Tuesday 18^th February, 2020 1600

OK, so yes, I have time on my hands. Just thought of an amusing (to me at least) tale.

One leave, after I had returned following a six-week stint in Chittagong, Bangladesh (incidentally the worst place I have ever been and I've been to a few dreadful places) I fell into my normal routine again.

That routine involved three or four evenings a week after the pub, going to a now-defunct restaurant, the Shaheen Tandoori in High Wycombe. They did a great curry, great butterfly prawn and great everything else. Over the course of a leave I would slowly graduate from a bhoona to a Madras. Once I tried a Tindaloo but was defeated. And they did the best nan bread I have ever had anywhere in the world, topped with ghee, succulently soft and perfectly fluffy, I'm getting hungry now!

Anyway, one particular night there were five male friends and I eating heartily our curries. When the bill came I pulled out my wallet and produced a wad of taka, the Bangladesh currency. Making a show of it, I counted it out and asked the manager if it was enough.

My friends were aghast! “You can't pay with that Mickey Mouse money!” they exclaimed. Usually I used Amex but not this time. “Yes, that's fine sir” said the boss, leaving my friends open-mouthed, or as they say these days, gobsmacked.

What they didn't know was that the previous week I had, purely by chance, asked the manager if anyone was going back to Bangladesh for a holiday because I had a walletful of notes the UK banks wouldn't change. By luck, HE was! So I arranged the set-up and told him to say nothing if it wasn't enough and I would settle the difference another day. As it happens, I got change!

I hope you don't mind but little things like this sometimes return and make me chuckle.