Tired eyes meet a warm kitchen

To break the week up and give my eyes a break from this screen I left home on Wednesday for the greenery and clean air of Wimbledon. Our globe-trotting friends have a brilliantly sunny apartment on the top floor of a house just a stone's throw from the Common and I was invited to go and stay. She and I spent the afternoon a bit like kids in a candy shop, looking at toys for children. She had a long list of kids of all sizes and ages to buy gifts for and this was just the research run to see what was available. Wimbledon has every possible high street shop in its confines and we had a jolly old time ooohing and aaahing over adorable winter coats for kiddies, geomag, lego and leapad. All oohed and aahed out, research duly done, we headed to their home to a glass of fine fine wine, Faustino I.

We went to Cocum in nearby Raynes Park. We've been before a few times, V & I, with these friends and a few others. Cocum is an unassuming South Indian gem of a restaurant that makes a mean appam and Nadan meen curry. The Kathakali masks and other Kerala handicrafts suit the small space and make the restaurant feel cosy and inviting. An enjoyable evening was had by all!

Their home, in a very comfortable guest bed and after nights of strange insomnia I was out like a light (well almost - an hour of reading followed by 6 uninterupted hours of shut eye). Woke up to a bright, clear and sunny day. Sat on a swiss ball chatting away while my buddy, a fabulouso cook, dished out hot freshly made gobhi parathas from her tawa and onto our plates. There I was exhausted from sleepless-ness and staring at the computer and TV screen till my eyes smarted almost continuously, now tucking into a steaming delicious paratha in someones warm kitchen. How I needed that! Warm kitchen, the smell of freshly ground spices, a full tum and unseasonably warm sunshine for this time of year - all reminders of an Indian holiday.

Well, its back to reality now. My home. More applications. Still no V. But soon.

There is NOTHING on TV. Thankfully we live in a high-ish rise and from one of the windows (strategically, our sofa is opposite) of our living room there are continuous fireworks magically going off every few second - minutes. This is all practice, buildup to Guy Fawkes day which is round the corner. My refreshed eyes are still resting. Enjoying the starbursts and beautiful dislplays that ligt up the cold London skies. Ta da!

Cocum: 9, Approach Rd, Raynes Park, London, SW20 8BA. Tel: 020 8540 3250

Appam: fermented rice pancake

Meen: fish

Gobhi: Cauliflower

Paratha: Griddle fried Indian bread

Sleepless in London

My Other (and Better) Half is the other side of the pond, in another of the world's greatest cities, the Big Apple. Meanwhile I am still in London, having (stupidly) turned down the offer of holidaying for a week with him, in order to stay home and continue applying for jobs. How foolish am I!? Don't answer that, its a rhetorical q...

I won't say I was not tempted but common sense prevailed. Temptation was kept at bay by the hassle of getting a visa (high up on the pain charts) added to the tingles of guilt of not having a job for the last 6 months. It's been a productive few days though. I've spent the last two days fused to this computer churning out applications with supporting statements that make me sound holier than thou. I have a load of application deadlines to meet in the next few days, deadlines I would have missed holidaying, so I'm not feeling completely useless.

What I am though, is sleepless and sleep deprived. It's been 3 nights since I've had a good nights sleep. Applications all day and most of the evening, interspersed by plates of hot gyoza, followed by telly till midnight and then a book till about 4am. Dozing by 5am and sound asleep at 6am when I can see the first lights of day. Up at about at 9.30am and back at this machine. Whatever is the matter with me. I suspect it's a combination of missing V and all the shopping I could have crammed into my suitcases.

Went out to get some fresh air and groceries today. Both were first in a while and I had forgotten how refreshing cold air could be. Now I have chocolate to accompany the endless steamed gyoza!

I'm waiting for the applications to go, V to come back and my days & nights to return to a normal rhythm.

In the meanwhile I hope V goes and sees the Statue of Liberty this time round!

Please, sir, I want some more

What better remedy on a Sunday afternoon after a partying Saturday night than the new adaptation of Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist? A remedy it was not.

