An insane fast thing

Posted on May 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

My friend is doing this insane fast thing. When I say insane fast thing I don’t mean she’s doing something really quickly, and I’m not talking about breatharianism either (remember that post – the one about the people who wanted to give up eating altogether and just live on light?…). This is even crazier than that…

Here are the rules to this fast:

No criticizing
No complaining
No gossiping
No negative language
No bitching
And the rule is if you slip up you forgive yourself and start the 21 days over again.

I looked at her, my eyes wide as the steering wheel I was, at that moment, clutching. ‘But, but…what will you talk about?’ Isn’t that tantamount to taking a vow of silence?

‘It lets positivity flow,’ she answered. I think the words universe, manifestation and creativity were also in there somewhere.

Thing is, though my natural response is to piss-take, I’m also kind of intrigued by the idea of trying this ‘fast’, even though it would mean trying it for the rest of MY LIFE because I’d never last 21 days.

For all my piss taking about Ubud I’m actually being busted more and more by friends who narrow their eyes at me and shake their heads while saying incredulously, ‘You’re actually one of them aren’t you?’

They mean that I am slowly becoming an Ubudian…I use the words manifest, intention, positivity, universe and raw at least once a day. Sometimes when I speak I slam my mouth shut in shock that such things have fallen from my lips, without any sense of irony whatsoever (what is happening to me?) I draw the line at wearing fisherman pants however. And I only own one mandala.

Contemplating it more though, I worry that this fast might limit my conversation. Won’t it make me kind of boring? Also, does ‘Don’t come up my fucking ass!’ (yelled at a really annoying driver the other day) count as negative language? Because I really do swear rather a lot…and I complain ALL the time (mainly about the drivers on the roads here), so quitting complaining might require me to quit driving.

No gossiping…I’m boggled by this one too. I’m sure everything that comes out my mouth could be constituted gossip. As in; the exchange of information. But if it means not saying anything bad about anyone then that’s fairly easy as I try not to do that anyway, unless it’s someone EVIL (you know who you are), in which case fair game.

On second thoughts, though it sounds like a noble intention (there I go again) I think I’d rather try breatharianism.

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Posted in Bali, ubud

Walk Dance

Posted on May 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

Clearly growing up in the eighties is to blame.

I had Fame, Dirty Dancing, Footloose and Grease as my starting point. I had Johnny Castle as my teacher. The streets of New York became my dreamscape and black leather trousers with red wedge shoes my fashion true north.

Which is why I am to be found at 1pm dancing through the jungle of Bali in cut off shorts as though I am possessed by the spirit of Kevin Bacon himself. Or Baby from Dirty Dancing (after she learned to dance, not before…please). I am on fire. I am drenched in more sweat than a French legionnaire after running 50km across the desert. I am channeling Lady Gaga and Lenny Kravitz and a substantial amount of SJP from Girls just wanna have fun (have you seen that movie? Oh God if not, go buy it now). I want to come across a river so I can throw myself in and perform ‘the lift’ – possibly with a passing rice farmer in lieu of the fact there’s no Johnny Castle around, nor the cute boy from Girls just wanna have fun (who is probably about 45 by now anyway and maybe not so cute).

Balinese farmers carrying machetes stop to stare slack-jawed as we skip and twirl and boogie and strut through coconut groves in time with our synchronised playlists. Because, yes. I am not doing this alone (I’m not that crazy). This is the first walk dance in Bali.

We don our earphones. We press play. We dance out of Green school and down the hill, past barking dogs (which I can’t hear because the volume is cranked way up and I’m too busy trying to remember the moves to Michael Jackson’s Thriller that I learned when I was 9 to even notice them…rabid dog? where?). We skip down overgrown paths, stomping to warn any snakes to get out the way, and then we dance in arm-waving spinning unison like whirling dervishes or Madonna backing dancers down roads, occasionally having to nudge the person dancing with their eyes closed out of the way when a car or bike comes up behind them tooting a horn we can’t hear.

At one point I take off my headphones and just watch as the others dance in perfect silence, each of them caught in the rhythm of their own beat. Eyes closed, smiling. It’s beautiful. And I stick my headphones back in, grinning even wider and join them following Lady Gaga’s instructions to Just Dance.

Dance Walk coming soon to a street near you.

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Babi Guling and Vaginal accupressure

Posted on April 25, 2012 | 3 Comments

Last night we went to a party. It was brilliant. There was a babi guling feast. Vegetarians look away now….that’s an entire pig roasted on a stick over an open fire that was then carved by the table, which wasn’t a table but rather, a ten-meter long mat made of banana leaves on which the food was beautifully laid out, pig skin and all. We all sat around it and ate with our hands…it was so awesome that I looked at John and said, ‘you know how I decided yesterday I was a vegetarian? Well, I lied.’ After the dancing girls had done their bit. And I had drunk at least a bottle of wine. And had a conversation in my head with the dead pig where I argued with it that it being dead already meant that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I had this conversation with one of the other guests.

