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I don’t know if I’m coming or going

SarahAlderson

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October 2, 2014

The psychic says yes, go.

One of my best friends says no, stay. The other has a baby.

My dad says come home.

John says, do what you need to do. I don’t want you to be unhappy.

Alula says, yes but not if I have to go to school in England.

My gut says …. I don’t know what it says. I can’t hear it. Or maybe I can and I’m just ignoring it.

I throw the question out to the Twitterverse. All but two people ignore it. The two who reply tell me that Christmas is only Christmas in England and for that reason I must return. Oh dear, they don’t know me well. They obviously don’t know how allergic to Christmas I am.

The Twitterverse failing me I ask for a sign from the universe that leaving Bali is the right thing to do.

I open my eyes. There’s a dead cat in my path. Honest to god. A dead cat. Its eyes milky and opaque, staring up at me.

Great. What does that mean?

I ask again as I come in the house, whisper the question to Ganesha, the stone god who guards our entrance.

I sit down on the step. The wind blows the blow-up globe belonging to Alula out from under the bench and across the lawn. It comes to a rest. It’s showing me North America, the world.

I stare at it, and laugh.

My gut says go. OK, OK, I’m listening.

How do you measure a journey?

SarahAlderson

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October 1, 2014

John and I are discussing over instant messenger the offer I’ve just had from a publisher to turn this blog into a book.

In the light of the offer I’ve been reading back over the blog posts from when I first started blogging almost five years ago to the day now. I’ve been laughing over some, cringing over others, frowning at who I was at some moments in time, wondering whether it would make in any way a good book.

John asked me how I felt about the old me that wrote the earlier posts. It was an interesting question.

This is what I typed in response:

I feel much less judgemental now. More centred.

Much more aware of my privilege.

More open.

More full of gratitude.

I feel older I guess.

Less crazy.

Also very grateful that Alula is no longer a toddler.

Man. Those were dark, dark days.

I’m still probably way too judgemental.

Probably not that centred at all (I definitely wasn’t this morning when I stood on the balcony and screamed at the tile cutter).

I’m definitely more full of gratitude though. I’m not even sure five years ago I even paused to consider the meaning of the word, but here it’s become a daily practice, as close to meditation as I’ll probably get.

I’m definitely older and sun damage has probably aged me way beyond my years but I don’t care. I love those lines around my eyes. They’ll always remind me of the magical time we spent here.

I’m so much calmer and less crazy now I don’t have a possessed toddler on my hands. Reading those old posts I almost didn’t recognise the child she was from who she is today; a beautiful joy who honestly lights up our lives.

I wonder if I would feel the same if I’d stayed in England, if I would be the same person, if Alula would be the same child she is today. No way to tell, but I think not.

This has been a journey in so many ways.

Tales of Balinese black magic and spirit curses

SarahAlderson

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September 28, 2014

‘Did she do a voice like in the exorcist?’ I ask, my eyes bugging wide.

Komang nods, though I’m not sure he’s seen The Exorcist. ‘Yah,’ he says.

To be sure he’s really understood me I do my own impression. ‘You must not wear short-sleeves!’ I say in a scary demon voice.

Komang nods, ‘Yah, like that,’ he says.

‘Woah,’ I sink back in my seat. ‘That’s nuts.’

Komang has just told me a story about a woman in his village who decided to go to temple wearing a short sleeve kebaya (a blouse that women wear with a sarong and sash for ceremonies.) The spirits were not happy. One took possession of the woman and told the villagers (happily the spirit spoke Balinese) that this fashion crime was never to happen again. As you can imagine, it never did.

In response to my wide-eyed woah, Komang tells me another story about the time when his village performed a special dance in the wrong part of the temple. In punishment, having angered the spirits, one person in the village died every three days.

‘How many people died in total?’ I ask.

‘Over one hundred. Every three days someone else die. For two months it go on until the priests do big ceremony.’

By my calculation that only makes about twenty dead people, but maybe something’s been lost in translation. I hope the rest hasn’t though. I really want to believe it. Another thought occurs to me; what if there was just a serial killer on the loose?

The stories started in the car where most my scary ghost stories with Komang begin. I love asking him all about Balinese culture and beliefs and Indonesian politics, struggling still after almost five years to get a handle on it all. What I love most are the black magic stories and the tales of angry spirits.

