Beyond Melancholy Hill

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all we have is now, BE HERE NOW!, Burnout, corona vaccine, Cosmic ordering, depression, gratitude, love, love what you have, make do and mend, marriage, melancholy hill, mental health, mindfulness, Narrowboat, narrowboat life, second hand, the present moment, values, Vegan, Voluntary simplicity, want what you need, Work, writing

On repeat every day

This morning John got up before me and fed the cats and lit the fire and made me a cup of tea, having first gone outside into the engine room to get another box of cat food,* and to the store bin outside to get kindling whilst I dozed in bed. As well as our new-to-us sofa- which even reclines!- we have at last bought a comfortable mattress, having been using a futon mattress ever since we moved onto the boat. After a year of the mattresses of low-budget accommodation of India and Southeast Asia it actually felt comfortable but over recent weeks it has become unbearable. This one is a Silentnight with integral topper, firm yet comfortable, and only slightly hangs off the edge- its 4’ a small double but too thick to fit under the lip in the wall like the futon did, bought from Gumtree for £50, second hand but apparently new. John says this might give him a few more good years!

I got up and we wrote out Christmas cards- just a few to elderly relatives and the kids- and walked to the village shop to post them. John filled up the water while I washed the dishes using the ‘emergency’ five litre bottle we keep in the kitchen. Then he went to work for a late shift- 2pm-10pm- and I did the washing in the twin tub and lit the fire, and settled down to write this. My plan for the rest of the afternoon/evening is to eat Marmite on toast, watch Ashes to Ashes (Season 2-3), eat stollen, perhaps cook something,** and watch more Ashes to Ashes.

I’ve been working hard on reaching an accommodation and acceptance of my current circumstances- I know this is ridiculous, since I live a life that so many people would dream of, but it’s part of my makeup to be striving, pushing; pushing against my natural state of melancholy. Looking to the future and the next big thing, or hoping that one day it will all work out. I’ll get a publishing deal, come into money when all along my life is as it is and I’m missing the moment. Being so focussed on creativity can be just another way to push away the present moment rather than accepting it and then hopefully enjoying its richness. Also from a practical point of view I get a lot of RSI so it’s really good for me to have a typing break when I can.

So I guess this is a kind of gratitude list: my husband John, my anchor and my guide.

There’s so much to be grateful for in terms of us sharing the same outlook that I forget that so many people can’t even find (as they are so rare) a vegan boyfriend or husband. I wouldn’t dream of being with someone who wasn’t vegan, and bearing in mind we only know about three vegans I’d probably be lonely. Above all, I am consistently accepted for and as myself, with absolutely no expectation or pressure to be anything but, even though I’m always changing.

John and The boat & The cats= Home and the perfect home and lifestyle for me

My job/financial circumstances. I qualified as an occupational therapist in 2000, naturally rising up to become Head Occupational Therapist at a secure service from October 2010- February 2018. That job was so involved and me being me that by the end I was pretty burned out. We went travelling March 2018- March 2019. March 2019-July 2019 back in the UK and in a state of shock and finding it hard to imagine ever working again. July 2019 we both started working as Bank (meaning you can pick and choose when to work) Health Care Workers. December 2019 I stopped, feeling the work was too physically demanding. I went to India December 2019- February 2020.

On return I took a deep breath and signed up to an agency to get Occupational Therapy work, which involved making an introductory video interview and going for mandatory training. A job would have probably involved full time work and up to an hour’s commute each way. The night before the training I said out loud, ‘I don’t want to do it, somebody please save me!’ An email from the occupational therapist at the place where I’d done the healthcare job came through saying there’s a three day a week occupational therapy job if you are interested. Although it’s a bit out of my comfort zone as it’s not the clinical area that I’m really confident in, it is fifteen minutes up the road, the people are all really nice, and working at a lower level and only three days means I have enough time and energy to try and build an alternative career- ghostwriting and editing via Upwork and of course editing and pitching my own book.

