Festival of colours

We’ve all seen that advert by Sony where the couple get involved in a paint throwing festival in India, or probably a spread in National Geographic about the Hindu celebration or you may even have a friend who headed east to find themselves and got caught up in the mix.

For me I always thought it looked so much fun but a trip to India was not an immediate priority having just moved countries and dealt with all that. I plan on leaving those far off destinations until I am a little more of a seasoned traveler, I wouldn’t want to go all that way and miss something!

Luckily for me a US company hosts their very own Holi festivals all over the country, they have yoga tents, DJs, Hare Krishna chantings and amazing food to fill your time between the hourly paint throwing. The festival is a family friendly event, they have a strict no drugs, no drink, no smoking, policy which I loved! And unlike most festivals, despite growing in popularity, these guys haven’t upped their prices, they haven’t used their name to attract bigger names or changed their core values. It’s a fun, family day out, reasonably priced (all in it cost us $13 a head) with a great atmosphere.

The festival ran 11am-5pm, we arrived at noon and bought our paint packets and the throwing began.
They have an hourly mass throwing where everyone counts down and throws at everyone and the sky, although to be honest I preferred to watch this from afar more than be in the thick of it. I mean I’ve dealt with mosh pits since the tender age of 13 so the crowd didn’t scare me – this one was far nicer than a bunch of hardcore kids, it was just so pretty to see the puffs of neon paint fly up into the bright blue sky.

We three paint on each other, on strangers passing by, and were attacked by the groups of children running wild and free. But no one did it aggressively. I felt like a hippy in the 60s, all peach and love, baby!

We left the festival after about two hours. Rus, his sister Kellie and I are all whiter than the driven snow and being out in the sun is a dangerous hobby of ours. But we’d seen all the clothing tents, we’d eaten some fabulous vegan food, we’d chatted to the holistic therapists and got well and truly covered head to toe in a rainbow of colours.

The paint is a powder paint, on the website it suggests shaking your clothing free of as much paint powder as possible prior to washing to avoid staining which is what it does when wet. The only problem is you can’t help but sweat in the heat of the day and purple armpits at the gym certainly receives attention!  

And can we all just take a moment to appreciate my husbands beard…

 

Queen’s Bakery – A review

One of the main things I miss about the UK is the food – the price, the ingredients, the availability, the quality, the taste. Just everything. So every time I see an attempt at British style food, be it fish and chips offered on the menu, a cadbury chocolate bar, an Irish themed pub (I know Southern Ireland isn’t politically British anymore but geographically it’s the same land, the same food grown, the same love for potatoes).

Some experiences have been amazing, we visited Dublin4 and had the most amazing meal there, some have been pleasantly surprising, I was not expecting Red Robin to provide such perfect fish n chips and some are down right disappointing.

I had one such experience at Queen’s Bakery this weekend.

I saw a ‘groupon’ for high tea for two at the Queens Bakery and got really excited. I looked on their website to see what sort of place it was, trendy and stylish offering delicious sounding (and looking) cakes and treats. I’ll be honest, I didn’t research too thoroughly. They’re taking the Queen’s name, that cannot be done in vain, so it must be bloody brilliant, it was a $20 offer and how hard can tea and sandwiches be?!

Well, if you’re a Southern Californian resident apparently it’s really hard. I blame it on the lack of decent bread, y’all don’t understand how good a simple sandwich can really be!

We walked in and I was immediately disappointed. What looked online like luxurious yet quirky decor was cheap and poorly finished, Queen Elizaebeth I’s portraits were wonkily framed cheap Ikea frames, the back wall was covered in a bad silver wallpaper job, the pink paint was tired and badly cut in and there were more tables than they really had room for.

But that’s just decor, their tea list was quite impressive.
I chose Earl Grey, Rus opted for a strawberry green tea. Our tea arrived first – with no milk, no sugar, no lemon, no honey. No NOTHING. Please do not limit my options and assume how I should drink my tea. That is not your job.
The milk, sugar and honey were all brought for us, upon request, along with two scones. Two blueberry scones served with strawberry jam and cream, no butter, and the cream was squirted out of a can.
Yes, squirty cream on a scone.
I understand clotted cream cannot be purchased here, but it is not hard to whip some double cream. It is just as simple to add some vanilla and make yourself some Chantilly cream.
The scones were okay, but small and flat, very hard on the outside with just a little bit of soft fluffy doughy goodness on the inside.
In fact they weren’t really scones at all, rather half-set shortbread biscuits lavishly sprinkled with crystallised sugar.

