Too many Pirates!

Hello - again - sailor!

It had to be a Blue Rock Mojito!
 

We re-entered Fraggle Rock on the first Sunday of Carnaval so had already missed a little of the action. As there would be few buses we engaged Windows Dave for the transfer home. He told us that two more British owned enterprises had closed, the main road was now fully open, there is a police scandal (see below) and that Blue Rock Claire was having her (significant) birthday bash that night. Sadly the last passed us by! The flights, the early morning and the highly resistant jet lag met the "little siesta" lasted until 11.30 pm. So we gently returned to normality during the week giving events a wide berth and looked forward to the weekend. The theme this year was The Caribbean:- plenty of scope one would imagine!  Ruth went down the Carmen Miranda route with the help of artificial fruit from one of the Chinese shops. Bob's outfit bore an uncanny resemblance to that of last year's South Pacific. Out there on Saturday evening there were a few zombies, a Fidel Castro on a bicycle, some Rastas with or without real or fake spliffs, and many, many pirates! Star Prize for originality went to Sandra and Dave whose costume is barely captured here (must sort the flash!), but was a meticulous evocation of Haitian Voodoo. Only a few chickens had been harmed to produce those bones! 


Fruit Wars at The Rock!

The procession was about "normal" size, with some glorious Rio-style glitz. There was one austerity float-load of thirty odd men who had done nothing on the costume front but were consuming a lot of beer and presumably waiting for the outcome of the on-board barbecue which was smoking dramatically so it was as well the Wacky Races bomberos were behind! Wittiest of all - given the local news - was a set of Guardia Civil trailing white powder! (It is safer than usual out there on the roads at present with each week seeing new arrests of people in either the Guardia or local police force for various acts of corruption.)

Meanwhile! Sunday saw the Sardine thing! The fish in question was a good one - and those balloons made for spectacular popping at the cremation. The fireworks were spectacular and the crowd was enormous, with some mumbling about council expenditure, but in fact they were sponsored this year by Fund Grube. 'Hate their shops, but Gracias!





Not quite retirement.. not quite restful paradise holiday!

The last few days have been frantic and follow on from multiple frustrations for our final week in Goa. The reason is the unexpected early departure of our tenants in our old house. This left us trying to get new ones in at short notice, at the wrong time of year, and in strange market conditions. After a flurry of early viewings we

were given very negative feedback about décor and furnishing, so we organised a big painting job to tone things down.  No problem with being absentee landlords for that bit, but then we realised the living room curtains were going to have to be replaced sixteen years after being lovingly crafted by Ruth. This is not easy to do remotely, so after pondering on the beach we decided we would have to spend time on site and the obvious plan was to jettison our onward flight from UK to Fuerteventura, book into a Croydon hotel and fly home four days later. This despite having appropriate clothes for only 12 hours each way!



Bob collapses under the stress!

So having made the necesary bookings we turned attention to ordering curtains online, often with very slow internet speeds. Debenhams seemed to be able to supply and we wrestled through to the end of the tortuous ordering process and heaved a sigh of relief, but within hours our tracking showed the order had been cancelled for some credit-related reason. Fury! We started again with an excellent company recommended to us, and now by us:- Tony´s Textiles. Within 24 hours the delivery arrived at our neighbour´s. Conclusion: Debenhams for Curtains? Curtains for Debenhams!

 

We relaxed for the next few days with the sea becoming increasingly inviting, and the temperature rising, and we left Palolem at 5.15 am on Tuesday morning. It had been a wonderful stay - even with the UK rental problems taking up time. In addition to the changes described in the last post there is now a Greek (Corfiot) -owned beach shack.



In the South of Goa? Weird!

For the return journey we had booked a slightly later domestic flight that would give us less time hanging around Mumbai airport, as the general rule is the fewer hours of that the better! We got the impression that our flight was going to be full (Something to do with a change of tariff after that day?), and it was a 747:- new to us on this route. It turned out to be almostly completely full. We had chosen our own seats online and had managed to pick one of the only two on the plane with non-functioning video (Bob got it!) As we made clear to the cabin crew and later in our complaint to BA the irony was that we could have paid a lot less for the flight with Jet, but were lured by the in-flight entertainment. Add to this a defective seatback in front of Ruth and being in the last row to receive the hot meal with no choice, and we were a bit disgruntled. We watched movies in shifts, were brought extra newspapers (unfortunatelty including the Daily Mail!) and then were given a glass of complimentary good champagne. (Since then we have also received 60GBP in BA vouchers, which feels like a result all round!)
So we are now post-Croydon resting up at the Radisson Blu at Stansted and due to fly at 6ish tomorrow morning with dear old Ryanair, where we will doubtless experience a rather different level of customer care! On each of the three days we took the train down to Balham and put in some hours prettifying the house and clearing out rubbish left by a succession of tenants. We took our decorating team out for a drink on one occasion, ate various British delicacies, bought teabags and opened a Metro Bank account which will give us free foreign currency withdrawals. (Watch out Nationwide we may soon be parting company!) It rained a great deal, and our one set of outer clothes - which doesn´t include coats -  has just about lasted out. We are exhausted, but feel it has been worth it.