New Years' Eve

We have booked ourselves onto the ‘Naked Chef’ night at Time for Lime for tonight, and are very excited. The concept is that all the men, possibly in some sate of undress – and an apron – cook dinner for all the girls, who sit about drinking cocktails while the lady who runs Time for Lime essentially gives them all a cooking class, produces, helped or hindered by her nubile helpers, an amazing array of amazing food. Then we all eat together, followed by clambering onto a waiting longtailed fishermen’s boat to sail lazily out under the stars, to view the midnight fireworks from the sea. Aided by what is simply termed ‘adult punch’.

It sounds good to me.

It’s actually a bit of a first for a number of reasons. Firstly, generally we avoid the over commercialised, over puke ridden New Years Eve events, preferring to invite friends over and get gently sozzled in private. Or, if we go out, it’s to friends or family to sit in their lounge. And get gently sozzled.

Secondly, I have not felt glamorous since long before travelling. When I was recovering from an operation I had a swollen abdomen, nasty looking new scars complete with stitches, and no energy with which to consider putting make up on or wearing anything which was not loose and free flowing, far away from the new wounds.

Following that, I was busily wrapping up work and packing up a house, which entailed looking dusty and sweaty for much of the time, and wearing a permanent frown of concentration as I tried to attend to all the various competing to do lists inside my head.

And since travelling, I have been always sweaty, always wearing something stained, torn or generally travel worn, and with permanent blisters and itchy mosquito bites. I have gradually bothered less and less with make up until now, I don’t really wear any at all. My hair, bleached by the sun drastically on the top of my head and remaining dark brown at the bottom, is odd looking and sun and salt dried. It gets washed and shoved into a bun on the top of my head most days, the better to facilitate the sweat which inevitably trickles down my neck at some stage during each and every day. Somewhat gratifyingly I don’t actually mind, and have discovered that I can manage to walk down the street in this condition without anyone vomiting at the sight of me, and in fact have learned that I seem to be at least averagely passable without the vast array of cosmetics and blood sweat and tears that has been known to accompany getting ready of a morning.

That said though, today when I pull out the abandoned make up, and slip into a white (white!) and thus vastly impractical Thai style dress I have bought once again from Jin, and proceed to pose delicately in it, sipping lemongrass mohitos, well I feel fabulous darling. The only concession to the fact that I am travelling is the absence of hair tongs and the presence of my daily worn, rather battered looking sandals which have seen as much dirt, dust, water and sweat as I have since I first set foot off that first plane journey. It feels really nice. I feel, well, clean. I don’t think I’ve even felt that for a while, except the first five minutes after showering in the morning. Travel just involves a lot of mess. Generally.

And thirdly it’s unusual because of the cocktails. I am perfectly used to drinking rare beers crafted out of the back of someone’s garage and flavoured with port or aniseed or even garlic, or to popping open a nice red wine and quaffing it rather too quickly – but cocktails, not generally my thing. Not because I don’t like them- it’s just I have to pay more for them and well, they’re a bit small.  I can drink one in about ten minutes and then I am once again without a drink. A pint of beer you can rely on. A glass of wine, similar.

But tonight, in my white sundress, fluttering my newly mascared eyelashes at the sunset, cocktails, my dears, are the only thing.

M slaves away at his cooking, though in fact it seems later, from his account of it, that they spent most of the time drinking and taking off their shirts. By the time I act the good wife and appear to take pictures and deliver him beer, he has had three shots of brandy and a couple more beers and is in animated conversation about the amount of flavour with which it is possible to imbue a vegetarian tom ka. All the men are dressed in nice white Time for Lime aprons, and their trousers. Sunny (pseudonym, but she rather was), our friend from Koh Lanta who works at the Animal Welfare Centre, and who has had a good number of brandys herself, is rather disappointed.

“They are the most chaste lot we’ve had,” she says, disconsolately, “last year they got down to their pants.”

The way M tells it, they were told to remove at least one item of clothing after their first shot of brandy, and that they could chose how much they were comfortable with disrobing, but that pants must, for reasons of ‘hygiene’, remain firmly on. I don’t think the latter rule was crafted by Sunny.

 I, adorned with unusual glamour and a white sun dress, sort of, well, drink my way through the cocktail menu (we have rather less money at the end than we predicted, but I do learn that an Ameretto Sour beats a Black Russian anyday). When the boys rejoin us for a triumphal feast, I am quite happy, though growing a little prematurely sleepy, and have made a lot of new girlfriends.

In fact the eating part, though the food is fantastic, represents a sort of lull, as everybody’s drinking catches us with them, and all of us overeat and grow fat and – perhaps a little over relaxed.

Eventually we are perked up again by a number of games, crafted by Sunny, involving everyone wearing a peg, with the aim being to collect other people’s and amass a large ‘peg army’, winning pegs by persuading the unwary person to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and – my personal favourite, whose paper aeroplane can fly the furthest. I have a fond, though hazy memory of a line of giggling guests, all posied with their aeroplanes, and then a burst of laughter as the planes are released, and the majority simply fall at our feet. It is the kind of beautiful silliness which really appeals to me, even when I am being glamorous.

We have only just finished this game by the time we are called to embark on our mini cruise, and we clamber into one or other of the line of waiting long tail boats. While the atmosphere on each boat differs depending on the combination of people on board, we are rather lucky in ours in that everyone on it seems to be inclined to simply sit quietly, appreciate the beauty of the stars, paper lanterns and fireworks in a more contemplative and peaceful mood than the hilarious partying that has preceded it. We are also a little ‘alcoholed out’ and so we don’t drink too much of the punch, which tastes a little like a very sweet jelly, and which contains potions and spirits that no one has ever actually heard of.

We float, gently on a black sea, watching the stars, which are bright, and the waves of paper lanterns, which people are releasing from the shore, representing things they wish to get rid of, and things which they hope for. Only one doesn’t quite make it, crashing and extinguishing itself in the sea. I hope that one was a thing to get rid of, and not a hope for the future.

When the fireworks, our only indication that it is midnight, begin, we are amazed by the sheer number of them. This is not one display from a set location, this is a number of displays ranging all along the coast. It is as if Koh Lanta is marking its perimeter in colours and lights. I snuggle up with M, watching and thinking how nice it is to have a New Years Eve celebration which embodies two such very different and complimentary atmospheres.

When we eventually wend our way home, having made for the shore, waded back onto the beach and been briefly delayed by the emergence of a sort of ‘after party’ led by one of my new friends, who seems to have got hold of a bottle of champagne, which we later discover was someone elses, and is generously dishing it out, it is in a peaceful and happy mood.

Drifting off to sleep beneath our mosquito net, I think, for the millionth time, how lucky, how very, very lucky we are.

Thai Top Ten Moments

As is traditional, and as we leave Koh Lanta in a few days time, here are the usual top ten moments in Thailand so far. I am not counting New Years’ Eve or New Years’ Day, because, technically at least, they haven’t happened yet. And they’re a bit special anyway, all in all.

