I love Thanksgiving. I mean I’ve never sat down and had a Thanksgiving dinner or anything but as celebrations go, Thanksgiving seems to me to be one of the better American traditions. It beats Christmas (stress of present buying, annoying Christmas tunes on the radio, Queen’s speech) and Easter (guilt at eating chocolate to celebrate a man being crucified) and Halloween (shit I have to come up with another costume). Thanksgiving seems a lot more humble and honest. Less consumer driven. And less costume-focussed.

Anyway, even though we’re not American, Alula is starting to sound like one and we’re the only British people we know in town, so I’m going all out and adopting Thanksgiving this year.

Here’s my list of things I’m thankful for:

1.    Living in Bali not South East London

I give thanks every single day (as I machete open coconuts and stare at the rice paddies and order up another massage) that we live here. I drive John mad by my daily announcement; ‘Can you believe we live here, that this is our life? We could still be living in Beckenham you know…(pause for horror to sink in)?’ I feel incredibly blessed we have found this unique and magical spot on the globe.

2.    For having a husband who believed in outrageous potential

John and I often comment on how we wouldn’t be here without the other. I had the urge to travel and have adventures but John was the one who ultimately suggested we cut the safety net tying us to jobs and country and just go and see what happened. He’s the one who tirelessly believed in outrageous potential…while I’d ask him every five minutes in those early months ‘are we going to be OK?’

His unfailing ability to nod and say yes saw us through some lean months (as did his ability to nab amazing design jobs all around the world and therefore keep us afloat as my meager writing advances trickled in).

3.    For having fans!

Yeah! Really! I get fan mail. Me. Actual fan mail. Really lovely, gushy letters from people who’ve read my books and think they’re the best things since sliced bread, and who go and tell all their friends to read them too! It’s amazing. And everyday when I wake up to them I smile because what a wonderful incredible thing! Except if it’s another one from the stalker who’s turning into a miniature Kathy Bates. But hey ho, can’t have everything. And it really is incredible to make a living from doing something that makes people so happy!

 4.    For having a daughter like Alula

With her Scooby Doo obsession and incredible imagination who fights with passion and loves with intensity and laughs like a witch and who at just 6 turned to me after I made a wish for ‘love, joy and abundance’ and said, ‘But mummy, we have all those things! You wasted a wish!’

5.    For family & friends

This year has been a year of friendships – from meeting up in New York with dear friends to hanging in London with oldies and besties, and seeing family and nephews and new niece and collaborating from afar with fellow writers. I love it that as I grow older my friendship circles grow and bloom too, rather than withering and dying as I think can often happen. (And if any of you read this, my birthday is Sunday and what I would adore more than anything is an email from each and everyone of you so I don’t start to miss you too much.)

Also grateful for: ice cream, cacao pow balls, being given the chance to work on the Hunting Lila screenplay, selling two more books, dancewalk buddies, pilates, chocolate, coconuts and massage.

I have been lame at keeping up the blog. I think I needed a break. Thanks for bearing with me. I’m going to post several posts at once.

Well, Alula turned six and started first grade! Can you believe it? We left the UK when she was 3 so it feels now like she’s spent half her life living overseas and is a proper ex-pat kid. A theory confirmed today when John and I tried to work out where she’d been disappearing to for half hours at a time. It turned out she was running next door and having the lovely Balinese girls who live there braid her hair and paint her nails.

This morning she woke up and asked me if she had time to run next door and get her hair braided and a pedicure before school. Holy hell. We’re really not sure how she’s going to adapt if she ever has to rejoin the ‘real’ world. Though frankly the real world is overrated.

We have managed to get on top of the cleaning up after herself and treating the babysitter like a gimp though. We no longer have a babysitter (see my next post) and we introduced pocket money. She has to tidy up all her toys, make her bed and bring her plates to the sink. In exchange she gets a dollar a day to spend at school at the raw food warung. Yes, Green School Bali, possibly the only school on earth that has it’s own raw food warung selling raw chocolate dinosaur truffles and green smoothies good enough to bribe kids with.