Next came the sandwich course, because everyone starts with a sweet prior to the sandwich. We had not been given a choice of sandwich, we were not asked a bread preference nor for any dietary requirements. We were just given eight sandwiches with four different fillings.
First we had tuna fish, quite a common sandwich filling the world over. For some reason the kind people at Queen’s Bakery had opted for forgo the ever popular mayonnaise that usually accompanies it and instead chopped up chillies to for the odd spicey bite. Each served on a quarter of a brown, slightly stale, bap.
Next was pureéd spinach with something the waitress couldn’t pronounce or didn’t want us knowing about so muttered. On white bread, crusts cut off of course because this is a sophisticated affair despite what the cheap pink walls say.
Thirdly we had cream cheese and cucumber. Again on white, no crust, bread. This was actually their one winning sandwich if only they had their ratio right! The cream cheese was spread thick, while the cucumber was thinly sliced so much so that it was more an essence of cucumber than a hearty crunch of the good stuff. Cream cheese is perhaps the only cheese this country does well. I’m not sure if Queens Bakery just buy an awful off-brand of if all cream cheese tastes so awful when served at room temperature. Living in a country where good hard cheese is so readily available and not obscenely priced I am not yet a connoisseur of cream cheese.
The last sandwich on our platter was a nutella sandwich, served on brown crustless bread, with some sort of nut-shaving to give the nutella extra crunch. Because there’s nothing worse than smooth nutella…? I love nutella, I plan on buying some for Pancake day this evening. But there is a time and a place for all things, and high tea is neither for nutella. But I’ll admit it was the only sandwich I could stomach on the entire plate.

Dear Queens Bakery, please invest in some ham, egg, mature cheddar, hell even jam for your sandwiches!!

Finally we made it to the dessert course. Even though we had technically started with it with our scones, we got some cakes to end on too. We had two bite sized brownies, two bite sized cupcakes and two cookie baskets filled with coffee buttermargarine-cream frosting filling. Also bite sized.
The cakes were okay. They were grey, they were mid ground, they were miles from the delicious pastries and cakes I can buy for less than £1 at my local bakery back home. After the awful sandwich course I was mainly just happy that they had made standard cakes and not decided to pureé anything.

We were just wondering about tip-protocol when something awful happened, nay two awful things happened.
Normally Rus leaves tipping to me. In the UK we do not tip all servers, it is not a career choice it’s a part time job for students – for the most part. A tip is commonly left but it is not a percentage of the bill, it is not dictated on the receipt what should be given, it is a ‘thank you for going above and beyond to make my experience more pleasurable, buy yourself a drink later’ amount of about £3-5.
I don’t appreciate it being expected here, I often find service is worse because they just expect to get 15% of your bill added on as a tip. I often don’t, I apply my British tipping method if the service has impressed me.
Rus’ brother is a server so I’ve already been told how awful my attitude is. Whatever, I’m on a budget.

So Rus and I were deciding if a tip was worthy, the waitress had done an okay job, I mean she hadn’t dropped anything, and she did seem to be working alone, and I had not proof that she had invented the pureéd spinach sandwich.
Firstly she approached the table next to us and asked them to leave – I was four inches from this table, we were practically eating together while politely ignoring each others existence. Their table was reserved for someone at 1:30 and they had been there since 12:30 so if they could just finish off. In the waitress’s defense she did seem to cringe as she said it.
Then I heard her approach the table behind us and offer to top the tea up with hot water.
I went cold. The tea was a little weak already, I had had to squish and squeeze the teabag to get it to release it’s beautiful flavour. And now this lady’s tea was at risk of being further diluted! Did she know or did she think that tea was meant to be a weak flavourless, slightly brown, beverage?!
The room started to spin and I had to leave.

I don’t know if Rus tipped, I just said “I’m done, take me for mexican” and left in a flurry.

Grief

This past month has been hard.

After finding out my friend had died I spent a week unable to shake my melancholy mood, I distracted my self as well as I could with the restrictions that are in place here – no job, no car, no really good friends.

