Absolutely No Monday Blues

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Usually after a busy weekend all I want to do is curl up and rest, with some granola and a good movie or book. But there are different kinds of rest, and Monday’s rest after the exertion of Night Festival was found in spending time with a friend I feel so comfortable with and having a simultaneously entirely normal and entirely extraordinary dinner with her and my family.

I decided to walk to Nat’s house, down the Green Corridor and along the Canal, and so I set off in a baggy t-shirt, with my colourful patchwork bag (holding precious cargo of granola and chia seeds) on my back, and my Vietnamese Hat (nón lá) swinging in my hand and listening to ‘Hidden’ by United Pursuit. The birds are coming back to the Green Corridor, and as I walked along I thought ‘I really could do this one day, just take a bag (with granola inside) and some good music, and just keep walking till I have to stop. And then wake up the next day and keep walking, and singing, and being in the world around me.

At Nat’s place, we made Acai bowls (after she laughed at my hat and we watched a Masterchef episode in which the only vegetarian chef lost the vegetarian challenge sigh) and then went to Bukit Batok, which promised Breadnut trees, a Quarry and…figs!

Between the bus stop and the Nature Park we encountered two Primary school boys, one of whom seemed quite hysterical. He shrilled something I can’t quite recall about water and photosynthesis, and then began laughing at such a high pitch that it sounded close to screaming!

Bukit Batok Nature Park has winding trails that are easy to hike up, which lead to an abandoned quarry, a lookout point and a memorial of two war memorials. We spotted beautiful leaves, some squirrels, a flock of White-crested Laughing Thrushes, a sign warning us of falling Durian, and a few other park-goers who we were quite sure were looking for Pokemon. As we were coming out, we spotted the figs that the guide had mentioned! They were small, green, and grew out of the trunk of the tree, but were unmistakably figs.

Nat came to my place for dinner, and we sat round the table with Mum and Tim (Dad was having a hair cut) and ended with a game of categories, which always means fierce debate and plenty of laughter, especially when Dad, unclear that the central rule of the game is that you must answer each category with a specific letter given at the beginning of the game, tried to make one of the categories ‘The 5 longest rivers in the world’, forgetting that there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

Safe flight, God's love, and all happiness in Majorca, dear friend.

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Going through the motions.

And the motion is -

reach slip slice

stack slip slice

Life sans serif

though I work with words.

But they are not mine

- mine are kept,

contained.

No cut for them to seep through.

They pollute my veins

with festering, quiet

rebellion inside my body.

A cancer of vocabulary.

Goodbye, Aristurtle

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I awoke this morning to a world made grey by the haze. Although 'haze' is too euphemistic a word to talk about the choking, polluting cloud that drifts over from the burning forests in Indonesia. It is more like smog – a more sinister word, a word that sounds like entrapment, blindness and dirt. The smog we have here is soft and blurs the edges of the sun and makes the buildings in the distance grainy, but also means waking up with a scratchy throat and inhaling the smell of ‘burnt’ with every breath.

I can’t imagine what it is like to burn a forest. To set a torch onto green, life giving plants and see them crinkle and curl up in smoke as they blacken and smoulder. To encourage the spread of the flames as it takes on a life of its own, leaping from tree to tree in chase of the squirrels and birds that flee, making the forest floor an inferno. To cause cracked death everywhere.
Smog or no smog, life keeps going. Since I was only due into work late today, I had time in the morning to do something Mum and I have been meaning to do since we returned from England – free our turtles.

Technically, they are red-eared slider terrapins, but because of the contemplative nature of one of them he was named Aristurtle, and since then to call then anything but turtles seemed an affront to his title. We received Aristurtle (initially called OJ) as a thank you gift from a couple who stayed with us for a while. (PSA: Never give animals as gifts.) We had no idea what to do with that small, scuttle-y creature. It had a small tank and we placed a rock into it as a consolation. Welcome to the family.
I recall making obstacle courses with lego bricks and trying to entice OJ through them with rancid-smelling slivers of terrapin food. He wouldn’t budge, and it was not too long after that that he was named Aristurtle. While he was contemplative, he was certainly not kind. Afraid he was feeling lonely, we bought him a little friend, a tiny turtle from the fish and aquatic life shop in Ghim Moh market. Aristurtle ate all the food we put into their shared tank and the little baby turtle died overnight, un-named.

And so when we got Mikey we made sure to separate him and Aristurtle. But this time it was for Aristurtle’s safety. Mikey was about twice as big as Aristurtle – he’d grown up with our neighbour, Ali, who was leaving for Australia and needed to give his turtle to someone. That someone was my brother. (PSA: Never offload your pet onto someone else if you can help it. Especially when all you know about that someone is their ability to play football and not their ability to take care of another life.)

And so Mikey and Aristurtle lived side by side in two tanks on our balcony for years, serving as silent listeners to my ‘hanging-out-the-washing’ concerts and providing novelty to the children who come to my Mum for speech therapy sessions. They grew, as we all do, and when I came back from England and looked into their tank I knew they needed more space.

And so this morning Mum and I walked, with the two of the min big blue buckets, to a nearby pond and let them loose. I released Mikey nearer to shore, among calmer waters where he stayed, treading water, before he disappeared into the dark undergrowth of pond weed and leaves. Aristurtle just sank to the bottom on the pond, his legs anad head tucked into his shell, refusing to adapt to change. He stayed at the bottom long enough that we thought he was dead from the shock of it all. But gradually he poked his head out, then his legs, and then shot to the surface (the fastest I’ve ever seen him move) and then begun swimming around, occasionally stopping and casting a sage eye on his surroundings – this is all very new.

