Ladoo

I think kids should be given a patch of mud and some sticks and told to get on with it – ‘Go on! Bugger off and entertain yerselves!’.

It’s half-term this week and I broke the car the weekend just gone. I miss it It was the over-revving that took its toll. But it’s diesel! It sounds soooo nice, so gruff when its at 6000 revs. To me it’s like a sexy growl in my ear and gives me tingles like no man can…Anyhoo, being the black widow that I am, I thrashed it around and had my way with it, and then ungratefully savagely murdered it. So there is no car. And its half term holidays. The kids (Ladoo, Hustlaa and Honey) have nothing to do. To get to anywhere worth getting to on public transport takes a minimum of an hour and a half. It’s a long time. You have to walk to the bus-stop which is quite far away. Honey doesn’t like walking. Her pretty shoes aren’t made for walking.  Ladoo likes sitting on her ladoo-arse, be it in front of the TV, on the sofa playing the Wii or on the car seat. She doesn’t like to feel the breeze on her bottom. Hustlaa likes to say in his room and secretly speak to girls and Nick. His room stinks of B.O.

So it’s half term holidays. The car is dead. The kids are lazy. There has been a lot of time spent at home. Its fostered imagination.

This is what we do when we have no car:

1)  I absolutely love people who reply to random/crazy/inane/seemingly bland suggestions of things to do with a ‘Hell yeah!’ or ‘Wohoo!’. For example, ‘Let’s go to Tescos! Wohoooo!’ or ‘Do you want to walk across London through the night and find out where we end up when the sun begins to rise? Hell yeah!’

2) I have so much fun with my siblings. Just having lunch together or tidying the kitchen nearly always results in me raucously laughing in a very much unlady-like-bad-example-of-a-mild-tempered-Muslim-girl manner ‘til my sides hurt and I’m gasping for breath between each involuntary peal.

Just the other day I walked past our front door and heard a slight whimpering. Ladoo was standing outside rubbing her cheeks against the glass pane whilst Honey was on the other side of the closed front door stroking the same glass panel and making the whimpering noise as if there was no glass between them and she was petting a puppy.  I had no idea why they were doing that. I had no reason to ask. I still laugh thinking about it.

3) 2008 was my emancipation.

4) I passionately hate texting, emailing and instant messaging as a method of ‘chatting’ with someone.

5) I dislike tidying up. While cleaning I have the constant image of the sand in my egg-timer of life draining into the plughole of the filthy sink I am cleaning at the forefront of my mind. I think cleaning is a necessary evil.

6) The concept of ‘home’ is very dear to me. Home is a place clean enough for you to lie on any surface in any part of the home (in the hallway, behind the settee, on the dining table) and sleep without the worry of dirt going up your nose or things getting stuck to your hair. Home is a place warm enough to walk around in shorts and vest even in the midst of winter. Home is a place cosy enough to beckon you back when your walking around outside with a cold runny nose and ice-cube fingers. Home is a place welcoming enough for your friends to know that they can call in whenever they please, have whatever’s in the fridge and stay over for breakfast the next morning as they can’t be arsed to go back to their own pad because its late and they’ve only got cereal and stale milk waiting for them in the morning.

7) I’m not sitting on a chair right now but actually on the surface of my desk, sitting sideways to the screen and monitor with my back curled and legs bent and one arm snaked under them as I’m typing this. It’s beginning to hurt my back a little.

8 ) I’m facing the wall against my desk which has photos of my sisters when they were littler at nursery and Brownies; a coloured drawing on thick cartridge of a cartoonised version of me as a mad scientist which was a gift from Mags; and a page from the Metro, Monday, March 1, 2004, with a full page image of Mohammad Ali and the caption in capital letters;

“IMPOSSIBLE IS JUST A BIG WORD THROWN AROUND BY SMALL MEN WHO FIND IT EASIER TO LIVE IN THE WORLD THEY’VE BEEN GIVEN THAN TO EXPLORE THE POWER THEY HAVE TO CHANGE IT. IMPOSSIBLE IS NOT A FACT. IT’S AN OPINION. IMPOSSIBLE IS NOT A DECLARATION. IT’S A DARE. IMPOSSIBLE IS POTENTIAL. IMPOSSIBLE IS TEMPORARY.
IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING.”