Agency work, either full time or at a higher level, or both, is still an option, and might be a good idea at some point- we could be here in the UK earning as much money as possible for six months, and in Italy/India/Phnom Penh for the other six months. But for now, whilst we 1. Can’t go anywhere and 2. I want to try and build an alternative career, this is ideal. If I did a job like I did before, with a commute, all my energy would be taken with that. Plus I am a real homebody, and rather lazy, and enjoy nothing more than sleeping in and hanging about on the boat with the cats and the swans.

I’m getting the Corona vaccine tomorrow – as a worker in a care home I am in the first batch, everyone at my work got a link sent to us through which we can book in at the local hospital. So that’s our fun activity for our date day- Fridays are the day John and I always have off together. In January we’re getting eyetests! (not been done since just before we went travelling- I still have my reading glasses and their bright pink/orange case which went everywhere and never got lost, its catch long broken but held closed with a hair elastic…) And I’ve got a £25 M&S voucher from work as a Christmas present as well so I could also go and spend that on yummy Christmas food. Or perhaps a dressing gown. I’m not being sarcastic when I say that truly, my cup runneth over.***

Modest/tentative plans for next year

Focus on eBay and selling the India stuff we bought in Pushkar- a narrowboat really isn’t big enough for a business involving stock!

Go to the Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch exhibition in London and hopefully see my friend Molly at the same time!

Go to Italy to check out property- still thinking about it

Go off for a week on the boat- we have people’s dream holiday beneath our feet yet don’t really use it

Phnom Penh, Cambodia and/or India, are still hoped for for winter ‘21-‘22 but of course who knows?

Go cold turkey on Waitrose Essential Mince Pies and Aldi Holly Lane Marzipan Stollen (both #accidentallyvegan) I haven’t had a drink since August but I have bought Vegan Baileys (from Waitrose), Champagne (from Aldi), Gin and Tonic ready mixed in cans (from Aldi) and Fosters lager for Christmas Day and Boxing Day so will be probably ceasing all that in January too

*The cats have decided that the only food they really like is one particular flavour only of Morrison’s own brand, which involves a special trip to Northampton a half hour away.

**I never did, I just had a bowl of muesli

*** I’d nearly finished when a knocking/tapping sound on the window alerted me to the swans outside wanting food. I rest my case.

Sending you all warmest wishes and lots of love

Thank you for being here

On the way to London last weekend to meet up with John’s kids before Christmas- just in time as London shut down again a few days later

Rachel

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Lord give me a song that I can sing: Part Two

Tags

Cosmic ordering, Ho Chi Minh City, Law of Attraction, love, marriage, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel memoir, Traveling, Travelling, Vietnam

Draft extract from the final chapter of my travel memoir

Lord give me a song that I can sing* Ho Chi Minh City

It can be hard to get a dentist in the UK, an NHS one anyway plus we’d have other things to do and might not get around to it for a while, so we’d decided to get check ups before we left. Anthony had booked the dentist when we were in DaLat. It was a private practice, very smart; the decor was leaf green, with green lockers where we put our outdoor shoes and green Crocs to wear. When it was our turn a member of staff took us up in the lift to the dentists. We were seen at the same time in separate rooms. We were struck by how many staff there were and how much attention we got, at one point I had three members of staff with me. Apparently lots of Australians come to Vietnam for dental treatment, even with insurance it is cheaper to fly to Vietnam.

We went to the army surplus market, it wasn’t as cheap as we’d hoped, the stall holders were good at the hard sell and it wasn’t at all easy to bargain. I bought army boots; Anthony bought army trousers and a long green coat. I liked the enamelled rice bowls supposedly used by the Vietnamese soldiers and considered getting them for presents. It was an indoor market and so incredibly hot we had to leave for a break.

