Drinks are on me!

A wet day today – the wettest for a while. I went out this afternoon to do the rounds of the garden shops to try to find an attractive indoor hanging basket or pot, but I found nothing. I was also hoping to buy a winter jasmine to hang down the wall at the back of the house, but again, nothing. I shall have to resort to online buying!

Due to the COVID pandemic we’re of course unable to meet with our Photo Club members, so in lieu of a speaker this evening – an illustrated talk on Namibia - we’re asking members to take a photograph of an unusual object in the house and post it on Facebook for the rest of us to have a guess at. I hope no Photo Club members are reading this or they’ll see the answer! It’s not an ideal situation as at least two of our 14 members won’t touch Facebook with a barge pole, but we’re not sure what to do about that.

This object is a Nepalese drinking vessel, known as a tongba, or a tomba as we thought it was pronounced when I was last there. I didn’t see it written down in English, of course. In the mountain villages they ferment millet in a big cask in the local boozer and when it’s ready the mixture is spooned into these vessels and the liquid sucked up through a thin bamboo with a small slit at the bottom to filter out the grain. Somebody comes round and tops you up from time to time. It’s supposed to be mildly alcoholic, but I thought it tasted like warm washing-up water, or what I expected washing-up water to taste like!

Before we left I asked our sirdar if he could find me one to take home. He eventually found someone willing to sell me one, rather grudgingly I think, as she said they were difficult to come by and she’d have to buy another one. Anything to put the price up! To my surprise she popped a small potato into it, to stop it drying out I think. Unfortunately over the years it’s shrunk and the lid won’t fit anymore – and the brass rings, put on to keep it from splitting I suppose, now slide off. But it’s a lovely reminder of my two visits to the Himalayas.

Limerick of the Day:

A corpulent matron from Dorset,
Broke the zip on the front of her corset.
Said her husband 'Don't fret
You'll get out of it yet!
Just hold tight to the bed and I'll force it!