Kites & kebabs

6th July Guest Editor: Hilary Hodge

Another relaxing day – Luke popped out when he got up to see how the days celebrations were progressing and took a few photos of the offerings and activities. James emerged at a relatively early stage and spent some time organising the next leg of their marathon trip - spending the next 3 weeks visiting various Indonisian islands until they fly to Australia on the 1st August. I spent some time catching up on the backlog of my visiting editor duties. One observation I keep forgetting to mention is the sale and flying of multi coloured kites – those who have seen the film the Kite Runners will understand the reference. Those who haven’t seen the film I would highly recommend it.

After another Luke snack lunch and nap, a relaxing time reading and a swim in the pool we wandered down for a beach side drink before dinner. Singapore slings were the feature of the evening as Luke and James had missed out on them when they were staying in Singapore. We then strolled back to the villa.
Luke had decided to have a BBQ, the problem being that despite having coconut bark to help the charcoal to catch light nothing much seemed to be happening. Always being resourceful he somehow opened a lighter only to find it was filled with gas and not fuel so that was no good. His next remark was ‘you know at Xmas brandy is poured over the Xmas pudding – do you think gin would have the same effect?’ So it was that Bombay Sapphire gin was used to give life to Luke’s BBQ. The kebabs did start the process of cooking on said BBQ but the surrounding hordes started to get fractious as to how long they were having to wait for their food so more conventional means were used to finish them off. Anyway however the food was cooked we all enjoyed a good meal.