We found a cafe where we drank freezing iced water, Red Bull and coffee. There was a waving cat on the counter, the man in the cafe told us about waving cats, businesses have them, he said, rather than waving, they are beckoning customers in. We asked him about whether the stuff in the market was real, given all the years which had passed. He said that some may be fake, but you’d ‘have to be expert to know.’ In the end we bought engraved US Army lighters for presents. Unfortunately these were confiscated at Air China check in. Every other airline we went on let us carry one lighter in hand luggage, Air China, none at all. At the counter there was a huge plastic sweetie jar half filled with cheap lighters, and our special ones were added in, sadly.

We went to the area popular with tourists, where there were narrow alleyways, lots of massage places, street food stalls, packed little shops selling everything and nice little bars and restaurants. We stopped at one and I ordered a mojito…

(We met *Geography of the Moon who we met here and went to see play, you can read about that here)

…I had only had only two cocktails, one mojito, and one cinnamon one called ‘The Struggle,’ invented by a previous bar tender, ‘She was going through something,’ the bar tender said, and one beer, with lots of space in between. But I got a contact high. Such a high of happiness. Later I lay there loved up, him asleep or resting, me thinking, appreciating him, thinking he may die, what would I be like. The next day I said, ‘I thought Oh my God what if you die, I’ll scream and I won’t be able to stop.’ I’d had a dream like that, like being out of body, trying to get a hold of myself and stop screaming. Anthony’s face was a mixture of horrified and sad. ‘No you won’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll say to yourself, ‘we had a great time together, and now it’s time to get on with the next phase of your life.’’

With two days left, I did my ‘Words are spells’ action plan/wish list. Interesting that post success life looks the same as what we are/have been doing… I imagined what I’d want, how it could start, someone could approach me about the blog… And they did. What next?

Jim Carey, ‘You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.’ The alternative is what we’d do anyway, get ordinary jobs, not suicide.

What is being a failure anyway? Leaving with nothing? You can’t take anything with you anyway.

In the coffee shop we had a conversation about The Future; Anthony saying I must finish the book and that he would support me, over coffee and iced peach tea and more free iced tea, so much liquid. Anthony said, ‘It’s funny how you get a free drink when you order a drink.’ And that at least in the case of coffee the free drink is often much bigger than the ordered and paid for one (a last metaphor!)

Just before we left we went back to the mojito place where we’d met Geography of the Moon. We ordered Anthony breakfast, me, Americano, a great big coffee. We had one last thing to buy, incense, we thought we’d have to go to China town but we were fed up with shopping. Like everywhere the restaurant-bar had a shrine with incense burning. We asked the woman where we could buy some. ‘Are you Buddhist?’ she asked. ‘Well we meditate, we use incense,’ we said. ‘Easy,’ she said, and told us to just go out of the restaurant down the alleyway and to ask at any shop, and wrote us down the Vietnamese word for incense on a piece of paper. Sure enough, at the first shop we came to, we were shown a big box full of packs and tubes of incense, perfect for presents and for us.

Lord give me a song that I can sing/Sing for me my lord, a song that I can sing (GOTM). Much as the mournful request is hardwired into me to love, I know really you can sing the song yourself. You can write the song yourself. You can write yourself the song you want to sing. 

‘Your life is your life, go all the way’ Bukowski

Thank you very much for reading

For more photographs of HCMC see previous blog

Thank you very much for reading!

About me

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. Went travelling with my husband for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Currently in the UK, living on a narrowboat and finishing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appeared regularly on this blog, and I am returning to India 31/12/19!

Lord give me a song that I can sing: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Tags

Backpacking, Cosmic ordering, escape the matrix, HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City, Law of Attraction, Mid life, Minimalism, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel writing, Vietnam, Voluntary simplicity

Draft extract from the final chapter of my travel memoir

Lord give me a song that I can sing* Ho Chi Minh City

*Geography of the Moon who you can read about here

The man at the bus stop in Da Lat asked us if we lived in Ho Chi Minh City. We marvelled at the possibility. There are ex pats. There are digital nomads. There are retirees. There are people with all sorts of businesses. It’s not that strange but at the same time, the thought that it could be us seemed somehow hard to believe. And yet he thought it. And yet, of course, it’s possible.