Komang also told me he never accepts a drink from anyone ever, and if he can’t get out of it he pours it away when they’re not looking. ‘Why’, I asked, thinking of some cava I once happily accepted only to realise it wasn’t the bubbly kind but some mysterious mushroom drink that tasted of mud and death. I threw it on a pot plant when I thought no one was watching.

‘In case they’ve tried to put a black magic curse on me.’

‘Why would anyone want to do that to you?’ I asked.

He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Because, you know, everyone see me all the time at home, not really working, yet I have lots of money. They all jealous.’ (nb. Komang isn’t rich but he earns a salary from us because we pay him to take Alula to and from school so I can squeeze as many writing hours out of the day as humanly possible).

‘So you don’t drink coffee when it’s offered?’ I asked, wondering if perhaps I should be testing my own drinks for black magic curses before drinking. Perhaps some kind of litmus paper could be invented for the job.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I check the bottom of the cup, make sure it is warm.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘If warm, no black magic.’

‘Er… no, still not understanding.’

‘If black magic potion in there it would be at the bottom and the cup would be cold.’

I glanced at him sideways, thinking; but what if they stirred it? What if they added the potion after the coffee? What if the potion was warm to begin with?

I’m confused. Lost in translation perhaps. Again.

If I can’t stay where I am

SarahAlderson

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September 27, 2014

My heart is hurting. It’s aching in my chest.

I feel a state of panic. Adrenaline coming in fits and starts.

How can I leave this? How is it possible? What am I thinking?

The days are like this at the moment. I make a decision to go. The next day I change my mind.

I think in my heart I know I’m leaving, but I’m finding it hard to let go, to sever the ties.

The sun is rising red over the palm trees and the rice paddies. We’re on our way to the airport for a visa run. ‘Look!’ I say to Alula, ‘look at the sun!’

‘Oh, it’s so pretty,’ she says in awe. ‘It would be even prettier if there weren’t a million ugly houses in the way.’

It’s true, this whole area of land was once all sawah and is now built over with concrete villas.

Yet still, how to leave this? How? There are the small things; the light, the chirp of the crickets at night, the brightness of the bougainvillea, the neon green of the rice, the sleeping with the windows wide open beneath the haze of a mosquito net. Then there are the big things; here I work 9-10 hours a day; solid, uninterrupted time pouring words onto a page. It’s perhaps too much. But right now also necessary (three books and a script to write by January). In the UK I might manage 5 hours if I’m lucky – the hours when Alula will be at school. How will I manage?

And let’s not talk about the laundry. Or the cold.

Stupidly I’ve been re-reading old blog posts. The ones I wrote before we left. The ones that dreamed of a life lived somewhere hot, the ones where I railed about doing the laundry and mainly about the cold, and dreamed of another type of life.

I read those now and I literally weep. How can I leave? It feels as if we’re turning our back on outrageous potential.

It’s just a step along the way.

I’ve ordered a deluxe double electric under-blanket for the bed (5 heat settings! A timer!). And some thermal tights from M&S.

Can you order Prozac off the Internet these days too?

Then I read these words by Jeannette Winterson and it gives me some measure of comfort; ‘If i can’t stay where I am, and I can’t, then I shall put all that I can into the going.’

Outlander Wedding!

SarahAlderson

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September 24, 2014

‘Ooooh it’s like soft porn,’ we murmur and stuff more peanut butter cups in our mouths and crank up the volume.

Becky and I only managed to watch the first two episodes of Highlander before we gave up on it. It was just way too much talking and not enough… well, shagging.

We tuned in this week because we’d seen on FB that there was to be an Outlander Wedding. Hurrah! Finally. It only took then seven episodes to get there.

In the book world this would be like slogging through five thousand pages and not having the protagonists kiss until the last paragraph. That’s fine in the Pride and Prejudice world but not in our world. We wanted Jamie and Claire to be doing it by the end of the pilot. Preferably by the end of act 1 of the pilot. We’re impatient like that.

In my defence, for research purposes (did you know I’m now also a screenwriter?) I’m often watching about ten different shows at once, and constantly watching pilots, so if a show doesn’t impress me off the bat then it’s off my list and I’m on to the next. And what does it take to impress me? Well, clearly Jamie naked.

‘That was a bit quick,’ I said, tilting my head to adjust for the angle. ‘And not very romantic.’

‘Oh my god, imagine being the actors?’ Becky says as Jamie gives his best orgasm face to camera.

‘Oh my god, I just can’t. Do you think they walked on set and were like ‘Ok, let’s get naked. Do you mind if I stroke your ass lovingly? Don’t laugh. Ok now I’m just going to pretend to give you a blowjob. Try not to get excited by that.’

