a diddakoi and her travelling caravan

A small note regards bald men and methodism. Apparently, John Wesley, the father of Methodism, criticised George Whitfield for laughing too much. Maybe, then, the 40 bald heads in the methodist church, the hot Sunday morn, were not a coincidence. Maybe it was because Methodists are not supposed to laugh. Too much. So, the point is, bald men, in essence, cannot let their hair down. They are in perpetual hair-up, as up as it can get, and so Methodism can survive. Haired men, or worse, long-haired men, other than hanging out and making love in Liverpool, let their hair down, and laughed it out. So there was absolutely no reason they could have been Methodists at all. They needed to hang out, in addition to Liverpool, in low churches, where priests were called pastors, and music was made by guitars.

And extroverts of the worst kind. Girls, all of them. Early 20s, not quite stopped being teenagers. And german. The bathroom is full of girls' stuff. And stuff it is. Shampoo bottle to put on hair on Wednesday and Monday. Another shampoo to put on Thursday and Saturday. And so on. 2 types of conditioners, per person (3 extroverted young german females). Hair treatment thingies, which are not conditioners, but are like conditioners, whatever that means. Creams, one per person, to face, to lower posteriors, to legs, to toenails, and others which I feel too modest to talk about. Toothpastes, mouthwashes, breathsprays, flosses, electric toothbrushes, normal toothbrushes. Handwash, bodywash. I have learnt to keep my eyes tightly shut when I use the bathroom... The atmosphere is full of teenagey-cum-adulty noises. Worse, cos they are mostly german gutteral-cum-teenagey-young-girly sort of cool. Their voices ring out like sirens, as they call to each other, as they giggle the most awful...

Thoughts of growing up days and church. My mother, ensured the family got its weekly share of church. For some reason, for a reason beyond me at that time, we always sat at the very back. Since it was a very big church (by Colombo standards), this meant we were very far away from the Reverend (that's what we called the preists in our church. Reverend. Hmm. Person who is reverential? Chief of revering? Interesting choice on noun for a preist. Very interesting, as compared to, father, boring, and also too family-like for us methodists. We wanted to make it very clear we were not related in any way At All. Also not, pastor. No, that was for only those neo-liberal low-churches. We, with our stip upper lips, and suede shoes, didn't need pastoring at all. We were not sheep. We were in the cat family, we chose to be reverent, or irreverant as we felt. In those days, we actually sang bona-fide hymns. No happy-clappy hand gestures and guitars for us. It was always pre-1900, and it was a...