Tag Archives: ubud

On Creativity and a return to the UK

Posted on January 25, 2013 | 4 Comments

Last night was the first time in three years I’ve cried because I missed home. I had a craving for fields. Yes fields. And woods. And the smell of bonfires. And strawberries. Summer and autumn sights and smells. So if you dropped me back in the UK right now I’d swear at the cold and the snow and get back on the next plane, tossing my rose-tinted glasses into the bin on the way.

But most of all I was crying for my family and friends.

An email from my brother triggered it. Talk of my nieces and nephews. An email from my best friend too, with the butterfly heart-beating possibility that she might be coming to visit in March. The hope of that being tempered by the possibility she may not, just squeezed my emotions in such a way I burst into tears. OK, there was also the fact of a tax bill I have no idea how I’m going to pay. It had been a hard week.

Hard in that after three years, John and I are still finding our feet here financially. We walked out of well-paid jobs into a life of instability but outrageous potential. To pick yourself up from nothing and get back to a state of feeling comfortable takes a lot of hard work or a lottery win.

Though maybe that’s the point. Maybe ‘comfortable’ is not a place I subconsciously want to reside in. Being uncomfortable makes me work hard, push boundaries, try new things, keep trying new things when the first ones fail, keep throwing stuff at the wall in the hopes that one day something will stick. Would comfortable equal lazy and complacent? It’s a possibility.

My mum asked in an email ‘why not come home?’ and even through my tears (some now of guilt) I smiled and shuddered. Because even though I miss fields and strawberries (Kintamani ones have nothing on English ones) and bonfires and family and friends I could never move back there.

It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t been here. I have days where I hate Bali (the days when I’m told that ‘no your hard drive still hasn’t arrived from Singapore because it’s been diverted via Surabaya and now they’re holding it back until we pay a bribe’…the days when the internet fails for no reason and it takes a week before anyone can fix it…the days when I’m told I have a black magic curse on me) sure. But 99% of the time I love it here. And that’s not just because I don’t have to do the dishes.

I love who Alula is here. I love the world she gets to grow up in – this magical TV-free, advertising-free place where she is so, so happy. Never has a 6 year old child been so innocent. She’s growing into a conscious, kind, generous, empathetic and wildly imaginative child, as at home in a developing Asian world as in a first world city, able to flit between an American and English accent before ordering a juice in Bahasa.

Yesterday she said to us ‘I love living in Bali’ before skipping off to play among the butterflies.

I love that just as Alula gets to be creative and explore her imagination 100% of the time, so do I.

I love that John’s creativity has soared and he’s poured it into two incredible new businesses to inspire others’ creativity and connection.

I love the friends we have made here – all passionate, creative and entrepreneurial.

The word I keep coming back to is creativity. And the more I reflect on it the more I realize that for me, creativity has become a central component of living. It’s one of the main things that now gives my life meaning. Not always happiness that’s for sure, but definitely meaning. I see it give meaning to John and to Alula every single day as well. This is how we live now. We can’t ever go back from that. It’s inconceivable.

Which isn’t to say you can’t be creative in the UK. But it’s a hell of a lot harder. It would be something we squeezed in between going to work, doing the dishes and prising Alula away from CBBC.

This place is where we get to explore outrageous possibilities unfettered and unhindered, supported by the energy and people around us. So no, we’re not moving back to the UK.

While so much potential has been fulfilled there’s still so much ahead of us.

(sorry parents).

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The Extraordinary Life of Lara Craft (not Croft)

Posted on January 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m super excited to share the news that my first adult book is out now!

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It’s published under the pen name Lola Salt and it’s a comedy romance. Think Bridget Jones if Jackie Collins wrote it.

It’s a collaboration with the fabulous Becky Wicks. We met when Becky was in Bali writing a travel memoir and, over a bottle of wine and a rant about 50 Shades, we decided to have a go at writing erotica – I mean, how hard could it be?

Turns out, very. We giggled too much writing the naughty scenes, so eventually we decided to quit trying to write erotica and stick with comedy…and so The Extraordinary Life of Lara Craft (not Croft) was born. We sent our Lara off on a series of adventures, mostly inspired by actual events that had occurred to me and Becky. We even had Lara visiting the Island of the Gods where I had particular fun drawing from all the whack job crazy folks I’ve met over the last three years. Obviously, for the record, it’s ALL A WORK OF FICTION, ahum.