My top ten most memorable Thailand moments are, in no particular order:

• ·        The first time I snorkelled, following the initial panic, when I simply saw an amazing fish – and set off after it.
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• ·       The first night, when we sat out on the deck, eating boiled eggs with elephant skewers, with, for the one and only time we ever hear it, Silent Night playing from somewhere, out over the water.
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• ·       The euphoric run past the finishing line in the Run for The Animals on the beach.
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• ·      The discovery of Favourite Cat in the cupboard, with her kittens, and her easy acceptance of our awe and wonder, our affection and – our food.
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• ·    The night we happened to be out on the deck for the most spectacular ‘moon rise’ I have ever seen. I have not before or since, seen a ‘golden moon’, but I will not forget it in a hurry.
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• ·   Christmas Day, beautiful and bitter sweet, holed up in our pole house, with makeshift decorations and, magically, roast potatoes.
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• ·      Meeting Jin, and her amazement at the idea that there are no wild monkeys in England, (“What? Not even in the jungle?”). Her subsequent amazement that we didn’t have jungle.
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• ·      The first time I cooked. The fact that it tasted good. The fact, indeed, that it tasted fantastic. And M’s obvious enjoyment of it. (“This is a triumph!.....” (pause) “…but I am still allowed to cook sometimes, yes?”)
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• ·      Buying, and then drinking, rice whisky. “You are buying this?”, (sheer amazement from the store holder), “you will be very, very drunk.” We are not very, very, drunk. But we are a bit.
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• ·      Everyone’s absolute and blatent disregard for anything worrying, routine, punctual or safety conscious, “It’s OK,” says our driver, noticing our white knuckles, and negotiating hair pin bends with one finger, glass of wine in one hand, mobile phone in the other, while our St Christopher trembles in my purse, “This is Thailand.”

This, indeed, is Thailand. It’s incredibly heady, intensely relaxed, often frustrating, very slow moving, warmly friendly, totally inefficient, sometimes dishonest, always peaceable, utterly random.

And deeply compelling.

The Portrait of K and M: The Enchanted St Christopher

When we embarked on this trip my sister gave me a St Christopher. I have blogged about this before and about her half joking half serious faith in its ability to keep us safe and to bring her sister back to her in one piece. One live and kicking piece, bright and bushy and eager to tell the tale.

I have also blogged before about how it does indeed, seem not only to have done its job, but to have gone over and above its initial mission, bringing us champagne, prime seats, jumping queues for us and securing us a few rather perfect accidents (a cancellation of an Air BnB booking allows us to change our booking to something else, which turns out, arguably, to be better).

I have a new theory about our St Christopher. I think it is taking the hits for us.

You may or may not know the story of The Portrait of Dorian Grey, by Oscar Wilde. If you don’t know it, you may know the concept from films like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which utilise it, if a little misleadingly.

The basic idea is this: Dorian Grey is a beautiful young man who is gifted and charming, and who, not to point too fine a point on it, everyone fancies. Men and women alike are drawn to his charms. But he has a terrible secret. Tempted by the devil, in the form of a rather loosely categorised ‘friend’, he has made a pact with something dark and dreadful, to allow him to remain, forever, beautiful. Dorian does not age, he does not mark, and, though this is rather overly emphasised in cartoon references after the original novella, he does not die.  His secret is a hidden portrait, covered by dust sheets and kept locked away. The portrait, of him as a young man, full of life and beauty, is, essentially, his soul. Where he does not age, it does. Moreover, it bears all the marks of his inner darkness, his sins, and later, his murders, are all evident in the ever more horrific portrait he keeps so carefully hidden, both from others and, because of its horrifying truthfulness, himself. In the end the only way for Dorian Grey to die, is to kill, not the nubile young man he is known as, but the portrait itself.

That contained rather a lot of spoilers for the novella, for which I am sorry. But I think it’s famous enough now that most people know it. And if you didn’t, just buy the book and put it to one side for a year. You’ll have forgotten by the time you rediscover it. And it is worth reading.

Anyway, much as I am sure that Oscar Wilde would appreciate my one women advertising campaign for his work, the point, as I suspect you know I am about to come to, is that our St Christopher is the portrait of Dorian Grey for us.

Not that we have killed anyone, and I don’t think as yet that it is taking on the darkness of our souls, though who knows what may happen by the end of the trip, (“you change,” says everybody, “when you are travelling. You won’t know yourself.”), perhaps we will return as serial killers, disguised as slightly sweaty angels. But I have a theory that our St Christopher is taking all the bashings we are managing to avoid.

It has been with me everywhere I go, in my purse, but I keep it wrapped in the paper it was given to us in, to preserve it. The other day, I took it out to show someone, and was surprised to find it looks, well, a little different to the way it did when we first started out.

The writing seems to have tarnished and is not altogether readable. It is not the clear silver script on black background it once was, nor is it perfectly round, but seems to have acquired the odd groove around the edges. As I have done nothing more than carry it about in my purse, this seems to me mysterious and wonderful.

M does venture that possibly the St Christopher is made of silver, which does tarnish if not polished, and it occurs, even to me, that it could be related to salt water having managed to get on practically everything in Thailand, and that if washed in fresh water and polished up, it would be fine. Plus my purse has been everywhere with me. So it will have got a bit bashed and juggled around in my bag.

But I refuse to believe in such unlikely stories. I think that for every time we have ridden in an open backed jeep driven crazily fast on mountain paths in Thailand, for every time we have traffic dodged on Cambodia’s crazy roads, or ridden a motorcycle taxi in Vietnam, for every boat trip in rough weather, every snake, spider or scorpion we have passed in our sandals without noticing, every new combination of unusual or unidentifiable foods we have tried, or for every mountain, hill or incline we have scrambled our way up, over or under, our St Christopher has gained another, minor defect. Just a smudge on his lettering, or a tiny groove in his side. We have not taken any overt or obvious risks, and have done nothing which could later have been described as ‘reckless’. We have not wandered into jungle wasteland without proper shoe wear, or a supply of water, have not knowingly taken any transport which did not have a good safety reputation (at least under the conditions of the country we are travelling in), and have never knowingly driven with an unsafe driver. I say that – sometimes we have known once we were in the vehicle only, and there was nothing we could do about it (I am thinking about Thailand – speed, substances and sight (of the road) are all things which are taken quite lightly on Koh Lanta). And I suppose there was that one time when we drove our own motorbike. But still.

For every mosquito that has managed, despite clothing, repellent, and fierce admonishment, to bite one of us, our St Christopher has sweated his way through a bout of dengue fever. For every monkey that has tried to bite our hands in order to steal sunglasses (yes, really), he has dealt with the rabies. (though actually we are fully injected and immunised, so I am sure that in fact, it  would have been fine anyway – but that rather breaks my flow, so for now, we’ll pretend a little more danger  than we have ever actually allowed ourselves to be in.) We are travelling nowhere in which there have been reports of Ebola, for which I expect our St Christopher is heartily pleased.

Travelling does mean that all the time you face tiny dangers, based normally on having less information or less certainty than you might in your own culture and on your own geography. It’s not that you are always risking your life, as I set out above, you have a choice in that kind of activity), but you are always wandering past ‘Sliding Doors’ style alternate situations. And I think our St Christopher is taking the hits.

I re-wrap our poor beleaguered saint back up in his paper, and place him back in my purse. When we get back, and he is back off duty, he can relax. I’ll even treat him to a bath and a bit of a polish.

And in the meantime, I can’t help but sneak little peeks at the state of him. How, I wonder, will he look after we go Fly Boarding in New Zealand?  

Saving the Animals - And the Virtues of Coming in Last

Actually I don’t come in last. I am somewhere in the middle. M, of course, is somewhere near the front. I am referring, obviously, to the Run for The Animals. The Lanta Animal Welfare Centre is organising its first ever annual Run For The Animals today, and we have been lucky enough to have timed our stay, unknowingly, so that we can take part in it.

I didn’t talk much about the Welfare Centre itself on the day we cycled there, being rather self absorbedly preoccupied with my ability or otherwise in respect of a Mountain Bike.  As I had explained earlier, it was set up by the lady who runs the Time for Lime Restaurant, and is funded solely by the profits of that restaurant and by donations. Vastly oversubscribed, it tries valiantly to keep up with the increasing population of stray cats and dogs, largely because they are unsterilized and so reproducing more rapidly that they can sustain themselves, partly because of the kind of shirking of responsibility I encountered, (or suspect I encountered) in the case of Favourite Cat and a tiny bit because there is active animal cruelty. When I contacted them to ask if they could take Favourite Cat and her kittens, someone named Ben (psuedonym of course) sent me an email to tell me they simply couldn’t take them in. Though the email was short and concise, I could feel his regret through the lines.