Me: ‘Oh my god, Vaginal releasing? Like, holy what the fuck? Seriously?’

Her: ‘Did you do it?

‘No! I took the card so I could photograph it and tweet about it. And let me tell you it made the twitterverse laugh their heads off. I was still getting responses about it twelve hours later.’

‘I tried it.’

‘No way!’ I say.

‘Yes.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Amazing!’

‘Really? What does she do?’

‘She massages you with coconut oil and then says, ‘I’m going inside, is that OK?’

‘And you said ‘OK?’ ????’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘And it was incredible. Such a release. So different to an orgasm.’ ….

Later the conversation turned to products that are sold in a health store in town: ‘And we have these vaginal sticks too.’

‘Excuse me, what?’ (that’s me talking)

‘Vaginal sticks…’ (at this point I must admit that I can’t fully quote the conversation because my brain was doing too many loop the loops and I was laughing so hard I was spitting wine across the room). But I can tell you this…

A vaginal stick is something made of clay that is smaller than a rampant rabbit yet larger than a finger. It has crystals in it and is used for: ‘rejuvenating, tightening and exfoliating, oh and moisturizing.’ Don’t forget that crucial moisturizing. Your insides really need it.

‘Exfoliating?’ I asked, ‘But why do you need to exfoliate a part of your body nobody ever sees?’

I was told something about dead smells or maybe dead cells. I can’t remember I was too busy ewwww-ing.

This is one of the many reasons I love Bali. Because you get Babi Guling and talk about vaginal sticks in one room.

You should know that while I was happy to do the colonic in order to entertain and inform you loyal blog readers, this is one step too far.

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The universe always needs to teach you a lesson

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 1 Comment

The gili islands – when I came here fifteen years ago they were like something from a bounty advert. No running water, intermittent electricity. I remember washing my hair in sea-water and wandering deserted beaches in very little attire. Now they’re a bit like Ibiza meets Goa on speed. Our first night we spent in a room with a balcony overlooking another balcony. The occupants of that apartment spent all night on said balcony drinking vodka and vitamin shots, and listening to head pounding house music.

At about midnight I leaped from the bed in impotent rage and ransacked the bags for my headphones, then raged at myself for not having forked out the extra $40 for noise cancelling ones. I drifted off to the sounds of The Album Leaf. At 3am I was awoken by doof doof doof doof beats and a gentle sob rose in my chest. John slept soundly on my left ear plugs wedged in his lugs. Alula’s left leg was slung across my stomach. I tugged my iPod closer and set it to play on repeat.

At 6am Alula woke me singing a song about mother earth. I was tempted to push her onto the balcony and encourage her to sing it at the top of her lungs to the neighbours.

I did not. Because I am actually thoughtful and not selfish. Unlike some people. Instead I demanded my money back from the hotel and found us a new place to stay.

However, I spent the morning pissed off and simultaneously worried about the excessive amount of money I’d spent trying to solve the problem. And as usual the universe threw other things in my way to teach me a lesson. First I met Dayu.

‘How old is your daughter?’ she asked.

‘Five and a half,’ I answered.

‘I have a daughter,’ she said.

‘Oh, that’s nice, where is she?’ I asked.

‘She lives on Lombok,’ she answered. ‘I do not see her. I live here to earn money.’

I shut my mouth unsure what I could possibly say. But as I took Alula’s hand to cross the road, aware of X watching us, I swallowed hard. How lucky am I? I asked myself. Imagine if I had to leave Alula even for a single night…OK a single night…Joy! I can manage that. But for months…? To have others bring her up? To not be there to see her grow? Inconceivable. Heartbreaking. Horrible.

Then I met Yudi, the night watch guy. 22 years old, wrapped in a towel, suffering from flu and sleeping on the beach. We chatted. He spoke English with a perfect Australian accent – to the point where I was convinced he was actually Australian. It was so strong you could have believed he’d grown up on a cattle ranch in the outback. ‘You will never go back to England?’ he asked me, incredulous, when I told him we had no plans to ever return. ‘But why?’

‘Um, because we don’t like the weather?’

He stared at me dumbstruck. I felt dumb enough to have rendered him struck.

He wanted to go to Australia. He felt so sad he told us because he had no family on the island and his dreams seemed so unobtainable. He had no belief in himself or his Australian English. My words to him to believe in himself rang hollow.

