Home away from Home

Bright and early, I boarded the bus and headed out to meet Kak Teh at Malaysia Hall. There was no water to be seen anywhere along my route and I was waiting in front of the Bayswater tube stop - where the familiar figure of Kak Teh came up the street to meet me, and gave me a big hug. We started talking and did not stop until lunch time!

I knew it would be warm and wonderful to meet her, but it was underlined to me that she embodies all that is true and warm of the Malaysian personality - and to many of the community here, she is the heart and home away from home. Meeting her brought me in touch with a whole part of Malaysia inside of me I had not visited for a long time, and it was a gentle homecoming.

I think the cafe at Malaysia Hall is worth a visit. I will confess I was so intent on the conversation, I barely tasted my food! There is no picture of the nasi lemak as I had demolished it before I thought of taking a picture - aiyah, not a food bloggerlah! In the picture you can see the curry puff and a bit of the roti canai, a pot of my Frankincense potion, YM's book (for Kak Teh) and some Terengganu rendang and Asam kepala ikan that Kak Teh kindly brought for me.

Of course I would have carried on till dinner if I could, but I had an appointment with the Tower of London. Ahh, I drifted away back into the bowels of the city, the happy hum of friendly words in my head.

Wot I et: for lunch or comfort food in pouring rain

oo-er, is that a sausage or are you just pleased to see me?

Dodging the flood

Woke up today with more rain slanting across the windowpanes. The children are home at the start of their summer holidays - with its wet weather promise of indoor pursuits! We should be like true brits and don our wet weather gear and wellies and go tramping round the mud, at least to stop the cabin fever from mounting.

However, being a bad blogger mum - (Is that an oxymoron for the holidays? Blogging means "ignoring your children".) I have agreed that if they allow me some time to blog - I will allow them some time on their Nintendo DS. Which I guess will balance out our electronic burnout, I won't spend hours on this because I shall be aware that my little darlings are simultaneously frying their brains.

I was very lucky on Friday going up to London - I left on the 9.13am train and the drizzle was coming down steadily. By the time I arrived at Victoria Station, and got on the first train to my destination there was an enormous clap of thunder and the word "cloudburst" springs to mind. The train was cancelled. The roof of the station gave up the ghost and immediately sprang innumerable leaks as large as rubbertree trunks. It was amusing to see the waterfalls pouring onto the cash and ticket machines, and all the people taking pictures. I had to save the battery and find a train. Bagel, chocolate and flower vendors looked on in amazement at the encroaching flood. Large rivers of water began to snake across the white, slippery stone floors as I dodged huge drips and deluge from platform to platform trying to catch a train out. On my third try I was successful, and chugged away from the beleagured station into clearer skies.

Photo by Warwick Bambrook

My cousin YM from Fusionview picked me up and we had a huge gossip about blogworld, probably boring anyone else within earshot. Angie made us yummy smoked mackerel pasta with rocket, watercress and baby spinach (an added touch she said, owing to my post on tortellini - the blogworld is all about us!). The sun was hot and we decided to walk off lunch at the park, passing gardens bursting with roses and lavender. Two-thirds of our group being Malaysian, we stopped off for coffee and cake.

So while the nation looked like this:

photo by Peter Stewart

I was wandering around in weather like this:


Mr G phoned and said all the trains between London and home had been cancelled. Nobody had made it east since mid-morning and anyone headed west were stopped at Oxford and then turned back, but finally made it home by midnite after 7 hours. We were all shocked at the flood news, and our thoughts go out to those who are still struggling in the continuing rain. Thanks to YM for a lovely visit and more after the lunch break.

Off to the Tower with you!

Ooh crown jewels and ravens and the echo of the executioner's axe. Or I could just be fighting my way through hordes of tourists. Quite excited really, never seen a Beefeater close up before! I say!
This photo is from the Royal Palaces website.

I'm off to London to see the queen, err... I mean YM and Kak Teh. We're gonna have a grreat time!

Have a really really good weekend folks.

Wedding 15!

Happy 15th Wedding anniversary to Mr G and me! Oops we forgot till now - 5 minutes to midnight of tomorrow. What happens to old married couples?? Life, I guess. Still we ate dinner together, at least! Mr G's greek lamb casserole with tomatoes, cumin and fresh coriander. Blinis with sour cream and roe, sprinkled with chives from my garden. Hummus and pita and cracked chilli olives, a nice salad. Very companionable.