9) I take photos of everything, including the food I eat when I’m out. Sometimes I forget details of the ins and outs of what I’ve been up to recently. The photos cement those memories. I can and have and do spend hours looking back at old photos.

Food memories: Dim Sum at Plum Valley, China Town

10) I like to cook but I hate the fact that it can take up so much time, so I keep things simple and whack in whatever I’ve got together, dump it in a bowl and enjoy.

11) I charge my batteries with other people’s enthusiasm and energy.

12) I absolutely love dancing to loud music with lots of bass. My friend Shy calls me a ‘bass whore’.

13) When I was younger I always dreamed of running an orphanage.

14) I don’t think all babies are cute. Some are weird-looking. Some have an evil glint. Some look boring. Others just look like plain vanilla babies. You do get cute babies. Quite a few are smiley babies (mainly down to the fact they have wind and they’re letting one rip at that moment). My favourite are the cheeky variety. (And I don’t think that not finding all babies cute would stop me from being a super-duper-cool-amazing-orphanage-running lady.)

Amaan: Cute and cheeky baby

Sabah: a dont-mess-with-me-you'll-lose child

15) I love driving. I love noisy diesels. It hate it when you can’t hear the gear change.

16) I don’t like being a friend only when in need. Sometimes I don’t mind it because at least they keep in touch even if not for the reasons I would like.

17) I love making things with my hands.

18 ) I find talking very openly about personal issues and opinions is the best way to deal with them. I used to keep many things to myself because I didn’t want others to judge me. I also realised that I wasn’t vocalising some things because I was being cowardly and didn’t have the guts to put into words those thoughts that you know you shouldn’t be thinking or wishing. As a childish example – imagine you had a very old cat that was on its last paws and it didn’t do much except poop all over the house rather than in the litter box due to age-induced incontinence and so you couldn’t go away for weekends because it required all lot of time for care and you couldn’t find someone else to care for it for a weekend. Thoughts that you should not really be thinking let alone vocalising would include, ‘the cat is a burden’; ‘I wish it would hurry up and die so I can get on with my life’; or ‘I’m thinking of leaving the cat in a box outside a cat charity shop and buying a new bouncy kitten instead’…etc Nowdays, if I wished that cat would get run over, I’d say so.

19) Sometimes I miss my siblings at night even though they are sleeping only one floor below me so I creep into their rooms, shake them a lil to wake them up and have a chat which they never remember because they’re half a sleep. Sometimes if it’s cold and I’m cosy I’ll just text them.

20) I absolutely love meeting strangers and feeling as if I’ve known them for a long while after a 5 minute chat. Sometimes I walk around collecting petals of the different flowers I pass and put them in my pocket. Sometimes I collect new friends in a similar way.

21) I don’t think children should consume more than 1 litre of Coca Cola per annum. I think parents who top up their kid’s glass with Coke should be done for child abuse. That includes my aunt Shazia.

Children who have had too much Coke at a wedding (including Shazia's kids)

22) I love the rare, brief feeling when I wake up some mornings of not knowing where I am. I half open my eyes and my stomach tenses as I hold my breath due to the shock of the unexpected surroundings. After a few moments of taking it in and realising where I am, I release my breath and as the air gently expels I feel a wash of calm come over me and all my muscles relax.

There have been times where I’ve woken up and I can feel the heat of the sun warming me through the window and the sound of the waves outside my door and I have absolutely no need to figure out where I am – I instantly have a huge smile across my face. There have been times where I have woken up unaware of my surroundings and then felt overwhelmed by the feeling of snugness and security which comes with realising where I am, feeling that there is nowhere else I would rather be and knowing there is no reason to leave my cosy spot. In those instances I usually wrap the duvet around myself a little tighter and with a smile on my face I close my eyes again. I’ve also woken up unaware of my location and as I regain the sense of familiarity of my surroundings I feel a wave of poignant sadness lightly sweep over every part of my body as I realise I am no longer in the place where I wake automatically with a banana-grin.

my beach hut, my bike, my sea. where i woke with a banana grin.

