Sri Lanka

1985 -- This was a nice place, if a little paranoid. They were in the middle of political upheaval as far as I remember, and they were all wary. The customs were annoying, not wanting to give our passports back without some baksheesh.

We stayed there longer than what we intended, because we were waiting for some people that had our camera. Upon leaving Darwin, we had left with another yacht, to whom we gave our camera so that they could take photographs of Pampero while we were sailing. Then we parted ways, because of bad weather—they went to the Seychelles, and we went to the Maldives. We were supposed to meet in Sri Lanka -- but they never turned up. I don't remember the name of the yacht -- my father would, but let bygones be bygones—anyway the camera would probably not be worth anything now.

I remember meeting the weirdness of … sweetpop and sourpop! What was weird about them was this: sweetpop tasted sour, and sourpop tasted sweet. Too weird, huh. My mother stuck sourpop in a blender (with sugar), and put them in these little plastic bags, took them into the marina freezer and froze them. Mmmmm, pure heaven. I wasn't upset about having to stay there—it had its compensations.

Let's see, what else can I remember … oh, Damien and I had lots of fun making cubby houses on the deck, and we made a concoction of felt pen drinks. For the coloured water that resulted. We never got the courage to drink it, in case that they were poisonous, but the pretence was almost as good.

Oh, how I wish that you could see the cubby houses that we made. We stripped the yacht of every sheet and pillow available, and made a tent on deck. It looked more like a harem, or a tent, than a cubby house, on retrospect, but boy did we ever have fun.