Here’s the Blurb:

When ex-circus employee Lara Craft is dumped for a contortionist, there’s no point in sticking around. Delivering packages to random global corners for a mysterious concierge company seems like the perfect way to hide from her humiliation.

As she travels, a suitcase full of whips and props might well prepare Lara for proposals by Arabic princes, advances from Christian cowboys and kidnappings by pirates, but nothing can prepare Lara Craft (not Croft) for what happens when she discovers that the best and most exciting thing about her life is right where she least expected to find it. 

And you can buy it from AMAZON in every country NOW!

And follow us on Twitter @LolaSalt

And to wet your appetite further, some of our favorite lines from the book, including this one which actually happened to me in Bali:

“I hope you’ll stay for Blissology?’ the man suddenly said, grabbing for her hand.

‘For what?’

Davidoff smiled serenely at her. ‘I’m a holistic escort. I have a PHD in Blissology from the Maharishi Kundalini University of Carlsbad. I’m about to hold a session.’
‘Right,’ said Lara. ‘What do you do exactly?’
‘Well, I interpret our human purpose by looking at quantum physics, an individual’s astrological alignments and the I Ching.’
‘And what does that mean exactly in English,’ she questioned, feeling herself zoning out.”

—

“This isn’t just any shirt,’ he told her. ‘This shirt was worn by he-who-must-not-be-named in the first of the Twilight films.’

Lara’s mouth fell open. She blinked several times. What was he talking about? Voldemort wasn’t even in Twilight.”

—

“Somehow, perhaps because of the way he spoke in a manner reminiscent of Jack Bauer from 24, Lara calmed down.

She repeated his words in her head. Wait. Assess. Intel. Yes, OK, that sounded sensible.

Then the hysterical coward in her reared up unannounced and she tried to run for the door again.”

—

“Don’t you want to find your purpose?’
Lara glared at her. ‘Right now my purpose is to get the hell out of here and then I’ll figure the rest of it out the normal way; by drinking vodka. Or maybe I’ll read Eat, Pray, Love all the way through…”

—

“He took her around the place, pointing out the hybrids and divulging a few of their clients. Lara could barely believe so many celebrities she knew were actually sick and in need of medical marijuana. She tried to make a mental note of their names but knew she’d forget them later, given that she’d already forgotten her own middle name.”

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Prostitution, the Human Condition & The Gorgon Stare

Posted on June 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

‘The first prostitute I ever visited was in Las Vegas. She told me that I was the youngest guy she’d ever slept with … and the best.’

I glance up from my sun-lounger where I’ve been pretending to read my kindle and stare (with my nostrils flaring) at the man speaking. He’s about sixty and up until then I’d assumed gay. I am so grossed out by the fact he is talking about Vegas prostitutes at 10am by a hotel pool that I shoot him a stare that would make a Gorgon flinch. He doesn’t seem to notice because he’s far too busy telling the 50 year-old woman next to him that he’d love to wake up next to her and that her arse is perfect.

The woman preens a little and I think to myself, lady he just told you he sleeps with prostitutes…are you fricking deaf or something? I don’t know about you ladies, but if a I guy tried to pick me up by telling me that a prostitute in Vegas told him he was great in bed, and I happened to be standing by a pool at the time, I would push him in and then I’d probably stand on him until he drowned a bit. OK, that’s probably a little harsh, but you get me? I wouldn’t preen. I wouldn’t pout. I wouldn’t giggle. I would find some way of expressing my disgust that would hopefully render him impotent for the rest of his life. I believe I have that in me.

‘I’m celibate,’ the woman answers, thrusting her cobalt-bikini clad breasts towards him like torpedos. ‘I swore off men three years ago,’ she continues. She doesn’t act like someone who has sworn off men, I think to myself, eying her over my Kindle as she flicks her hair and bats her eyelashes. I glance around wondering if I have in fact wandered onto the set of a really bad movie because these lines…these lines are beyond reality. Surely they’ve been scripted. But I see no lights, no camera. No one is yelling action.

‘I decided,’ the lady continues, ‘to go celibate after my fifth marriage ended in divorce.’

The man dives under the water at this point. Resurfacing at the far end of the pool.