23) I first really started going to the cinema when I was about 16/17 and had started sixth form as that was the first time I had free lessons and so could leave school without anyone (i.e. parents) knowing my whereabouts. I had been a few times before but its a very different experience going when you want to go to watch what you have chosen with the people you want to share the movie-watching experience with and with no-one bollocking you with how much you will be sinning by being in a mixed environment (i.e. there are also going to by boys there! gasppp!) and rather than watching such trash and giving the angel on your left shoulder something to write about you should be more productive by putting your head down to the mat and repenting for your sinful ways and sinful thoughts such as suggesting going to the cinema, and being further bollocked for it because it is a waste of money as terrestrial TV shows films for free.

When I sat in the cinema at age 17, I watched High Heels and Low Lives and laughed so hard and so loudly that by the end of it I felt I had been through a short but powerful process of rejuvenation (but in the lighter sense of the word so as to not sound like a hippy). I bet if I watched it again I may not even find it half as entertaining. But actually maybe I would? I have just checked it’s imdb rating – 6.1/10. I guess it must be pretty crap because I usually don’t touch movies unless they’re an 8/10 plus. The crap rating is testament to the effect of the overall cinema experience on me and not the specific movie.

When I started watching films in the cinema at that age I felt I had discovered a 6th sense. Another way of describing it is it was as if I had never been able to experience the sense of touch. As if plasters had been wrapped around my fingertips and toes and then at that point of watching those films, the plasters had been delicately removed and I couldn’t get enough of touching, caressing, stroking, gliding my fingertips over every single delicious surface – feeling for the first time the rough texture of carpet-like fabric on the cinema seats, the perfectly smooth glass surface of the popcorn counter, the soothing cool feel of the metal on the buckle of my bag.

I would watch a movie and be so absorbed my the loudness ( I think some cinema’s have become quieter now) of the dialogue and score, the colours on the screen, the smell of sweet popcorn from the person sitting next to me (God forbid it’s a man!), the wide-angle cinematic shots of stunning landscapes that I would go home to dream about… My heart would race when the suspension built up. I was always the annoying cow that you could hear gasping overdramatically when the axe-murder springs out of nowhere and your thinking that it was so obvious that was going to happen in the movie that nobody could possibly have been so shocked. I was really always that shocked.

I used to be so absorbed by the whole thing that I never remembered who I actually went to the cinema with, nor where I watched it. It was just me and the movie.

I still to this day (not that 2001 was that long ago) assimilate myself to movies I watch in the cinema. I still come out of the cinema feeling my senses have been heightened. I wait until the end of the trailers to let the after-taste of the movie linger and I feel more tactile. I am more aware of the texture of the carpet on the bare soles of my feet and the tips of my toes, the fabric of my socks between my fingers as I put them back on and the way my shoe laces wrap around my fingers as I tie them up.

24) When I finally get my own place I’m going to go back to Maroc and buy all the furnishings from Chefchaouen.

Djemaa el Fna: Maroc's outdoor Ikea

25) I wish I was 10 times as fit, fast, persevering and strong as I am right now. I need to work on it and make big efforts.

26) I had only really eaten out at Dixy Chicken and similar 2squid-chickenburger-n-chip joints up until I started university at 18. Other rarer occasions of eating out, which were considered more of a treat, included McDonalds and Pizza Hut. Once my aunt treated me with a meal (and dessert!) at Harvester on my 11th birthday. I loved her unconditionally for years afterwards.

When I got to uni my first real meal in a restaurant was actually a dessert – the main dish was too expensive. It was at Tootsies, Bond Street. It was a rich, sticky chocolate brownie that cost 4 squid. I shared it with Salz and we split the bill. She was humouring me. I was shocked that half a dessert cost the same price as a stuff-yourself-meal! She wouldn’t have thought twice about having a 6-course meal there. It took a while for me to realise how tight I must have seemed but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t hold it against me. She didn’t even acknowledge the situation and treated it as if it were the norm. Thinking back she was so lovely about it. Salz is a lovely chick.

