A Whole New World...The Start of a New Zealand Road Trip

It seems funny to think that this most epic of road trips began with some donburi and teriyaki bento in a little suburb outside Glen Eden, West Auckland. We were hangry and a little hungover and had already argued a little about map-reading techniques within the first ten minutes of the journey, but that's how it began.

We had spent most of the previous Saturday (this was Monday) drinking on a mini wine tour, then beers in the Hallertau brewery, followed by a couple of cans of Woodstock (a sickly sweet bourbon and coke mixture from A's adolescence), finishing off the night with a mix of different drinks - more beers, wine, and finally - ouch -whisky sours. The Woodstocks, I was told, had to be drunk outside, on the beach at Muriwai, and it was explained that this was West Auckland tradition: you couldn't have grown up as a "Westie" without having done that, so I chugged down the sweet alcopoppy thing, whilst realising I was on one of the most incredibly beautiful beaches I'd ever had the pleasure of watching a sunset upon. We started out full of chatter and laughter, but as the bright sun waned and we watched a million colours in the sky illuminated in the many rockpools on the ground, it seemed to quieten us, as if we had to pay reverent heed to what we were witnessing.

Actually, that was the second impressive beach I'd seen already in my first week in New Zealand. We had taken one of our first drives out a few days prior to Piha, a spectacular surfing beach on the Tasman Sea, with a permanent town population of 600. It's incredibly rugged, famous for a giant formation known as Lion Rock and the first ever NZ board-riding competition in 1958, and is surrounded by subtropical forest and various impressive hills and rock formations. It's one of the beaches where The Piano was filmed, and it lends itself well to melancholy art: a song, a poem, a piece of prose, a painting all might suggest themselves to someone so inclined, were they to have visited on a day like we did; overcast, windy, and brooding.

Driving through the countryside towards our first stop in Rotorua, I was reminded of Scotland's green peaks and burns shimmering in the low sunlight, but also of the great American landscapes I have only seen in films: the flat, wide roads, the tall pine forests, and the seemingly endless shapes of mountains forming on the horizon. We started out listening to Maori radio, and I felt inspired by the newness of this place, moved by its exoticness, its duality, its storytelling in two languages.

It was the same feeling I'd felt the evening before, as we had walked out of the house for the first time that hungover day just in time to see the sunset. We had walked to A's old primary school up the road, set on the side of a hill with a huge Macrocarpa tree, and looked out to views of the Waitekere ranges and prehistoric-looking forest. We noticed a Sunday church service taking place in the small school chapel, and the attendees were Pacific islanders, either Tongan or Samoans, speaking in a language we could not understand. Soon, however, as we started ascending the small footpath, we heard the strains of a haunting song sung by a choir of strong voices. It hung around us like the scent of flowers at dusk, and clung to us, silencing our chatter as we reached a magical little waterfall above the path, itself enclosed in a hushed cathedral of green.

I've spent much of the last three weeks feeling awed like that. Maybe the photos below will help to begin to explain it.

Ahora Caigo

HOLIDAY! CELEBRATE! And other words that end in an A sound...

We recently returned from a week in a teeny, weeny, holiday bungalini. It's been the making of this month. I calculated before we went that we hadn't been away on a holiday, just the two of us, without any computers, wifi coverage, nor much in the way of mobile phone reception, for the best part of 16 months. We didn't even....shhh... take any conditioner. (Straggly, unruly hair is a small price to pay for inner peace.)

The truth is we've not had much time, or many euros to spare. Oh, eff off, you live in a sunny place, I hear you protest. You can walk to a beach, you lucky biscuit. ¡Callate, puedes caminar a la playa, eres afortunada! OK, I admit, we can see palm trees from the living room, but we have chirruping emails to answer, rooms to clean, laundry to dry, ironing to do and several weekly food shops just like everyone else. Add some recent life/family/health/job insecurities to the mix and well, Little House on the Prairie it ain't.

So that's why ditching the city for this place for a bit was much needed. See how it makes the Mister look positively catalogue-model winsome?