I start to scribble down this epic dialogue for use at a later date in a blog post or a cheesy TV pilot or a comedy romance novel or a geriatric porn movie (you never know where my career might head, I have to keep my options open and maybe the Universe put these people here in front of me so I could record these incredible lines and then use them in the future for something truly epic…maybe I’ll win an Oscar with it or a Pulitzer…you never know…).

Just then Alula comes skipping over to me and I decide it’s too risky to stay to hear more. I don’t want my five year old asking me what a prostitute is. I grab our towels and my Kindle, ready to hustle her away from the skanky man talking about sex and the divorcee with the torpedo boobs. I head to the desk to pay for our drinks.

Suddenly from behind me I hear. ‘Wow, what amazing eyes you have.’ I wheel around and see the man speaking to Alula who thankfully has a similar approach to dodgy old men in speedos as I do. She stares at him and starts backing the hell off.

‘So beautiful,’ he continues oblivious to her death stare (she gets it from me…I’m so proud).

My warrior mama comes bursting forth at this point.  I’m about to go tearing over there like a lioness hunting down a gazelle. But John is already there. And I’m waiting for my change.

‘I draw eyes,’ I hear the man tell John. ‘I’d love to put her eyes in my painting.’

That man is not putting her eyes in his painting. I will push him in and drown him in the pool if he even thinks about putting her eyes in his painting.

‘I think the eyes tell us everything about the human condition,’ he adds, as though that might sway us into letting him paint Alula’s eyes.

Push him in the pool, I yell silently to John, that’ll teach him all he needs to know about the human condition. I curse John for not having developed his psychic mind reading abilities and myself for not having developed mind control ones. How handy that would be right now.

But John being John, (ie. being far nicer than I) and not having heard the prostitution conversation, just nods genially at the man and makes a non-committal sound followed by a polite goodbye.

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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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‘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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I AM A LOVE GODDESS

Posted on January 29, 2012 | 2 Comments

‘I am a LOVE GODDESS.’

John and Till stare up at me. (For those of you wondering who Till is – he’s our housemate – he’s like a German Larry David who’s been cross bred with Deepak Chopra and in our affections he sits somewhere between Lily and Alula.)

‘I am a Love goddess,’ I repeat, beaming at them.

Is that skepticism I see on their faces?

I have been listening in the car to a blissitation meditation thing. I know I’m not meant to meditate whilst driving because three seconds in the lady with the soporific voice tells me I should have my eyes shut and my hands open in my lap. I wonder out loud whether all the drivers in Bali are listening to this blissitation tape whilst driving – it would explain a few things. Still, I decide I can skip the part about keeping my back straight, eyes shut and hands in my lap and just do the listening part. After all, if there’s one place in the whole of Bali where I need to find the zen, the love – the bliss inside of me – it’s in the car.

Recently we started car pooling (because a) we go to green school and the irony of taking one child on her own in a car 30km a day had not escaped us b) Alula insisted that car pooling would save mother earth and c) because I was in danger of bringing forward the prophecy I was given that I’m going to die in a car crash when I’m 62 – now I’m driving 50% less I figure the odds have dropped). What I hadn’t factored in was how much I swear at other people on the road – and with other children in the car this has become a problem. I mean, it’s one thing Alula learning how to say fricking moron and quite another when a peace loving hippie mum asks you where her daughter has learnt to say arsehole.

As I drive the lady intones in a calm beatific way: I communicate with authenticity and integrity. I repeat it after her.

A car cuts me up.

‘Don’t even think about cutting me up you fricking eegit!’ I yell as I put my foot down.

I appreciate the awesome people in my life.

‘Get out of the damn way.’

I do random acts of kindness for people.

‘No, I’m not letting you out in front of me. Think again Bozo.’

I pull into our drive.

You are a LOVE GODDESS.

‘I am a love goddess,’ I repeat as I kill the engine.

‘I am filled with love,’ I tell John and Till, ‘I have just been listening to a meditation tape in the car and now I am filled to overflowing with love.’

They keep staring at me saying nothing. I think I see them exchange a glance.

I walk in the door.

‘Goddamn the fucking internet’s still not working.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Musings on Home in the style of Carry Bradshaw unfortunately

Posted on January 4, 2012 | 1 Comment

Home.

