That time I slept in a monkey cage..

 So as you know I just got back from India. While I was there I didn’t post much so over the next couple of weeks I’ll post some snippets as catch ups – this one is one of my favourites.

It took us a long time to get to Varanasi, we stopped over at Amsterdam and Delhi on the way. We had anticipated a 6 hour turnaround in Delhi, which turned into 8, then nine. As a result when we eventually got to Varanasi we were pretty tired and because we’d intended the trip to be an adventure we hadn’t booked anywhere to stay. Ange had been to Varanasi before, 5 years ago and remembered that the hostel she’d stayed in had a nice dog. And on that tenuous basis we ambled into Varanasi’s backstreets to try and get a room there for the night.

veiw of the galis from our hostel's roof

 If you’ve never been to Varanasi, some description may be useful here. Most of the photos you’ll see are of the Ghat’s down by the river – and boy is it beautiful there. Heading away from the river are a labyrinth of ‘galis’ which are streets far too narrow for cars. These galis make up the old town where 1,000’s of locals, tourists, monkeys, goats and cows make their home. Space is at a premium in Varanasi so people have added floors apon floors to their homes, to cram in rooms for tourists, shops and bakeries, so when you walk through the galis you may see cracks of sky but you are almost always in shade. And all of those thousands of people and animals are out in the streets, packs of dogs barking and playing, cows blocking off exits and goats mating and wrestling or taking a nap, and then there are the corpses, covered in fabric and tinsel, held aloft and followed by chanting loved ones on their way to the ghats to be burnt. What I’m saying is – it’s a lot. And if you love India – which I really truly do – then what you come to India to find is here in all its glory.

But also – I grew up in Milton Keynes with it’s clear and ordered grid system, and I’m dyspraxic. I have neither the experience nor the skill to navigate my way through this warren. Ange is better, but there aren’t any signs except the odd advert painted on a wall – so it takes a while to find our way to the hostel.

And when we finally arrive they tell us they are full.

And then they reconsider. They say they might have a room – if we are happy to sit down & play with the dog while they make it ready.

So we sat, we played with Lucky, we waited and after 10 minutes we were shown to our room. Which was basically a cage with curtains on the roof. Now I know I’ve been known to exaggerate in my time so I took a photo as proof.

See. That is a cage on a roof. 

It speaks volumes about how tired Ange and I were that we had agreed to rent it and were in bed within 5 minutes of seeing it. Our only query was wether there was any chance monkeys could get in. We were told no – they couldn’t and what’s more they didn’t come onto this part of the roof because the dog chased them away.

So we cleaned our teeth, let ourselves into the cage and fell immediately asleep.

I don’t know how much later I got woken by Ange. I do know she was holding the curtain open with one hand and pointing with the other. “look there is a huge monkey just sat there looking at us”

My reaction? I said something unhelpful along the lines of “Just close the curtain and you won’t be able to see it” and then passed out again (in my defense I really was very tired).

The noise that woke me next was loud, close and confusing. Ange and I sat bolt upright, and looked at each other. “That’s monkeys, lots of them”

“Yep”

“And they are climbing all over the cage”

“Yep”

“But they can’t get in right?”

“Um.... well the guys said so, and someone normally sleeps in here. So I guess not…”

My water bottle falls to the floor – as I look over to see what made it happen I spot a tiny baby monkey, the kind I think is adorable when it’s not trying to get into my bedroom, has already forced it’s arm and shoulder into the room and it’s making a pretty good job of trying to push it’s head in.

“We should get someone”

And we start shouting loudly, for the guys that work in the hostel, for the dog that lives there, for anyone to come help us. Because no matter how cute that monkey looks –we do not want to be trapped in a cage with it. Particularly when it’s mum, dad, aunty and a collection of second cousins are going to want to come in after it.

We hear a clattering outside and the monkeys scatter onto other rooftops. The guys from the hosteI shouted that they’d gone. I ran to the loo (mild peril always activates my bladder). When I came back I asked Ange what they’d said and she gestured to the bed. “they left us that” A catapult and some marbles.

I genuinely thought I was hallucinating “What is it?”

