CopyrightMDG2016-0901 all rights reserved,

(derived from my life story titled, unbelievably lucky but not yet published.)

CEYLON

My most exciting holiday ever

It is now the year 2016 and this little story relates to events over forty years ago, when I
was in my twenties. Now, I am in my seventies and find that I have forgotten a lot of detail, so I am
recording this before I forget any more. Please bear with me as more than 90% of the excitement in my
life was in this short period and though it might seem far-fetched, it all actually happened!!

MONEY. At first, it was all about the money. I had been buying shares in plantation
companies that I thought were under valued. Yet the shares just kept going down. Eventually they had
dropped from about five pounds to a farthing. Having some experience as a garden laborer, it seemed
to me that I understood enough about growing stuff to exploit my knowledge so as to make money out
of it. So, I had been investing my wages. Perhaps there was more to it than I had realized. So, I asked
for three months unpaid leave to go out and see what was going on. For some reason, my boss was only
too happy to have a break from me.

So, I went to a travel agent and asked for the cheapest flight to Ceylon, where the
plantations were. This turned out to be with the Russian airline, Aeroflot and had the added bonus of
stops in Russia and Iran on the way!! Out of courtesy, I wrote to the company Chairman about my visit
to see if he would facilitate my visit. My manager at Barclays Bank arranged an international bankers
card for me so that I could withdraw up to ten thousand pounds a day from any bank in any country
abroad without carrying anything other than my passport!!!

GOING. Russia was very impressive. A free tour of the Moscow sights was included.
The clean cold air was so refreshing. The clean snow, The Kremlin and St. Basils Cathedral were
sights that I shall never forget, or the icy river.

Tehran was completely different. Particularly the way poor people were treated and
religious feelings about drink and gambling ignored in order to plan tourist development. So I
repeatedly said that there should be a revolution. I was put back on the plane without any problem but
later, my uncle, who was a friend of the Shah said that it was a completely different thing that I had
done compared to an exiled religious leader in far away Paris calling for revolution and that if I had not
been his nephew, he would have shot me himself. I guess that ideas, carelessly expressed, can be more
dangerous than guns.

From Iran to Ceylon, I was sat next to a member of the Supreme Soviet who was on an
official visit. I was full of praise for the Russians taking on the task of pacifying Afghanistan and told
him of my youth, growing up in a town with a lot of retired military men who had had their health
broken by service in that area and how they mourned those who had not survived. He went very quiet.
When the Russians later pulled out of Afghanistan, I wondered if my words had had any influence.
Even a casual conversation can have repercussions. No doubt the American armament dealers and
industry were glad of the new business.
 COLOMBO. When we landed at Colombo Airport, I stood respectfully aside as the
soviet delegation walked the red carpet: I watched the Russians leave and then handed in my passport
to passport control.. The official said : The red carpet was for you, sir! We expected Mr. Gladstone to
be a much older man! (No doubt they were confusing me with the long dead William Ewart
Gladstone, I thought). They had, he said, been informed by the company Chairman that I was coming
out and that I was the major shareholder in their biggest and oldest company. There was a reception
waiting for me and they were holding a State Banquet in my honor in the evening!!!

Whatever was I to do? I had no formal clothes with me and was quite at a loss at being
treated as a celebrity. I was only used to being a nonentity and was in a mild state of shock: Siri, the
company agent from Carson, Cumberbach, took me to the hotel that had been arranged. I dumped my
rucksack and shabby suitcase in my room and went for a stroll to clear my head and decide what was to
do. At this late stage in my life, I have forgotten the names of most of the people who were so helpful
to me on that holiday, except perhaps Kumar, Anna, Rex, but I was always very poor at remembering
peoples names and apt to call people by the wrong ones; something that my family were very tolerant
about.

Finding myself in a nearly deserted little road, I started to relax, when a living skeleton
sat up from the ditch at the side of the road with outstretched arm, saying give me money!
Thoroughly shocked that this apparition could speak, I handed over an English fifty pound note. As
through a mist, I heard the words, give me more! In no time at all, I seemed to be surrounded by a
sea of hands; all clamoring for money.