HAHAAAAAAA! At number 23 I got a little stuck and couldn’t think of what else to write so I ‘phoned a friend’.  I absolutely love his response:

i) You will only use one particular nail cutter in the whole world
ii) You can only wear shoes with arch support
iii) You can’t jump, but you know how to bounce
iv) You knew about Primark way before it was hip
v) You can drive on both right n left sides of the road
vi) You have an advanced – read “kick a$$” – driving licence
vii) You believe you’ve been chased by a wild pig in Italy
viii) Once you tan, it’s for life

I am sorry, have just done this within 2 minutes without any real thinking, not sure if it’s any good…

I think at the bottom of everyone’s 25 Things Facebook note, the people who have read them should write what specific and not obvious things  they know about that person. Feel free to do so here…And I want to read your lists. I’ve really  enjoyed compiling my own and I can’t imagine anybody not getting the same kick from doing so.

sup lilster?

10:03pm Lily

nuffink Mr Matey

10:03pm Mr Matey

oh.

10:03pm Lily

have just finished off a really long blog
and im not really happy with it

grr
will post tomo
u?

10:03pm Mr Matey

i have not finished off a long blog
consequently, i have nothing to post tmrw   
BUT

10:04pm Lily

loser
i want to go to ur gym
was thinking about it today

10:04pm Mr Matey

heavy snow is forecast..if it snows like they say it will, i get snowday

10:04pm Lily

was jealous all over again like when u first told me about it

10:04pm Mr Matey

my gym thinks about you too   

10:04pm Lily

snow tomo?

10:04pm Mr Matey

in oxfd, yeah
*fingers crossed*

10:05pm Lily

hope u cant even leave ur home and theres no food in the fridge
and u have to start eating your toes

10:05pm Mr Matey

mum cooked a kilo of mincemeat
so, no. not at all   

10:05pm Lily

hope its gone off

10:05pm Mr Matey

cooked it yest evening

10:05pm Lily

and u have to keep running to the loo but uve got no loo paper
hope it heated up too much in the car on the way to oxford

10:05pm Mr Matey

got two rolls, and i'm conservative with it

10:06pm Lily

and the fridge doesnt work properly

10:06pm Mr Matey

it didnt, was in boot
have two fridges

10:06pm Lily

yeh - conservative - u just use ur hands like a regular pakistani

10:06pm Mr Matey

and what? dont tell me you walk around with it hanging off ya

10:06pm Lily

yes

10:06pm Mr Matey

lily ofthepoo

10:06pm Mr Matey

and you dont even shower often

like, once a month
dis-gusting.

10:07pm Lily

its true

im stinking right now
got to go now and stink some more

10:08pm Mr Matey

when do you start work?
next monday?

10:08pm Lily

monday coming

10:08pm Mr Matey

dont put a suit on top of your pj's
i didnt say anything last time you did it, but these kids might not be so kind

10:09pm Lily

aww

thanks for being concerned

10:09pm Mr Matey

Today is National Poop Day. To create awareness of such an auspicious occasion I present to you…Doodie Man!

Click the link to make him poop as you please:

Pooping is for super heroes

I started off with a piss-poor game of tennis in central London. For my part, and as is always the case, there was more time spent running around collecting stagnant balls than running for the flying ones.

I then went to Camden to watch freaks shopping. Always fun on a Saturday morning. It’s the enhanced version of people-watching. I met Cosmic Dennis. I remember his face from some place. Its easily recognisable – he’s got sticky-outty (Nilogism: sticking out in an endearing manner) cauliflower ears which you find in rugby players or unfortunate men who have had little bunnies nibble at their ears for a few months, and a big wide smile that made him look like a caricature of Tony Blair. He sat down with a mocha and was scanning the crowd with a wide, toothy, ear to ear grin. I got chatting with him. I only do that with Randomers (Nilogism: strangers met in a random situation). He was there for a B-movie convention, and here he is looking chuffed with his spoils:

Cosmic Dennis and his B-rated movies

He gave me his website and insisted I download his Underwear song. Hold on, lemme check it out…he wrote his website on the back of the receipt which is now being used as a bookmark for The Pillowman play I’m currently reading…let me go find it…

HAHAHAAAAAA!!

‘Coo coo coo cumber.

Giant Man.

Giant Plan.’

Awesome lyrics! This man is a genius!

LADIES, GENTLEMEN AND ALL THOSE IN BETWEEN – I’d like to introduce you toooooooooo…*drum roll*…

….COSMIIIIIC DENNISSSSS!

