It was a remarkably restrained bunch of people that gathered at Barbara's fabulous new apartment on Wednesday night to watch the storm, sorry, discuss Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries. Two whole bottles of soft drinks were got through - more than the amount of wine!! A new addition to the beverage selection was provided in the form of Margrethe and Nicola's cider, but at a paltry 5% alcohol, this really didn't cut the mustard.

To the book... well, I think the general consensus was that those who had seen the film were better off. Not only did the filmgoers have the opportunity to ogle Gael García Bernal's pretty-boy looks (is he Julia Roberts's long-lost twin brother?), but there seemed to be a lot more action and real representation of the landscape of Latin America in the film than in the book. My humble apologies for having recommended this book, as I found it very disappointing... it didn't live up to it's name (hardly any motorcycles and not even a diary), didn't give any insight into how character-forming this road trip must have been for Guevara, didn't illuminate what must have been an extremely important friendship between Che and Alberto and was badly edited to boot. Dissenting voices to these opinions were few and far between, so one has to surmise that this was one of our less successful book choices.

Much more important issues were then discussed, including whether deodorant causes breast cancer, Sharon's somewhat less than ladylike gynaecologist, Dr. Van Dyke, how insignificant the age gap between 23 and 30 is, the potential for opening up the book club concept to Leuven and, very importantly, the fact that our newest recruit Darshana's mother has a number of eligible potential husbands lined up for her to inspect when she goes home to Bangalore in December! This of course prompted the debate about which system is better; having your parents do the slog-work for you while you wait to be presented with the cream of the crop, or dating a load of cruddy men before (hopefully) finally meeting a prince. Does one save more on heartache than the other? Which way is more likely to end up in a successful relationship? Alas, no conclusion was reached on the night, but methinks this has the makings of an ongoing theme.