Colouring in at the library

I had a terrible day.

My day took me to the library.

As I was leaving I noticed a lady in the foyer had set up a colouring-in station; that is, a place for grown-ups to sit with other grown-ups and colour in, in the quiet of the library. She provided paper and crayons and picture books for inspiration, and even some tracing paper.

I chose a book called “ After man! A Zoology of the future” and carefully traced a sort of leopard with long curling nails and spikes on his tail.

Impaled on one of the spikes, I drew a very little dragon of my own invention, oozing green and yellow. I drew a tiny tiny speech bubble for the dragon and wrote:

Do not whine about your bad day

For tomorrow you may wake up impaled

On the tail of an unknown animal.

He was right of course.

I reviewed my work and saw that it was finished.

I looked around for the lady to also review my work and applaud my tracing skills. She did not disappoint and even noticed my addition of the dragon. What a clever idea, she said.

She asked if I would like to hang my drawing on her colouring-in board.

But I felt a sudden tenderness for my little dragon and I could not leave him and his wise words to be gawked at by the general public.

The lady, still smiling, was waiting for my response. I grabbed my drawing from her tyrannical clutch and ran as fast as I could.

The little dragon said, “ Now everything will be different. I can make you happy.”

“Hush little dragon,” I heaved through gasping breaths as I ran, still.

As soon as my words reached my ears, I stopped.

The dragon speaks, and I speak back. There will be no room for us in this world.

Steak

I was brought up a vegetarian, and remained in that state until I was 21. I’d already had a lot of sex by the time I tried meat; I’d already used the word “soporific” in a sentence; I’d already tried and tested a plethora of class A drugs, got wasted with Boy George, read Ulysses twice, and punched a man in the face, all before I had my first taste of meat- lamb, to be more specific.

My dad became vegetarian because of this meditation group he belonged to in the 60’s, and my mum can’t remember why she became a vegetarian.

But I had my own reasons: I didn’t know what it tasted like and it was my thing; I liked having a thing.

Not only was I raised a vegetarian, but my parents are Orthodox Jews so we were also kosher. I decided when I was 20 or so that God doesn’t exist, and then I decided that since I’d decided that God doesn’t exist, he probably wasn’t going to strike me down for eating a prawn. So I did. I ate loads and loads of prawns and squid and lobster and scallops (mmm scallops) and mussels, and it totally changed my life. Seafood is so fucking delicious, and I’d spent 20 years not eating it; I’d been deprived and had deprived myself of something totally amazing. And it got me thinking: what if meat was fucking delicious? What if it was even better than seafood, and I wasn’t eating it just because?! What a ridiculous reason to rob yourself of an experience that could potentially change everything you know to be true! What if meat was what I had been looking for all my life? What if the mystery of my desire to live lay in the smallest sliver of beef carpaccio, or in the tiniest shred of szechuan duck? I had to know.

But the thought at once thrilled and terrified me: I spent maybe six months talking to anyone who would listen about how I thought maybe I should try meat, just, like, only the best, like if someone was eating a steak and they said that was the best steak they’d ever eaten and they’d eaten a lot of steak, well, like, maybe I should just try a bit, you know, just a bit because you should try everything once. Then one day, during one such speech to my brother whilst he ate a roast dinner, he put a little bit of lamb, and a dip of mint sauce, a chunk of honeyed carrot and a tear of gravy -soaked yorkshire pudding on a fork and shoved it in my over-exercised mouth…

Lamb though. Seriously. Lamb. I can’t describe it. How often in your life do you experience something that you can’t liken to something else? Try describing lamb, further than saying it is tasty. You can’t. It’s just fucking tasty.

Anyway, after that it was all downhill. Chicken was an easy contender; you know those little ones where you get one to yourself? Yeh, tasty. And steak. Man, steak! STEAK IS SO GOOD! If I could make the caps more cappy I would because STEAK IS SO GOOD!

Obviously, I went mental for a bit. I might have been responsible for the culling of a dozen farms by the end of my first meat-loving year, and I’ll tell you something, I don’t regret it. Sure, I think lambs are cute, and cows are harmless and I still have trouble with the idea of eating bunny rabbit, but STEAK!

This year I went travelling with a vegetarian friend and, that combined with the questionable source of some meat in Asia, I was pretty much vegetarian again for eight months- except that time I ate freshly murdered barbecued wild bore in the jungle which was AMAZING! But other than that. And I thought, maybe I could be vegetarian again. I toyed with the idea, told a bunch of people so I could hear what it sounded like, and I was pretty close to becoming born again…And then someone said, But what about duck? And I thought, yeh, what about duck? I can’t not have duck again. That would be like arriving on a secluded tropical island, and rather than checking in to your five-star beach-front accommodation and slipping in to the warm green sea, saying, I think I’ll go home now thank you. I don’t think so.