Roman Polanski's mastery with 'The Pianist' was not in evidence in this much awaited autumn release. My benchmark is certainly the 1968 musical 'Oliver!' which I have seen many a time and for me, brings to life Victorian England through the eyes of young Oliver.

The story is much the same: Victorian England and an innocent orphan walks 70 miles to escape his terrible fate in the countryside, only to become entangled in the dark world of London criminal named Fagin. Innocent Oliver yearns for a better life and a chance meeting with a learned gentleman Mr. Brownlow shows this to be possible. However, this chance and Oliver's life are both threatened as Fagin and his associates want him to be kept in their grimy sordid lifestyle. Fairy tale ending with Oliver escaping to the good life offered by the kind Mr.Brownlow.

Polanski's version is certainly true to the novel and depicted with the finest detail, costumery and sets perfectly rendered. What it lacks is warmth, character building. The decadence of class war and the exploitation of women and children is shown clearly but the film did little else to grip me to my seat.

Young Barnaby Clarke certainly had the fitting look needed for the role but his wide-eyed trembling lip underplayed the part leaving me feeling as though he was an incidental arm to the whole thing. Polanski fell short as a director for this child actor. It was not enough by far.

I liked Mr. Brownlow, well projected by Edward Hardwicke (a familiar face as Dr.Watson from Sherlock Holmes) but the artful dodger was hardly convincing or endearing as he has been in other versions of this film. I was looking forward to Ben Kingsley as Fagin but again this representation with too much make-up and a much mumbled accent left the character cold in his tracks.

V was in office and I watched it with two friends. At the end both declared their love for the movie and quite evidently enjoyed it. I'm the more cynical type. I expected far more from Polanski than sets, costumes and depiction, especally since he chose to make yet another version of something that has already been rendered so well in the past.

I wanted more. I wanted to be transported to another time, to feel the vulnerability and care about the outcome. This was a mere storytelling, jumping from incident to incident without much fire in its belly.

Please, sir, I need more.

Where did all the good news go?

Maybe this is me being morbid.

Or maybe this is a reaction to just sitting at home and filling in job applications that make me sound holier-than-thou with no real results.

Or maybe I need a bit of sunshine through these grey skies.

Everywhere I look the news is bad. Everyday and night I watch the news and keep thinking that the next story will be one of joy, sheer unadulterated happiness. It is yet to happen. Most often the only cheery face is of the BBC weatherperson smiling at the prospect of a sunny day. That even makes me smile, often through a sheet of tears. Take your pick amongst the possible bad pieces of news;
Man-made: invasions, civil war, acts of terror, arson, murder, theft, muggings, cheating...
Nature's wrath: tornado's, typhoons, hurricanes, volcano's, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, drought, famine...

Whether manmade or natural all this bad news is bearing down upon us. It's a miracle anyone on the news can smile anymore. In such a vast diverse world you would expect that some of the news filtering through would be good. So is it the media or the media-watchers (TV, online, newsprint) who want to know only about the usually terrible, often dramatic scenes that errupt daily somewhere on the planet.

And here's how the projected good news - keep faith - have hope - stories work. The good news is qualified by how good it is in the face of something bad. Like a vaccine for a disease that's killed millions; this cure may or may not work. Or weapons being put down to help people over the line of control because of an earthquake in a region where peace is a rarely used word. In my mind it's all too little, too late.

I'll be the first to admit that maybe I'm just a bit cynical because I intersperse job applications (even that is all horrible news, much closer home) with watching the sensationalist news. One way to feel a bit more cheerful might be to find good happy moments in my own life. That is all I have, the life around me, that's all I can somewhat control.

So here is the last picture I took that makes me smile. Maybe you'll smile too....or maybe you'll share a bit of good news from your own world!

being grown up is a terribly hard thing to do. its much easier to go from one childhood to another - f scott fitzgerald (& V agrees!); this is his birthday cake (from Paul) with a sugar tiger (from Patisserie Valerie) gleefully smiling in the centre.

Before the Booker

For lack of money time and space I rely on Random House’s Borzoi to keep me up to date on what authors are saying, reviews of new books in multiple categories and simple inspiration to read even though I can’t seem to write.

