Happy Balinese New Year

SarahAlderson

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March 5, 2011

Roosters, birds, crickets, geckos, ducks, the man shaking the tin cans on the line in the rice paddies trying to scare away the birds.

But other than that silence. Which isn’t very silent. Cockerels are loud. We’ve just learnt to block them out but now on this day of silence we notice them more. I’m trying to remember what other noises I normally hear at this time in the morning. The man shaking the cans usually yells too. But today he’s silent. Even the dogs are silent. There’s no distant noise of traffic or conversation drifting over the walls from the neighbour’s house. There’s no ‘kelapa’ delivery man dumping coconuts on our porch and calling out ‘Pagi!’

This is because everyone (as in everyone except a handful of police) is locked inside their houses hiding with the lights off. We’re hiding from the evil spirits who have returned to earth. We hide so that the spirits are tricked into thinking nobody’s home and leave once more until this time next year when they decide to try again.

We have to stay inside for 24hours – traditionally a time for silence, meditation and fasting (though silence and meditation with a four year old in the house? and fasting with John in the house?) Anyone going out on the street can be fined up to a $100, including tourists, who are banned from leaving their hotels and can’t leave the island because the airport is shut.

Last night we walked up the hill to the football field in the centre of town, following a procession of ogoh-ogoh’s – these are a bit like Bonfire Guys, huge paper mache and polystyrene figures made by every village, but rather than representing some sixteenth century pantaloon wearing gunpowder plottist, they represent bad spirits (or fairies as I explained to Alula). These are paraded through town, massed on the football field and then taken away to burn.

Alula’s school made one which looked like a Zombie, which explains why for the last three days she’s been obsessed with playing zombie games at home. I had been puzzling over that one, wondering if her babysitter had shown her Dawn of the Dead whilst we were out. Glad I’ve cleared it up.

We took Lily Bo with us on this adventure to see the ogoh-oghohs. It became an impromptu party with other parents and kids. Then we walked home. Alula and Lily and I took a tumble in the crowd as a surging ogoh-ogoh carried by 100 boys came careering towards us. Health & Safety? Mwah. Kids of twelve were hoisting up the power lines to let the ogoh ogoh’s through. Crowd control consisted of one policeman blowing a piddly whistle. Still, have to be glad that they figured out burning polystyrene and paint in the centre of town was generally a bad idea.

john angry

 

squash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paris Hilton came to Ubud's Nyepi celebrations, looking rough, but her dog looked cute in its John Lewis canvas bag, a downgrade from her usual LV swaroski crystal encrusted number.

 

happy nyepi kids

Giving up eating

SarahAlderson

1 comment

February 26, 2011

I’m writing this about friends of ours – friends whose company I enjoy a lot. But I’m never going to have dinner with either of them again.

That’s because they’ve given up eating. As in solids. As in chewing.

And you thought I was lazy.

And they’re not doing this indefinitely. No, they’re doing this ‘infinitely’. As in until the end of time when God comes a knocking.

I get the whole eating healthy thing. I do. Honest. Well kind of. But juice for the REST OF YOUR LIFE? I love juice as much as the next person but FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE? I think about what I would do – the repetitive strain from passing all those carrots and broccoli stalks through the juicer all day. I ask my friend if she’ll just sit in Clear café and work her way through their delectable drinks menu all day because if I was her I could do that. That would be ok for a day or two anyway – especially if I could just drink one of their chocolate smoothie drinks every hour on the hour. And also if I could include a flask of vodka as a dietary supplement and slip it into my colada cooler when the waitress wasn’t looking.

Will you still poo? I ask my friend, cutting right to the important stuff.

She assures me that she will. But I’m wondering how that’s possible if all that’s going in is liquid. Surely you’d just poo water? AKA squit.

This evening I read a blog post about their first day doing this juice for the rest of their life thing. I’m kind of in blinking awe of this. And stunned disbelief. I want to go around to their house and start bbq-ing steak and letting the smell waft in or at the very least smother some papaya in coconut cream and cacao (I know they like this) and start eating it in front of them but I think they’d probably just liquidize it and drink it as juice (the papaya – not the steak).

And then I read on their blog that the ultimate goal is to stop taking any kind of food or liquids at all and to live on light.

Imagine how much washing up that would save, and how much money. And then I feel relieved because maybe we can have them round to dinner after all. Because I won’t have to try to juice them anything with my broken juicer. I can just give them a plate with a sunbeam on instead.

NB. update: two years later and both parties are now fully committed members of the carnivore world. No more raw food nonsense for either of them. In fact one of them tells me he hasn’t eaten a salad in over a year. So HAH!

Hunting Lila – Cover released

SarahAlderson

7 comments

February 25, 2011

Finally…the cover for my book Hunting Lila has been finalised and here is the first sneak peak for my blog readers.