When we arrive, to prepare for the run, which raises money through people paying to take part rather than through sponsorship, acknowledging that many of the interested runners will be foreign and only on the island for a few days or a few months at most, a young man who I immediately suspect to be Ben, is crouching down in the lobby of the centre, over what looks at first glance to be a pile of chicken bones.

It is only when I leave the congregating runners, all in various states of fitness and employing various levels of professional looking outfits (from lycra tank top and hot pants and muscles to match, to me, with my cobbled together running gear, borrowed shoes, and the kind of flab which emerges, tellingly as an unwelcome bulge when you aren’t paying attention to holding your tummy in), to go to the toilet inside the building, that I realise that next to the pile of chicken bones is a cat. Ben (I discover later that my assumption is correct) is gently holding the cat down and carefully emptying the contents of a syringe into him.  In as long as it takes for me to realise there is an emergency treatment taking place, mutter a hurried, “Oh! Sorry..” and back out again, the cat has relaxed into a chemically induced sleep, been lovingly picked up and carried to a suitable recovery unit and Ben is saying, in a voice of authority which belies the incredible gentleness I have seen in him with the cat,

“OK, this needs to be thrown away securely and we need to sterilise the area.”

I have seen the Animal Welfare Centre in action.

Returning to the groups of milling runners, alternately chatting and playing with the numerous cats who roam around looking for love, or for a bit of peace and quiet (this, they do not get, surrounded by well meaning animal lovers), I know from my previous visits that the cat will be placed in a recovery cage, alongside other animals who are recovering from treatment, before being returned to the ‘Happy Cat Home’, a large room with a number of round baskets into which some 70 cats will return to sleep each night, safe from predators and prowling stray dogs. Out the back, there are a number of large outdoor ‘pens’ in which carefully selected ‘packs’ of stray dogs play together. The selection of the packs rather resembles a match making agency,

“This one is on his own at the moment,” explains a volunteer who is working at the centre, “because he is an Alpha Dog. He is such an Alpha Dog that we can only match him with very relaxed, submissive strays. We have a few just come in for treatment which we think might get on with him.”

It’s a nice set up. It tries, as far as possible, to reflect the ideal, in which cats and dogs could indeed be free, could live as strays but without the accompanying dangers, threats and hardships that go with the overpopulation and general human intervention. Well meaning or otherwise. The Centre sends animals for adoption all over the world, but the appetite for adoption never matches the speed at which the animals are brought in. The Centre employs all sorts of imaginative schemes to make things easier, recognising again, that given that Thai culture doesn’t necessarily match with care of dogs and cats in a domestic setting, many of the people who will be willing to adopt a dog or cat, will be from overseas. It uses ‘flight volunteers’ who will escort the animals to their new home, has the facilities and government backing to quarantine the animals for their required period of 3 months at the centre, rather than paying for this at the airport, and, as we later discovered when we got chatting to a lady who lives down the road from us in Lanta Old Town, and works at the Centre, in situations such as ours, we could have adopted Favourite Cat and the centre would have arranged for her to be ‘fostered’ until such time as we were at home and ready to receive her. As it happens, Favourite Cat is much better off where she is and very well loved, so I am secure in our decision.

We all hang around amiably and there is an atmosphere of anticipation. It’s a fun run, and it doesn’t actually matter whether we all complete it or not, it not being sponsored. We’ve all paid our 300 baht to enter and it is that which will raise the money. Even so, somehow it still feels as though it is our finishing the race that will, singlehandedly, save the animals. The sun, which is beating down on us now, as we prepare for our 5 pm start time, is going to make the run no easier, nor the stretch on the beach and the rather hilly nature of the island’s geography. It’s only 5k but it’s still a challenge.

I spend a slightly shameful period of time surveying the participants and trying to guess where in the race, they will finish. This person has all the most up to date gear but it looks a little new for her to be an experienced runner. This lady looks like a body builder, and will probably come near the front (she doesn’t actually, she is surprisingly slow). These girls looks pale and delicate, their white midriffs showing, and their near identical faces look unweathered and unlikely. I think they must be sisters. I predict they will be near the middle. They come first. This man is overweight and sweating already. He might not manage to run all the way. He beats me. This man is muscled and tatooed and tanned. He’ll be trying to impress so he’ll probably come first. I don’t know in the end. I don’t see him again. Perhaps he bottles out at the last minute, or ducks into the nearest Irish pub. This man is slight but lean and lithe looking, he’ll probably be fast. He is. He is M and he does very well. He’s the only one I get right and, with him, I do have an unfair advantage.

I am not alone in my inability to tell from watching people, how well they will do.

“You should drink lots of water  and..oh no. I can see you’re not new to running,” says the lady who registers me before we begin, “The fast runners should start near the front, OK?”

I enjoy my apparent ability to appear sporty, but, as I say, I am somewhere near the back of the middle. I don’t even try to place myself near the front.

Ben does the quick health and safety chat before we go. He is wryly cheerful and will be riding in the van at the back to pick up anyone who is having difficulties.

“What a rubbish excuse,” shouts someone and there is a chorus of good natured bullying, which Ben, who looks pretty fit and able to my eyes, shrugs off good naturedly. I have a slight urge to be teacher’s pet at this point. It’s a problem I have I think, with authority. I always want to be the favourite. Whatever it is, I want to get an A grade in it. Also I have emailed Ben to tell him that we managed to get Favourite Cat adopted and his response is so warm and grateful it makes me want to make myself known to him. So, presumably, I can bask in my persona as ‘Saviour of Animals’.

And we are off. I begin, as usual, over confident, but soon drop back and lose my breathing pattern. M, I can tell, is holding back, and I can see him in front, watching the tension in his back as he tries to decide whether it is OK to leave me and to power on.

“Go on!” I tell him silently, trying to send the message telepathically, “do your best time – I’ll see you at the end.”

Somehow the telepathy works and I watch him put a spurt on, and pass all the other runners who, like me, overestimated their ability and are no good at pacing themselves.

I allow a few people to pass me, including several I had previously marked as being unfit. Which, quite frankly, serves me right. Never, I think, panting my way past the muscled body builder I had picked out to come in first, earlier, judge a book by its cover.

About half way through there is a station at which volunteers are handing out water bottles, relay style, to runners as they pass. Seeing this hone into view is a mixed blessing. It means I get water. It also means we are only half way through.

I am wet through with sweat. Even my underwear is drenched and I can feel the hot blood in my face, knowing that my usual running visage, beetroot red and shiny, has taken effect.

“Hooray!” shouts someone as I pass them, clicking their camera, “smile!”

I am feeling rather euphoric, but I can’t spare the energy to smile. I manage something between a smile, a grimace and a dribble. Does everyone get an excess of saliva in their mouth when they run or is it just me?

I have run 5k before, but in this heat have been known to come over all delicate just walking. I try to drink some water, but don’t dare stop in case I don’t manage to start again, so end up just sloshing it over my face, leaving me spluttering, through mercifully cooler. I pour the rest of the bottle over my head. It’s an added weight anyway. I’m not sure what happens to the bottle. I definitely don’t throw it on the ground so I must, at some stage, have found a bin or a recycling point. Either way I don’t have it as I approach the point at which, to my relief, I see people beginning to turn off the road and onto the beach.

The route is straight along the road once we join the main road from the welfare centre. Towards the end we take a side street down onto the beach and double back on ourselves along the sand to end up at Time for Lime.

