At last we've done something that USPG would be proud of! Arun and Yesu took us to the palace for a proper look round (Arun skived, Yesu had a day off because one of his teachers was getting married) in the morning and told us what all the Tamil in the museum meant. Apparently it was built in 1912 and was abandoned in the sixties because it was unsafe! Forty years isn't really a very good life-span for your average palace, but as we have often remarked, Indians can't build.

Even the huge palace in Madurai was unsafe. The last Raja's son lives in a part of the palace that is surrounded by dogs and golden lions! We want to meet him – well I do, I think C. was only joking. After all, you'd have thought that he would be interested to know what two white people were doing living in Ramnad. Arun says he knows him so we might get lucky. Or he might be lying. The Raja died a while ago, but his wife is still alive, living in a small house next to the palace. We went to the palace temple and took some illicit photos from the back. It's very small and picturesque.

Yesu was funny – he doesn't like temples like any good Christian and kept saying things like, "this is a piece of stone" really loudly. We went on to another Shiva temple and stopped to see the Raja's elephant on the way. Apparently it cried when the Raja died, and looked very sad all chained up in a big barn. It must be so bored! They only take it out for festivals – all quite horrible really. At the other temple we took some more secret photos and some which were permitted. We had picked up quite a crowd by now, mostly Arun's friends, but all good fun. The main part was closed so we had to go back at four-thirty and by this time it was raining hard, soaking us on the way home.

My stomach isn't very happy again, playing up all of yesterday and forcing me to come home early. I've got the shits quite badly but at least I'm not throwing up again. It seems to have dissipated now, I'm just left with the stomach cramps and a dehydration headache. We went to Arun's house on Tuesday night and had chicken masala (probably what my stomach has been objecting to) even though they are vegetarians. We took a lot of photos and I got some more music titles to look for. Our evening of welcome and liquor hadn't worked because Arun had gone off to the temple and forgotten about us. He has promised to give us a tour of Rameswaram so I think we might find it in our hearts to forgive him!

There is a nasty man around – I think he is a warden or something – who chases the children away from us with a big stick (like Kumar with Arun and his friends). They seem to quite enjoy the excitement, but it is annoying the hell out of me. He went round our house and closed all the windows because (as he motioned) the children can throw stones through them. They can, but they don't. He visited us last night going on about a 'choir practical' at the Schwartz Matriculation school. He near as dammit dragged me there by the hair even though I felt terrible. So I went to hear the church choir. They are rehearsing for the Christmas service on the eighth – the singing is good, but the songs are a bit dodgy! Yet another tiny keyboard accompaniment, it makes me realise how lucky I am to have a five-octave keyboard with full sized keys! The Schwartz Matriculation teachers have asked me to play for them on a song they have learned off a tape. At last, something musical! I'm going to go to work on them and hopefully after Christmas I'll be able to teach them some Mission Praise stuff.

While I was at the choir practice C. went to St. Andrew's with no plan for the lesson, we'd been so busy. He told me that it had been going all right just chatting until Florence turned up and had a go at him for not teaching. We can't get her to acknowledge that we don't really know anything about grammar ("Of course you do, you're English!"). I don't know. He went to the teacher from St. Andrew's's house (I really must find out her name!) while I languished in stomach cramps and pain.

There was a lot of horrible screaming going on t'other day, and on looking out to see what it was, I saw some people tying up a pig. The pigs are big and black and they roam wild around here. Every now and then they are rounded up by Dalits to be exported. Who eats them? We eat white pigs! There were about ten animals left all trussed up outside Yesu's house for most of the day until a lorry came to take them away in the evening. It wasn't a very nice sight to see them treated like this and I had a slight tiff with C. about whether it is nicer to treat them well before killing and eating them or to let them know well in advance that they are going to die, make them want death. I'm not really adamant about either of these standpoints, I was just arguing for the sheer intellectual fun of it.