Tortellini Malaysian Style - wot I et for lunch

Mr G has taken to buying enormous packs of tortellini, which the children prefer in a soup - tortellini en brodo, I believe it is called. But there is only so much tortellini you can have in a week! And who is left to correct the food balance in the house? So for my lunch, I really really fancied pan mee, not that this is a craving from my childhood - we never seemed to have it in our house or when we went out! I figured the tortellini would do, as the fresh pasta is egg noodle dough, so I boiled it up with Marigold brand vegan low salt soup powder (!! don't ask!! Delia uses the regular kind, same brand.) and added two handfuls of Waitrose rocket, watercress and baby spinach salad from a bag, some mini corn and a big spoonful of chiu chow chilli oil. Happy!

And what else makes me happy? A bowl of lovely ripe summer cherries!

Sunny Intervals - Jacob's Ladder, Bath

This is only the middle bit of the climb up the hill. More steps before and more steps after. I don't always walk it, I confess. But I try to do it more than once a week, hopefully at least three or four times! I caught it in a quiet, summer moment between rain and schoolboys sliding down the bannisters. Apparently they have been doing that for decades from the boy's school at the top - sturdy steel worn smooth by countless...er...slides. There is always birdsong, you'll be able to see the year's progression from these steps: first Spring, now Summer. When the leaves begin to fall, I will chart them to the bareness of winter.

The Feeling Wet

You can see the rain on the back of these people's necks! Woo Hoo, it was fun though jumping up and down in the rain, the warm summery downpour, bass reverberating through your sternum.

(Bit busy with the daily slog at the moment, I'm behind in blogging!)

Take it easy

Mr G came home with new mugs for both of us. Mugs have favoured status in the english household as the ceremonial vessels for the traditional cuppa.

Cuppa means comfort, cuppa means love ya, cuppa means sorry, cuppa means friendship. I'm sure all those things and more. And Mr G being the proper englishman he is, wields the cuppa in all its full meaningful glory.

Mr G chose for me a serene and feminine mug called Momiji Peaches. When you finish drinking your nice cuppa tea, there's a little message revealed through the milk and sugar (just one, please).

It says, "take it easy! life is peaches."

How sweet is that? Maybe I can actually be a sweet and feminine wifey...hmm...no, actually it won't work. Too bad. Don't get me wrong, Mr G did not choose wrongly because he does know my exact taste for beautiful Japanese design, and this is just right. Little did he know, that in the underbed drawer full of presents for little girls, there are already two momiji dolls which I couldn't resist buying for my two. You can see the kind of thing I mean at this shop. What kind of momiji would you like? Or which momiji would you get me? *wink*

Back To School - to Cheddar Gorge

In the rolling Somerset Hills lies Cheddar Gorge, home of cheese. Vertical limestone cliffs rose up around us and then we were there, at the rather cheesy village of cheddar, full of gift shops and twee tea houses. Apparently it is true that cheddar cheese was first made here, and during the tour of Gough's cave, we saw some wheels of cheddar cheese maturing, and a cheesy aroma (mixed with bat) floated through the air...dubious mmm? We, meaning 3 teachers, 3 parents and 60 kids, were on an educational school trip for the school day. Whilst I, would have been happy at a cheese tasting - it was not to be. My first responsibility was to ward the children's safety through the bowels of the Gorge...ah but I learned a decent amount!

The cave we visited was discovered in 1890 by Mr Richard Gough who retired to Cheddar in 1881 - he was a sea captain, and thus an adventurous soul. A beardy Victorian gentleman, he had 7 children. Together with his 5 sons, he discovered and cleared the mud and boulders away, year after patient year, to reveal the caverns before us.

The cave walls were chill and smooth to the touch, and everywhere was dripping water. Formed by the ice-melt of million year old glaciers it was the old riverbed, and an underground river still ran beneath us. There were some beautiful formations in the cave - my phone camera cannot do justice to them - though not bad for phone-cam!