“It’s a catapult Ed”

“That’s what I thought. Why is it here? “

“So we can scare away the Monkeys when they come back”

I chose to ignore the ‘when’ and followed up on the tools we’d been issued instead: “But I don’t know how to use one of those Ange, I’m dyspraxic, I’d probably do myself more harm than I would any Monkeys”

“I know Ed – you would actually blind one of us”

“And what about when we’re asleep?"

“I know – we don’t need a sodding catapault. We need a new room”

Which is how we ended up spending our first night in India in the basement.

Normally this blog is about living with less. I started it to raise awareness about families of disabled children living in poverty. You can find out about my challenge here and donate to make a difference here 

A break from photos

You’ll have noticed less photos of me over on Instagram recently, and I thought I’d let you know why.

Go ahead - have a little break from my face

I’ve been really honest from the beginning of this challenge how much I hate having my photo taken. And I very much still do.

So having my photo taken every day has been an actual painful chore. 

One of the reasons for this is because it's so unusual for me, as I’ve never really been that engaged in the way I look. I know that sounds really weird for someone who really really loves clothes, but it’s true. For me there is a fundamental difference between caring about what my style communicates and seeking to glorify/ mitigate the genetic accident that is my features. My face looks the way it looks, it'd be a horrible waste of time to try and make it look any different.

I want to be clear I don't hate, or even dislike my face - I'm just not very interested in it. It has the normal number and placings of features -  I look look neither astoundingly beautiful nor appallingly hideous. My face does what it is supposed to, and I'm fine with that. I make the best of it with some tinted moisturiser and some bronzer on work days - but have never engaged in faffing with 'sculpting' makeup to give me the appearance of cheekbones or whatever - simply because I can't see what difference it could possibly make to my life.

I think that my attitude to my face is pretty healthy - and I think my sense of perspective has been aided by always having some very pretty girls as friends. There has literally never been a time in my life when I’ve been the prettiest girl in the room and actually that has really worked for me. This is not an area in my life where I can try really hard and somehow make a huge impact. I’ve never been the girl who spends hours on make up or hair because I’ve always looked around me and thought – what’s the point – that’s never going to be my thing.

I’m not saying that in a woe is me way – it doesn’t worry me at all. In fact I've watched some of my gorgeous friends have their intellect under valued, being disliked by other women, and just being aggressively pursued in the supermarket and in doctors surgeries (places where I think we can agree no-one goes looking for a date) purely as a result of their looks - so I know knock down beauty isn't an out and out gift. It can be a bloody pain too.

And I also know that once we are past our painful teenage years that our facial features are far from the headlines of our attractiveness. I don't worry that my husband will desert me for a prettier face, or that if he did do something so foolish that I'd be alone forever.I know I’m funny, I know my energy, fierceness and enthusiasm is pretty attractive and that for a particular type of man I am exactly how they like their tea (and breakfast and dinner...). So as an adult I’ve never equated my value to anyone with the way I look.

So I never really thought about my face, never considered it, never spent hours in front of the mirror examining it, never took endless selfies to show the best side of myself. My considered opinion on all that nonsense? Bollocks to it! Until this year, when I’ve had my photo taken every day. And every day I’ve had to look at photos of my face. And they don’t really match my idea of myself. I always look sad in photos, or like I’m grimacing. And it's not even about that - it's that I feel like the more I see images of myself - the more my sense of self is about those images rather than what I'm feeling and experiencing. Those photos and the need to look at them are affecting my sense of self. And I don't like it.

Varanasi was beautiful. And my memories about it have nothing to do with how I looked..

I'm so glad I grew up when I did. When you took a photo then had to wait weeks for it to be developed. When peoples voices, the way they sounded on the phone, the letters and postcards they wrote and mixtapes they put together where what formed your depth of impressions of them when you were apart. We didn't have the option of looking someone up and seeing an image of their face when we missed them. I genuinely worry what my teenage years would be like if I lived them now. If all those friends I made who loved me because I danced with sheer abandon were greeted with what that looked like in stills the next day. Worse if I was. Because in my head all of that fun and energy shone out of me and made me a magnet for fun (& I really think it did), but the photo lens isn't going to get that - or at least hardly ever. And I think my fragile emerging teenage self might have lost some of her bravery and her arrogance if she was presented with all these two dimensional images of herself, that had no room for her silliness, or the sound of her laugh. My teenage years are documented in photos yes, but also in poems, and stories written between friends, in stolen jumpers, and swapped treasures and none of it is online - which means I've been able to curate this collection to tell the stories that are healthy for me to remember, and leave behind the ones that I shouldn't. And I think that has been healthy for me.

