Education gone mad!

At this time of year the UK gets its public examination results for 15/16 year olds and 17/18 year olds. Every year pupils "do better" than the previous year. And all credit must go to the individuals who work hard and work well. But there is a knock on effect of universal greater educational achievement, and to their potential path to greatness by gaining a university degree.

My local paper is carrying an advert for an NHS Procurement Assistant. The role, to be a buyer, requires a degree, it seems. Without demeaning buying in any way, since a good buyer can save the organisation a fortune, having a degree as a buyer is as useful as having a degree as a salesman. What you need is instinct, training, and process. Plus a good quantity of guile.

So why does Royal Berkshire NHS want a degree? What true value does it add to the procurement process?

"I need a better price than that. I do have a degree, you know!"

The reason is, of course, the Thatcherite creation of universities everywhere which have to create degree qualified people, who then need a job. And that means that jobs got upgraded to require degrees even when there was no need at all. And public examinations were dumbed down to allow more kids to enter university and hunt for a degree. Which led, of course, to the inability to afford to give students a grant, resulting in students leaving university with £12,000-£15,000 of debt which takes six years or more to pay off.

Back in the 90s, when I ran a telesales company almost the last job candidate I wanted was a graduate; not because I have anything against graduates, but because the skillset and the expectation wasn't congruent with the jobs I had on offer. I did sponsor my data administrator for his computer science degree, but that was a different matter entirely. Note that he had no degree when I hired him! He didn't need one. Nowadays you seem to need a doctorate in janitorial services before you can clean a toilet.

Does Seth Godin Advocate Click Fraud?

Surely not, I hear you cry. Not Seth Godin. But it is for you to judge.

In "Ads are the new online tip jar", Godin advocates clicking an advert every time you read something good on a site or a blog.

"If you like what you're reading, click an ad to say thanks."

That's what he says. And he justifies it for his blog by saying:

"I can say this because there are no ads here" (meaning his own blog. He knows full well that encouraging ad clicks is not a good thing to do)

Well, I hope I write good stuff here. And I hope the good stuff attracts adverts you would like to click in addition to enjoying the good stuff, not to thank me, but to investigate with a view to buying the product or service they advertise. I'd prefer it if you hired me as a consultant.

If I invite you to click an advert then I break my terms of service with the supplier of the adverts. If I do that I am committing click fraud - effectively depriving an advertiser of money when there is no interest in a possible purchase. And if I do that I lose the right to publish adverts.

How is it different if Godin advocates it?

What about ethics? Is it ethical to advocate this approach? Adverts cost money, especially when clicked!

Or is he just after a bit of notoriety?

Oh Seth, for my money you got it so wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Or did you. Great piece of viral marketing. Sure, you apologised the next day, but the cat was already out of the bag by then.

Now why does this remind me of Heinz and their Deli Mayo Gay Kiss Advert Fiasco?

Bank Customer Personal Data Sold for £35 on eBay

It looks like a great month for data breaches. Just what is this bank doing?

From the ComplianceAndPrivacy.Com news page:

An investigation is under way into how a computer containing bank customers' personal data was sold on an internet auction site.

The PC, which was reportedly sold for £35 on eBay, had sensitive information on the hard drive.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and its subsidiary, Natwest, have confirmed their customers' details were involved.

RBS says an archiving firm told it the PC had apparently been "inappropriately sold on via a third party".

It said historical information relating to credit card applications for their bank and others had been on the machine.

The information is said to include account details and in some cases customers' signatures, mobile phone numbers and mothers' maiden names.

Don't they have a Data Destruction Policy? This just is not rocket science. This is something that I advise my clients about all the time and as a matter of course. Either not having or not following a Data Destruction Policy is, in my view, something that should be considered very seriously by a disciplinary procedure by the bank.

Creating one is simple. It is about 3 pages of A4, maximum. The Data Privacy Officer needs to be pretty darned certain that one exists already. I really do hope it isn't one of my colleagues on the Data Protection Discussion List!

Not following it is a matter of process and contracts. It really is not hard to shred electronically all data on a disk before sale if the disk is in working order. There are pieces of software like PGP that will do it just like that. If the disk is not working, remove it from the unit and destroy it. If in doubt about how, use a volcano. They're good at that sort of thing.

As for the idea of selling it inadvertently, that's just unacceptable. Heads must roll.

This Best Western alleged hacking success...

Best Western now denies that there was a massive data loss. It says that there was a breach, but that this affected only 10 people's data.

So, what do we have here? Where is the reality behind the story? And what of the 1o people? isn't that still 10 too many?

This still requires official investigation, but will we get a "Hey, well done, you've stopped losing data" verdict from the regulator? My money's on that, not because of any lack if willingness to enforce in the UK, but because the enforcement provision in the law is incompetently written and almost prevents enforcement.

There's a prominent notice on their site now:

Update to alleged security breach

The story printed in the Glasgow Sunday Herald on August 24, 2008 claiming a security breach of Best Western guest information is grossly unsubstantiated.

We can confirm that on 21st August a single hotel in Germany was compromised by a virus. The compromise permitted access to reservations data for that property only. This has affected only ten customers who we are currently contacting to offer our assistance. Most importantly Best Western purges all reservations data within seven days of guest departure.

We are working with the FBI and other international authorities to investigate further.

At Best Western we take the confidentiality of our customers' personal information very seriously, complying with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS).

I wonder if the object of the exercise was a weird Denial of Service attack on Best Western. The site took 67.774 seconds to load. This will lose them online bookings because online bookings are for folk who want instant gratification.

It could also have been a crazy Search Engine Optimisation thing! It will have generated a vast number of good quality inbound links to the site!

And no, I'm not linking to it. You can find it for yourself if you want to see it that badly! Either way they don't need more casual voyeuristic traffic.

I am cynical today!

Best Western? Not at keeping your data safe, it seems!

ComplianceAndPrivacy.Com, the aggregation service, picked up this story:

Best Western Data Loss - Indian hacker alleged brain behind biggest cyber-heist

An unknown Indian hacker is being 'charged' with the greatest cyber-heist in history for allegedly helping a criminal gang steal identities of an estimated eight million people in a hacking raid that could ultimately net more than 2.8 billion pounds in illegal funds.

An investigation by Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper has discovered that late on Thursday night a previously unknown Indian hacker successfully breached the IT defences of UK's Best Western Hotel group's online booking system and sold details of how to access it through an underground network operated by the Russian mafia.

There are no details yet on how the hacker was identified to be an Indian and if a probe is on to identify the person. It is also not known if the hotel chain has alerted the police about the heist.

There's no doubt that it's a big story, look at Google! But so far we all seem to be blasé about it. "Another data loss, ah well!"

This is an enormous data loss. The scope for individual harm is incalculable. Identity theft is the primary purpose of this data breach, and the alleged recipient, the so called Russian Mafia, is adroit at cloning credit cards, and more besides. There is huge scope for individual civil action for damages against Best Western.

And all they had to do was to protect their systems better, and not store all that data for that length of time!

This is such a huge data breach that the authorities need to take enforcement action. I bet they don't!

Vietnam introduces heavy fines for spammers

I just read a Viet Nam News article on spammers. "New Decree Has Spammers Facing $5,000 Fines".

It covers spammers, those who collect email addresses, those who have software to collect email addresses and looks as if it may make great strides in regulating at least a part of South East Asia. If Richard Thomas were given powers like these to enforce the UK's Data Protection Act we'd be in a far better state.

It seems to me that we've given the UK Information Commissioner good laws to enforce in concept, but no useful power to enforce them.

The wisdom of the gods

I just said to my business partner, "Interesting that Google Adsense is two page views behind Google Analytics which is itself about four hours behind reality!"

I was checking one of our sites which is just being indexed by Google and has a very low visitor count right now. Two page views are about four hours worth of elapsed time.

Fast as a flash came back, "Never compare deities, they don't like being analysed. Accept their verdict without questioning!"

I'm going to do my best to finish it this time! Part 21

Since I've shown you so much of Melanie wearing nice clothes I thought I ought to show you the boys wearing sarongs before I close this travelogue down. To be fair, Al has the figure for it!

Come to that, apart from being as skinny as a lath, just like I was at 18, and being fit and tanned (like I was at 18), it suits him very well. He started wearing them when he went to Myanmar. He passed 18 a few years back, though. Hmmm. How does he stay so sleek?

Melanie asked us to pose for her so she had a souvenir of her men looking attractive!

I, by contrast, after no exertion at all, in our cabin in Tangalla, have managed, just by the exercise of posing for the camera, to work up a half decent sweat.

Now look, I have an excuse. We were only 600 miles from the equator in Tangalla! And it was just a tad on the warm side, and not a little humid!

I shall probably not be using this picture in my profile when I speak at events! 'Fat bloke in a skirt!'

Really I was wearing the wrong shirt. The Nehru collared one I bought in Kandy is far better.

When in doubt, blame the tailor!

On our last full day in the Galle Fort Hotel we decided that, if not exorbitantly expensive, we would make the most of the day and use the hotel's transport to get to the airport. The idea of a 9:30am train and the notorious lateness of Sri Lankan railways led to our being a little nervous. We could, of course, have taken the bus to Colombo and then another one to the airport, but, after the luxury of the hotel, that somehow lost its appeal.

It turned out to be £50 for a four hour chauffeured ride in an air conditioned and well driven minibus, and money well spent. After all, this was the wrong end of the holiday to be late. Arriving late at booked accommodation in Kandy would have been acceptable, but missing the plane just because of transport delays would have been stupid.

The scenery almost all the way to Colombo was of tsunami damage, road rebuilding, property rebuilding, and a few large, probably damaged but recovered, package tour resort compound hotels.

Sri Lanka used to be and will be again a surf and scuba paradise, but it was great to see only one jet ski and only one water skier on the entire trip.

Bandaranaike Airport is odd. The lowest price restaurant is before check in. If you check in you may not go back to the restaurant. But there isn't time to eat a decent meal before checking in. So you either get them to create fast 'food' for you (lord, a burger!) , or go through check in and find food there. Someone should explain airport shopping to them and airport food. And how check in is not really final.

Ah well, it was a decent flight home. Memo to self: Never fly on a Friday night. The plane is going to be rammed full!

The train to Bracknell was uneventful. We caught a taxi at Bracknell station and the driver ripped us off by deliberately going the long way round. He did not get his full fare. Instead he got reported to the council's taxi office. We think he saw three tired tourists with backpacks and decided to rip them off. Shame he found he was ripping off a resident. For him, that is!