Light up, light up

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Yesterday I followed the artists VJ Suave as they projected their cartoon animations on to the walls of the buildings in the Bras Basah Precint. A girl flew on the walls of SOTA, a cat stalked the fence along the House of Curiosities and a Construction Worker drilled the ground against the wall of the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd (which is being restored) as real construction workers took out their phones to take pictures.

They were simple drawings and projections but my heart was floating with happiness - how magical, to have drawings come to life on the walls that I walk past daily! It's so innocent, so playful, so child like.

The artists have a dog named Gnocchi, and started a movement called "mais amor por favor" (meaning "more love please").

(They are going to be at the Night Festival Friday and Saturday night - be excited!)

24/08/2016

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Yesterday I met a hungry man. I'd just been in the Marketplace in Raffles City and had bought all their old bananas (PSA: I discovered only after I'd bought them that unlike Cold Storage, green tape around old, brown bananas does not mean half price unfortunately.) and was walking back to the museum when I heard a wheezing whisper to my right.

I looked over and saw an old Indian man sitting on a bench, beckoning to me while saying something I couldn't quite catch. I walked over, and he said 'Excuse me Miss, could you spare some cash? I'm jobless and hungry, could you spare some cash for me to buy some food?'

Because on principle I don't give money to beggars or the homeless (This Atlantic article discusses the issue of giving money to the homeless, and although I know compelling arguments for both sides, I agree with the articles conclusion: If we drop change in a beggar's hand without donating to a charity, we're acting to relieve our guilt rather than underlying crisis of poverty. The same calculus applies to the beggar who relies on panhandling for a booze hit. In short, both sides fail each other by being lured into fleeting sense of relief rather than a lasting solution to the structural problem of homelessness.) I decided to instead give him some food. And the food I had at that moment were those bananas.

'Would you like bananas instead?' I asked, and he said he wouldn't mind one or two. So I left him with two bananas and walked back into the museum.

Yesterday I was hungry. I was out buying something for the artists that had arrived, when it hit me. That sort of shaky, cold feeling of hunger that I thought I'd left behind me when I finished the rice and beans challenge. Miserable, I looked at boxes of cereal - why is cereal so expensive in Singapore? I tried to buy a little bun, but the woman told me all the buns had milk in it (why?) and so I drifted through the supermarket, looking for something small, vegan and within my intern budget. As I walked by the sale rack, I spotted a packet of dried bananas on sale - and I grabbed it like lightning!

I think by the time I was out of the shopping mall half the packet was gone. Oh, to be hungry is such an uncomfortable feeling.

As I inhaled those banana coins I thought back to the man on the street previously. Both of us were hungry, both of us had bananas eventually. But the difference between us was that I am earning and he is not, and so I could afford to look through the shelves of a supermarket for something, while he had to hope that the girl walking by with quick steps would hear his dry whisper.

I hope that as long as I have ears and a job, I never block out those sidewalk whispers.

Four fascinating things

1. David's Ankles

"Destruction takes many forms, not just the sudden apocalyptic crash or the long-term degradation of rain and ice and wind. There is death by inaction, death by neglect. There is also death by reverence, death by ubiquity, death by subtle retail-shop humiliation...We knew the David so well, and our own knowledge of our knowledge of that image, that we could hardly see the David at all."

2. A beautiful performance about busyness (and many other things) by Acrojou - Frantic

3. Health (including how it relates to kindness and forgiveness of self)

4. Part of Maiden May by Christina Rossetti (italicised is the bit that just wrung out my heart like a ragged dish cloth):

Maiden May sat in her bower; 

Her own face was like a flower 

Of the prime, 

Half in sunshine, half in shower, 

In the year's most tender time. 

Her own thoughts in silent song 

Musically flowed along, 

Wise, unwise, 

Wistful, wondering, weak or strong: 

As brook shallows sink or rise. 

Other thoughts another day, 

Maiden May, will surge and sway 

Round your heart; 

Wake, and plead, and turn at bay, 

Wisdom part, and folly part. 

Time not far remote will borrow 

Other joys, another sorrow, 

All for you; 

Not to-day, and yet to-morrow 

Reasoning false and reasoning true. 

Wherefore greatest? Wherefore least? 

Hearts that starve and hearts that feast? 

You and I? 

Stammering Oracles have ceased, 

And the whole earth stands at ‘why?’ 

Underneath all things that be 

Lies an unsolved mystery; 

Over all 

Spreads a veil impenetrably, 

Spreads a dense unlifted pall. 

Mystery of mysteries: 

This creation hears and sees 

High and low - 

Vanity of vanities: 

This we test and this we know. 

A funny tug

I woke up with the feeling of my bones being too heavy for my body, a symptom of a 2am night following the first night of SNF. As I showered, and watched the leaves falling in the sunshine - so beautiful, I could almost hear the first glittering notes of Florence and the Machine's 'Raise it Up' - I had the strangest feeling.

I think I've known that this break would be short - so short that I thought I'd be able to easily slip back into my Cambridge skin (like some sort of lizard) when the time came, no tears, no heartquakes. But as I looked out of that window, I realised that home is home is home and second partings are partings nonetheless. I fell in love with Cambridge fast but then also gradually, and now I am falling in love with home, like falling in love with a friend you've always known and loved and taken for granted and who in a moment of shared jubilation or unexpected comfort becomes a new person yet always loved and longed for.

Part of me wonders if this all sounds so contrite but I don't have the words really.

21/08/2016

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'Why are you both in buns?' Hannah asked when she saw Emily and I, my bun considerably more lop-sided than hers, in the car. There was no actual reason (aside from Singapore's perennially hot weather) neither was there an actual reason for us meeting after church, but what begun as a study/reading day evolved into a couple of hours of:

singing aloud to old Hannah Montana songs, acai, too-spicy aloo gobi, mishearings (I mistook 'acai bowl' for 'cyborg'), getting onto the wrong train and having vegan chocolate silk pie.

