Bill the flowerpot man! 

We’ve now had the ups and downs of dog-cat land for over a week. 


We first heard the assertive miaow of the kitten after a wicked storm. The resulting flash floods must have separated him from his mum. 


Lucie has been singularly unimpressed. She jumps from grudging acceptance to attempts to catch and well… I reckon she wouldn’t have the first idea what to do, if she did catch the cat. 


Well the whole situation has presented a major challenge. We leave for the UK in two days and Eric the Viking has come to stay, do his studies, look after the house and care for Lucie. 


It’s too much to ask him to look after the cat and deal with the potential conflicts. I do also need to recognise that Lucie does feel jealous and left out. If we were here, I reckon we could handle it and the bear/eagle would learn to live together. 

So….


We’re off to People for Animals. We’ve left Bill, and he left Manj with a ‘lasting impression’  the first and only time he’s scratched. Well she was most in favour of taking him there! (She’s now getting a Tetanus injection.)

If he’s still at the Shelter when we get back from the UK. I’ll smuggle him home. There was however a telephone call while we were in the office of someone looking for a cat! 

So Indian 🙂 

Is there a right way?

How not to handle it!

As you may know we have an alien in our midst. The heavy storm last week and torrential rain seperated the kitten from it’s mum. The first we heard of it was the woeful cat crying from Next door. Later that day it was out on the street (our neighbour is not the most tolerant or easygoing. 


So we fed it a bit of egg. Personally I’ve an open mind about these things. But cats are not BIG in India and well there are two bossy women here (yes Manjula and her side kick Lucie) me I’m way down the pecking order. 


Ring any bells?

Well as you might imagine they are not too impressed. 


The ginger disrupter. Is going to have to work hard to win them over. 


Yes a bit like this. 

But the cards are stacked against him. 

Manjula is close to being won over. 

Lucie is wound up, close to attacking. (Bark worse than bite?) 

The cat is a bit demanding and God knows where it’s shitting. 

We’re off to the UK in ten days time with Eric looking after Lucie and the house. So the whole thing might be a challenge too far. 

New journey 2 

Update

We’re trying to get registered as a BnB. First call was the City Corporation. Wrong! We need to go to the Police first to get their authorisation. But it’s useful as we realise that the evidence of tax payment from the owner isn’t a good enough xerox copy so need to get it redone. 

We find a helpful advocate and his English speaking assistant. The letter from the owner giving Manjula permission isn’t good enough so we have to redo the rental agreement.


Bored? Had enough yet? 

You’ve seen nothing. 

We’ve had to get new stamped paper, check the revision of the agreement is AOK, sent it to Bangalore for the owner to stick his pic on it, sign over the pic and every page of the agreement, get it witnessed, send it back to Manjula, she does the same. Then we take it back to the advocate to be officially signed and stamped. 

Meanwhile we write to the Commissionerbof Police.  

Farrell Footnote

We’ve operated up until now as a AirBnB but as of this year we now have register with the Karnataka Government. 

So to all intents and purposes this is a new venture that we will launch in September. 

It will of course still be Mysore Bed and Breakfast, at 163 Moksha and the laid back team are in residence. 

India then.  Same but different. 

Which ways best?

as we plan our second trip to the UK next month Manjula confesses to me that there’s one aspect of the trip she’s not looking forward to.

It’s a delicate matter!

It’s a significant part of every day!

so, which do you prefer?

I’ve just started reading GUT by Giulia Enders in which she relays important research findings and one study helps answer the question: “Are you sitting properly? ” ….

if you take into consideration the time it takes, the satisfying feeling afterwards, using less energy (i.e. Not forcing it out) avoiding haemorrhoids, and one or two other things, the squat method comes out on tops….

so there you are

But we knew this didn’t we?

there is a second aspect to this and it’s how we clean ourselves, I wonder if any research has been done on that subject?

IMG_1252

I’m definitely with Manjula on this one!

Wildlife in our garden. 

We have beautiful art both natural flora and fauna on our roof terrace and peeking  through are images from the painted sides of bullock carts.


The new buds on our Brahma Kamla plants are also coming out. We hope to see them flower over one night  in the next two weeks.

It’s a bit wet. 

Last night we had heavy rains and thunderstorms. TV and Internet stopped working, Lucy was cowering on her bed. Monsoon is at least a month away so it’s a little early to be getting so much rain. This morning while walking Lucy there were signs everywhere. 