Running on the road has actually been really nice. Thai people are stopping on their motorcycles, some staring open mouthed and in frank disbelief at our idiocy.

“Thai people,” says Boris, “do not exercise.”

M and I have encountered enough sheer amazement when we walk. Running is quite another matter. But everyone we pass is smiling through their wonder, several wave at us and a good number of onlookers, both Thai and tourist, cheer as we pass.

“Keep it up! Well done!” says someone, perhaps to us in general, but I like to think just to me as I struggle past on the steaming road surface. I remember how much it matters, how much of a difference it can make to hear that, and I watch myself put a spurt on and hold my head up higher.

The turn off onto the beach means it’s all nearly over and I run down it almost at a sprint, though I slow at the beach. The sand is hot and hard to run on, even in running shoes. There is no shade from the burning sun and the sea, which I look at to try to distract myself, is beautiful but lethal, sending blinding reflections into my eyes as I pass. My eyes stream, though they are doing that anyway from the sweat in them. I wonder why anybody actually runs in this climate and then remember that nobody does. Though, as if to give the lie to that, I have totally lost sight of M.

I think of the animals. Somehow, in my mind as I blearily but determinedly advance towards the finish line, I am, single handedly saving every animal on Koh Lanta. The fact that whether I stop running or walk doesn’t matter, because it’s the money I paid to enter that will save them, the fact that even this is just a drop in the ocean for the Animal Welfare Centre, do not register with me. I am saving the animals. Look, I have nearly finished and I didn’t stop running. Phew. Thank goodness. Now the animals are safe.

I reach the row of flags which marks the finish line. And I realise that coming in near the end as I am doing, is actually fantastic. There is a crowd of enthusiastic cheerers welcoming me in at the finish line, and as they, having finished their own runs much earlier, clap and whoop as I make it through, I get a rush of emotion mixed with relief and something between tears and shouting floods through me, so that I make a sort of panting yelp of triumph, and run into the waiting arms of M.

Never mind that he came in quite close to the front, he encircles me in his arms, hands me water and congratulates me as if I am an Olympic champion. And really, that’s what I feel like, a champion.

Later, over the celebration beer and raffle tickets and cut price food that marks the end of the run for the participants at Time for Lime, M tells me that the earlier one came in the race, the less people there were to cheer for you, and that the delicate looking twins I had noticed earlier, had outpaced everyone else by far. There are raffle prizes and awards for the front runners, and a general sense of enormous bonhomie. I bump into Ben who is bemusedly trying to cut spring rolls into sections,

“I can suture a cat,” he says, “but I can’t cut a spring roll so it looks edible.”

I tell him that suturing a cat is much more important, and introduce myself, still, I think, a little in the ‘I have single handedly saved the animals’ mindset. We have a nice chat about animals and the centre, and he helps me carry the food back to M, who is relaxing his ridiculously nonchalant body, in a deck chair in front of the sea.

I absolutely stink of sweat and my rather thwarted attempt to do what the Thais are always telling you not to do, and use the shower head in the toilet to wash myself off (it is supposed to be used like a B’day), has not really made much in the way of inroads against it.

Never mind though. Today I saved the animals. Favourite Cat would be proud of me.

Postscript: This was not a sponsored event, but if you wanted to donate to the Animal Welfare Centre, you can do so via paypal on its website here: http://www.lantaanimalwelfare.com

No pressure. But it would probably be a heck of a lot easier than running 5K in the 40 degree heat. I’ll even cheer for you, if you like.

The Christmas Cat: Part Four - Farewell

I will admit to a little poetic licence here. In fact the cats were not collected and rehomed by B and Boris until tomorrow morning. But as I am writing this a little while after the event, I have the ability to predict the future, and as the cats were supposed to be picked up today, but circumstances delayed this, we more or less spent the day expecting the rehousing of the cat family, so it feels as though it happened today. In our heads at least. And tomorrow I want to talk about something else. So I will admit to my little bit of truth stretching, and then relay today, the events of tomorrow. Not something most diarists can do.

But most diarists don’t get weeks out of date with their entries.

Boris and B turn up with a cat carrier, large enough to take a whole family, and a thick blanket. It will be important, Boris tells us, to make sure that Favourite Cat feels secure as she is moved, and also that she can’t see where she is going, to avoid the temptation for her to try to move the kittens back to our house. Boris and B live significantly far enough down the one street that more or less encapsulates the whole village, that such a journey would be long, arduous, and fraught with danger. And then we’d have to take them all back again.

I stroke Favourite Cat gently, and talk to her. Then we lift her into the box and quickly pick up her kittens, one by one, and place them, gently, in the box next to her. We want to minimise any stress she might feel about the safety of her kittens, and to move her first, then them to her, seems the best way to do it. Sure enough she is distracted by the arrival of each kitten, licking it and settling it, so that she doesn’t start to worry about the remainder. When all four are settled with her in the box, she blinks, trustingly up at us.

“Goodbye Favourite Cat” I say, though I will in fact walk down with them to see her settled. She narrows her eyes, stretches out, and the kittens begin to suckle. We cover her up and set off down the road, Boris carrying the basket carefully.

She doesn’t meow until the box is put down, after some discussion, in the corner of the room. We have brought the cardboard box and some old trousers I had donated for a nest while they were settled in our house, to bring the familiar smells with her, to help her feel safe. We settle cats, box and blanket in the corner, open the box, watch and wait.

She begins by finishing suckling her kittens. That done, she jumps out of the box and begins, carefully, to sniff her way around the house. Bumping into the two cats who already live there, both new and old cats pause, freeze, and eye each other carefully. There is no hissing or fighting. They simply each sit down, warily, eyeing the other carefully, a safe distance away.

“Don’t worry,” says Boris to the collected feline audience, settling himself down between new cat and old, a hand on each, “see I am stroking both of you equally. No need to be jealous.”

They settle a little further into the floor, ears pricked up, listening. The kittens are asleep. Everything, I can see, is going to be fine.

“Do you mind if I take this thing off?” says Boris, eyeing Favourite Cat’s collar distastefully.

“Of course,” I say. I had not been a fan of that collar myself. Once again if you believe that cats should be left to be free, don’t put unnatural collars on them. If you’re going to turn them out on the street when they get pregnant because you didn’t sterilise them, don’t turn them loose wearing a collar on which is a bell, so that they can’t even hunt successfully, to feed themselves. Either they are free. Or they are not free.

I open my mouth to resume this rant to Boris, but he isn’t listening.

“There,” he is saying to Favourite Cat, releasing her from the collar and throwing it away, “you are free here. OK? No collars.” He strokes her gently and she purrs and rubs her head against him. “Now you can wash your neck properly.”

My work here is done. All is well that ends well. I leave.

Postcript: Favourite Cat, renamed ‘Lila’ remained with Boris and B, made friends with the other cats, not much older than kittens themselves, and settled in like the patient, trusting cat she was. The kittens, at the point we left Thailand, were growing healthy and strong. The cat family did not try to relocate themselves back to our house. Cooed over and cossetted, and living far away from the usual haunts of the packs of wild dogs, gentle and fearful of humans but sometimes vicious to smaller cats, they knew which side their bread was buttered. And everyone, was very happy.

And if I wished we could have taken the whole family with us…well I kept quiet about it. There will be other cats. One day there will be our cats.

And in the meantime, a cat, perhaps, in every country. If there is anything that is universal, it’s cats.

The Christmas Cat: Part Three - Boxing Day

Reality, is only just around the corner, and you have to face it sometime. In the case of the cats, I know, and wake up knowing, that the sooner we face it, the better for them. I am awoken by a meow, and, peeping out through the mosquito net, I see a small, pink nosed, grey and white face, looking up at me. She is asking permission. I turn to M, he is half asleep still, warm and smiling at me, eyes closed.