Taking Alula’s hand to walk through the darkness back to our room, we mused together on how lucky we were. ‘Because you can see me every day?’ Alula asked.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘We have each other and we are so so lucky. Let’s never forget that.’

‘OK.’

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Posted in Bali, children

Explaining the birds and the bees

Posted on March 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

‘But how are babies made?’

I admit I am not expecting this question while stuck in traffic on Raya Ubud. I’m caught, crunching through the gears, and for the first time probably ever I’m speechless. Given I’ve had 5.5 years to think on it, and given also that this is a question all parents know they’re going to face at some point, you’d think I’d have an answer prepared. Except I don’t.

‘Well, you see…’ I stammer, buying for time. I’m half-giggling and half trying to work out in my head what the correct answer is. I mean, I know the correct answer but I’m not sure how much of it to explain. What’s appropriate for a five year old to know? I don’t want to traumatize her.

Dual visions assault me. In the first, Alula runs into school and starts telling all her school-friends in graphic detail about erections and penises and I receive angry phone calls from parents outraged at their own child’s loss of innocence thanks to my daughter. In the second I see Alula running into school and telling all her school-friends that babies are grown in little pots of compost and watered regularly. I see her being socially shunned for fifteen years of her life, at seventeen still being teased on her lack of reproductive knowledge.

‘What?’ Alula interrupts my desperate imaginings.

 Daddy sticks his willy inside mummy and plants a seed doesn’t quite sound right, but it’s also the first thing that pops into my head.

I weigh up the drier; ‘Daddy’s penis inserts into mummy’s vagina.’ This only makes me giggle some more, imagining Alula’s response (it will be something like: ‘What’s a vagina?’ I’ll say, ‘Your lady bits, your front bottom, you know.’ She’ll pause, then ask, ‘But where does the willy go?’)

I suddenly recall this book I had as a child. It was all about a boy called Thomas and a girl called Sarah, who were brother and sister. I thought this book was therefore written just for me, given that my own brother was called Thomas. Imagine my wonder! Thomas and Sarah’s mum was having a baby and the book explained how babies were made and born in just the right amount of detail to satisfy my five year old self and also just enough to keep me pouring over the pages, still intrigued.

I cannot though for the life of me, sitting in the car twenty eight years on, remember the exact wording of this book. Which is a great shame.

‘But mummy how?’ Alula demands again.

I’m getting close to hysterical , wishing John was there to add his thoughts to the fray. I try the clichéd route, laughing even as I say it; ‘When a mummy and a daddy love each other very much…’

‘Yes,’ Alula interrupts impatiently, ‘But how do they make a baby?’

‘They make love,’ I say, thinking how euphemistically lovely and vague this sounds and hoping it will satisfy her fairytale-rich imagination.

‘What does that mean? Making love? What’s that?’

‘How about,’ I say, ‘we wait until we get home and then we call daddy and get him to explain?’

She sits back in her seat and after a moment agrees to my suggestion. Holy hell, I think, making a mental note NOT to prime John.

Sucker.

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Posted in Bali, children, parenting

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My bat shit crazy mercury retrograding insect murdering day

Posted on March 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

John went off to Singapore this morning at 4am. He never hears his alarm clock so I have to smack him around the head a few times to get him to stir and then a few more times to turn it off, by which point I’m thoroughly awake.

So I spent a couple of hours reading in bed before Alula naked as the day she was born jumped on me demanding her weetbix (Australian brand – don’t have a go at me about my spelling) and my help in colour-co-ordinating her knickers for the day.

I wandered out onto the balcony and almost stepped directly into the pile of bat shit dropped there by the child-sized fruit bat which hangs out nightly upside down from the roof beam.

Groaning at the ickness of that I staggered blurry eyed into the study and almost stepped on a District 9 sized cockroach. It was belly up, it’s spiky tufted legs immobile. Sighing because John wasn’t there to call on for cockroach duty I manned up and grabbed a wine glass still with the ashy dregs of Bali’s finest coating the bottom. Using that and a dirty tissue I bent down to sweep said cockroach into the glass. Turns out that cockroach was very much ALIVE. It was just resting down there on the floor, belly up, maybe it was some kind of cockroach joke, his mates laughing from behind the bin. Scare the crap out of the human, go on, it’ll be funny. Once I zoomed in on it with the tissue it burst into activity, its antannae things waving drunkenly. I swear to God I screamed the entire village down.  And yet I still managed, while screaming, to lurch toward the balcony and toss the thing across the roof. I did think for an instant of flushing it down the loo but I weighed up in a nanosecond whether I had the nerve to make it that far and decided not to risk it.