And then we got to our front door, and our problems started. The door was almost unopenable, jammed with stuff the builder had left there, our kitchen looked like a bomb site, the builder was nowhere to be seen. Mould on the coffee cups showed he'd been away for ages.

Today we are four weeks in to a three week job with no end in sight.

It was a great holiday though!

Will I ever finish my Sri Lanka Travelogue? Part 20

It's almost that I don't really want to finish it. My house is still a bomb site, two weeks after the builder promised he'd be 90% finished, my living room and dining room and garage are full of my kitchen. I keep saying "It will all be worth it," but I'm really no longer sure!

The second evening Mel decided to wear her sari, the one from Kandy. This takes courage, not to look beautiful - the sari makes every lady who wears it look beautiful - but to wear for the first time a lovely garment from someone else's culture. The first time is a surprisingly big thing.

The next day one of the staff came up to her and said "It was lovely to see you wearing a sari last night, madam. You looked wonderful." Al and I looked scruffy by comparison wearing even good sarongs.

So those who are nervous about wearing local clothes, stop being shy and start wearing them. They're the most wonderful colours. I just wish men could also have such colourful things to wear. We just get the dull stuff.

Earlier in the evening she and I walked into town to collect her tailoring. We passed a very Baden Powell thing on the way there! A cub scout meeting! (there were more than these two lads, honest! When we walked back there was a whole cub pack running races in the heat!)

Of all the things I expected to see just outside the walls of the fort, Wolf Cubs (well, that's what they were called when I was a kid) with caps and scarves in woggles at the local scout hut was not one of them!

I was expecting scenes far more like this one in the fruit market. Cattle are not 'everywhere' like Al says they are in India, and these are most assuredly well fed, and often marked with their owner's brand.

Something tells me that this freedom to roam is nothing to do with sacredness, more do do with making sure they can find free food!

This one certainly looked longingly at the fruit stall.

This was the day we wanted, well, I wanted, to do an entire circuit of the ramparts of Galle Fort. We started by the lighthouse and Al met his adoring throng of kids again. A couple remembered his name, too. In excellent English they told him their ages, who was related to whom, that a couple were twins and loved chatting to him. I think he rather loved chatting to them, too!

The really nice thing is that the kids were just kids. No angle, no begging, nothing except proper innocent fun.

We had a great wander round the ramparts. The fort's an excellent piece of defensive engineering. Every part had a gun position that can aim at it. If an attacking force got through one set of walls and defences it would soon be whittled down. The engineering is very different from British forts. A great example of these is the huge Palmerston fort at Dover, the Drop Redoubt.

I'm sure I've mentioned this, but this was a Portuguese fort, then a Dutch one. Despite the British taking over(!) from the Dutch the entire contents of the fort is overwhelmingly Dutch. In fact the Dutch government is doing some huge works inside it right now repairing the ancient but effective sewer system within the fort complex.

It was hot strolling round the fort. By the clocktower we met a vendor with two really nice wooden elephants. He wanted a ludicrous price for one of them, 6,100 rupees. These guys are desperate for money, and it puts us into a dilemma. We, whose money goes much further in their country, have money, almost an embarrassment of it however poor we may be back home.

So, if we spent, as we could have spent, 6,100 rupees on the item, bearing in mind the low cost of food there, his family would be well supported. The elephant will have cost him well under 1,000 rupees to buy or make. But that changes the dynamics of the economy and makes a street vendor disproportionately wealthy. It also overvalues the items sold. Nice as Jumbo is, he is not worth £30 back in the UK.

We negotiated. He added a teak elephant into the pot for 6,000. The original is supposed to be Royal Ebony. It may be any old wood with black boot polish, or it may be ebony. We just like the look of it. We liked its friend too. We liked them both £15 worth.

He followed us for ages. Then he kept popping out of side streets at us! We knew and he knew that we'd reach agreement in time. We almost reached it at the Police Garage (really!) 'Built in 1917'.

It's the left hand one, click to have a look!

We also got met here by an old 'friend' who wanted to sell us a Buddha. Mel also wanted a Buddha, but in teaching pose. He rushed off on his bike to bring back a 'friend' with a vanload of Buddhas, but none were right.

We ought to have bough a Buddha in Pollonaruwa where Al bought his Krishna. We did buy the elephants, for 3,300 rupees the pair. We didn't find a Buddha we liked enough, a matter of some regret. But we do have one in our living room now.

We needed the hotel and its pool after that.

Blogs by Email

Until I put an email signup form on the blog I never realised that people wanted to receive the news by email.



Once I moved the form to a better left hand margin place, and reproduced it in a blog article, too, quite an amazing number of folk signed up:



It's rather heartening to know that many folk want to hear each week about the things I've been writing about the previous week.

One thing that really confuses me is the order things come out in when the email is auto-composed, and how a few articles seem to get repeated. That part is weird, but I hope Zookoda is working on that one.

Now featured by the Chocolate Cake Church

Wonderful where things get picked up! The latest Sri Lanka post got picked up as "Missing 1950s Have Been Found. Must be the old cars!

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 19

Almost every other holiday I've had has been pretty samey. The closest to this holiday in interest and sights was a tour of Wales in May with my very good friend and business partner. But even Wales is samey. Ok, I know there's a pseudo-divide between the north and the south, but there's a coherency about Wales. Mountains are mountains, the coast is the coast, and sheep are sheep.

Sri Lanka's different. The coherent thread is the friendliness of the people, except in Nuwara Eliya, of course, where they're obviously too damp to smile. The countryside varies from mountains to plains and green fields to arid grassland. Even spending two sets of three nights in two different same places was relaxing and different.

We had a few surprises in Galle. Automotive surprises. I'd been expecting to see a lot of Morris Oxfords, now the Hindustan Ambassador, a new old car. Looking inside it is a modern car, in an old, old body.

Before writing this article I'd always thought it was based on the Morris Cowley, so thanks, Wikipedia!

This one looks brand new. I think it even has air conditioning!

Moving back in time, a car beloved of Tudor architects - the half timbered car!

Skulking in a fort side street we met the Morris Minor Traveller, windscreen wipers akimbo, the car my uncle Norman used for newspapers in his newsagent's shop in Herne Bay, and the car Melanie had when I met her.

Solid, reliable, but with a propensity for metal fatigue of the steel wheel centres with embarrassing wheel fall-offage under hard(!) cornering, they've all but rusted to pieces in the UK.

We were even more surprised to find a pretty much original Jelly Mould - The Morris Minor itself.

That's more Morris in one day in Sri Lanka than we see at home in the UK. This one looks like the post WW2 original NM version. The wonderful thing is that it still has all four hubcaps, complete with the Morris logo.

Apart from the bullock carts, oddly often hauled by intact bulls, the final car that astounded us was, we were told by its proud owner, a 1932 Singer.

It looks a little odd because the tyres are motorcycle tyres, but the original cross ply tyres are probably impossible to get there.

He's very proud of it. It's outside his antique and gem business and he's had it for years. It was his brother in law's car and they've both owned it from new. Only they're too young!

What I can't understand is how he hopes to sell the toothless old piano behind the car!

All four of these cars were somehow entirely appropriate to Galle Fort. Quaint and yet practical. Almost!

Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations - What is the point?

The PECR 2003 was much heralded as heavyweight formal legal protection from electronic spam and from telesales into the home. It allegedly gave teeth to the Telephone Preference Service.

Today I got yet another unlawful call at home from yet another company that "got your data from a database" but can't say from where, and "yes, we do check the TPS" but the practical outcome is that it sure doesn't look that way.

I took their details as usual and filled out the Information Commissioner's PECR complaint form. And there, as the end of the form, I have to say, which I never saw before:

"I have read 'The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations - When and how to complain' leaflet and understand that you have no powers to punish an organisation for any likely breach of the regulations and that you cannot award compensation."

Good grief!

No wonder Richard Thomas wants more powers. What the devil is the point? Why draft a law that has no remedy?

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 18

Ok, I know you want to know if this travelogue will ever end, but this was the best holiday I've ever had as a grownup! And this is my Thank You to Sri Lanka. It's a glorious nation with wonderful people, and it's just plain good to be there. The civilisation is as ancient as any other we have on the planet, the historical sites are absolutely astounding. Seriously, visit the country, and dare to do it as an independent traveller. Package tours are not the answer!

Three glorious nights. Wow. So we decided to wander. The first thing we did on our second day was to wander into town for shopping. I didn't even mind shopping! It was on the second day Mel bought the salwar. I bet I confused you in the previous post!

The fresh fish market is superb. There's no smell of fish, they are fresh (duhhh, the clue is in the name!) they're plentiful and presented as no frills fish. Good variety, too. It made me wish we were somewhere where we could cook as well as somewhere we were being cooked for.

I'm not sure what the fish were, they looked like tubby mackerel. They may have been small tuna.

I'm back to "too many pictures, too little blog'.

The town's as crowded as the fort is tranquil. We did find yet another tout who took us to an Indian shop where Mel could buy kaftans. She found some great material, but Galle is way more expensive than Kandy, about 50% more. Let's not mess about, though. The base price is still good, and we used Kandean prices to negotiate Gallean prices closer to our level. Three kaftans later, while Al and I bought a couple more sarongs each, Mel also found some great fabric for a less dressy salwar, too. The salwar cost 1,000 rupees to make up. That's under £5! £20 in total. More expensive than a sari, which just needs a blouse made. It seems they call them blouses nowadays, not 'choli'.

It was all a bit of a rush to get them complete by the end of day three. We had to sprint behind the shop boy who took us to a different tailor.

I also tried King Coconut - orange nuts which get the top slashed off and provide an allegedly delicious drink inside, and not at all like the dried up things we get in the UK. The juice was refreshing, if bland. The vendor then slashes the nut open with a machete and you scoop the rather glutinous flesh out with a shard of shell, and try very hard to enjoy it. I don;t need to bother again, but I liked it better than papaya.

We tuk tuked back to the hotel, hot and tired. Actually we tuk tuked back to the Anglican Church because you get a better rate if you aren't staying in a posh hotel! And we oozed hotly into the pool. And the pool is where you meet folk.

Every Dork Has His Day

Microsoft thinks Bill Gates is a winner in its new advert campaign with Seinfeld. So says The Wall Street Journal.

Look, let's be fair. Everyone has his price. For a good share of his fortune even I would take Billy Boy to be my awful wedded strife, but he is not, surely not, the face that launched a thousand chips.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 17

We did venture out of the hotel. We ventured out that afternoon. We hit our first tout of the afternoon as we walked to the ramparts near the lighthouse. He was chatting about how seven of his family had been lost when Galle was inundated by the tsunami. The fort withstood it, but the town suffered badly.

