There are quite a lot of young Europeans with families who come to Goa for the winter season to work in various businesses.  Some of them seem to discard their brains when they step into the sunshine and do things they wouldn’t dream of doing at home.

Take this morning for instance.  I was walking down the lane to the beach when a young father came past me on his scooter.  In front of him he had crammed two children who looked about 2 and 3.  Behind him, clutching on for dear life, was another, aged about 5.  None of them had helmets on, the children had shorts and t shirts on.  Now this would be a criminal offence at home and probably result in the social services getting involved.  Here no one bats an eye because it is all too common.  And you have to set it against the background of the very poor state of the lanes around here.  Imperfect tarmac, a lot of dust and sand all over the surfaces, liberal dobbings of cow dung everywhere, and then the hazard from other drivers.  The best result in case of an accident would be severely scraped legs on a surface that is very, very far from clean.  The worst doesn’t bear thinking about.  What makes it even madder is that the kids could be delivered to school in a tuktuk for about £1 or a taxi for about £1.50.

I saw another woman, also on a scooter, delivering her child to school, both without helmets.  And the woman looked like she had already broken her neck because she was driving along talking on her mobile phone which she had sandwiched between her ear and her shoulder, so her head was literally sideways.

It just beggars belief!

OK… rant over…. so today was a beach day as normal and followed our normal Patnem pattern of games and reading and swimming.  Bob went off to Chaudhi first thing and picked up his new glasses which are fabulous, and ordered another pair and also the sunglasses into his existing frames.  He’s saved an absolute fortune, probably over £900.

Mark, an ex neighbour from Dinesh’s house came down and wupped everyone at Scrabble.  Dinesh (not the house owner, another one, a Nepali) who used to work at Salida also called in for big hugs all round.  He got married this year and is working as a masseur on Talpona Beach with his wife who is a beautician.  Very nice to see him.

Tonight, we ate at Tantra.  We were eight: Jules, a friend we have made through Frede, joined us.  He is a lot of fun.  We had a great dinner.  I had prawn masala, and two margaritas.  Bob had chicken schnitzel with chips and salad and two bloody marys.  It came to about a tenner.