There are so many different kinds of meat that I have yet to try, and life is short. Maybe I’ll stop when I’ve tried the lot…Or maybe by then those clever scientists will have invented a way of growing the most delicious cuts in a lab, independent of the animals which inspired them, and we can all eat as much meat as we want, guilt-free! Just imagine! Until then, we must fight the good fight and do what must be done, for the alternative is too awful to consider.

Re: Let’s rubricate

I fear I have been misunderstood. ‘Rubricate’ is a word, and it’s a really good one; it means ‘to write fancily in red ink’.

It actually has sweet fanny adams to do with anything, except that I like the word and I had to name my blog before I could post anything. I sat at my computer for quite an embarrassingly long time, could think of nothing overtly witty and decided to settle on choosing a word I liked. That is all.

The title of my blog is not a jab at Asian people’s difficulty with ‘L’ and ‘R’.

Whilst I am a little worried that this misunderstanding may have scared some potential readers away, I am far more concerned about those that read my blog specifically because they thought I was a little racist. I do not mean to imply that you thought I was small and racist, only a bit racist. And whilst I am small, the one does not imply the other. What I mean to say is, I am short. I am not racist.

Shame on you.

Making new friends

 

There’s this Wordsworth poem that’s all like, “ Oh to be young and living in the moment, but oh to be old and appreciate one’s surroundings.” When I was very little, I didn’t give two shits who I was hanging out with. I’d like to think I was a little discriminating regarding mean and nice people, but I think that’d be a lie. Children just wonder up to each other and, noting their similar height, figure they’re appropriate companions.

This tactic doesn’t work anymore, because I am 5ft and there are some eleven year olds taller than me.

When I first moved to London as a student, I went and got myself a bar job and made a bunch of friends. If you’ve never worked in a bar before, that is what happens- there’s loads of alcohol and loads of young people who all have to work the weekend together. I made some of my best friends from that job. I also consumed a whole bunch of alcohol and substances, fucked up my second year of University and dated some terrible ideas. Some people don’t do that. They work the weekend, go home when they’re finished, and re-establish a morning schedule for the rest of the week. I am not that person, so I decided that I’m not allowed to work behind a bar anymore. I am only allowed to be sensible until I am a fully-fledged grownup with a sort of grown up job, and well-researched political views, and maybe a pet. I would like a pet.

Therefore, I have no friends. I do not understand how/ where sober grownups meet other sober grownups, and then get to know each other casually, enough to take it to the next level and meet officially for a friend-meeting. And before you suggest it, I don’t want to join a volleyball team.

I decided to be proactive about it- the way my dad might’ve been on my behalf when I was a teenager, much to my horror- and I called a girl I’d always wanted to be friends with but had never gotten round to doing anything about it. She was very busy and I was sometimes busy and it took us over three weeks to finally meet for a thing. In the interim I hung out with my brother and aunty a lot. They don’t let me be alone too much in my readjustment phase which is very nice.

So we finally met up and I spent most of the evening very nervous that I would say the wrong thing and she would flee and tell everyone I would make a terrible friend. But a bottle of wine in, she blurted out that she too had wanted to be my friend but she too hadn’t gotten round to it! How glorious! I have a friend! And it only took us the four years we’ve known each other and a month of back-and-forth emails and cancelled dates…

This is going to be a process.

Ode to a Fly

On a lazy sunday afternoon, I sat at my kitchen table, my feet resting on another chair as I painted my nails. There’s something very therapeutic about painting your nails; hypnotic almost, as the brush glides from cuticle to tip, this nail conforming to the nail before it.

On my second coat, a fly came into my peripheral vision, rather ruining the relaxed atmosphere as it buzzed around frantically, much like I do when I’m twenty minutes late and I’ve lost my keys.

I could’ve left it well enough alone but it bothered me, so I batted it away. The buzzing stopped so, satisfied with the refound peace, I went back to the task at hand, only to find that the fly was stuck to my nail. Still a little alive it tried to fly off with its one free wing, and I attempted to help by frantically waving my arm around, but to no effect. I tried flicking it off, but its free wing attached itself to the other nail and ripped. The little thing had pretty much given up, but I couldn’t. Mainly because I still had a fly stuck to my nail, but partly, also, because it was so undignified an end. I gently dragged my nail on the edge of the table and tried nudging it back to life. As you might imagine, this was not terribly effective.