“Hello cat,” he says sleepily.

I reach down and hold open the mosquito net for Favourite Cat. She jumps up with some difficulty, back legs still weak from carrying four kittens. Both before she gave birth to them, and, presumably, after, when she somehow transported them all into our house when we weren’t looking. She lies down between us, paws outstretched, the way she lies with her kittens. I regard her, sleepy myself, and so pleased to have her. And yet with so many conflicting emotions.

Favourite Cat is perfectly housetrained. She meows when she is hungry and follows us into the kitchen. She is deeply trusting, even with her kittens. She lies down with us on the bed and she has not, even once, made a mess in the house. Either she goes out to do it, or she actually uses our toilet. I can’t tell. If she uses the toilet then she is flushing it too. As flushing a Thai toilet involves filling a bucket of water and pouring it repeatedly into the toilet bowl until its contents are clean again, this seems unlikely. Such a house trained, healthy, well cared for cat, wearing a collar. Something, I can’t help thinking, doesn’t add up.

Later, my suspicions are confirmed. I have been feeling, though it has only been two days, a little guilty that we have been feeding a whole family of stray cats in S’s house. And that we haven’t actually got round to telling her. The fact is, if it wasn’t a family of kittens, I might have gently put her outside, or allowed her in to visit. But I wouldn’t have fed her. I am aware that this isn’t my house and that I cannot keep on feeding her. But the kittens are very young and she is feeding them. It feels like a very different situation.

Even so, as M is preparing breakfast, I nip out. Sure enough, I bump into S.

“There’s something I wanted to just mention,” I say carefully, formalities and ‘happy Christmass’es over with, “we um..well a cat came in and had kittens in our cupboard!”

Careful as I am being, I have been unable to keep the excitement out of my voice. But S is not sharing it.

“Oh no!” she says, sympathetically, “put them out. Put them out and close the door. That’s the best way to get rid of them.”

I am catching my breath a little, but I know in my heart that this would be S’s reaction. She’s not a monster, but she has been living in Thailand for 14 years now. She has the Thai attitude to animals and, even more to the point, it’s her guest house.

“Well obviously they can’t stay,” I say hurriedly, “because we won’t be there. But I am hoping to get them sorted out humanely.”

I can’t help but linger a little on the word ‘humane’.

“The kittens are too small to be moved really,” I keep talking “and so we will make sure that by the time we leave I will get them adopted. Take them to the Animal Welfare Centre or something. Or maybe B will take them on.”

I see S’s face.

“We’ll make sure they are gone by the time we leave,” I say again.

“Well I’d like them out before then, ideally,” says S.

I am terrified that S will force us to simply dump the cat family back out on the street.

“Leave it with me.” I say, “Give us a couple of days. We’ll do it humanely.” That word again - I can’t help it.

“They probably belong to next door,” says S after I explain about the collar, though by this time something in me simply wants to turn and run, and shut the door behind us. “She probably put her out when she got pregnant. That’s the Thai way. It’s a Buddhism thing. They believe animals should be free.”

“Well anyway,” I say, “see you later. I’ll sort it out of course.” I flash her what I hope is a reassuring smile and then I actually do pretty much turn tail and run. For the first time since I first learned about the door code in Thailand, I deliberately shut the door behind me. And lock it.

When I return to join M, he shares my feelings that the cats should not simply be put out on the street, but he isn’t surprised. “You always have to be so honest, don’t you,” he says, kissing my forehead gently, “you didn’t need to tell her until we’d sorted it out. I didn’t know that was what you were going to do or I’d have stopped you. Of course she would react like that. It’s her house and she’s been living for 14 years in Thailand.”

Thai’s are not cruel, though they have a bad reputation in respect of animals. But they are rather shruggy about stray cats and dogs, not particularly moved by them and believing, especially the Buddhists, in nature ‘taking its course’ without humans interfering. I do have some understanding, and indeed some sympathy, for that point of view, but I am angry with the neighbours, if S’s assumption is true.

“It’s NOT natural,” I say crossly, “for humans to take animals in and put collars on them, domesticate them so they don’t have enough instinct to survive in the wild, but not take the trouble to sterilise them either. They do it FOR FREE in the Animal Welfare Centre, to deal with the over population, which is causing starvation and suffering for the animals.”

“I know. I know.” says M, sadly.

“I mean,” I am gaining momentum in what is the first and so far only time I have felt that I cannot respect an aspect of another culture. Hitherto I have been careful always to notice the good, to accept what seems odd. But on this I am adamant, “if you are going to domesticate an animal, then go the whole way. Either sterilise them if you don’t want the kittens, or if you can’t be bothered to even do that, FOR FREE, then accept your responsibility for your domesticated cat and look after or at least find another home for the kittens. It’s not OK. It’s not natural to take a cat in then dump it out on the street when it’s at its most vulnerable.” 

M dishes up breakfast.

“Either the cat is free,” I say, pulling drawers open and locating chopsticks and soy sauce, “or the cat is not free. If you only take half the responsibility,” I pour water into glasses, “then the only thing that you are keeping free is YOU.”

We write two emails, together. One to B, to say that we are going to ask the animal welfare centre if they can take the cat family, but that, as she had said she might want to adopt them herself, we wanted to give her first choice, without making her feel obliged. The second, to the animal welfare centre, explaining the situation, and asking if they could take the cats, assuming our friend cannot adopt them. It’s worrying on both counts. The animal welfare centre is vastly oversubscribed. And B and Boris already have two cats. Another five would mean seven. Seven is quite a lot of cats.

Then, with nothing more we can do, we embark on our traditional boxing day walk. We have planned to go to the National Park, do the hike around it, and then spend some time on the secluded beach there. I look in on the cats again before we go. Favourite Cat is stretched out and the look on her sleeping face, with her kittens, asleep at her teats is blissful. It reminds me, poignantly, of a moment at my Grandfather’s funeral, watching my two year old niece. She had no idea of the gravity of the situation, but had been running round and round the church building while all the adults had moved into the side building for the wake, to her hearts content, giggling and shrieking. Now she had joined us for the wake, and was, obediently, no longer running about, but as I glanced up at her, I saw her rise up for a moment onto her tiptoes, with a joyful little laugh to herself, looking so innocently and perfectly happy, that this, more than anything else in what was a very moving funeral, brought a tear to my eye. Favourite Cat does not know she is, what I am rather dramatically terming to myself, in danger.

The walk around the National Park is beautiful. In honour of my new found ‘write your own story’ attitude, I climb to the top of the lighthouse, using some four separate rickety ladders, and the hike around the park itself involves a bit of scrambling, and a bit of careful, and wobbly balancing over a bridge. I feel brave and happy and the beach really is natural and beautiful. We swim in the sea and we eat an ice cream, pursued by some rather threatening monkeys. They surround us, snarling and make several runs to jump up to snatch the ice creams out of our hands. In the end M makes a big gesture, raises his arms to make himself look bigger, and roars at the monkeys. They retreat. We have out monkeyed the monkeys.

Even so, we wade out to sea to eat our ice creams in peace.

When we come back I check my phone immediately. The animal welfare centre have sent an apologetic email, probably a very difficult one for them to send, explaining that they simply cannot take in any more animals though they could offer free medical treatment if needed, so the animals were not ill or suffering. The angst caused by this is short lived, luckily. Amid a flurry of skype conversations with close friends for Christmas, B and Boris drop round to see the kittens – and to make arrangements to adopt them.

“We were always going to take them,” says B, soothingly, when I release a burst of heartfelt gratitude and relief.