You make my soul shine.

13/08/16

Photos from Nat's incredible new camera

I planned to sleep in to 11am, tired out from a late night spent walking around giving gifts and this letter to the street workers in Geylang. But Mum woke Tim and I up at 9am, with ‘Joseph Schooling is swimming!’

It isn’t every day that you see history made within 30 minutes of waking up.

Mum and I walked down to Phoon Huat and then to Holland Village to pick up some groceries (including dragon fruit) and as I walked back, a man whizzed past on his bicycle and called out ‘Hi, love!’ which made me miss the easy greetings and smiles in the Cambridge market place and the fruit and vegetable stall man that call me ‘love’ as well.

Back home, I made aubergine arrabiatta and chocolate chip cookies (look at that gastronomical alliteration), and thought I’d made a complete mess of the cookies and was in quite a tizzy when I turned up at 4.35pm at Botanic Gardens for a picnic with Alicia, Amanda, Cheryl, Luk Ching, Nat and Niki.

I hadn’t seen Alicia and Niki since coming back and oh my I missed them so. I was enveloped in a Bear Hug by Alicia and Niki had brought the most beautiful red pepper dip and crostini from her work place (Baker and Cook) and with everyone else, and all the food we had (and we had so much food) it was such a happy evening. And my cookies weren’t disastrous!

Cheryl and Amanda were two people I hadn’t really talked to before, but talking to them was easy, and Ching managed to steer the conversation so that we really learnt about some of our struggles and stories. Nat had brought jackfruit which I tried for the first time ever - it tastes like bubblegum! After the picnic (and two rounds of categories) we all said goodbye, and then Nat and I went into Cold Storage (which is by far easier to navigate than an Italian or Spanish supermarket!) and continued our conversations on the train ride home. Things are changing and new adventures and journeys are coming, but I am so glad to have friends by my side.

So today:

Joseph Schooling won Singapore's first ever Gold Olympic Medal (and set an Olympic Record).

I found dragon fruit on a crazy sale of 6 for $3.

I met like-minded friends, both old and new.

I had light-hearted fun and deep, meaningful conversations.

I experimented with 2 new recipes that were rather nice.

I’d say that was pretty darn perfect.

The Great Europe Gallivanting Adventure: London

5 July 2016

We got the bus to Tottenham Court Road and then walked to the National Gallery, where we met Nat’s friend Ee Faye. Ee Faye studies in Canada, is very petite with a high voice which is noticeably inflected with the Canadian accent.

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The Dutch Flowers exhibition in the Gallery is our consolation for missing the Kükenhof tulips in Amsterdam (they only bloom in spring, not summer) and the paintings are so detailed and bursting with life and colour that they come very close to reality. It was interesting to see the progression of styles and how each painter chose to either copy or challenge their predecessor – perhaps art, like the epic, has a necessarily cannibalistic quality to it. Van Brussel was the one who first struck me with his accuracy and realism, how he could make the petal of a red veined tulip translucent and delicate but unabashedly there, I don’t know. The sheer amount of flowers and other things he crammed into one canvas was also all intentional; on one of his paintings the commentary read ‘if the broken stem in the foreground hints at decay and rupture, the egg in the nest symbolises new life’.  

We went into the gallery with the Van Gogh paintings next, where a group of school children sat before his paintings, drawing their own versions of them. Despite having spent a long time in my last visit to the National Gallery staring at A Wheatfield with Cypresses, I couldn’t help but be drawn to it again. 

I read in an essay by Wilhelm Uhde that ‘[Van Gogh’s] story is not that of an eye, a  palette, a brush, but the tale of a lonely heart which beat within the walls of a dark prison, longing and suffering without knowing why. Until one day it saw the sun, and in the sun recognised the secret of life. It flew towards it and was consumed in its rays’. I felt that more than in his other paintings, more even than Sunflowers, A Wheatfield with Cypresses represents his obsession with the sun, and whereas in previous paintings his turbulence was apparent, or his search or glimpses of the sun, in at A Wheatfield with Cypresses he actually finds it. 

Yellow is in everything – the trees, the fields, the mountains, the clouds, which means that although an actual representation of the sun is absent from the painting, the sun is still everywhere. Although staring directly at the sun is impossible and blinding, ultimately fatal to the eyes, one can catch the sun by knowing that it is the sun that enables sight and by really, truly, seeing. There is a peace in the painting from his use of complementary colours (unlike the contrasting colours he uses in many other paintings to give movement and life to the painting) which provides harmony and contentment, and yet it does not mean movement is lacking from the painting as the golden fields and cypresses and even the clouds and mountains shimmer and move through impasto. There is a realness to the painting, not because of realism but because of idealism, Van Gogh somehow so easily reaches into your heart and pulls out the vision you’ve always had of that perfect place, puts it on canvas and says ‘I believe in this too’.

We moved on to Monet and other impressionists after that, and Nat loves Monet even more than Van Gogh, but we didn’t have too much time to indulge because we realised that we had got the time for the start of our free tour wrong, and that they had already started. 

With some quick thinking, we realised they would pass the National Gallery near the start of the tour, and so we met them there, and joined the already begun tour. Possibly the best thing I learnt that was that Henry VIII exploded after he died, as a result of the fermentation of his last meal – peaches and cider – in his stomach.

We ended the tour near Westminster, where there was a demonstration against cuts in education, which I was glad Nat got to see because I think marching is something rather English, more specifically, good-natured marching, where you are buoyed with happiness at the understanding that you are surrounded by people who support and care for the same cause as you do.

We headed to Borough market for lunch, picking up Simren and Reshem on the way and looking through a book sale along the South Bank. Unfortunately, Borough Market was rather empty, and certainly less lively than it had been when I was there last summer. Nat and I still managed to find Ethiopian food though, which tasted great, and we met Hannah there too, and walked back down the Southbank to beautiful St Pauls for Evensong.