What an awful way to go. Imagine, you’re frantically looking for your tiny fly keys, not even thinking about the importance of life, when suddenly you’re hit by a sticky nail, and then partly torn apart, surrounded by nothing of the world’s beauty, but by the more seasonal rainy-day grey I recently purchased, the fumes of which engulf you, as you are bashed from one grey sticky wall to the next.

I wish to pay my respects to this fly of whom I knew nothing. May your last memories be of the exotic scenery of my living room, and not of your unsightly and drably decorated end.

 

The art of Zen in London

This year has been a real journey for me, you know, in so many ways. I really felt my spiritual hamstrings stretch in ways I didn’t know my soul was flexible. I’ve really learned to look at life, not as a paint-by-numbers, with rules and a pronounced finish-line, but as a Modernist painting, improving with every seemingly random splash of colour. I try to speak with my eyes now, to give myself to people in the most fleeting smile, the smallest nod of the head. And this isn’t a feeling I left in Asia. No, I brought it back here with me, to share with you, the good people of London.

And you don’t want it!

Seriously. I was in the supermarket yesterday staring at the bread selection, and another woman also staring at the bread selection said something, so I responded in a friendly neighbourly we’re-sharing-this-bread-staring-moment. She turned round and yelled “ I was talking to myself!”, then stormed off without any bread!

And that’s not all! The other night I was paying for a cocktail at a bar, and the lady next to me was humming and hawing over the menu, so I offered her a sip of my drink to help with the conundrum. With my eyes I was saying “ I am a friendly stranger, trying to break boundaries in the big city.” And her eyes responded,“ My mum told me about people like you, and I don’t want any of your Rohypnol!” She accompanied this with a scowling “ No” from her mouth.

I do not mean to imply that things were simpler in Asia. They were not. Trying to get a bus in Delhi was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do; it’s a whole other story and I’ll tell you one day. But despite wanting to cry after finally getting on the right bus six hours later only to be cursed by a holy cross-dresser, there was something in the air that made it so much easier for me find my inner-sanctum. You know what it was? I was allowed to say “inner-sanctum”. I was also allowed to say “zen” as much as I wanted, and “ What would buddha do?” (I never actually used that last one but I could if I wanted to!) Londoners are so stripped bare of the bullshit that there’s no shit left to cushion the blows of daily life. That’s what I miss- a pile of poo to fall back on when reality is just a bit too harsh.

 

Searching for Whale Sharks

Doesn’t it sound glamorous? Oh we swam with turtles and schools of thousands of sardines; we’ve seen pristine reefs, some left untouched for so long they look like vast urban fish cities. But that was all child’s play; that was just the warm-up. Now! We search for whale sharks! Not just sharks, the third in a ranking of things people fear the most; no no, we want WHALE sharks, so named because of their enormity: we want the BIGGEST SCARIEST THING THERE IS!

Ahem, and what this has amounted to is two four-hour boat journeys throughout which, almost from the moment we set off, we were in an electrical storm. Twice.

Why, I hear you ask, would you get in a boat if you could see a storm coming? Well, I wouldn’t. The perplexing and incredibly frustrating thing about this place is that within the space of ten minutes, the weather can totally be a fucking lunatic, going from chemical blue clear skies to a blanket of grey. Ten minutes, I swear, and on a regular basis.

Even so, we are in Donsol. We made a conscientious choice not to go to evil Oslob in the south where the Whale Sharks are guaranteed because they are fed. Oh, we were there! But we said NO! We will not be party to fucking with an endangered species!

So we came all the way up to Donsol, the respectful traveller’s choice, and here we are and I must see a whale shark! On the other hand, I really really didn’t want to sit on the ocean in another storm for the allotted four hours for which the nice boat men are obligated to take you out. So I diligently woke up at 6am, peered outside and saw a mass of mushy grey cloud lurking over the sea, and back to bed I went.

I woke up two hours later, and I’ve never seen such a glorious sky, so calm an ocean. Aaaaaah fuuuuck! Is what I thought.

Lark, who is coming back as a WWF volunteer and so does not feel the Whale shark urgency, convinces me to go on the eleven o’ clock boat.

I turn up at the tourist centre and of course all seven boats that went out this morning saw whale sharks. Nonetheless I’m hopeful: the weather is still perfect and Lark claims to have terrible luck sighting wildlife, so her absence is helpful.

