Gecko roamin’

We used to have insects. Mini beetles would scuttle across the work surface; flies would divebomb my head; the occasional cockroach would taunt me knowingly from the wall. Once I wandered into the living room to find a trail of hundreds of ants marching single file into the kitchen, an invasion apparently prompted by a scout’s discovery of a solitary unbinned mango stone.

But no more. A few days after I got back to India four weeks ago, I opened a cupboard and a tiny startled lizard scampered back to the safety of the darkness, behind all the tins of stuff that I bought a year ago and I’ve forgotten about. Since then there's just been the occasional glimpse when I’ve suddenly turned on the light. I think he probably has a whale of a time when I’m not around: I’ve pondered coming home unexpectedly one afternoon, just to see if I can catch him unawares, probably drinking my brandy and having it away with my wife on the settee.

Anyway, exciting news yesterday: there’s another one. A little one, slightly lighter in colour, and he seems like a bit of a loveable rogue, poking his nose out from the under the cupboard doors and looking like he fancies getting up to no good. Meanwhile the original fella has grown to a massive two inches long, and taken on a more gecko-ish shape. Or maybe that’s a different one altogether. I forgot to attach electronic tags to them so I can’t be sure. They’re probably breeding, which is an exciting thought except it does conjure up nightmarish visions that sound like the plot of a 1950s B movie.

And the insects? Well I don’t want to tempt fate (particularly not in India, where the fickle finger of fate is all that keeps you from a sticky end under the wheels of a Dhak Dhak Go Hero Honda) but I’ve not seen many of them around recently. My new friend seems to have the situation under control.


PS I hate Google. Just when you think you’ve invented the ultimate original bad pun for your blog post title, so appalling that surely noone can have thought of it before… turns out there’s a bloody art gallery in Florida that got there first. D’oh! Perhaps we should settle the argument with, erm, a wrestling match?

Long to rain over us

Sorry. I am a crap blogger.

It’s been raining. Not in the year-round Mancunian sense, but in the Indian, bloody hell I can’t see more than six feet because the air is full of water sense. When we were kids and it rained, we used to say it was God having a wee: two weeks ago, when the rains broke in Bombay, I think God must have had chronic dystentery.

I got back from work to find water all over the floor. This wasn’t an enormous surprise, as the balcony in the flat was clearly designed by someone who thought that flats really need a nice covering of water every once in a while. Perhaps it helps with growing cress. Either that or, more likely, it was designed by an idiot. Anyway, three hours of kneeling in an inch of water and squeezing a towel into a bucket later, everything was ok, if a little filthy. Hooray for the sensible person who noticed this design flaw and suggested I move all the electronics off the floor during the monsoon season. You know who you are.

Today there was another mega storm and within a couple of hours, the roads had all turned into small lakes and rivers. We drove through some really deep water in Worli: there were kids swimming right next to the car door. Astonishingly, my crappy little motor made it home.