jockey-tastic

Hi, Twin 2 is up with Ganga the physio and the others are watching Star Trek with Hubby, and I'm fairly amazed at my lack of hangover. Last night we went to a cocktail party/games night in the mess. It is a bit bizarre to get all glammed up, only to play oversized board games and screech along to Singstar on Wii, but army life is nothing if not surreal. The oversized board game was in fact a horse race, based on the Grand National (the leading horse's syndicate had to down a glass of red wine when the horse made it over Beecher's Brook). I was in three different races, or maybe four (my memory is a bit hazy) and our team won two of them. In the final, Hubby and I entered a 'horse' called Gary Baharda Rai, in honour of our lovely mastiff dog, and we romped home and won ourselves eight thousand rupees (about £70). Not bad, eh? Even with the amount of Mojitos I consumed over the course of the night, we more than broke even. And, even better, I haven't had a real hangover today - I was up by eight cooking french toast for the kids (okay, I had to have a little power nap this afternoon, but then, I usually do on a weekend).
Luckily the do was held at night, as the dim lighting helped disguise the big rash of acne/eczema that has appeared on my chin. I'm beginning to think that I really ought to have splashed out on burka in Dubai, as it would help prevent the looks of revulsion I've been subjected to over the last few days. Even the doctor seemed horrified at the sight of the monstrous carbuncles in my peri-oral area and immediately prescribed antibiotics and steroids - do hope they work, as I don't have the option of growing a beard.
Rebecca Bryan is away right now (and don't tell her about the mojitos or the horse race as she would only disapprove), but before she left she uploaded a revised chapter 1 onto the peer review site. She now just has to review lots of other people's first chapters in order to get some good reviews for hers over the next two weeks - it's a bit of a numbers game. I think she'll have to come back tonight, or possibly tomorrow...
Anyway, have a good weekend xxx

Rebecca

Rebecca Bryan hasn't gone down too well with Hubby. She is too work focussed and a little bit grumpy. Tonight for example, Hubby suggested an episode of Corrie and Rebecca said in her best authoress voice "I have to work". She did not say, "Ooh, yes, and let's eat lots of chocolate whilst we're watching" because that's not what she's like. She is focussed and professional. Later, Hubby came up to where Rebecca was working - at that point she was just saving a document and morphing back into me. He said: "Well, I don't know what you've been working on..."
Rebecca was not very happy that Hubby couldn't know that she has spent the last three years writing, and has just completed a manuscript, especially as she told him she was revising chapter one this week, in order to get it peer-reviewed before entering it into a competition. He appeared to know nothing about this. Rebecca, on the other hand, knew all about super-chlorination and the difference between chloroforms and coliforms, and other water-treatment related work issues.
Rebecca feels that Hubby has scant interest in her writing beyond a potential means to retire early and buy a yacht.
I'm not Rebecca, though, so I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. This time...

Tonight, Mathew, I'm going to be Rebecca Bryan...

Twins have gone for a sleepover with their friend, and Son is an only child for the night. This afternoon I played chess (beat him, too - didn't mean to be quite so evil, and hadn't realised that I had him in check mate), tigers & goats and then did some cooking. He made some lush lemon squares, which will foil my attempts to lose a few pounds before we get back to the UK (the ingredients consisted mainly of sugar and butter, with a teensy bit of lemon juice and flour thrown in - don't know why I go to the effort of eating the darn things; I may as well just stick them directly onto my thighs).
Then I left him (not alone, Meena and Mani were scuttling about the place) whilst I went to the gym. I think I managed to work off the equivalent of half a mouthful of lemon square on the rowing machine (still too dizzy to go running, even though the nice doctor has given me some much more effective medication). After the gym I went to Hubby's office to walk home with him. As it was a quiet day, I only had to wait half an hour whilst he had conversations about super-chlorination and tried to shut down his very old computer. I began to wish I had brought 'A prayer for Owen Meany' with me - I could have got through a not inconsiderable chunk of it whilst waiting for the office tedium to end. Still, I filled the time trying to think of a suitable pseudonym. Did you know that Beyonce always thinks of herself as 'Sasha Fierce' before going onstage. A very nice friend of mine suggested that I do the same, and give myself a writer's name, in order to become more focussed on being a writer. So far, I've settled on Rebecca Bryan, which isn't terribly exciting, I know, but then neither is Mark Twain, or George Eliot or George Orwell or even Caroline Harvey (Joanna Trollope used to write as Caroline Harvey). Well, let me know if you can think of anything better than Rebecca Bryan...
So tonight, Mathew (ah, Stars in their eyes, remember that? does it still exist?), I'm going to be Rebecca Bryan, and I'm going to revise and edit chapter one.
Ta ra!