‘I just couldn’t. Oh the embarrassment. Can you imagine? And your whole family watching on the telly.’

We both fall silent.

‘Yeah, because we don’t write erotic sex scenes that our parents and friends and thousands of people then read. Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be?’

Becky and I give each other a guilty glance and snicker.

‘Oooh, look they’re at it again.’

The psychic has spoken…

SarahAlderson

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September 20, 2014

John left Bali yesterday. For good. Kadek cried all day. I stood, looking at all the junk he’d left for me to clear up, and scowled.

When I first heard that John had been offered a job in London my first thought was, well at least there’s Skype.

It was funny though because about three months before he received the job offer I had a conversation with a psychic that went like this:

Psychic: ‘I see you going back to London.’

Me: ‘Hahahahahahahaha.’

Honestly, I laughed, while simultaneously thinking this woman is clearly the worst psychic EVER. There’s more chance of me moving to live in a hermit cave in the Urals with Russell Brand.

Then she added: ‘You’ll move before Christmas this year.’

At this point I rolled my eyes and considered asking for my money back.

It seems however that the psychic is actually psychic. Quite unexpected.

Once we had decided that John absolutely had to take the job, the next question was: do I come too with Alula or do we live apart until next July when John’s contract’s up?

Or, to pose it another way: do I give up sunshine, a great life, great friends, Alula’s place at Green School and lots of home help to move back to London in the dead of winter to live with my mother-in-law, do all the washing up, and send Alula to a local school where the only thing green is the uniform?

Are you freaking kidding me? That’s not a question. That’s the punch line to a joke.

In which case, I guess the joke is on me. Because today I made the decision to leave Bali at the end of November and not stick out the school year at Green School, thus ending five wonderful years here.

I’m trying to look at it in the spirit of adventure. It’s just for 7 months. After that the dream is to head to Canada for the summer and then head on to pastures new. A second round of Can We Live Here is in the pipeline.

And yet, just as happened the first time, when we quit our jobs in London and stepped off the ledge, following a vague dream that somewhere out there was a life that would be more fulfilling than the 9-5 and the constant battle to juggle parenting and work, I’m terrified. I’m waking in cold sweats. I feel almost permanently nauseous.

I try telling myself that we’ve done it once before, that we can do it again. I remind myself of the crazy swinging pendulum of feelings that hit me in the run up to quitting our lives five years ago, how I managed then and will manage now (by drinking lots of wine).

I’ve made myself a list of ‘the worst that can happen’ which includes: ‘falling out with my mother-in-law over the washing up’ and ‘driving the car into an oncoming truck thanks to my newly acquired Bali driving skills’ and ‘getting obesely fat because of all the chocolate and wine I will have to consume to get me through a UK winter’ and ‘getting depressed because I won’t see the sun for months’ and ‘spending all the money we are meant to be saving on thermal underwear’.

I have countered this list with a list of all the things I’m looking forward to. It took a very long time to compile this list. Here it is:

Friends and family

Smoked mackerel pate

Museums

Rack of Lamb

Curzon cinemas

Konditor and Cook’s curly whirly cake.

Book stores

M&S underwear and food

Cheap wine

It’s funny that having done it once before doesn’t make it much easier. Stepping out of the known into the unknown is never going to be without risk. And taking risks requires courage (or just plain naivete). Dealing with uncertainty requires nerves of steel. I don’t have those. But John does. Luckily for me.

So, the journey continues. And the psychic tells me that we’ll be out of the UK by July. Too right we will. I’m booking those tickets before I even book the flight back.

mmmmmmm cake….

I repeat your order, OK?

SarahAlderson

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September 13, 2014

‘I repeat your order, OK?’

I look around in panic at everyone else at the table but they’re all locked in conversation. Mightily convenient.

It’s an unspoken rule in restaurant / cafe situations that at least one of the people at the table listens to the waiter repeat back the order. It’s a good practice to ensure nothing (especially not the coffee) is lost in translation.

For some reason though as soon as any waiter says these words in my vicinity my eyes glaze over and I turn into one of those nodding dogs on a car dashboard, smiling and nodding and grinning like a lobotomised lunatic until they finish, at which point my brain tunes back in in total panic and thinks: oh god, did he get my flat white?

This morning the waiter turns over his notepad and takes a deep breath in. I know he’s getting ready to reel off the three-page order that took half an hour for us to relay to him. I’d already skipped to the bathroom for five minutes in the hope that when I came back that part would be over.