Still in a confused haze, I became aware of being surrounded by a party of police. They
were, I later learned, led by the Minister of tourism, come to rescue me, having been alerted by the
Government offices emptying to the cry that a mad Englishman was giving away fifty pound notes.
They led me into a tailors shop, through it and out the back way and took me to my hotel.

At the hotel, which I had thought a bit too posh for me, I went to the toilet and went to
sit down on an ordinary, European type lavatory pan. Glancing down in the act of sitting, I saw that it
was not connected to a P or S trap but went straight down and two curious faces looking up from
the kitchen below, while a hoard of cockroaches were racing up towards my bum. It was a holiday
where I suffered terrible constipation!!!When I mentioned this to Siri, he was sympathetic and said the
place must be filthy! He ensured that I did not encounter this again.

In due course, I was advised that my distribution of fifty pound notes had caused the pound to
collapse on the Colombo money Exchange as the dealers were unprepared for the people all trying to
change their fifties when there was no cruise ship in port. The disruption had apparently spread out to
Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo before it stabilized in about three days: It was a dramatic lesson to
me that markets can be disrupted by unexpected events even if only a few hundred pounds are
involved! International finance and money management is a much more delicate and complicated
market than I had realized. Maybe some of the bankers who enjoy vast salaries are actually worth their
money?

It was very embarrassing to appear at the banquet, inappropriately dressed while

everyone else was so smart. They had offered me the choice of menu as the honored guest and I had
chosen the prawn curry because I thought that I knew what that was. As soon as I put some in my
mouth, it seemed that I was on fire and I dived for the water. The person next to me, said reproachfully,
we made it specially mild for you, sir! I was too choked to offer an intelligent reply and felt that I had
somewhat let down my hosts and the reputation of my country. It seems that Europeans there had a
history of macho tolerance to very hot food. I could not help wondering how my post office workmates
would have fared. There was not much conversation and it seemed as if everyone was just watching
me.

Soon, I was to meet another Westerner casually dressed like myself and I chatted to him.
In response to my question, he said that he was a poet but when I had pressed him into showing me
some of his work, I started to laugh out loud and told him that he did not understand poetry at all. After
some joshing he eventually admitted to being CIA, but of course I do not know if this was really so or
if he was actually up to something else. We seemed to be getting on OK and he tried to interest me in
investing in Iran!!! I explained my position on Iran and that it was an immoral administration that
should fail and that I had formed this opinion just days before. He seemed to think that I stood a strong
chance of getting into some sort of trouble and gave me the name of a young KGB agent in Colombo
who would be competent to help me!!! To say that I was intrigued was an understatement as I had
heard of this Russians exceptional competence from a chap who said he worked for the British Military
Intelligence!! Later, my company agent also mentioned this Russian name in the same vein!!!
Obviously, I had to meet him!!!When I presented myself at the Russian Embassy/ Consulate in
Colombo and asked to see him, he wanted to know where I had got his name from? I just mentioned
Siri and asked if I could have my photo taken with him and was there anything that I could do to
improve relations between our two countries ? He said no; because I was unpredictable and they did
not know what I would do next!! Obviously, he knew rather more about me than I knew about him!!
Nevertheless, he did fix me a Russian passport for internal travel in Russia but I had to hand it in when
I left Russia. The kindness and consideration that I witnessed from Russians, especially toward people
with problems, have given them immense respect in my eyes ever since.

EXPLORING. After that, I learnt that the company wanted every facility laid on for me
to look round Ceylon but to keep me away from the plantations. The Ceylon government then put all
their facilities at my disposal! I took full advantage!! The Government Rest Houses and various
plantations that were not controlled by Grand Central gave me ideal free accommodation, food and
transport. The Minister of Survey, an Estate Manager and officials took their holidays in order to come
with me. Siri was arranging everything for me and I owe him much gratitude for that. I thought that he
was like a dark cherub, always smiling and happy. However, I overheard someone say that Siri was in
danger of a breakdown because he was so worried about the Englishman.!! Could he actually mean
me??His wife was skinny and intense and I sensed that she was ambitious and driving him. Perhaps he
was just suffering normal matrimonial pressures just like my workmates in England.