What do we think of when we think of home? (oooh I realize that was very Carry Bradshaw sounding…I apologise…I won’t now deliver another 498 words of angst about not yet being married/ having a baby / finding love with someone with the improbably stupid moniker of Big).

For a while now I’ve been wanting a space that feels like home. Our house is very nice and everything but it’s not home. It doesn’t feel like home… if it burnt to the ground I wouldn’t much care (so long as John and Alula weren’t in it and someone rescued my computer and my Kindle). But like most ex-pats in Bali we compromise. Houses here aren’t built with comfort in mind. They’re not built with anything in mind I don’t think other than ‘box, giant bathroom, tiny bedroom, outdoor kitchen, now let’s ask for 10million rupiah and see if any Bule is stupid enough to agree!’

When I close my eyes and picture my perfect home I see a place with a wooden veranda and swing chairs, creaky floors and sun-drenched windows, sandy soil and scrubby plants, a wild and rambling garden with roses trailing, somewhere so close to the ocean you can taste it and smell it on the air. It’s hot, it’s sunny, neighbours say hello and wave, there’s a wholefoods shop down the road, an awesome café bookshop, lots of independent stores and places to buy cake. It’s hippy and liberal and filled with awesome people all transplanted from Ubud.

I have a room in this house that is all mine and where I write – with paintings on the wall from all our travels, my usual plethora of post it notes, photographs and notes from Alula. There are book cases to the ceiling and a sofa for lazing on. There is also massage on demand, incredible sushi and frozen yogurt delivery.

In all these visions of home, despite all the plus points of living here – coconuts on tap and the incredible friends we’ve made – I don’t think of Ubud. Which is all to say that I, Sarah Alderson, vagabond, wanderer, consummate Saggitarius, am getting itchy feet.  I want that room of my own. And partly that might have to do with the fact we got back to Bali and found someone building a house right in front of ours, blocking our unspoilt rice field view. All in the name of progress as the stunning town of Ubud gets eaten up by greedy developers without the foresight to see that if the views get spoilt the visitors – both tourists and longer term visitors – aren’t going to come and stay anymore. Dur. Someone please show these people pictures of Spain’s Costa del Sol.

Sigh. I sat in my swing chair this morning trying to avoid looking at the naked workmen (they were getting dressed – they don’t work naked) and trying to meditate on the concept of home. A voice in my head tried telling me that home is John and Alula. It’s a place inside you. A building is just a building after all. But still, this image of our home sticks like one of my post it notes to my frontal lobe and won’t be peeled off. I have no idea where it is and maybe, like the prophets and the Buddha and probably Steve Jobs said, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.

So now I just have to work on convincing John to take part in Can we live here part 2. But what if the search is futile? What if this dream home doesn’t exist and I spend the rest of my life on the road, dragging my family around, searching for it?

PS. This doesn’t mean we’re about to quit Ubud. We’re here for at least another 4 years. We have seeds to sew and friendships to grow (as well as an organic veg garden courtesy of Alula) and massages to have and school to finish and I’m not quite ready to give up Kadek. So we’ll see. Watch this space.

 

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I am so done with driving in this town

Posted on December 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

There’s a campaign in Ubud to stop the tourist coaches coming into town and clogging the narrow streets up. Of course this being Bali where organization, foresight and planning are low down on the list of priorities nothing changes. The buses continue to belch their way into town to deposit their tourists outside the market so they can buy penis bottle openers and over-priced wooden Buddha statues.

There are seemingly no rules to the road in Bali whatsoever. If you like you can drive on the left. I’ve never seen a bike pause at a stop sign and look both ways before pulling straight out into traffic – they always just pull straight out. It’s like they’re born to play Russian Roulette and have no care whatsoever that they might DIE. I can’t figure it. As a driver you have to be totally on your toes. It’s like playing space invaders. 3 people a DAY die on the roads in Bali. 3.

The one rule that is pretty much always observed (other than don’t wear a helmet) is that if your side of the road is blocked by a car or other obstacle you have to give way to oncoming traffic until the road is clear to overtake.

So I’m driving up the hill into town. On the other side of the road is a long row of parked cars and bikes. By rights anything at the top of the hill has to wait for me to pass before it can go. And then I see the FO sized coach at the top of the hill. I narrow my eyes and think to myself ‘don’t you dare you fucker’ but does he telepathically hear me or does he just think…I’m going to crush you sucker?

