ANIMAL MORNING!

Welcome, one and all, to ANIMAL MORNING at Koggala bay! A wake-up rap on the door from AT comes with a promise to see a ton of monkeys, so I'm dressed and outside in a flash. The golden furred criminals have been antagonizing the dogs for an hour already: chattering at them, shaking nuts from the branches on their heads and throwing down coconut husks. We follow them around the yard for a good while until the nimble gang slips away up the electrical lines at the edge of the property, stopping to pee on the guesthouse in defiance. Cheeky!

Out to the water, we check the second drop of the crab trap, and pulling up the cage find a tenacious specimen clinging to the outside. It's not of the size to cut a sailor's legs and head away from his body and smash a lifeboat to bits, but it's a crab! We toss him back into the water to let him grow to hotel-razing proportions and live another day.

Not an hour later, another exclamatory call from AT. Somehow a falcon has gotten into his room. Ha ha! Im serious. It's an actual, taloned, face-pecking, absolutely-dangerous-looking red-eyed capitol-f FALCON. And it's screeching, taking turns perching on the bed canopy and smashing into the bay window, getting exponentially more and drunk and dangerous each time. We feel terrible, and take brave turns running in to open the tall windows and running out again, hands covering our heads. It's not until Shiva (named for the Hindu god of destruction?) comes to the rescue and manages to shoo the wyvern out of the room with an Oskar broom, first try. Hail Shiva!

In to Galle, we pick up our cricket tickets and after some time find our seats in the 1st class section. 1st class in this case being identified by tattered red upholstered chairs, loosely arranged on a rough cement bleacher facing the field. For a newly constructed stadium hosting an international match of the national sport, there is a lot more broken glass and rubble around than I expect, and the preferential washroom looks like a set from a documentary about dysentery. Luckily we've been informed of the long, lazy, four-day pace of a game, and come outfitted with a backpack of beer and snacks. As cricket is a confusing sport with many rules, I'll endeavour to go over the details of our game:

We arrive during what looks like a short intermission performance of fancy dressed men running and throwing a small ball at some sticks, many of them standing completely still for the duration. It's tearfully dull, but it only lasts a good ten minutes before a "tea break" commences and the game begins. As you may know, cricket is always played in the rain, and with dark clouds gathering on the horizon, we are set to begin! By rough estimate, there are abut 80 players on each team, clad in uniforms of shorts and a simple white shirt. The players race onto the field in ordered lines, placing themselves at intervals along the outer edge. A signal is given, and each team must race to pull their tarpaulins towards the centre, covering as much of the field as possible as it begins to rain. It's a sport which requires much teamwork and endurance, and after a drenching 30 minutes, the teams look tired and have only covered half the field. Now my favourite part: each team rolls heavy tires onto the field to secure the tarps. Who will collect the most rain?! The suspense and drama of sport! It's really heating up now as the rain turns torrential and the last of the field is covered. Ah- but short minutes later, an upset: the rain has stopped. Now the teams hold ends of the tarps and in careful synchronicity wave the water to wards the edge of the field. It looks like the team on the far edge of the field is catching up here! Over the next 45 minutes, the tarps are gathered up and the field is back to being empty. End of first inning! By good fortune, we don't have to wait long for round two, as a new downpour suddenly begins and the process starts anew! These men are athletes, and it shows!

The second half of the game sees the addition of a sort of steam roller which each side guides over the sodden, boggy grass, sopping up every drop they can, then racing to fire the diphtheria - conjuring soup into the bleachers. I LOVE THIS GAME! After 4 hours of this excitement, AT and I are drained. What a sport; it's great to learn about such a foreign game, and I'll be trying to get together a cricket beer league back in montreal, as soon as I can source enough tarps.

We head back to the house by Tuk Tuk, sundrained and a little tipsy, (black and white pics snapped during the ride) and have a massage from a local Ayurvedic (?) practitioner, a thank you from AT's mom for our long day of cooking. Well marinated with therapeutic oils, we have a quick dinner and say goodbye to AT, who's heading up to Colombo to retrieve Barnaby after a couple of morning meetings. I stick around for the night and afternoon to soak in some tranquility and write, absently poking my nose into a copy of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by someone I have already willfully forgotten the name of, a blind purchase by AT at our local used bookstore. It is the most insipid, maudlin, treacly sort of fiction money can buy, and I am totally not in the mood for it. I'd really only endorse it to be used page by page to clean up the public washroom at Galle cricket stadium.

The boys return the next day and I have completely decompressed after a great sleep and afternoon on the veranda looking out at the rippling lagoon and nodding palms. Renate says if you spend a whole day looking at the view, you can feel an eternity go by. I can easily accept that. Tonight, it's out to visit Ian and Brian for a drink at their villa, then a party on Unawatuna beach, and finally an early start to a weekend of unmitigated adventure taking us into the dark green crotch of the high country.