First, we were shown the main tourist attractions of the Island, including Kandy (the
ancient capital City of Ceylon) with the Temple of the tooth (of the Buddha) with the sacred turtles in
the moat. However, I seem to have forgotten most of that, except that they took great store by the tooth
and showed me where they keep it, to only take it out of its nook once a year for a big ceremony, a
great occasion! Another place that I particularly enjoyed was Nuwara Eli-ya and the hills.

Because I had read a copy of a letter from a former British Official about small
carnivorous pachyderms ( elephants) and their skin color described variously as being akin to European
skin or pink or white in various references, I was hopeful of hearing more of these creatures or
investigating their alleged swamp habitat. The last report of them seems to have been by radio from a
party of British servicemen making their way through a swamp to celebrate the Coronation in 1953.
However, the party was never heard of again or their inflatable rubber boat. Their last message
described some of these creatures swimming toward them. I was unable to find any trace of them. My
brother said later that he thought it just as well. However, I did see some remarkable cattle (two
actually) and got out of the Land Rover (actually I cannot remember now what sort of vehicle it was
but as they were still using British products , I suppose it must have been) and investigated. They were
very tall and thin with curious plate feet, presumably adapted to the swamp, they were more or less my
color and had straight horns about three feet or so long. I tried to feed them with plantain but they were
not interested. They just kept sniffing me as if to say do you think this meat is off? When I got back
to the vehicle, the others explained that they had been scared to get out of the car and kept the engine
running because these beasts were carnivorous and ate people.

It was incredibly lucky for me that they were draining the swamps at this time and I
could see creatures that are not supposed to exist and were, in some cases, never recorded. Some
creatures had been only recorded in other places or in other eras. The government had given priority to
making land available for settlement by poor people and apart from swamp and jungle, had released
reserves of hill land, left by the British planters to stay jungle and act as a sort of stabilizing sponge that
avoided drought or flood. The loss of this factor was ,of course, drought and floods and landslip so that
overall, there was not much improvement. This is often the effect of local politicians success in
achievement of independence, where their interest may not be the same as that of the people that they
represent but when things do go wrong, they can always blame the British. One young planter seemed
to have enough drive for me to offer to sponsor him to train in Britain but he was angry that we could
teach him anything about tropical agriculture! So I avoided taking on that burden.

As we were going along a track in the former swamp, the Land Rover stopped rather
suddenly. I asked what the matter was. In a shaky whisper, my companions pointed ahead and said
snake. All I could see was what looked like an enormous black cast iron water pipe. I realized that it
was slowly moving. It did indeed appear to be a snake. I estimated it as about three feet wide and
possibly one hundred and twenty feet long. It took at least about twenty minutes to pass from left to
right but not one of us dared to hardly breath, let alone get out and measure it. Size on its own can be
very intimidating. Anacondas get darker with age and my guess was that that is what it was but they
are not recorded in Ceylon. Colonel Fawcett describes such a beast in Brazil, in his book Exploration
Fawcett. An acquaintance of mine said that he had one on his farm in northern Brazil and that it
swallowed the occasional cow. I heard later a report of something similar in the Mekong River and
wondered if it might be the same animal as they can swim well in salt water. Reading it up in the
library much later at home, I found that no big black snakes had been recorded for Ceylon. Could it
have been someones escaped exotic pet? As my mother used to say, there are more things in heaven
and earth than ever man dreams of!!

Walking along a jungle path, I saw what I thought was a small tiger coming toward me. I
squatted down to encourage him to continue his approach. He hesitated and then slowly came on and I
was hopeful that we could make friends. Suddenly there was a bang and the chap behind me had shot
the animal dead. I was shocked. I said, I thought you Buddhists did not believe in killing! He replied,
I am not a Buddhist, I am a Christian. I kill any damn thing! If I had not shot him, he would have
killed you! He said it was a big leopard because it had spots. To me, it seemed that it was a tiger with
breaks in its stripes but what do I know? Maybe we were both wrong and it was some other variety of
big cat. What I do think, is that Christians may be more dangerous than big cats!