I look around desperately, hoping that someone else is tuning in but no one is. Everyone is resolutely locked in conversation. It’s going to fall to me. I understand exactly how Captain Oates must have felt when he decided to take one for the team and bravely ventured out into a blizzard.

The waiter is looking at me pleadingly, expectantly, and I feel so bad that he’s being ignored by everyone else that I make extra clear eye contact and beam at him to show him that I for one am listening.

And then he starts to repeat the order back to me and I zone out just like I used to do in chemistry lessons. I can’t help it. It’s out of my control. I can hear the person next to me having a really interesting conversation and I WANT IN ON IT. But I can’t get in on it because I’m having to nod and smile and pretend to listen. But I’m not computing. It sounds like the presenter of the Shipping News is reading out a data stream of binary numbers while a swarm of wasps engulfs my head and I JUST WANT MY COFFEE.

I almost sob when he is done.

‘OK?’ the waiter asks, looking up from his notepad, and smiling at me.

I nod so hard my head almost falls off. I grin (it’s over!!!). He goes off with the order.

Of course, half of it never arrives and the other half is most definitely not what we ordered. The waiter glares at me as we shake our heads in bemusement at the lemon curd pancakes and the extra fruit salad. I can’t look him in the eye because I know, I know it’s all my fault.

Facing my demons

SarahAlderson

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September 8, 2014

Perhaps it’s because I’ve finally started venturing out of the house after a bout of dengue (that’ll please all the folk who sent me black magic curses) or perhaps it’s just because living in a small town you are eventually, by the law of statistics, bound to have run-ins with the people you have blogged about or been in conflict with, but this week has been all about facing my demons, quite literally.

Witness: last Friday at school to pick up Alula I ran into the man who just the week before had told me all about his vasectomy in great detail while I was queuing to buy tomatoes. This would have been embarrassing enough because now every time I see him I just see testes split open like pomegranates (I know that’s not how they do it but I have a writerly imagination), but as it was I had then written a blog post all about it. What if he had read it? With burning cheeks I ran and tried to hide behind my sunglasses. Epic Fail. I can’t keep writing blog posts I told myself sternly and assuming people won’t read them. Not after my last post went viral and was read by 20,000 people or thereabouts.

I haven’t been able to go anywhere since then without people saying ‘oh are you the person who wrote that post about leaving Bali?’ I keep forgetting that people actually read my posts. I am so used to thinking of my writing as being a bit like a NASA broadcast into deep space. I must learn to censor before hitting publish…but maybe not quite yet.

Yesterday, pulling into our drive, blissed out from the beach, I see this girl (a girlfriend of an acquaintance we let stay in our house while they were between places) and slam on the brakes. This girl had some kind of psychotic melt down in our house about six months ago, smashed all our belongings, called me a whore, screamed and bellowed like a cow in labour for hours terrifying Alula and then told John to ‘fuck off and die looser (sic)’ when he suggested politely that it was time for her to leave.

I tried to be compassionate. Clearly she’s messed up. Call me what you like (I’ve heard way worse), but spell loser looser and I’ve got an issue with you. And let’s not even talk about the vase. I loved that vase.

She turned and saw me getting out the car and gave me this evil glare. It took a lot of will power (OK, and a stern talking to from John) to walk into the house without saying a word. I reminded myself that people like her are a gift from the writing gods and that one day I will use her and the looser anecdote in a book (and in the meantime blog about her and use the looser anecdote). I will probably kill her off too. That made me feel better. But I did also have this strange compunction to draw chalk markings outside the house to ward off evil.

So where was I? Oh yes, Becky and I were sitting in our favourite writing spot (and coffee spot) trying to work and were constantly being interrupted by the booming voices of girls in yoga outfits talking about a) how much cocaine they snorted last night (hello DEATH PENALTY you idiot. Also, um, doesn’t snorting cocaine undo the effects of all those downward dogs?) b) how they are like totally healing their auras c) how moringa powder is the answer to like everything.

I turned around in the cafe and realised that the Priestess of the Goddess Gaia (self-professed) was sitting beside me. The same lady who drove me up the wall with her screaming tantric sound healing sessions. The same lady who told me she wouldn’t turn the volume down as she was ‘serving the community.’ The same lady whose house I threw jicama at in a fit of frustration.