Nanny McWee

Good old Nanny McPhee. Or Nanny McWee as I like to call her. The kids tell me to stop being rude, but I can't help it, anything that ends in a double 'e' ought to be replaced with wee; it should be the LAW (perhaps this is why I never did anything with my Law degree?).
All of them are now watching Nanny McWee, which has given me time to sort out exhorbitant (no idea why the spell check says that's wrong...exorbitant? hmmm?) car insurance (more than the price of the car) and attempt to sort out road tax. I couldn't do the road tax thing because apparently the car, which  I'm buying from my mum, doesn't exist. Do you think my mum has fleeced me, the old scoundrel, and made me cough up for a fenced motor? Perhaps she's going all criminal in her dotage? Or maybe I'm doing something wrong because I can't actually focus on the screen properly?
So, today hasn't been totally unproductive. I have also done the scary meat shop, and the flour-and-cheese shop (but not the trout-and-strawberry-and-stationary shop - no need for fish or biros today, thanks) and got myself a new forces railcard, and pretended to be a teacher whilst the kids did their holiday workbooks (I know, it's a bit tiger mum, but they will be off school for two months and if I'm not careful they will forget everything, the bunch of goldfish-brains), took them to a bookshop/cafe for lunch with their friend (in order to buy reading books for hols - I know, I am turning tiger mum; I'll be enrolling them all in violin lessons next...). Now they are all watching a DVD (hah! not so much tiger mum now!), and I'm wishing the blooming room would stop swaying. Every time I go on a plane nowadays I suffer days of 'vertigo' (I don't mean that I get scared of heights, just that every time I move everything goes all swimmy) afterwards. It's like being drunk, but without the good bits.
Right, I'm off for a lie down now whilst Nanny McWee is still doing her stuff, and hopefully everything will stop moving. I'm going to attempt to read some more of 'A Prayer for Owen Meany', which has taken me two years to begin, and at the rate I'm reading, may well take a further two years to finish (the writing is teeny-tiny and the book is very thick). It's good though.
Take care xx