PLANTATIONS. While staying on one plantation, I saw an enormous lizard as long as a

crocodile stand on its hind legs licking a plantain right to the top of the plants! It was the most
astonishing moments of my life; like being suddenly wafted back in time to prehistory! It looked
remarkably like a Stegosaurus but with only one set of spines along its back and only two spikes on its
tail, as opposed to the Stegosaurus that apparently had two rows of spines and four or six tail spikes.
Ignoring the tail,it would have been about my height; that is much smaller than recorded Stegosaurus. I
found it immensely impressive but when I got back with my camera, it had gone. The estate Manager
said it was quite harmless and only ate insects. When I inquired of him a few years later, he said it had
not been seen since. It was green and blended in very well with the surrounding vegetation.

Many years later, a friend from the Philippines saw my painting of the Stegosaurus type
creature and said we have that animal on our island! When I eventually went to investigate, the area
had been developed and the animal was out but they said that it was only about three feet long but they
were going to eat it when it was bigger. Had some of the ancient animals evolved into smaller creatures
or was this a case of parallel development? Certainly there is a lot more around than is in the books and
it is vanishing at an incredible rate.

Stopping overnight in the swamp area, we found we were short of one mosquito net,
only seven between eight of us. I volunteered to be the one without a net but in the morning found that
I was the only one not bitten. Everyone else had been bitten wholesale! How do you explain these
things? I feel that there were other strange things that I have forgotten; I should have written this
straight away when I got back to England when things were still fresh in my mind. Please learn from
me to record any strange events while they are still fresh. Oh, and always have some sort of camera
with you to record things. I guess that my only excuse is that I never really expected to see anything
that had not been recorded before.

On one estate, where they put me up in luxury, I flung back the bedclothes and jumped
into bed without looking. I immediately bounced about two or three feet in the air as my bum was
pierced by a jungle bee that had somehow got in there. It was different from our bees in Europe at over
an inch long and dark red. My word, how the servants laughed about it as they extracted the sting!

All local titles had been abolished by the socialist government following an alleged
indiscretion. However, I still felt honored to stay with the former Royal family on their Estate. They
took me with them to their jeweler to get their silver teapot repaired. They took a photo of me wearing
the crown outside the jewelers shop. I do not think this would happen with our own Royal Family!!

GEMS. When I eventually managed to stay at the Grand Central Estate, the Manager
had thought that a swimming pool would be a nice idea. When the digger started excavating; It was
turning up massive pieces of gem quality quartz. It seemed that the company had ten thousand acres of
gem land! However they did not have mining permission as the Ceylon Government had a policy of
orderly mining, so as not to disrupt the gem market. This was a vital part of the national economy. The
company, in the meantime had to bear the cost of guarding their land, even all through the night!!
Naturally, I stuffed as many sapphires and rubies into my rucksack as I could get in with my other stuff.
I presumed the company directors were doing much the same. The manager had a beautiful yellow
sapphire on his desk, almost as big as a junior football but I could not get him to part with it. My
companions urged me to invest in a big blue for sixty thousand pounds but I did not know enough
about it to risk that amount. Back in England, later, I found that their advice had been good and that
such a stone, as big as a fist would have sold easily in London for two hundred and fifty thousand. I did
not bother either with fine, polished white sapphires which were offered me for so many pennies a caret
but now sell for as much as a thousand pounds a caret!! My word, I was popular with my lady friends
when I got back to England and my girlfriend accepted two rings that I had had made for her with her
initial in sapphires and rubies as an engagement ring but I was not quite sure which one was for the
engagement.
 By complete chance, I met a Singhalese millionaire and discussed Grand Central with
him. He appeared very interested but said very little. Not long after, there was a take over bid for the
company and I did very well out of it; very well indeed!!! I also received three pence a share in
dividends before the takeover went through.

