who was on exchange at an Indian boarding school, and as a memory of
my Indian Adventures…
and traveling solo, for a six-hour train ride to Delhi.A mad taxi ride across Delhi, to the Airport, popping my anti-nausea pills to stop disgracing myself,
like an overindulged teenager, after a night on the booze…
A flight to Dehradun on some obscure Indian airline, with a load of school kids wonderingwhether any of them were friends with my son,
but then remembering he didn’t yet have any friends in India…
Or so he said,
(not entirely accurate as it turned out!)
Hitching a lift from the airport with an incredible Canadian woman
who was teaching English to street kids, and welcomed me in her taxi,
when mine was nowhere to be seen.
Stopping at her house meeting her Indian housekeeper’s children
who she was paying to attend an English language primary school,
then travelling on, alone, up into the clouds,
for a further hour into Mussoorie: ‘the Queen of the Hills’
Our room (my son was allowed out to stay with me) was filled with lovely Himalayan decorations. We got him a haircut, at the hotel salon, he had been there eleven weeks by the time I arrived and was like a shaggy dog!
BUT then it broke!
I was left with a whole load of happy memories,
and beads all over the place!
In a previous life this would have been no drama, as there would have been a lady at the Jade Market in Hong Kong, or across the Chinese border inShenzhen, who would restring and mend, good as new, for next to nothing!
But in Melbourne? Where to go?
If I had needed to have some high quality pearls restrung, or maybe it was made of precious stones, that would not be an issue, but a whole pile of artesian beads?!!!
Time to call in an old friend, visiting from Hong Kong, used to my strange requests
to help me fix things in Australia that once seemed so easy in Asia…
So my necklace flew to Hong Kong …
And was fixed by a little lady somewhere in HK or China, I’m not sure!
My friend sent me a picture of herself wearing it for a night on the town, maybe Lan Kwai Fong or maybe the Kowloon Cricket Club, I forget where.
Then she returned it home to me!
So now my necklace is back on the supermarket run again…
Oh the stories, it can tell!
I do wish it would tell me about when it was made,
and who made it…
‘Would they be surprised to know that it has travelled around the world and now
Lives in Australia?
Have a lovely week!
PS Update from Rokeby Manor (click comments below to read more)
