gruel

Kids are very happy as they have friends with equally vivid imaginations round for sleepover. I'm sure they are all dreaming of magic aliens and invisible elephants. And so long as they don't decide to come and tell me about it at five in the morning, I'm happy too. Hubby, however, isn't happy. He is sad. If he were a type of food it would be gruel (by the way, does anyone actually know what gruel is?). Because of the whole leech-adventure thing, it's been a very short week, and he's tried to squish too much in. So we thought we'd just watch a DVD tonight. The only DVD in the pile that we hadn't watched yet was one called 'Edmund', which was very interesting, involving murder, sodomy, racism etc., all very cleverly put together but hardly something to lighten the mood.

Managed deftly to avoid being on the new partner's club committee this week by saying "erm, I just don't want to do it" to the lovely Chair. God knows I will never be either a diplomat or a saleswoman. I am just so pants at wriggling out of things (or wriggling into them, either). I feel simultaneously guilty and relieved. I wonder whether a bloke would struggle with something like this. I don't think Hubby would. If he were in my shoes, a trailing spouse, and was asked to be on a committee like this, he wouldn't bother with the niceties, and would just say 'not while there's breath in my body' or something equally clear, whereas I just fudge the issue with lots of apologetic hand-wringing because I don't want to upset anyone.

Anyway, it's done, so no coffee-and-bingo mornings for me (I want to say 'hurrah' but I'll have to say it in a very quiet and meek voice, so as not to upset anyone).

Anyway, should really go - 10pm is lights out time...

leeches

Went to the British Gurkhas welfare bungalow on the Kathmandu valley rim at Kakani overnight last night with a couple of other families. We had a barbeque and the ten kiddies had plenty of rollicking fun. You see, when you say it like that, it all sounds perfectly idyllic. The reality was that there were sixteen of us in a bungalow intended for six, at most. Ten kids. Yes ten. And many, many leeches. And it rained. Oh, and the kids all woke up at quarter to five this morning. And it rained and rained so we could barely make it out of the house, and when we did, everyone trailed leeches back into the house on their shoes, so there were leeches in and out. At five o'clock this morning Hubby made me promise never ever to make him go through this again. And I promised quite cheerfully. 

Anyway, half term is over now and the kids are back at school tomorrow and Hubby is off to Pokhara, and all the leeches in Kakani will be hungry.

Also, I'm not vomiting any more (apart from at the sight of a leech fresh from the sucking fields of some four-year-olds foot), which is good.

I am freaking out a little at the realisation that we are halfway through the school term, and my goal of finishing typing up the first draft of the novel by the end of term seems almost unattainable. Still, if I manage to avoid leeches and bacterial infections for the next few weeks I might be in with a chance...

ps - two of the fish have already died. Reminds me a bit of the poor ill-fated gerbils we used to have when I was little. They never seemed to last much more than a week, either. I wonder if i could tempt Son with something a little more hardy for him to nurture, like a cactus. Although come to think of it, I managed to kill a cactus once, by over-watering it (I was nine). I thought that as the poor thing didn't get much water in the desert, I'd make up for it and give it lots. One day it popped.

More vomit

Ill again - haven't even been remotely tempted to open birthday chocolates, which bodes very well for fitting into bikini for pool party on Friday. There's a silver lining to every cloud, as I told myself as I was chundering in the changing area of the pool this afternoon. It is good to hang onto positive thoughts at times like these, I find. Son was pestering me for another chocolate biscuit, Twin 1 was crying because her skirt had got wet, and Twin one was having a hissy fit because I'd told her it was time to go. And I couldn't tell any of them to give it a rest because of the vomit up my nose. Is that too much detail? Probably.

I got asked to be on the Partners' Club committee today. I said I would think about it. I thought about it, and my thoughts went something like this: no, no, no, please no. However, the woman who is the new chair is extremely lovely, so I'll have to find a nicer way of saying it.

Anyway, I'm off for an evening snack of paracetamol and immodium now. Mmmm, yummy!

vomit, mostly

Hubby is out at the Red Rooster (a bar) with workmates and I'm contemplating a second glass of wine, although I should really be in the shower, as i have puddles of congealed vomit all down my back. It's black vomit too, the result of a whole can of Coke: Twin 2 is not very well. In order just to get some fluids down her, I let her drink the (usually forbidden) Coke, and bless her, she managed to down the lot, but then most of it came back up again when she went to bed. I think that managing to cuddle someone when they are throwing up all over you must be the sign of true mother love - I certainly wouldn't do it for Hubby if he comes home two sheets to the wind from the Red Rooster.

Anyway, I'm 39 now.

Yes I am.

It's all a bit depressing. I just wish I could be forty already and just get it all over and done with. 