In Nha Trang we’d sat in a restaurant and checked the booking for HCMC. We realised we’d booked somewhere with no WiFi- since almost everywhere has WiFi, it was easy to forget to check. It was quite hard to find cheap places in HCMC and certainly they all seemed pretty small- I wondered was it a dense population, like Tokyo, with space at a premium? Anyway after quite a while of searching we re-booked a small but nice looking room.

When we arrived in HCMC we realised we’d forgotten something again and not got our own bathroom; we hadn’t always had our own bathroom on the trip, but it is nice to have, plus we thought, it was our last place. Not only that, the place was very hostel-y; and our room was actually one of two small private rooms off the main dorm, which meant we had to go through the dorm, right to the back, and through a door on the right to enter.

A balcony ran along the back of the dorm and past our window too. Our room had looked grey in the photographs, in real life it was unfinished with bare concrete floors, albeit with a nice rug and a comfy futon bed, a clothes rail and a desk. It didn’t help that the key to our room stuck and didn’t work so that we had to go in and out via the balcony doors. So we were a bit disappointed, and thought about moving, especially as the first night was very loud outside; below the hostel was a restaurant bar with people outside late.

But it turned out okay, as always. There’s a sense of having to bed in to a new place. We got used to the room and stopped being bothered about the lock, and the staff were really friendly.

I had been anxious about the shared loos, only three toilets for all those people but there was hardly ever anyone else in the bathroom area. Sometimes there were young women in there playing music, I wondered if it was a privacy thing, like in Japan? And later we even enjoyed the noise outside or at least appreciated it.

The dorm room had eighteen beds in it, you could even stay as a couple sharing one, occasionally walking through I caught glimpses through slightly open curtains, people had made like nests with food etc, like hutches, could one live like that all the time, I wondered?

Inside we had AC as powerful as we wanted, outside on the balcony it was hot hot hot and dusty. From the fridge downstairs I bought ‘big water,’ Sprite and beer and took them upstairs and onto the balcony. Such a pleasure, those things, and looking out, smoking, and watching the people below and passing by.

Again, breakfast was included, I only went down a couple of times, huge chunks of French bread, and black coffee. Anthony said that one of the biggest differences between when he went travelling twenty years ago and now, was the phones. We had a smart phone, Anthony did the booking of accommodation, trains and buses etc, and it was very useful. But at breakfast, in the open area at reception, we looked around, no one talking to each other, everyone on their phones. So when a man walked in, looking around for somewhere to sit, it was us who made eye contact and ended up sitting and chatting with him, as we were the only ones not looking down at a phone. He was tall, which confused me at first, as I hadn’t thought of Chinese people being tall, and casually dressed in shorts and a faded pale blue t shirt, the other Chinese people I’d seen had been smartly dressed. Plus, he was on his own, and the others had been in big groups. He was the first and only Chinese person we met. He said he had made his money already and now came for several months of the year to Vietnam to eat the healthy food; he often went to the market and bought a kind of vegetable/fruit that looked like a potato, he cut me a slice of it, I wasn’t that impressed, it tasted similar to raw potato to me. He explained that the food in China is poisoned; the air is polluted. He told us about a Chinese dissident, now living in the US, who is on YouTube, who speaks the truth about China, and who he believed would be the one to change everything. You can’t say anything against the government, maybe nothing happens then, but it is noted, and one day it comes back to you. He said it used to be hard for Chinese citizens to get a passport, now it is much easier, hence the huge rise of Chinese tourists.

