Monday night we watched England v France in the European Championship. (I'm skipping ahead of myself here posting about last night, when I've not posted anything about the last 5 weeks here, but I'll get back to that. I just thought the footie was topical at the moment). Vashisht is generally a quiet place and most places close early at night. As the Indian time difference means that the games are shown here at 9.30pm and 12.30am, Colin thought that we wouldn't be able to watch any of it. The other week we were sitting in the village square and ended up talking to an English guy Pete and his Austrailian Partner Beatrice who travel to India a lot. Pete is football daft so we all got talking about finding somewhere to watch the footie. We were joined by a Glasweigan guy Dave (not only do you not meet many Glasweigans or Scots when you are travelling but you certainly don't tend meet one who went to the same school as Colin!). He even knew Colin's mother, although that's no great surpsise. Amazingly another Glasweigan guy appeared so now the footie talk got serious. Dave and Pete then arranged with the Rainbow Cafe in Vashisht to stay open late so we could watch the footie. Colin and I never went to the first two nights games but we couldn't miss the England game as we knew it would be a hoot watching it with Pete. Poor Pete was devastated on the night when we all turned up, as all the Scots were supporting France. Beatrice had made the flag you can see in the photo and it turned out a really good night. Pete was, as expected, a hoot throughout the game and was quite happy with the draw. On the same night there was a festival in the Temple which is just beside the Rainbow Cafe. Just before the game started they all came out of the Temple and paraded around the square, banging the drums and blowing their really loud horns. Pete was jumping around the balcony of the cafe and waving frantically at the procession and he was shouting to all of us that they were playing for the barmy army. Luckily the villagers are used to Westerners behaving strangely!
Grabbing a seat inside before the mad rush.
A few more arrived but later this wee room was packed and there wasn't a bit of floor space or standing room free. There were Scots, English, Germans, Israelis, Aussies, Irish and maybe a few other nationalities. Pete had told a few French guys that he met earlier in the day that the Rainbow Cafe wasn't showing the game so there were no French people to boo the English. His team did get a roasting from us Scots though, just to wind him up! I wasn't able to post he wild photos of everyone jumping around when a team scored as they turned out a blur with all the carry on that was taking place.
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