So knowing this why would my 35 year old self choose to document every day of this year with a photo of myself? Why would I post a photo of me knackered and pale and resentfully posing in my front room every day? Photos that are taken when I get in from work, at that point in the day when really I just want to talk to Matt, change into my dressing gown and then snuggle up with the dog.What purpose does this serve? 

My Instagram feed these days – yuck.It used to be photos of my dog, my friends & weird and wonderful London sights - now it is an unrelenting wall of me. Is that how I want to remember my 35th year - by how I looked everyday? I think not. It’s so self regarding and so SO not who I am. But I’ve kept it up because it felt like part of the deal of this whole capsule experiment.

You can see how little I wanted this snap taken yes?

While Ange and I were away we stayed for a couple of days in Amma’s ashram. And photography isn’t allowed there, and there are no mirrors in the rooms. So for three days I got a break from my face. I got a break from awkwardly posing for photos whilst hating myself for doing it, and break from worrying what you guys thought of the photos when I put them up.

And I liked it so much I’m sticking with it. There will still be some photos – to demonstrate how I manage changes in the weather, or big occasions – to introduce you to my final 3 items & if I come up with a new way of wearing something. But that is it. You’ll kind of have to trust me. I am going to stick with this (I’m too bloody minded not to), but I’m not going to undo all the good this experiment has done me in terms of changing the way I think – by letting those teeny tiny claws of self hatred grab a hold of me every evening as I pose for a photo.

But if you do want to see photos from a woman with a real sense of who she is beyond what she looks like I would urge you to read this from Julie Kirk she's pretty awesome.

In other news - there are still a couple of tickets left for tomorrows clothes swap - you can read about it and book tickets here. And if you want to donate - that's cool too (tomorrow I'll be 9 months in!!!!)

If you want to hear me banging on more about capsule fashion, Katrina from Soul, Style, Story interviewed me earlier in the week. If I were you I'd head here on her site where they talk about an app that will (I hope) change the way we shop for the better..... 

In defence of primal screaming

Firstly let’s acknowledge how unlikely that post title is for me. I mean come on - primal screaming? This from a girl who refused to do yoga for literally YEARS because it was just ‘competitive bending’.  It’s a bit worrying isn’t it? Am I going to turn into one of those lightweight post travelling spiritual types who can’t resist telling everyone about their ‘awakening’ at some full moon chanting session? Well no – I think I can assure you that is not on the cards. 

This is just a story about how I found myself screaming on a bus.

So Ange and I couldn’t get on the train we wanted to in order to do the first leg from Ooty to Munnar. Which meant that rather than a little tootle on a minature railway we had to drag ourselves up at 5am to undertake a 14 hour epic journey taking us on 4 buses. 

In all honesty I anticipated the journey being hellish – but actually it was kind of beautiful. The journey takes you through tea country and dusty plains and is absolutely gorgeous. Plus the changes every 4 hours or so were great for grabbing street food. And as an added bonus this was the sign for the pay and go toilets at one of the bus stations.

I like to think that Jennifer Lawrence used this toilet on the way through India and gamely agreed for her face to be used to advertise this really, very grim, facility - but I suspect the truth of the matter is quite different. Worryingly the guy taking the money at this loo stop also asked to take my photo on the way out - so if anyone sees my face advertising a toilet somewhere in the world please let me know. ( I worry about how deeply unhygenic a loo with my face on it would be given the unsanitary standards of JLaws - in fact if you see a toilet sign featuring my face, I have not endorsed it - do not enter....)

12 hours into the journey our bus pulled into a station and the driver announced there was a 10 minute stopover. So Ange and 2 or 3 other people hopped off the bus to go to the loo. And then the others got back on the bus maybe 3 minutes later and the bus started to move.

And Ange wasn’t on the bus. Her bag, her purse, her passport, her phone – they were on the bus. But Ange herself? Nope.

So initially I was very British about this – I called to the driver “Excuse me! You said 10 minutes, my friend isn’t back…” and he ignored me. The bus continued to move. At which point I lost my words and (just a little bit) my shit. Because I couldn’t let the bus leave without Ange. 

