Plantation life

I was remembering my visit some years ago to a tea plantations company in Sri Lanka. We were given tea by a plantation manager in his bungalow on his beautifully manicured estate with its smart white painted fences and immaculately mown emerald green lawns with the tea plantation stretching down the hill below and given a stroke by stroke account of the one day cricket match between Sri Lanka and India. We went on to dine at the plantation managers' supervisor's bungalow which was very similar to the first except that it was twice the size. The supervisor, a rather formal man in his 50s with lanky black hair glued tightly to his head with a mixture of oil and sweat, welcomed us. His wife had a headache, he explained, but would join us for dinner. In the meantime, would we like to see our rooms and join him at our leisure for a drink? The rooms were straight out of the 1970s with vast mosquito nets draped over the beds and ancient copies of Good Housekeeping strwen on rickety side tables. The conversation over drinks was made rather awkward by his trait of saying "Correct" in an abrupt fashion rather than "Yes" and made us feel as if we were contestants on Mastermind, although we seemed to be asking most of the questions. We then heard a door open and a huge old English sheepdog bounded in followed by the plantation managers' supervisor's wife who was about 20, very pretty and absolutely charming. She gushed over us, apologising for her absence and invited us into dinner. She had not known what to serve Europeans, she explained, and so we had a mixture of eggs, spaghetti, lamb curry and salad, all on one plate. It turned out to be a very jolly evening.