17th April 2015
Well that was a busy couple of weeks!
When I think about it, it was an extremely busy couple of weeks. Rather a tempest of celebration, travel and varying degrees of consequential sufferance.
Exhausted yet glad that I’ve lasted nearly a whole week at work, I’m now home, I’ve popped a San Miguel (I had no idea this was an Asian beer), pulled the chord on my desk lamp and I’m ready for writing action!
Somewhat difficult to know where to start though. Do I start with a young nephew launching himself off of a sofa Kung Fu stylie in his freshly opened Chinese pyjamas? Picture him, determined mischief in his eyes, kung fu growl upon his lips and fists clenched ready for battle on impact. He launches, and lands… straight onto my groin – I had been standing but hadn’t anticipated a cunning sweeping attack from the rear by the other similarly Chinese pyjama clad nephew which rendered me collapsed on the floor, an easy target for the one gathering momentum and flying, then landing, from the back of the sofa. Tactically reassessing the situation while I grasped my poor leg, and dramatising even further what was a rather painful experience, I cleverly opted for the counter attack which would exploit my easily accessible advantage: my weight. I belly flopped onto the slightly concerned pair until I felt ready to jump up and engage the appropriate stance while they floundered and gathered the breath so recently knocked from them.
Do I start at a huge wooden table, snug in the corner of a New Zealand drinkary? Tankard in hand, smiling and saying cheers and hello to my soon to be married cousin having only 30 minutes ago been collected from the airport? Minor panic ebbed when I realised that the fact she was unable to remove herself from the wheelchair she was presented to me in was only because so many people had seen her in it that she couldn’t just jump out. The charade was aptly executed until my baggage arrived and we could tear from the airport without acknowledging the scornful gazes of those who may think a wheelchair joyride somewhat inappropriate. If I started there, I’d have to concede that I was still wearing the clothes I wore to Sally’s funeral. I have no idea how long it had been as the travelling entirely threw me. Seeing as time was not a constant and I’d crossed timezones, waited in various airports had red wine and noodles for breakfast (I think. It may have been lunch) feel free to wince, in travel time that could possible have been nearly 48 hours.
Perhaps it would be better to start back there, in England, in a church, seeing Sally’s face grinning at me from a video screen and smiling with her at her ridiculously adorable sense of humour in producing a lip-syncing version of Heaven 17’s Temptation for the ‘opening act’. Although if I start there I am in danger of becoming too morose, of appearing too sad when actually what I am is grateful: grateful to those constants who whether I haven’t seen them for one week or two years always make me laugh.
Perhaps I should start somewhere entirely different? With me wading out to sea, following a nephew far more capable of catching waves than I am but loving every crash of the water and every lurch over swells. I am no surf chick, that much is obvious to even the novice water-treader who observes the board flying into my face or my dramatic paddling at the break only to be left flat, drifting and frankly a little pathetic while others fly past. Yes, perhaps here, in the ocean that I have missed greatly. Or maybe as I follow another cousin up a hill, a vast and somewhat challenging hill where I clearly struggle but attempt to maintain conversation. I see that the summit is not too far, that the gasping and burning will only last another few moments and notice that my kindly cousin has ceased attempting to draw me in to conversation at the subtle realisation that I am unable to walk and talk simultaneously! Although if I started there I would have to admit that when I reached the summit, when I took that breath, lifted my head and looked, a feeling rushed through me that was more than just appreciation for a pretty view. It was a released yet a drawing and sudden sadness that stung my eyes and made my stomach drop – not because of the cheeseburger wrapper that stumbled past in the light breeze but something else. Why is it that everything seems so profound when emotionally exhausted and grunting like a 57 year old man who has spent his life smoking while working in an aspesdos lined factory, enjoying sausage and egg McMuffins for breakfast every day for the last 30 years. Perhaps she saw it on my face, perhaps she didn’t, but my clever lady proceeded to inform me that we were just about to reach a popular dogging destination and that the reason that she knew this was not due to her own participation in such activities (honestly) but the incidental interest of a colleague of hers who had not known what dogging was and subsequent internet investigations where the spot in which I was about to stand was highlighted as a particular favourite – she’s a helpful friend to those unfit and uninformed so she is.
Or perhaps I should go back to eating meatballs with my sisters and mum who surprised me at the airport in the UK. The meatballs were gorgeous and the rice only partially cooked (my sister’s excitement at having us all together being blamed for the resulting potentially poisonous starch rather than her inability to cook rice) which I ate it all the same, enjoying watching my nephew don the Chinese dress I’d bought for Emmie while he poured imaginary tea from the wedding present I was yet to deliver to New Zealand.
A wedding may be a more appropriate place to start? A wedding where I frequently had to tell myself not to do anything wrong as we had been invited onto Mauri land for a unique and splendid ceremony. A wedding where I only clashed heads a couple of times when performing the hongi which in my uncoordinated and nervously excitable way was a superb result considering I had to perform at least twenty such manoeuvres.
Although back in Acton might be a good place to start? Wine in a good ‘ole west London pub with some of my bestest and oldest who forgave my overindulgence and entirely unexpected blowout, tolerating my drunken ramblings and proclamations in entirely good humour – even the 22 year old lads I cornered to inform them that they should read more if they were ever to sound even partially intelligent and the man who I grasped urgently and told that he had magic eyes were surprisingly encouraging. Oh, the shame! Oh, the hangover. And oh, the wreck, snuggled up with my sister the next day awaiting the arrival of the two mini monsters (although one no longer so mini and one with a personality large enough to inspire awed fear in any giant who happened upon her) with a pizza and Lucozade.
Perhaps I should start with it all and perhaps I have. Not one moment of this trip will I forget. It was one of the most beautiful, knackering, expensive (whoops – and yes, I got a telling off – thanks Val), inspiring, difficult, reassuring, fun, affirming trips I’ve had to date and I’ll do my best to write a few tales in the coming week. For now, I shall say all of the above plus the obvious: that there was much red wine consumed (far too much), two wheelchair rides, much laughter (usually at my expense) and tonnes of nephew and niece squidges (they had little choice in the matter); a few tears although many, many more laughs then a little more red wine and some drum and bass dancing (which I think impressed the New Zealand folk) before saying fond farewells and jumping once more onto a plane, destination: Shanghai and home for the time being.
It was an awesome trip (and I mean that in the proper way not the slightly watered down version so happily adopted by the kindly NZ folk. You know, those who would without questioning scale be as likely to describe having mail passed to them from the postman in the morning or a slice of bread presented to them for breakfast as ‘awesome’, as they would proclaim when confronted with Niagra Falls or gasp while watching me perform a triple heart bypass on a flailing seal and saving the life of the said seal or whisper gazing mezmerised as a five year old Spanish speaking toddler recites King Lear word for word in English while also changing voices to suit characters. Be not affronted, my excitable friends, I am merely a horrid, heartless brit). And I did have a truely awesome time. x
She went to Shanghai 