Yeah, he thinks the latter.

He comes steaming towards me. Seeing that there is no way in God’s universe a Coach – a fricking coach – can pass me without crushing the car whole I slam on the brakes.

I ram the car into reverse, checking my mirrors. A woman on a bike is staring blankly at me, as I beep her to get off my bumper and back up. She doesn’t move. I honk again. She stays staring gormlessly as the coach descends on us. I reverse so I’m touching her wheel. She still doesn’t move. By which point there are now about fifty bikes and three cars all up my arse …THERE’S A FRICKING COACH IN THE WAY – I’m yelling at them all. None of them seem to figure it out.  BACK THE HELL UP!

They all start trying to overtake me instead. Of course they do. This is Bali.

I sigh and put the handbrake on and let the coach meet me face to face.

Now what? I think. I can’t go back and he can’t go back. I can’t climb the curb as it’s about a foot high. And he has parked cars and bikes on his side.

This is when the six men with whistles come flying down the hill, arms waving, cheeks puffing. I roll my eyes heavenward. If you read my blog regularly, you’ll know how much I love these traffic guys. I mean how on earth would I know which way to turn the wheel without them to show me?

And now they start in earnest. They’re a swarm. All I can see is flaying arms and agitated faces. A man on a bicycle joins in. A western tourist starts taking photos. A motorbike tries to mount the curb to overtake me. Three men start banging my bonnet and telling me to turn the wheel – one this way, one that way, another man at the front tells me to back up. Yet another starts screaming at me to come forward. A fifth man tells me to stay put.

I wind the windows down.

‘Can you all shut the hell up?’ I shout. ‘You’re all telling me different bloody things! YOU’RE NOT HELPING.’

This sets them to cursing out each other.

I wind the window back up. And then the coach starts moving forward.

‘What the fuck?’ I think to myself. There is just no way that coach is getting past without taking off the side of the car. I watch it bear down thinking that this just cannot be happening.

I close my eyes.

It squeezes by me leaving not a millimeter to spare. And then it gets stuck by the wheel arch. Really? You don’t say. That was UNEXPECTED.

The coach driver doesn’t give a crap about my car. It just cares about getting its coachload of tourists out of Ubud and back to Kuta. I want to get out the car, smash down the driver’s door, grab hold of one of the wooden penis bottle openers no doubt on board and do serious damage to him with it but unfortunately you can’t even slide a piece of paper between my car and the coach. I am wedged quite literally inside.

Eventually ignoring the gesticulating whistle blowers I slam my car up the curb, jumping it about a foot and the coach scrapes my wheel arches and then thunders off.

 

Sodding, sodding coaches.

 

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The silence of the pigs

Posted on November 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

I sit bolt upright in bed. I am squished between John and Alula who has her legs thrown over my stomach in five year old abandon.

‘We are leaving!’ I announce scuttling like a crab across the bed and flicking on the strip light. John sits up sighing loudly. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s midnight and we are leaving! I can no longer take that mosquito. The mosquito has won.’ There is no blood left in my body. I am anemic. I am hovering on the abyss of madness. One more zzzzzz in my ear and I will smother myself with my own pillow.

We are trialling a house. We have done this a few times – spending a night in a house we are thinking of renting. John wonders aloud whether we might start to be the house trialling con artists of Ubud…moving from villa to luxurious villa -every night a new place ‘trialling’ out potential homes none of which will ever mysteriously make the grade. It would certainly be cheaper than paying rent in this town where money grabbing Bule middle men keep hiking the prices to infinity.

It is only down the road from our current house this mosquito filled house. It has a pool though, whereas ours just has a paddling pool filled with stale rain water in which float dead geckos and bugs. This was the main attraction (the swimming pool that is). But when we first came to look around this swimming pool house, the  sounds of pigs having their throats slit disturbed the serenity of the surrounding rice paddies, silencing the frogs.

Thinking it might just be on account of an upcoming ceremony that said pigs were being slaughtered I questioned the girl showing us around. ‘Babi?’ I asked, drawing my finger across my throat and making a stuck pig squealing noise and sticking out my tongue. ‘Ada Upacara hari ini?’ (Is there a ceremony today?)

She stared at me in wide-eyed confusion and shook her head as though she didn’t have a clue what I was asking. But she did.

‘I bet it’s a pig farm next door,’ I whispered to John.