While Al was chatting to a group of local kids the tout took me aside. "Can you do me a favour?"

"Tell me what it is?" I do sometimes have my wits about me.

"My daughter, she needs milk powder. Please will you come to the shop and buy me some for her?"

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The old milk powder scam! It has to be a non perishable small item that's very family appropriate.

"So, let me see. I go with you to buy milk powder. I give it to you and feel I've done a good thing. As soon as my back's turned, you go and give it back to the shopkeeper, who sells it 27 or so more times. Is that how it works?"

Departure of tout, never to be seen again. I've never seen anyone vanish so fast.

The little kids all had pretty much perfect English. Wow!

We had a potter round the town outside the fort. Al wanted fruit, Mel was hoping for a Salwar and maybe another sari. I just wanted to look around.

The main town is just another crowded town. Not special, but fun to walk round. It has a fruit market, a veg market, and small shops in abundance, always grouped into enclaves.

We did come across some unusual parking, though. And Mel found a Salwar. All complete, except the sleeves were separate. Based on the Kandy price of her Sari we negotiated the Salwar price down. And then went round the corner to a tailor who, for 50 rupees, configured the sleeves and sewed them on.

His was a fine mixture of a modern overlocking and trimming machine to finish the edges, and an old Pfaff treadle machine to do the actual sewing. She looks gorgeous in it.

There's this odd dilemma about wearing clothes of other nations. We wonder if they'll approve. I wonder if we base this on Scotsmen who tend to disapprove of Sassenachs who try the Kilt on. Instead it's really like eating with your fingers in Sri Lanka. If you fit in without being an idiot then you will be smiled at and appreciated.

So wear 'their' clothes with relaxed pride and you'll get appreciative smiles, even compliments. Al and I went pretty much everywhere in sarongs. Mel's clothes are 'for best'. But a little more of that later.

It was late by then and we were pretty tired. We strolled back to the hotel, past the fish market, through the gate to the fort and found it a haven once inside. The town melts away as you pass the beggar woman who sits on the road in the gateway, presumably trying to get run over, and the fort's peculiar tranquility descends.

And that pool was calling us loudly. And so was a long, cold beer.

Privacy & Data Protection UK 2008

This is an unashamed plea for delegates to this prestigious yet oddly undersubscribed event.

My good friend Thomas Kohn, who runs Transatlantic Events kindly asks me to speak at his events. I guess that may even mean that I know what I'm talking about! This year, the fifth time the event has run in London (and it also runs in Dublin) is the biggest, best and most splendid he has put on.

Each individual speaker is worth listening to and worth the fee, but the speaker panel he's put together this year is incredible. And yet it is undersubscribed.

So, please at least check out the agenda. I'm not naive enough to think that you want to hear me rattle on about stuff, but the other speakers are well worth listening to. And the networking opportunities in the breaks are superb. Come to that, the food's not bad either. And the price is one you can easily expense without thinking about it.

House purchase is never smooth

Planning ahead, my wife and I are buying a house in deepest Devon. We'll rent it out until we retire there. It's imperfect. There's no car parking except in the main car park, and that's a five minute walk away - cold and wet in a southerly gale - and it needs a little bit of restoration, but it's close enough.

The UK house buying process can be protracted, but the vendor is moving into a new home, and we have no chain of buyers beneath us, so we expected a 2-3 month turnaround. The only possible ointmental fly is that it is a Grade II Listed Building, as is the entire town of Dartmouth, pretty much. This means that no alteration of any description, internally or externally, may be made without Listed Building Consent.

Imagine our surprise when our solicitor told us "This building was listed in 1972, and, in 1978 something extraordinary happened." She went on to explain that it had been a single house with its neighbour until 1978. Then it was divided, doubtless with a handsome profit taken by the owners. But that there was no Listed Building Consent applied for (or granted) for the division.

This is, interestingly, a criminal offence, carrying a prison term or a substantial fine, but the liability passes to the current owner.

In other words, if I buy without regularising the consent, I become criminally liable for work done in 1978. I think this is designed to make it impossible for anyone to sell a listed building which has been improperly modified because the purchaser will(!) discover this during the pre-contract phase and refuse to buy. As such it is good law.

Or it's good law until some fool has bought the house without ensuring that this is all ship shape and Bristol fashion.

The vendor bought the house 11 years ago without checking and without knowing that they now have a house that is unsaleable. I imagine the neighbours are in the same position, unless they are the guy who divided it! There is no statute of limitations on gaining Listed Building Consent, and the Conservation Officer is entitled, should he so wish, to enforce against both properties.

If he enforces it is unlikely that he will insist on restoration to before the 1978 division, though he is entitled to do so. More likely is a swingeing fine for both neighbours - not a welcome outcome.

A lot of research has found that this can be brought to closure. Assuming that the Conservation Officer is willing to indicate firmly in writing that he has no intention to enforce, English Heritage will be willing to consider an Amendment to the listing. This will then regularise the status of one or both properties, and allow them to have a value again.

At present the house we intended to buy is unsaleable and has no commercial value at all. Who would buy a possible prison sentence and/or swingeing fine? And a criminal record prevents travel to many countries, too.

We're pretty sure that the house will be taken off the market and offered for sale in a few month, probably with a different estate agent. But we are firmly of the opinion that all the local agents will refuse instructions to sell unless this has bee regularised. After all, what they want is good, clean business.

What is interesting is that none of this has shown up in the HIP, that wonderful Blairite invention that is meant to make housebuying so simple.

None of this helps the UK housing market. No wonder house prices are no longer rising!

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 16

Galle Fort is well known for touts. We managed to drop several along the way, all the while looking for accommodation. Our plan all along had been to start basic and gradually work up market as we tired of basic. So picture, if you can, three "mad dogs and Englishmen" out in the noonday sun with backpacks and other bags.

Galle Fort is originally Portuguese, then Dutch, then British, and now Sri Lankan. It's both crowded with buildings and empty at the same time. Narrow streets, but the buildings often extend way back with shady courtyards.

We were following the book. We started at basic. Er, no. "I am cheapest in the fort."

I expect he was. We could see why. Well, he was lower grade than we wanted, anyway. So were three others.

We headed for the Galle Fort Hotel with no real expectations. It is not a cheap hotel. For Sri Lanka it's unbelievably expensive. It isn't the most expensive, that is some $600 US per room per night, just up the road, but it is $200. We did the start of a deal. The place is an oasis. We loved it. Then we were made an offer we could not refuse. Three nights for the price of two.

We were standing in a room that was a pure delight when the manager made the offer. Pristine sheets, four poster bed, clean mosquito nets, white fluffy towels, air conditioning, shower, staircase, sofa. Later we noticed some idiots reviewed it as 'bad' because it had no minibar and no TV. Idiots. The hotel is a better place for their not going back there. What were they thinking? This is a hotel to get away from it all, and to get away from idiots like that. Their review is somewhere hidden in the many real reviews. I guess they are marching to their own drummer.

Minibar, indeed! And dear little miniature bottles of gin! What do they think room service is for? It is time to deploy the word 'wankers!' with venom!

We were ushered gently to the lobby and given a long cold drink while we checked in. I love touches like that. They cost almost nothing to do, and set the scene of quality and service completely. And that's one thing the Galle Fort Hotel does so well.

Sri Lanka is excellent for service. It's poor at repeatable high quality of the thing delivered by the excellent service. But at this hotel they've cracked it! They deliver reliable repeatable quality with unassuming, unpretentious quiet good service. They truly understand their market, and their staff recruitment and training is exceptional.

Am I waxing a bit lyrical about this place?

Well, yes, but it's idyllic. You can even have a 100% private suite. And there's a blissfully cool, clean pool for when you get back from exercising your shopping muscles in the fort. And we did. Melanie wanted some more local clothes, and Al and I wanted more sarongs. And in the heat we shopped until we dropped!

And the food... You can have what you like, of course you can, but their set meal is an amazing eastern fusion. And they offer excellent alternatives if you let their chef know that you can't eat a particular food. With business trips I have a religion of trying never to eat in the hotel. Here my religion is never to eat elsewhere. They even made the papaya in the fruit salad at breakfast pleasant - not lime juice, but passionfruit juice. Now there is a real treat.

It was tempting to stay inside the doors of the hotel for the entire stay. But we didn't! But we did learn that you do not say that you are at a costly hotel when bargaining for goods locally.

I'm going to carry on waxing lyrical. I'm sure it is imperfect, but I couldn't find the cracks for things to slip through. if anything doesn't work they just fix it. The beds get turned down with fragrant flowers placed on the linen.

The owners have two rather ancient and adorable Papillons that look at you hopefully while you're having breakfast or dinner. Some halfwit complained in their review about the dogs! These people need to get a life. I hope they read this blog and see how much I respect them!

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 15

Galle is where we planned our final three days, well three nights. We were right about the buses. There's one leaving every few minutes for Colombo. I'd love to see buses like this on the streets of London, being driven Sri Lankan style. They feel huge, they accelerate and brake hard. They're not as comfy as you might hope, but they do the job.

Except the designers of this one had forgotten about luggage! Three backpacks were stacked by the front door, and then every bend was a left hander, so they fell into the aisle every few minutes. Eventually one of the bus boys (odd to have two!) managed to tie them on.

Then we found out why we had two bus boys. One was so totally wasted he nearly fell off a few times. They were taking him home!

I had the 'good' luck to sit where I could see the windscreen. I have a colleague who drives an Audi R8 very fast. Our young driver, head to head in similar machinery, could give him a run for his money!

As is usual in Sri Lanka we overtake on blind bends going uphill. It's oddly safe, and you get used to it. Mostly!

And, of course, you have bus races. First to the stop gets the people standing there!

As far as I can tell, the red buses (The Lonely Planet says "yellow") are the national bus company ones and the other colours are privateers. Same ethos, though. Same bus races. The bus boy leans out of the door while his bus overtakes trucks and waves at them to slow down and let his bus in. And they do.

That's pretty much how all Sri Lankan traffic works. He who overtakes has right of way. There's much horn blowing, but it's a code for "please let me pass, please let me in!"

The coast road goes through places devastated by the tsunami. Many homes have been rebuilt, many have no-one to rebuild them. Wrecked fishing boats are still strewn in unusual places, but there are strong fishing fleets in small harbours and offshore anchorages.