burkini

Hello, I'm back. And, yikes, we've got less than a month left here. I've got the suitcases out at the top of the stairs for a little ad hoc packing over the next few weeks. How do you pack for a month of homelessness in a UK summer? No, I don't know either. I did buy myself a pair of spangly fit-flops in duty free, because I thought they'd be nice and sensible for camping (and the sales lady said they matched my handbag). I managed to resist the urge to buy myself a burkini whilst I was there, although with the shocking amount of flab on my thighs these days, some might say I should have given in to temptation. I did see quite a lot of young women with burkinis at the water park, and the fact that they were completely covered in black lycra didn't seem to stop them having fun. There were also, however, quite a few properly burka'd-up women (who had no doubt still had to pay the extortionate entrance fees, even though their only amusement was sweating it out in the forty degree heat whilst their fat male offspring frolicked, loudly), and I realised that I have no real comprehension of, well, anything. It just seems to me that the rules of female dress in that part of the world are made entirely for the benefit of the men. Maybe I'm missing something. I did read somewhere that for some women its  liberating to be completely covered because you don't then get ogled at (or as you get older, miss getting ogled at, I guess). But I still think, that if those burka'd women at the water park had the choice, they'd be in a swimming costume and screaming their way down the water slides with the rest of us.
We had two days at the water park and two days in the mall, and on the last night we had supper in front of the dancing fountains and watched nighttime Dubai in all its blinging glory. It's such a surreal place, and the total antithesis of Kathmandu. Not sure how long I could survive living there though - it's like the essence of consumerism: people go shopping to buy things to go shopping in - and I'm not sure what else they do. Hubby went for a run and nearly died of heat exhaustion, so I doubt there's much sport going on.
Hubby is sad to be back in Nepal. He misses the gleaming efficiency of Dubai. In fact we all began to miss the first world from the moment we got on the flight back home (mainly because most of the other passengers had yet to master the concept of sitting on a toilet seat - the air hostesses kept having to close the toilets and give them a thorough hose down and disinfectant; still, at least there was no urine running down the aisles this time). However, I'm sad to be back because now we're going through the whole 'last of' experiences. Soon we'll have our last trip to the Sterling Club and our last lunch at Cafe U etc. etc. (won't miss my last near-death experience crossing the main road, though).
Kids seem cheerily unaffected by it all. I think I will be the only person sobbing my way to the airport when we finally head off.
Anyway, must go and take cinnamon rolls out of the oven.

back to the first world

Spent the day in Dubai Mall, which might sound tedious, but compared to Kathmandu, was utter heaven. Where were the potholes, leaking sewerage pipes, unlicensed adolescents on scary motorbikes, gormless shop assistants and general air of lethargy? Nowhere! Because we're back in the first world (although we can only afford to be here for five days, before the money runs out...), and for now it is a jolly nice place to be.
We went to the aquarium; Hubby went to Gap and now looks like a Gap model, and not like a tramp; we went to the rainforest cafe for lunch; Hubby and Son went up Burj Kalifa; Twins went on a train ride round the mall; I went to the Body Shop. The credit card has had more use today than it has had in the past year, but we're all happy, and what's more, Hubby hasn't mentioned work for a whole twenty-four hours.
I've just popped out to get a haircut: magic - the hairdresser knew how to cut hair and there was electricity for the blow dry and magazines to read that weren't circa 2007.
And now I'm off to have a bar of real chocolate and flick my coiffed locks at my Gap model husband.
Ta ra! x

handsome tramp

Here we are in Dubai, hurrah! Hubby is not grumpy, hurrah (mainly because we had a Burger King for supper)! Nobody was sick on the plane, hurrah! The plane was an hour ahead of schedule, hurrah!
We are all very happy to be here and be away from the stress (in Hubby's case) and raw emotion of the end-of-term-saying-goodbye-to-everyone (in my case).  Spent a not inconsiderable time last week saying goodbye to people over lunch/supper. I think I ate at home maybe once last week. Well, it's all over now, the weepy old end of year has come and gone and everyone has hot-footed it back to the UK/US to visit parents and in-laws. However, we have another month to go.
Hubby has just said that I ought to mention the scare with the cashpoint - I think he's still hoping I won't revert to the Sophie/Jocasta topic.
There was a bit of a nail-biting moment at Kathmandu airport, when the FlyDubai check-in staff asked to see the card I paid for the tickets with. I didn't have it because I accidentally cut it up last week (I thought it had expired, but it hadn't - doh!). Thought for a second that they wouldn't let us on the plane, but the nice check-in clerk obviously decided that on the fraudulent/idiotic scale, I obviously tipped the balance towards the idiotic end. She smiled patronisingly at me, as one would at an utter moron with the common sense of a gnat, and waved us all through. Then when we got to Dubai airport neither mine nor Hubby's cards would work in the cashpoint - yikes. Anyway, it's all okay now (hurrah).
Right, I'm off to do a little search to try to find a Gap store in Dubai so Hubby doesn't have to look like a (handsome) tramp this hols xxx