Sunday 26 September 2010

oh, and the good news is that we're off to Dubai for the hols, hurrah!

cherry cake

Apparently the goddess's modem is broken, and that's why she hasn't been replying to my emails. My fixer said I should just pop in and have a chat with her, but I think I might be better off just waiting for her modem to be fixed. Shecan't shrug in an email, or glance across with a 'whatever, minger' face. Oh, I don't know, maybe I'll drop by tomorrow morning when the kids are at school.
I have just tried to be a proper mother by doing homework with the Twins. They have to cook a dish from their own country, describe it on paper and bring in a sample to school tomorrow (quite ambitious given that neither of them can actually write). I have been planning to cook cherry cake with them ever since I found the only place in Kathmandu that sells glace cherries (not sure why I found this so thrilling - I don't even like glace cherries. And they don't really look or taste very much like real glace cherries, if I'm honest - probably made from plastic, cow dung and red food colouring). The cake recipe also called for ground almonds too, and you can't buy them anywhere. I did, however, find some whole almonds, and ground them myself. Are you impressed to my commitment to homework yet? I am!
Son joined in with the cake making, so it was somewhat chaotic. We tipped the mixture into the cake tin, only to realise that we had forgotten the sugar, so I had to scrape it all out, add the sugar, and shove it back in again.
The final product was really quite underwhelming, given the amount of effort that went in.
Twins had a little sheet to describe it on.
Twin 1 said: It looks like a shoe. It feels squidgy.
Twin 2 said: It sounds like the wind. It tastes of flowers.
Which I think says more about their respective personalities than our national cuisine.
TTFN x

Wednesday 22 September 2010

living goddesses and sonic screwdrivers

The blooming goddess still hasn't got back to me. She's probably busy wrestling Demons, or meeting an incarnation of Shiva - or alternatively she can't be bothered because she's poking people on Facebook. It's a bit irritating, because she was so utterly monosyllabic, no worse than that, nonosyllabic (yes, I have just invented a new word, and that's because I'm a writer, and I'm allowed to), so I could use a tad more information or I'm going to struggle to make my thousand words.
I'm almost better now, really, nearly, but I wasn't well enough to go to my Bollywood class last night, so I've missed out on a whole fifteen seconds more of slinky moves, shame.
Hubby still has his nose in Harry Potter (not literally), and I'm feeling a little jealous because I'm reading an autobiography of the chap who started the Grameen Bank (microcredit). It is quite interesting, but I don't think its as exciting as HP (no brooms or house elves at all).
Hubby and I had lunch today, in the spirit of injecting fun and romance back into our marriage (this is the kind of thing it suggests in magazines for women-of-a-certain-age, and I am that age now...). He told me about an exciting new strainer he has sourced for the water treatment works, and I told him about writing my scene where the heroine realises that her father is still alive. And they say romance is dead... I said that perhaps some gentle flirtation was in order and Hubby winked at me. He said that if I'd expected seduction I should have married someone else, and went back to discussing resin, particulates and borehole yeilds (enough to set anyone's heart a-flutter, no?).
Son is back downstairs. He can't sleep because he keeps thinking stuff about Dr Who and is worried about having bad dreams. Now he's off to eat some cheese, not sure how that will help. He seems to think that it will make him smile in his sleep and therefore have happy dreams. Hmm, not sure I'm quite convinced by that theory.
However, nice to see that some things don't change. Thirty five years ago it was me hiding behind the sofa when the daleks came on - nice to see I can pass that cheery childhood experience on to my own kids.
Anyway, I'm now off to see if I can buy a sonic screwdriver on Amazon.
Cheerio x