I look sideways at Boris. He is as soft hearted as B, but more practical. It was he I had wanted to be certain they could afford the money and space needed to look after another five cats. He is staring at the kittens,

“I think,” he says thoughtfully, “that the orange and grey one might be my favourite.”

I smile. The cats will be fine. The cats that came for Christmas will be given a happy and loving home. Not just for Christmas. For life.  Just like in the poster.

“..or maybe the stripey one,” says Boris, “can I have two favourites?”

The Christmas Cat: Part Two - Christmas

For me, one of the most enduring features of the Christmas story is the idea of a God in child form. The innocence and helplessness of a baby is affecting at the best of times. If that baby embodies a redemptive, yet all powerful God, the story gains a beautiful irony. I have often wondered, why the Christian religion, being, like all religions, rich in colour and stories, we focus so much on this part, on the birth, the beginning. Is it that we never get past it, we are so busy trying to get our minds around this part that we cannot begin to comprehend the rest, especially when it ends so tragically, so bloodily and yet so triumphantly? Or is it that this part of the story, with its symbolic offerings, Gold for a King, Frankincense for suffering, Myrrh for death, actually embodies, somehow, all of the rest? And then there is that haunting phrase. ‘Mary saw these things. And pondered them in her heart.’ What dark forebodings did she have? What a terrible and wonderful mixture of emotions. What awe and wonder.

And if you believe it’s just a story, with no truth in it, but a clever and deep analogy, it still works. If you are doggedly against the whole thing, and focus only on Santa Claus and Christmas Trees, is the whole festival not about life and love? About children and innocence? About Good and Evil? At the very least, tis the season to be jolly. And that’s quite something.

Looking at our very own cat nativity this Christmas, I feel the power of children. There is something indescribably touching about the four, furry forms which suckle, squeaking, at their Mother’s breast on Christmas Day. They are helpless, and in fact a little dull. All they can do is suckle and sleep. They cannot even manage a meow yet, and their eyes are not quite open. They are utterly dependent on Favourite Cat, and in fact it is she, that Mother love which is most fascinating. When I sneak a peek every so often, (all too often according to M) into our cupboard, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness, it is her that I look at. The way she cleans her babies, her protective paw over them, her stretched out abandonment as they climb roughly about over her, seeking her teats. Her brief periods of respite, when she leaves them, exhausted, to venture out for some food. Her watchful gaze as we approach the cupboard and even more touchingly, how her body and her eyes relax as she recognises us, submitting to a stroke on the head, purring mightily.

After discovering her yesterday, I ran to the shop to buy food, knowing that a suckling cat will be ravenously hungry. We supply her with food and water, and, with a twinge of guilt, I head out again to seek, not S, whose house it is, and in whose house we seem to have started to feed stray cats, but B, whose love for her own rescued kittens is so strong, bordering, rather like mine, on the obsessive. B and Boris come over to have a look and Boris, who knows a lot about cats, tells us that the kittens are not new born. They are about a week or two old. She must, he says, have had them outside and then brought them in here because she felt they would be safe here.

We are hugely honoured and deeply touched. But we are not stupid. The gift Favourite Cat has given us, of bringing her family in to our home for Christmas, has a bitter edge to it. We can’t let them stay because we don’t actually live here. And we can’t take a cat family of five, including young kittens, around the world with us. It wouldn’t be fair, isn’t allowed (you can take only two animals per person on a flight), and would do the cats much more harm than good.

Boris, being Thai, and basically the knowledge imparter in this situation, (B and I are reduced to melting pools – I especially am so excited, so touched and so moved by this addition to our temporary home, I am unable to do much more than goo. Literally.)  manages to speak to our next door neighbour.

There is an excited conversation in Thai. Boris turns to us.

“She put a collar on her,” he says, “because she thought it looked nice. But she’s not her cat.”

“So she isn’t owned?” I say wonderingly, and disappointedly. Cats for Christmas is lovely for us, but I want them to have a more permanent safe house.

“No,” says Boris, though he frowns as he says it, “but she looks much too well cared for to be a stray.”

The question, hanging in the air, but as yet unvoiced, is whether in fact Favourite Cat was once owned by our Thai neighbours, but abandoned when she became pregnant.

That was yesterday. We chose not to think about it for today, because it’s Christmas. But it’s difficult to look after a cat who you know you will ultimately have to abandon, who you know you will ultimately have to loose. Are you doing the cat a disservice? Or a favour?

Either way, right now, the kittens should not be moved. So we feed Favourite Cat, and we supply her a stable.

Which is rather stretching the anology. But still. Is it blasphemous, I wonder, to draw analogies between a cat family and the nativity?

I don’t know. But it’s a little difficult not to.

As we might be the only people in the village who are marking this day, (neither Buddhists, Sea Gypsies or Muslims celebrate it), somehow our home, with its cat family seeking refuge, and its carefully planned Christmas meals using Thai ingredients and a tiny oven which we have to check underneath for Lazurus the lizard before we turn on, feels, for today, like it somehow contains Christmas. We have made a Christmas decoration, out of a candle from Jin’s shop, and some shells from the beach, and arranged it on the table. M and I have swapped ‘cards’ though these are not so easy to get hold of in Thailand. Mine is a notebook, in which M has written a carefully worded message and an endorsement to use the notebook to record nice things. Compliments, triumphs, etc.

“You haven’t only discovered bad things on this journey”, is a summary of his sentiment, “try to remember the good.”

It is certainly more natural to remember, and to beat yourself with, the bad things you’ve done. The failures, the disappointments. It takes more effort to do the same thing with the positives. Why, I wonder. Or is it just me?

M’s card is actually a card, though emblazoned with a colourful picture of an elephant. So not especially Christmassy. It contains a long message in which I thank him for journeying with me, for not abandoning me half way through, for his wisdom and his patience.

We do not swap presents. We have decided that for each of us, it is the traditional, carefully worded, heart felt message we write in our cards, which is the thing we most value.

And is the most easily transported. If you happen to be travelling around the world.

And so, we celebrate Christmas. We have a cat family in the cupboard, an enormous amount of food, and a Christmas film.

We are, for the moment, perfectly happy. But that perfect happiness is made, oddly, the more perfect for not being. The cats, like the baby Jesus, are a mixed celebration. They are, as for Mary, so bitter, and so sweet. Christmas itself, without our families, though with each other, has its own edge of sadness, and our skype conversations, though short snippets, riddled with internet unpredictability and with all the joys and sorrows of family life, all those absent, and all those who miss them, all those suffering, and all those who love them, are all the sweeter for their sharper edges.

We go to bed in a whirl of love. For the people who weren’t here with us, and the people who were. For the opportunities we have, and for each other.

Downstairs, a cat stretches out with her kittens. She licks them busily, falls asleep curled around them. She does not know what their future holds. But perhaps, for now, it doesn’t matter.

The Christmas Cat: Part One - Christmas Eve

So far, everywhere we have stayed there has been a cat. Given our obsession with cats, this is fantastic. For long years we have longed for a cat to share our living space and our lives with us, but have been ‘just about to travel’ for at least the last 4 years, and so have been unwilling to invite a cat in, only to abandon it. Or drag it around the world with us. Which would be uncomfortable for both cat and us, as our hands would fall off trying to keep up with the paperwork, and the poor cat would spend much of its time in airport quarantine. The plan is to rescue a cat once we get back, assuming we can find a flat which allows animals.

In the meantime, as I have mentioned before, we are glass of wine, film, good company and craft beer people. We are not clubbers. (Though M can pull some impressive moves in the right setting, and I have been known to hit the dance floor in the right company. Both assuming the music is good. We disapprove of new fangled bands who are a quarter of our combined ages. Did I mention we are becoming rather comfortably middle aged?) So, whilst neither of us have grown up with a cat or lived with one, a curled up cat on the sofa, or a playful cat knocking over ornaments, for us exemplifies home. Having a cat in each place has helped us to achieve what was our original goal – to feel, rather than as though we have visited eleven countries, as though we have lived in them. This is the reasoning behind cooking for ourselves, shopping at local markets, staying long enough to make local friends and choosing one place to stay in for a whole month.

