Back soon...I think

I suddenly realise that it's been ages since I last blogged. I've been busy recently and also, just haven't been able to think of anything to write about that I could write briefly. I toyed with the idea of griping about irritating mothers/in-laws because they've been driving me crazy AGAIN, but that would need at least an hour of ranting - I mean typing.

We're off to Crete next week so I'm unlikely to be back online for a bit. I'm supposed to have started writing my first thesis chapter but still haven't done that, so it could be a while before I'm back blogging.

But until then.....

A binge too far

I should have seen the warning signs when Shezza got out the Tesco's Value Gin at 5.30 in the afternoon.

Shezza is a bad influence. One of the last times we got together we ended up drinking the best part of a box of wine and for some reason best known to my drunken brain, I ended up weeping over the kitchen table. The following day, we drove to Crawley. Shez - eyes like pinpricks - had to sit in the back with her 11-year-old daughter illegally on her lap, groaning loudly and threatening to hurl at every roundabout.

'It may be cheap, but it makes me happy!' said Shez brightly, pouring a monster load of gin into several tall glasses. It was drinkable - the tonic probably took some of the edge off it - and by the fourth swig it tasted as good as a Gordons.

Like old pros we eased naturally onto the white wine. Just as the words were beginning to slur and stories were starting to be repeated, dinner of ham, potatoes, peas and parsley sauce came to forestall our descent.

Sparkling wine and toffee cake followed (in deference to my impending birthday) and we were all feeling warm and fuzzy when Shez had the hairbrained idea of 'strolling' down to the beach.

The rain was lashing down hard and in regular gusts. "Come on! This is fun isn't it? I love the sea. Can never be far from it," enthused Shez. Unable to resist in any coherent way, we followed like lambs. Half an hour later we got back to the house, soaked down to our knickers.

That's when we could - should - have stopped, but invigorated by our 'stroll' , Shez opened another bottle of wine. We sat as Shez told of her life and loves, munching through a giant packet of Walkers. At some unspecified time later, I managed to stumble up to bed, just about in control of myself, but Shezza was weaving all over the kitchen.

I got up twice in the night for some water - brain lurching at every turn, head hammering with the mother of all headaches. Unable to get back to sleep, I lay awake, longingly visualising ice cold flannels and huge lozenges of paracetamol. About 7am I resolved to get up and find some. The bathroom had no medical stuff in it at all, but a desperate search through the kitchen cupboards brought success. All that activity proved too much for my poisoned system and barely minutes after downing the painkillers I was bent over the kitchen sink, wretching them all back up again.

Shezza woke up to find herself sprawled over the living room floor, phone off the hook and her address book open at her ex-boyfriend's number. She had no recollection of anything after the packet of crisps.

I've made a resolution. Next time we meet, I'm not going to get drunk. But as I said, she's a bad influence.

Memories of fieldwork

In my build-up to starting writing my thesis once again, I've been looking up information on the city in Sumatra where I did my fieldwork. The other day, I came across a website containing hundreds of photos of that very place some of which I am borrowing for this post, including the one above (source: Palembang daily photo)

I've become fascinated by these images of the tropical metropolis which was my home for thirteen months. Though I can barely recognise many of the locations, brief threads - nuggets of memory - are filtering into my daily consciousness. Slowly but surely I'm being transported back 20 years to an extraordinary time in my life.

I found a picture of the monument (which I can't find again) where I once stood for a photo with the trader I called Young Etek: she done up in her traditional-style sarong from her Minangkabau homeland and me in a thin blue cotton dress down to just below my knees. My face is the usual puce from the heat and humidity, hers deadpan for the important picture - testimony of our friendship. I remember her house now: the wooden walls; the woven, plastic mats on the earthen floor; the simple plastic garden chairs used for guests; her husband cooking for the next day's trade in the rudimentary kitchen at the back; her pregnant daughter selling ice shavings from a stall just outside and the constant but comforting noises of neighbourhood life. I stayed the night there once, sharing a bed with her youngest daughter who gossiped about boys and make-up almost all night. We could hear the neighbours chatting and arguing through the walls - their proximity made me feel the warmth of a community who by necessity have to live cheek-by-jowl.