I read about John Banville in passing last year and it somehow stuck in my head that he had been nominated for the Booker Prize in 1989. A short while later, for lack of anything to read on a train journey to Leeds, I wandered into a WH Smith just before and bought ‘Shroud’ (Book 11).

The narrator is Alexander Vander, an elderly professor of literature with an international reputation of being one of the greatest scholarly writers of his time. Early in the novel he admits that his life is a lie: an identity from a friend of his youth, that friends’ bourgeois family in Antwerp that he has claimed as his own, an education fabricated. Alex fled Belgium during the second World War and established himself in California with his wife, whose recent death has brought on the new waves of guilt about his life. He is an unhappy old man, given to a violent temper, alcoholism, rudeness and self-destructive behaviour. His deception weighs heavily and is not helped by a letter from Cass Cleave, a young woman claiming she knows all his secrets. Knowing he must destroy Cass to save his past he meets he in Turin only to discover that she is slightly unhinged herself. His conversations with Cass in a Turin hotel room explore the morality of identity theft, sacrifices people in his life made, the enormity of a life of lies and the path to redemption.

This is an intelligent and detailed novel to say the very least, and it required much more attention than my train journey could possibly give it.

A few weeks later I found 'Eclipse' (Book 12) in a Greenwich bookshop for a fraction of the cost and bought it. What I had not realised is that in 'Shroud' I had inadvertently read the second of the Alex Vander novels. So, upside down I shall continue.

Alexander Cleave faces collapse of his 30 year career, both physically and psychologically. He retreats to his childhood home, now abandoned, in the hope of redeeming his life and being himself rather than all the parts he has been forced to play to the world. Simply be, rather than be for an audience, as it were.

Unfortunately, his abandoned home is full of memories, of his childhood years, his crumbling career and marriage, his estranged relationship with his daughter and his fathers suicide. Also in the house are a strange caretaker and a teenage housekeeper. Memories, inhabitants and apparitions of a woman, a child and a third figure all intertwine to make it a struggle for Alex to confront his own problems. Challenging himself to figure out exactly what has gone wrong with his life Alex comes to realise the ways in which things, time, events and people are not always what they seem and how in time they reveal their true colours.

I wish I had not read them upside down because I knew what to expect with 'Eclipse'. Banville’s prose is brilliant, almost poetic. In both his books he is a bit like a magician, wandering around, setting the scene before with one flash revealing a most amazing trick.

Banville has just yesterday been declared the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2005 for his novel 'The Sea'. This interview with Banville by a brilliant lit blog is evidence though that it takes getting nominated for a Man Booker (as Banville was in 2002) to jump from 4000 copies to 100,000. I’m thrilled Banville got this far. He is a treasure.

I do wonder though, how many brilliant writers are languishing in anonymity, waiting for a literary nomination. If you read something good please buy it, lend it, suggest it, gift it, blog about it.

Rumal(i) chaahiye

This brought tears to my eyes. I miss India so.

Thank you Deirdré Straughan!

Whats in a postcode?

Numerous discussions, different sets of people, lots of loud opinions, semi-correct information and no finality on how the postcode system that identifies each home in the UK works.

This is how it's done.

So now we know.

Smell those roses

Look at a mainline tube station between 7.30am and 10am and you will see a platform full of tense-browed commuters all of whom are packing themselves like sardines in a tin can train. Purportedly they are all rushing to get to work before their company collapses without them. If we did a one-question survey of the office-goers on that platform I can bet most of them would choose 'yes' to a slower pace of life than 'no'. I feel a wistful longing.

When I worked my hours were never too long but travel and looking after my home meant that I was a bit of a speedaholic, constantly juggling lists in my head. Now, thanks to the fast paced life of one such urbanite, I have taken the summer off work and am able to take my time looking for a new job. All summer I have remained gleefully, gainfully unemployed for the moment. Life has expanded (oh so easily) to fit in all my free time. Continuous houseguests, piles of books, coffee in the sunshine and the odd job application are just a few of the gainful (life experience, not moolah) activities that fill up my day. I have had a few months of the slower pace of life now and consider myself somewhat an authority on the vie paresseuse. With the chance to stop and smell the proverbial roses I've discovered that they smell really nice!