As we were walking there, Hannah asked us about our tour, and we told her about Henry VIII, and then she asked about our tour guide.

‘He actually worked in the Houses of Parliament before doing tours,’ I said.

‘And he had 6 wives!’ Nat chipped in – she had our tour guide confused with Henry VIII!

After St Paul’s we went up onto the roof of the nearby building (One New Change) and lay in deck chairs in the sun and watched Wimbledon (or journalled, as I did) until we were slightly sunburnt and ready to go.

Simren decided to roast vegetables for dinner, which took quite a while, so Nat and I decided to walk down to Sainsburys which was just 5 minutes away. As we were walking, we saw some free wristbands from a shop, and we stopped to examine them. Then:

‘So you found it,’

I looked up to see a man, and I was puzzled for a second – Found what? The wristbands? Then I realised he was one of the people who had given us directions the day before! What serendipity!

6 July 2016

This morning we went to the VnA, where you feel like you could travel the world twice over just by walking through its galleries. The entire museum is light and airy and beautiful, and is much less crowded than the National Gallery. I think it is harder to intellectually access and enjoy artefacts as compared to artwork, but I was still fascinated by some of the things there. First was a statue with a poem engraved on it that struck me as very Christina-Rossetti like. Countess Emily Georgiana of Winchelsea and Nottingham wrote it before she died, to comfort her husband after her death:

I

When the knell rung for the dying

soundeth for me

and my corpse coldly is lying

neath the green tree

II

When the turf strangers are heaping

covers my breast

Come not to gaze on me weeping

I am at rest

III

All my life coldly and sadly

The days have gone by

I who dreamed wildly and madly

am happy to die

IV

Long since my heart has been breaking

Its pain is past

A time has been set to its aching

Peace comes at last.

From the museum, we walked to Hyde Park, exploring the extravagance that is Harrods on the way. Hyde Park looks somuch more joyful in the sunshine, the Serpentine glitters blue and geese cover is and everyone lies down and basks in the sunshine, which is what Nat and I did as well. When Nat uncovered her eyes the world was all blue. Nat told me about a story she read when she was younger, where the world was taken over by bears and humans were their slaves. Humans could only escape if they reached Hyde Park, which was spelled Hide Park in the book. She couldn’t remember its name, and I couldn’t find the book on google, but Hyde Park did feel like freedom on that happy summer day.

We got lunch from Vantra Vitao, my favourite food place in London. It sells takeaway boxes which you stuff with anything from their buffet of vegan curries, salads, and other dishes. I rather overstuffed my box in the excitement to try everything! We sat on a bench in Soho Square to eat, and had another proper conversation. I’m so thankful to have travelled with someone who not only shares my interests and diet, but also doesn’t shy away from talking about things that matter, weighty, troubling things. We talked also about what we’d learnt from this trip, which has been rather enlightening for the both of us.

Then, we met Hannah at Yorica! for dessert. Yorica! is a vegan froyo and ice-cream place, and it is truly amazing stuff. My chocolate and vanilla froyo tasted more like soft serve, but the best soft serve I’ve ever had in my life. Whilst we ate, Nat dared Hannah to wave to a man passing by. She did, and after initial bemusement, he waved back! When we walked outside, a man in the butchery beside Yorica waved to us, beckoning us inside to try some of the meat he had just cut. ‘We’re vegan,’ we mouthed back, since he was on the other side of a glass window. He, misunderstanding us, smiled and pointed at himself, ‘me too!’

Before dinner Hannah, Reshem, Nat and I took a long walk through the nearby park, and while Hannah and Reshem strode on ahead Nat and I talked about everything from the man playing a guitar by the path to abortion. But our most protracted conversation was surely about self and the projection of self to others, through social media or anonymity (which in itself sends a message) or fame. One thing that both of us have discovered in this journey, and marvelled at, is how different we are in person and on social media or even over whatsapp or email. The in-person Miriam, Nat says, is for more relatable and less terrifyingly perfect, as opposed to the stories that were circulated about me in school (which were perpetrated because, seeking anonymity, I remained as silent as possible and  therefore an enigma) and the in-person Nat is deeper and more personable, but also has more sadness and problems. To befriend and exonerate an online personality is nothing but short changing their real self.  

Nat and I had got face mask samples from Lush in Cambridge, and we all put them on when we were home, although Reshem refused. I began packing my suitcase that evening, heart heavy because it was our last night in England.

7 July 2016

Our last day – and it was not a happy realisation. And yet, the thought of going home filled me with so much need that I wanted time to both speed up and slow down intensely. We went to Camden Market on that last day, a surefire way to speed up time due to its vibrancy, its sheer voume of stuff and noise and smells and smoke. We tried free falafel, I bought a necklace from a Japenese woman who folds miniature cranes (self taught, and has folded a few thousand but is saving her wishes for a rainy day) and we also found the famous vegan bakery, cookies and scream. We shared an oatmeal cookie and a peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie with ice cream (oh me oh my what a wonderful life) and it was so good. As we kept saying on the trip ‘I REALLY like it!’

We had arranged to meet Hannah, Simren and Reshem up on Primrose Hill, and so we walked into Regent’s Park and up the hill, past chalk words on the road that reminded us to ‘Breathe Consciously’. Somehow ending our time in a place by looking at it all from a height felt so right – a remembrance of all the places we’d been and where we have yet to go. In all honesty, I doubt I will finish exploring London by the time I graduate – it is just so vast and full of life.

Hannah, Simren and Reshem were nowhere to be seen and we needed to get back to finish packing and go to the airport, so we wrote them a goodbye note and left it stuffed in a crevice under the bench we sat on, hoping they would find it. But just as we began walking down the hill, we saw them walking up, and so we stayed for 15 minutes for a final picnic.