You can hear his Underwear song by clicking on the Capitan Shanty picture, although the Coo Coo Cumber song is really floating my boat. Cosmic Dennis appears to have created MySpace profiles for his 2D stickmen drawings and then added them as his MySpace friends. Now that my friends is an innovative way of expanding your social circle. Nutter. Love it.

Saturday afternoon in winter overlooking Camden market

Having had a nice chat with Cosmic Dave about his Underwear song, I stepped outside for some fresh air and caught the view above. It reminded me of the view I saw of a night market in Luang Prabang, Laos, when I was descending from a hill I had climbed to get a birds-eye view of the land and then watch the sunset over it:

Luang Prabang night market, Laos

sunset over Luang Prabang

siigghhhhh…

OK, back to my weekend…

My friends and I have this tradition we started when we were about 12 years old back in secondary school. As with all Woodford Girls, we love our traditions. Every night before Eid (the Muslim Christmas for those narrow-minded lot) we would have a Chaand Raat party (Night of the Moon). We would get loads of girls and only girls, and heap them in a house. We’d dress up in typical Asian suits with full make up and fully coiffed hair. We’d eat ‘til we were sick, gossip and bitch ‘til we felt better about ourselves, dance ‘til we made some space in our bellies, and then top it off with dessert to fill that space. We’d dance to bhangra and garage and then as we matured we got our hands on remixed bhangra which was a combination of the two. GT Road was always a huge hit as was anything Missy Elliot. Then came the Egyptian influence – the eye make up got heavier, the hips swaying become more pronounced and the hand-movements moved away from light-bulb twisting (as demonstrated by the lovely Nick) to more elegant twists and flicks of the wrist. Soon after the belly-dancing belts came along and we all danced like crazy to Kiss Kiss, thinking that the loudness and frequency of the jingling coins was directly correlated to our flair of dancing. We were great! I loved it. Aasyh usually hosted it and as she liked me she’d let me indulge in a few drum and bass tracks like Original Nutter. Imagine a little Pakistani girl in a pretty, colourful Asian suit with a matching, delicate necklace and bangles, flinging her head around wildly as she was head-banging to Prodigy’s Smack My B!tch Up – yeh, that was me.

During the past few years, as most of the girlies have moved far far away to lands of University and I Have A Job I Work, Chaand Raat has consisted of a fistful of us popping over to someone’s house (I usually went in my PJs and greasy hair) to have a good chin-wag. If we ever found ourselves at Af’s place I’d always get her to make one of her amazing cuppas which involved mixing the tea and special special milk in a certain formation (special milk being powered milk but shhh! cos she thinks we don’t know her secret). There was giggling and laughing aplenty and it always ended in big, deep, rib-crunching bear-hugs. The delicate cheek-to-cheek kisses received when greeting each other at the beginning of the evening would always becoming big wet kisses on the cheeks all inclusive of the *smack* sound effect. One of the girlies would give me a lift home to my palace (it would be too late to wake my chauffer at that time) and we would sit in the car which was parked outside my house for nothing short of an hour, pouring out our hearts – the gripes, the reservations, the perverse feelings we had for the wrong people and by the wrong people I mean those our Mothers would never accept, the old times, the stoopid times, the late-night runs to Tesco, the first times of all sorts of things that were along the rite of passage. I always walked up the stairs to my bedroom at the end of the night feeling giddily loved-up and the night usually ended with me lying in bed with my phone, texting the girlies and telling them how much I loved them. Awww. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

So this year we thought we’d get the old crowd back. And here we are!:

awful posing

We ate and ate. I nearly ODed on the Jaffa cakes which Aaysh, being the perfect hostess, kept replenishing. There were three desserts – sticky choc cake with Cornish ice cream, gajrella and some pudding thing. I had seconds of each. There’s one who is married, one who just got married and one due to be married (plus the one or two who are considering marriage but are in two-minds – but shhhh! its a secret). So we discussed marriage – we discussed venues, outfit colours, jewellery, tailors, venues, seat covers, photo albums versus story books, buying from Green Lane versus buying from Pakistan, guest numbers, card thickness of invitations, colour schemes, buffet versus seated meals…thinking back I realise that we failed to mention the actual issue of the groom.