A calcite "waterfall" - an airpocket in the earth caused the water to form in pools, and as the water evaporated and the level went down, formed each level of the "falls".
My favourite formation - King Soloman's Temple (yes, Mr Gough was a grand old Victorian wasn't he!) - I was really impressed! All this knowledge made up for the ear-splitting volume of the trip, despite behaving well. Needed a good lie-down in silence after, and probably some lavender water in the victorian theme!

Work in Progress

You know how you have work that isn't quite right, and you sit on it, take it out and revise it, and it still isn't quite right? Well I have this one I am not willing to give up on, but am stuck on where to go next. Can anyone give me feedback on which bits they 'get' and which bits are ?huh? ect, you know, just reader's impressions, doesn't have to be full analysis! Maybe it will light a fire under this work and get me to finalise it. I'll post it here, I promise not to get upset by anything anyone says...and I thought since I have explained chamomiles below, it may be less obscure than I think...

Chamomile Mother
for L and B

You tasted them equally–
Mother’s milk, chamomile tea,
One sweet, one bitter healer,
Soothing the night’s darkness–
Strict in the day’s relentless light.

Flower water and fragrance,
Bathed you and laved you,
Matricaria Chamomilla
Rubbed it on the hard knocks of
budding independence,
Remedy for your tears.

Bitterness to cool your blood,
Purify that daisy chain of dreams,
Your mother will tell you all the truth if you ask.
It won’t be pink through her chamomile glasses.

Love doesn’t come into it.
Love’s like the planet Mars to this plain tale.
An evening star over it all,
A daily wonder to be explored.
Curious companion for life.

Monster Slug eats Bellflowers

Actually, this was a small slug.


Raindrops on ladies mantle...

The back garden will be evolving slowly and organically. :)

Back garden before...

There's a large pictsy along the garden path. Will post after work pictures if the slugs don't eat everything aargh!

Started to dig (How many HSS does it take to build a Garden?)

*update: It is done now. Top view of garden above and from my front door view of the new grass and herb bed! Two weeks before we can actually walk on the grass!


Front garden being cleared...

Summer is here, make room!

Nigella sativa and Nigella (photo by Francesca York) http://www.nigella.com - this photo is for Kenny. Learn more about the herb here.

These are not quite the right colours but I like them, some strange technical fairyland has touched the edge of my photo! Surreal.

My garden is being dug up and replanted to make an aromatic herb garden. I am excited. Will update you on progress.

I'd like some blue roses, wouldn't you?

The Soothing Chamomiles

Matricaria recutita © 2000 Joseph Dougherty/ecology.org.

There are two kinds of chamomile commonly used in aromatic treatment. German chamomile, matricaria recutita pictured above - and Roman Chamomile, anthemis nobilis. The flowers look almost identical, but you can tell the oils apart as they are different. As you can see, they belong to the Daisy family Asteraceae, whose bright-faced flowers like bellis perennis dot English lawns and are ruthlessly eradicated by lawn purists; or dandelions, which are even tougher to get rid of.

Both Chamomiles are cooling and soothing. They calm and induce sleep. They help with pain in the nerves and muscles. They are supportive to the liver, encouraging its detoxification function and regulating the Qi. Both relax the diaphragm and the abdomen, helping with shallow, anxious breaths and nervous cramps. Both ease the frustration held in the solar plexus when we have fixed expectations which are difficult for the unpredictable world to fulfill.

German Chamomile is a thick blue colour, pungent and viscous. It is rich in Azulene, a monoterpene chemical which only turns blue in the distillation process and bisabolol, an anti-inflammatory agent. Its smell is sweet and earthy with a bitter tone. I reach for German Chamomile in creams and gels to heal the skin: to cool red eruptive rashes, or inflamed edges of wounds and grazes (not on the open wound itself, it would sting!). It has both sedated my toothache - and my anxiety in the dentist chair from having two wisdom teeth out this year - and aided in swift healing after. German Chamomile helped to cool the inflammation of the lining of my lung after my bad bout with the viral flu. It eased the pain of the torn muscles in my ribs from the coughing!

Roman Chamomile is lighter, more appley, still with a bittersweet bite. I use this with children, to sooth their nights, calm their tummies, wash their stings, stop the itching for chicken pox, in their ears for ear infections. As for the rest of us, massage into tense muscles, apply to the abdomen for pms and period pains, stress and insomnia. Lovely in the bath after prolonged exposure to relatives during the holiday season.