As we were walking away for the last time, I heard Simren shout ‘MEI MEI!’ and turned around to see Reshem running towards us – we had forgotten the keys!

We had our last proper muesli meal (I shall never think of muesli the same way again, it will forever be associated with train rides and makeshift bowls and last minute meals before travel) and then took 2 trains to Heathrow. It was a long train ride and I had a song stuck in my head, which neither of us could figure out – it was maddening! But in the airport, Nat spotted the sign for Iberia airlines and cracked the code - the song was ‘I took a pill in Ibiza!’

We sat beside a man who used his blanket as a head covering for the entire flight, and we both watched Julie and Julia on the plane, and had muesli desserts after our meals, and asked for spare bread, and as usual I listened to ‘Arrivals’ from the Like Crazy soundtrack as we touched down, and I stepped on Singapore soil after 9 months away from home.

There was a poem we saw as we were going back to Auntie Fiona’s house for the last time that, despite our rush, stopped both of us because it was quite simply perfect:

I love the life so the life loves me

That's how simple it really be

It took a while for me to see

That if you love the life

It will love you back

That's the truth of it

That's a fact

The Great Europe Gallivanting Adventure: Cambridge and Ixworth

3 July 2016

After about 3 hours on the coach, I concluded that there are only three positions that make sleep possible on an overnight coach, and all of them require the luxury of 2 seats. Thankfully, our bus was not very full, and so I did have two seat to myself, and I curled up and managed to catch shred of sleep. We were woken up twice in the night, once to get our passports checked at Calais, and another time to board the ferry from Calais to Dover. We both felt a bit like refugees, especially since when one is tired, or just surfaced from sleep, one feels extra vulnerable somehow. However, the sudden awakenings were worth it for the glorious sunrise we saw on the ferry, somewhere on the Channel, the sun a big orange ball clearly defined against the pearly sky.

When we arrived at Dover and got back onto the coach, we had the famous white cliffs on our right, and to our left, a vast tsunami of cloud, pinioning us in a valley of white. 

We arrived in London in good time and got onto our other coach to Cambridge. On that second coach was a girl who was terrified of the experience of coach travel, who sobbed and gasped softly and asked her Mum ‘Can you sing me the song like last time?’

It felt surreal to be back in Cambridge – so much is the same and also so much is different. Students have all gone back for summer and tourists flood the streets, scaffolding has popped up where it previously wasn’t and disappeared in areas it previously was. We walked up to my college, and put our suitcases with the Porters who joked with us that it would require a bribe, or payment in chocolate. We laughed along with them, but inwardly promised to truly get them chocolate - they are such sweethearts! 

Both of us were starving – our breakfast on the ferry had been hours ago and quite makeshift – and so we headed down to the market. But before we got food we were distracted by a dramatic palm reading machine that belched smoke and then told Nat (who was getting her palm read) to please come back in 168 hours! We also smelled the incense sticks at the scent stall, and found one strikingly familiar – the sandalwood stick smelled exactly like what Vera burned in her toilet! We bought wraps from a Caribbean stall that I had been to once before – and the man remembered me! He calls his wraps the ‘best vegan wraps in town’, and though I must disagree with that because the falafel stall is hands down the best vegan wrap in town, I love his joyful service and jokes. 

Still hungry, we bought a salad each from Sainsburys, and walked down to Trinity punts. I took a little while to remember how to punt, and because I had trouble turning, we went down in the direction opposite to where I usually go, towards Magdalene rather than Queens and Darwin. The sun made everyone good natured, and my bumpy start was met with smiles, laughter and joking shouts of ‘don’t fall in!’ We listened to the script of the professional punters and their tour groups as they went past us, learning probably a much as the average tourist, and moored against a wall near Magdalene, which had handy creepers to pull ourselves back in when we begun to drift. Our salads taste incredible, we ward off an over-curious swan and see another punter lose his pole, which remains sticking up in the river, like Excalibur, until another punter returns it to the damsels in distress. The sun was perfect, life was good, and when we decide to turn back I handed the pole to Nat. She is a natural at punting, and a passing punter teaches her to stand with both feet facing forwards and the stick under one’s arm, which makes things a lot easier!

We bought chocolate cookies for the Porter, and looked around some of the colleges, peeking into Trinity and strolling through Pembroke (which I think is the prettiest college) before we went back to college, collected our suitcases and then walked to the train station. On the way to the station we met Tim and Liz – I’m always bumping into Tim at the oddest moments! We didn’t have much time to talk though, because we had a train to catch! On the train, I watched the clouds roll by, silver tinted by the sun, and listened to The Black Atlantic and Gregory Alan Isakov and tried to settle the rising ball of fear and joy and tremble-y excitement in my heart at the prospect of seeing Mum again after 9 months of absence. I’d imagined this moment for ages, but always it had played out in the airport in Singapore, and always I’d cried.

‘I see my Mum,’ I choked to Nat as we pulled in – she was there, just as she always is, but now in the flesh. We got off the train, onto the platform and then all was tears and arms and my cheek on her shoulder and my head where it still fits into its old spot against her neck. 

We drove to Bury and looked around Abbey Gardens which is beautiful as always, but its beauty was sharpened in the golden light of the evening. Then we drove to the hospital to see Grandma. She was sitting up in bed in pink night clothes when we entered, looking at the menus that the hospital gives to her for her to choose her food (which includes her favourite porridge and prunes combination) She told us all her favourite stories, about how she recited Das Veilchen to the German examiner, about her friend Margaret Endersby who became Margaret Bendor-Samuel when she married and became a missionary to the Guajajara tribe, and how the hospital socks they’d given her were a little too tight. She kept telling us how privileged she felt to have the ward all to herself and for the kindness of the nurses. I love my beautiful, gentle grandma who notices colours, like the ‘clover’ of the ward wall. 