“You must be mad,” said some people.

“I want to be you” said others.

Whichever way, it has worked for us. We have regretted none of our choices so far. We have another eight months to go, so we’ll see, but I have an inkling this feeling will continue throughout.

Back to the cats. In Vietnam we had Chiba, a small tortoise shell cat, not much older than a kitten, full of life and play, but perfectly willing to curl up on our bed with us at night. She was a rescued stray, brought home on our host’s motorbike. And for one month, she was as much our cat as Vietnam was our home.

In Cambodia, A, our next door neighbour and now good friend, was kind enough to allow us to share her little black and orange cat, Vanilla. Vanilla was equally playful and whimsical and also not much more than a kitten. She played with us in the garden, visited us in our bungalow, and generally exemplified home.

It was getting to be an expectation. But thus far, Thailand had not provided such a local feline friend. At least not in our house. Beautiful as our pole house is, out over the sea, with devastating views that can take your breath away each day, or each time you look out at them, it is a house intended for short stay guests. It does not contain a cat. And our attempts to befriend some stray baby mice, met with reasonable disapproval from our host.

So we have made the best of it. We, I in particular, have stopped to stroke every stray cat we come across, and have played with B’s two kitten/cats, both about the same age as Chiba and Vanilla.

There is one cat in particular who we have fallen a little in love with. She wears a collar, which makes us assume she is not a stray, and she is beautiful. She is grey and white, with little white feet, and a friendly, gentle face with a pink nose. She looks too healthy to be a stray and, as she is often around our front door, we have been assuming she belongs to one of the local Thai families next door. I have been stopping to make a fuss of her each time I enter or leave the house and now she meows in greeting and trots over to me to receive the love each time I round the corner. I say trots.  ‘Favourite cat’ as we have named her, is quite pregnant. It’s not so much a trot as a waddle. Her back legs stagger slightly under her bulging tummy, and her teats, when she rolls over for a gentle stroke on her strained tummy, are swollen and ready to care for her family.

“Hello Favourite Cat”, I say to her gently each time, “how are those babies? OK? How are you doing?”

I ask her daily. She never replies.

Today, however, she came in to see me. I was sat in the room nearest the road, which is unusual. Generally we leave our door open, as is the Thai tradition, but spend most of our time, when we are in, either in the kitchen or out on the deck, transfixed by the view. We have been visited by a crab, by a tourist looking for S, and by S and B in passing. It’s nice. Once we even had a visit from a big, gentle stray dog, who padded all the way out to the deck to see us, sat down with us, and then accompanied us when we went out to the shops.

One of the reasons it took us a while to get comfortable with living with the doors open, was because you can’t, out towards the kitchen and the deck, at the back of the house, really see what human or animal might be wandering in until they make their way out to find you. If they chose to wander around without going as far as the kitchen, we don’t really know that they’ve been there.

So when Favourite Cat came in through the door, I was aware it might not be the first time she’d visited. I was very excited of course, and leaped off the sofa where I was supposed to be catching up on my blogging, so far behind already, greeting her and bending down to stroke her. I don’t ask her how her babies are today, partly because a couple of days ago we noticed that she didn’t seem quite so pregnant any more.

“Perhaps she’s had her babies”, I said to M.

“Maybe,” he said, “perhaps they’re tucked away inside.”

“Probably,” I say, “which might be why we haven’t seen her for a couple of days.”

To say we think no more of it would be a lie, as I am excited to see the kittens, once they are old enough for her to allow them out to see us, but it doesn’t go any further than that. I don’t have the Thai to ask the neighbours and the ones we think might own her, keep themselves very much to themselves so I don’t like to intrude and quiz them about their cat. Their door is usually firmly closed. In Thai culture that means, “leave me alone”, so we do.

Today Favourite Cat really doesn’t seem interested in a stroke. She moves past me with nothing more than a cursory brush around my ankles, as if to say, “don’t be offended but I really have work to do.”

She sniffs each corner and then, casually, walks through the lounge and into the hallway. I follow her. Without a moment’s hesitation, she slinks underneath the stairs and rounds the corner into the cupboard where we once searched for a mouse nest. It’s a dark cupboard with rat poison and chemical cleaners and I am concerned that she will get shut in if we go out without realising she’s there.

“Hey, now”, I say gently, sliding the cupboard door open a crack. It’s dark in there but I can just see her. She’s crouched in the corner, where there is a tiny space amid the wood varnish and bleach and tools. She’s looking at me, very alert.

“You can’t stay in there,” I say, “I mean I don’t mind you being here but I don’t want you to eat the mouse poison or get shut in.”

I reach in slowly, let her sniff my hand and then prepare to gently lift her out, when there is a movement beneath her. I freeze and stare. Now that my eyes adjust to the darkness I see that she is crouching over a number of furry, wriggling forms. I draw my hand away.

“M!” I breathe “M, come quickly. I think Favourite Cat has had her kittens!”

Forging the Path

After the tumultuous last few days, which have been tumultuous only inside my mind, and in fact perfectly calm and harmonious on the outside, today is the calm after the storm.  The growing inferiority complex had, I believe, been made more obvious by travelling, rather than created by it, removing, as travelling does, many of the various reasons or causes we attribute to things in daily life. Alongside that, travelling gives you time to think. It shows you your inadequacies, it brings you to your knees under the weight of them, but it does give you time, not only to consider them in the first place, but to work out a resolution. How much, I wonder, do we have going on under the surface as we battle the more prosaic parts of our everyday lives? As we get up, go to work, do the washing, go to the bank, are there storms brewing which we don’t have the time to face? Do they come out in other ways? In the sniping between husband and wife, which leads so many of us to make the sort of annoying snide comments M and I heard so much in the run up to our wedding, (“oh this is the beginning of the end, you won’t be so dewey eyed later” etc. etc. ad nauseum and beyond.) Or in the casual yet oh so depressing cynicism, (“Well that sounds too good to be true”, “yeah the kids are nice now. Just wait till they grew up. They’ll be corrupted soon enough.” Life, apparently, is a bitch. And then you die.)

We walk and talk. M and I are good at that, and either walking or eating are our prime times for forgetting time, appointments or the washing up, and just having a good old natter. It’s something I love about him. He doesn’t mind entering into a philosophical debate. Or running about talking in silly voices and generally being silly. There are a lot of things M doesn’t mind doing. It helps, if you’re going to be married to whimsical old me.

M says he wonders about the generally accepted idea that everybody gets jaded as they get older.  He looked at a photo recently, of us on our wedding day, only just over a year ago, and noted how much younger we looked. It was, he thinks, a certain light in our eyes, that did it. Have we, I ask him worriedly, lost that light now? Is it inevitable? Do people older than a certain age, or on days other than specific celebrations, no longer have a light?  Do we lose our twinkle?

Neither of us want to accept that. We talk about the last few days in which I have fought, lost and then belatedly won a battle with just that concept, that dying of the light.  But, as I say again to M, I just don’t think that’s OK. I’m not willing to say that life is just like that. If something is wrong, there is always something you can do to make it better. And it isn’t OK to lie back and accept bad behaviour in yourself based on an idea that it is going to be inevitable. It isn’t. But it takes effort and heartache.