17-year-old Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever. Or thereabouts.After a mugging on the streets of South London goes horribly wrong and exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust – her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organisation called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them. Trying to uncover the truth of why her mother was killed, and the real remit of The Unit, Lila becomes a pawn in a dangerous game. Struggling to keep her secrets in a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realises that she is not alone – there are others out there just like her – people with special powers -and her mother’s killer is one of them…

The Psychic and The Dog

SarahAlderson

2 comments

February 24, 2011

I went to see a psychic.

Purely for research purposes.

Ahum.

No. Whilst it is true that my new book does have a psychic girl in it and I wanted to quiz a psychic on concepts of free will and destiny (like if you tell me that I’m going to die when I’m 62 in a car crash is there anything I can do to avoid that or should I just merrily accept my fate?) I did also have a curiosity about what the future might hold (car accidents and all).

And apparently it holds success, fame, a boy child (AHHHHHHHHHH), a few years in Bali, a move to Australia or possibly Colorado, a big party at which I wave coloured flags and parade to a waterfall with lots of children (the point at which even my well trained eyebrows quivered in skepticism). Still I liked the bits about success, fame, books and – err that’s about it, so I think this psychic was spot on and now I’m wondering about where I can buy coloured scarves in town and which waterfall I can arrange a trip to for Alula’s class.

What the psychic however failed to see was the PUPPY that bounded into our lives that very evening. Maybe she’s long sighted. The psychic, not the puppy.

The puppy is the most perfect piece of canine heaven you’ve ever encountered. There is puppy love and then there is the love I have for this puppy. My family is complete. Alula has a sibling. John has his first pet. The boy child is unnecessary. I have a creature that adores me, and that doesn’t cry or answer back. Ok, she shits on the mat and eats the shoes, but I didn’t have to go through labour so that’s ok.

Please welcome Lily Bo to the can we live here adventure.

 

 

The Tao of Alula

SarahAlderson

2 comments

February 18, 2011

This week at Alula’s school they’ve been focussing on love. Who said anything about her being at a hippy dippy school?

I don’t care what GCSE results she gets if this is what she learns though. Firstly she came home on Monday and said to me: ‘ Mummy why doesn’t granny like you?’

And I said something like ‘errrrrrr’

And she answered, ‘But you need to love each other. We have hearts. We have to love everybody. That’s what they’re for.’

I was totally bowled over by the wisdom spouting from a not yet five year old.

Then yesterday she was asked to write a letter about love. I have posted it here because it’s beautiful and because I think our daughter might just be the most fully enlightened, heart beautiful person I know.

Dear TKA (her class)

I love all my friends.I still love my friends when they are naughty and when they cry.

I love all the teachers. I really love the letters I’m learning in TKA and I get to colour some of the pictures. I love every teacher because I can learn with them and make pictures.

I hope your heart feels so good so you don’t get sick. If the person got sick I would still love him or her. Even if they were not my friend I would still love them because if they get sick it’s very sad and I don’t want them to be sick.

Love from Alula

Upgrading car and downgrading cool

SarahAlderson

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February 17, 2011

We just upgraded our car. This sounds impressive but really from the jeep it was impossible to downgrade, except to maybe some roller-skates made out of shopping trolley wheels and some frayed rope.

It’s laughable that an upgrade from our tin pot on wheels, with doors that didn’t shut properly, brakes that didn’t understand their purpose and an engine that made a noise so loud and reverberating as to have its own ranking on the Richter scale, is to a car that if I saw it in the UK I’d cuss out as the kind of car that only grannies with mobility issues would ever drive. It’s the kind of car that once I scoffed at as I whipped past it on the motorway. A car on a par with a Reliant Robin.

But needs must. It actually costs more than our jeep. But for an extra $70 a month we get seatbelts, brakes and four doors, so no more of Alula clambouring with filthy feet over the seats and then me sitting in it.

You can’t drive that car,’ my friend Leila tells me. She says it in a way to suggest that our friendship may be on the line if I drive it. I know for certain that if I drive this car and bump into her on the street she will look the other way. ‘I liked you in the jeep. The jeep was cool.’

And I did feel cool zipping around town in the jeep. I’m kind of sad to lose Jeep persona. However given the status of my back which I put out the other day (no, I wasn’t having wild crazy sex, I put it out sunbathing – how hilarious is that? One minute I’m lying down sunning myself and the next I rise trying to be graceful and collapse screaming – so sexy FACT) and the fact I can no longer bend or twist, it’s quite useful to have a car I can maneuver into without bending.

The other day at the crack of dawn I packed the whackmobile and sped off to the coast by myself.  It was still dark. I wanted to get out of town before anyone could recognize me driving something so uncool. But woah. A granny mobile it may be, a mobility car it most definitely is, but this car zips. My father will be horrified to hear this but this car can overtake three lorries in a row going uphill on winding roads.

But don’t worry dad, it has seatbelts.

Is the world ready for Raffle Girl?

SarahAlderson

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February 9, 2011

Oh dear.

It all started about ten days ago.

A concert

Afro Moses

Cool

Franti’s Villa

Pool Party                        Awesome

Raise money

Raffle

Fundraiser

‘Sarah can you ask Leila to be a raffle girl?’