At this point I screamed. Not words – this wasn’t me shouting the word  “stop” or something logical like that. The noise that came out of my mouth at great volume sounds approximately like “AAAAAAAAARRGGH”.

And it worked. Sort of.

In that the bus driver stopped – and with great irritation mimed that he was just moving  parking spaces, and everyone else on the bus laughs their arse off at the stupid, feral Englishwoman.

And it did feel a bit feral, to have lost my ability to communicate anything but pure base emotions.  But there was a weird massive rush of endorphins immediately afterwards too.

It stuck with me for days – the relief at just having completely expressed myself in a way that would be understood in any language. So maybe there is something in occasionally just roaring whether with anger or with laughter – rather than always, always finessing our feelings into acceptable, manageable words. I might try it more often – though maybe next time in the privacy of my own home …..

Thinking less is good for you

Remember how every September when we started a new school year everyone seemed so much older than they did in the summer? There’d always be a couple of new kids, someone would have changed their haircut, discovered a new band, at least 3 people would claim to have had a romance with someone too far away to fact check and everyone would somehow be just a tiny bit different, a tiny bit cooler.

Well I just took the adult version of a summer break, and there are some real similarities.

It was more than 6 months ago that I decided that I needed to take some time away from my real life to think about what I wanted to do next. I wanted to be sure I was making active decisions rather than just taking the obvious next  step in my career. It seemed to make sense to do this just after Christmas, both to extend the time I spent away from my daily routine, and to ensure I spent some quality time with my husband before disappearing off to another continent without him.

So on December 21^st I ‘broke up’ for Christmas, and last Monday the 8^th February I returned to work. Nearly exactly 7 weeks, so have I changed in that time?

Well one thing certainly has, I noticed about 3 weeks in that I was thinking less. And by this I mean that my mind was focused on what was in front of me, what was happening in that moment. And that felt calming. The most fundamental difference was that I stopped thinking about work in the shower, or when I was walking the dog (it didn’t hurt that we didn’t take the dog to India and I only had access to 1 hot shower the whole trip!). I’ve always known that my breakthroughs on gritty problems don’t tend to happen in front of a computer, but instead when I’m pondering them in a relaxed environment, so I suppose that at some point I'd conciously or not given myself permission to give over portions of my home time to thinking about work. I know I've cheerfully practiced talks I'm giving, or mentally reworded documents whilst washing my hair loads over the last few years but until I stopped I don’t think I’d realised was the extent to which I’d annexed  almost all of my ‘relaxing’ times to mentally review work stuff.

Now that I have noticed it. I realise that when I'm not thinking about work, I'm thinking about things I 'ought' to be doing with my time, and my money. And when I'm not doing this I'm writing lists of people I owe visits to or presents I need to buy. It's exhausting all this thinking and it's stopped me from noticing what's going on around me.

When I planned my leave I did an exhaustive handover and I am so glad I did. It meant I knew that there was nothing I could do about work while I was away – and this freed up my brain to do other stuff – I designed chutney labels, doodled a new tattoo design, and was actually fully present when seeing some of the gorgeous views that India had to offer. I actually saw what was in front of me, it was weird, as if I suddenly had much thinner skin. It's like my lists and my thinking are a pair of thick winter gloves I'd gotten so used to I'd forgotten I was wearing them. And now that I've taken them off I can feel EVERYTHING. It's amazing.

I’d set myself the task of thinking about my future whilst I was away. I think I’d imagined that this would be a tactical piece of work – plotting a course that would allow me to achieve something notable. And because I wasn't drowning in thoughts it wasn’t like that at all.

Both the time I spent at home over Christmas, and my time in India freed me up to remember some pretty fundamental things about myself. Like what it is I enjoy, and what it is I value. And it turns out those things are pretty basic – I like to cook, I like to write, I like curling up in a comfy chair with a good book, looking out of train windows at the view, spending time outdoors, and being with people I love and trust in small groups and intimate settings. I love my dog, and my husband and my home, and I love on occasion being somewhere as different from that as possible.

And having these things is really possible for me, easy in fact. I don’t need a 5 year plan, a strategy or tactics. All I need is to be present in my own life – so I notice how bloody lucky I am. So deciding what to do next has become less about my career and more about my life – which is actually pretty amazing.