I can't help imagining this time next year that people will think 'ooh, she looks in quite good nick for someone in her forties', whereas now they'll just be thinking 'hmm, she looks a bit tatty for someone in her thirties'. Well, actually they'll probably be thinking nothing of the kind. They're probably just thinking 'Why on earth is that silly bint letting her four-year-old quaff a whole can of Coke? She is obviously way too obsessed with how she looks to care about hyperactivity or tooth decay.' Or possibly just thinking,'Peter and Jordon, how dreadful, who could have predicted that?'

Anyway, I give up trying to mind read. It's futile. And a jolly good job no-one can read my mind. They would be appalled. Several times a day I have to pull myself up for internal bitchy comments, which really aren't acceptable, even if never voiced.

I have a good friend out here who became a Christian a few years ago. She said one of the hardest things is to give up general bitchiness and schadenfreude. No more Heat magazine. No more celebrity Big Brother, etc. And not only do you have to give up gossip media, you have to give up gossip entirely, even to your husband. Moreover, if someone is nasty to you, you can't bitch about them, you have to FORGIVE them, which would be pretty much impossible for an inherent grudge-bearer like me. 

Must go now as Twin 1 has woken up with a fever, so i suspect the whole vomiting thing is about to repeat itself - good job I haven't got round to having my shower yet...

Tootle pip!

lettuce flu

Feeling pants. Just achy and rubbish. Apparently its something to do with eating lettuce in the rainy season. I told Hubby last night that I wasn't feeling too great, and he just kept repeating, "You're not ill!" in an increasingly irritated manner until I got very cross and huffy and felt utterly unloved. He was nice again this morning, but too late for total forgiveness. I'm saving revenge until the next time he gets man flu, and then I'll just trumpet, "You're not ill!" and ignore him. See how he likes it. Yeah.

ps - do you think it could be swine flu?

ps - still no curfews or vehicle-burning madness ensuing from Nepali constitutional crisis x

the fish tanks are on me!

Son has learnt to swim. After blooming years of lessons at the public pool in the UK, and spending all last year attached to his 'noodle'  (one of those wiggly buoyancy aids), the magic that is the (slightly less handsome than I had been led to believe - although admittedly about a million times better looking than nice Geoff, the swim coach at Bramcote public baths in Nottingham) Nepali swim coach Sudeep worked in less than two lessons. 

It is most anti-climatic. 

I had promised him (Son, not Sudeep) a fish tank and everything when he finally learnt to swim. Luckily I found a fishbowl and contents for less than a fiver. Not spending more than that when it only took him about ten minutes to learn. Really. On the first lesson he did a bit of kicking on the side. At the second lesson I had just busied myself with wiping a bottom (not mine) and ordering a diet coke, before getting into the pool myself. By the time I had poked a baby toe in, he was front crawling all over the place. Quite disappointing. 

Still, there are a couple more challenges in store for magic Sudeep, in the shape of Twin 1 and Twin 2. If he can get Twin 2 swimming, it'll be fish tanks all round. I may even buy one for Hubby - it might calm and de-stress his tortuous, grumpiness. It is supposed to work in dentists' waiting rooms, so why not in our bedroom?

Well, it would be worth a try. 

It is just after eight thirty in the evening here and Hubby has gone to bed. Son woke him up at about five am, for the second morning in a row. They have both been bleary-eyed and irritable all afternoon. The ladies of the family, however, sensibly had a power-nap after lunch and have been perky-as-you-fancy most of the day (boys of the family don't fancy any perkiness whatsoever, and were content to merely watch Star Wars and go to bed, pretty much at the same time). 

Anyway, I ramble on like a big slice of rambling pie. Should really go and stare at the new goldfish (or Goldy, Mischief and Sauce, to their friends) and put me in the right frame of mind for a good long kip.

Nighty night.

ps - Twin 1 wants to be Darth Moll (? don't know how to spell), but only if Mummy will be a Sith as well. Not sure what to do - should I move across to the dark side too?

Hubby: Outlook thundery with outbursts predicted later

calm before the storm?

Oddly, no protests today. However, the Commander, who happened to be sitting nearby at a briefing on swine flu this afternoon, told me that the maoist politburo is meeting in the morning to decide what action to take, so there may well be some more tyre-burning argy-bargy before the week is out.

 An 'old hand' next door, who has been here for years, advised me this morning to get some shopping in, just in case there are 23-hour-a-day curfews, as there were a few years ago. Unfortunately our car is still in the workshop, so I could only shop for the essentials. Come the revolution, we will at least have plenty of chocolate spread and cheese triangles to see us through the misery and mayhem. We might even get round to eating the scabby old flapjacks that Meena made two weeks ago.