Words can't describe, probably because the mind cannot conceive, the sadness and the overwhelming massive destruction. It's easier to brush it off and just say "Yes, there was a tsunami." This must be very similar in its way to standing in New York City at the site of the World Trade Centre and thinking about, or being unable to comprehend the enormity of, either event, one natural, the other made made.

It's been almost four years now. What is going to be rebuilt has been rebuilt. The towns are certainly back to roughly what they must have been beforehand. The occasional bus has a 'Donated by [donor name]' sign on it. You can't dwell on it. Life does go on.

This street could be almost anywhere. It happens to be in a tsunami devastated zone. Those of you who aren't visiting because there's nothing left, think again! No idea now which town. It might be Matara. Then again it might not!

I managed a few snaps from the moving bus of local colour. I've never quite liked taking pictures of schoolkids, but a moving bus is ok as a platform. The uniform, bizarrely for such a dusty country, is white. The boys look like an enormous cricket team, the girls have white blouses and skirts, little boys have white shirts and blue shorts. It's a universal uniform, just with different ties, or, in Nuwara Eliya, pullovers.

They must have damned good soap powder! To be fair, though, we have also seen folk washing clothes in the old fashioned way in streams.

The old tourist resorts are definitely building back up. There was a mixture of large resort hotels on beach side of the road, and even the occasional island resort.

But this is not a place for a package tour beach hotel, it really is not. This is a place for the independent traveller to book an air ticket to, and then find accommodation. And to tour by bus, rail or yes, by car and driver.

The roads are being rebuilt, the surfaces are pretty good. If you can brave the traffic a motorcycle tour would be great fun. This is pretty much a no rules vacation paradise. Just learn how to fit in, and respect the nation and its customs.

27o rupees (about £1.30) saw the three of is in Galle. We'd expected a bus station. Oh no. It was a roadside drop, and, much to the annoyance of the bus boy, he couldn't untie the backpacks!

Before we looked at the book to find a hotel we went to the station for train times to Colombo Fort. 9:30am. Ah well.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 14

The sound of the surf all day and all night was incredible. At night it sounded like a wind storm. It was disappointing not to be able to swim in the sea without imminent death, but we did resting and reading books and snoozing. The food was good, often imaginative, the staff were friendly. We felt isolated from the real world. We didn't even trouble to go into Tangalla.

Instead we had an idyllic time, pretty much alone in the hotel. The families of the weekend had gone. It looked as though we had a honeymoon couple or two with us, but there were so few guests that we had a menu based Sunday meal instead of a buffet that is traditional there on Sundays. It looks as if it could be a great party venue with more guests. Well, if you can raise the energy, that is!

The shade was so good that we hardly realised how close we were to the equator, but the sun was far stronger than we'd experienced before, not that the lizard minded! It wandered near our cabin, totally unconcerned that we were chasing it in slow motion with a camera!

Did I mention that the place was brimful of butterflies? Well, at night it was even fuller of fireflies, right inside the cabin. Lying in bed looking at the dancing points of light was (insert enthusiastic adjective here!).

The surf also brings the locals out, fishing. Not boats, just simple fishing rods with the line tied to the tip. I very much doubt they caught anything, but they looked as though they had a lot of fun. Anyway, fishing's an excuse to stay somewhere beautiful for far longer than one would stay there normally.

Beachcombing goes on, too. An elderly woman was on a coconut hunt, and a family were carrying back old, fallen palm fronds. Fuel, building material? No idea. One asked me to take a picture of what must have been her grandkids. I've no idea why.

The night after the man was to show us the turtle we went and sat on the beach before sunset and waited until well after dark.

No turtle came, and we wondered if he was sitting in the dark watching us and laughing at the three English fools who'd gone to try and see a turtle.

He said he was a security guard for the tsunami trashed property just inland from the beach and also a turtle warden. And there is, elsewhere, a turtle hatchery that tries very hard to release an enormous number of turtles back into the wild. They do need protecting. The eggs fetch quite a lot of cash in the market.

It was with mixed feelings that we left Palm Paradise Cabanas after the third night and took a tuk tuk to the bus station. We hadn't bothered to find out bus times. We reckoned that loads of buses head for Colombo. We were right.

The penultimate chapter - North East Surrey Crematorium

Today we had the penultimate chapter in the saga that has been going on since the end of November 2007, the day of my mother's funeral. The Small Claims system in the County Court takes a while. I used it to bring an action for damages against the crematorium for the distress caused by their acts back in November.

Today we had the hearing. Or rather we had a pre-hearing to determine if and in what track the action should be heard. The crematorium used its superior knowledge of the law to ask the District Judge to direct that the claim be struck out, so I was batting to have the claim kept.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the Data Protection Act, nor any breach or otherwise of the act. This has only to do with whether, in law, a party is entitled to damages for pure distress (palpable and significant) or whether a financial loss has to be incurred prior to an action for damages being allowed.

The process is a mixture of formal and informal. There isn't a courtroom. The Judge sits in chambers (an imposing room, nonetheless), and the parties sit on opposite sides of a long table. The Judge is most assuredly in charge. One speaks when one is spoken to, and one answers clearly what one is asked while he (or she, but ours was a chap) takes notes and considers the matter.

Since it was the crematorium's request that the claim be struck out, they spoke first and put a convincing case that damages were inappropriate whether the DPA had been broken or not. I was asked for my comments and was able to describe the reason for bringing the case at all to the Judge, who expressed substantial disgust at the marketing mailshot and at the office procedures adopted by the crematorium.

He did take into consideration the crematorium's admission in court that it was not, at the time of the mailshot, registered under the DPA, but that it (as a Data Controller) relied on contracting its data processing to Wandsworth, one of the co-owners of the crematorium. Had this been a criminal case about the Data Protection Act 1998, which it was not, this appeared to me to be tantamount to an admission of guilt.

The Judge, quite reasonably, while deprecating the actions of the crematorium, kept to the law and issue of damages. His opinion and the order he has made is that damages are inappropriate because there was no loss, just distress. He explained this to me clearly and well. it was unarguable with. He also stated that because of the way the crematorium had acted he would make no order whatsoever for costs. The claim is thus struck out. I'm content with that.

While it seems to me to be a shame that one cannot seem easily to obtain damages for such an incident unless one has a physical loss, the matter remains with the UK Information Commissioner, who has not yet finished his deliberations. That's why this is the penultimate chapter. But what I really hope is that this has concentrated the minds of the crematorium board, and the privacy officers.

What I fear is that the man from the crematorium perceives that the crematorium has won. Instead he is very lucky that he has not lost. I do hope he has not reported to the board that this is a victory, it really isn't.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 13

Not really finished being a tourist, but this is the R&R part of the trip! And Palm Paradise Cabanas came to us recommended by Holly, Al's other half.

We were surprised when the tuk tuk retraced the bus's tracks for a short way, but then the sea hove into view, and we turned down an unmade track for the hotel.

There's so much to describe about the bus ride, too. The terrain changed from mountains with precipitous cliffs, through arid plain to salt pans as we were near Hambantota. The thing that perplexed me was that some rice paddies were full and productive, and those just next to them were dry and weed filled. A mystery I won't solve by pondering it, and one I never solved by asking.

The salt pans near Hambantota are huge, and must, I suppose, have been reasonably easy to restore after the tsunami inundated them. This part of the country, and all the way from here to most of the way to Colombo on the coast road, was devastated by the 2004 tsunami. The evidence is patchy. It seemed pornographic to photograph it, somehow, almost like the endless TV coverage of the World Trade Center collapsing. Even so you see the occasional fishing boat in places where no boats ought to be, and foundations of houses where no house remains.

Tritely and truly, life goes on. The dead aren't forgotten, but the place seems to have moved on emotionally.

The tsunami is the reason, it seems, for the lack of tourism. "There'll be nothing to see!"

Wrong!

The war doesn't help either, or the news coverage of it, when it's covered at all, doesn't help. All the BBC ever seems to say is "There's been a bus bomb in Colombo." That really doesn't help. It's the proportion of the thing that's important. There weren't any bombs while we were there, and not for ages beforehand either. I'm off at a tangent again.

Behind a gate lay the Cabanas. There was noise of happy kids at play, and a bit of bustle. This is a holiday resort for Sri Lankans, mainly, and there were three or four families enjoying the dappled shade and gentle breezes that surrounded the hotel.

I can quite see why it got its name. Mature palms, the occasional large lizard, scented air, the sound of crickets, and the sound of surf.

Amazingly, the more amazing since this is a waterfront property, only three of the cabanas were slightly damaged in the tsunami, and they were open for whatever business remained in under 10 days. They were lucky, very lucky. We looked at their photo gallery.

The cabins (I really can't keep calling them cabanas) have no glass in the windows, and an open grid to the front. Mossie country, so deet is needed, but no monkeys, which is really good news.

Al missed his deadline of being in the sea by 3:30 by about 5 minutes. Mel and I were close behind him. This is Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday territory. It was just plain lovely. It's everything I ever imagined a palm beach would be. Soft sand, warm sea, coconuts on the beach, and glorious sunshine.

I got into the sea. I love surf. We'd been told that the beach was safe, no rip, good for bathing. We larked about.

There is no rip, not a special one, at least. But there is a fearsome undertow. I'm used to surf beaches. This one had me tell Al "I'm not sure I can get back in!" with a little urgency in my voice. No point in panicking, just in planning what to do and where to swim to without getting exhausted.

Pretty obviously I did get back in. But it was worrying for five minutes or so. The picture doesn't look much. It's not the waves that were much, but the undertow was unamusing. I sat in the edge after that. [I kept the thumbnail small. It was almost embarrassing!]

Later we walked along the beach and found where a turtle had laid eggs the previous night. A local chap offered to chaperone us to an egg laying that night, if we arrived at 8:30. So we planned to do just that.

The egg site is unexceptional, unless you know what to look for. The photo shows flipper marks. It's an interesting, exciting place, restful.

Pleasant family sounds from the other holidaymakers, idyllic surroundings, comfy cabins with good fans and the best mosquito nets so far, hot showers, with a choice of cold if we wanted.

It's expensive, really. €33 per cabin per night. That's about 3,300 rupees or so. And even that is amazingly low cost!

Apart from the lack of bathing beach, our feet were well and truly fallen on by us!

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 12

I'm pretty amazed that there are 11 posts before this one and I've only just got to the end of week one, pretty much. Bored yet?

The first week was designed as frantic tourism. The second week as rest and recreation. The plan was simple: Head for three nights in Tangalla and then three nights in Galle, timing the arrival in Galle to perfection as the India/ Sri Lanka Test Match crowds had left.

