Gladys gets to Page 3.

Or maybe it was page 33. Whatever .. she's in the news and is feeling quite smug about it. This pic was taken at the Overseas Women's Foundation's Annual Bazaar on December 1st, 2007, held at the St Mark's Cathedral grounds. Docteur Clown had a table there. Well, half a table. We set up shop with our wonderful 2008 calendar --- a rather delightful work of art, featuring photographs of all of us clowns - and our colourful postcards, as well as a couple of exotic cakes and muffins. We also had MUCH fun painting clown faces on lots of wonderful little children. Unfortunately Dr Crazy, who took pictures of these mini-clowns, has gone away on holiday and so we shall have to wait till she gets back before we can share those pictures with you.

Gladys had a WONDERFUL time. She wore her favourite hat and inbetween painting faces and helping herself to clown cake, she tromped around the bazaar, meeting everyone and making lots of new friends. She also adopted two very nice puppets, a witch who now goes by the name "Mrs. Snape" and a little clown who is yet to be named (you can see him in the picture .. Gladys has him by the neck).

She also got to have a mesmerising conversation with Basava, a large and extremely patient ox who was taking children on cart rides around the cathedral grounds. He was a quiet sort of ox, didn't have much to say, but turned out to be a very good listener.

Yes, it was a good day indeed. A nice nutritious clown lunch of cotton candy and something wonderful called a hog dog (oh dear .. I do hope it was halal) and she even bumped into Santa Claus. Alas, she did not get a chance to sit on Santa's lap (that would have been quite a feat, as he was standing up at the time) but he did promise to send her Professor Snape for Christmas. I do hope Shah Rukh doesn't get to hear about this. He might think she's moving on to greener grounds. Greener .. get it? Slytherin? House colours? Green .. oh, never mind.

Well anyway, I suspect she did this for me, sweet big-hearted Gladys, as she knows how madly in love with Professor Snape I am. Very selfless of her.The highlight of the day was when Dr. Tonsils showed up. Yes! Gladys' daddy! It was his 81st birthday and so all the clowns got together to give him a beautifully tuneless rendition of the "Happy Birthday" song. There was a strange expression on his face while they sang, the harmony and melody drawing crowds of curious onlookers (or perhaps music lovers). It was a combination of pleasure and embarrassment, I thought, but Gladys assures me it was pure unadulterated joy, perhaps on an empty stomach. (He left for lunch soon after).

On went the clowns .. with a short "coffee" break at Koshy's - or as my mother would like to say, "she's just stepped out for a bit of fresh air" .. Gladys and Mrs. Rose took Severine and me over for that much-needed fix of fresh air, and my oh my, aren't those clowns a couple of head-turners.

And then all too soon, the day was over. We didn't manage to sell all our calendars (you have been warned .. I may show up at your doorstep any day now, peddling these wares) but it definitely looked like all the kids there were sold on the clown doctors.

Long time no G.

Ooh, it feels good to be back! Yesterday I finally started clowning again. Mamooo and Gladys did the rounds at Philomena's, there were lots of little girls and boys ranging from 4 to 9 years old or so - Dolly, Pavan, Rita, Prashant, Giri, Akash and one little boy whose name Gladys forgot to ask, mainly because he had a bar of Cadbury's in his shirt pocket so she kept calling him Chocolate Boy and pretending to steal his candy - and we succeeded in getting loads of giggles from them all. Mamu's fart-balloon was a huge success.

My crotchety old cleaning lady was very happy to see us again, although she chased us out of one room where she had just mopped the floor. She talks to Gladys a lot. As Gladys does not speak any Tamil, these conversations are always quite intriguing. Most of the time Gladys assumes that she is asking for a dance, so usually replies by trying to sweep her into a waltz. She was saying something about tomatoes at one point, and indicating Gladys' nose. It must have been some traditional Tamil vegetarian compliment.

We also succeeded in drying some tears, which felt good. The first was Sakshi, a little boy in the ICU, having a drip put in. Screaming his head off. We didn't do much good at first, but then Mamu started singing softly and he actually calmed down. Meanwhile his mummy was getting equally worked up and she dissolved into tears too so Gladys took her off to one side and had a little chat to dry them off.

For me, the best part of the morning - the biggest compliment - was when we were heading back at the end of our rounds, and one of the senior nurses stopped to tell us that Akash, one of the kids we'd seen earlier was crying and would we go back and cheer him up? It really felt good, and meant a lot that she recognised our contribution. He wasn't in pain, just cranky and unhappy with having to use a nebuliser for his wheezing. But it was wonderful to be there and see him soon go from screaming back to his delightfully mischievous giggling.

So - a lovely morning. Exhausting, of course. Two hours of clown energy can be quite draining. So you can imagine how exhausted I am NOW - as I've just got back from a whole day of being Gladys at a Christmas bazaar. And so I'm off to bed and will write about today's adventures tomorrow!