The best bit was that there were two best bits: we could walk to a choice of two unspolit beaches along a rocky coastal path pretending to be mountain goats, and also - we had a barbacoa to put chicken on, something that took us right back to gnawing on jerk chicken with blackened fingers in our beloved Brixton. 
Oh, and a bonus thing. We learned loads more colloquial Spanish from the truly alien pleasure of watching telly in our little bungalow. We haven't owned a telly in more than a year. Ahora Caigo (quite literally, Now I Fall, or Now I Get It! - a game show where competitors fall through a hole in the floor at breakneck speed if they answer incorrectly - and  Millonario Anónimo (you know the format, but did you know it would be even more tear-jerking in Spanish? It's la crisis, you see) - were our favourites. 


I tell you what, we needed that holiday. Because the real work starts here. You remember that New York job I went for two posts ago?

They only went and gave it to me.

That's right, we're moving to NEW YORK FFS OMG ETC ETC.

I'll go first in August, and the Mister will follow in a few months, so now we are on EMOTIONAL HIGH ALERT and are bobbing wildly up and down like crazed trampolinists, veering between elation and woe at the thought of separating our lives - the ones we've just spent 11 months soldering together in this live/work space that has been our business and our home and our adventure and our comfort blanket all in one.

This is pretty big, yo.

The Short Month

Just a short one, this month. The month and the post. Short because I'm aware that I've already broken my new year's resolution to post once per month, if you count that I'm an hour and 18 minutes into March already. (OK, for you in the UK it's only 18 - wait, no, 19 minutes in.

Well, what is there to say about February? It came and went, as February is wont to do. I had a week back in London for work. It was more than a little stormy that week, as roof tiles and garden gnomes went flying, and the news was full of politicians wearing waders and wellies and looking pointedly at huge expanses of dirty water. It was the UK's wettest January in more than 100 years, they said. It made me quite glad that we weren't spending another biblical winter in a small, damp basement flat in Vauxhall this year, with the Thames barrier being deployed and the river threatening us a few metres away. I felt quite guilty for our relatively painless winter here. But the nice thing is, we're also a haven for our friends and family now. And boy, do we know it. The mums are booking trips over in March quicker than you can say 'easyjet'. Long-lost family members are suddenly looking us up, they've heard we have a guest house in Barcelona, what's availability like, over the spring?

The truth is we're booked up well into May and June - something we never expected, at under six months of being open. But we're enjoying what we do. We're getting good reviews, so we aren't bad at it. And we genuinely enjoy making people feel at home, comfortable, cared for. We enjoy making someone's holiday - that precious time we know all too well from working long hours ourselves in London -better.

Tomorrow (well, later today), we have a couple arriving who have been referred to us by a friend, and they will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary here. We've booked them into the best restaurant in town, will have flowers and cava awaiting them, and will enjoy watching them stroll out each day with some foolproof recommendations under their arms. A year ago, I was packing up our flat. I just mentioned this to the Mister, and he reminded me that we put everything in boxes and held our last dinner parties this time last year. And here we are, a year on, entertaining again. And it makes me happy.

The Cautionary Tale of the Fat Grey Seal

I've been quiet for the last month, but that's a good thing, because any posts would have been fantastically dull. I spent much of March applying for a new job (I didn't get it, sadly), working my arse off and earning myself a holiday.

The holiday part is quite good, though. We went to the beautiful West Highlands of Scotland, bathed in sunshine upon our arrival and with temperatures in the high teens (on the first day, anyway). I wore waterproofs and hiking-type shoes almost nonstop, and actually enjoyed it, despite looking frightful in all our holiday snaps.

We walked. A lot. We sailed (well, someone else drove and parked the boat. I know I'm using the wrong words, and I don't care - I know nothing of boats). We watched birds! We saw enormous grey seals! They looked ridiculous! I wouldn't mess with them, though. Those blubbery blighters. Look at that one there, giving us stinkeye. He knew. We would have been happier on his turf. No wonder it was being guarded so carefully.

What?

There was a lot of whisky and cullen skink and Lorne sausages. There was no TV aerial in the flat where we stayed and so we watched some Hitchcock films and - fittingly - the DVD extras on Braveheart. There was also no phone reception to speak of, so it was pretty darned relaxing. I managed to read a lot and the days seemed longer, something I often long for in a normal working week.

It made me think very hard about city living. Without exception, every local we met in the sleepy little Argyll village we stayed in seemed to pity us for living in London. Some had lived and worked here themselves, and had great stories to tell, but none missed it. One couple in their sixties had come back for a holiday and enjoyed themselves, but for the most part the men hated cities and the women got their cultural fixes in Glasgow or from holidays in other places.

