this is the third time i’m entered to run the edinburgh marathon, taking place on 23rd may. twice previously, i became injured and had to withdraw – last year, just a few days before the race.
however with the help of some physiotherapy and my natural stubborn streak, i am running again, and determined to complete my fourth marathon.
and as i’m going through all the trouble, i thought i’d try to fundraise some money for an organisation very near and dear to my heart: the elephant nature foundation.
those who know me well, know just how strongly i feel about the work that the elephant nature foundation does. Lek and and her team work tirelessly to save the asian elephant, rescuing one ellie at a time. Lek is also a brave and outspoken advocate of eliminating traditional abusive training methods.
having seen first hand the dedication work of Lek and her team, and having experienced the beauty of an “elephant haven” where ellies can spend their days just being the gorgeous creatures they are, i cannot recommend this organisation highly enough.
lek and the elephant nature park have been recognised for their work by the humane society of the united states, national geographic, and time magazine.
but don’t just take my word for it – read more about Lek and her respected foundation in the news here. watch videos of the ellies they have rescued here.
a hundred years ago, there were 100,000 elephant in Thailand. today there are fewer than 4,000 Thai elephants left.
if you haven’t already read about our experience at the elephant nature park, you can do so here, and see more pics here.
they are magnificent, sentient beings, and lek’s commitment and drive are an inspiration to me. if she can dedicate her life to saving the ellies, in the face of incredible odds, then i can certainly try to run a few hours and raise a few bob to do my part.
- he leaves empties everywhere. empty tubs of peanut butter, empty cartons of milk, empty bottles of shampoo. there’s nothing like going to use some clingfilm/margarine/coffee only to find a container full of air.
- he kicks me in his sleep. rhythmically. he’s got periodic limb movement disorder, which means that just as i’m ready to fall asleep… i get kneecapped. it does not make for restful nights.
- he smokes. i’ve been trying to get him to quit for years, but no dice. my favourite is when he has a cigarette right before climbing in bed.
- he’s immensely cheery when he’s hungover. no matter how rough the night before was, he springs out of bed in a sprightly, hypermaniacally happy manner. when i can barely open my eyes, it makes me want to strangle him.
things that drive me crazy about jonno:
- he makes me belly-laugh, every goddamn day. it’s a kooky, goofy side that he keeps private, but when we’re alone together, his offbeat sense of humour is infectious, and it makes my life immensely richer.
- he is loyal to a fault. family and friends always come first, and those priorities are crystal clear for him. moreover, not only does he put up with my crazy family, but he actually likes and values them – and the feeling is mutual. that makes all the difference.
- when he wakes up in the morning, with his sleepy eyes and tousled hair, i can see the little kid he used to be. and it makes my heart melt.
- he’s driven to achieve the things that are important to him. for nearly two years now, he’s been studying for an accountancy diploma via online coursework. at home, evenings and weekends, he’s been turning down social engagements, and studying his little brains out with a discipline i am in awe of. and he finally received his diploma, just the other day. i couldn’t be prouder.
- he is steady and calm and unfazed by all my insanity. he is kind and good to the core. he always does the right thing. he is a better cat parent than me. he has the most wonderful eyes.
i love the hell out of that guy.
happy anniversary to us! five years down, only 45 to go.
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don’t be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you’re quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”
and so, i hear you clamouring, how was the vacation?
let’s play a little game, shall we? guess how many pictures i took with my camera? now, given that for most of my holidays, i come back with anywhere from 300 – 400 photos to sort through and edit, and given that i was in sun-soaked turkey for a week, you’d probably expect somewhere in that neighbourhood, right?
three. i took three photos with my camera. despite dutifully lugging it everywhere in hopes of capturing some bucolic holiday shots, i might as well not have brought it along at all.