Back in Ixworth, we head over to Auntie Sarah’s house, where Uncle John is making risotto. Ellie from next door caught a beautiful frog with a bright red belly, which she let me hold, and as I stroked its warty, dewy back, it escaped! We caught it again, and set it free in the pond, where it swum away with a perfect breaststroke.

Ellie and Auntie Sarah also take a swim in the big inflatable pool Auntie Sarah had set up and filled with salt water. Since it is evening, the water is already very cold, but the two of them wade about undeterred!

I slept in Grandma’s bed that night, sinking into the soft layers of multiple duvets, mattress covers and pillows, and reaching up to Mum for my first goodnight kiss since September.

4 July 2016

I woke up just as Mum bent down to wake me up. Nat and I had breakfast (Mum had bought us hazelnut milk, which tastes like all the good things in life made into a smooth silky drink) and then after a short while we got the bicycles out, got them as workable as possible, and begun the cycle to Pakenham watermill. The fields were different to how I remembered them from the summer of 2015, but still equally gorgeous – with the blue sky and wispy clouds, and the bright fields of barley, wheat and oat, it looked as beautifully unreal as the Windows Desktop Background.

We had a little crisis when one of the bicycle’s chain wouldn’t work, and so Nat and I continued while Mum wheeled the injured bicycle back to Grandma’s house, and told us she would drive over to meet us there.

We cycled past the 5 stones that mark where a farmer buried his dog, and past the poplars that remind me of a Monet painting, then across one road and up another, past the windmill and to the watermill. Mum was already there, and I peeled off my shoes and socks and stepped into the cold millpond, being careful to avoid a crayfish with very large claws that we spotted before going in. The riverbed rocks pricked my feet painfully and my arches ached with cold, but there was a certain pleasure in the paddling too, a feeling of healing, like the pain you feel when you step on the Chinese Reflexology Walking Paths. But stepping out of the cold water and onto the warm, grassy bank was another sort of healing too, and I lay down, with my head cushioned on Mum’s tummy, and watched the sky pass by over us. Erholung.

We drove to Great Barton after that to get the sweet strawberries they sell there, and then back home, where we cooked lunch for Mum, had strawberry and peanut butter on toast (a new favourite), packed, showered, and left, all too soon.

We got onto the train at Thurston and left Mum having a conversation with an elderly gentleman who she later dubbed St Anthony, who told her about how he came there to watch the trains while he ate his lunch. I decided to save writing in my journal for the longer train ride after we changed at Ipswich, but that didn’t happen because of a happy intervention at the Ipswich train station.

The big suitcase of books that I’d brought from Cambridge was too heavy for me, and my heart sunk a little as I saw the steps we had to take to cross over to the platform where our second train was waiting. Thankfully, a young man asked ‘Do you need help?’ I was very grateful. His name is Ollie, and he decided to sit in our carriage across from us. He actually wasn’t meant to be on our train at all, but he’d left his wallet at Elmswell, and had to go back to retrieve it, and then come back to Ipswich later, which happened to be when we were there too.

Having found out in our brief conversation on the platform that he’d studied in York (history and archaeology) and that he was heading to London, coupled with the fact that he’d been so helpful and kind in carrying my (really monstrous) suitcase, I felt compelled to carry on the conversation with him on the train. However, Nat and I had sat so that I was on the inside while she was on the aisle seat nearer him, and Nat thought it would be best if I didn’t have to lean over her in order to speak to him. And so, after much whispering in which Nat devised a genius plan, she pretended to go get something from our suitcases, and called for me to ‘help’ her find the non-existent thing, and when we swapped seats when we got back to our places.

‘So, what are you doing in London?’ I turned to Ollie and asked, trying not to blush because truly our ruse had been so obvious.

He was smiling as well – he knew, help –but we talked all the way to London, about his family’s property company (they breathe new life into old, beautiful historical buildings), and travelling, and illness, and Brexit, and what having two home felt like. We also discovered that incredibly he lives in Woolpit, which is very close to Ixworth. I kept wondering throughout the conversation why someone so interesting and accomplished and intelligent and (truthfully) gorgeous would speak to me.

We got off at Liverpool Street, said goodbye, and exchanged Facebook details (‘Yes, that one’s me, that one, holding the strawberry’) and then I heaved my monster suitcase out and he went ahead. Nat and I figured out that she, being stronger, would fare better with my monster case while I took care of the two smaller pull-alongs. Ollie was waiting near the turnstiles, and we exchanged and last smile before Nat and I were engulfed by the organised madness that is the London tube.

Thankfully, more angels were stationed along the way to help with the suitcase, and on the train itself our cases became a little fort as we swayed and lurched our way to Highgate, where 3 more people helped us with directions to Auntie Fiona’s house, where Hannah opened the door for us and let us in.

Reshem came in soon after, and so did Nic who was joining us for dinner, and we all sat round the table and ate and laughed and talked. The conversation drifted into politics and Hannah and Nic were going back and forth and neither Reshem, Nat nor I could get a word in edgeways (although I don’t think we knew much about what they were speaking about in any case) until Nat broke in with, ‘So, what movie shall we watch later?’

We ended up watching Begin Again, which Nic rated an 11/10 but Nat, Hannah and I rate about a 6/10 – we probably laughed more at Reshem’s wry humour during the film than the film itself.

The Great Europe Gallivanting Adventure: Amsterdam

30 June 2016

Amsterdam was drizzly all day, but I still managed to fall in love with that gentle and vibrant city. We had chocolate cake for breakfast (when on holiday…) and bread with berries from Vera’s boyfriend’s garden. We also met Vera’s children, Adriano and Graciella, who asked if she could come into our room to see a pigeon that had taken up residence on the balcony. We took the tram into the city and walked to the Anne Frank Museum, stopping along the way to look around the kooky Jordaan Neighbourhood. Houses there all seemed to have flowers or other plant life surrounding them, and the canals were quiet.

