I’m on a train right now. The light is dying outside – and the clouds are glowing rosy pink over the limestone hills. Enough with the pretty. Inside the train it’s prison strip lighting, tacky floors and toilets that make me yearn for a penis (as in, that I had one for peeing with, I …
We have twenty four hours left Malaysia before we get back to Bali. Home. As I’m tentatively starting to think of it. We’re going back for 6 weeks to make sure the honeymoon isn’t over. I haven’t loved Malaysia. Just in case you missed that. But maybe, after Bali, nowhere was going to impress. I’ve …
‘So what do you fill your days with?’ a friend asks in an email. I stare at the screen frozen. What exactly do I do every day? I have no idea. My fingers hover over the keyboard as I try to think. I have become one of those women I used to read about with …
There are days when I wake up and open my bag and collapse sobbing over its contents. Yesterday I caught the end of Clueless and it made me cry. I love that movie – Alicia Silverstone in awful knee high socks, Poor Brittany Murphy, the guy who marries Phoebe, the revolving wardrobe. That’s what made …
‘It’s 100 metres.’ ‘So how long will that take?’ ‘The man says it takes twenty minutes.’ ‘Twenty minutes? Even I,’ I scoff, ‘can manage to walk 100 metres in twenty minutes.’ And with that I fling open the car door. Immediately I am knocked backwards by the wave of humidity. I groan and pull myself …
We have gone up in the world. We are staying in a dead posh hotel. We know it is posh because Alula’s first words upon tearing through the room and discovering the bathroom were, ‘YAY! There’s Loo paper!’ (Mine were, ‘YAY! There’s a minibar!’, John’s were: ‘Yay! There’s wifi’) That says it all really doesn’t …
‘There are 28 people in my pool.’ ‘It’s not our pool.’ Hmmmm. Details. ‘There are 28 people in my pool. Don’t they know it is MY pool?’ I cut myself off because I realise I am starting to sound like Lola from Charlie and Lola and I am almost thirty years older than Lola. I …
‘Watch out.’ ‘Seriously, slow down.’ ‘Brake!’ Luckily the woman hears my screams and flips herself like a fish on a griddle, thus avoiding being nutted on the head by the tip of the canoe John has steered straight at her. ‘Dude, did you not hear me yell?’ John says something about the current. About it …
‘Move round, face the window. Ok. Pull your knickers down.’ Lula looks at me aghast: ’But mummy people are watching.’ I glance around. ‘They’re all sleeping. No one will see.’ John shakes his head at me, ‘This is all going to go wrong.’ ‘Well the only other option is she wees on me. Given that, …
I’m having difficulties with noughts. Four countries, four currencies, four months, four billion noughts between them all. I thought I had it sorted. 1000 rupees roughly 14 quid, 1 Singapore dollar roughly 50p, 10,000 rupiah roughly a dollar (for some reason I switch to dollars in Indonesia). Then we got to Malaysia and it all …
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