M says he thinks that part of this widespread attitude that becoming jaded is unavoidable, is based on our culture, which celebrates the beginning of things but not the duration. We mark a wedding day, but do not necessarily remember, daily, how lucky we are to be together. We mark anniversaries of the occasion, but sometimes forget that what we are celebrating is not the occasion, but its ongoing state. We don’t celebrate the status quo, even when the status quo is brimfull of things worth celebrating. The same is true of New Year, of Christmas, of any public holiday.

But to work against this idea of the gradual depreciation in value of our spirit, or of our lives in general, does take effort, and to work against what may or may not be a ‘natural’ slippage in the way we treat one another, the way we view life, the way we respond to a challenge, takes the sort of painful facing of the truth which I have found so brutal over the last few days. When the effort itself is painful, it’s hard to tell whether there is enough of a reward to justify it.

And there is as always, that slippery ‘balance’ to be obtained. Being hard on ourselves will make us hard on others and continually miserable. To allow ourselves the sort of acceptance, patience and willingness to empathise we might offer to others, but at the same time to keep focus on the necessity of the effort involved to curb the more negative of our natural spirals, is incredibly difficult, perhaps even impossible.

Life, we agree, if it is to be lived with a goal of being happy and imbuing others around us with happiness, is a series of little tweaks. You have to be mindful, watchful, always of tendencies in your self and your circumstances, that may be heading, however subtly, in a downwards direction, and make small adjustments to put it back on track.

It’s a great metaphor, and a wise truth. But hard to know precisely where the ‘track’ is.

There are a lot of Christian metaphors about pathways. My favourite has always been in Pilgrim’s Progress, in which the main protagonist has to choose between a tough looking pathway, overgrown and steep, and a rather more pleasant walkway, wider and greener. The latter looks good, but it doesn’t lead anywhere. It is the harder route that will really take him to his final destination. The reason I like this one is that the protagonist doesn’t have any information. He sees two  pathways, both claiming to lead to the same place. I have often felt that causal references to taking the road least travelled by, or to walking the narrow path are a little glib. Yes if I knew that, and had that information and was literally standing at a cross roads looking at a narrow path and a wide one, I would of course chose the narrow. If I was literally making a choice of walking partner, between a glowing light and a warm, welcoming pair of holy arms and a cackling hooligan in a red suit with a pitchfork, I’d walk with the former. (Even if the latter, in that particular picture, does actually sound like the more interesting partner).

But it isn’t that simple. Good does not always look good, wise disguises itself as stupid, paths are not laid out, but have to be forged.

“It’s a minefield, really,” I say to M, “if you talk about things or self examine too  much you start navel gazing and lose perspective or you become one of those ultra emotional hysterics who have to discuss everything in fine detail for hours only getting themselves all het up in the process. If you ignore things you sink into habits which later you find harder to resolve.”

He agrees. There is a pause. We have walked a 20 kilometre round trip and we have not found the answer.

“How long would you have to walk before you figured out the perfect anti-jading solution?”, I wonder.

“I don’t know,” says M, “perhaps all your life?”

The Great Travelling Meltdown: Conclusion - An Uncommonly Clean Resolution

And, to pick up the story from it’s really quite riveting cliff hanger yesterday, I do indeed open the door, go back into the kitchen and COOK. I take the three recipes, I turn the heat back on, pick up the chopping board and the knife and the ingredients and I, to use an American phrase, cook the hell of them. We do have a virtual beer session with our friends, which is predictably fantastic. They are a set of people for whom the miles do not make a difference, and, as they are also one of those groups of people with whom it is possible to share any sadnesses, but also with whom it is possible to forget them, and lose ourselves in just having fun, they are perfect.

Back to the cooking though, as I triumphantly pile my Som Tam salad onto a plate, adding the garnish of a carefully patterned ring of sliced tomato and cucumber, I feel confidence flooding through me like a transfusion.

“Wow.” Says M.

It’s all the endorsement I need. I add a flourish to each dish, boil eggs as an added garnish and marinade them in soy sauce. I arrange each dish lovingly, moving them around until they are in what seems to me to be the perfect formation. If M is agog he is kind enough not to say so.

The fact is, it is clear to me as I cook, and my mind settles, that I have always known that this was the solution. I am an ‘all or nothing’ person. If I am sad because I can’t do something, the only way I know to get over it is to do it. And some. Not just do it, but really do it.

Also, I reason as I carefully chop my tomatoes, rivalling M’s perfect geometric shapes (almost), it is hardly a recipe for self respect if you don’t pull your weight at things. M genuinely loves to cook and will, I know be actually disappointed if I insist on doing all of it. But I should do more. It’s never a good idea to let yourself get to a stage where you have, for so long, relied on somebody else to do something, that you start to be fearful of doing it yourself, or even forget how.

“Do you think,” I ask M, who has not been privy to this rather epic turn of mind, and is therefore watching me a little warily, “that we could take turns? You know I cook tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast and then you do…”

I trail off because it is the day before Christmas Eve. I know that M has lovingly and excitedly planned our Christmas Eve evening and Christmas day meals and I don’t want to steal that pleasure from him.

“Of course,” says M, like the saint that he is.

I reassure him that he can do Christmas.

Later, explaining the thinking to M, he agrees, though I think he is sorry that he couldn’t reach in and magically alter my escalating state of self disappointment at the time.

“It isn’t something you can help with,” I tell him, “only I can do it, it has to come from the same brain that concocted the problem.”

And this is the answer. This, to me, absolutely embodies the answer. Live life, says my tag line for this blog, so that it makes a good story. But you can’t just follow a plot someone else writes for you. If you want a good story, you have to write it.

“They say you go travelling to discover yourself” I have said, “but all I am discovering are things I’m no good at, or how many things I am too scared to enjoy.”

But I realise now that you have to decide what it is that you want to discover, and then set out to find it. I don’t want to come home and say to people that I went travelling and discovered that I was a scaredey cat. I want to come home and say that I discovered I was scared, but I did it anyway. That I took those fears by the throat and I conquered them.  My mistake was assuming that travelling handed things to you on a plate. That you simply became relaxed and chilled out and more confident and fearless just by virtue of having been away. That’s not the case, I was right the first time – travelling really is brutal. But you have a choice of what you do with this new information. M and I could buckle under the strain, or grow stronger together. And in fact at no point have I doubted that we were doing that. But I don’t have to simply note my fearfulness or my tendency to panic and feel sad about it. If I want to discover inner strength, I have to look for it. Treasure is never so easily come by.

“We are conquering fears.” said the German couple we met back in Dalat, as they confronted snakes and jumped off the top of waterfalls.

And yes. It is a verb. To conquer. It doesn’t just happen. You have to drive it.

M and I will cycle again when we get the chance. I will admit how I feel about it but doggedly do it, until I don’t feel that way any longer.

When we are in New Zealand, the adrenaline capital of the world, we will do something like canyoning, in safe hands, and in my instigation. I will tell the organisers I am petrified and that I am here to get over that. When I mention something else we might do in New Zealand, FlyBoarding, my friends chorus “oh no. There’s no way I would do that, I’d be far too scared.”  But that wasn’t something I was actually afraid of. Nor snakes for that matter. Or spiders. My issue happens to be bikes. And heights. And not being good enough.

Everybody is afraid of something. It’s not just me.

Fearlessness, is a state of mind. And I am not here to discover. I am here to become.

Postscript: I am writing this on 11 January, having become hopelessly, but happily, behind with blogging. I am therefore in a good position to tell you that having come to this conclusion, and having reached this pinnacle of confidence crises, this travelling meltdown, I have never again felt that way. We have been cycling and I have climbed high structures to see beautiful scenery. I have cooked some meals I am very proud of, and made a lot of friends along the way. Travelling is ruthlessly honest. You discover what you are made of. But once you’ve discovered it, you can mix it about a bit. Just don’t expect the rose bushes not to be thorny.