The Anne Frank Museum is small and intimate and reminds you of its 8 inhabitants who hid there for 2 years. The rooms are bare, and it is Anne’s voice, through descriptions and captions on the walls , that breathe life into the empty rooms. All furniture has been taken away, but traces of Anne’s stubborn and lively personality remain – the posters and pictures she glued on to the walls for instance, which I imagine couldn’t be removed like the furniture, and insistence on permanence and longevity (like her diary) which first puzzled me (how long did she expect to stay in the Secret Annex?) and then made me sad.

One part of the house that particularly struck me was the attic that she and Peter spent time in. The rest of the house had a mandate of forced silence, hushed by the black out curtains across the windows, but in the attic, there was a window patch of blue and the silhouette of trees and their leaves against the brightness of the sky. ‘The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air’. (Anne Frank, 23 February 1944) A glass panel over the entrance to the attic meant you couldn’t climb up and disturb the memories of that space, which was quiet because it wanted to be, not because it had to. We could only see into the attic through a mirror, just as now we can only see into the lives of the 8 inhabitants of the Annex through the pages of a book.

Although the 8 inhabitants of the Secret Annex didn’t survive the war (apart from Otto Frank), that wasn’t the case for all hiding Jews during the war. We discovered in our Free Tour later on that a group of Jews had hidden in the basement of the Royal Palace during the war, and had survived! The Royal Palace has another interesting aspect of its history, this one more humorous. When Napoleon appointed his brother Louis Bonaparte to rule and legislate Amsterdam, he decided to rename the Amsterdam Town Hall the Royal Palace, where he would take up residence. Unfortunately, when giving his speech to the people of Amsterdam his Dutch was so poor that instead of saying ‘I am your King’ he said ‘I am your Bunny Rabbit’ and from then on, he was known as "Konijn van 'Olland" ("Rabbit of 'Olland").

Near a street named Spui (pronounced ‘SSHH-PAO-W’) is a little chapel and inner court, called Begijnhof. This place was for unmarried women (but they were not nuns and could leave the place to get married if they wished) who began living together as part of a religious community, caring for the sick. Today, 93 women still live there as part of that community. Most of Amsterdam is abuzz with activity, but that place was so peaceful. However, its chapel holds a funny story. In 1345, a Priest administered the Sacrament of the Sick to a man who was ill, but he vomited the bread (which in Catholic belief is the body of Jesus made literally manifest) back up and it was thrown into the fire. Anton can Duinkerken described what happened next this way:: “The Host, thrown away into the fire, kept floating unhurt among the flames. The force of grace appeared to be stronger than nature”. A woman picked the bread out of the fire without burning herself, and it became a miracle! The chapel is built where that miracle was meant to have taken place, and the story of the miracle can be found on a painting in the chapel by the painter Schenk. 

All this was told to us by our walking tour guide, a very enthusiastic and determined young lady originally from Louisiana who had come to Amsterdam as an au pair, fallen in love with the place, and began giving tours, rain or shine. In our case it was most definitely rain, and by the end of the tour it was pouring so heavily that neither Nat nor I could make out what the guide was saying.

We took shelter from the rain in a nearby café called Vegabond, where we had a summer roll, almond brie and fig jam toast and a breakfast granola and soy yoghurt bowl. Everything was delicious, and when two young boys (naughty boys who made faces and signs at passers-by) across from us left their toast with pesto and tomatoes untouched, I nipped over (after dithering for a moment beforehand from embarrassment) and took it back to our table, while Nat created a diversion by very noisily searching for something in her bag. No regrets, that toast was delicious.

It stopped raining after that little rest, and Nat and I took a walk to the Fault in Our Stars bench. I haven’t watched the movie or read the book, but I could tell which bench it was from the numerous love locks fastened to it and quotes from the book written all over. I can’t remember much else about the bench, but I do remember that we laughed a lot.

We got back to Vera’s to find the house in an uproar, Graciella in tears and Vera frantically cleaning the place. We tried to comfort Graciella, and later found out that Vera had discovered fleas in the pigeon and was terrified that it might have gotten into our things. But I certainly didn’t notice anything amiss, and we also decided not to tell her that Graciella had picked up the bird again.

1 July 2016

‘It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet’ that is the Dickens quote isn’t it? And that was also what Amsterdam was on our second day there. We’d had perfect weather for most of our holiday so far, and all the bad weather decided to conglomerate and pour down on that first day of July.

We started the day with a trip to the antique market of Waterlooplein, where we found tins and other old things, work clothes, and the song ‘Do ya think I’m sexy?’ by Rod Stewart. We decided to stop by Vondelpark because we had plenty of time that day, having cancelled a countryside bike tour in view of the weather. We were directed to the park by a very cheerful metro man, who said we must never walk ‘like grandmothers’, a statement he found so funny, couple with his imitation of how ostensibly a grandmother walks, that he burst into giggles after his own sentence! Nat and I both have the impression that the people of Amsterdam are friendlier than most, and very helpful too. In stores, the shopkeepers will switch to speaking in English with each other so as not to exclude you from the conversation, and yesterday as we were walking through the Jordaan neighbourhood, two people said ‘Welcome in Amsterdam, ladies!’

Vondelpark looks like it could be beautiful, but any park in a downpour is not exciting, and so I ate an apple, we sat awhile and watched the bicycles whizz by, and then we went to the Albery Cuypmarkt, where Nat got some dates, and then to … the Van Gogh Museum.

