Click here to see a clip from the latest Bollywood movie from Andaloo Productions.

It was said on the local news yesterday that a woman went to hospital, worried that she may have avian flu after giving a pigeon the kiss of life. Thankfully it turned out she just had a cold. What caught my attention though was that nobody seemed to think what she did was odd. Personally I wouldn't know how or when to give a pigeon the kiss of life, for which I'm grateful.

Every now and again I wander back to tblog to see what’s happening, and slide back out before anybody notices. Today I feel like leaving a few words behind.

It’s been two years since I wrote about moving to this village I now call home. Adjusting to life here hasn’t been easy but I think I’m on my way to settling, I’m at least satisfied. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be fully accepted here, the locals don’t even accept people from the next village so a paying guest from another country has no chance. That’s not to say that there’s animosity, far from it, but I’m reminded often that I’m not expected to understand because I’m a foreigner.

The old boy across the street died recently. He was a cantankerous old bugger who always wore his slippers outside, had a foul mouth and insisted on calling me “guiri”. I really liked him. I once complained about his shouting through the siesta and asked him to keep the noise down. He simply told me to stop listening. Problem solved.

The day he died I didn’t know what to do, so did the cowardly thing, nothing. It seemed to me that everybody else knew what was expected of them, what had to be done and when. Within minutes the women from the street arrived and laid him out…on the sofa. Then the food started arriving, pot after pot of the stuff. People came and went throughout the evening and over night. The women stayed in the house, feeding whoever would eat and the men stood outside smoking black tobacco. They all wailed.

I’ve thought about him and the day of his passing a lot. I didn’t understand what was happening and I didn’t know what to do, if anything, but as I write this it occurs to me that maybe I wasn’t expected to understand. Maybe.

There’s a feeling of newness creeping over the land of the smiling mule. Summer’s end. The other Andaloo has packed his satchel and returned to school, my work phone will start ringing again next week and the whole circus we call real life is about to start again.

The village sits on the side of a hill and its road winds up to the castle, but if you miss the (unsigned) turn at the top you find yourself lost in a maze of small, very steep streets. The old crones that live at the top of my street love the summer. They drag arm chairs from their houses and set up camp on the cobbles, their sport, cackling at the traffic. As drivers turn the corner and see the width of the street a look of terror spreads over their faces and they stop to assess the situation right where the crones sit. Big mistake. They’re told there’s no way their car will fit the street and the best idea would be to reverse back around the corner and up the hill. It’s a cackle fest, but by the end of August it’s just not fun anymore. The arm chairs have gone and the crones have gone back to watching television at ear splitting volume.

I don’t have a television, so listen to the radio instead. I love local radio because it’s so bad, but during the summer even that plummets to mind boggling lows. I heard an interview with a ventriloquist … nuff said. Another day they had a twenty strong group of flamenco dancers in the studio, so they aired two hours of foot stamping. Best of all though was the day they did a make-up demonstration.

All that will start to change from now. As the shadows get longer the lost tourists get fewer. As the local politicians return after their summer break the radio station will have scandal to report again. As for the crones, they’ll always be here; they’ll just have changed into their over-sized orange cardigans.