The Internet Personified: Non, je ne regrette rien
Guys, I know this newsletter has been wildly irregular, but since I've been On The Road, I've basically become like the Dowager Countess Grantham.

Anyway, since no one has really complained, I assume you all follow me somewhere else as well as here and you know I've since been to Madrid and Paris, and now I'm in Luxembourg visiting my Old Dear Friend Ginny. We knew each other when we were four, bonded by shared rabies shots when the cocker spaniel puppy ("Puppy") I had died suddenly and quietly. Then we met again at twelve or fourteen, and now, consistently since we were seventeen, so there's a lot of history there. We can remember each other as little girls, she keeps telling me I drink my alcohol as slowly as I used to drink my milk, for example.
It took Ginny's presence to make me finally eat some Indian food, after close to three weeks without. Which was dosas this morning. Ameya, a Newer Old Dear Friend, and my Madrid Connection, had both idlis and dosas on offer, but we partied so hard in Madrid that we never woke up for breakfast time. And then I got some funny headcold/congestion (TOO MANY INDULGENCES. Plus, I'm travelling and moving about like I'm in my twenties, I think my body just had to remind me that now I'm an Old and I can no longer burn the candle at both ends.) (Still trying though. The lovely thing about Abroad is no hangovers because you're seldom dehydrated enough. It's COLD in Luxembourg. Paris was lovely and hot, but the wine was so good it didn't stay around the next morning, like the best behaved one night stands do.)
My horizons have definitely broadened. Probably so has my waistline, but since I've been walking so much I think I'm staying pretty much the same size. K made me ride a bike in Paris, and I was all NO I CAN'T I'LL DIE then he got all frustrated and there was some shouting and some despairing and finally I got on to one, prepared to be a martyr. "When I die, he'll regret this," I thought to myself sadly and smugly, and set off, but of course, I remembered how to ride a bike, long unused muscle memory kicked in and I swung down the streets and K looked smug and I was flushed and triumphant, so there's a happy ending for you.
Okay. now I must go, because Ginny wants me to wander around old Luxembourg which is a ridiculously attractive city and also a great place to have a rest stop for two people who have been wandering maybe a BIT too much. I still have to tell you all about Madrid and Paris, but I might do that in retrospect and when I'm back in Delhi and all depressed but also reunited with the cats. (One of whom has taken advantage of our absence to give the sitter a dodge and escape on to the wild streets.) The next time we speak I shall have Amsterdammed as well, and maybe I'll send you my last European missive from Berlin where we return to full circle. Maybe. I make no promises.
xx
m