Little England ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 292 TROPICAL TOPICS, Sunday 7 February 2016. Welcome to readers to this penultimate newsletter of this series that began in 2010, with a look at Little England in the hills of Sri Lanka. Catnap Last week when I heard a mewing from the bushes by the railway line, I discovered a well-fed, shy female kitten ...
Art & Soul ROYSTON REPORTS, NUMBER 291 TROPICAL TOPICS, Sunday 31 January 2016. Welcome to this week’s newsletter, mainly about tropical art. Toddy time Toddy is the effervescent sap tapped from the flower of the coconut and a natural alcoholic drink when drunk slightly fermented. It can be bought legally in toddy taverns throughout the country, served in plastic bowls ...
Pillar boxes ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 272 Sunday 13 September, 2015. Welcome to this week’s newsletter – and to those who manage to attend the dinner at Mount Lavinia Hotel next Saturday. Pillar boxes A pillar box (in the UK) is a large cylindrical public post box – a letter box – that excites the nostalgic for what it represents: the ...
Gourmet gathering ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 271 Sunday 6 September 2015 Gathering of Gourmets I was privileged to be invited to the opening of Colombo’s newest restaurant last week, The Grande Gourmet at Nirj’s (39A Horton Place, Colombo 7; reservations 077-3527978, Mr Sheriff; http://nirjs.com). This is not just a restaurant but the latest in a lifetime of amazing achievements by Nirj ...
Naked models ROYSTON REPORTS Number 259 Sunday 14 June 2015. Greetings from Sri Lanka where curios and the curious continue to amaze me. Antique Butterfly An extraordinary curio recently came up for auction on ebay: a 100-years-old butterfly from Ceylon. I asked a reader of this newsletter, a butterfly and Sri Lanka enthusiast, about it since I was curious whether ...
Beethoven & Mozart. ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 257 Sunday 31 May 2015. Welcome to this week’s newsletter from Sri Lanka (although I’m currently in London for a few days). Quail cottage Since a friend gave me a few quails last year, I have become fascinated by them as pets. They require very little care (just food and water) and in return ...
Big Time ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 256 Sunday 24 May 2015. Greetings to readers; hope to meet some of you in London on Friday 29 May. Big Time At the dawn of the Swinging Sixties, every hot-blooded boy wanted to make the big time by becoming a pop star. Since I couldn’t sing or play an instrument, I took to poetry ...
Naked Beatles ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 255 Sunday 17 May 2015. Welcome to this week’s roundup of happenings in Sri Lanka. A Classic Classic SS Jaguar 100 This restored SS Jaguar 100 car was on exhibition with some 140 other classic cars at the Motor Show held in Colombo last weekend. It is one of the two-seat sports cars built in ...
ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 254 Sunday 10 May 2015. Welcome to this week’s news about life in Sri Lanka. Labelled Galle Face Hotel (GFH) in Colombo is one of those venerable institutions (like Raffles in Singapore or the Oriental in Bangkok) that exude the essence of the grand days of travel. It’s currently undergoing a complete revamp while the upmarket Regency ...
Beatles in Colombo ROYSTON REPORTS Number 253 Sunday 3 May 2015. The Beatles and classic cars feature in Colombo this week. Local Coffee There is a renaissance in Sri Lanka coffee. Coffee was the island’s main export in the mid-19th century until a blight wiped out the crop on hundreds of plantations, bankrupting many planters and investors. Then planters turned ...
Cuckolding koel ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 251 Sunday 19 April 2015. In Sri Lanka we’re recovering from the New Year celebrations and it’s taking a few days for people to get into the mood for work The beach is back A couple of Sundays ago I was invited for lunch at the Calamander Unawatuna Beach Resort (CUBR). The occasion was to ...
Happy New Year! ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 250 Sunday 12 April, 2015. Best wishes to all our readers who celebrate the Sinhalese & Tamil New Year on Monday & Tuesday 13 & 14 April. Oil cakes Easter came before New Year in Sri Lanka (and in several other Asian countries) this year. Instead of the hot cross buns of last week, ...
Grandiloquent ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 247 Sunday, 22 March 2015 Welcome to this week’s “grand” issue. Grand dish I first stayed at the Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya 33 years ago and later, in 1991, I spent many days there rambling around corridors and rooms to research and write “The Centenary Souvenir.” The best that could be said about the hotel ...
Driven mad ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 245 Sunday 8 March 2015. Welcome to this week’s newsletter with a continued debate on coping with drivers in Sri Lanka. Dish of the week Something simple and inexpensive is always going to appeal to adventurous tourists and residents. We leave the boutique factor to the unconfident. This was my first visit to Time Out, ...
Garden of Secrets ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 229 Tropical Topics, Sunday 9 November 2014. Welcome to readers around the world to this week’s newsletter featuring a new restaurant and an old garden. Fish delivery In the last newsletter I mentioned my encounter with a mobile bakery on a motorbike; this week I was visited by a mobile fishmonger making the first ...
Hospital pub crawl ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 228 Tropical Topics, Sunday 2 November 2014 Greetings to readers of this week’s newsletter featuring food & drink (as usual) plus an extreme (for me) adventure. A string meal Ever the sucker to try new products when I discover them on the local supermarket shelves (that’s where I go on safari here) I bought ...
Property Seminar ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 227 TROPICAL TOPICS, Sunday 26 October 2014. Chamber music, rock n roll, an ancient temple and a little known rest house feature this week. Dish of the Week I’ve raved about kankun (best described as water spinach) before and it turns up in many Asian cuisines. Kankun with garlic and chillies, usually too enthusiastically doused ...
Chevening Scholarships ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 226 TROPICAL TOPICS, Sunday 19 October 2014. Food and scholarship among this week’s odd hot topics. Dish of the week I devoured this week’s special dish at Sugar, the wine bar/restaurant overlooking the Galle Road in the Crescat Shopping Complex in Colombo, adjoining the Cinnamon Grand Hotel. I like it there because they serve drinks ...
ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 225 TROPICAL TOPICS, Sunday 12 October 2014. Greetings to this week’s round up of topics tropical and news of a new Beatles book. Colombo’s Floating Market If its name conjures up visions of boats laden with fruit and vegetables for sale floating along a waterway, or moored by a river bank with tacky souvenirs dangled in front ...
Ceylonese Cat? ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 224 Tropical Topics, Sunday 5 October 2014. As always, something on food; this week introducing a real, rural Chinese restaurant. Dish of the week The new signboard by the Induruwa railway station pointing inland announced the arrival of Yuan Heng Chinese Restaurant 10m inland from the Galle Road. We went there with trepidation as so ...