Before it was famous for tea, Ceylon was the producer of the finest coffee. Suddenly, the
coffee bushes were devastated by disease; since when Ceylon has never been dependent on one crop
and only grows a relatively small amount of coffee. I certainly enjoyed the local coffee, especially
made with fresh milk. A few cows were kept specially for this purpose.

The problem was that the bats kept feeding on the cows blood. It was not the amount of
blood that the bats drank but that they infected the cows with the rabies. These bats were known as
fruit bats or flying foxes and had a wingspan up to three feet. Naturally, I wanted to see them. I
was told that they roosted in trees but mainly in the old British ammunition dumps at Trincomalee. So
we went there,eventually. I could not be dissuaded by the risk and the advice leave the damn things
alone.

Looking round the plantations, I was impressed going along the lines at the way the
workers looked after their very small homes, little more than one room. One chap proudly showed me
how he had lined his room to insulate it. They manage to raise families in the space that we have as a
front room to entertain visitors. They grew small amounts of food to supplement their very small
wages but workers on plantations not owned by British companies seemed to fare less well. Yet, it was
the British companies that got criticized in the media! Always, there were groves of plantain (banana).
There were a huge variety of this fruit, some for desert, some for boiling, some for frying, some sweet,
some sour, some very small, some very big and apart from yellow and green, there were blue and red
ones. There were also the coconuts, some used to make an intoxicating, mild but very refreshing drink ,
used much like our beer, some used for a lemonade like refreshing drink and of course the delicious
coconut milk.

The plantations had their own tea and rubber factories, largely clad in corrugated iron.
There were even plantation railways but their use being inhibited by lack of foreign exchange to pay
for essential supplies of foreign parts. There were also soya, nuts and many other crops to inspect and
rubber tappers and tea pluckers to admire at their work. So many handsome, smiling young women,
happy at their work.

There had been some trouble referred to as the insurgency but a conversation with
some people in the jungle who had been involved, suggested that it was in fact a resurgence of the old
thugee religion, motivated by a wish to do away with excess human population to prevent
environmental disaster. I suggested that they could be more effective by joining Friends of the Earth
who were a major international organization campaigning for the same ends. It seems to me that the
way to defeat one idea is with another idea. However, if Friends of the Earth start to worship Kali, then
we will know that my plan miscarried!!!

An Estate Manager, living in an isolated bungalow in the jungle had been attacked by
such a group with machine -gun fire at his newly decorated home. He was so angry with them that he
dashed out and grabbed a knife from one of them and chopped them all to bits! When the police got
there, they could not be sure how many there had been because of all the body bits strewn over the
jungle where he had chased them. They thought that it might have been about two dozen. He gave me
the knife as a souvenir. It looked like a traditional pirate cutlass: Many years later, I showed it to an
Antiques Roadshow expert. Ha identified it as made in Belgium about 1600AD for export to the est
Indies for cutting sugar cane. I pointed out that it had a tropical hardwood handle, that it had been made
in Ceylon and I had had it nearly new!!They also got everything else wrong and did not choose to put it
on their show!!

On the way north, we saw many spectacular sights. One was a temple on top of a huge
rock. There were also some brilliant colored rocks of immense size, including a spectacular purple but
my lack of knowledge frustrated my understanding of all that I saw.

In antiquity, the old Kings of Ceylon had had reservoirs built that they called tanks.
Despite drinking lots of karumba (coconut lemonade), I could not keep cool. This would have been
partly due to my once having swum the length of Lake Winder mere in the ice and snow and impairing
my ability to sweat and thus keep cool and leaving me with subnormal temperatures. Anyway, the
locals said that the environmentalists had banned them from hunting the crocodiles. Since when, the
crocs had become aggressive and had been killing one person a day for the previous three months. The
villagers needed to go to the tank every day for water but if they did not go, a crocodile would come to
the village and take someone. When I learnt that someone had already been taken that day, I gripped
my large knife between my teeth and dived into the tank. The crocs went and hid in the weeds.
Crocodiles attack from beneath, so I swam along the bottom of the tank to be on the safe side. I was
able to do this because I had lungs that were about ten times as efficient as normal. This had been
verified by the local police surgeon back home in Cheltenham. So, I was OK. Crocodiles can be easily
killed by a knife thrust straight through the eye into the brain or badly shaken by a whack on the end of
their snout but are particularly deadly if they attack en mass, or so I understand. Again, they may
have been un-nerved by the unhealthy pallor of my skin.