(now, i didn’t let this whole experience go undocumented – oh no. i did take a whole dozen pictures with my iphone. i’ll share some of them below, with apologies for the quality).
i preface my moaning by saying that i’m *not* a high maintenance kinda girl. those of you who know me in person will attest to that. i really feel i need to mention that disclaimer.
i’d signed on to this holiday completely sight unseen. my good friend Tracey asked if i wanted to join herself, another acquaintance of ours, and two friends of the acquaintance (whom i hadn’t met), on an “all-inclusive” package holiday to turkey. given my druthers, package holidays are not generally my preference, but i’d been on two before and enjoyed myself. sun, food and alcohol are really what all-inclusives are all about, and so, i said ’sure’ without even thinking twice about it. the hotel was supposedly 5-star, but i also knew to take that rating with a huge grain of salt. i just wanted some sun and a few umbrella drinks.
so we arrived, and the hotel looked a bit tacky – strange constellations of fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, balloons and crepe-paper streamers as decor, fake plants, all a bit motel 6-ish. which, you know, is not a big deal. it was a cheap holiday, and i didn’t have terribly high expectations to begin with. the room was fine – i had to change rooms after the first night because being located next to the stairwell was too noisy, but that was fine too.
here’s me on day one – all excited about a week of pure relaxation ahead.
we check in, settle, head down to check the pool (it’s still really early). the pool is appealing, although unheated. there are plastic sunloungers abounding, and we strip down for some spf-30 roasting action. bake-turn-bake-turn. it’s soon breakfast time and there’s a giant buffet of good food (including the bizarrely faux-pink turkish sausages which have that red-dye you sometimes see in bologna). for drinks, however, there is automated a sad little automated coffee vending machine (blech!), and Tang. several varieties of Tang, being paddle-stirred in large slurpee-style dispensers.
now, if you were a child of the 70s in America like me, you’ll remember Tang as the powdered imitation orange flavoured breakfast drink of the astronauts. in the 80s, however, Tang fell out of favour and largely disappeared from the shelves.
ladies and gentlemen, i am here to tell you that Tang is alive and well, and being served in cheap turkish resorts in place of real juice.
and this was the first harbinger of doom. because really, can you not provide real juice at an “all-inclusive” resort? i hasten to add real juice *was* in fact offered – fresh squeezed orange juice, for just an additional 2 turkish lira, or roughly £1. i kid you not.
so we had lots of Tang, because Tang was what was on offer the entire week – unless you went to the “bar” and asked for some flat generic coke or lemonade or orange soda, served in an airplane-sized plastic cup, half full of ice. there were a few large cups floating around the hotel, and we took to holding on to them when we were lucky enough to stumble across one. which is, in and of itself, pretty sad – we were hoarding plastic cups.
so we headed back to the pool, where we are surrounded by 99.9% brits. fine, okay. there are several copies of the daily mail paper spotted, and books like “ant and dec’s bio”. there is lots and lots of smoking going on – probably 90% of the adults and many of the children (*maybe* 14 years old at a stretch?) are smoking. it wasn’t terribly pleasant to be constantly surrounded by smoke, and see cigarette butts littered everywhere. but hey, it’s turkey, right? everyone smokes here, not a huge deal.
the whole pool area is nice enough. here’s a picture – the building across the street is another “resort”.
the music in the pool area starts up. it’s a strange mix of s club 7/take that/tom jones (as to be expected), lady ga ga’s “poker face” (maybe 50 times in the week?), too fucking much michael jackson, some oldies (for the senior set), and lots (lots!) of the black-eyed peas “boom boom pow”. if you care to, you can have a listen here, but the lyrics go a little something like:
That digital spit
Next level visual shit
I got that boom boom pow
How the beat bang, boom boom pow
I like that boom boom pow
Them chickens jackin’ my style
They try copy my swagger
I’m on that next shit now
I’m so 3008
You so 2000 and late
I got that boom, boom, boom
That future boom, boom, boom
Let me get it now
…
I’m a beast when you turn me on
Into the future cybertron
Harder, faster, better, stronger
Sexy ladies extra longer
‘Cause we got the beat that bounce
We got the beat that pound
We got the beat that 808
That the boom, boom in your town
so that was fun.
after lunch, we got a little thirsty. as part of the “all-inclusive” there is free beer and wine, and free vodka drinks – at least, until 11pm, when, as it turns out, drinks are £5. i wish i could say that the drinks were even palatable – it’s not like i’m some kind of snob! – but truly, they weren’t. the beer was watery, the wine was practically vinegar, and the vodka drinks… well on does get tired of tiny thimblefuls of cheap vodka and orange soda (again, no juice!). after day two, i just gave up.
