leech socks

I'm a bit concerned about the whole leech thing. I know I'm obsessed, but yeuch, ergh etc. can't really bear the thought of them. Spent some time googling leech repellent whilst the kids had a DVD. The only effective thing is to purchase some leech socks (not socks for leeches, which would be very small and slimy, but socks to stop leeches getting their evil little fangs into your lower limbs), apparently, so I might have to take a trip to Thamel this weekend...

topless feminists?

We've got a bandh (national strike) today so the kids are off school, which leaves my heroine still not having found out the truth about her new boyfriend (I didn't write much yesterday because I was in a bad mood, and also had to do a meat shop - boo). Maybe I could write something tonight, instead of reading Cloud Atlas until way past my bed time? Desperate to get chapter eight written before I go off on my trek, on Monday (to Langtang - no I don't know anything about Langtang, either, but I will do within two weeks!).
Nobody seems sure what today's bandh is about, which seems to defeat the object, really. I always thought the point of a protest was to highlight your cause. If I find out, I'll tell you. I'm sure it won't be anything nearly as exciting as topless Ukrainian femininists, though (did you see that article in the Guardian this week? Good for them, although I can't help feeling that a topless protest might be a bit parky in the Ukraine - maybe it's a bit warmer this time of year? I'm guessing they probably don't do the topless bit in the midst of the Ukrainian winter - do you think they just put on those 'rude' aprons, like other people's dads used to do at family barbequeues in the 1970s? Now that would be a warmer option, and also bring a nice ironic-retro feel to the public displays of outrage, don't you think?)
Right, time to get Son off the play station and into the swimming pool.
Take care x

the mighty jungle

Hello. It's been a while, but I have a valid excuse: we have been hunting tigers in the Terai (not shooting, you understand, just looking). We won an elephant safari in a raffle a couple of months ago. Pretty nifty prize, I thought - confidently expect to win nothing more exciting than an old box of sugared almonds in future.
Twins were distinctly underwhelmed by being out in the jungle on the back of an elephant, and spent most of the time asleep (but only after they had spent an hour or so complaining about being bored), although Twin 2 admitted that when the tiger roared it woke her up, momentarily. After the elephant safari I tried to read The Jungle Book to them (felt very chuffed and good-mother-ish that I had remembered to pack it), but they got bored and went back to some important colouring in instead. Good job we hadn't actually had to pay for them, otherwise I would have been shaking them and shouting, "This cost us a bloody fortune and YOU WILL ENJOY YOURSELVES!" (much as I remember my own parents doing when they took us to Egypt - pyramids: of passing interest; Cairo museum: about as interesting as cold pea soup).
I was thrilled to have spotted a tiger in the wild, and heard it roar, too. The only downside of the whole free elephant safari thing was the beds. They were shockingly hard, and I came back exhausted, even though all  I'd done over the weekend was sit on elephants or in jeeps or in rafts and get waited on hand, foot and finger by the very helpful staff. Maybe they just made the beds hard on purpose, just to make the guests feel as if they are roughing it a bit in the jungle.
So now we're home, kids are back at school, Hubby is back to being Kathmandu Hubby (as opposed to holiday Hubby - there is a difference) and it's raining, which doesn't bode well for my trek to Langtang next week.... will just have to hope that you don't get leeches above two thousand metres...

Happy Birthday, girls...

It's the Twins' birthday. They are six. Blimey, how did that happen?
At the moment they are sat on the sofa with two of their friends watching Tangled and eating fake Smarties (you can't get the real ones out here). Tonight will be a sleepover - good job they're watching Disney and not Dr Who (far less chance of nightmares).
As it's the hols, we're not doing a proper party until next week when the rest of their class will be back. And we didn't do a proper cake; instead we did birthday jellies, with fairies suspended in the jelly. The jelly was surrounded by marshmallows with candles stuck in them. Yes, it was my idea, and yes, I did think it sounded pretty cool, and no, it really wasn't. Little plastic figures suspended in glutinous red liquid - a bit macabre for a birthday supper. But the six-year-olds didn't seem too bothered, luckily.
Feeling very jealous of the Smarties (even though they're fake) and wish I'd bought myself a compensatory fake Bountie or something, but instead I'll have to make do with mangled bits of leftover birthday jelly....ooh, sorry, had to break off there for an exciting bit of the DVD. Oh, no, she thinks her hero is dead, and she's singing him a song. Oh, I'm sure it will all come good in a minute - Disney wouldn't leave us feeling sad, surely? Ah, now her tears have healed him, hurrah, and it's all going swirly and magical.
Sorry, must start to watch something other than Disney, or I will start to hope for swirly magical bits to happen in my life - if I was in a Disney film, could my tears magic up a Bountie bar, or possibly a nice slab of Green & Black's?
I wish...

