Griffs in Goa

The Three Shackateers

January 10, 2010 at 6:43 am (The Diary)

We have spent most of our time during the dat at the Castello Beach Shack. The three managers of the shack pictured above are the most courteous, friendly and gentle Indians we have come across in a long time. They are not Goans but come from Assam and Calcutta. They, with their chefs run an excellent shack which serves delicious food. We wish them every success and if we come back to Goa again that will be the first place we head for.

Our friend Alan arrived yesterday full of a cold and the grim details of the weather back home. Other friends are making plans to move on, while we start to consider the trip home and the return to the numbing  repition of work.  We have not found this holiday as relaxing as past holidays, maybe it’s the double dose of upset stomachs that we have had. mine has returned with a vengeance and after five days of extreme discomfort and misery have self -prescribed antibiotics which I bought from the chemists for one pound 25p.  cannot bear the thought of travelling for 24 hours with the bug still in me.

We have done very little this holiday. The ancient Greeks used to think that Idleness and Contemplation were the ultimate aims and that work was an indignity only to be suffered by slaves. Most work is repetitive and boring. It can be compared to Sisyphus who everyday heaved a boulder up to the top of a hill only to find that it would roll back down to the bottom again.  I think the only people who really enjoy their work are the one’s that find repetition challenging. Enough of this ‘idle contemplation’! I have a reality check as I look out from my balcony and see a row of women in a paddy field, bent double in the baking heat, up to their knees in mud planting rice and then I see the ‘real’ challenge of repitition.