This picture reminds me of a shop in town where I used to get my photos developed and sparks off a memory of a bizarre time when I went there with my friend Kath who was working with VSO. The shopkeeper had asked me whether I wanted a matt finish on my photos and I hadn't understood so to demonstrate he had brought out another customer's pictures and with a flourish, confronted me with an image so surreal that I was forced to double-take. There I was, in the middle of an Indonesian city in the mid 1980s, staring at a photograph of a bullfrog,wide-mouthed and apparently grinning, dressed up in Elizabethan ruffs, a shirt and puffed up shorts, sitting on a hand-made swing, webbed feet demurely crossed.
Just for info - this is what a normal, nude bullfrog looks like, so imagine it if you will:

'Oh yes,' Kath had said casually,' those are Mrs Brennan's.' Mrs Brennan was one of the handful of Western expats in the city - a Kentucky lady whose husband was teaching at the agricultural college. The poor woman, presumably sent doo-lally by the life of a trailing spouse in a Southeast Asian backwater, had developed a hobby of catching bullfrogs, making clothes for them, training them, photographing them and then setting them free.

I had been to her house a couple of times - in fact she had been the first person I met. I had bumped into her in the city's first shopping mall (very like the one above) , a day after my arrival, wandering around and feeling lost. She took me to meet my contact at the university, gave me some tea and offered me the key to their video room, where they kept copies of Cheers and American films and where I would spend a number of happy hours in an air-conditioned place, touching base with my Westernness.

The photo of the river brings back another time with Kath, when we had gone on some boats with some of her students and Kath had split her trousers right up the back and we'd had to find all kinds of ways of preventing her from exposing herself to the boys.

A picture of the local buses reminds me of a terrible journey I took with a newly found Minangkabau friend, with very curly hair and a moony face, who took me with her to her home village over Eid. The seats on the coach were far too small for my massive Western frame and my friend had been sick all over me. Worse, the bus broke down and we were stuck at a truck stop for what seemed like an age (6 hours) while all manner of folk had stared prodded and poked at me, laughing at my pointy nose, thin lips and ghostly skin.

Lastly, a photo of the river Ogan reminds me of Ogan lane and the first family who took me into their home. I had a room to myself while the other girls shared. Four children, a niece and a Javanese boy, plus me and Mr and Mrs C made up the household. There was a chicken farm outside managed by Mrs C which stank to high heaven and contained a MADDENING cockerel who crowed ALL THE TIME. Inside, was the main sitting room with a fantastic faux waterfall as a centrepiece on one wall. Just by my room was the mandi (bathroom) with a tiled concrete square about three feet deep containing water and goldfish from which we washed ourselves using plastic scoops. The toilet was outdoors - a squat toilet into which I secretly smuggled tissues - I never got the hang of using water; it always ended up all over my knickers and dress.

I could go on and on - but perhaps that's enough for now.

Gloom and doom

A wandering bad feeling seems to have settled on our house and I've no idea where it's come from. The husband is snappy, the daughter highly hormonal and the son has started crying about going to school again. As for me I just feel so so tired - my eyes have had overtiredness ticks for about two weeks now - I feel cross and seriously gloomy. Despite my best efforts, nothing seems to be able to lift me or the others out of it.

There seems to be no reason why we are all so suddenly like this. Could it be that I am to blame? Is it because my PhD is not going so well and I'm worrying about starting writing? - or is that just a symptom of my mood? Did one of the others bring the unwelcome feeling into our house and we all caught it, like a virus? Was it the husband with his back problems and work-related gripes? Was it the daughter with an onset of heavy teenage negativity?

Or is it something environmental? Could it be something simple like the lack of sun, after a fabulous February? Have we got some weird virus that just makes us feel plain worn out? Or is there some odd freaky electrical current? Even more paranoid - could it be the wireless router, that's suddenly working now?

Whatever it is, I'd like it to go away. I'm hoping that by writing about it, it might just do that.

(Oh - completely unrelated to the above - does anyone know what happened to Debio from Land of Sand?)

In front of the lens

Let me ask you a question:

Before the husband did his back in we went to the beach for his birthday earlier this month (yes..it was THAT mild). The place was heaving with people; hearty dog-walkers, families with cute kiddies running around in brightly coloured wellies, elderly promenaders donning hats and sticks, some dudey surfers looking to brave the sea and a flock of photographers wielding tripods and zoom lenses obviously on some sort of club outing.

We nestled into an out-of-the-way spot, off the main drag and set up our barbeque bits. Max and Chloe climbed on the groynes and we lit the coals which smoked and smoked and smoked. To our left, a couple were climbing some rocks with two ferrets on leads sniffing around the crevices. To our right an older lady with white hair - probably a member of the photographers' troop - set up a camera on a tripod and trained the lens right on us. A few minutes later a man came and set up his camera right next to her. So there were two - looking directly at us.