unwelcome blood-letting and God

Had a spot of unwelcome blood-letting this weekend.
We went up to the welfare bungalow in Kakani for the last time, to see the Himalayas and have a nice little country walk with the kids. Sounds nice, no? Yes, we thought so too. But fate is a cruel mistress, and she brought low cloud that destroyed our mountain view, and a guide who misinterpreted us saying, 'don't take us through the jungle because there's no view and the uneven ground is hard for our little disabled daughter' as 'take us through the precipitous and thorny jungle, we want to carry our disabled daughter through the scrub, and while you're at it, please get lost at least twice and make sure you stop for a long time somewhere damp so that the leeches have a chance to crawl up our trousers and have a lengthy feast.' - must be a language thing....
Hubby would have been hopping mad, had he had any energy left to hop after carrying his daughter on his shoulders through the jungle and losing a considerable amount of blood to the festering slimy creatures.
Eugh.
I can take spiders, and cockroaches, but leeches just churn my stomach. Two of them got me, the bloody horrors.
In the visitors' book at Kakani, there were lots of comments about how relaxing, scenic, etc. Kakani is. One woman, describing the mountains, had even been moved to write: 'Thank you God for your creation'. Now, I'm not a complete atheist...but I do find it a little hard to believe in a supernatural omnipotent being creating leeches. Surely, if you had all the power of the universe at your disposal, you could find something other than leeches to set your mind to on the seventh day, or whenever it was. Perhaps God was busy creating something more useful/beautiful than leeches, but had only just got started when His phone went, or He felt an urgent call of nature, or maybe it was just a job that He'd left until after lunch on a friday afternoon and He just didn't finish making them properly...I mean, He's only human isn't he? Oh, no, that's right, He's a supernatural omnipotent being so there is no excuse, no, none whatsoever for creating leeches.
I read Richard Dawkin's God Delusion a couple of years ago, and although it was powerfully argued by a man of fierce intellect, I wasn't one hundred per cent convinced. However, were he to have included a chapter on the existence of leeches as clear evidence of the non-existence of God, I think I would have been more readily persuaded.
Right, I'm off to sleep now, and I'm going to try not to dream of horrible slimy things crawling up my legs and sinking their little fangs into my flesh.
Nightie night xx

nepali new year

It's Nepali New Year! Happy New Year. Nepali's have a different calendar, based on the birthdate of some  Hindu saint. I think it's now 2068 here, which would make me feel very futuristic, but, sadly, the infrastructure is still about a thousand years behind.
We decided not to go to the New Year function on camp (well, to be honest, if you've had the whole whisky-and-dahl-baht-and-lip-synching-traditional-dancers thing once, then you don't really need to repeat the experience), plus none of us were feeling very well, having had our meningitis and typhoid boosters in the afternoon, so we were all in bed nice and early last night. This morning I said to Hubby, did the firecrackers and whooping wake you up last night? To which he replied, what time was that? (Der, did he think they'd re-sheduled New Year's to 2.31 am instead...)
Anyway, now I'm ill, which is a bit of a bummer, but a good excuse to go to bed and attempt not to buy things on ebay. I keep bunging in offers for things, and thinking that I'm bound to be outbid, but it's worth a punt - only to keep winning things, dagnabbit. Still, you can never have too much BNWT Boden, can you?
Oh, I was meant to do something wild and crazy to tell you about, wasn't I? Hmmm....nope, wildness and craziness eludes me. I feel about as wild and crazy as a packet of own brand Angel Delight.
Take care, and may all your wishes for 2068 come true! x

class

Well, I've got eight kids on the sofa and Dr Who on the telly. Yes, it's the school hols. Other parents organise tennis camps and swimming lessons, but I do DVD afternoons. And I take no responsibility whatsoever for the six-year-olds having nightmares...
Son and Twin 2 are recovered today, which is jolly good. However, we still packed off Twin 1 to her tennis lesson this morning, so she could go and be sporty with her posh friends, whilst the rest of us had chocolate flapjacks by the side of the pool.
Twin 1 does seem to be distancing herself from the rest of us, since she has taken up tennis. She mixes in different circles now, and has even taken to breakfasting alone, all the better to break the bond with the chaviness of the rest of the family, I suspect. It's only a matter of time before she starts demanding kedjeree instead of choco pops.
I read a thingy on class in a sunday magazine this week (for some reason I ended up with the Sunday Times instead of the Guardian weekly this week - and I devoured the lot, instead of having to force myself to read it; it was like the difference between all-bran and frosties) which talked about how to tell what class of middle class you're in. Apparently we all think we're middle class, but the real distinction is whether you are upper middle, middle middle or lower middle. I think we're lower middle or possibly middle middle. Twin 1, on the other hand, is definitely upper middle. I mean, she's not even six and she's having private tennis lessons. When I was that age I counted myself lucky if I got kicked out of the house with my big sister and sent to play on the witch's hat at the local park (do you remember witch's hats? They banned them in the eighties because of the high fatality rate of kids using them, I think - but nobody gave a stuff about unsupervised kids using unsafe play equipment back in 1975...)
Oops, Doctor Who mutiny! The six year olds are revolting - they have formed a Tom & Jerry splinter group upstairs. And I will have to give up the laptop to it...
Bye! x