So I’m back at work now, with a month to go till I leave for good and when I look around me at new work opportunities I realise that having this new perspective has helped me make decisions about work that I never would have been brave enough to before. It’s still really important to me that what I do is meaningful, but commiting only to what is achievable within a (healthly) working week is important too, as is the opportunity to work closely alongside people as part of a larger team. And money – well as long as I can pay my mortgage money really isn’t important – after all walking the dog with a friend is free!

So I haven’t come back to school with a new haircut, I haven’t discovered a new band, or had a ficticious relationship with someone in a band while I was away. But I am subtly different, a little calmer, a little more focused on what’ll make me happy. A bit cooler perhaps – and really excited about 2016! 

Me but a little bit more relaxed

Just because I'm leaving Contact a Family doesn't mean the fundraising is stopping. It's not. But there is a big final event I'd like to invite you to.

Join us at Shoreditch House on 22nd February, 7pm – 10pm for our CLOTHES SWAP PARTY. Situated on the rooftop ‘Secret Garden’ you will have the chance to walk away with a brand new wardrobe, have a fantastic evening and raise vital funds for Contact a Family supporting disabled children and their families. All you need to do is buy a ticket and bring 2-6 pieces of clothing you would like to swap. We’ll value and sort your stuff & give you tokens to spend on new (to you) clothing. Every guest will also get a goody bag full of treats from our sponsors.

Tickets are £15 and you can get them here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/clothes-swap-party-tickets-21255423544

 

The cheapest way to a brand new wardrobe

So February. The grimmest month: Still carrying the extra Christmas weight. Not motivated enough to stop eating left over chocolates (though not the nice ones – they went late December). Still suffering mild financial peril as a result of spending with gay abandon in December and then facing the epic wait for January’s paycheck. It’s cold. And don’t even get me started on Valentines day………Just YUCK.

But wait – what’s that you say? This blog post is in fact an invite to a swish clothes swapping night at Shoreditch House? I’ll be able to swap stuff I already own for new (to me) items of clothing? And listen to fashion advice? On a Monday night? For just £15? And I can feel awesome about that cos every penny of that £15 goes to charity? AND THERE’S GOODY BAGS!!!! Where can I sign up ? (here, you can sign up here)

If you aren’t free on the 22^nd, or you live outside London, Contact a Family can help you run your own clothes swap with friends – it’s a really fun just get in touch with Bella for more details.

So why do this in February? 

Well, hands up who went shopping in the January sales? Hands up who is now looking at the ‘bargains’ they purchased and wondering what on earth they were thinking?

There is nothing like sale shopping to tempt us into buying things that don’t really suit our personal style. And there is nothing like unworn clothes on hangers in our wardrobes to fill us with guilt and a faint sense of doom. And I’m guessing those clothes aren’t bad. There is nothing wrong with them – they are just not you. 

But maybe they are perfect for a friend, or someone in your office, or down your local pub? Now I’m not suggesting you offload everything you no longer wear onto your nearest and dearest – that’s a quick way to lose a friend, but have you ever considered a clothes swap? 

As a kid I did this all the time, my sisters and I would dig out binbags full of stuff we no longer wore and we’d fight over the stuff we wanted, I still leave stuff I’m getting rid of in a bag at my house for a month so friends can get first dibs before things go to the charity shop. This is great – but if I’m honest – it’s even better if I can pick up something I love for free too. And organised clothes swaps are the way forward for this. Because someone other than you judges the value of what you’ve brought along. So you don’t end up hating the friend who pounces on your (worn once) MiH denim dress, and argues it’s a fair swap for their ancient primark t-shirt covered in hot rock burns. “One in one out yeah?”. Don’t risk your friendship like that – it’ll leave a permanent mark.

But putting 10, or 20 people in a room and sorting their contributions for quality and being given tokens to ‘spend’ on new items really works. It feels less personal – in a good way. You’ve said goodbye to the stuff you’re happy to get rid of, and have a pocket full of tokens to spend as you wish. You might not always find something you are in love with – but the odds are on your side!

Anyway I’d love to see as many of you as possible at the Clothes Swap – it’ll be a fab night & Shoreditch House is an amazing venue.

Once again you can get tickets here.

Regular readers – I know you’ve been waiting to hear about India, and particularly how my clothes survived. Normally blogging activity will resume Friday & I’ll start updating you then – warning – there will be loads of photos of goats!

Happy New Year!