Monday 20 September 2010

Kevin-the-teenage-goddess

Right then. Still have lurgy (will it never end?) so am back in bed. Anyway, I said I'd tell you about the living goddess, so here goes: The story is that in the seventeenth century the Hindu goddess Taleju was playing a game of dice with King Malla. Here the story gets a bit confusing. I've heard that either he inappropriately lusted after her, or she gave him some important advice about running his kingdom. Anyway, for some reason or other she decided to be incarnated as a pre-pubescant girl from a local Buddhist caste, and has done so ever since. Now King Malla divided the Kathmandu Valley into three kingdoms because he had three sons - so each could inherit a kingdom upon his death and not have a big old civil war. So now there are three incarnations of Taleju, one for each of the ancient kingdoms (Kantipur, Baktapur and Lalitpur). The name given for a living goddess is a kumari. The kumari is a young girl, chosen between the ages of three and six. She's chosen from a local Newari caste through a combination of astrology, physical attributes and the priest's gut feeling. Her tenure as a living goddess lasts until her first period.
So it's all quite interesting, and I have been vaguely thinking I ought to write something about this since I've been here. Anyway, I was very excited to finally, via a Nepali photojournalist and fixer, have the opportunity to meet my neighbourhood kumari, here in Lalitpur. She lives less than a mile away, near Patan Durbar Square, in a skinny house on the main street with her mum, dad, and two younger brothers. She is fifteen, and has been a kumari for nine years - so she's knocking on, in goddess terms.
Meeting her was worth fighting through the 'flu for, not just because it was exotic, etc. But because it was so interesting to see the combination of arrogant goddess and sulky, embarrassed teenager morphed into one bejewelled person.
As interviews go, it was probably one of the most challenging I've done. Because she's a goddess, people aren't supposed to talk to her. And as she's only allowed out of her house in her palanquin on festival days, she doesn't get to see much, so doesn't really have much to say. Pretty much nothing at all, in fact. Although by the way she looked at me when I stammered out my clearly ridiculous questions, her heart was saying, "yeah, whatever."
I did manage to wrest from her that she wants to study accountancy in college (which, dull as it sounds, has got to be way more exciting than being locked up at home from the age of six).
She also gave me her email address, because she said she'd rather answer questions in writing. Which is how I came to have a living goddess's email address.
So I emailed her last night, and hope she will find time in her goddessy existence to check her hotmail account, because with just a teensy bit more information I can write up the interview for the Sunday Times magazine, if they'll take it...
Need to get out of bed now and tell Meena what to make for lunch (feel a bit like a living goddess myself, sometimes!) x

Sunday 19 September 2010

emailing a living goddess

Still ill, but I dosed myself up with as many random drugs as we had this morning and headed off to do an interview with a living goddess. Yes, really! And now I have the living goddess's email address. I'm wondering if she'll want to be my friend on facebook? I will tell you all about it soon, but I really do feel hideous, so I'm going to make a hot lemon and go to bed. xxx

Thursday 16 September 2010

ill again!

Feeling really pretty horrible today - think I have Son's lurgy thing. That's my excuse for not writing up the 'catalyst' scene (where our heroine discovers the big fat family secret that sends her off on a quest of discovery...), and instead falling asleep for an hour in the middle of the day. However, I think the worst is over so I'm going to try to write it now (not as if I need an early night, given my large siesta). Well, not right now, because I'm talking to you now, but, you know, in a minute, when I have procrastinated a bit more first.
Sunil turned up after supper to sort out my saggy-elephant-bottom linen trousers. I know that no amount of tailoring can make my bum look small, but it's a sad day when something actually makes it look bigger than it really is - which was the case with aforementioned (good word, eh) trousers. He's also making me a slinky velvet pencil skirt, no idea when I'll wear it, but hey. I've had to get my tailoring in before Sunil disappears on some mystery business trip to Munich (well, he says Munich, but I suspect he's being recalled to the Mother Ship).
Oh, I didn't tell you about the Bollywood classes, did I?
The first one went very well, thanks. If you think a room full of mildly uncoordinated middle-aged women wiggling their hips and pretending to be young, Asian and slinky counts as 'well'. It only took an hour's class to learn the first fifteen seconds of the routine... quite glad I was at the end that didn't have a huge great mirror on the wall. There's a Bollywood party in a couple of weeks at the embassy, so perhaps we could all do a little exhibition dance?
Right, need to chew some paracetamol and give my heroine something to think about.
(And by the sound of it I also need to give Twin 2 another puff on her inhaler and an extra dose of cough medicine, poor little scrap).
Night, then x

Wednesday 15 September 2010

Must be a nicer person...