To be fair, we hadn't known about the cricket when we planned the trip! Odd, really, because Al's the cricket fan, and he planned the itinerary!

Two different stories about the bus. "It leaves at 7:30" or "It leaves at 8:30". Either way there is one bus per day to Matara. Or more than one bus per day. Or not. But, however many or few there are, missing it is not an option.

The trip is seven to eight hours to Tangalla.

We had to leave before breakfast, so we paid the bill the night before and were given breakfast packets. Cheese sandwich (we avoid meat when refrigeration is unlikely), banana, hard boiled egg and a bottle of orange squash. Oh, and a pre-sliced tomato. I managed to drop them as we left the hotel. Oops!

We found the bus. No air conditioned luxury this time. The was one of the two bus workhorses, a Tata. The other one is a Lanka Ashok Leyland. The bodywork is pretty similar, the mechanicals are rustic and easily maintainable with a big hammer. These are the true sports cars of the Sri Lankan highway!

We left just before 7:30. Great busboy, full bus. Yiu reserve your seats by putting something of yours on them, that means you can, if you need to, brave the bus station toilets confident that your stuff will travel without you if you're late back!

What can one say about a bus trip? Long, hot as soon as we got to sea level, varied scenery, signs of tsunami destruction, three army checkpoints to check baggage for bombs and weapons, and a 15 minute lunch and piddle break where the bananas we bought we just not quite ripe.

Lunch is a rush. There's an 'all you can eat for 100 rupees' buffet, which Al did very well at, but Mel and I weren't hungry. The photo's at the lunch stop. Boys are lucky at piddle breaks. We have bushes. Being a girl must be a right royal pain.

The bus was rammed full the whole way. This bus made a profit. The fare for the 7 hours or so? 220 rupees per person!

The interesting this is one of the expedition people we met said "The girls don't have enough money to visit the south. It's outside their budget." The correct word for this is 'bullshit'. There is something about these expeditions that really rankles.

We arrived early in Tangalla. We expected our hotel to be after the bus station. Instead it was before it. Douglas Adamas did a better job with his book! Ah well.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 11

After lunch we did something I've always wanted to do - go and see a tea plantation and factory. The nearest is the Pedro Tea Estate, about 2km away. We got a good price from a passing tuk tuk and puttered off there.

Not sure about today, but in the old days every tea worker was guaranteed a home for life. We're not sure if 'life' means 'for the life of employment', though. It's also a fact that there was insufficient local population to work on the terraces so contract workers were imported from Tamil Nadu.

Broadly, this is the cause of the LTTE struggle in Sri Lanka. Very simplistic explanation: Contract workers are contract workers, citzens are citizens. The government does not wish to grant citizenship to contract workers. The LTTE has also gained support form native Tamils (ie not contract workers) in Sri Lanka, and is pressing its case. It even controls two large areas of the country with real administration, infrastructure and so forth.

Politics apart, it looks as if all tea workers are still Tamil. And it looks as if all the tea pickers are women.

The old wicker baskets have been replaced with sacks, but they're still worn in the best ergonomic position, on the back, tied around the forehead. It looks like a pretty rotten job. The terraces are cold, clammy and damp, and your entire day is spent walking up and down steep hills. Well, except when you are walking along a terrace, of course.

The factory tour showed some ancient machinery with no regard to ergonomics nor health and safety.

Why put a guard on a machine? Workers are cheap.

Why use a conveyor belt? They cost money and break down. Use a worker! Workers are cheap!

The factory was dead when we went round. It's rained too much and the tea is not picked when too wet. I wonder if it weighs too much and the workers get paid by weight?

Is this exploitation, though?If people are willing to work in these conditions, and if they make a reasonable living, and if it's normal, why should we bring UK values to bear on it?

What we do know is that this pile of tea chests is for decoration only! I haven''t seen a tea chest in years. This was a display in the lobby, and it was in the lobby that we met the party of 30 or so English girls on one of those expeditions whose mathematics make such interesting reading.

After the tour we were served tea, and I heard "You can't have tea without milk and sugar!" from one of them. So, two weeks in to an adventure expedition and she had learned not a single thing, then. £3,000 wasted for her, I think!

No photography allowed in the factory, so nothing much else to show you. And there ios one thing I wasn't able to do. I wanted to chew and taste a fresh tea leaf, just to see what it tasted like. Still, you can't have everything.

Apart from going for a stroll in the late afternoon round some green lanes and finding the entrance to the official residence of the President, that was the rest of our time in Nuwara Eliya. Worth a visit, not worth a stay.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 10

What is it about eggs? Why do hotels think we want an egg for breakfast? "How would you like your eggs, fried or boiled?"

"En cocotte, please!" Ok, I remember Tony Hancock and the 'Go to work on an egg!' adverts, and the later egg adverts, I admit it. I am just(!) old enough. I never asked for them done that way, mainly because I've no idea what it means! Interesting how much colourant we must put into chickenfeed. Sri Lankan eggs have very pale yolks indeed. "It's what the housewife wants!"

I suppose it is, now.

We tuk tuked to the Botanical Gardens. The lad driving was nice, and he amazed us with his low price. On the way there we dropped about 500 metres and wondered how we were going to get back up the hill again. They don't have an awful lot of horsepower, these tuk tuks!

We had a great geography lesson. Relief Rain! We left Nuwara Eliya in clammy damp, and over the top of the pass we ended up in sunshine, with wonderful terraces of cabbages, leeks, root veg, the lot. No longer tea country, we were in temperate smallholding agriculture. This is not a nation where starvation should ever happen. I share Al's views on beggars. he will not give money unless their plight is obviously genuine. He says that to do otherwise encourages a begging industry, with pimps and even parents maiming the kids in order to get a better story.

That aside, we rounded a bend an the most amazing view opened up. The picture's a little higher in the botanical garden, and no snap can do it justice. This was a jaw dropping moment.

The gardens were pretty steep. We tramped to the top amidst huge butterflies, and sauntered down. There was a party of schoolgirls there, all of whom wanted to touch Al's hair, and all of whom giggled at him. He reminds folk of Robin Hood from the movie!

We managed a few pics while jammed in the tuk tuk. This one shows just how close traffic gets! You're up close and personal with buses. We overtook a truck that was labouring up the gradient. You get scalded from hot truck exhaust as you pass by. Then the truck overtakes you as the gradient eases. And then you get scalded again on the next steep gradient. We need these in London!

On the way back we were reminded of the cultural diversity here. We stopped at a Hindu temple - Hindu because there is a large population of Tamil tea workers, and Tamils tend not to be Buddhist. We like, very much, the cultural diversity, though Parker (remember Parker?) was very anti Muslim. I suppose this means that what we see is on the surface, and underneath old rivalries and differences still run deep.

Please do not worry about the "no photography" signs. We were given permission without asking.

If I have this right, this is the place where Shiva was imprisoned, only to be rescued by a rather amazing character whose elephant left its footprints in the living rock on the opposite bank of the stream behind the temple.

Well, they are naturally eroded holes, but the story's pretty good! And I might have it all wrong. I must ask Al. He's studied it.

Too many pictures to post, there always are. I wish I could share all 2,000 or so with you.

We made a lunch error. The book (how Douglas Adams!) recommended The Grand Indian, part of the Grand Hotel. We, by contrast, do not.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 9

We were getting used to touts. One met us at the bus station and insisted on showing us the way to his hotel, next door to the Glendower Hotel where we intended to stay and where we ended up. The review by 'gtbg' is mine. I make a point of reviewing all the hotels I stay at. I suppose you could always stalk me after the event!

It was a pleasant walk, past Victoria Park, past the usual crop of kids who laugh at Al's long blond mane, now sadly cropped for work, and past a man sitting on a very small pony indeed suggesting we might want to go horse riding. And the very 'Home Counties' in black and white, and croquet set and billiard table hove into view.

We negotiated the room rate down. But this is a 'luxury hotel' and attracts luxury tax, so, with 10% service charge (doesn't go to the staff in most establishments) and 17.5% luxury tax (like VAT?), you get to pay ~30% more than the ticket price on everything. Even billiards is 300 rupees for 30 minutes! Plus 30%, naturally.

It smells of a strange furniture polish everywhere. It's almost mothballs, but mostly floor and furniture polish. It gleams! It has bathtubs, too! The room was great, they added a third bed for Al, and we headed into the town to have a look around.

Nuwara Eliya was built by the British as a recreation resort for Planters and Soldiers. So it ought to be full of brothels and gin bars! It did have trams, like Blackpool, until they wore out after independence, and the brothels and bars, if they were ever there, have gone as well.

What remains is a bus station, a high street, some awful eateries - truly awful, please do not bother at all, even with the alleged Grand Indian attached to the Grand Hotel - (one of) the official residence(s) of the Sri Lankan Prime Minister [No photography, please. A minister is asleep(!)], an open air fruit market and an indoor market.

As hill stations go it's apparently both typical (though is has a horse race track!),and very British. We expected a polo lawn. As places to visit go, well, this was not a mind blowing success. But you do have to see a hill station once in your life. or, in Al's case, twice, because he's been to one in India as well. I know the mayor will hate me, but it is a bit of a rat hole!

We wandered around. We had a foul lunch in the better of the two lonely planet half recommended eateries, had a look at the markets, bought some fruit in the rain, and wandered back, wetly, to the hotel to play billiards. Al was amazed that I beat him. Me too. A fluke as usual.

It wasn't as bad as that, honestly. And it wasn't the rain. It's just an odd place, with begging women shipped in by bus, and locals who just plain did not return smiles. We didn't understand that.

The hotel proved to be mean, too. We asked for a heater for the room. We were rented for 400 rupees a night a one bar antique electric fire that made no difference at all to the room temperature. They got that back for the second night. Meanness like that irks me. Luxury tax ought to mean luxury.

We stayed two nights. The service was good, the food was good and the staff were cheerful. Eccentric, but cheerful. "Three gin and tonics, please?"

One large bottle of tonic arrived, label separately. Much rattling behind the bar and nothing else came. Al left the India/ Sri Lanka Test Match to go and find that the barman had vanished. A little prodding and three gins arrived, too.

Have I mentioned that Sri Lanka is famous for great service? It's just that it lets it down by delivering random stuff well! But just wait for the Galle Fort Hotel!

We were here for two reasons: to see a tea factory, and to visit the Botanical Gardens.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 8

The title, I am told, is getting boring. But the title also gets picked up well by aggregators and helps folk search for articles on Sri Lanka.