I looked back at Becky. It’s her! I hissed. The priestess who I threw jicama at! Out of reflex I glanced across the table for something that I could throw in case she started up with the chanting. After a few minutes she got up and scampered out. I like to think it was because she knew I was there and was embarrassed and didn’t want to get hit in the head with some flying cutlery, and not because she’d finished her Kombucha.

It is becoming clearer and clearer to me however that this town is way too small for someone with a mouth so big.

The priestess and the death penalty

SarahAlderson

1 comment

August 20, 2014

You may or may not remember about a year ago our Western neighbours started running these “tantric sound healing workshops” (I use inverted commas because I think they would be better described as ‘fleece the naive soul seekers workshops”) from out of their house, a house I hasten to add, that has no walls.

Aside from the fact they had no work permit and were charging money for these workshops the noise was insane. The screams would start up at around 10am and continue until about 8pm. I’d see the fisherman-pant-wearing crew start arriving en masse and stick my headphones in, though not even cranking up my music to the max would drown out the noise. Imagine what hell would look like if created by the Game of Thrones writers. Now imagine the noise of a million Theon Greyjoys being tortured. That was my life for three months.

I tried everything. I went around there and politely asked them if they wouldn’t mind keeping the volume down. They acted all wide-eyed as if they couldn’t understand why I would have a problem. There was no apology.

The noise continued. I yelled out the window at them to shut up. I blasted Eminem at them at top volume. I threw wrinkly jicama from the balcony at their roof. Condemn me if you will for my immature behaviour but know this, if I had owned a missile firing Bazooka I would have used it.

Taking a deep breath I sent an email to the girl and asked in the most polite way possible if she wouldn’t mind being more mindful of the fact she lived in a community and telling her that I couldn’t even hear my daughter speak when she was three inches from me in the bed because the noise was so great.

She wrote me back the most hilarious email I’ve ever had the fortune to receive. She told me she was a ‘priestess of the goddess Gaia’ and that I wouldn’t ‘dare to ask a Balinese priest to stop his praying’ so why would I dare ask her to stop? She went on to tell me that she was on the planet to ‘serve the community’. It was basically a long f- you, but dressed up in Ubud gratitude-speak.

Gobsmacked not just by her total insanity but by the irony of someone claiming to be spiritual and community-minded while acting in such a selfish way, I wrote her back without bothering to dress up my long f- you.

John solved the issue at the end of the day (my hero). Being nice, unlike me, he went and talked to them and told them they needed to cease and desist immediately. And just like that, they did. I’m still not sure how he managed to get them to stop when my jicama throwing / Eminem blasting / pointed emails didn’t. Sigh.

Anyway, I have since found out that these same people just send out a public Facebook post inviting dozens of people in Ubud to a ‘sacred ceremony’ to drink ayahuasca…

… a drug that carries the death penalty in Bali.

Smart huh? ADVERTISE on Facebook the time, date and venue of the place where you are going to be taking drugs and then invite all your friends to indicate if they’re coming or not…

… In a country, I repeat, with the DEATH PENALTY for taking drugs.

Sometimes I wonder at the IQ of some people. Though not these people. I already knew they weren’t the brightest elves in the forest. It was nice to be given further proof though.

TMFI

SarahAlderson

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August 12, 2014

I just went next door to buy tomatoes. As I’m queuing to pay I see someone I know vaguely and ask how he is. He says ‘Yeah, not so good. I just had a vasectomy.’

I blink. And clutch my tomatoes tighter. I feel a little uncomfortable. I expected a ‘fine’. I smile and nod in what I hope is a sympathetic way. Then he tells me that he’s telling all his guy friends not to do it because ‘it throws the body out.’ At which point I can’t help but interject with a remark about the pill. I mean what does he think happens to all the billions of women who are stuffing their bodies with fake oestrogen each month? Frankly it’s about time men took some responsibility for birth control, you know what I’m saying?

Then he starts telling me – completely out of nowhere cos believe me I was trying to shut that conversation D.O.W.N – ‘I used to use the rhythm method.’

‘Oh,’ I say.

Now all I can do is picture him having sex. And you know, that would be OK if it was RYAN GOSLING telling me he uses the rhythm method but it isn’t. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t gone to buy tomatoes.

THEN he tells me that he had to get the vasectomy as the rhythm method stopped working and he kept ejaculating by accident (does that make it premature? I don’t know but I’m going with that).

I can’t even process this right now. I’m too traumatised. This is too much fucking information. LITERALLY.

Also – dude. Don’t ever tell stories like this to someone who writes for a living.