Right then, I only have eighteen minutes of charge left on this laptop and you can't make me go all the way downstairs to get the charger (I'm feeling ill, again, another little sip of viral soup).

I have a friend, who I met up with the other day, who says that when you get irritated by someone, it's usually some fault in your own psychological make up that's bugging you (yes, she probably did say bugging you, because she is Canadian). She says that when you point the accusing finger at someone, you have four fingers pointing at yourself.
I have been thinking about this.
I have been trying to have less prejudice, and be mindful of my own less-than-perfect nature.
I have been trying...
However, I have decided that I cannot totally respect someone who names their child after a superannuated pop-country fusion singer. Even if that person is jolly nice, and has even invited me to their birthday party, there is a part of me that just can't, well, get over it.
Perhaps I will ask my wise Canadian friend what she thinks. She will probably think I'm being vile, especially as namesake nineties pop-country fusion singer is also Canadian.
Perhaps I should try to get over my prejudice by renaming my own children in a similar vein. Perhaps I'll start calling them Sunny, Cher and Madonna.
What do you reckon?
No power left, must go x

Monday 13 September 2010

half term

Sorry. So much for trying to write more often. I blame the hangovers.
We had half term (two days), which involved lots of ferrying kids around to meet other kids at various locations.
Then on Friday evening there was the fabulously surreal Teej (I had to mix my pre-do gin with ginger beer in the end, and I have to say it was pretty tasty). There we were, all dressed up to the nines in our rato saree (red saris - although in fact I was a bit of a rebel as I wore a red dress that used to be a sari), with clinking bangles and nervous laughter that morphed into drunken laughter as the evening progressed. We drank (plenty), danced (badly), and won quite splendiferous raffle prizes (Twin 1 was very pleased with the brown plastic statuette of a dolphin I gave her the following morning). I'm talking about the British wives, natch. The Nepali ladies all looked stunning, danced gracefully, didn't drink, and let us win all the raffle prizes, bless 'em. Ah well, we'll return the favour with the Secret Santa at the wives xmas function...
On Saturday Hubby was feeling a bit tired, so he went back to bed in the morning, leaving me to entertain the kids (oh, don't worry about my hangover, you just get some shut-eye, mate, I muttered, as he began snoring, and the kids began demanding something more interesting than quiet colouring in).
Went out to eat Saturday night with Hubby and a group of lovely people from the Embassy. There were three single laydeez in the group, all of them top birds, lamenting the paucity of single blokes in Nepal. So if anyone knows any nice unattached males, please do send them out to Kathmandu, where I can guarantee they will be very well looked after.
Only one kids' party to attend this weekend (what's happening? Are they becoming unpopular?), but it was miles away in a place called Godavri. Still, they had a blast, as did Son (he didn't seem bothered that the party was intended for five-and-six-year old girls), until his illness kicked in - yes, this time he was genuinely ill, not just kicked out of school for having sickly siblings.
I hope he'll be better by tomorrow because, you know, there are best-selling novels just waiting to be a-written!
Nightie, night x
ps - Twin 2 has started trying to give me open-mouthed kisses at bed time. Yeuch. Like being kissed by a tortoise. She's been watching way too much of those Disney Princess movies!

Wednesday 8 September 2010

no secrets!