I wonder if Kandy is the true home of the scam artist?

We wanted to catch the train to Nuwara Eliya. We were heading for high country, just under the ceiling of our medical insurance. The train goes most of the way there, and the views from the train were reputed to be spectacular.

Early train, change at Peradeniya, and bumble off for about four hours to a station 8km from the town, finishing by bus.

Or so we thought.

We decided on first class. That guarantees you a seat, kind of, probably, if and only if you buy the first class ticket at the station you change at, not where you start your journey. Maybe. Anyway, we'd done 2nd class from Colombo Fort to Kandy, and it was just a tad too full of boxes of live chickens for us!

The ticket window has infuriating staff behind it that ignore you until the train is almost due. They allowed us to pay 30 rupees each for the short leg to Peradeniya Junction. On the platform we met a young man who was heading the exact same way. "The train we have to change on to is 4 hours late," he said. "There has been a derailment."

We chatted aimlessly, while I took pictures of the station. Then a Kandy bound train arrived. "I know the guard. I'll find out about the train." and he dived across the tracks to the inbound guard's van. While he was there our train arrived.

"It's now five hours late," he said. I am going to look for a bus.

We agreed and followed him. Always use local knowledge at Sri Lankan bus stations if you can. They're organised chaos.

"No bus until this afternoon," he said, "I am going home to get my motorcycle." And then he said "I could help you some more. I could get my car and we could share petrol. $75 from you and $25 from me."

Even at 157 rupees per litre that means his car has a pretty large fuel tank and does very few km per litre! Very politely we declined his offer. I admit that I felt totally lost for a moment. Then Al, veteran of many Indian bus journeys, headed for the bus station office.

"Not only is there a bus leaving in a few minutes, it's an air conditioned bus, and the fare is only 200 rupees each! And, even better than that, there are buses all the time! That bloke was lying through his teeth!"

We got on. We had comfy seats, still plastic wrapped, still new enough for the plastic wrapping not to be too cracked. And, insanely, the bus left before it was even a quarter full. Sri Lankan buses do not leave before they're full, there's no way they can possibly make a profit if they do.

What's meant to happen is that the bus boy yells the destination at the bus station and at every group of people the bus passes. And it travels from town to town getting fuller and fuller until the only room left is fuller than you could ever expect. Not this bus. To me it looked as if they made about 2,000 rupees on a trip that cost 3,000 in diesel. Very odd.

The trip only took two and a half hours. That beat the train hollow. And 600 rupees versus 7,500 with railway scam boy was good news.

Something tells me that he wasn't travelling anywhere that day. He just saw tourists in the ticket queue and thought "Yes, there is some cash for me!"

The trip was twisty, and we climbed about 1,500 metres up the mountains. I only got nauseous once! And we arrived in Nuwara Eliya, always pronounced "Nurellia".

It wasn't as chilly as we'd been led to believe.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 7

"Hello, I recognise you from the hotel."

"Hello." We didn't recognise him from the hotel, but a new chat-up line is always fun. We explained we were going to the market.

"Market closes in an hour and a half for the festival. I show you. Come quick."

Well, no, it wasn't closing, not until the evening, a LONG time later. We had the idea that he was a stranger to the truth. More than an idea. Even so he was still showing us the shortest way to the market, so we went along with his charade.

Many times he told us that the hotel doesn't let him speak to guests and he would lose his job if we told them. And he asked if we were angry that he was talking to us. Al likes these guys. I can't stand them. He finds out about their life stories, chats away. I get bored fast.

But he did show us the way to Kandy market, and it isn't hugely obvious.

He's a tout, obviously. He hopes to get a commission from the traders and a tip from the tourists. We bought fruit, and I got a sarong and a Nehru collared shirt. Mel found some pashminas. I wondered if they were fruit or clothing!

We found two types of passion fruit. The locals seem to prefer a golden and very sweet one, and the more 'usual' sweet-sour one was frowned on, or at least not so readily available.

The food market is amazing. This is not, or ought not to be, a poor nation. There is an abundance of fresh fruit, meat, fish, vegetables. There are many kinds of rice. There is, of course, tea, though Sri Lanka exports the best tea for the best money. But the prices are so low that, surely, anyone can afford to eat pretty well. Or am I being naive?

Tout boy eventually came clean and asked for "a beer", which he wanted to have dry, as a handful of 300 rupees. Al surprised himself by handing over 200. And we headed back to eat fruit.

Have I mentioned that durian tastes like leeks and custard? And that Al loves it? Well, Mel and I tried it. Barfomatic! Al left it in or digs that night, Salon Dil, booked by Lake Bungalow because they had overbooked us. The thing stinks as badly as it tastes.

Back to the market for Mel's sari.

There were so many wonderful silks, the 'wear once for a special event' type. She looked fabulous in one, but needed a more practical one which could be washed with care, not dry cleaned only.

From final choice to measured for the blouse and fitted took only two and a half hours. This picture is the final steps of the tailoring, in the market, outside the store.

And the tourist heavens opened to reveal a small flock of French people, all choosing to look but not buy. Except one who wanted his Magic Box mended.

Why was I surprised that the trader spoke English, French, Dutch and German?

The finished sari? I'll show you later. Glamourous, very.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 6

You have to go barefoot and bareheaded into temples. Shoulders must be covered, and ladies must wear skirts or trousers long enough to go below the knee. You get your shoes minded for a few rupees by a professional shoe minder. At the Temple of the Tooth Relic we saw the class system in operation.

At the outer gates there is the shoe depository for locals. An embarrassingly long way in is the shoe depository for foreigners. We we embarrassed enough to remove our shoes at the locals' place and carry them all the way to the foreigners' place. Go us!

To me this temple, while important, was a bit plastic. But to the locals it is very different. It's great to see a place of worship being used as a part of the community. In one part, not the most sanctified part, people were sitting in quiet contemplation, or chatting, or little kids were playing, all in a place of great spiritual significance. I loved that. And I also loved the offerings of flowers everywhere. There's something deeply pleasing about the appearance of Buddhism. I just can't put my finger on it. [apologies for the lack of focus in the picture. While we were allowed to take pictures we also did not want to intrude, and worked too fast for the camera]

We did see the full story of the Tooth relic, including an attempt to smash it causing it to glow brightly and rise into the sky as a star. I guess resurrection is everywhere. Or is that a chariot of fire? There are about 30 tableaux like this one showing what happened to it.

Upstairs, in the museum, is also an exchange of letters with the then British Governor around 1900 showing that even we Brits saw the importance of protecting the relic and returning it to the Temple. Some fool officer had seized it at some point and it was away form the Temple for ages.

There isn't a tableau about the stupid British officer.

There's a huge amount to see. And, if you are lucky, for 100 rupees donation to the temple and 100 rupees donated to the person, windows and doors that are closed will be opened for you to see otherwise unavailable views, like the underside of the golden roof. Ok, it IS through a security grille, but the did have a massive terrorist truck bomb here a few years ago, so a bit of protection is not to be begrudged.

I don't mind giving rupees to someone who's done something worthwhile. Who would? But we met someone with a set of lies we hadn't heard before, next.

We'd left the temple, had a bite of lunch, and were heading for the market. Al wanted fruit. Well, Al wanted a durian fruit, to be precise. And some passion fruits, mangoes, and, if in season (they weren't) rambutans.

And we met him, or he met us, while we were hesitating about whether we headed for the bus station to plan our next journey leg, or to go straight to the market.

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 5

It's odd, really. At the monastery we were introduced to a trainee monk who showed us round. The training takes six years. He tied a three part cord around our necks with some sort of significance that escapes me! When it falls off I am meant to hang it on a tree. Since I need all the luck I can get right now (We have the builders in modifying the house and fitting a kitchen!), I am still wearing mine!

So, here I am with a piece of yellow cotton round my neck as a talisman!

We were on the way to the Temple of the Tooth relic when he diverted us. It was a great diversion. I far preferred the monastery to the temple. They run a school at the monastery, and this looks as if it might be an exam in progress.

So far we haven't seen a schoolroom with windows. I'm really not sure what happens when the monsoon rains come. We know it rains like crazy from a snippet about Kandy Station. Apparently, though not obviously, it is being refurbished at present. A prime concern is rainwater drainage. So what happens to schools in the rain?

Good lord. I meant to write all about the Temple of the Tooth relic here. I guess I got sidetracked. But, for those of you who can stand it, there will be more!

The one thing we kept noticing is the urgency with which taxi and tuk tuk drivers hustle for fares. Locals use them, of course they do, but tourist money would be a major boost to the economy. I can't see why we stay away en masse.

"Please phone me. I'm too busy to answer your posts on my forum!"

Bizarrely, I received this email from a advert groupage provider.

I'd asked, on their forum, when their service would start to generate cash. The forum is a great place to give them compliments and criticisms. Great customer service.

They emailed me and asked if I would mind shutting up on the forum and calling them on the phone because, broadly, they were too busy to spend time answering stuff on the forum.

I guess I hit a nerve, then. I wonder when they will generate cash.

I will not be phoning them. So far I have made 32 cents and that does not pay for a transatlantic call. Anyway, if I called they would be on the phone for FAR longer than it takes for a forum reply!

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 4

Back in Kandy for a couple more nights, in part because it's on the way south, and in part because Mel wanted to buy a sari, something she looks astounding in, we visited the Temple of The Tooth Relic.

We were met on the way by a young man who was offering prayers towards them temple, and who greeted us warmly, and showed us to a monastery where his father was a dancing teacher, and there were some amazing things we never knew about to be seen. Amazing marketing, because I'm still not sure whether he had a profit motive, or whether he simply wanted to show off the temple.

He did get us to sign up for, but not pay for, the 5:30pm Kandean dancing outside the Temple, but at 300 rupees I doubt his cut of the take was much, and he showed us a Batik shop inside, or maybe outside the monastery where we bought a couple of pretty Batiks at a much lower price than offered.

We'd seen the dancing before, so we didn't go. We did see the statue of the last King of Sri Lanka, though. Odd place to find it, in a temple. The story tells that he never touched alcohol until he was given a glass of toddy. After that he never looked back! And the sentences he gave out for minor crimes tended to involve people dying a lot.

Booze has a lot to answer for!

He did tells us [not the King, do keep up!] that some very high ranking Japanese Buddhist priests or monks were attending the temple of the Tooth relic that day, but we viewed that to be a terminological inexactitude to get us to go to the dancing, which we skipped, having seen it already in the Community Centre. It's a nightly thing in two locations!

