Sri Lanka is different to England

Hi

I have lived in Sri Lanka for over 2 weeks now and have spotted quite a few ways in which it is different to England, which is my home country. I'm qualified to point these out because 2 weeks is a pretty long time.

Think of this as one of those Buzzfeed lists which are compelling because of the way the list format draws you in, and on. Except I won't number the list entries. Actually yes I will.


1. Weather

It is currently 29 degrees. It's supposed to be raining but it's not. I don't know what it will be like year round but I know it will never be bollock freezing, until something really drastic happens. Supposedly it will get hotter over the next couple of months. We don't have hot water at the moment, except when it is really hot, which is when you don't want hot water, so there's that.

I'm not rubbing it in, I'm just saying.


2. Fruit

In our garden there is a coconut tree, a banana tree, three papaya trees, a passionfruit bush and a cheeky lil plant which I've signed an NDA for so can't name. We have also just planted a garden trough and various pots with a bunch of herbs and three types of tomato and three types of lettuce and all the other whathaveyous.

A is for aubergine. B is for bell pepper. C is for cauliflower, and chives. D is for Don't you wish you lived 2 mins from the sea?


3. Lizard

We have a monitor lizard called Toby who takes care of all the insects (not). He is quite long, maybe 120cm from tongue to tail. He pops by occasionally but actually doesn't stick around much. I haven't got a picture of him but this is broadly what he looks like. All told, monitor lizards are f*cking cool, and they have massive paws, which they use to catch the gnarliest waves.


4. Monkey

Pests here are called Cheeky Monkeys, because they are monkeys. They hop around on all fours with baby monkeys clinging to their chests and eat all the passionfruits off our bush.

There he is, the bastard.

Get him, Zombie.

"Meow." (No)

We encourage Zombie (the cat) to growl at them but he is much smaller than them, and they have four hands to punch with. So Zombie tells us to nominate someone our own size and rubs his head on a plantpot. Then he just lies there, doing fuck all and looking adorable.

He has a sedentary lifestyle and likes dog food even more than he likes sitting on the wardrobe, or licking people's food during a party.

Peripheral members of the family are Terreh, Christopher Reeve and Jeeves, all dogs, and two cats called Sally and Frankie Big Nuts. She is welcome, he is not.


5.

You can swim here without feeling like the underworld is gripping you from beneath and trying to pull you down into a frozen abyss.

//

There are also some similarities, like cashews are expensive, and riding a motorbike is fun. (I didn't do that in England but I assume it is also fun there. It certainly is fun in China. Happy to handle any disputations over a cup of Lion beer, or Erotic Nights tea.)

Say hello to my little friend,

Elton.

Also making things from scratch is still fun, maybe more so than before. So far I have made peanut butter out of peanuts, coconut milk out of coconuts, and a cocktail called Grey, which contains neither peanuts nor coconuts.

Together we have made all kinds of things, all of which are vegan, like vegan sausages and vegan burgers and vegan meatballs, only I think it's a bit silly to call a vegan meatball a vegan meatball, because meatball denotes meat, and veganism denotes the absence thereof, therefore "vegan balls", only that also sounds a bit shit, so I find myself in a bit of a pickle.

Anyway it's all delicious.

Swing by some time.

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