Okay, I will write more often, then...Not sure how coherent it's likely to be tonight though, as I'm on my third G&T (I was trying to save the tins of tonic for a pre-Teej stiffener, but that's gone by the wayside - will just have to down it neat on the fast-approaching night).
Anyway, I had to have a bit of Dutch courage to Skype the Sunday Times magazine and pitch an idea for A Life in the Day feature.
It has been many, many years since I've pitched to a national (about ten, actually), so I thought a gin was in order.
Oh, don't give me that, it was 8pm over here, so perfectly respectable (the sun was well over the yard arm, as my mother would say).
You see, I have agreed with Hubby that I can't carry on in the manner-to-which-I have-become-accustomed once we're posted back to scary UK. I have to earn something, and much as I'd like to think I'll be a best-selling novelist by then, lets face it, the odds are against me. As the only thing I'm even remotely competent at is writing, then I guess I'll have to start freelancing again. So I thought I ought to try to get a couple of things in the cuttings file before the move.
Anyway, I'll let you know how I get on. It would be pretty cool to say, "I'm a novelist, and I also write for the Sunday Times" when people ask what I do - instead of saying, "I'm a trailing spouse". Sometimes I think I should just lie and say I'm "In development" like everyone else does (I suspect half of them are lying, too).
Oooh, that G&T is really quite tasty.
I had given up drinking in the evening (until today) in a vague bid to lose weight. But then I read in the Economist that all you have to do to lose weight is to drink a pint of water before each meal. It's scientifically proven, and what's more, it's in the Economist, so it must be true. So I drank a pint of water before supper (momos and chips) and now I'm about to pour my fourth G&T. Do you think it will work?
Hubby is away in Pokhara, so he is probably on his umpteenth whisky in the Amsterdam bar, so I don't feel remotely guilty. Plus, the kids are on half term tomorrow, so I don't have to get up at silly o'clock in the morning, hurrah. I'd say that merits another snifter, wouldn't you?
TTFN xxx

Tuesday 7 September 2010

more of the same

Hubby has told me I have to write some more on my blog. I'm not sure whether this is because it gives him more time with exciting Harry Potter, and gets him out of tedious conversations about Meena's pasta sauce, or because he's hoping that the more I write, the more secrets he'll find out next time he logs on.
So, Hubby, when I'm telling you about Meena's pasta sauce, my secret thought is that Colin Firth is licking my toes.
Actually that's not true. I have gone off Colin Firth since his Mr Darcy days (so long ago, now!). Now he always seems to play ageing homosexuals, so I think that little crush of mine is well and truly over.
I could tell you about wailing and chuntering in the medical centre when we had our rabies boosters, or breathless and confusing conversations with other mums about trekking over deshain holidays, or shouting so loudly at Twin 1 at bedtime that now my throat hurts.
But these are things that don't really need to concern you.
What you want is another secret thought, don't you?
Oh alright then.
Today's secret thought is... other people's babies scare me. There, I've said it. I pretty much have baby phobia. In fact, the younger, the scarier, in my opinion. There is a new girl in the Twins' class, and they like her, and she seems to like them, and she also seems very nice (unlike X) but I'm scared of arranging a playdate in case her Mum brings along her two baby brothers, and I will have to pretend to think they are cute and charming, when actually I'll be resisting a desperate urge to run for the hills.
Don't tell anyone because it's distinctly unmaternal and frankly downright wierd, given that I've had three babies of my own.

Monday 6 September 2010

Three secret thoughts

  1. And my secret thought today is... how never to invite Twins' friend (we'll call her X so as not to be defammatory) to our house ever again. I'm waiting for X to ask to come over to play, so I can say "No, you can't. And you know why not." But on the other hand, I don't want to fall out with her mother...what can you do?
  2. My other secret thought is...pumpkin and soya bean curry. Have you never tried it? You really should!
  3. And my final secret thought is... yes, it was me who ate the remaining mini mars bar and bag of chocolate buttons from this weekend's party bags. They weren't thrown away by Sanu or snuffled up by Gary. It was me, me, me, and I shall have to do an extra session in the gym to repent.

Hubby is upstairs with Harry Potter. He and Son are both now utterly obsessed. Think I may have to sue JK Rowling for ruining both my marriage and my relationship with my boy.

Wish there were more party bags to plunder...

Thursday 2 September 2010

norma no mates

I am feeling utterly overshadowed by my children's social lives. This weekend Son has another two parties (I'm getting through that stock of Usborne True Stories books that I accidentally over-ordered earlier this year - who can complain if you give their children books as presents?), and the Twins have a party and a friend for a sleepover. They even have friends over for a sleepover tonight (and it's a school night - shock!).
Still, at least I have the Gurkha wives' Teej party to look forward to next week, which is always a pretty surreal experience (including a tombola and a prize for the best-dressed lady). I have realised, after a whole two years here, that the way to approach gurkha-type events is either to not go at all, or make sure you have plenty of 'journey juice', so you're already half-drunk when you get there. I know, I know, I should be embracing the cross-cultural experience. And I will embrace it, I really will - but only once I've had a nice stiff G&T.
tootle pip!