Having said that I'm ready to go back to work and the only change I'd make is to constantly remember that smell. I want my work life to mingle easily with a combination of summer-like laziness (want to think that thought even in dreary winter) and a flurry of social activities.

The work-life balance argument goes both ways. This is the only time in life where we have enough energy to do more, see more, read more, eat more, earn more, be more, more more more more..... By the time we have enough money to stop and smell the roses its our knees that will buckle under! Flip side, we all become slobs, rolling out of bed at noon to soak in the summer sun, doing little else but spouting how this is the time of life to smell those roses, before we're too old and mouldy. result: little or no moolah to bide our elder years by.

So whats the balance? How much should we do, how often should we stop and smell those flower, how much money is enough etc? All questions that have no correct answer or rather an unique answer for each and every individual. While you do some soul searching for your unique answer do stop and smell those roses. May they inspire you!

Nothing but a pile of sand

The brochure that the S-team picked up from somewhere promised the '4th Car free maritime Greenwich festival' at its best with 'car free events'(??) and a 'buzzing programme of free outdoor events'. Greenwich is one of my favourite London weekend destinations with its arts & crafts markets and numerous food stalls. The suggestion of more stuff happening in an already buzzing Greenwich was alluring to say the least. So come mid-day V and I legged it with much enthusiasm and the promise of being 'awash with fun performances, activities and displays'. A brochure picture (I know I know, all pictures look better than the real thing) of a sand sculpture of a horse in the middle of the road by some famous guy was another thing I was keen to see.

Never has a festival been as disappointing as today. The 'car free' was only one small road at the start of which the Dhol Academy was belting out some good stuff (ie loud stuff) to distract from the street art which was nothing like a horse but instead a pile of sand with tiny children crawling all over it. Maybe it was a horse to start with and the 'art' was to unleash 50 kids (average height 1.5 ft each) on it and see what their feet could do to enhance it. I bet some smartie festival organiser thought it would be easier (and much much cheaper) to clear the street by siphoning off the sand in the shoes, clothes and hair of all the little tykes. Let baby shampoo and tub plugholes deal with it.

The market was hardly expanded (face painting stall and unbelievably ugly overpriced art stall do not count) and was so crowded with people looking for those elsuive expansions that we got moved along by sheer sea of humanity.

Olives, feta in chillies, stuffed vine leaves, sun-dried tomato foccacia, lamb megriz and cumberland sausages tucked into our bags (all this is normal fare, nothing added by the so called festival), we decided to lunch at the Coach & Horses, which is a corner pub in the undercover market. Very popular eatery and as a result very overcrowded. We had to share our bench table with two twats who went on (simultaneously) about completely different things to each other; one about diving and the other about his upcoming birthday at Edinburgh; so much so that at one point I wondered if they were part of a conversation with god or just high on something. Here's a sampler:
spiky haired guy 1: I can't believe it's only 170quid for the diving course man
spiky haired guy 2: my birthday party is going to be in Edinburgh in 3 weeks
spiky haired guy 1: I'll be able to go on all these trips before the year is out man
spiky haired guy 2: I think Alisa and Jaime will be there. The party will rock man
(Wierd hanh!?)

V & I ate scrumptuous burgers with fat (truly fat) chips. One of the S's from the S-team had a goats cheese on veggies baked (OK, he said) and the lady-S had a mushroom risotto (horrid campbells soup combined with rice and fried mushrooms).

One book purchase later (Three Junes by Julia Glass) we were home sweet home and a relaxed evening has led me here, to the end of another weekend. All with the disappointing taste of a festival gone awry. Greenwich I love, it's festival I didn't.

The Coach & Horses: 13 Greenwich Market, Greenwich, London, SE10 9HZ; Tel: 020 8293 0880

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional!