heaven on a plate

The other hot topic, and always an ice-breaker among Asian girls, was hair removal – laser, epilating, waxing, threading, aloe vera versus talcum powder, salon versus in a back room round some random lady’s house who makes you lie down on a dirty towel that has not been washed for two months, plucking, regrowth rate, thickness change on regrowth, pain thresholds, dilatory cream…I’m not even exaggerating.  It’s funny how shy people can be when they are in a room with people they don’t know or haven’t spoken to for a long time, but as soon as the personal topic of hair removal crops up, there is not an ounce of bashfulness and even the most introverted will proudly declare her tried and tested, fail-proof method of removing those stray hairs from your butt-crack. Being a hairy monkey I was a key contributor to the discussion (on hair removal, not the specific butt-crack hair topic). I also picked up some good tips.

There was lots of catching up – finding out what career paths we all took (although Facebook took the surprise out of most the answers), the latest bra sizes (one of them had reached a 40G !)…And then there were the stories…the stories!! There was the one of the girl who had a bob haircut but shaved half her head off completely and went around with an invisible baby in her arms who would cry in class because apparently it needed to be fed – said girly would produce fantastic impressions of a wailing baby and managed to keep a straight face the whole time, even after telling the teacher that she must be excused from lesson to go feed the baby; there was one about the porcelain doll which had her own mini Woodford uniform made for her, complete with kilt and skirt belt, who would have the sign ‘She’s watching you..’ pinned to her and be found hanging by a noose in random corners of the school – the first years were so afraid that their parents complained and demanded the taunting be stopped at once; there was the memory of the area under the stage where some girls would crawl with candle and ouija board to conduct a séance and speak with the dead; not to mention how someone found out the code to the payphone and everyday for months thereafter there would be a queue of girls waiting to call their mates/boyfriends/grandmothers in Israel/family in India for free….they were silly stories but they made us all roar with laughter ’til tears rolled down into plates of gajrella.

I went to bed after having a girly little chat with Honey until the wee hours of the morn.

SUNDAY – chipmunks, park, nuclear bunker

Ladoo woke the whole house by leaving her phone downstairs. It had an alarm set.

For 6.50am.

It was a Sunday.

The ring tone was ‘Funkytown’ – Won’t you take me to Funkytown..!

It was the version sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks….

Jeeez, that has to be the worst way to wake up.

We played tennis in the afternoon as I was determined to get some practice in to improve on my general piss-poor performance.

Avid tennis playing going on here

The court was icy and the swings appealing so we ditched our rackets and ran…

I jumped on the roundabout, relaxing as the world slowly went round until my git of a brother and two Judasian (Nilogism: having traitor qualities akin to Judas) sisters decided to hold me captive on the roundabout by spinning me around non-stop and thus not giving me an opportunity to get off. I yelled threats. They pushed harder. I pleaded for sympathy. They laughed. I cried tears. They stopped spinning it and ran. GRRRRR!

I love driving, so on the way home I took a little detour through the Essex country lanes were we stumbled on a once secret nuclear bunker. It was closed but am definitely going to check it out soon. Its open during the day for you to have a gander. Instead, I propped the camera on the roof of the car, set the timer, and took a picture of us siblings in front of an extraordinary sunset.

The four Musty Mares at sunset

MON – EID

Woke early, Mother screaming, didn’t get out of bed cos was too cold. Went back to sleep and was rudely awoken by my Mother threatening to pour hot curry on my face if I didn’t get up right that moment and get my butt into the car. I put on a manky pair of brown trousers and a big fat jumper over my PJs as it was far too cold to even contemplate removing a layer of clothing. Layering up on your PJs is, as I have discovered from years at university, the most quickest and effective way to hide the body odour cumulated during your sweaty night of tossing and turning in bed. It also means you retain a certain amount of that snug feeling you feel when you curled up in your warm duvet, so when you jump on the train or get in the car you can fall right back to sleep.

I stumbled down the three flights of stairs and towards the front door in my stinky zombie state and grabbed a mould-green scarf which was all scrunched up as I usually wrapped tightly round my neck, and wrapped it round my head in what I thought was a similar hijab-like fashion as my sisters. Mother, as I was walking through the threshold, managed to yank it off, pins and all, and mummify me in a neatly ironed blue scarf with matching pin.

