Convenience Personified

Dot and I love our morning cuppa . I used to be more of a coffee person but Tetley changed all that. Now the folk at Tetley have come up with the very clever drawstring teabags. Like Chakli here, I love to try new products (quite the opposite of Dot who thrives on familiarity) and every once in a while, you stumble upon a gem like this. Simply brilliant.

(*Image courtesy Famous Foods.)

Vrooooom Vrooooom!

That's right ladies and gentlemen; I passed my UK driving test and I am chuffed to the gills!

It has been a very interesting road to here. I got my first driving license in India in 1999 but we didn't have a car and my folks didn't feel the need to own one, given the abundance of public and private hire transport in Bombay. That meant little or no driving for quite a while. A couple of years into my working life, I contemplated buying a car and restarting the driving but by the time I got around to it, I was moving temporarily to Australia and my folks just wouldn't drive themselves, and employing a driver was extremely extravagant and wasteful to their strong middle-class values (it still is). In any case, that meant another few years of no driving. I was too skint to afford lessons as a student in Sydney and I wasn't sure I was going to hang around long enough to really need to be able to drive. However, ever since we've moved to England, I have wanted so badly to drive. We would be able to do so much more, both work and play, if I could drive. The first year we moved was when I should've done the whole take-a-few-lessons-and-have-a-go-at-the-test-routine, but our first year here was emotionally very hard and I hung back. I didn't feel ready. When I did get around to restarting lessons I found that I was dealing with the baggage of being older and therefore too cautious and sometimes hesitant. Any good driver will tell you how when you drive, you do need to have your wits about you and keep safe, but you also need that little bit of confidence, bordering ever so slightly on cocky (for want of a better word), to earn your space and respect on the road.

Well, it took me a while to get there but I've done it! I am now a fully licensed driver and very very proud of it! At the risk of this sounding like a sappy Oscar acceptance speech, thank you Pat, you're a superstar! Dot, darling, you're my voice of reason, punching bag, and my inspiration; I love you. Mamma, Mummy, Daddy and Nodot thank you for not once doubting I would do it; Nodot especially for being my source of driving gyaan. Papa for being there with me every time I'm behind that wheel (do you know I took your glasses with me to the test as a little something familiar?!; I hope you didn't pull any favours and that I passed on my merit!). To all my extended family and friends, you know who you are, and you've been so lovely and supportive all along this journey - thank you heaps.

It may all sound terribly silly to those of you who drive every day without giving it a second thought and think of it as a skill as basic as walking or talking. To me, it's a blessing and a privilege, and so, do indulge the gushing.

That's me after my maiden drive in our car with my congratulatory flowers from Dot.

I assure you this was only a pose for the camera. I do usually wear my seatbelt when I drive.

The two of us beaming. Thanks for the picture Oscar.

Une Petite Suisse

Switzerland.

The country that (horror of horrors!) does not have a common national language; where everything costs the earth; where trains and all public transport runs incredibly on time (First Great Western and Oxford Bus Company are you listening?); where people getting in don't wait for alighting or exiting passengers on buses, lifts, and the like; where people smoke as if their lives depended on it; where people are so fit and outdoorsy, despite all the smoking, it makes me want to cry; where areas of outstanding natural beauty are always just around the corner; where you could enter two countries through one airport or one railway station; where bathrooms don't have windows and all windows have secondary shutters; where clean is a state of being; where renting is not considered second best to owning your home; where you have proper summers and proper winters; where beer is a pale bubbly lager or, as Martin* eloquently put it, Eurofizz; where banking is a religion and is über efficient; where rules are everything.
(*Martin's a very respected phonetician and speech therapist and a good friend of ours.)

Dot and I were in Lausanne, Switzerland, a couple of weeks ago. Half of our week there was spent with Dot working (yeah, right) and me being the ultimate conference accessory wife, and the rest of our time was spent meeting friends, old colleagues and attending a friend's Spanish-Swiss wedding.

While Dot constantly laments the absence of a place he can call home, Lausanne is home to him, and he has lots of wonderful ties to the place and the people. I too have met almost all these friends and visited all the haunts quite a few times, and so this became a wonderful nostalgia trip.

Here are some pictures:

Dot playing around with the macro lens.





Want more? Go here. Dot's photoblog is no longer fed from his mobile. It's now a proper photoblog which he promises to update. So there.

Drinking Monaco, which is 2/3rds Eurofizz, 1/3rd lemonade, topped with a splash of grenadine syrup.
This is the remarkable Sauvabelin Tower built entirely with recycled materials and offers panoramic views of Lausanne and beyond.

See what I mean when I say outstanding natural beauty?





















We spent an afternoon at Thermalp Ovronnaz. A thermal bath in summer sounds ridiculous, I know, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to lie in an open-air jacuzzi with the stunning mountain landscape as a backdrop, could I? That said, a thermal bath is best done in the winter. Picture it - snow-capped mountains, minus-2-degree-Celsius weather, 36-degree-Celsius pools, saunas, Turkish baths, fondue in the restaurant - do you see what I see?

I know you do, except when you're wearing sunglasses and your head is taking a pounding from a hot water spout.

And then there was the wedding. What a wonderful end to a fantastic trip!