But we’re back trialling the house anyway. So far no pig noises. But I don’t think they slaughter pigs at night so that means nothing. John and I go for a skinny dip in the pool (is that too much information?) but we didn’t have any swimmies with and it was dark.

We’ve just dared the bracing cold when the pig chorus starts up.

‘Pig farm!’ I splutter, ‘She WAS lying. I KNEW IT.’

‘Shall we go home?’ I ask.

‘We may as well stay’, John answers, ‘think of it like a little holiday.’

The same way as Clarice Starling thought of hanging out in an underground cell block with Hannibal Lecter was a little holiday.

We climb damp (we forgot towels too) into the bed with Alula. The pigs go to sleep. The mosquito starts up.

Half an hour later we are all piled into our bed at home. I squirrel under the covers, looking through the hazy mosquito netting listening to the croak of frogs and chirrup of crickets.

‘I love our house’, I say.

 

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Trick or healthy treat.

Posted on November 2, 2011 | 2 Comments

It’s trick or treat time. Being British I’m faintly disturbed by this tradition; squirmish about the concept of fancy dress (the effort involved seems commensurate with axing the trees to light your own funeral pyre), cynical of the commercialization of yet another pagan / christian ceremony and also mightily stressed out by the following email, which begins:

Come in Costume, laugh and smile a lot!

The British in me rears up like a dragon. Not only do they expect me to wear a costume (a costume!) but they also are demanding I laugh and smile? PER-LEASE. Who are these Americans? So crass. So happy all the time…

OK, I’m just a little envious. I’ve grown up in the land of Malcom Tuckers. I don’t know how to be happy and laugh all the time. I know how to be sarcastic and wry and cock one cynical eyebrow all the time whilst complaining about the weather.

We’re asked to bring healthy food for the pot luck and healthy snacks for the trick or treat, as environmental as possible (this is after all at Green School – the greenest school in the world or something).

I spend all week online googling manically for healthy Halloween recipes. I have visions of extravagantly costumed parents holding out little cupcakes with monster faces on whilst I lurk in my jeans and a t-shirt at the back handing out Haribo. The shame is too great and spurs me into action.

I head into the metropolis of downtown Denpasar to buy an oven and a little Chinese black box to make it work, which made a percussive sound when shook like one of those kid’s maracas. Though a child’s musical toy would probably not have exploded in quite the same spectacular fashion.

Annabel Karmel can make brain mush muffins. Well whoopppeee dooo Annabel.

Jamie Oliver can make fruit gums using real fruit. Congrats Jamie.

I however can make nothing because my oven has exploded. My NEW oven which cost me an arm and a leg plus the ‘fine’ that we had to pay for being foreign and driving a car past a policeman.

Secretly I’m quite glad that the oven exploded because as soon as I unwrapped it I felt a deep sense of foreboding, rather like when you were a kid and unwrapped the giant present under the tree convinced it was going to be the Barbie house you’d been hoping for for three years but was in actual fact a flower press. And you had to slap a face on you and act happy for the rest of Christmas day when all you wanted to do was go upstairs and hide the flower press at the top of your wardrobe and kick something really hard.

That’s how I felt about the oven. But I had to act happy and like I hadn’t just sentenced myself to a life of stress and drudgery. My inner monologue went something like WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

Anyway I woke up on Saturday morning, the day of the trick or treat thing, and decided that I was done with pretending (I know, I know I’ve said this about ten times on this blog) that I was a yummy mummy domestic goddess. I closed down all those google windows displaying images of mummy pizzas and googly eyed fruit salads and instead pulled out my phone and speed dial rang the pizza place, ordering three pizzas and five packs of cookies. They’re spelt flour – that surely qualifies them as healthy?

Relief has never felt so good let me tell you. I might have been $80 poorer but I was a million dollars worth of happier.

Then we get to the trick or treat village. I have to ask a passing Canadian what I’m expected to do when the kids come knocking. She looks at me weirdly and tells me I should compliment them on their costumes and hand out the cookies.

OK, I think, I can manage that. I hand out all the cookies, eating seven myself as I wait. (It was stressful, running over my lines.)

Alula arrives beaming with the shopping bag I’d given her filled with goodies. We empty them out.

Every single treat is a plastic wrapped one cent sweet from the local supermarket.

 

 

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