‘Where you goin’?’ Hustlaa yelled from the kitchen.

‘A fashion show’, I replied and was flashed a glare of reproach by Mother.

It was 8.15am and we were on our way to the mosque for Eid prayer. Mother always treats a trip to the mosque as a prime occasion to try and find a husband for me. As we’re segregated we don’t really get a glimpse of the opposite sex. Deep down inside (her jubba), she won’t admit it, but I know she wants me to dress nicely when I go to the mosque to try and catch the eyes of one of the old ladies who, by the way, always have a whiff of curry about them which is evermore apparent when 20-odd ladies are crammed together to pray in a room the size of a toilet. She wants one of those curry-smelling ladies to eye me up. She would love it if one of them comes up to her and says ‘Oooh is that your behti? Kitni soni lagti hai!’ [ ‘Ooh is that your daughter? She is very pretty!’]. And then that lady would ask about my background – what am I doing? Can I actually read and write? Mother will add something about the amazing meal I cooked for the family the other night, which is, as you know, bull, but makes me looks good. And then it will transpire that Curry Lady has a son or nephew or some far off relation of a similar age and that it would be nice if Mother stayed in touch and how about you come round for tea next week? Tea would turn into wedding planning and I’ll be hitched in a month and preggers in two with a nice bouncing baby boy (obviously) before this time next year.

I feel for Mother. For no matter how colourful the scarf that she pins to my head to cover my haram hair, no matter how sparkly the pin she uses to hold my scarf, no matter if my shoes are matching, or how skinny and tall I look, no lady has ever really approached her with a line of conversation similar to the one above, much less a curry lady.

It was 8.15am. I can’t remember waking up at that ungodly hour since May this year, and that was only as I was attended exams that would dictate the course of my career. The few occasions where my eyes have actually been open when a 8.15am approaches is usually down to the fact that I hadn’t actually gone to sleep by then. Such as this weekend just gone by where I partied in Paris…awesomeness…

After I had taken a little nap in the sajdah position (I was feeling as snug as a bug crammed between two fat curry ladies and was comforted by the feel of my PJs on my skin and the homely smell of curry) and been booted out the mosque, I dropped Mother off to do some communal curry-stinking/cooking at my Aunt’s and took Ladoo and Honey to Big W aka Woolworths to take advantage of its demise. We hunted around for an hour and ended up purchasing two pairs of pillow cases for 1.38 each. Bargain! Although not so much a bargain if you consider the travel cost – what should have been a 15 min journey took nearly an hour as I got lost, thrice, and had to make phone calls to two separate people to find it.

Here’s Ladoo and Honey enacted The Nativity Play to a crowd of Big W shoppers:

'Baby Jesus wants to ride on my back!' 'No, he wants to ride on my back!'

At some point we went to pick up Hustlaa form the hospital (ingrown toenail boys and girls, no need to panic) and all gave him a big Eidy hug. Notice lovely Nick being a part of the family frolics. Aww.

Everyone perving on Hustlaa's sexy ingrown toe nail. Eid Mubarak!

I then went to Big Mummy’s aka Gran’s house and dined with my dad’s side of the family and then rolled along (I was pretty fat by then) to an aunt’s house to continue dining with Mother’s side of the family. I am now typing this so stuffed that I feel I should puke to make some space for breathing purposes. I’m fearing rolling into bed because I can imagine myself, as the moment I roll onto my stomach, to be comparable to a full tube of paint being squeezed hard and all the paint projectile vomiting out. With the amount of gajrella I ate, I liken myself to an orange paint tube…

Who’s yours?

my heart is with my family and friends

its a shame my family and friends aren’t on Koh Pha-Ngan

sunset on Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand, Aug 2008

She tried to tell me to be quiet today:

Moo bund kar (‘shut your mouth’)

She ended up saying something that sounded very similar but had a slight variation in meaning:

Moo pudd kar (‘fart with your mouth’)

Hahahaaaaaaaaaaaa! I’m still laughing with tears rolling down my cheeks just remembering it!