The day turned out to be one of those days where you meet people on the street and they say ‘man, I wish mercury would hurry the hell up and unretrograde’ and you nod and say ‘totally!’ Because this is Ubud and that’s the UK equivalent of saying ‘alright?’ ‘Yeah, not bad.’ But after paying 300 quid to Qatar fucking airways (that’s what they should rebrand as) for a cancellation fee (long story) I was the one screaming at Mercury to unretrograde its ass double-quick.

Then I had to spend the entire day, when not stuck in traffic on Raya Ubud (mercury again) contemplating mowing down the Japanese tourists who cause the traffic jams, writing copy about San Diego which made me sad and frustrated because I really, really want to go to Comic Con one day (with half-naked actors at my side pretending to be Alex & Jack) and this dream seems to be eluding me (mercury again?)

Finally, I get home and discover that Kadek is ill. Poor Kadek. But this means also that the bat shit is now cemented to the floor, three days of washing up sits forlornly in the sink, we’ve run out of bowls (I know this is lame but really I’m busy trying to earn a living…and battling my way through traffic and um, going out for long, boozy lunches)…and oh SHIT, I step closer to the floor cushion in the bedroom. It appears that it’s moving. I blink and focus in on the half-eaten chicken carcass that Lily, our dog, has carried in and feasted on. She has left it here and it is now literally being carried off by an army of 3 million ants. The pillow, once white, is now black and pulsating like some optical illusion. Screaming I pick up the chicken carcass between thumb and forefinger and run to the balcony, hurling it like it’s a grenade into the bushes below. Too late, several hundred of the tiny things swarm up my arm in a scene taken straight from Indiana Jones. I slap them away (screaming) and return to the cushion which is now the scene of pure ant anarchy.

3 million ants (minus the ones that got hurled with the cushion) are running this way and that in utter panic. Their chicken feast has vanished, what will come next? Earthquake? Fire? No…Flood! I fill a bucket with water, throw the pillow onto the roof and douse it with water. Ants are however stubborn little things. They cling to the cushion through several dousings until in the end, the cushion goes the way of the chicken, tossed into the garden below. Only after I throw it do I think to shout a warning in case anyone is walking below.

Anyway, that was my day. How was yours?

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Posted in Astrology, Bali, parenting, Uncategorized

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‘Wow, you’re an author, that’s like so cool.’

Posted on March 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

‘Wow, you’re an author? Like, that’s so cool (pause) are you like, um published?’

‘Yes,’ I mumble. I have had this question about a hundred times and I never know quite how to answer it.

I don’t blame people for asking because here in Ubud, every other person is a writer, or claims to be one. So when they find out I’m actually published (by a big name publisher), and haven’t just photocopied my manuscript and sold it in Bali Buddha next to the crystal deoderant and sacral chakra pendants, they can’t believe it (actually I still can’t either).

I have this weird relationship to the word author though. Partly because I feel like a total fraud saying it. Because I’m not like Margaret Atwood or Zadie Smith or Monica Ali. And also because the word author has so many connotations for others when they hear it.

Namely the connotation is: ‘SHE IS AS RICH AS JK. ROWLING. WHERE IS HER SUPERYACHT?’ Their eyes go a little wide.  I see them scanning me for any sign of wealth…eyes dropping to my fetching yoga leggings, zooming up to hover at my Topshop sunglasses. They frown and then glance at my fraying old handbag. Yeah, keep looking I think to myself…if you find any sign of wealth please show it to me.

I think authordom is completely misunderstood. People have this vision of authors making six figure deals and living off the fat of the land in their thatched cottages in the Cotswolds (thinking of the guy in Tamara Drewe) or castles in Edinburgh (JK) or in their villa in Bali (ahum).  Let me be clear on one thing to all you aspiring writers out there. DON’T GIVE UP YOUR DAY JOB.

I was moaning with a friend via email about money. She’s a well-known actress, up and coming, constantly in work for TV and film and she’s broker than me. We were bitching about how hard it is to make a living as an artist (especially now with online piracy making it really hard to earn out an advance…just saying). But then I listed off my biggest expenses:

Massages, Sushi, flights, pilates, books…

Yeah. I mean. I read it back and started laughing. When you have enough money to afford those on a near daily basis you’re a long way from broke. And yes, I’m super lucky to have an amazingly hard working and successful husband able to take up the slack (until I’m as rich as JK he tells me, which is when he plans to retire – see even my husband is deluded).

Life is sweeter than sweet. I moan about being a poor artist but in actual fact I just had a manicure, lunch with my friends and ordered in frozen margaritas. Downstairs Kadek is making us a salad while I ‘work’. I might earn half of what I earned in London but my life is a trillion times more enjoyable.

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