The streets resemble a beach. Partly the sand that’s been spread everywhere but also the rubbish looks as if it’s been washed up by the tide. 
The piles of sand outside construction sites, the rubbish dumped at street corners, grass removed to create sandy soily verges all help create this mess after they’re all liberated by the rains. 

new journey

imagewe’re setting out on a new journey…. after the wonderful experience last year (Note English sarcasm) ..to firstly ensure that Manjula’s various IDs were accurate and consistent with name, gender, address, date of birth ( it took, four months), then the ‘reality game’ of applying for a passport (two more months) and being knocked back a couple of times (the board game of these tangles with bureaucracy will be in shops soon) then to top it all we applied for a TOURIST (yes just for a holiday) visa from the UK Government just at the time of some insignificant Vote or other (Brexit aka Biscuit idiotic referendum) only to be summarily rejected (Brit Govt is fast on its rejections, three weeks total) and applying again with an avalanche of papers (two weeks)… for you dear reader, what feels like lifetime’s experience compressed into six months has already been documented on these pages. Some of you may remember it .. well this new journey is…. wait for it…. an application to register as a Homestay with the Karnataka Government.

IMG_1428in my English wistful sort of way I think it will be very straightforward and probably a damn sight easier than a similar process in the UK.

lets see

background is we’ve been operating on the same basis as an AirBnB property but this year the Karnataka Govt has introduced a new rule and that means everyone has to register with them.

As I say let’s see, first step following the ‘critical path’ , let’s find out what’s required 🙂

Out of the blue

Manjula’s Amma (mother) arrived unexpectedly at the house today. We’ll have to wait until later for our update to find out why she’s travelled for hours from the village where she’s currently living with her sister. 

A day in the life of….

Manjula’s Mysore


What a mix.

Life goes on in the odd tapestry of India!

Manjula’s tailor friend may have found a prospective husband. For her daughter. Current view is 90% likely. Check.

Mangala, our main cleaner (Narianappa her father and our gardener has recently died. Check previous outings) No longer has her father to represent her interests with her useless husband. He doesn’t work, lazes about and demands money for drink. Well she got to the end of her tether so beat him up. The girls are now laughing as he hobbles around with the help of a stick and moans about his bruises.

As Kamlama is now somewhere in Coorg, check Manjula has found a new cleaner. We need to have absolutely trustworthy staff, not least because I leave things around the house but of course we have many guests who must feel comfortable sharing our home. Well Manjula decided to test her and left some money out which promptly disappeared. Next day Manj asked her if she’d seen it and Mangla (yes same name as other cleaner) professed no knowledge about it. So ‘soft cop’ Manjula informs poor young girl that there are CCTV camera in the house that the boss aka ‘hard cop’ (yes that’s me, unlikely as it might seem) will check the computer when he gets back from abroad. Miraculously, as you might expect, poor girl finds it under the fridge! I’m just an observer in these things and don’t condone any particular methodology but we have to work out the best we can in the circumstances.

A friend of M’s mother has died so she’ll get over to pay her last respects who will be laid out outside the house and take to the Chamundi Hill bottom where there’s a field for the funeral pyres.

We have Indian guests from Delhi and Chennai this weekend and will all gather for dinner at Hotel Roopa this evening.

Good friend Vinay reckons I’m a closet BJP supporter. I don’t eat beef,  love India and now have a lotus tattoo.

img_2148
I don’t! I’m not!

And finally


Lucy just hangs around. I thought it was because she missed me during my trip to the UK. Far from it, it’s just too bloody hot. Manj wants AC and demands to go away for months next year!

Hang on…. she must have got the vibe and


Now wants a walk

Marriage woes

Ok. So you’ve got the gist of the story. Manjula’s friends daughter is looking for a husband. The broker has now found maybe six or seven potential husbands. Non have been suitable, they’ve rejected her usually down to the fact her parents don’t have a lot of money. They’ve been bank managers (she’s one) or equivalent. 

Well the latest guy is up for it, works in a bank and his parents are well off. Will it work? 

Seems not. 

Our good friends Diana and Florian has a love marriage this year. I’m beginning to wonder if that is a little easier

She worries that his job is too lowly within the bank which could prove an embarrassment in social situations. How will this ever be resolved? 

I wonder what incentive scheme the broker is working on. Does he have targets! Does he get paid per intro or for a successful union? Whatever, it’s a minefield!