WATER

He was washing his curry-stained hands in the sink the other day when suddenly he exclaimed with absolute sincerity and a touch of surprise in his tone,

‘Water’s cool!’

He then proceeded to cup water in his hands and watch it drain through his fingers. He was mesmerised. He did it at least 6 times with his mouth slightly ajar. Don’t you just love youthful exuberance?

The look of gleefully pleasure on his face initially reminded me of a Texan striking oil in his backyard. That’s not the best analogy as I perceive Texans as fat, red, lazy and generally stoopid. Hustlaa’s neither red nor fat.

I think the best way to convey the situation is if you imagine a little Irish leprechaun doing the Irish jig in rejoicement (OK, apparently ‘rejoicement‘ is not a word. I have just been informed that making up words has a term – neologism. I’m gonna re-coin that word too now to Nilogism which from this day forth will be a term used to describe when Nil (that’s me) ‘neologimises‘ words (‘neologimises‘ has been through the Nilogilisor, to be nilogimised) (I’m loving this!) (I’ve decided to underline all the words I have nilogimised) (For the benefit of my thicko readers ‘nilogimised‘ means Nil, ie me, has just made up the word) (I feel like I’m opening up a polynomial equation)) in an at-the-end-of-the-rainbow pot of gold.

I’m now going to re-write the above, cos clarity is king, sans the interruption of my tangent thoughts crap:

I think the best way to convey the situation is if you imagine a little Irish leprechaun doing the Irish jig in rejoicement in an at-the-end-of-the-rainbow pot of gold.

Water's cool!! Water's coooool!

Idiot. Hahahaa. He made me laugh though.

CHESS

We have white square tiles (1ft/1ft)in our kitchen-dining area. I think Hustlaa’s a bit/a lot OCD as he will only manoeuvre around in a Knight-like fashion.

We’ve developed it into a game. He’s a Knight and I’m a Queen and we have to ‘kill’ each other using the standard chess moves. It results in the winner attempting to inflict a ‘FINISH HIM!’ Mortal Combat Fatality move. It’s a lively, albeit painful game.

He’s a good chess player. As is Ladoo. I can only make apple crumble.

Hustlaa Hustling in Spain

Ohh that reminds me of the men I spied on in Paris:

Paris

Ohh and in Italy:

Sorrento, Italy

Naturally, its a short-lived game (unless you deliver your answer between long weezing breaths like the black, wheelchair-bound kid in Malcom in the Middle). Sometimes, if I find the person interesting enough, I extend it by asking them to describe someone else in three words or what three words they would like used to describe them.

I found a scrap of paper under my bed last night which I picked up to use as a bookmark. (Am currently reading Novel With Cocaine which is a pun in Russian as ‘novel’ may also be construed as ‘romance’. It was lent to me by a die-hard Russian literature fan who I fear is prepping me before he twists my ear to get me to read some of the dark and troubled Dostoevsky stuff.)

In very faint green pencil there were six words written across the scrap-of-paper-turned-bookmark. Ah. I remember. It was from an equally faint phone conversation I had with someone a while back. We’d played the game. They had described themselves:

engaged     intense     awkward

They had then described me:

warm     tough     outgoing

I sent them a text right away. It must have been months – it could have been eight months but with my crappy sense of timing it may have only been a couple – since playing the game. I asked them for three for them and three for me. I don’t think they would have at all remembered their previous answer. Their response:

Them:

in     the      making

Me:

adamant     about     enjoying

I’ve just remembered playing this with friends maybe a year or so ago. I had written the answers on an equally scrappy bit of paper back then. I think I stuck it in my scrap book. Lemme dig it out. One sec.

Found it! We all had to describe ourselves.

Me:

passionate     resourceful     assertive

Person 1:

undecided     suspicious     sensitive

Person 2:

confused     sensitive     ?

I can’t make out the rest.

Some people read blogs. Others just wizz through and look at the pictures (in which case I would suggest to you the Argos catalogue). Give me a minute of your time. I’m sincerely interested. Describe yourself in three words…

Father bought me a gift. Although, this gift was so cheap, it was free. I guess it should be that he ‘brought me a gift’ and not ‘bought me a gift’.

He brought me back a pair of hotel slippers.