‘Ooooh I like, like one of those 1950s cigarette girls’

‘Yeah, short skirt, a little hat, part men from their cash by shoogling her toosh.’

‘That will totally work. We’ll make a fortune.’

And somehow we’ve ended up here…

…Me standing holding a plate of ketchup in which a dozen chips are slowly sinking, whilst Leila measures me.

‘What are you measuring me for?’ I ask dropping another chip into my mouth. I remember asking her to make me a dress a while ago. It must be for that I think.

‘I’m thinking bright pink. What about you?’

‘Errrr – ‘ I say.

‘We don’t have to be the same.’

‘Errrr-‘ I say.

‘You’re doing the raffle with me right?’ Leila asks, jotting down my vital statistics which even upside down look huge.

‘Errrr – I guess I am now,’ I gamely say, gulping as she measures my bust and starts talking halter necks.

‘How short do you want the skirt?’ she asks.

I put the plate of chips down.

‘Belly on display?’

GOD NO. Corset can you make a corset I’m thinking. ‘Let’s go with hourglass shapes,’ I suggest.

I stand there as she measures my waist, my hips and bust and start thinking about what this might mean for my standing in the community.

Then I think, what standing?

I have no idea what people in this town think of me. I can guess though. The words sarcastic, sharp, aloof spring to mind. Possibly bitch. Maybe one or two people might say I’m friendly (those people I am actually friendly to).  I know at least one person who calls me dancing sarah. I also know a few people who call me Alula’s mum. And a spattering who call me ‘the girl who blogs about us.’ However, I’m pretty sure in amongst all the adjectives there aren’t many people thinking ‘raffle girl’. I’m worrying all of a sudden about the raffle ticket sales.

But nonetheless, I cannot leave Leila to look like a cigarette girl come turn of the last century prostitute all by herself on Friday night. So I will be donning my costume like superman pulling on his tights, with a martyring expression on my face. I will be Raffle Girl.

Hello Tequila.

John

SarahAlderson

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February 6, 2011

I probably don’t talk about John as much as I should on this blog. Sometimes I get caught up in the ecstatic dancing and the freakdom here in Ubud and my attention wanders.  It is about us living here but I don’t like tarring him with my judgmental, opinionated, piss taking brush so I tend to leave him out of many of my diatribes. Because he’s a much nicer more balanced person than I am. His mother would undoubtedly agree.

Which means that other than the odd reference to John’s raised eyebrows in response to my above mentioned judgement calls and the occasional bear story, he’s perhaps not as visible as he is in real life, in this story of moving abroad.

So I want to rectify a few things.

My husband John is not just the best looking man on the planet (he really is rather especially gorgeous) he’s also one of the best men on the planet. He can’t multi task and he’s spending rather too much time playing air hockey on the ipod and despite what he says I’m definitely the better drive but he’s the one whose belief in the power of outrageous potential brought us all this way. He’s the one who kept me sane over and over again when I used to ask him ‘are we insane?’

He’s the one who has hustled and fought and worked to bring in the money that we can keep living in servanted up bliss whilst we wait for my advance to trickle through.

He’s the man who loves me despite my melt downs. And today is our 9 year anniversary and I wanted to say that I can only live where you are John Alderson.

Now go ahead and puke.

 

The psychics and me

SarahAlderson

4 comments

January 31, 2011

The psychics are angry.

I’m noticing a weird pattern. And I’ve deduced that either

a)    I’m evil

b)   I’m dying very soon

c) They can read my mind (as in they are all telepaths)

Because every time I pass a psychic on the street in Bali, which I have to tell you, is quite frequently, say every tenth person or so,  I am being given death stares. The kind of avert eyes very quickly, drop gaze, shudder shoulders type of look that you normally associate with how people greet Sarah Palin.

At ecstatic dance, where several self-labelled psychic type people congretate, I’m being avoided like the plague. This could be my dancing. Or it could be any of the three options above.

I take my problem to my friend and ask her whether she thinks that the psychics in town have it in for me, that they can see something in my aura or my future or my irises or if they’re just reading my mind (in which case they’re probably hearing, oh my goodness if she speaks to me shall I call her by her Native American name or by her name which makes her sound like a floor tile? I don’t think I can keep a straight face, just keep looking her straight in the eye, smile, smile nicely not like you’re paranoid that she can read your mind because la la la la la la crazy la la la stupid name la la la la can she hear this oh dear).

My friend takes a deep breath and tells me that I’m just being paranoid, that if anything they’re just picking up my very grounded vibes. She tries to tell me that people who are spiritual (and I’m thinking, but not saying hey I’m spiritual, kind of, I mean I know I eat cows and stuff and I struggle to meditate but um, I’m spiritual… ) can feel intimidated by people like me who are so grounded in reality. I bite my tongue from saying, ‘basically you’re calling me a cynical, eyeball rolling bitch with no connection to anything remotely spiritual or deep.’

And then I think about it some more and I realize that maybe all these psychics aren’t seeing me dying. And they’re not reading my mind.

No. They’re reading my blog.

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