I don't think I'm quite ready to live in a place where no shops are open past 6pm (or indeed on Sundays) but it did make me consider what one really needs from the place they live. Something I seem to do regularly each time I leave the city, whether for a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I keep hearing that little voice beckoning me away. And I do wonder if I'd be more productive; maybe writing more, maybe spending more time talking to friends, less time exhausted on the sofa, less time travelling, less time worrying about money.

I know, I know. It's been two years of this love/hate shit with London. Even I'm bored of it now. I'm like a woman scorned who keeps telling her friends he'll change. 


So, definitely time for a new record. This is the last time I say this. Promise. 

Opening Windows

Before I turn 30, I've promised myself, I'm going to see where all four of my grandparents and all four of my great-grandparents came from. 

With 18 months still to go, I'm not far off. I've seen my maternal grandmother's tiny fishing village in the west of Norway, where her mother was raised, in turn, on fresh mackerel, sea air and goat's milk. I've stood on the spot where my paternal grandfather and grandmother built their little raised house with the corrugated iron roof on stilts in the verdant, wild bush of Trinidad (more goats here, too). I've walked many a mean street of Bermondsey, where my mother's dad knew every bus route going in Southwark (apparently this led to a degree of popularity with the young au pairs who happened upon his particular patch in Rotherhithe to go to the Norwegian church). 

But there's one part of my heritage I've never been able to experience first-hand. A part of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother's stories I'd been desperate to see. 

India.

When I was about seven or eight, I remember my father pointing out the northern and southern tips of the vast landmass on the map pinned to my bedroom wall. He marked two asterisks on this; his unmistakeable scrawled capitals marking the top: "MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER WAS BORN IN KASHMIR" and the bottom: "MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS BORN IN MADRAS." Both places sounded so exotic and so far away from each other, let alone from my childhood home in south Florida. My father had never been to these places either, but his dark face and poker-straight jet black hair belied his roots. He contented himself with Kipling and Naipaul's literary versions of India, and I never knew if he would have liked to visit his diverse family beginnings at the top and the bottom of our map, but the foods of my childhood were certainly squarely tied in with his original ancestry (as for most Trinis): roti, paratha, chana dhal, okra, curried chicken, and plenty of hot pepper sauce on everything.

My first visit to India, at the end of last month, was to neither of the places on our map. I'm not ashamed to say it was to a place set squarely in the middle of the tourist (and hippy) trail; a place that Thomas Cook flies to twice a week and a place many Brits flock to in search of sun, sea, sand, and sex. I was certainly looking for sunshine, but more than anything, I wanted to get the measure of the people, and open a window I hadn't ever been able to look out of before. 

In most of the places we went while we were there, I was asked if I was Indian. And for once (unlike in other European countries this happens to me in - Greece, Italy, Spain), I could say with some conviction that this country was woven somehow into my family history. And I liked that. 

I'm already planning for our return journey. Next time, we'll definitely see more than a holiday resort and I hope to be able to open that window a little wider, look a little deeper, and take the time to try to visit those asterisks on the map of my childhood. I hope, with my return visit, to see a little more of the people who can already see quite a bit of me in them.

I have no more words. Just pictures.

Zakynthos 1, London 0

12 days on a Greek island, and I'm a changed person.

We stayed on Zakynthos, one of the Ionian islands, the next one over from (maybe) the more well-known Kefalonia, which attracts an altogether more middle-class kind of tourist. Zakynthos is definitely the smaller, poorer cousin who has, around its southern coastline at least, in the town of Laganas, decided to give up its day job and embrace a life of beer, football, sunburn and chasing tail.

We arrived not in Laganas, but in Alykes, on the north eastern side of the island, sandwiched between two holiday resorts very popular with Brits. Although vastly preferable to the resorts frequented by beer-swilling, strip bar clientele, sporting custom-made 'LAGANAS STAG DO 2010' t-shirts and surviving on a varied diet of both McDonalds fries and kebab shop chips, it was still not what we were expecting and was somewhat annoying to begin with. We had come to see Greece, not Blackpool on holiday. Although not as developed as other parts of the island, nor were there any fairground rides or penny-slot machines, it was enough to remind us that learning to drive, and the independence that comes with mobility, is important. Especially when trying to find The Real Greece and escape the package tour and 'egg and chips, please' Brits that favoured the island.

