So where were we?

Right, we were on our way to the craziest house in Sri Lanka.
Smiling politely in the least crumpled of our clothing, we arrive at Brian and Ian's house (actually called The Fortress. Like, actually, in writing) for drinks and a tour. A smiling young manservant, one of several hand-picked from across the country for their trim physique (and I assume propensity to pull off the uniform of an open-fronted transparent mesh shirt and silky Aladdin pants) leads us through the foyer. The house is retarded. An open-concept jaw-dropper fashioned of poured concrete, brushed aluminum and tsunami-rated bullet proof glass, it sits on a white strip of coconut-framed beach on Sri Lanka's southernmost coast. So many questions: How the hell am I here? Is that a storey-tall mural of a topless Mr Universe etched in glass framing the front door? Is that an infinity pool with fluorescent koi in it? And really, just what do I place as my drink order? Questions dissolve as I'm handed one of history's greatest gin and tonics from a silver tray and led outside, passing under the cellular bulges of a hovering commissioned lamp from a spanish designer I should probably recognise, lashed a story above with nautical cord. We toast, talk and eat some great prawns and blackened cashews, the setting sun reflected flatteringly in the surface of a tiled wading pool.


Cut to three hours later AT, Barnaby and I are standing amidst hundreds of people and thousands of watts of heavy house music, lasers and strobes cutting out to the ocean like a hallucinogenic lighthouse. The night's taken us to a beach-side club called the Happy Banana (sigh), elevated stages set on the sand as improv dance floors. I suggest we head inside as I'm feeling rain, but for better or worse, it's actually someone throwing up on my arm from overhead. Right. We drink terrible, terrible beer, avoid a brawl with an arm-wrestling fisherman and end up talking with three Irish girls. One is indecipherable, one is cute but sand-headed and one tells me bluntly I look like Hitler ("did that sound insulting?"). SHE seems someone who has been the brunt of a life of insults, so I leave the conversation magnanimously without letting her know she looks like something an illegal japanese trawler with a harpoon gun might take interest in. She repeats her observation to her cute friend who winks at me and actually says "I always thought Hitler was kind of hot." It's time to go. A blurry tuk tuk ride back to the house sees Barnaby, who has had a full conversation with a stray 3-legged dog and managed to walk out of the club with his last drink, pour an entire vodka collins on our heads. Home, we slink into bed, not entirely worse for wear, but one of us unwittingly pregnant with the Worst Hangover in the Universe.

Music: Magnetic Fields: Young and Insane

Lyrics: in this town there is nothing at all
but a brown school and a dead shopping mall
the record store is execrable
we sit around blowing bubbles

'cause we're young and insane
and we're running away for the summer
we're deprived and depraved
and we won't get away with it
young and insane

when you're free in an antique car
for a week you will know who you are
in uninhabitable we go out to jump in puddles