and so it turns out that the only thing worse than a tacky, rundown, boring holiday is a *dry* tacky, rundown, boring holiday.
it only went downhill from there. the activities were minigolf (putting into a wooden box) and boules, facilitate by crazed activity staff who ran around shouting at the guest, haranguing them to join. the cafeteria tablecloths became soiled and weren’t changed (yet strangely people dressed to the nines in glitter and stilettos for dinner!?!) the glasses were frequently dirty. the towel stand was only open on alternate days? (thus negating the point of the towel card – having to drag beach towels back and forth every day.) in the evenings there was no entertainment – we played cards until bedtime like a bunch of oaps. the incessant music went on until well past 2am. the other guests were loud, crass and generally rude. we nicknamed one family the Clampetts, if that’s any indication. after two days on holiday, i actually started to feel rather depressed – was everyone else having a great time besides me? was i just being a big old snob? i began tweeting my observations (at 50p a text), simply because i couldn’tkeepthemtomyself.
on day three, then, i jumped at the idea of going on a walk to the local beach with tracey. as we walked out of the gates of what i had begun in my mind to call “the compound”, it felt like a huge weight dropping from my shoulders – freedom!! we walked a few hundred yards to the beachfront, only to find… dirt. it was a little smudge of dirt crowded with sunloungers stacked nearly on top of each other. i made some tentatively snarky comment about at least being outside the “resort”, she and i looked at each other and just started laughing. relief flooded over me and i said, “oh thank god! i thought i was the only one who thought it was horrible!” and to my utter thankfulness she said, laughing, “oh it’s *hideous*!!” i nearly knocked her over hugging her – all this time i’d had to hold in my disappointment, worried about hurting the feelings of our other companions who all seemed to be enjoying themselves. finally i had an ally! things were looking up.
here was the beach. it almost looked pretty… from a distance you can’t even see the trash!
from that point on, we made a concerted effort to spend as much time as possible getting outside the walls of the “resort”. we trekked into the town of Altinkum – a shitty little strip of cafes serving up “full english breakfast”, “footy on the big screen”, “x-factor tonite!”. we went on a party boat – broiling in the day long sun, choked by chain smokers. we had dinner and went in search of a bar that wasn’t blaring karaoke or “amarillo”. we got tipsy on real beer and wifi access.
(as a side note: when i arrived, i asked the staff if they had wifi access, which they said they did – they only needed a mac address, which i happily provided. the it manager then told me it “doesn’t work for iphones”. ummmm, huh?! but whatever – being trapped at the hotel with no connectivity only exacerbated my feeling of isolation.)
our other three companions? never ventured outside the hotel. for the entire week, they were perfectly content with horrible drinks, shabby surroundings, and chavvy holidayers. we tried to encourage them, but they declined every time. all i can say is thank god for tracey, because she made the rest of the week bearable, and at times, even fun. we enjoyed ourselves in spite of our surroundings, and not because of them.
i perversely wish i hadn’t taken any pictures at all, because i’ve been told i actually made it look rather attractive, when in reality it was dingy and depressing. nevertheless, here’s my week in pictures:
the poker. we played for a cocktail and i won and ordered a piña colada. that was a tactical error because (without any juice at the hotel) my colada had no piña.
the day we first escaped from the compound. that’s relief tinged with hysteria you see on my face.
some lovely flowers at the dirt “beach”. too bad they were surrounded by a pile of rubbish.
tracey dives off the party boat. there was no shade, only a few sunloungers (which we possessively claimed in order to avoid sitting on a bench the whole day!)
we ventured to the bar across the street for one night. real cocktails!!
this gentleman was sunning himself while wearing a half shirt, a thong, and tube socks. standing up, it was not a pretty picture.
some classy ladies out for a night on the town (i.e. drunkenly singing “amarillo” at the top of their lungs). i can see why a night out in altinkum is something you’d dress up for!
one of our nights out, enjoying a turkish coffee.
the airport waiting for our flight home. i refused to pay £5 for a slice of pizza.