When I moved out here I had a list of things I wanted to do, I planned on reading a book every month, seriously practicing yoga, maybe taking up running, learning italian, and blog about it all (for myself to look back on mainly) and all that has fallen to the wayside during this past month.

Not knowing what happened to Lucy during those final hours, being so far away from anyone else who knew her and having a lot of time to think has made everything feel a little pointless. It also fell in with my PMS and, maybe due to my grief, my period was three weeks late. Three weeks of PMS is not a fun thing for anyone under any conditions.

The funeral was at the beginning of this week. I awoke at 230am and lit a candle for when the ceremony was held in the UK. I then re-lit it at 1030am California time with plans to let it burn out throughout the day. I called friends back home who had attended the funeral to see how it had gone, and to try and find out exactly what had happened. But the family are being quite tight lipped about specifics beyond ‘she took her own life’.

I still like to think it was accidental.

After my phone calls I was ravenous, I thought about leaving the candle lit, about taking it downstairs with me and finally about blowing it out. I felt a little disappointed in myself for not being able to just leave it lit – anxiety is an awful thing. But when I blew it out I felt a weight kind of lift. This week my mood has felt lighter and brighter as the days have passed.So back to the to do list!

Billy Bobcat

About a month ago I did something I never thought I would do.

I excitedly purchased a kitten.

I have always been a dog person, mainly because I am from a dog family. My sister went through a cat phase but living on a busy road it did not end well for the poor guy.
As a child I had a kitten which turned into a cat and meowed loudly and left mice heads in my shoes and was far from a joy.

When I was 14 I got a chihuahua, after two years of nagging my poor parents, and it was love at first sight. There’s just something absolutely wonderful about coming home to a dog and them greeting you with a wag of the tail. They make splendid walking companions – I’ll admit Charlie the Chihuahua fell short in this category but being a dog family we had another five to pick from for walkies. They are the perfect nap buddies and they don’t have sharp claws or a penchant for scratching walls.

Cats on the other hand always seems a little selfish, they would come for feeding and petting but always on their terms and when they were done they would bite you and leave, swishing their tail arrogantly as they left.

When I moved over, Rus promised me a dog. Unfortunately he didn’t think to check with his parents who weren’t exactly over keen on the idea. I also got to thinking about the time commitment. Right now I have nothing but free time, but by the end of the year, if not sooner, I would like to be working again and it would be cruel to leave a dog used to 24/7 attention on his own.

So no california dog for me.

One night Rus suggested I get a kitten. I made a face and said no thank you. In his attempts to persuade me he took me to shelters and showed me ads on craigslist but I still struggled to get excited about it.

Then I saw an advert for Billy. He was born on the streets and then found by the pound. He was next in line for the Lethal Injection when he was recused. Unfortunately his mum wasn’t so lucky and the rescuer had to hand rear him. The ad was asking for someone with the time to pour into helping a skitty, nervous cat.
He was described as a suspected Main Coon mouthbreather who’s tongue shoots out when he sneezes. His picture was adorable.

I made the call and found out all about him. I wasn’t a cat person admittedly but something about this guy made me want to try. There are so many animals in this country who are put to death because we decide they’re overpopulating the streets, why shouldn’t I save one? I could grow to be a cat person perhaps, I could play with yarn.

Just so long as I didn’t have to deal with mice heads in my shoes.

We collected Billy a month ago and I fell in love with him instantly. He spent his first week hiding under the sofa, running out to eat and use the toilet when we weren’t in the room. Slowly he’s got used to me, as I have to him. He sits and watched soaps with me, joins in on skype calls and loves playing fetch. He’s happy to cuddle but more than happy to be left alone with his toys and food.

My family are all very shocked at choosing a cat but right now I’m struggling to think why I wanted a dog in the first place.

 

 

Secret Garden

When I was young, like most girls my age, I watched The Secret Garden. After that any time I was near a large hedge or overgrown bramble I would expect to find a door. One time I did find an old key which I would take with me whenever I thought I was likely to come into contact with a hedge. I never found a door, I never found a secret garden and  I never turned out to be a princess… although that might have been another film.