Anyway, there wasn't enough security for any high ranking Buddhist blokes, so we wondered what he was on about.

Now, I've been roundly criticised for the way I'm writing up Sri Lanka. A very good friend said "I like the pictures, but the words, while interesting, are too long. Make it a vignette per item, otherwise you are forcing us to watch all your holiday snaps instead of letting us skip to where we want to go."

So that's the end of this vignette. He's probably right. He usually is.

These charitable expeditions to the less developed world...

While we were in Sri Lanka, we met a couple of groups of kids on a charitable expedition. Back home one of Mel's friends has a daughter on a similar expedition. These are the character building things where the kid has to raise (say) £3,000, and go and build a school or dig a well or something in a deserving place. And they sound great.

We met an expedition leader in a tea factory in Sri Lanka after we'd met a group of kids in Rams, an excellent Indian restaurant in Kandy. The latter group got through a whole bottle of ketchup with their meal. I almost mentioned the Heinz Deli Mayo fiasco to them!

I asked the leader about the maths. He told us that the organising company was not shy. It is in business both to do good and make a profit. And that is fair and equitable. The kids raise £3,000 each or so. £800 is donated to the project by the organising company. That leaves £2,200 for flights, group leader's pay, accommodation, food, insurance, first aid and profit.

Our travel insurance for our trip cost £94 for the three of us. Lets say that equates to £40 per kid. Theirs includes being helicoptered out. Add another £50. Round it up to £100 for insurance. We have £2,100 left.

They are there for three weeks. Our lodgings at £4 per room per night were by no means bottom end lodgings, but lets assume two kids sharing a room (thus £2 per night) for 21 nights. That is £42. Meals are about £1.50 per meal, 3 meals a day for 21 days mean £4.50 per day, or £100, and 5 litres of water per day at 25 pence per litre for 21 days makes another £30 or so.

So where are we now. Food, necessary drink, and lodgings make £130. Call it £150. We have £1,950 left.

I'm not even bothering with local transport costs. £5 per kid will bus them anywhere in the country twice! The rounding up I've been doing covers that!

Air fare and transport to the airport. Three of is flew for just under £1,800 return, or £600 each, and it cost us £50 each return by rail to Gatwick. So, let's take £700 off to be generous. £1,250 left.

Now, that £1,250 has to cover the £2,000 worth of drugs they have to carry with them, plus the flights and costs of two leaders. The group size looked to be about 30 kids.

So, 30 lots of £1,250 give us £37,500. Take off £2,000 for the drugs and round it down to £35,000 for minor contingencies.

The leaders can't be well paid. But let's take their costs as £10,000 overall for the 2 weeks. That includes flights, food, wages, expenses, treatment for grazed knees, the lot.

Hmm. We have £25,000 left. That's quite a lot. That's an awful lot. And that's great marketing.

Why great marketing?

Kids love the idea of going. Parents like the environment of safety abroad. Raising the £3,000 is good character building stuff. The recipient projects gain handsomely. Cross cultural friendships are made. Prejudices are set aside. And the expedition companies make a substantial profit in the new "School adventure" and "Organised Gap year" markets.

So why does the maths make the hairs on the back of my neck rise?

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 3

Did I tell you about the hotel at Pollonaruwa? Or show you the view from the top of the Sigiriya rock?

No, I did not!

I'm right back at the theme of Sri Lanka needing tourists. We stayed at the Siyanco Holiday Resort. Now look, it isn't a holiday resort. It's a very good medium range hotel. 3,500 rupees for the three of us for the night. This was a bargained down rate because we chose to have the aircon switched off and just use the ceiling fans. It's a four month old hotel, bright, clean and sparkling, with excellent facilities, great staff and no guests.

They treated us so well that I promised them a plug, so here it is. Book on 027 2226867/68. They do have a website "coming soon", but I expect that will be November some time. Sri Lankan timelines are not the fastest in the world! Marketing cuts both ways. We had the best rice and curry ever in the evening, and great conversation with the manager. So I am marketing his hotel.

He needs to market it, too. There isn't a sign, there's no website, and it's too new for The Lonely Planet.

He's pretty damned fed up with the war. Everyone wants it over soon. It affects tourism badly, but it just doesn't get into the lives of individual tourists. We see army checkpoints and machine gun nests, of course we do, but they only affect us if we travel by bus, or sometimes by tuk tuk.

I also never showed you the Lotus Pool!

There are (probably) seven of them, but this is the only one excavated so far. To a stonemason this is all in a day's work, but I think this sculptured pool is absolutely amazing. But what would it look like full of water? Are the lower steps a waste and a conceit, or do they work?

Maybe one day we'll find out. It would be absolutely great to see Pollonaruwa with all the hydraulics functioning

I left something out of the Botanical Gardens, too, at Paradeniya. The snogging forest, the one with more than snogging in places!

I left out the handbag trees!

There I was, minding my own business, wondering why Melanie always takes my camera and deciding to buy her one of her own, when she asked, "What is that in that tree?"

"Handbags. It's a handbag tree!" Well, I was hot!

Then we looked closely as something the size of a tea tray took off, circled the tree and landed.

"Twinkle twinkle, little bat,
How I wonder what you're at.
Round about my head you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky!"

Click the picture and you'll see flying foxes. There were trees upon trees with them. And, that night, at dusk, they flew into Kandy. We also saw them at the tank in Pollonaruwa.

I forgot the pillar box in Sigiriya, too! Not just in Sigiriya, of course not. Another legacy of the British Raj, and very much in use today.

In Kandy we posted four postcards in one that looked neglected, expecting them to arrive in December. But they arrived before we got home!

Amazing when a plan comes together.

There's so much there it's impossible to show even a tenth of it. The atmosphere, the hawkers of goods, the smiles on the locals' faces, especially when you wear a sarong instead of trousers. No, they're pleased, not laughing at you. Truly. It's not like when you wear a kilt and are not Scots!

The hawkers all sell the same crappy tat, though. "Magic Box, Sir? Can you open Magic Box?"

Well, yes, I can. I did, eventually, buy a coconut bangle for a good friend and an elephant hair bangle for me. Mel bought carved elephants, and Al bought an amazing Krishna with very good carved detail.

While there are obviously aimed at tourists they are not at the hugely inflated coach tour prices of the Sigiriya woodcarving workshop. We recommend street vendors and haggling any day.

I was very remiss in not showing you the view from the top of the rock, too.

The lake at the foot is natural. On the top of the rock is a swimming pool, of all things. And the water was pumped up the rock from the lake using bamboo pumps and pipes.

If you look carefully you can reverse the view and find the Hotel Sigiriya, too. Now, which one of those monkeys stole my breakfast?

There's a guard post on the rock with a highly polished seat that overlooks an unfenced precipice. The idea was that you did not fall asleep at your post. or I suppose you tendered your immediate resignation if you did, while screaming in your sleep as you fell!

And I never showed you us, shown here in Lake Bungalow in Kandy on an antique bench between the tusks of a long dead and much loved family tusker.

We headed back to Kandy via Dambulla, where the Japanese government has donated a huge and gaudy golden Buddha that looks rather plastic. It's so plastic it's rather horrible. But the virtue of Dambulla is high up the rock there.

About half a Sigiriya Rock high there are the most incredible caves with painted walls and ceilings. They're rammed full of Buddhas, but the Buddhas are not the wonder here. It's the painted rocks you've come to see, so try not to be distracted by the statuary.

I'm back to my theme, though. It was wonderful not to be sharing the five caves with a charabanc tour singing "Didn't we have a luvverly time the day we went to Bangor...", but we shared them with no-one.

The peace was wonderful.

But these places need money in order to survive and be maintained. They do not survive on fresh air and good will. They require tourism, with all the positive and the negative benefits of tourism. And there are no tourists.

So, let's get this right. The civil war is contained. It's irrelevant. The tsunami is long gone. Folk died in each, folk are still dying in the civil war. It's a crying shame that each disaster has happened, but they should not keep you away from this superb nation with its awe inspiring treasures.

Just be aware that climbing Sigiriya Rock and Dambulla on the same day is a challenge for a tubby middle aged bloke

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 2

Wow. What an amazing place to stay!

Lake Bungalow's on the south side of the lake and up a side road. It's run by an amazing couple who've owned it for over 30 years. They used to get a lot of trade from the VSO, but, for some reason a decision has been made to stay in Colombo, so they've lost out more than a little.

This is the view of their garden from our breakfast table. It took me ages to realise that there is no wall or window, and that breakfast in Lake Bungalow is taken under a veranda out of doors, in company with the most enormous yellow Labrador, and a rather cheeky Mina Bird.

They arranged a car and driver for us for the next three days. We intended to use buses, but they were aghast! And, to be fair, and with glorious hindsight, the car and driver (we dubbed him 'Parker') were well worth it.

Now Parker is probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he has a good job driving for a Kandy tour company. The guy we booked with told us "Brand new car, sir, brand new, with air conditioning."

It turned out to be a Hyundai Elantra with rear inside door handles that snapped off. So we'll not be buying one of those, then! Oh, it was at least two years old with about 70,000km on the clock. And I fear that the broken door handles come out of Parker's wages.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Day one we went to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. Ok, it is a zoo, really, but it also looks after orphaned elephants well, and it has to make money in order to do so. And you can 'meet' the elephants, talk to them, touch them.

Even the little one in the middle of the group here was approachable, with attendants hovering, and the aunts allows us to meet it and touch it.

That was quite an experience, standing among these powerful creatures, and, as strangers, being trusted by them to approach and touch a baby that can't have been more than a week old.

Even at Pinnawala there were very few tourists. Some would say "just as well" because the beasts certainly do not need crowding, but there were maybe 40 non local faces. The good thing is that the attractions attract the locals (and they are priced differently for the locals). The bad thing is that they need tourist money to function, and that money is absent.

We are insane, of course! We did the trip to Pinnawala by tuk tuk! That is about 30km each way! Stupid and fun!

On the way back we stopped at the Botanical Gardens. A great place for trysts, it seems. There was snogging behind pretty much every tree, and in at least one case more than snogging!

Back to Parker! We left the next day at about 10 to head for Pollonaruwa. Parker's driving was less pushy that the tuk tuk guy's! Actually we were almost overtaken by tuk tuks a lot of the time. It took us ages to realise that drivers are instructed to drive slowly so as not to scare their passengers. When we asked him to drive normally life become far more adrenaline filled!