so to sum up: the resort was awful, altinkum was a shithole, and the most redeeming features about the whole week were the weather and clinging desperately to my sanity via tracey. it took me a week to write this blog post, in part, because i think i’ve been trying to block the whole thing out – i now know why they have those “holiday from hell” programmes. (other people have reviewed the resort here)
this is hell – elvis costello
i am present present present only in this moment, this moment, this moment – this is the rhythm my feet sing out as they hit the ground, over and over. my legs, too short to stride, churn a simple beat. man has been running since the beginning of his existence, and i now tattoo the earth in the same elemental way. lungs fill and empty, synapses fire billions of small miracles as the trees rush past me. the change of season announces itself – there are chestnuts now spilling over in abundance as the leaves begin the cycle of decay, the dry burnt tang of them hanging in the air. it gets darker now, and the moon is a waxen balloon. waxing moon. waning trees. my body knows how to do this instinctively, no learning necessary, just the communication reflex travelling along nerves and sinew and muscle, guided by the brain stem. my thoughts get out of the way, and let the feet do their thing. i do not try to run, i simply do. and even as i subconsciously note the arrival of autumn, and the beginnings of death all around, my body has never been more alive and my awareness in each new second is only this:
i am present present present in this moment, this moment, this moment.
after six and a half years living in London, i don’t really get homesick anymore. not for places anyway. and as for people… well, the awful truth is that you get used to the missing. that ache becomes a constant, uncomfortable but bearable background noise that you learn to live with out of necessity.
so it’s been a while since i choked up on the inevitable departure. i am always sad to leave again, of course, but dealing with that is the price of being an expat. so you deal – you prepare yourself, you suck it up, and you deal.
and so it caught me by surprise to find myself sobbing as i hugged my sister goodbye yesterday afternoon, crying as hard as if it were my first time tearing myself away. i don’t know why. maybe it was the fact that i will once again miss the birth of my newest niece or nephew, due in a few short weeks. maybe it was the fact that for the first time in five years, we were all together for my brother’s wedding, and it felt so good to be in the warm embrace of my whole family. maybe it was the changes in my grandfather, whose memory of me is fading so fast. maybe it was the time spent with old friends that know me so well that we can pick up where we last left off without missing a beat. maybe it was seeing my dad together with his sisters, and realising that the passing years are beginning to have the same effect on myself and my own siblings.
it was probably all of these things and more. these precious, precious things that only grow dearer with time – these stirring longings that no amount of travel or freedom can take the edge off of.
i always believed that more than six years as an expat would inure me to these nagging doubts and guilts. i always thought this choice would get easier, not harder.
i have, for the most part, become accustomed to the missing. but this fresh spate of tears serves to remind me that that’s not necessarily a good thing.
In the mid-city, under an oiled sky,
I lay in a garden of such dusky green
It seemed the dregs of the imagination.
Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence
My face became a moon to absent suns.
A low heat beat upon my reading face;
There rose no roses in that gritty place
But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out.
Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds
And one sweet statue of a child stood by.
back in april, when the metropolitan weather office was optimistically forecasting a “hot and dry” summer season ahead, i sniggered. in may, when they began warning of a genuine heatwave and recommending people paint their houses white, i laughed. i nearly bust a gut laughing – that info practically became the punchline to the running joke that is british summer. it may take me a while to catch on, but after 6 years here, i’ve finally come to understand its cruel annual tease.
still, in spite of my cynicism, some part of me was kind of hoping it would prove true. sadly, this morning’s news was an all too familiar refrain: august will be wet and cold. as per fucking usual.
so, unsurprisingly, no sun outdoors. luckily, i’ve got my own supply in…
just when i begin to think i just couldn’t be more fed up with this city, it has a way of turning around and surprising me into falling in love with it all over again.
an incredible sunny warm summer evening. husband on the barbeque. wimbledon on the television. and this view at the end of the couch.
so here’s what happens when you plan a holiday around sun and beaches: it rains.
it rained nearly every single day of my vacation. and yet somehow, through the unfailing optimism and hilarious good cheer of my travelling companion, (and copious amounts of beer), it was all okay. everything we did, was “perfect”. everything that was even moderately successful was “meant to be”.
