In the colourful land of Tír na Óg

“I don’t mind the heat but will those damn doves never stop!,” I asked my wife, paraphrasing poor Caruthers, the prototypical English administrator in the heart of darkest Africa, driven demented not by the doves but by the incessant drums.

The Indonesian doves do, surely, go on, and on, repetitive and inane as Irish wood pigeons and not as sonorous. But, usefully, they get one out of bed soon after dawn.

On early mornings on the Gili islands, off the north coast of Lombok in Indonesia, the air and sea are as clear as crystal, the sun warm and the sky blue but for sweeps of high, white cloud. A strong breeze blows, with no chill in it, only refreshment. By nine o’clock, the sun is warm; before long it becomes, to our Western skin, a burning sun. As the morning hours pass, humidity rises but the wet season is almost over. Sometimes, in the late afternoon, the sky clouds over and there may be an hour of rain.