We did get an allotment though and every weekend my family and I would trudge down to it and check on the fruits and vegetables, pull out weeds, plant potatoes etc. then go home to make rhubard crumbles and eat peas straight from the pod.
For those who don’t know, an allotment is an area of land, owned by the local council, which you rent to grow fruits and veggies.
I think they were originally set up in WW2 when everyone was growing extra food to make up the rations. Nowadays they are mainly populated by older men, escaping their wives for an afternoon with their allotment buddies.

We gave our allotment up when I was about 12, I’m not sure why. Perhaps my parents became disinterested or the rent went up. By then I’d moved on from wanting to find a secret garden but the enjoyment I got from planting a seed and watching it turn into a plant is deep-rooted (lolz punz).

Rus has a balcony off of his bedroom, unused except by the cat, I expressed an interest in getting some plants on it last time I visited, I envisaged growing a few herbs that would make the evening air fragrant as we sat sipping drinks and reading books. Rus went into overdrive and bought about twenty million plants. He then promptly got bored of it and they all started dying off. The mini succulents in their tiny pots remained knocked over by a swish of the cat’s tail, the peppers shriveled up, the herbs dried out and turned to fragrant dust.

I decided to take matters into my own hands and spent the last few weeks slowly working through all the plants, I’ve used my gardening knowledge (all learned from the secret garden film) to check which were saveable and which needed to go. I managed to get rid of a lot of them before Rus figured out what I was doing – he’s somewhat of a hoarder.
When he found out he was a little upset, I’m not too sure why because it wasn’t like he was tending to the plants. To reassure him I wasn’t just recklessly throwing things away I told him my Secret Garden tip; that if something looks dead and you nick it with a knife and it’s green inside then it’s actually saveable with a bit of TLC.
Rus got really excited by this and started chopping at everything and exclaiming ITS ALIVE! like a mad man. Unfortunately they were the ones I’d already checked (and two new ones that I’d only just bought. Which were still green. AND FLOWERING) and his ‘nicking’ was actually chopping off an entire stem so I have a few half-hacked up, but very much alive, plants.
Then he got to the coriander plant which looked very much dead, I’d already tugged at it and it was so dry it just crumbled away, right from the root, all that remained was a little twig that I’d already decided to get rid of. But, Rus had his shears and chopped it in half and sure enough there was a bit of green inside. Rus got really excited that he hadn’t killed all the plants and is insisting I keep it and look after it. So every other day I water a twig in a pot and wonder how I didn’t realise Rus had special needs sooner and if he’ll notice if I just replace it.

Before and after shots…

Suicide

My friend died, she killed herself, and it’s been horrible. It’s made worse by being 6000 miles away from it all and by being told the details on Facebook.

We worked together and she was troubled, she never opened to me directly because I’m twenty years younger and what did I know.

But I wish she had, because I’d have genuinely listened and not used it as a platform to talk about myself, I wouldn’t have encouraged the self medicated wine, I wouldn’t have asked how she was just to hear the latest gossip. I would have tried to help because she was a nice person and deserved a friend. Yet despite meeting her for coffees and going out for meals she never opened up to me.

I wish I’d poked my nose in more, and not been worried about seeming to be interfering. I wish I’d spoken up when I heard worrying snippets of conversations she was having with other members of staff. I wish I’d asked her why she was hungover yet again, and just how much had she drank. I wish I’d shouted at her for repeatedly drink driving. I wish I’d told the ones she had spoken to to try harder to help her.

If anyone you come into contact with is visibly struggling with life, if your coworker is repeatedly coming in stinking of booze, if someone is crying on the bus, if someone has cuts on their wrists, if someone is withdrawing from life, reach out to them. Because I didn’t and now my friend is dead. A mother is dead. A daughter is dead.

And if you’re struggling, if life is really hard for you right now, reach out to someone. Even if they’re younger, even if they don’t have the same issues, even if they’re always laughing. It doesn’t mean they won’t bend over backwards to help you. Because there is nothing romantic about suicide, everything just ends. And even if right now that seems like a good idea, you could not be more wrong.

Ooops

I haven’t posted in a long time.

I got stressed and anxious and sitting at a computer was the last thing I wanted to be doing. The move kind of sprung itself on me, I had been working towards it for two years and then all of a sudden I was buying tickets and packing my bag and it was more than I could handle – packing up my life as my family are all getting set for a christmas together.