i was, as tourguide, overcome with the realisation of just how different i am from the person that lived in boston 6 years ago. the paths and places i’ve forgotten, the words that tangled up my tongue. while there are bits and pieces that remain as intimately known as the back of my hand, more and more, each visit back represents snapshots of a life that is more different than i ever remembered, and all the unseen shifting that happened when i wasn’t looking.
time marches on, of course. would that i could freeze people, come back to exactly where they were when i left, slide right back into my slot, take up my place seamlessly in everyone else’s lives and times.
but i can’t. and the changes seem more and more pronounced each time i try to pick up where i left off. i cannot, it seems, expect to indefinitely straddle two worlds – at some point, they drift too far apart.
these observations are not new, of course. i’ve made them many times. what was new, was the realisation that it doesn’t really sting so much nowadays. i kinda wish it did.
other things of note:
i have a new nephew! will get to see him in a few weeks when i’m at my brother’s wedding
my nephew had swine flu. yes, for real
my other sister is also having another baby! due sometime in november
i don’t miss getting wound up by the ridiculous media in the u.s., at all.
lucky charms have inexplicably shrunk their marshmallows and now call them “mini-charms”
i may get lost driving around, but i can still home in on the beacon of any dunkin’ donuts within a 5 mile radius
customer service, while sometimes verging on the sycophantic, overall remains a far better experience in the u.s.
i hate getting charged for using an atm machine
boston is actually not a bad little city
people in the u.s. are starting to use british slang. i heard “knackered” and “wanker” used. for some reason, this annoys me greatly.
so after two long and painful weeks, i am back online. i also now hate virgin media with the intensity of a thousand suns, but that’s another story.
how’s everything been going in the interim? well the move has turned into one of the worst-planned-and-executed operations since napoleon’s waterloo. however we’re now fully here, sans sofa and a few other essential items. up until a few days ago, the place was chaos – thanks to the determined efforts of j, it is now a slightly more refined chaos. here’s a peek.
the kitchen:
the lounge (and air mattress we’re sitting on in lieu of a couch)
the hideous orange hallway (why??!)
the peculiar toilet/utility room (i *hate* when they do stuff like this, in a effort to appeal to sharers)
the spare bedroom, cute husband (and icky drapes)
the “master” bedroom with soon-to-be-replaced velvet curtains
the bathroom
the decked patio
the in-need-of-overhaul garden
still needs a lot of work and cleaning.
i’m absolutely run down, falling apart at the seams exhausted. in addition to the move and between-two-apartments limbo, i’ve been working like crazy (late even! and i never stay late!), and running like mad. i’m now rather worried, as i’m suffering some sort of painful hip muscle strain and pretty sure i’ve got a stress fracture happening in my foot (which i’m ignoring). only 2 weeks until the marathon, and i’d be devastated if i couldn’t finish it, so i’m stressing – trying to rest *and* maintain my conditioning. i just feel run into the ground, like a could take a long nap at any given point during the day.
so i’ve been coming home late, running, eating and falling into bed. then last weekend, a girls weekend in brighton with my heavily pregnant friend tonia…
and j’s birthday on the sunday…
… the sunday which also happened to be mother’s day in the u.s., and which i missed. guilt. also, a sad indicator of how reliant i am on those little email pop-up reminders and other internet-based cues, none of which i had access to. also a strong indicator of how very fried i’ve been. so happy belated to my mum and my two sisters (one of which is due with her second little boy quite soon!) and my stepmom i’m so sorry i missed telling you what fantastic mothers you’ve been, and how much i love you all.
so that’s what’s been up with me… what’s been up with all of you?
we went to a wedding in the yorkshire dales this weekend. i’d never been, and omfg it is gorgeous. like, beautiful in the way i dreamt of when i read “all creatures great and small” as a kid (fitting, as james herriot was writing about yorkshire). and no, i clearly never watched “emmerdale”, either.