V's birthday today. I bought him a baby chocolate mousse (in lieu of a forthcoming cake) but carried it around all day and it was quite squashed and resembled chocolate mashed potatoes(if there is such a thing!) by midnight! Proper cake today and I promise you a pic....

So my V, remember that a birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip!

A fishy start

4am alarm screeches from my mobile. Why did I choose that utterly inane and joyous tune on my sony ericsson - because there aren't any other less zingy ones - more importantly why did I set it for a Saturday morning? Well for almost 3 years now we have lived within a fairly close proximity to Billingsgate Market. (yes that's the one in the lyrics of Mary Poppins song, Well done sister suffragettes: From kensington to billingsgate
one hears the restless cry from every corner of the land womankind arise!)
The 5am to 8am opening hours of Friday and Saturday (for retail customers in addition to the wholesale purchasers who are allowed every am) was a real stumbling block. Friday because it was always a workday and it was a rush to just get to work and Saturday, well just because it's the weekend and it defies all commonsense to wake up before the birds when you don't have to. So Billingsgate has been so close and yet so far.

Our houseguests (whom I am going to moniker the S-Team) are enthusiastic fish-eaters and were keen to check it out. So Saturday 4am alarm, a cup of tea and rubber slipper lopping along later and we were there. It was 5.05 as we entered the gates to find a stream of people coming out. Even 5 minutes after it opened we managed to be late. The market is a well-lit, bustling-at-the-seams affair. Wholesale means that they usually don't sell you less than one zillion cases (yes, I am into extremes at the moment)of the same fish; retail (as defined by the King of Billingsgate) apparently means atleast one box. One of the S-Team managed to secure two huge King Sea Bass and some smoked salmon (that was our Saturday night meal; he stuffed them with garlic, red chillies, parsley and tumeric before baking it. The salmon was added to blanched green beans as an accompaniment and a potato&scallion salad completed the meal; we polished off the meal enthusiastically before I remembered that I should have taken a picture of it!? You'll have to imagine it and take my word for it's sumptuousness)

I bought a box of cod fillets (I'm picky about skin, bones etc; I know I know whats a fish without, but hey that's just me), 24 of them to be precise, from the stall of Lobo Fisheries. Mr Lobo, if indeed that was he, assured me and the S-Team that all his fish including two incredible looking pomfret had come all the way from India (woohoo!).

Home, cod seperated, date marked and put into the freezer. Smelly box thrown out of the house, into the main bins and it was only 7.30am. Sleep long gone I set about cleaning my kitchen; scrubbed till it shone. Could not get back to sleep as hard as I tried, so read till V woke up and went for brekka to our local Saturday haunt cafe. A carefree Saturday sparkled and shone ahead of us.....relaxed and replete with the promise of a brilliant meal.

If today were a fish I'd throw it back.

Billingsgate Market: Trafalgar Way, London E14 5ST; Tel 020 7987 1118

Day out, pictures in

Trudged to Ikea today (the one that's in Neasden) and got away fairly lightly. Is it that it's not as enamouring as before or just that I have no more place to keep a 5 piece set of bamboo baskets, 3 trillion tea lights and 1500 hundred types of paper napkins????

I think its the space because I thoroughly enjoyed myself, just looking at the set-up rooms had me wanting to move permanently to a showroom. Perhaps for the first time ever I listened to the little voice whispering into my ear that keeps saying "it's only things you want not what you need!". Oops sorry that's not my voice or my conscience, it's the voice of my cuz 40in2006 all the way from the US of A!! How thrilled V will be that I have not spent my meagre fortune on an oversized futon, sets of filing racks, 200 glasses and 13 spotlights (I was soooo tempted, just the packaging and economical price bowl me over and make me into an Ikea-hungry maniac)

I have to go now. My cousin A has sent me 4 gazillion photographs to trawl through - all of his wedding in Patna, reception in Madras and my aunt's birthday. All my cousins and spouses and aunts and uncles and nieces and parents and brother and grandfather and family friends from before I was a tinytot.......when will we be together again I wonder.....