Luckily for us, the place we stayed was a delight - quite a haven in the midst of the resort of Alykanas, the larger and more brash of the two towns we straddled, complete with bars called 'D.N.A.' or 'Two Fit Birds' or whatever. Alykes, the smaller and more serene of the resorts, was still replete with full English breakfasts and more world cup screens and England flags than you could shake a stick at.

We managed to ignore most of that. We'd planned to see the best the island had to offer - nesting beaches for endangered loggerhead turtles (caretta-caretta), incredible blue caves made by the erosion of soft limestone cliffs around the island's north coast, framing perfect azure waters, and to try as much authentic greek food as possible.

Look! A real live caretta-caretta swam under our boat!

The studios we chose to reside in were called Anna Studios, run by a marvellously friendly couple from Dagenham and Suffolk, Ian and Sarah, (who met whilst working in the prison service), and were utterly unlike anywhere else I've been. Once you've stayed there, with Ian, Sarah, her son Fraser and their dogs, cats, chickens and geckos, you feel a little bit like one of the family.

We've certainly never experienced such warmth and hospitality that seemed so effortless. From our first email exchanges, to being met by Sarah at the airport, to being asked to sit and eat with our hosts at an evening barbecue, we've never felt so completely welcomed by any other place we've stayed.

The studios themselves were clean, well-appointed and comfortable. Ours was stocked with bread, some jam and butter, teabags and milk upon arrival. Sheets and towels were changed regularly and we were given a fan as soon as the temperatures started to climb. The rooms were suited to couples or small families - private but close enough to chat with your neighbours if you wanted to - and the pool was big enough for a proper dip, with pretty gardens surrounding it.

What we liked most about the Anna Studios, however, weren't the gardens, or the pool, (or the truth bar by the pool), or the fresh eggs from the roaming hens, or even the great location a 10 minute stroll to the wonderful beach at Alykes. It was the feel of the place, which encouraged you to do those things that we find are so often lacking in our busy modern lives - talk to other people, make new friends, and find the opportunity to truly relax.

In those last few days there, I felt my limbs lengthen, my heartbeat slow, and myself opening up to the many possibilities of alternative futures - that with 'one auspicious and one dropping eye' - no longer include London.

I'll let the pictures speak - they're better than words in this case.

Operation Easter Bunny

Easter weekend is coming up, and I'm buzzing.

Here's why - on Thursday last week I got this happy little message in my inbox from the Mister:

Operation Easter Bunny requests your presence:

Date: Friday 2nd April

Time:

08:30hrs

Location:

London Railway Station (need-to-know-basis)

Kit:

Wee suitcase containing enough clothing for 2 night stay, toilet bag (own toothbrush optional), scrabble, notebook, book, make-up, waterproofs (we hope these will not be needed), swimming gear (optional but I'm taking mine)

Rendez-Vous at [our home address] - ready to leave at 07:30.

We will be returning to above address late afternoon on the 4th April 2010.

How sweet is that? Never did I think that those casually-dropped hints would have been taken on board so readily by the man in my life. "Wouldn't it be great to be surprised with a call to say, meet me at the airport with just your passport and toothbrush, you've got the next few days off work," is a sentence that has passed my lips many times, but has never been put into action. Until now (well, within reason). Actually I don't know if I'd want someone else to sort out my holiday dates with work. Scrap that.

He's a special one, and I'm an extremely lucky girl. The only trouble is: I'm also an extremely sniffly girl. I seem to have come down with a cold just in time to be a bit worried about whether I'll enjoy being whisked away as much as I'd enjoy my own bed, my slippers, fleece blanket and the entire back catalogue of Come Dine With Me. So today I'm at home resting up to make sure that wherever we're going, I'm going to give Operation Easter Bunny my best.

It's quite exciting, though, isn't it? I wonder where we're going. Waterproofs? Well, clearly we're not leaving the UK. Swimming gear? Does that mean a pool? Or does it mean some crazy Scottish urge to throw ourselves into subzero waters to prove some kind of point about hardiness?

His 'own toothbrush' clause points to a long-standing discussion (debate would be too strong a word) about why I won't share a toothbrush with anyone, not even my beloved. I'm sure my mum won't mind me blaming this on her microbiologist habit of analysing the likelihood of bacterial growth on any surface at any given time. It took me a long time to be able to share a can of coke. I know, it's sad. I'm working on it.

Anyway, I'll write all about it, wherever it is we're going, once we're back. Here's wishing you a wonderful Easter break too.