Actually, at Alula’s party the other day, I looked around at her group of friends and honestly felt like she is growing up in the best place in the world. They’re the most polite, kind, loving and generous-hearted six year olds I’ve ever encountered. All of them growing up without TV or the evils of advertising, practicing yoga, learning two languages at school and immersed in the beauty of this Hindu animist culture. We had a treasure hunt which led them to a statue in the garden.

‘Ganesha!’ they all cried.

This morning John and I found an offering Alula had made and placed at his feet.

Although a lot of people will tell me that I’m good at confrontation, that I get an A* in telling it like it is and a gold medal in speaking my mind, consequences be damned, I don’t really enjoy it. Well, OK, sometimes I enjoy it…if I have the upper hand and have prepared all my lines.

But yesterday on the tube (yes, we’re back in London and have been since the end of June, which is probably why you haven’t heard from me. I’m just too exhausted by being here to blog…) I had a moment with this woman which made me a) want to burst into tears b) wonder at the state of the world and all the anger in it (see I’m so Ubud now) c) want to smack this woman around the head (OK, maybe not so much with the hippy bliss love) d) go straight back to Bali without passing Go or collecting $200.

I’m on the tube. Alula is beside me and we’re talking about something really important. I can’t remember what but probably it was about Moshi Monsters or about Alula’s business plan to start a spa in our house so that she can make people happy while also making herself rich so that she can then ‘buy lots of things to make me happy’ (note to self: not sure this eco Bali teach her the true value of things concept is working on her).

Anyway, suddenly this woman yells, ‘Would you stop doing that?’ startling us both. I realize that as Alula has been talking to me her foot has been absently tapping the woman’s leg.

‘Oh God, was she tapping you with her foot?’ I ask, genuinely feeling bad cos I know how annoying that is.

‘Yes!’ the woman roared at me over Alula’s head.

Alula sat there startled and pale. ‘You know, you could have just asked her nicely to stop it,’ I said.

‘I glared at her three or four times,’ the woman spat at me.

‘She was facing in my direction, not yours. How was she supposed to see you glaring at her?’ I asked, quite nicely, but also feeling the blood beginning to pound through my body and my face getting hotter. ‘You know, you could have just asked her nicely to stop. She wasn’t doing it on purpose.’

The woman turned away in disgust and started muttering under her breath.

‘Do you have something you want to say?’ I asked her, again opting for polite, but verging on getting very, very irritated.

‘If you’re going to be an apologist for her all her life then god help how she’s going to turn out,’ the woman snapped at me in fury.

By this point, my eyes were popping. I glanced around the carriage to see if there was anyone else as gobsmacked as I was by the crazy lunatic woman yelling at me.

No. Everyone was remarkably interested in their Evening Standards. Typical.

‘I’m not apologizing for her.’ Actually I wasn’t. By that point I was wishing I’d egged Alula on to kick her harder. ‘It was an accident. She didn’t mean to kick you. What the hell is your problem lady?’ I hissed.

I grabbed Alula’s hand and we stood up. ‘You,’ I said, holding my head high while also seething, ‘are a CRAZY lady,’ I informed her. ‘And we are getting off. Because you are CRAZY,’ I added for emphasis. Also, by this point I wanted to confirm my prognosis by making her even crazier. I do like to stir sometimes.

And it worked. We stood on the platform as the train doors closed, staring in  as she ranted and raved and her eyeballs practically rolled in her head and everyone around her buried their own heads in their papers.

Anyway, it left me shaken, and Alula shocked into trembling silence. And then it just made me want to go straight back to Bali, where they might put a black magic curse on you but where I’ve never seen such dark, negative, angry energy pulsing off a person. It just makes you feel tainted being around that shit. I had to go home and have a bath. Then in a very Bali move instead of seething about it and sending her hate vibes, I started sending the crazy lady positive energy and vibes and compassion instead. Call me Guru Rimpoche from now on people.

She must have had a hard day I tried convincing myself (NOW I really was being an apologist…oh the irony). And the thought that I was taking on her black energy and passing it forward was not what I wanted to do.

But, having said all that, I still wish Lula had kicked her harder. And with a steel-toe capped boot besides.

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.