We visited the Market, the Fort and the Prison at Trincomalee. All of which, I found very
interesting. The Straights between India and Ceylon had in early times been the main source of fine
pearls. A hippie had puzzled the customs officials by making regular monthly crossings on the ferry
between India and Ceylon. They assumed that he was maintaining himself by smuggling. When they
eventually asked him , he confessed that each month, he took one moonstone from Ceylon to India and
the difference in price was enough to live on. So, I brought a quantity back with me when I returned.

However, the area was peculiarly quiet. There had been worries about the number of
Tamils crossing the Manaar Straights from South India into Ceylon, changing the balance of
population of Tamils and Singhalese. Some had been sent back in an overloaded boat, with great loss of
life. I warned that this could start terrorism. I was ridiculed on the grounds that Tamils are not warlike,
unlike the Singhalese.

VAMPIRES. When we got to the old ammunition dump, the rest of the party would not
approach and would only watch from a distance, so I had to walk to it on my own. It was a large shaft,
partly filled with rubble, with chambers opening off, each with doorways about six feet wide, with iron
sliding doors. There was a good deal of rubble to scramble down. Once inside one of the chambers, my
eyes started to adjust to the gloom. There was a deathly hush. The walls were covered with totally static
big brown bats. However, there were two that were much bigger than the rest, with white fur and
bodies of similar size to mine!

There was no evidence that these creatures were alive, or if they were dead . What
should I do? I clapped my hands twice, sharply and all hell broke loose!! The bats showed that they
were very much alive. They went mad, trying to escape from the chamber as I squatted in the bat dung
on the floor, pulling my Harris tweed jacket over my head....I felt a sharp blow on my back from one of
the giant bats and just managed to stop myself going face first into the dung on the floor....The bat had
pierced right through my tough jacket and other clothes and left me with a wound that I bear to this
day.

These giant bats had a wingspan of about six feet compared to the fruit bats three feet,
and had not been recorded before. I wondered if they were a completely different breed or a recent
mutation? They have now spread to several other countries according to a report in the Philippine
press.

SUNSHINE. On the way back south, we stopped at the Blue Lagoon Resort on the
Indian Ocean.. It was approaching noon and was extremely hot. So I stripped down to shorts and shoes.
Someone said, you are very brave; we cannot go out in the midday sun! So I rushed down the beach
and into the cooler water and swam for a few minutes, quickly slipped my shoes back on and ran back
up the beach to the shade of the palm trees, chased by hoards of crabs. I had no idea that crabs could
move so fast. The man made soles of my shoes had melted. In a few minutes, I gradually became aware
of extreme sunburn.

It was fortunate for me that a German chemist was also staying there and treated me.
Even so, I was burnt so dark that when I returned to work, my mates said that they were sure that I had
really been visiting relatives and called me cherry blossom and other names. My dark skin took about
forty years to look white again and I still do not have the pale skin of my youth. I was ever after careful
not to expose myself to the sun more than I could help.

SOUTH. I headed for Galle, to the south of the island to see what that was like. First
stop was to the Post Office to send correspondence home. The girls at the Post Office were very
friendly and arranged where I could stay. There seemed to be an awful lot of people with the surname
Fernando and since Ceylon had been a Portuguese possession in earlier times, I wondered if there
had been a Portuguese who had been very prolific with his descendants?

