I know, it's been a while...power cuts are partly to blame (even though we have lap top and our own generator, the internet gets cut off at the same time) also Hubby seems to have been hogging the computer a bit. But anyway, here I am, fresh from surfing ebay for silver watches - I am hoping to get a cheap one that I can take to a jeweller here and get customised. I have really got sucked into the whole shopping thing, although luckily as kids still on holiday, there are limits to how much I can do. However, I did manage to order a leather skirt today and get some fabulous green satin for making a new evening dress, despite three-way handbrake. As a thank you to the kids for traipsing across town to the leather shop with me (the traffic was so bad that even our fab new car game 'pink umbrella'* got a bit boring) I decided to take them all out for cake and pop at a lush place called Barbarmahal (who I always thought was a cartoon elephant from a kids book, but it turns out is a tourist trap in Kathmandu) Revisited (I'm not sure why it's called Barbarmahal Revisited... revisiting what? Like Brideshead Revisited? never read it, but I do know it has a teddy called Sebastian Flyte in it - my facility for hoovering up trivia is pretty good - think if we ever settle anywhere I should organise pub quizzes in my local, with lots of questions on eighties indie bands and toys from literature). Anyway, it's a lush place with shops and cafes built in the courtyards of an old palace, with some yummy cakes on the menu of one particular place, which I was sure the children would love. So I forked out what in Nepali terms is probably the equivalent of about one weeks wages on a snack for my well-fed and overprivileged offspring, who pushed it round their plates and asked to go home. It was hard not to get irritated (and in fact I did), when there are people here who are genuinely hungry, and the food we eat is wildly extravagant in comparison to the usual local dish of dahl and rice. Next time kids can just have a banana in the car and be grateful!

Oh yes, one of the reasons I haven't written for so long is that we spent one evening preparing our 'go bags' in case there is an earthquake. We now have two rucksacks, which we keep in the hallway at home or they come out in the car with us, just in case. Apparently Nepal has not had a major eathquake since 1934, and as they usually come round every sixty years or so, we are way overdue. So, if we're out on yet another shopping trip  - not to Barbarmahal as I'm not going there again with kids - and the worst happens (massive earthquake, roads and Bagmati Bridge destroyed), we can at least camp in the Landrover until help arrives. Dinesh, our driver, thinks it's hilarious that I insist the bags are in the car whenever we go out, but we'll be the ones laughing (actually, we probably won't, we'll by crying hysterically along with the rest of the citizens of kathmandu) if it actually happens. We have a torch and spare clothes and shoes and a sleeping bag. We have enough food for around two days. It's only baked beans and boiled sweets, but kids will probably love it, beanz and sweetz and no cleaning teeth, hurrah. I'm trying not to think about the whole major earthquake thing too much because it is a big scary old thing, which frankly scares the beejesus out of me. 

* pink umbrella game is: five points for spotting a dog, ten for a cow, fifteen for a goat, twenty for a monkey and five for a pink umbrella. On a trip to a temple last weekend, we split into two teams, and the girls and boys teams both scored one hundred and fifteen points by the time we arrived. Which gives a fairly accurate idea of what the streets in kathmandu are like.