ike winning a cricket test series. Luckily there are some staple truisms to keep us all from thinking that the lunatics are running the UK asylum. England rollover the Irish at rugby, Spurs go marching on, and Ashley Cole acts like a prat. We've all spent the month in Mumbai, so are throat-cuttingly keen to get out of India for a few days - we are off to Dubai for Conor's school Spring Break to ski in the desert again. Off to stay with The Williams Clan on Frond 9 - more on that next month. Might make High Tea at the Burj Al-Arab this time if the helicopter is the right colour - Karen never travels in anything other than a Royal Blue helicopter these days.
I need to bring you up to speed on my health - it is deteriorating fast! I have had to use the Indian health service during the month, and as you can tell from the picture I was not feeling on tip-top form on Easter Sunday either.
The hospital visits were due to my inability to hear a thing my delightful wife was saying to me. The 'affliction', as it became known, seemed limited only to problems hearing Karen, which I put down to her having a far softer and more lilting tone than anyone else I know. My experience of the Indian Health Service puts the NHS to shame - but frankly I hear the Iraqi health service does a pretty good job of that as well. My ear was back fully functioning within a week, helped by the highly professional ENT specialist I paid R.250 (3 quid) to see on the spot - queuing time 20 minutes. Easter Sunday saw Conor, Karen and I take part in the American School Tryathon (baby triathlon). Conor and Karen did the swim legs for their respective teams, and I ran what seemed a distance worthy of Paula Radcliffe but was in fact about 1km. We ran at around 09:30 in the morning, by which time the temperature had reached 32C, and humidity was above 90%! Running without oxygen proved a tad wearing on my aged bag of bones, so as I crossed the finish line, my chest was bursting with the Flames of Hell itself! The Karen and Ian team came 4th in the baby tryathon which was some achievement ... the other competitors were generally a little younger..... well, they were 10 year olds.
I spent the next 12 hours running cold showers and standing in front of the AC units in the apartment to try and reduce my body
temperature below that of Johnny 'Flame On' Storm. I had no idea I had sweat glands in places that were leaking so profusely that I genuinely thought I was going to dessicate from the inside out. My face has now returned to the colour of a human rather than a beetroot so I believe I am on the road to recovery - I shall not be entering an Iron Man challenge any time soon. I have always had tremendous respect for long distance runners.... now I am just a little bit worried about their sanity.
Mumbai traffic is a major feature of Mumbai life - without it the city wouldn't be the same. Up to now, we had always taken the chaos as more of a fact of life than a real problem. Like all jammed traffic, it stood still, and therefore didn't represent a danger to anyone. Driving in the morning rush hour last week, Karen and I saw a tuk-tuk passenger get thrown out of the side of his vehicle as it swerved 
violently to avoid wiping out a pedestrian. The passenger hit the ground at about 25 miles an hour right by the side of our car. He continued to travel out toward the middle of the on-coming traffic leaving much of the flesh on his back on the road surface - looking strangely like red tyre marks. As he slowed to a crawl, a tuk-tuk (thank God it wasn't a car) tried desperately to stop but couldnt avoid him, mounting him, one set of wheels roughly at throat height, the other taking out the middle of his calves. As he came out the back end of the tuk-tuk like meat through a sausage machine, his head popped up which automatically sat him bolt upright - dazed and confused, he didnt have a clue where he was or which way was up, or why several lines of traffic were hurtling toward him! All the tuk-tuk drivers involved inspected their vehicles just to make sure he hadn't done any lasting damage or ruined the paint work. One helpful passer-by ran out into the traffic and picked up the poor fella like a sack of spuds, legs and arms flailing in all directions and whisked him to the relative safety of the pavement. Perhaps the traffic is a little bit of a liability...... Note to self: must get insurance.
Conor got his second set of test results from the American School this month and it appears the kid is a bit of an American genius and is in the top 1% of 4th graders. He has no more room to improve on the graphs of his relative performance against the 4 million 10-year old American kids who took the test. He communicates like a 16-year old American, reads like a 14-year old American, and his maths skills are those of a 13 year old American.......... CONOR FOR PRESIDENT !
Conor is doing very well as usual and is training hard for the upcoming Swim Gala. He has 1:2:1 coaching now, which explains why he and his mate Owen came second in the tryathon - yes, the same race his parents came fourth in! Here is some footage of Conor and friends at ASB sports day recently - very competitive.
Karen has been doing her stuff for the PTA and for the AWC but with her impending departure from Mumbai in June, is now looking to hand over her onerous responsibilities to those that follow. I think she is secretly enjoying offloading what has, 
over some time now, become an unfathomable overload of administrative hocus-pocus. The PTA ball this year was a real giggle, particularly for those that thought I was a Catholic priest! I cannot remember how often I had to say 'No its a Nehru jacket, no I am not celibate.'.
Anyway back to news from Blighty. Smashing the Irish must not be seen as any reason for putting Cipriani on the pedestal reserved for Jonny. The Irish are a busted flush of a team now and O'Sullivan going was proof that they think so also. Cipriani is good but lets get it all in proportion before we create ourselves a disappointment of All Black proportions. I don't want to go the way of Wales in thinking that we can win more than 5 matches in a row. Lets find a midfield and a back row first. Well done to the Welsh - about time something nice happened out that way
Oh and for all you Chelsea fans out there.
'Nice one Cyril, Nice One Son, Nice 
One Cyril, Lets have another one!" - Sing along now..... 'Nice one...... '
Dumbers
P.S. Desperately hope that you have all come back down from the mountain with all your bones intact - I think you are all getting to the age where skiiing injuries may be the excuse needed to put us down. They shoot horses dont they?