There was the feeling of things to do, a kind of anxiety. In Nha Trang we were low, in DaLat we were high, here, it was more balanced, about practical things, shopping for warm clothes and presents. ‘Just do what’s in front of you’ (method of dealing with anxiety). It felt still, in the eye of the storm, it (home) upon us, surreal…

We walked to the night market, past very expensive looking creatively decorated hotels, everywhere lively, busy, vibrant. On the way back we walked through a public park, there were huge fallen leaves on the ground. A crystal meth addict stumbled around near a bench. There was music in a pavilion, with formal dancing lessons going on, young people, then in the next pavilion, older people doing dancing lessons. In the streets there were people of all ages out late, eating cheap food, drinking cheap beer. It seemed easy for people to be out having fun, socialising and enjoying themselves in the evening. Of course, being somewhere where it is dry and warm late into the night helps to make this possible.  HCMC had a nice vibe, people seemed happy. ‘We could live here for two weeks a year,’ we said; ‘Phnom Penh for a month, India and the UK for the rest of the time.’

For more photographs of HCMC see previous blog

Thank you very much for reading!

About me

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. Went travelling with my husband for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Currently in the UK, living on a narrowboat and finishing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appeared regularly on this blog.

LOVE US, NOT EAT US

Tags

Cosmic ordering, Hanoi, Mindful travel, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel fatigue, Travel memoir, Vegan, vegan for the animals, veganism, Vietnam, writing

Draft extract from my travel memoir

Hanoi in between SaPa and Dong Hoi

We had got up in the dark at four-thirty am but by the time we left TaVan it was light. In SaPa it was damp, drizzly and a bit cold. We wandered around looking for somewhere open; most places were closed as it was still early. We found a coffee shop that was just opening, a woman opened the door and served us wearing smart silk pyjamas with a coat over the top. We ordered hot drinks; cacao and ginger tea.

We arrived in Hanoi early afternoon, we had decided to get a room to use for the wait before our overnight train to Dong Hoi that evening. It was hard to find a place, nowhere looked that great- places were run down, too expensive, or turned out to be nonexistent from the map or people’s directions. We got tired and stopped at a cafe, which turned out not to have any food. We ordered orange juice and sunflower seeds but left most of them; neither of us had the knack and the amount of food didn’t seem worth the effort necessary. Afterwards we walked back towards the train station and found a hotel on the street. It had a restaurant downstairs which was empty.

It was a small room but just fine, with our own shower and loo with free toiletries, a nice bed and clean white sheets. To have a room to base oneself in, to have a bed to stretch out and lie down on just for the afternoon, felt luxurious to us. In the room was a mini bar, a fridge with beer, 7Up, Lipton Ice tea, water, and on top of the fridge a basket with Oreos, (famously vegan and available everywhere, I have become obsessed with Oreos since giving up animal products whereas I didn’t even really like them before!) crisps, cacao bars, instant noodles, with everything at reasonable prices; if we didn’t find anything else we knew we’d be able to get snacks and drinks for the train journey from there.

In the hotel in Siem Reap we had seen Western travellers hanging around downstairs all day after checking out, but for six pounds (US$ 7) you could have a room for the day, or ten, (US$ 12) here in Hanoi, which in my opinion was totally worth it when there was a long journey ahead. It was a level of comfort we afforded ourselves and was sensible, making allowances for how tiring travelling was especially when in your forties and fifties not teens or twenties! Plus like a lot of things I do, it’s also about looking after the hour by hour day to day experience not just doing everything as cheap or as basic as possible. I would not enjoy wandering around without a base*, and even though it seemed a bit extravagant to get a room just for the afternoon, I appreciated it so much.  *I mean wandering about all day between travelling. If I won the lottery or this book gets published I would very much enjoy wandering around without a base, a few weeks in Ho Chi Minh City, a few weeks in Phnom Penh, a few months in India, a few months in the UK etc etc! Just saying, dear Universe!

Although at first the menu in the SaPa hostel had looked good, after five days we had grown bored with it. Anthony found a vegan place to eat on Happy Cow that was within walking distance. As we left the hotel the restaurant downstairs was getting busy, some tables were full, one was covered with fresh coriander with a woman preparing it. We thought about trying to eat there but there didn’t look to be any obvious vegetarian options. We walked for a while, eventually we came to a sign for the vegan place, as if everyone comes looking and gets lost. A woman on a street stall directed us down an alleyway and there it was.