The chamomiles blend well with lavender and geranium, also jasmine and rose. For a first aid blend, mix with helichrysum (for bruises) and ravensara (anti-infectious).

These are two oils I always carry with me in my tool box.

First strawberries of summer

I always try to catch that first elusive taste of an English strawberry. It's so subtle, vanishing as it melts in your mouth. These tiny little berries pack a small explosion of it - and you have another and another...until the whole punnet is gone. Even better go out to the all-you-can-pick place on the old Roman Road and get them fresh off the plant in the benign English sun or drenched from the quiet rain.

Kenny Reads, Leaves

Sufian Abas took a very serious portrait of Kenny. He looks like he has a flame of enlightenment over his head like a bodhisattva. Why did I post this pic? It is good to have different viewpoints of everyone, which is why Sufian's photos are so extremely good. Kenny was describing the "I" in his book in the morning, just waking up:

"I see my face as black and white and see no shades of grey." - in Broken Mornings

So since I missed the last Readings, Kenny promised me he would get out Broken Mornings and give me my own private reading when I visited. Lucky me, I thought, but expected him to be kidding. But no, the man remembered his promise. He delivered unto me my own personal read of "Leaves" over the cake I might have mentioned once or twice. Kenny is very good at reading, no wonder ladies get rapt. The paparazzi were too busy listening, we didn't get any photos. It wasn't that kind of evening anyway. He read "Smell" which Spiffy chose and "Settling In" which Lyrical Lemongrass requested. So we all got one. It was fair and square. Kenny said that he felt he had moved on from these stories but liked them again now he heard them aloud. So all was good.

We even got a drawing demonstration on a napkin - hey, he can draw too - look forward to seeing some illustrations when Dark City 2 comes out. We all reluctantly stood up to leave and we dropped Spiffy off at the train and Kenny at his new place, clutching a Just Heavenly cake, I wonder if he ate it or just fell asleep on the spot!

Lyrical Lemongrass and I went off to find the perfect sashimi...we did very well. She blogs about Umai-ya. Mmm, what a lovely crowning evening. Thank you for looking after me so well. I will take this day and store it in my jewel box.

Let Me Eat Cake II

This orange ginger cake cordially eaten by Lyrical Lemongrass, Kenny, Spiffy and me.

Let me tell you why eating cake is like meeting bloggers in KL.

You see a cake and you want it. You debate on its creamy contours. You speculate on its inner integrity. You imagine its aromatic entree. You can see other's choices of cake and it says something about them. Cake is a luxury of experience. You don't have it normally after every meal. Cakes are intense concoctions of myriad ingredients alchemically transformed into a whole. They are manifestations of someone's vision. Maybe we all have tired, cynical parts of ourselves which whisper, "Cake cannot be as good as it looks." Pleads with us not to get tummyache or be someplace where someone will hurt you, or laugh, or stare.

So what is it like to fall out of the sky with perfect clarity? To hurtle past the towering cumulus canyons and set foot on the earth of your past?

Maybe you could see my hands shaking as I read to you.

Afterwards, the rush, the acceptance, the friendliness and generosity of spirit. Thank you for hearing me read. Thank you for saying a few things to me afterwards. It really meant a lot.

Tucked in my chair at Marmalade - light and open to the sun - Kenny and Spiffy before me and Lyrical Lemongrass at my side, where she had been all day; well, we ate cake. I finally and truly felt at home. Eating cake that evening was the perfect experience. A coming together. An alchemy. We picked up the threads of our blogs and we smoothly turned them into real and very truthful people. We laughed and told each other lots of truthful things and all it made was a good difference. Kenny was burning bright with adrenalin, tired from his move and working so much, he still made some time to come out. Spiffy had a sore throat and felt ill with flu and I said have honey, have honey and we all worried about her getting home to rest. Lyrical Lemongrass had ferried me everywhere, gone to blogger's breakfasts and lunches with openminded aplomb, for she is a formidable writer and reader too. Here I was among them, drunk on cake and companionship.

You know what? There was more.

...and have it too.

I had to look it up on wiki: about the cake phrase! Too late tonight to keep going. Write more later on getting my promised personal reading I had after. *wink*