Things seemed generally unlikely in all sorts of ways. There was a cat being hunted by a
flock of crows, a poor, skinny thing, trying to hide anywhere he could. I went for a walk along the
headland. It had very neat grass like a new-mown golf course. Then the crows turned on me! It sounds
silly but it was quite scary with dozens of them dive bombing me like in the Hitchcock film, The
Birds. Just in time, I realized that the grass was with a steeper and steeper slope that ended in the cliff
edge. I got off the grass and made my way down to the beach where I found a lot of bones that
confirmed that the crows were in the habit of driving creatures over the cliff edge for food!!!

In the harbor was the burnt out wreck of a European type fishing boat. I was told that it
had been a multimillion dollar charitable donation from the Canadians. The Canadians had given iit
with no restrictions and the people of Ceylon really appreciated receiving aid that way. They had a
party to celebrate the first night and that is when the boat had got totally destroyed by fire.

I thought of the poverty stricken farmers that I had seen because of a disastrous rice
harvest. I also thought of a shipload of rice sent by a famous British charity that had somehow gone to
rich people and been re-sold to make the farmers plight even worse. My mother used to say; the road
to hell is paved with good intentions! No doubt the people who run these charities do very well out of
it, whatever else results.
 Galle, although a thriving port was unpolluted and had the most amazing coral gardens.
These, I explored with great delight, while surrounded by shoals of multicolored fish. Brilliant red,
green,orange, purple, yellow and violet corals of every shape and hue. In my ignorance, I did not
realize that these were living organisms and broke pieces off to take home. When I got home, they were
all gray and stinking.

As I drove back to Colombo, there was a police operation against a terrorist threat and
they threw a stinger device across the road to stop the car and check. It was the first time I had
encountered these things. No problem, even though I had no license or insurance, because they were
just looking for terrorists. It is good when police just concentrate on the most serious issues.

Back in Colombo, I made friends with an elderly, Muslim jeweler. He taught me a bit
about sapphires and rubies and other stones. I always remember his advice, never to buy a stone where
you cannot see inclusions because you cannot trust it to be genuine. I think it applies to people, too!!

I started to feel very unwell. I knew that I was suffering from constipation, dehydration
and the heat. I realized that my condition was deteriorating rapidly and getting desperate. I thought to
get back to England for expert medical attention in case I had caught rabies from the bat. I got a taxi
straight to the airline office but they took one look at me and called the doctor. He took one look at me
and said: Rabies! You cannot fly! Go straight to hospital! The taxi driver was crying as he rushed me
straight to Durdans Hospital, which did not normally treat Europeans but it was the nearest. I
desperately tried to tell them to get a tube into my lungs for oxygen and one into my stomach for water
but could not seem to speak and lost consciousness.

When I came round, I was weak but better. They had also cleared my constipation. They
demonstrated how they had extracted it in pieces, reconstructed it, varnished it and put it on display!! I
did not understand the details of how they treated me because of language difficulties. Their bill was
trivial for what they had done and no doubt they had been more effective than if I had got to London. I
always meant to go back and thank them but all I managed was a letter and I do not know if they ever
received it because I did not know their full address.

RETURN. On the way back, the Russians kept me under observation for three days and
I had breakfast with Yuri Gagarin, the Russian astronaut. I had bought an exotic fruit in Ceylon that
was about the size of a football but tasted like a strawberry but it somehow melted in the night and
made a terrible mess. The cleaning lady looked very reproachful.

I had wanted to see the mechanized Russian tea plantations but was not allowed.
However, I did enjoy the Russian countryside with the air so pure and fresh that it was almost
intoxicating.

When the plane landed at Heathrow, I tried to declare my stones at customs but they held
their noses and refused to let me open my rucksack or case. I suppose my dirty washing after three
months in the tropics, not to mention the rotting coral, might have been rather smelly.

I tried to thank Siri by sending him some money but he said he had not had it. The bank
said he had and in independent inquiry appeared to confirm it. I suspected that his wife had wanted to
shake the tree to see what other fruit might fall into their hands, which left me feeling awkward and I
did not pursue the friendship.