It's time to feel nostalgic and homesick all in one......my eyes are geared for the feast of colour and laughter and my heart is geared for the feast of memories.

Music and laughter

It's a combination of a terrible cold and sheer laziness that kept me away from posting till just now. An endlessly runny nose is not a great farewell to a great city, but nonethelss it was the gift that sunny Prague left me with. A days worth of fever when I came back and then just the general run down feeling till about 2 days ago.

A day after we returned we welcomed a couple into our home, friends who have just moved to London from Frankfurt, and so they are staying with us while they househunt. It's like deja vu - remember we had globe-trotting pals stay in Feb-March - the lovely long dinners and general excitement of having more friends in London combine to give a heady feel to things.

Saturday night we went to the Jazz Cafe in Camden (on the advice of another friend) to help celebrate the 20th year anniversary of the release of Snowboy's first album. Now for those of you not familiar with the Afro-cuban Jazz scene, it is quite apparently Snowboy's forte. Yumptuous dinner at Raavi Kebab in Drummond Street before the show set the scene and lined our stomachs for the drinks to come. Jam packed house at the Jazz Cafe and the music was brilliant with everybody swaying/ shuffling to the music. Supported by the Latin Section and with a whole host of guest stars from the Jazz and R&B world, the stage/ music kept our attentions till fairly late on.

The next interesting thing we did was go for the Canary Wharf Comedy club on Tuesday the 6th. This Comdey Club convenes about once a month in the rather grand Cabot Hall in Canary Wharf and each time a whole host of stand-up comics turn up to regale the crowd. At £7.50 a person the 2.5 hours of laughs was well worth the time and effort.
Compered by a rather funny guy himself, John Moloney (endless gags, mainly picking on some poor guy from New York named Alex), the line-up included the wonderful Simon Evans (dry wit), Terry Alderton (brilliant mime) and one not-so-wonderful substitute for Papa CJ (whose name in itself had me curious enough) whose name I have conveniently forgotten! This was a brilliant evening and V & I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and are quite keen to become regulars at this monthly event.

Music and laughter has been my medicine....

Raavi Kebab: 125 Drummond Street, London NW1 2LH. Tel: 020 7388 1780

Letting our pictures do the talking

The mighty Powder Tower - once used to store gunpowder


Staromestska Square - the Old Square, huge and its periphery made up of unimaginably beautiful buildings. Completely swamped by the endless tourists .


The Strahov Monastry (near the Pohorelec Tram stop) atop the hills near the Prague Castle; the ringing bells in our memories make this our most magical picture.


Picture postcard from the Strahov Monastry - that's the famous Vlatava flowing under the Charles Bridge.


The magnificant Rudolfinum - where we spent a wonderful evening listening to the Bohemia Saxophone Quartet - music to our ears!


Tyn Church - partially hidden by some newer buildings, this church nonetheless dominates the Staromestska Square skyline. And what a clear blue sky we got....


Looking down the stair well of our very very grand hotel !!! Art Deco at it's very best.

Ahoj!

That's hello in Czech! Yes, V & I are off for a 4 day adventure to the beautiful capital of the Czech Republic, Prague.

We are at the Club Lounge at Heathrow Terminal 1, V breakfasting on a croissant while I sip orange juice and use the free internet to post this.

Will post from sunny climes if I can or else be back with pictures and holiday tales in 4 days.

Meanwhile, Nashledanou (goodbye, if you had not guessed) and have a good weekend.

Experiments with the truth

It's the absolute truth. I have struggled with my weight since my teens. Always been overweight, a fatty, rolypoly, cuddly, 'healthy'. Tried 548 diets between ages 14 and 19. Gave up at age 20. Decided that it was not to be. The aim shifted from thin to healthy instead. Ok, to a thinnie that sounds like a crock, an excuse from the fattie next door. But to this rolypoly it's a realistic goal.

Anyway, long story short, I'm a healthy fatty (or so I like to believe). I can cycle 45 minutes and cover 13 kms in that time without collapsing in a heap. London has taught me to walk (what seem like) endless stretches and my stamina has gone from strength to strength. I eat/drink a good balance of fresh fruit and veg, pulses and lentils, meat and soya, milk and juices. I swim 30 laps of a fairly large pool once a week. Blah blah blah. I'm still no thinner today than when I began this regimen. I'm still a fatty. Albeit a healthier one.