The museum follows the different locations and ‘periods’ of Van Gogh’s art. Some things I learnt and loved:

- In his painting of a peasant’s cottage (which he likened to human nests) a tree arches over the hut, protecting those within, and the streak of orange in the sky is reflected in the cottage’s window.

- Like Jonathan Safran Foer’s story in Extremely Loud and Incredibly close, Van Gogh thought hands were the most expressive part of the body.

- Van Gogh loved the spring in Arles, where he painted an Apricot Tree, a Peach Tree and a Plum Tree. Having experienced for the first time the joy and hope spring brings after winter, I felt like I shared Van Gogh’s excitement, in some small way.

- A microscopic examination of one of his paintings of a sea scape shows sand in the paint, sand from the very beach he sat painting on.

-‘The Garden of the Asylum’ struck me as particularly interesting because it didn’t show so truthfully the sight of the garden, I thought, rather the austere dark colours of the courtyard and the psychedelic colours of the sky seemed more like a reflection of the fluctuating mind of mental illness and the desire for freedom and release from the asylum

We spent 3 hours in that museum, but I could have stayed there all day. It was still raining when we emerged.

Oh, Nat said something funny this day although I cannot remember exactly when. We were travelling in a tram, at our usual place near the back of the car, and talking about what we would put in our shops if we owned shops. Nat would have a shop full of plants and succulents, and then she told me about how with one succulent she had owned, the little buds (which she calls ‘babies’) had grown at such a fast rate than, in her words, ‘I threw all those babies off the balcony’!!! 

2 July 2016

There was a bit of a wild goose chase in the morning as we tried to find the bus to Zaanse Schans, a neighbourhood of Zaandam with historic windmills, houses and a historical grocery store. We found our bus eventually, and got off at Zaanse Schans where we were greeted with the most heavenly smell of chocolate. Perhaps it was from the Verkade Paviljoen, a 20th century factory-turned-museum, where the authentic machines that once produced Verkade chocolate and cookies still run. More than 100 years old, the Verkade company has produced more than 48 different sorts of cookies, chocolates, toffees, bonbons, waffles, cakes, snacks and candles. It was famous not only for its confectionary, but for its workers, the ‘Verkade girls’. Verkade was one of the first industries employing women at the end of the 19th Century, and these Verkade girls (essentially factory workers) would also enjoy classes in cooking and sewing after work hours, and following World War II, crèche services were also made available to encourage mothers and older, married women to work in the Verkade factories.

Beside the Verkade Paviljoen is the Zaanse Museum, which gives you a brief history of Zaans Schans history and folk culture. Zaanse Schans has had over 400 years of industrial history, with three golden periods: 1720-1750, where there were at least 650 windmill factories in operation, 1890-1914 when windmills made way for steam, diesel, gas and electric machines, and 1950-1973.

Known as the ‘larder of the Netherlands’, the  Zaan region’s main products were cocoa, starch, oil, wood, rice and paper. Rice might seem a bit of an odditiy – Holland? Rice? What happened was that Dr Peter Molenaar marketed rice porridge as a wonder food for babies, calling it Molenaaar’s Kindermeel, which was a huge success. 

We walked into a weaver’s house, a clog workshop (did you know that clogs are fire-proof, water-proof, and can be driven over by a car and not break?) a chocolate shop, a bakery, a clock museum, and the colour mill where pigment is ground into paint powder, and the oldest organization owned and operated by the Dutch supermarket operator Ahold, the grocery store started by Albert Heijn in 1887, when orders were delivered by bicycle.

Today we were fortunate enough to have blue skies and sunshine for most of the day, except for a brief storm, and the good weather followed us back to Amsterdam. It was our last day in Amsterdam, and we were not going to leave Holland without trying pancakes (to be fair, we had had some pancakes the day before, but were not too impressed by them and wanted something better) We took the tram to Mook Pancakes, which I’d found just by chance while googling vegan pancakes in Amsterdam. Most of their pancakes aren’t vegan, but they have many vegan options. We had two plates of pancakes – syrup drenched and fruit covered. Both of us had a slight sugar high afterwards, but it was completely and utterly worth it, oh my. If ever you go to Amsterdam, don’t miss out on Mook Pancakes!

We posted our postcards, used a bathroom in a Police Station, walked around the streets which were even more beautiful in the sunlight, and then took a tram towards the bus park in Zuiderzeeweg, to catch our bus to England. And that’s when things started going wrong.

First, we missed our tram stop, and had to get the same tram back to the right station. Nat was noticeably worried, but as we had plenty of time I wasn’t very bothered by it, and watched a little boy on the tram play with his toy dinosaur.

The bus park at Zuiderzeeweg was strangely quiet, but since our bus only left in an hour and a half, we assumed that nothing was out of the ordinary, and sat down at one end of the bus stop. However, at 9.30 we realised that no buses had moved and no bus conductors were anywhere to be seen, which was worrying as we knew there was another bus to England at 9.30pm before ours at 10.30pm. So we checked the ticket, and realised that we were in the wrong place. We were in a holding place for buses, rather than at Duivendrecht, where our bus left from. This had happened because initially we were going to travel with another bus company which I suppose leaves from Zuiderzeeweg, but decided to use Eurolines which leaves from Duivendrecht, and had forgotten to change the bus stop on the itinerary.

That meant, we had to take the tram back into the city and then find the metro to get to Duivendrecht, which was in another area outside the city centre. We had one hour. I was strangely calm, and I just felt a detached and logical sort of reasoning of steps. I was already telling myself, ‘Alright, if we can’t make it, we have to go back to Vera and ask her if we could please stay another night.’ Nat was really panicking, and it was certainly a rush to get there. Thank God for a kind lady on the tram who gave us directions to the metro, and by God’s grace we got to the bus with time to spare to go to the toilet before settling down for a long ride.