Here comes the bride...

One of the main reasons we’re back at the moment is that we have two entirely unrelated weddings to attend. For one of them, the bride to be is having a small girls night out tonight. This is not a hen party - as she’s posh and doesn’t do things like hen parties.

But she does drink with Memsahib. Her and the rest of the terrifyingly intelligent, attractive and conquering circle of long standing varied friends. This simply means one thing. Lock up your firm young sons, lest they be lost forever, like a Viking raiding party coming to visit.

As this isn’t a hen party, I was technically invited to come out with them, but there are limits to my risk acceptance and when I determined I’d be the only man there I feared they’d have an “Officer and a Gentlemen” style navy suit waiting for me as part of some ritual humiliation and cheap evenings entertainment.

So I declined for once.

Never a truer word spoken

Back in London and back to the implant specialist who is about to perform both an extraction (from my bank account) and an insertion of the implant rod.

As I walk into the surgery, I notice the full array of surgical instruments laid out and turn a tad pale.

“Oh yes” he says, “We keep thinking every time a patient comes in and looks nervous, we really should keep those covered to one side….”

“You think?”, I reply.

“What we've got here is... failure to communicate.”

While waiting for a conference call to get started, Memsahib is engaged in conversation with her colleagues on the call about Delhi, They’re all asking how it’s going and is she still enjoying it and then one of them pipes up with a request. This colleague, who would probably wish to remain nameless for obvious reasons (Hi there Steve), asks if Memsahib could purchase a black pashmina for him to give to his wife as he meant to pick one up when he was last in India but ran out of time.

She says fine and then says that as there is a price range with a normal one costing roughly £20 and a very nice pure one casting £80, what type of price range is he thinking?

At this point the other men on the call join in,

“Steve, is it her birthday?”
“Nope”
“Well it’s not Christmas, so it must be an anniversary?”
“Nope”

Upon hearing this there4 is a rumbling consensus of
“Well you can’t get the £80 one, it sets a dangerous precedent”

At this point, Memsahib interjects with the neutron bomb
“She has born your children, more than one in fact. Get the £80 one”

The men are silenced but dissent rumbles, fearing a wife gift inflationary spiral about to erupt.

“Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon…”

Kathryn leaves today.

It’s been an eventful visit, especially as while she was here Memsahib was bitten on her eyelid by a mosquito, causing her (good) eye to puff up like Apollo Greed meets Ivan Drago. Kathryn as well has her war wounds, with a dodgy digestion that is still rumbling. Only I remain untouched.

My theory is karma; obviously they’ve done bad things in the past week, mainly forcing me to look at purchases, and now the scales are balancing.

After explaining this I then have to point out that language like that does not earn spiritual brownie points. It’s hard being a sage.

While the cats away

The advantage of being left alone for a few days (until the inevitable price tag of repeated insistence to “come look what I bought” is presented for payment) is that I can control the menu. This translates simply as “Sir would like the curry much hotter”.

It’s the small pleasures.

“I’ll take it in lots of colours”

The girls are off for a weekend away to sight see and shop. How much of the Indian economy 12% growth rate is down to Memsahib and friends is a question worthy of government studies.

“I’ll take mine to go”

We’re off to Bukhara. Kathryn is very excited. She’s been looking forward to going there for months as she’s heard wonderful things about it from everyone.

Unfortunately, she’s also developed a touch of the Delhi Belly and ten minutes after we sit down, she runs for the powder-room. On her return, she looks longingly at the food and tries a few mouthfuls before deciding that, though she loves it, she won’t be able to keep it in her. She then spends the rest of the evening watching us fill our faces.

We take a doggie bag home on the off chance she feels like some for lunch the next day, but in the end it’s the local pack who end up dining at one of the top fifty restaurants in the world.

“I’m having seconds for starters”

Memsahibs friend, Kathryn, likes the food here.

It’s get in quick or there’s none for you when she sits down. As is the usual way of these things, she’s a tiny girl and doesn’t show where she puts it all, but a place on a competitive eating team awaits her when career coaching wanes.

“She’s a girl, of course she’ll have a hairdryer”

The visitor train is rattling along at speed now. We’ve got a friend of Memsahib’s from work coming for a week. Apparently she’s some kind of coach….