Apologies for the late publication of this blog but I have been searching for a new home for it after being told I would be “upgraded” at a huge new cost. This will probably be the last one on this current site. Or the 2nd last one.
Anyway, lots has happened. Which means lots of photos. I will start with our appearance at the Cowbridge Food Festival at the end of May. Cowbridge is a small town outside Cardiff with a lot of money floating around if the estate agent windows are anything to go by.
It is also the nearby home of my sister Tracy who runs the said food festival. This time last year we a got very very drunk and I told Sonalee that she should do a demonstration of Sri Lankan food at the festival and that I could be their photographer. We all slurringly agreed that this would be a brilliant idea
My sister has a really bad habit of remembering promises that were made whilst pissed on good red wine.
And so we found ourselves taking time off from work to fly over whilst a very nice American lady looked after our pets and became the first to use our literally just finished new kitchen.
It was an intense few days for the both of us. I was employed as crew and photographer and Sonalee as crew and Stage Manager of the Demonstrations which took place in a local pub. It was also brilliant. We loved it.
Sonalee is a natural cooking demonstrator since it involves three of her favourite things – Cooking Sri Lankan food, theatre and telling people what to do. She packed out the pub for her two demos and had loads of questions from the locals afterwards which she was thrilled to answer since it involves the latter of her favourite things.
Some of the audience contained one of my best friends and his lovely family as well as my other sister and hubby and they agreed with everyone else that Sonalee was brilliant.
Of course, we all wished my mum could have been there but she is still recovering. I did get to see her for a few hours after driving on literally the busiest day of the year for travel and the transformation in her is remarkable. She is doing so well. She’s at the point where she’s getting pissed off that she can’t get past the DVLA bureaucracy to allow her to drive again.
Next year, mum will be there to witness her daughter-in-law wow the crowds again because we have agreed that we will be returning to repeat our endeavours. It was a fantastic experience for the both of us.
I surprised myself by managing to fulfil my sister’s brief of photographing all of the stall holders and also adding my own images of the hundreds of visitors whilst, at the same time, being really nice to people and smiling.
Me! Smiling!
Yeah, it’s once a year. Deal with it.
As well as our trip to wet Wales, we have had the end of the academic year to deal with.
For me it was about saying goodbye to my students, which was a little bit sad since they’re nice kids. I also ended my association with the village girls football team because I will be moving to Cordoba with my wife for the start of September.
We did, as a team, finish on a high it has to be said. We played our nearest town in a game which included four of my students who are in a team that are one of the best in the Cordoba region. With a packed local sports hall we drew one all with them in a belter of a game. It made me very proud of the girls who are, let’s face it, from a small village in the middle of nowhere and shouldn’t be challenging teams from bigger towns at all.
I’m hoping that my involvement will improve the perception of the locals towards the foreign invasion of new homeowners in the village. There are still some who see us as something to be suspicious of or resentful towards. It’s a natural thing but it can get a bit tiresome sometimes.
For Sonalee the end of the academic year was a vindication of the work that she has been doing at her new school. It would be fair to say that she has not found it particularly easy since she has been living apart from her favourite male for the whole year (Dante) and the first year of any new school job is always hard.
She had many messages of thanks and gratitude which made her feel a lot better than she did back in November. She is looking forward to her second year with her handsome husband in tow with her.
I need a job. I can’t stop myself from being bored by building any more walls because I think the landlord might be a bit miffed if I started bricklaying in the garden. We shall see. This time last year neither of us had a job so…
For now we are in northern Portugal for a month. I will write another blog soon, before the licence for this web address is taken from me. Plus there’s tons of photos and I can’t fit them all in on one blog.
Hasta Luego, Inshallah
Ayubowan
Ciao
Paul