We took for ever to get to Pollonaruwa. Arrived finally at around 6pm. It's only about 150km or so, but we stopped for lunch (good food, but oh my god, the toilets! And these were western toilets, too!) at Dambulla (Parker thought we wanted to see it on the way north, not on the return trip. Getting him to understand simple instructions was not always easy. He appeared to understand us, and then did unusual things instead!).

A Google search will tell you more about the ruined city of Pollonaruwa than I ever can. It's the remains of an astoundingly busy city, partly preserved, partly restored, based around a tank (local term for an enormous reservoir) that was the areas irrigation lifeline since time immemorial. The tank's been restored, but the complex sluices of antiquity have been lost, and the tank isn't managed properly to clean it out annually. Maybe that's a government thing. Or we can blame the Brits when we ruled the place.

The enormous stupa is certainly the largest in Sri Lanka. It may even be the largest in all Asia. Unless I've got it badly wrong, each stupa (certainly each significant stupa) contains a stone with nine compartments, each of which holds a relic of Buddha. Makes you wonder just how many complete bodies they can rebuild from all the relics. But the stupas are solid. no-one can get in to check!

Next stop another ancient place: Sigiriya. A Sri Lankan guest at Lake Bungalow had said to us, "Even though it is an expensive hotel, stay one night at the Hotel Sigiriya, sit at the bar and look at the view of the rock with a very large gin and tonic in your hand.

We did that thing!

We'd planned a dip in the pool, but, somehow, we slept past that the next morning. It's a bit of a package tour hotel, this one, full of people not quite understanding how to be guests in a strange land, but it does well enough.

I had my breakfast plate raided by a local verminous monkey, the food was good, though by no means Sri Lankan, the beds were comfy, and yes, even for a hotel of this size I negotiated a lower room rate.

And the next day we set out for the rock.

Ever the professional, Parker couldn't find it, even though it was as plain as the nose on his face.

The idea was to climb the rock. Melanie (She Who Must Be Obeyed At All Times) does not do heights. We've told her that all the injuries happen in the last half inch of a fall, but she still doesn't believe us! And here she was, choosing to climb a 200 metre plus rock, up steps, spiral stairs, and in once case what was pretty much an open sided narrow ladder!

I am designed to climb slowly. So I found small Sri Lankan touts pushing me up the steps in the hope of rupees. "I am helper, Sir!"

They're so polite it seems rude to turn them away, and when you try they insist on staying. But Mel managed in no uncertain terms while I was failing to catch my breath after being pushed at speed up a flight of stairs I wanted to linger over!

In days long ago there must have been splendid buildings clinging to the walls of the rock. All that remains now is the Mirror Wall, behind which is a protected path and much graffiti dating from at least 1,100AD.

The touts tell you proudly while insisting on pushing you up steps that there are 1,202 steps, which you will never manage without their help.

It's a long, long, hot climb. You do feel pretty exposed on some of it. And, since a king was the instigator, and since he had 500 concubines in his palace at the top (plus swimming pool) I hypothesise that the steps cut into the rock are really foundations for a more substantial structure which allowed regal progress without the danger of a sudden fall to his death!

Especially the last part!

Kings do not clamber about on rock faces. Kings are especially wary about this when one small push from an assassin could be passed off as "He slipped, honest!"

So look carefully at the rocks by the iron steps (circa 1938) and see what you think. Carved steps or carved foundations?

The view from the top is indescribably breathtaking. There's an even better view in a few days, but this was the best so far. No wonder this was made into a palace, not just because it is easy to defend.

I wonder if they had a chair lift back then?

When we got down, Parker found us with the car. It probably took him the three hours we spent there to find the tourist car park!

Sri Lanka desperately needs tourists - Part 1

Why no blog for the past couple of weeks? Simple. I've been on vacation. Or, rather more to the point, my son took me and She Who Must be Obeyed At All Times on an adventure. We joked that he was taking his children with him!

Last year he vanished in September, to reappear in May after visiting Thailand, Nepal, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Myanmar. Half way through he called and said “Dad, ask Mum if she'd like to see Sri Lanka?” I did. She did. So we booked three return flights and no accommodation! Brave us! Or rather, Brave him! Fancy taking two old farts on a trip like that!

And what is this doing in a blog about marketing?

That part's easy. Sri Lanka seriously needs marketing. And this blog entry is my small part of saying a heartfelt 'thank you' to the land and citizens. Ok, that sounds pretentious, but I think you know what I mean.

Let me set out my stall:

Sri Lanka is a small nation. Wikipedia says: “Sri Lanka, officially the 'Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka'; known as Ceylon before 1972, is an island nation in South Asia, located about 31 kilometres (19.3 mi) off the southern coast of India. It is home to around twenty million people.” And the thing is, it ought to be extremely prosperous. It just isn't.

It has plenty of rice, loads of well cultivated vegetables, decent livestock for those who eat meat, and a fantastic harvest of good fresh sea and lake fish. It has a substantial population capable of productive work, and it has industry ranging from tea to heavy engineering. And, if you add to that the fact that it's a paradise, almost Shangri La, then you start to wonder why it seems to be a strangely underdeveloped and poverty ridden nation. And one of the reasons is the lack of tourism.

I'm not going to make a case for package tours. After all, Monty Python's Flying Circus says it so well:

“What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day."

And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.”

That really isn't what Sri Lanka needs. Really not. And, luckily, those people don't need Sri Lanka! I'll try and show you why.

Day one we arrived after a pretty long trip from the English Summer in Bracknell. We took the train to Gatwick, and flew in two hops via Qatar to Colombo. The Lonely Planet told us we could catch a commuter train to Colombo Fort Station from “A station 500 metres from the airport”, so we tried to get some rupees (I would like to offer my grateful thanks to First Direct, who blocked my debit card instantly because they decided it was potential fraud at the very first ATM I tried) and walked towards where we were assured a station was.

Of course the whole time we were finding the ATM, trying and failing to get money out, walking hither and yon, we had the benefit of taxi touts, some of whom assured us there was no bus to Colombo (there are loads) and all of who wanted more than 3,000 rupees to take us to the city! And it was hot and humid.

And we found the station, though it was more like a whole kilometre away, involving walking along a long hot road outsiode the airport fence wondering if it would ever come into view.

Only there were no commuter trains.

A helpful heavily armed patrol of the Sri Lankan Air Force told us that they sometimes went north to Negombo, but we'd have to get a bus to Colombo. We opted to head to a small group of shops and negotiated a taxi to Colombo Fort for 1,600 rupees. At 210 to the pound that's not half bad! A litre of petrol is 157 rupees here. In the UK it's about 230 rupees per litre.

You've already seen the first issue that deters tourists. The words 'heavily' and 'armed'. This nation has been in civil conflict for a quarter of a century, but, since the Tamil Tigers are now on the losing side it appears as if instances of terrorism will rise as they become increasingly desperate. But, as someone whose working career started in London at the height of the IRA bombings, way before we gave dates to bombs and cared about their anniversaries, in reality the small number of buses that get bombed is immaterial. It just isn't going to happen to a bus I'm on, in the same way that I never got blasted at Harrods, or in Canary Wharf.

But it puts tourists off.

And so, weirdly, did the 2004 tsunami. “It's not worth going. There's nothing left!” Which is total unmitigated trash. Lets see why!

We're independent travellers. Though, to be fair, the last holiday I went on was a package tour to Huelva in southern Spain! Ah the irony!

So we caught the train from Colombo Fort to Kandy, 4 hours or so away, second class. The fare was under 300 rupees, against about 5,000 rupees by taxi from the airport. And the train is quite an experience. Apart from switching lines form narrow to standard gauge the track is not in the best condition, and no more has been laid since 1948 when the Brits left. We started with backpacks on the luggage racks.

Oh no! They have to go on the floor in case they explode! This seems more to be a passenger regulation than a railway regulation. They are afraid of bombs. Maybe we're just used to that sort of thing.

We shook, rattled and rolled to Kandy. I had a cardboard box of live chickens on my feet for the first hour. It was crowded. Vendors came in selling vdai (fried patties of spiced stuff, pronounced 'waddi”), nuts, drinks. We had a kilo of small bananas, which Al (our son) bought at the station fruit and veg stall on the platform! [Memo to 'the housewife': demand Sri Lankan bananas. They have flavour! Ours are rubbish!]

Kandy is an amazing bustling place, home of the Temple of the Tooth Relic, a relic of Buddha revered for centuries, retrieved from his funeral pyre, and taken to the temple in Kandy. The story is in pictures inside the temple.

Of course you can't get away from the bombing history - a truck bomb damaged the temple seriously a few years back, but security and bag searches are so tight that, while you can't say "never again" you can certainly think it would be extremely hard for another incident like that there to take place.

Out of the station into the hurly burly of "taxi, sir? MY taxi, sir? Tuk tuk, sir?

You can fit three adults, with backpaks into a tuk tuk!

We're talking about a 3 wheeled Vespa with arbitrary brakes, almost certainly built in India by Bajaj and owned proudly by its driver, a man who needs tourists. We're looking broadly at 40 rupees per km here, but business is so thin that they compete downwards to earn just about anything.

Ours looked at our girth. Well the others are slim, I'm on the portly side. Then he looked at the bags. We agreed, well Al agreed, 250 rupees for the trip. That's about £1.20 or so for a lot of uphill work and a load of traffic dodging for the entire kilometre to Lake Bungalow, one of only two hotels we'd booked for the trip.

And, apart from this week, when Kandy is full for the Esala Perahera, something we managed to miss by total accident, everywhere needs people in hotel rooms. Lake Bungalow is no exception, and yet it charges only £4 per room per night. 1,600 rupees, though breakfast is a whole 300 rupees per head extra!

The Perahera? Back to Wikipedia again:

Kandy is also popular because of the annual festival known as the Esala Perahera in which one of the inner caskets used for covering the tooth relic of Buddha is taken in a grand procession through the streets of the city. This casket is taken on a tusker of royal caste. The procession includes traditional dancers and drummers, flag bearers of the provinces of the old Kandyan kingdom, the Nilames (lay custodians of temples ) wearing their traditional dresses, torch bearers and also the grandly attired elephant. This ceremony which is annually held in the months of July or August, attracts large crowds from all parts of the country and also many foreign tourists.

More follows later, I'm still exhausted from what I found the builders had not done when I got home yesterday morning! Yes, I was mad enough to ask them to modify my kitchen while away. And yes, I believed it would be done. But my builder had a nervous breakdown a week ago and ran away leaving the place in tatters. Still, he says he will be back on site tomorrow at 8am!

Ah, there's Lord Lucan, and he's riding Shergar!