The food was cooked outside in the alleyway, there was a big frying pan of oil, the room where we sat was the downstairs room of a small house with a concrete floor, bare walls, two or three small tables, a staircase and a big fridge with a sticker of ‘food’ and ‘non food’ animals on. There was a woman and a man, they greeted us warmly and gave us a menu. They used seitan, a high protein meat substitute I’d only just started hearing about before we left the UK but is now in wide use. We ordered Banh Mi (rolls) and samosas/parcels. Just when I’d messaged a WordPress friend (Hi H) to say that we were struggling to find vegan food in Vietnam we found this place. Delicious fried parcels like delicate samosas, big full baguettes with seitan fake meats, salad and sauces.

A man and a woman who seemed like a couple and another man came in and sat at the next table, we heard the first man talking, he said he’d been in Hanoi for a month and had been to every vegan restaurant in Hanoi and that this was the best one for value and variety. He said that you can go to ‘the pretty places’ but ‘there’s no food,’ whereas the big cities are fine but you’re in a big city. Exactly, in TaVan our diet of vegetable spring rolls, French fries, plates of cabbage, and bread and jam had worn thin after a while and left us with gnawing hunger for proper food, even though the scenery and setting was wonderful. The man mentioned Tet, and how there was, ‘Nothing for a week.’ ‘Ten days,’ his girlfriend said.  Yes, I said to myself. I thought about how there was tofu on menu in TaVan but was not available as the person who made it had gone home for Tet.

We ordered a second lot of parcels to eat there and more Banh Mi for the train. We got back to the hotel with our bags of rolls and our tummies full of delicious nourishing food, feeling grateful to have found that oasis. The hotel restaurant downstairs was super busy, we walked through to the back and up to our room.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

About vegan stuff: for in jokes and mutual support as well as devastating arguments see Instagram @vegansarcasm and @vegansidekick

Good things happen when you stay still

Tags

Cosmic ordering, India, Kerala, Law of Attraction, Personal growth, Varkala, writing

The cafe where we often eat breakfast is beside a little beach a twenty-minute walk away.  Sometimes we walk past and have a longer walk before going back to eat.

One morning on our walk before breakfast people were making a film and, after joking about being in it, we were talking about celebrities who just got discovered without having to do anything e.g. just walking down the street or sitting in a launderette.

My husband said, ‘I’d have liked to have been discovered.  It would have been nice if someone had just come up to me and discovered me without me having to do anything.’  By this time we had arrived back at the little beach near the cafe.

‘Do you mind if I have a quick paddle before breakfast?’  I went down to the sea.  My husband stayed back and waited for me.  A man was walking past and stopped to talk to my husband.

‘You’ll never guess what,’ my husband said afterwards, ‘I just got asked to be in a film.’  Apparently they wanted someone to walk past; they took my husband’s number but they didn’t call.  He didn’t mind, he said it was enough to have been asked after what he’d said just beforehand.

About a week later (this week) we were at the cafe, this time the film crew were setting up right inside the cafe as we ate breakfast.  We thought it was funny; in England the whole place would be closed but here everyone was just eating breakfast around them.  We ate up and got the bill quickly to get out of their way, but as we stood up to leave a man asked us if we’d stay and be in the film.

Now, this might have been my husband’s dream, but it definitely wasn’t mine, however I managed to just go along with it.  A young, good-looking, well turned out Indian couple had been seated opposite the ‘action’ table and were promptly moved out and sweaty, scruffy old us were seated in their place.  We felt sorry for them.  A man came round and put out glasses of juice of varying fullness on the tables as props.  Another man came round with a tin of biscuits, I watched what everyone else was doing before eating it, it was actually to eat right then, presumably some people had been there for ages and were hungry.

We thought up a topic of conversation and stuck to it and I tried not to think about what was happening (I could feel panicky anxiety just at the edge).  They did a take during which we just behaved normally i.e. talked together, then the director said to us, ‘It is a funny scene, it is a young couple, he is trying to impress her, can you look over to them and smile.’