Other than feeling a tad jittery about the whole incipient swine flu pandemic and spiral into civil unrest thing (and, thinking about it, would it be such a bad thing if these two possibilities ended up coinciding: if swine flu reached Nepal and we were all stuck at home under curfew, then it couldn't spread - or if it all kicked off in terms of street protests and then swine flu arrived, then the political unrest would die down pretty quick if all the maoists were at home drinking Lemsip*), it has been a pretty good day. Twin 2 even did two poos on the toilet (she also did two in her pants, but best to focus on the positive, I feel). 

Anyway, I'm going to read Nepalnews website here, and see whether I need to rush out and stockpile strawberry cornflakes and Nesquick as well. 

*not sure Lemsip  exists out here, but there must be a local equivalent, probably based on substances outlawed in the UK - perhaps a health-giving tonic containing mercury, asbestos powder and opium, or somesuch.

the red goddess

So we went to see the red goddess, whose chariot (its a very tall thing: a bit like a huge christmas tree with a little wendy house inside, roped to the top of a huge wooden cart) was toppling precariously at a forty five degree angle and halted in the middle of the Mangal Bazar. The goddess herself had been moved to a less dangerous chariot, parked nearby. We thought nothing of it, clocked her (Hubby was very disappointed as he'd been under the impression that she was one of the famous living goddesses, but she's not, she's just a statue), and then went off to glance at the rest of the world heritage site that is Patan Durbar Square, before scurrying into a cafe for fish fingers and chips (I know, but it is hard to interest four-year-olds in seventeenth century architecture). 

Apparently when the goddess is halted in her procession, it's a dreadful omen, and means dire things are afoot in Nepal. Or so I read in the papers today, right underneath the story about how the army chief has been sacked, but refuses to leave, thus teetering Nepal on the brink of military coup. Or anarchy. Any excuse for a 'bandha' (protest), of which there were many yesterday afternoon in Kathmandu (luckily not across the river here in Patan). Last night the president wrote to the army chief, supporting his decision not to leave, and saying that his dismissal was unconstitutional. Today the prime minister got all huffy about the situation and resigned.  There will no doubt be loads of street protests again tomorrow, which will be terribly inconvenient as I really do need to do a supermarket shop.

I do wish someone would just fix the chariot, shove the red goddess back inside and get moving. Then the president, prime minister and army chief will all just kiss and make up, and we can go back to getting excited about the monsoon starting and not bothering with bruised political egos.

I'm no political pundit, but I suspect things won't actually spiral into disaster. I think there will be a lot of huffiness, a few more protests, and then things will revert back to the usual haphazard normality. But I may be wrong. Maybe I should ask the goddess?

jedis, siths, princesses and goddesses

Apparently I am a jedi and so is Twin 2. Twin 1, however, is a sith. According to Son. Hubby is half-sith and half-jedi. I'm not sure if this is possible, but might be down to him being a Gemini and therefore allowed a split personality. I'm not surprised Twin 1 is a sith: her spaceship destruction tally is quite high. Why, only the other morning I was woken up at quarter to six by Son in tears because Twin 1 had run into his room and annihilated a whole fleet of Lego space craft. She is certainly a girl in touch with her inner dark side. Not that we have seen any of it today, thankfully. Twins 1 & 2 had their birthday party. The theme was 'princesses' and it was as if the essence of all things pink, spangly and fragrant had been distilled into one tiny patch of greenery at the British Embassy. Except when Son started poking the princesses with a big stick. And when Twin 2 was so enjoying herself she forgot that wee should belong in toilets, not pants.

Tomorrow we are off to find the red goddess. The red goddess's huge chariot has been being built in the middle of the main road on our route to school (why it has to be built just there, I'm not sure, as there's a perfectly good football pitch just up the road that has loads of room. But hey, I guess it's just far-more goddess-like to cause massive disruption and make everyone late for assembly). 

Vasu, our driver, reliably informed me that once the chariot was completed and the statue of the goddess herself instated, it would parade through the streets of Patan, and then it would rain. I asked if he was sure it would rain, and he said yes. I said did he think it would rain specifically because of the goddess and he said yes. I decided to believe him and have faith in the red goddess (why not? after all, we all used to have faith in Michael Fish, and he didn't even have a chariot). Also, when the Nepalis had a festival for what they said was the coldest day of the year (January 14th, as I recall), and I pooh-poohed it, I was proven wrong, as it did start to warm up after that. Then when Meena, our cook, told me that we would get a little bit of rain after the festival of Holi, that was true as well. Likewise in this instance: Lo! on the fourth day, when the goddess began her stately procession, we had rain and thunder (a bit inconveniently as I had no coats for the kids at home time). Apparently her chariot has made it as far as the Mangal Bazar, which is within walking distance of our house (and not in the middle of our route to school), so we're off to get a look at her tomorrow. Think we will take rain coats this time, though.