So what's this post about, really. I got handed a flier boasting a 5 day membership to a fairly fancy gym in my area with no strings (like a photocopy of my credit card) attached. Decided to take the chance and move a step up from standstill cycling in front of our TV each evening (or 3 evenings a week, realistically). The decision was threefold:
a. to see if this place was worth it's money and it IS ridiculously expensive
b. to see if I could exercise 5 days in a row, without losing steam, enthusiasm or a body part (trust me, in some of these complicated treadmill/climb/cycle machine morphs it's not hard to imagine)
c. to see if I could fit planned exercise (classes) into my daily regimen of volunteering, job and house hunting

So starting this past Monday I became the proud owner of a 5 day gym pass. Monday (Day 1) I got myself into a 1 hr Pilates class and then swam 30 laps of the pool. Tuesday (Day 2) I just swam 30 laps and gave up. Today (Day 3, Wednesday) I treadmilled at a fair incline for 40 minutes (it took me 20 minutes before that just to figure out how to get the damn machine to work), attended 'express' Pilates (30 minutes) and did beginners yoga (1 hr). The beginners yoga was anything but. The class immediately launched itself into shoulderstands while I huffed and puffed my way into the most basic poses. Luckily there was one other 'newbie', so we looked equally foolish together. I feel healthy because I'm keeping up with most things, not making a complete idiot of myself in a gym of green beans. The yoga class was just unfair...

So far so good, in terms of value for money (although it has been fairly inconvenient to lug myself to the classes during office lunch hours, especially since I'm not working) and available facilities. With two days to go (and I intend to do a whole host of classes and use the machines) I know for certain that this is not for me. My large shadow needs a slower and cheaper alternate, something less bruising to my ego. My ego can't handle the number of thinnies in the gym. Positively anorexic women who have come to be that way from exessive exercise (or have been planted there by the Thin Peeps Association to make me look bad) . Or maybe it's not they who are anorexic but merely thin by comparison (what all I see through my fat eyes!) to us fatty's.

But hey, what can I say, the thin people need us fatty's, to have something to compare their thinness against. We are the benchmark of what not to be. The holy grail of figures is in the opposite direction. I am the potato amongst the green beans as it were.

The experiment: A play with body image among the legions of thinnies
The absolute truth: I will never be thin. I will always aim to be healthy.

A 'Somer' movie

What does any open air event crave beside an enthusiastic crowd? Good weather would be my guess. As luck would have it we woke on Friday to downpours unexpected. The plan was to join friends for an evening on the courtyard tiles enjoying 'Flash Gordon' at Somerset House. Film Four & Somerset House organised 5 days of films under the stars and as luck would have it we chose Friday, the only rainy day.

At mid-day swimming to the venue and being completely soaked was not ruled out. Our pal was curtly informed by Somerset House that as no inclement weather was forcast teh show would indeed go on and there was no way to return our tickets. By 4pm the rain was down to a drizzle and by 8pm we congregated at Thai Square just outside Somerset House. The food was fine if a bit sour, solely due to the attitude of the terrible waitresses. Hot dinner in tums, £12.50 a pop tickets in hand, square plastic coated blankets (at £10 each - refundable on return) spread on the courtyard cobbles among 500 Flash fans and we were set.

I haven't ever seen the classic Flash Gordon movie but I do remember reading the comics as a kid. It was entertaining to say the least - and had 500 fans cheering on Brian Blessed (who introduced the screening) and Emperor Ming, and singing 'FLASSHHH' at the top of their voices while glugging down beer. I found this review online and it says it all better than I possibly could:

"There are films out there that can be described as a guilty pleasure - you know they're quite bad, but somewhere deep down in your heart you can't bring yourself to admit it. Flash Gordon is, in my opinion, the guiltiest pleasure of them all. Cardboard characters, lunatic script, embarrassing dialogue, trashy performances (apart from Max Von Sydow), and hilarious special effects... yet the one thing that comes out in the film's favour is that, despite its seemingly countless faults, it is still irresistibly entertaining.