Luckily I had no time to panic.  As soon as the man actor came over and started chatting the woman actor up, my husband looked over at them, I followed suit, my husband and I turned back to each other and smiled a ‘Young love!’ type of smile, the director gave my husband the thumbs up (I was too terrified to look over in case we’d messed it up) and we were free to go.

Although this was all very exciting for us, not least because of the Law of Attraction/Cosmic Ordering aspect, when I told my German-American and my English friend about this they were underwhelmed, saying it happens all the time that filmmakers want Westerners in the background, that sometimes they make you look silly, and that often the films don’t get completed as funding isn’t necessarily always secured before they start, meaning actors and crew don’t get paid.

In other news…  I saw a mongoose.  (Okay I didn’t know it was a mongoose until an Indian man told me, I thought it was some kind of miniature sea otter.)  We had a balcony crow invasion after my husband accidentally left a bag of nuts out.  It really looked like something out of The Birds.  They had picked up the bag from the table and nuts were everywhere.  We threw all the nuts onto the ground for them and they ate them.  ‘Those nuts were quite spicy, I don’t know how they’ll get on with them,’ my husband said, ‘but I suppose they are Indian crows.’

Travel update

Still here, in Varkala in the South of the state of Kerala in the South of India, still happy.  Every time we think about moving North within Kerala as per the original plan, something puts us off going there.  An outbreak of Nipah virus claimed the lives of sixteen people in Kerala nine hours North of here.  The monsoon caused landslips and water shortages in the hill stations.  Someone told us that one of the places we were thinking of going is full of mosquitos during the monsoon and someone else told us it has elephantiasis.

I am going with the flow.  Even if we stay here where it is nice and quiet, where not too much new stuff is happening and I have time to write, until the end of July when we are booked to go to Chennai, it would still be touch and go if I could get up to date with drafting and complete the Hay House Proposal which is my ideal.

Food

The food that wasn’t: a restaurant that was closed, looked as if it were opening again.  We stopped and chatted to the people working on it and they said they did lots of vegan cakes.  They specifically mentioned vegan chocolate cake and we got hopelessly over excited about this.

Even with turning a blind eye to the fact that the banana balls we buy from the bakery near the temple almost daily might not be totally vegan, even with following the while in India 1% and under rule about milk products which allows us to eat Dark Fantasy (individually wrapped melt in the mouth chocolate biscuits), sweet snacks are in short supply.

So when a couple of nights ago we walked past and all the lights were on and there was a board written up saying Vegan Cheesecake, and below it a list of flavours including chocolate…  I thought all my dreams had come true.  I bounded up to them very excited, only to be told that, no, we are just planning out the menu, maybe in August we will open, I was gutted.  August!  We will be in Tamil Nadu by then!

Writing update

I finished a draft of Hampi and gave it to my husband to read.  He gave me some very useful feedback: improve the reader experience by orientating them to Hampi and how it is laid out at the start; make more of the monkey stealing my tablet incident which is probably our best travel story so far; make more of me finding and being able to thank the family who got it back for me.  ‘I remember that was really important to you,’ my husband said, ‘Make sure you show it.’

I noted down all his comments in my exercise book, and then MOVED ON to Goa Part Two.  I will be going back to all the drafts and adding in the changes, but NOT UNTIL I HAVE COMPLETED THE FIRST DRAFTS OF ALL THE CHAPTERS.  I do not want to get stuck rewriting the first sentence of a novel over and over and not getting any further.  My fear of failure* is so strong that it is really important to plough on and STICK WITH THE PLAN.  All the feedback will still be waiting for me in my exercise book.

As I write and as we talk, I remember new things that I had forgotten, as well as bits for other sections and things that link across sections.  I write them down and keep on going.  I have completed the Anjuna part of Goa Part Two, next up Arambol then Panaji.  Collectively it is quite a big section, but I hope to have finished the draft of it next week.

*although actually right now I’m feeling like I could actually do this

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week