They were really quite close and 'in your face'. If they had just been snapping quickly I wouldn't have minded really, but they were all tripodded up and stayed there for ages, taking picture after picture. We began to feel a little under the spotlight and it felt intrusive. Were they taking pictures of us or focusing on the ferrets?

Eventually my husband went up to the old lady and asked. Yes, she was taking pictures of us she said - the smoke from the barbeque looked beautiful apparently. Husband then commented - fairly I think - that he would have preferred that she ask our permission before taking pictures of us at which she acted surprised and mildly defensive, making out it was her right as a photographer to take pictures of whatever and whomsoever she liked.


Did she have a right? I don't think so. I always thought you had to ask permission to take photos of people, whatever country you are in - and especially when there are children involved.

What do you think?

Back problems

My husband 'put his back out' on Sunday. Apparently all he did was stand up a bit too suddenly having been kneeling down to clear out the fireplace.

I came back from football with Chloe (two unbelievably tense matches, in which C got repeatedly whacked in the head by the ball and was herself complaining of backache) to find Max complaining of a headache and husband hobbling around like an old man. I myself had a splitting headache - really honestly I did- but didn't bother to mention it, it would have seemed all too contrived in the circumstances.

So it was an aching rag-tag bunch of us who sat down to watch the rugby that afternoon.

Come the end of the match though, while three of us felt much better, the husband had frozen in place and couldn't move even an inch without sparking off a series of agonisingly painful spasms in his back. Even the most basic thing like turning his head caused him to be racked in extreme pain. I'd never seen anyone in quite such agony (except myself in childbirth - but then again I never actually saw myself).

I bought some Neurofen from the local shop but it did little to help. It just seemed so ludicrous. How could one small action have such a dramatic effect?

Over the course of the evening it got even worse, and we set up a mattress on the floor for him to sleep downstairs. It was a long night, with cries of pain from downstairs requiring my help and attention and two children, for some reason deciding to share my bed and taking up all the room.

The following morning it had become almost farcical. I returned from school drop-off to find him sliding along the dining room floor trying to get to the bathroom. Stronger painkillers which I quickly bought from the chemist did nothing to help. He was stuck on the floor for ages. All sorts of strategies and solutions were mooted, thought up, tried. But he just couldn't get up. The pair of us were getting quite hysterical with it all but, with cruel irony, laughing made it hurt even more.

I spoke to the doctor and she prescribed a pharmacopia of pills - muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatories, mega-paracetamol. But we had to wait four hours to administer these. When they finally kicked in we managed to get him back on his feet. It was an almost epiphanous moment .

Today, he is much better. We have rigged up the sofa bed, he can get in and out of it and walk to the bathroom. But it's still desperately fragile and he is still in pain.

To top it all it's his birthday: Happy Birthday darling!

Now I've been awarded a couple of awards which I must dutifully pass along.

Maddy has very kindly given me a Bloggers of the World award which I pass to: Swearing Mother, Diary of a Housewife, Too young for a Midlife too old for a tantrum, Manic Mother of Five, Land of Sand, Tomfoolery and anyone I nominated for the other award below who already has it!


Belle has given me the Excellent blogger award which comes with the following instructions:

I love being a part of the blogging community and part of all the friendships that I've formed so I wanted to give a blog award for all of you out there that have Excellent Blogs. By accepting this Excellent Blog Award, you have to award it to 10 more people whose blogs you find Excellent Award worthy. You can give it to as many people as you want but please award at least 10.

I nominate: Tomfoolery, Identity Crisis, She's like the wind, Crystal Jigsaw, 3kidsnojob, Itchy feet at 40, Flowerpot, Witterer on Autism, Land of Sand, The Write Eye and Mother of Shrek.

As I have just found out that most of these already have said award - anyone who does is welcome to take the bloggers of the world award instead. Anyone who I haven't nominated, please feel free to take either!.

Just a common or garden crisis

When I had my major meltdown, I thought it was a product of the way my life had gone, the place I found myself, the frustrated ambitions and pent-up resentments I had harboured for years. I thought it was a totally and utterly unique mid-life, individual and peculiar to me.

Now, I hear on Radio London that scientists have decided that the most typical time for a mid-life crisis -the ultimate nadir in one's life-course - comes at the age of 44. And how old was I when I finally expressed my angst-ridden rage? How old was I when I reached the very lowest point of my adult life?

44.

My very personal descent was after all just a scientifically predictable statistic. Somehow I find that rather disappointing.