Mirissa (3)

We're now on our last day in Mirissa. My, how time flies in the Land of the Lotus Eaters. In the giddy delirium of my old age it has been my habit to install myself in my garden (and occasionally a beer garden), pour myself some mind-expanding chilled amber fluid, and deep-dive into a book saturated with cosmic jelly. Here, I've barely read a chapter. Mostly because the scenery keeps moving in interesting ways; much as it really, really doesn't do in Totton. The sea moves endlessly. The crash zone is a source of endless entertainment, especially when unsupervised babies get carried away. People are constantly wandering to and fro in various stages of undress. Occasionally, young women will gallop by with their Fitbits (my thrice-damned hindbrain tells me there's a pun in there somewhere). Jetskis crash land on the beach, missing disoriented swimmers. Yesterday, some guy ran a drone up and down the beach, herding all the local pub dogs backwards and forwards in a frenzy. See? Great fun!

On the subject of moving scenery, and thinking about the comment Gary made a couple of posts back, I would like to make an old man's observation at this point: howcum young women manage NOT to wear bikini bottoms yet just about remain legal? An example: I was sitting at my spot at Kama's gazing out at the sea, as every student of Hemingway should aspire to, when my eyes drifted back to the bar . . . straight into a shapely pair of just-about naked buttocks, the owner of which bent over the table right in front of me fishing some money out of her purse. (Did I mention Kama's has no dress code whatsoever?) Seriously, c'mon, I have a delicate constitution (!).

Anyway, lest this post degenerates into pervy "Tales From Buttocks Beach", back to Mirissa. I've mentioned little of the food mainly because the heat makes it difficult to handle the big meals we eat at home to ward off the chill of winter. We discovered wraps are the ideal beach food. You can put anything in them (prawn curry, chillied onions, battered spicy musrooms, to name a few we'd tried), and as long as the roti bread holds out at the bottom you can eat large versions cut in half slumped on a chair on the beach without the need for a formal English dining table. A few nights ago we finally got round to ordering a main meal each at Kama's. Linda had the  jumbo prawn and heartily ripped into an armoured beastie served with fluffy rice, salsa and a mild curry sauce. I had a black pork curry, a bowl of tender pork in a dark curry sauce to mix with the rice and some chips. Wasn't cheap by local standards. Together with a large beer, a gin and tonic and a mojhito it came to around £30 but at least, unlike anything you buy from any major hotel in Sri Lanka, it didn't come with a 30% tax hike. We're proudly keeping the local economy alive!

Today, we walked to the end of the bay where the sea comes in with multiple crash zones and surfers have a chance of travelling a few more seconds without exploding into white foam. (Okay, no tales of whale watching or quad bike racing or anaconda wrestling or racing across the desert flats on our Harleys -- what were you expecting? we're bloody old, alright!). Interesting that the first voices we heard were, "Did you bring your wallet, dear?", from a septugenarian who'd just thought of it as her husband had settled into his seat. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry", she said to the waiter as she ordered  a cup of tea, "we must of left our money in the hotel". Looking around we realised this is where the retirees are supposed to reside. The average age was increased by at least 40 years and the buttocks were most definitely not worth reporting. NOOOO! We drank our banana smoothies and got the hell outta Dodge. The sun has passed the mythical yardarm by the time we paddled through the shallows on our way back to civilization so we stopped at what used to be the only Reggae bar on the beach for a recuperative lunchtime beer to discuss the meaning of life. A chalkboard at the front advertised "Crazy Thursday" and a leaflet explained that it was all about a hip-hop, garage, minimalist (?), rap, shouty festival of partypartyparty fun from 9 o'clock onwards. So here we are in limbo, too young to drink tea at lunchtime and too old to party to hip-hop after 9 o'clock.

Surrendering to the familiar, we dropped in at Kama's and asked if they could reserve our favourite Hemingway table at the front for sunset drinkies and supper. Don't fight a lost war, I say. Stick with what works! Tomorrow we leave here, probably for ever. But, next stop Hikkaduwa.