i’ve never been particularly enamoured of the english countryside except in a drive-by-on-the-motorway-oh-wow-look-at-the-sheep-and-pasture kind of way. i know that rolling green hills and quaint thatched roofs is what everyone thinks of when they think of pastoral england, but most of the countryside i’ve seen has been of the home counties – and it has never really appealled.
but something about the dales just struck me. had me daydreaming about living out in the sticks in an old stone house and going for brisk rambles with a dog by my side. (working remotely from a london job, natch.) how could you not?
the sad reality is that my marriage simply could not survive rural living – i would get bored, drive jonno insane, and then he’d have to kill me.
tomorrow (today) marks exactly 5 years that you and i have been together, four years that we’ve been married.
tonight, i’m sitting here watching a nature special about cassowaries with you. you’re doing a running commentary, as you do: “look at the little fuzzy chickies”, “ooh, he’s doing a jump!”, “that bird could eat little zekie”. i yell at you often when you do that, because you talk so much i can’t even hear the television – but really, i find it incredibly endearing and entertaining.
five years on, i love you more than ever. i know you probably don’t believe it – after all, i’m hardly as gushy as iwasbefore. but the highs and lows have smoothed out into a steady, rhythmic, comforting pulse. a presence i rely on like air.
and yet you still manage to surprise me with the small tendernesses that catch my heart unawares. the other night i came to bed and found you’d thoughtfully turned on my electric blanket for me so i had toasty sheets. me, with my reptilian circulation that you endlessly complain about.
and while it doesn’t sound like much, compared to flowery poetry and professions of love… it is, in fact, everything.
you are the endearing, entertaining, tender and surprising constant of my life. thank you.
by Jen at 11:20 pm on 2.01.2009Comments Off
filed under: blurblets, photo
so i’ve finally managed to migrate all my photos to the new domain name, along with a re-org and general tidying. nearly 3400 pics in all, with more to come (now that i’ve got a proper structure in place). there’s still a lot of tagging to do, but hopefully this is a much more managable system.
got to hang with my friend stacey who was passing through london for a day, and we spent an evening wandering around down by the southbank, then going to see this show. bizarrely enough, with all the pics i took, i somehow didn’t get a pic of the two of us. go figure.
but i love hanging out at the southbank at holiday time.
i recently went to the salon for a haircut. it had been quite a while since my last visit, as evidenced by the thick band of dark roots showing at the crown, the frazzled, too-long ends of dry, lacklustre, pull-it-back-in-a-ponytail hair. and when my stylist started segmenting it into miniclips for cutting, i felt a large pang of embarrassment at the shock of grey hairs that came shining through. i looked, i thought, like someone who’d begun to let herself go.
i’m not high-maintenance by any standard, but my one vanity is my hair. i’ve always enjoyed playing around with different styles and (in my twenties) colours. i’ve never been a clothes horse or one for trendy fashions, but the one thing that keeps me feeling young at heart (even as i get considerably greyer) is my hair. for the most part, i don’t think i look too bad for my age – i’m in decent shape, have few real wrinkles as yet… objectively speaking, i’m holding up okay. and yet there i sat, looking at this washed out, grey shell of myself.
so why have i let my hair get to this state? this frumpy, boring, can’t be bothered, look? it’s not like i don’t have the time or the money for this one small thing, every three or four months.
and you know, when he was done working his magic, i walked out of there feeling so terribly cute. i had a spring in my step, an instant mood lift. my new cut made me feel young and funky. it was worth every penny i paid for this feeling. i just can’t fathom why i don’t go more often.
a resolution for the new year – an investment in my self-esteem.
today is possibly the dreariest day so far this year. pouring rain, whipping winds, cold and nasty. in spite of this, my christmas cactus has burst into shockingly vibrant blooms, an assault of determined festivity.
more than ever, i need something cheery today. the house is full of the spicy smell of freshly baked pumpkin bread. the cat has become uncharacteristically cuddly and is curled up on my lap. i’m about to light a few candles for glowy effect, and play some christmas classics.
Bing Crosby – White Christmas
Ella Fitzgerald – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
The Ronettes – Sleigh Ride
Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song
Louis Armstrong – Winter Wonderland
Brenda Lee – Rocking Around the Christmas Tree
Vince Guaraldi – Christmas Time is Here
