keith Woods, founder of Tales from the Woods, the UK’s only roots music magazine (www.tftw.org.uk) ...
Appearing in London ROYSTON REPORTS Number 252 Sunday 26 April 2015. Greetings to readers, especially to those who can join me in London on Friday 29 May. London appearance My US publisher, Kicks Books, has sent out a bold flyer to promote my appearances in London next month. 5pm-7.30pm Friday 29 May THE RETURN OF THE PAPERBACK WRITER ...
Yevgeni Yevtushenko ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 249 Sunday 5 April 2015. Greetings from Sri Lanka at Easter, with New Year coming up next. (True! See next week’s newsletter!) Quail pickles A basket of eggs every day I’m in a pickle with my quails as they sometimes lay as many as ten eggs a day - far more than we want to ...
Wild horizon ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 248 Sunday 29 March 2015. Welcome to readers around the world to this insight into life in Serendipity. Wild Horizon A shout from Kumara to come quickly while I was working made me guess he had seen yet another snake in the garden. “Bring the camera,” he shouted. It wasn’t a snake but Sri Lanka’s ...
Save Una Beach ROYSTON REPORTS Number 246 Sunday 15 March 2015 Welcome to this week’s report with some serious issues. Kikili House What, wondered the bubbly Henri Tatham, to do as an encore after managing Galle’s lavishly exotic hotels, the Sun House and the Dutch House, so successfully for a decade? Get married and start her own business was the ...
The Maldives Adventure ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 244 Sunday 1 March 2015. Welcome to this week’s newsletter with news of the release of my latest novel – and there’s another to come next month. Nesting ants A recent item I bagged at an auction is an account by a 70-year old doctor, Casey A Wood, of “rambles through the jungle” written ...
Milk Churning ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 243 Sunday 22 February 2015. Greetings to readers everywhere with this week’s low-down on Sri Lanka. Dish of the week Shanth Fernando is one Sri Lankan who has made a difference to his country. He has created the availability of a lifestyle that didn’t exist in Sri Lanka before he opened his first store, Paradise ...
Salad Nausea ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 242 Sunday 15 February 2015. Welcome to this week’s newsletter, with thanks to all readers and friends who remembered my birthday. The big one is coming next year. Flourishing Flour In my quest for substitute flours to use instead of wheat flour, I have found yet another. This one is called Undu Flour and, like ...
Ceylon Express ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 241 Sunday, 8 February 2015. Greetings to readers around the world: I’ll be a year older on Tuesday 10 February but I hope to continue with this weekly newsletter at least for another year! Fellow traveller This is the time of the year when regular visitors to Sri Lanka drop in to see me and ...
Heart & sole ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 240 Sunday 1 February 2015. Greetings to readers around the world to this subscriber-only, insider’s report on scintillating Sri Lanka. Dosa Heaven Having made such a hapless hash of my attempts to cook thosai (also known as dosa) pancakes made from gram flour, I was yearning for the real thing. So on a recent ...
Sparkling tea ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 239 Sunday 25 January 2015 Welcome to this week’s newsletter with news on tea, trains and thosai. Another pancake In my never ending search for an alternative to toast made with wheat flour to enjoy at breakfast, I tried my latest discovery from the local supermarket: Thosai Mix. The ingredients are ulundu flour, rice flour ...
Organic seeds ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 238 Sunday 18 January 2015. Greetings to readers in Sri Lanka and overseas to this week’s newsletter featuring classical & rock music as well as an art fair and a tale of Comets… Organic seeds Hidden in the depths of one of the supermarkets where I forage for something Sri Lankan and different every week, ...
No frills ROYSTON REPORTS Number 237 Sunday 11 January 2014. Greetings to readers of this week’s newsletter featuring fruit, no frills Negombo, and a collector’s edition of a new magazine. Cookies…! Yoghurt cookies Here is something I bought the other day, which I didn’t taste because I read the ingredients: Wheat flour, sugar, fat, yoghurt, etc… Regular readers know wheat ...
English whisky??? ROYSTON REPORTS Number 236 Sunday 4 January 2015. Wishing readers around the world a jolly super-duper 2015. Oorid My first trophy for the New Year from my weekly supermarket forage will be familiar to Sri Lankans, but not to me. In spite of my efforts to avoid eating wheat flour, I sometimes crave something breadlike. So I was ...
Sesquicentennial ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 235 Sunday, 21 December 2014. Greetings at Christmas to readers around the world for a jolly good time of well-deserved indulgence. Tropical Christmas It’s Christmas in The Living Room. (not mine but the tavern in Galle Fort) Christmas in Sri Lanka is sublimely tropical and it’s not an extreme sport to swim on Christmas Day, as ...
Tropical Hockney ROYSTONS REPORTS Number 234 Sunday 14 December 2014. Greetings to all readers in the count down to 2015. This week, it’s art, air freshener and two new hangouts in Galle. The Living Room Here it is, not my living room, but a lounge (with emphasis on lounge) bar in Galle Fort (50A Lighthouse Street) which is how one ...
Voluptuous ROYSTON’S REPORT Number 233 Sunday 7 December 2014 Voluptuous architecture, superb wines and an essential guide for hotel staff feature this week. Voluptuous interior Ever curious, rootling around the streets behind the Old Dutch Hospital complex in Colombo recently, I saw an open doorway to an old building and, not knowing what it was, walked in. That’s how I ...