American football legend Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) and sexy babe Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) are aboard a private flight when a weird red-storm forces them to perform an emergency landing. They crash into the back garden of wacky ex-NASA scientist Hans Zarkov (Topol), an eccentric madman who believes the world is under attack from alien forces and who has built his own spaceship to do battle with the enemy. Astonishingly, it turns out that Zarkov was right - and pretty soon, Flash, Dale and Zarkov find themselves on the planet Mongo, battling against its tyrannical emperor Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow), with a little help from Ming's treacherous daughter (Ornella Muti), her lover Barin (Timothy Dalton), and the winged warrior Vultan (Brian Blessed).

Flash Gordon is an absolutely insane film. The set design is remarkable, as is the costume design, and a pounding rock soundtrack is provided by the group Queen. Performance-wise, everyone seems to be camping it up like an end-of-term pantomime, though Von Sydow somehow seems to give his villain a deliciously sinister edge. Some of the dialogue is so awful that it becomes eminently quotable by virtue of its badness (a few samples: "This Ming is a psycho!"; "That must be some planet you come from!"; and - my favourite - "Freeze! You bloody bastards!") Flash Gordon should be a total disaster - an awful shambles of a film with no redeeming qualities. It isn't. Perhaps we'll never know how or why it works, but it does. So let the dissection of Flash Gordon the movie end here - analyze it no more, just enjoy it!"

The hard coble courtyard was well worth it, both for the movie and the stunning buildings that surround it.

Pouring out into the night at 11.15 we crossed the road, via the bust of Jawaharlal Nehru in the courtyard of the Indian Embassy (that all the firangs think is the Mahaatma!) and into the impressive bar of One Aldwych. One is a swank bar with a sophisticated mood and a matching bar list. They have some amazing high back chairs that I want in my own house and seriously large scultpures to match the height of the room that I don't. Huge floral decorations that need ladders to be set up and ambient lighting made it the perfect nightcap point.

This was my first brush with Somerset House which I am assured is a wonderful place to enjoy fountains and coffee in the courtyard during the summer and ice skate in the winter. I vow to return.

One Aldwych: London WC2B 4RH. Tel: 020 7300 1000

Spam hate

As you will see in the comments of the previous post we now have virulent spamming in the blogosphere as well. My friend shoefiend alerted me to this with her wonderful post on spas getting spammed with junk about hair oil.

Any ideas on how to get rid of these guys or do I just delete their comments and pray they stop on their own???

The India diaries VI - Monopoly nights

As a gift for V's middle brother R and his wife T, this time round we bought (what we thought was a novel idea) a Classic Monopoly set. Little did we realise how welcome a gift it would be and how much we would use it in 4 short nights! Every night after dinner, V & me, both his brothers and their significant others would settle down to a few rounds of Monopoly. This is what the UK version (which comes ina wonderful wooden box) looks like: all places now so familiar to us.

What we never bargained for is that with 6 people playing it was always a case of the property getting bought up quickly and spread out in such a way that nobody ever owned a whole suite of the same colours. So with colours/ properties divided up the strategy moved to partnerships and amidst the giggles and loyalty-wrangling houses and hotels sprouted up on around the board. Then the inevitable would happen. The game would go nowhere and the person who perceived he/she was losing would declare 'new game, new game' and mix up all the money, forcing us to begin afresh. It's more fun this way, no outcome just the pleasure of play.

As we were taught, it's not winning, it's playing that counts.....i that true!!!???

Anyway, here's a whole new take on Monopoly I stumbled upon.

Swatantrata Diwas ki shubh kamnaye...

... best wishes on Independence day

"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we will redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance .... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again."
- Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (Speech on Indian Independence Day, 1947)

Wherever on the planet you are, be proud to be Indian (if indeed you are)!

Swatantrata: independence

Diwas: day

Shubh: auspicious

Kamnaye: wishes