……………………

We didn’t see anything, not even one measly dolphin. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m grumpy.

 

Wentworth

Wentworth is not the name for a feral wild man, but it’s important to stick to the truth of the matter; I must not stray from the bare facts, and the fact is his name was Wentworth.
And when one hears that one will be staying on a pirate’s island, one might imagine, as I certainly did, that there would be an air of decadence and debauchery: sandy beaches, bathtub spirits brewed in caves filled with sparkly things gathered on adventures. But as Wentworth rowed us closer and closer to the island in his broken boat, it became clear that he was living in a shack situated in what appeared to be wasteland- his paradise, as he had previously described it.
I should explain that Wentworth was not a pirate himself, rather he was taking care of the island for his pirate friend. Although the question was asked a number of times, we never did find out how Wentworth and Bunjee the pirate were acquainted.
The decor was homey- a couch with no cushions that could have washed up on shore after surviving a nuclear war, and a fold-out deck chair. The walls and cupboards were covered in messages scrawled in felt tip, written by previous guests. I noted one that said “Dear Wentworth, it was really nice to meet you, even though you killed that kitten.”
Our bedroom belonged to Bunjee’s daughter, and had been decorated suitably with dolls’ heads stapled to the ceiling.
The morning after we arrived, I crawled into the living room through the hole in the wall provided to enter our bedroom to find him on his knees by the fire, cradling a dead bird. It had been his favourite bird on the island, and that morning it had flown into the window and killed itself. I tried to console him, though from afar because another of Wentworth’s isms was that he appeared, or rather, he smelt as though he had not bathed in quite some time. Anyhow, I suggested we have a burial service which appealed to him. We walked outside in a funeral procession, and he took me to some sort of home-made contraption on the side of the house. He took the lid off a pipe that led into a big box, dropped the bird in, and with a big pole he, a little tearfully and rather aggressively, started ramming the bird down. When we heard the small corpse finally land plonk into the box, Wentworth put the pole aside and said a few words of tenderness.
After my shock had subsided, I discovered that this contraption powered the house and that the bird would be a very good source of energy. For the rest of our visit I felt markedly sombre whenever I switched on a light or used the stove.
He did his very best to host us as well as he knew how, but, for instance, it did not occur to him that biting his toe-nails, especially in company, is not the done thing. He never wore shoes, and his feet were covered in pussing cuts and callouses. I tentatively asked him about one particularly oozing gash, and he said ever so casually that he’d got a piece of glass stuck, and figured it would sort itself out if it wanted to.
The week prior to our arrival, he had somehow procured mounds and mounds of brussel sprouts, and had been eating nothing else since. Generally eaten raw, he would occasionally put them in the fire for a moment as a warm treat. I think he was a little hurt that we rejected his offer to follow suit, but once he had tried our gourmet tinned tomato sauce and ‘own brand’ pasta, he saw that the life of sophisticates such as ourselves had its advantages.
He asked about London, and though I tried my best to describe the hustle and bustle; the electric buzz constantly generating from the busy streets, his face grew wan, and he said quietly, “Why would anyone want to live there?”
One evening, my nose was a little runny, and I asked Wentworth if he had anything resembling a tissue to hand. He looked slowly around the room, then shrugged and pointed to a crispy-looking towel hanging from the ceiling. He said it used to be for drying dishes, but a while ago he’d had to mop up something sticky on the floor, so now its purpose had been downgraded. I suggested he clean it and use it once again to dry dishes. He looked confused for a moment, then said, “ I have a t-shirt for that now…Anyway, what would you wipe your nose with?” 

I’m home now, but I was travelling before

So I just returned from a year-long grand adventure! I met pirates in New Zealand (sort of), I surfed in Australia (again, sort of), I dived in Indonesia (at least I tried to), I swam with turtles and schools of sardines in the Philippines (that one I actually did!) and all sorts of exciting, mind-expanding, marvellous things! But! I did not write a blog.
Oh I meant to, but every time I found myself with a blessed internet connection, I promptly forgot everything on my to-do list, had a long, stressful conversation with my entire family and checked facebook. And maybe did a quiz on buzzfeed.
But who wrote the rules on travel blogs anyway, huh? Who said you have to be travelling AND writing simultaneously? The man, that’s who, and I think it’s high time we wrote our own rules!
I also have a tendency to be a little inconsistent with my subject matter so let’s just say I went travelling and I also write and sometimes the two collide but also sometimes I do what I want. Enjoy!