Rus had a few personal things going on in his own world, things that aren’t mine to mention here, but it meant he wasn’t around to chat that much and that certainly made it a lot harder.

I was going to just let the blog go, stop writing and switch to tumblr full time but that isn’t the place for long rambling posts and writing does make me feel… something. I don’t know how to describe it, it isn’t like I’m miserable and this is a place to let go, to release all my torment or anything like that because my life is pretty good right now. I guess I just enjoy it.

So I packed up stuff, kissed my parents farewell and hopped on a plane to LA. A week later I was married and that was a weird feeling. I store Rus in my phone as Husband! just to remind myself that yes that really happened (in a good way).

America is bizarre, it’s very similar to the UK – mainly because of the language, but then it’s very different – mainly because of the Americans. I’m settling in and it’s becoming more normal but I’m still pining for home in some ways. We cooked a big roast dinner on Christmas Eve, it was dark out, we had christmas pop music playing and it was hot in the kitchen so I opened the door sincerely expecting to be hit by that wall of cold air, so cold it catches in the back of your throat and makes your chest feel damp.

Instead it was warmer outside than in the kitchen.

When things like that happen and catch me unawares I want to go and sit on my bed and close the curtains and take a nap. But I don’t, I power through and hope no one notices the lump in my throat.

So I’m hoping writing will help me straighten out any sad feelings in my head, help me document any fun things we do and also give me a bit of a hobby. I can’t work for quite a while and, living with his parents, I have very few household chores to do.

Nice little end note

Four years ago I took my mum to London for her Christmas gift. On our to-do list was visiting the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park.  Then the snow started to fall so we cancelled our hotel and headed down for just a day. We tried to get to the statue but it was like trekking through wastelands. Freezing cold, snow filled, waste land.

The next trip down we were too busy to get near Hyde Park.

The third trip down we were far too hot. We go into Hyde Park and collapsed under a tree with ice cream.

This trip down for my interview was the last trip we will have in a long time if not ever – I’m not bothered about doing London when I return. So we made it our mission to get to the statue.

It looked a bit like we wouldn’t make it, my mum has a bad foot and it started playing up. But we hobbled on and arrived at the beautiful statue with plenty of time to spare.

We admired the design and then found a bench to feed ducks from.

It was probably the most peaceful trip to London anyone has ever had. No pushing and shoving, no sweating, no stressing. It was lovely and a great way to say good bye to the city.

Visa interview

On Wednesday I packed up all my proof, forms, certificates and photos and headed to London for my appointment at the US embassy.

Getting the appointment was a bit of a struggle. I hit an odd time at the embassy, they were swapping from a snail mail process to an online one and then their government malfunctioned and closed down for a few weeks [to probably play GTAV]. This also coincided with the Royal Mail going private and all the joyous postage problems that have followed.

I was expecting my appointment letter to come around the beginning of October. When I hadn’t heard anything I called and was told an appointment had been issued and I would receive notice of it within the week. Two weeks later I had nothing so I called again and was told this time that there was no case attached to my file number. A panic attack inducing statement.

Much googling later I found and online query form and sent a simple email explaining when my medical had been, when my paperwork was submitted and asking when I was likely to hear something.

They responded within a few days to tell me that I was scheduled for the 7th at 0800 and that this had been sent in writing.

Finally!

The letter never turned up and still hasn’t. So I packed everything I could think I would need and set off to London with my mum in tow.

The interview was a lot less formal than I expected. I kind of got the impression that everything was set before I had got there and that this was just formalities. Of course I could be wrong, people probably do get rejected at this point, I’m just good at being oblivious so seriousness. Seriously, ask my boss!

I was in the embassy for two hours and ten minutes, plus queueing outside for 30 minutes. I was being “interviewed” for about 2o minutes, at the very most, which was split in half. The first half checked my certificates and took a payment, the second half asked the questions and gave me the approval.

Now to begin to set dates, pack my stuff up and start saying my farewells!

Small minds.

When I’m at work I find myself stuck in the small mind category, something I hate myself for. But when I try to break from that I am quickly shot down by my work peers. I bite back my sarcasm, pretend I care about celebrity gossip and hope no one sees the title of the book I’m reading.

Only nine shifts left.