Val + I breakfasted at the Lunch Box. Despite its limiting title, we reckon its one of the best restaurants in town, for any meal. They had a poster up for a play showing at one of the local hotels, reminding us that we’d planned to see it when we got back. Tonight would be our last chance of doing so, but we had also arranged to meet Phil this evening, so I went off to find him + sound him out about it. He wasn’t at his guest-house, so I was pretty sure I’d find him in Naryan’s, his own favourite haunt, + in this I was quite correct.
My idea, since I didn’t know anything about the play, was to go down to the hotel where it was showing, + find out some information, but since his guest-house was on the way, Phil lured me in there for Bob Hope + cards. Satisfyingly, I beat him every game, which infuriated him intensely. Like me, + Val too for that matter, he is a rotten loser, + unchecked, a gloating winner too. We played a game of crib where one tries to lose. The other games one could play automatically – a decided advantage when not in full control of one’s faculties, but loser’s crib required a whole new set of programmed instructions. Eventually, + in a severely depleted mental state, I dragged Phil out to see about the play. He turned out to be very much a devil’s advocate, being a right philistine (Phil the Philistine – it’s just struck me.) However, I must admit that the newspaper blurb on the play that they had pinned up in the hotel foyer was not encouraging, + that every indication was that, as Phil stated flatly, the whole thing was a lot of pretentious twaddle. Even so, if it hadn’t been for Phil, I might have been tempted to give it a whirl anyway – it had music, so I reckoned it couldn’t be too bad, but since Phil to some extent was relying on our company, I agreed not to bother.
We were now on the other side of the river, + decided for the sake of variety to head back to the city proper via a different route. Inevitably, as always happens to me whenever I wander from the 3 streets I know, we got lost, tho’ only mildly + temporarily. Our journey back across the river was a real blast, staggering our way over a rickety, wobbly + very long footbridge. We both had the giggles all the way. It delivered us to the Durbar Sq area however, close to home, for me anyway.
Having escorted me safely back, Phil went back to his place, telling us he would return in an hour or so. Which he duly did – time to top up on the Bob Hope, after which a fine dinner at the Lunch Box, then cards, back in our seedy little room. I’m not sure I entirely approve of Phil, + Val actively dislikes some aspects of the man. He certainly can be a provoking bugger, + there’s a certain arrogance, particularly in some of his dealings with locals, which I find unattractive. An English public-school product.
Despite my doubts, I do seem to have allowed him to influence our lives. We would definitely have gone to see the play, for example, but instead allolwed this to be exchanged for cards and dope.
