Picking wild blackberries along the Thames Path

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!

What are the odds...

...of you taking your car to the garage and being handed the keys to a brand-spanking-new, 2.0 Turbo Sport Saab, with 300 miles on the clock, as a replacement car?

...of you driving the said replacement car to an arboretum (posh word - I know!) with a chap wearing a Stetson in the backseat and encountering a flash thunderstorm on the way?

...of having the three-quid-a-head arboretum entry fee waived?

...of you seeing an ostentation (posher word - I know!) of peacocks sauntering casually across your path?

...of you coming back to the said swanky replacement car in the car park only to find two of the said peacocks on the roof of the car, and about six others around it?

...of one of the chaps atop the car, read my lips, f-l-y-i-n-g to the nearby tree to join the other tree-dwelling peacocks?

...of nothing (including throwing twigs, shouting and waving arms, trying to get mobile phones to play jangly ringtones, and trying to toot the horn or set off the car alarm) working to get the lone peacock off the top of the car?

...of the chap getting comfortable enough to take a dump on on the shiny blue top of the said swanky replacement car?

...that what it would finally take to get the determined and now relieved peacock off the car would be a petite lady park ranger shooing him away with a red A4 ring binder, no less?

You don't believe me, do you?

Except, may be, the part about the chap wearing the Stetson.

Now, off to deal with the peacock poop on the roof.

I Did It!

It took over two months of excitement, a shameful aggregate of about two weeks' worth of training, lots of encouragement from friends and family, and 52 long minutes to get across the finish line of the Race for Life 2008 and all I can say is that it was so much fun!

Those who know me will know that I'm no athlete and will not go anywhere near any activity that can even remotely be described as 'running'. I can walk for miles (try not to look too surprised, will you?) quite happily but attempting to run is a different matter altogether. I knew I'd be able to walk the 5k but I thought to myself, maybe, just maybe, I could give jogging it a shot. I tried it and loved it but couldn't do more than 1k at a stretch. I huffed and puffed my way through training, walking and jogging in alternation, hating Dot for pestering me to keep jogging instead of falling off into a slow tired walk. The only time I came close to jogging the entire 5k was on Friday evening when I did about seven laps of about 400m each, stopping for a few minutes after every couple of laps. I was quite happy with this and would be happier to repeat this on Saturday.

Race Day dawned too bright, too early, and I began to seriously doubt my ability to do any jogging at all. There was this fabulous carnival atmosphere all over Oxford with lots of gaily dressed people obviously going to my race - some serious-, some mad-looking. I made my way to University Parks my trusty cheering team of mother and husband (also my 'coach/manager') in tow. I was meant to meet my friends Mandy, who is also a work colleague, and Narola who is also our neighbour who were going to be walking the stretch. Let us just say these ladies are dedicated serious walkers and would give any runners some serious competition! The race began with some cheerleading led by some lads and sponsored by Nivea, and some warming up to 'Greased Lightning' led by some girls from the Rosemary Conley bandwagon.

More nervousness followed and I was dying to get it over and done with.

When the race finally began, I started off jogging and I kept thinking to myself, I'll do five minutes of jogging and then walk and keep doing that - rinse and repeat. As I went on, I though, I'm not 'that' tired yet, let's jog a bit more. This went on till we came to the 2k mark. I then thought, 2k worth of jogging is very cool - I'm not too tired - I wonder how much further I can go before starting to walk. Halfway through the third kilometre my feet hurt from hitting the uneven ground and I felt very hot and thirsty because I couldn't be bothered to carry a water bottle around the track with me. At that time, University Parks proved to be the perfect venue because every so often we'd come to a leafy shady grove and there was this lovely cool breeze. I met Dot a few times standing by the track, taking pictures and cheering me.

It was too much for Mamma to keep following me around and so she sat on the grass enjoying the sunshine and chatting up a storm.

I have to say that after the 3k mark, I just didn't feel tired any more. It was so encouraging to think I had done the 3k without stopping once (except to redo my shoelace) and then on, at the risk of sounding preachy, it was simply a case of mind over matter.

In my head, I wasn't tired or bored, and enjoying myself thoroughly. It was easy to keep the end in sight and when I crossed the finish posts I was the happiest person alive! I gave Dot a rib-crushing hug all while wheezing and trying to tell him how I didn't stop jogging all through!

A giant THANK YOU to all of you who donated so kindly and generously (I raised £90!!) to my cause and made me believe I could do it. I did think of you at the 3k mark and you were one of the reasons I didn't take the easier (for me) way out.

You know what? I think I might just do this all over again!

A Weekend in the French Pyrenees (and a quick lesson in Franglais)

I have always been more of a beach holiday person. Not much of a surprise considering I've lived most of my life in Mumbai (does that make me an 'islander'?) and my Goan heritage which ensured I got dragged to Goa (quite happily, might I add) during every school break. Since meeting Dot, I have 'discovered' the mountains. We did some walking and trekking/climbing the few times I visited him in Switzerland, and like standing in front of the ocean, being in the mountains can be humbling and uplifting all at once. We made quite a quick weekend trip to Pau, in the French Pyrenees.

We landed at the tiny but ever-so-modern Aeroport Pau and met one of the most amusing people I have met in my 30 years (he's up there among the greats). This gentleman with a collared red tee with a couple of neck buttons undone, gold chain, black leather jacket (the kind with the elasticated wrists and bottom), navy trousers, very white trainers, and a bum bag sitting atop his tummy. Let's call him Mr J. He was there with his daughter who stood by their baggage trolley, looking very disinterested, while he father walked around purposefully with his/their large passport pouch, squinting at the display boards through glasses perched at the end of his nose. Dot poked me in the ribs saying I should go chat up and try to help my lost-looking makapao brethren. We struck up a conversation and I found out that Mr J was very "katlick" but from Karnataka and now an American citizen (ah, that explains the very white trainers), who had lived in Germany for a few years, and is now visiting relatives in London (more like Southampton, but it's always London for the Indians; a little bit like all the Bengalis you meet come from Calcutta and all the Tamilians come from Chennai). So Mr J was doing the rounds of the holy places in Europe with his daughter who had never travelled out of America. They had been to the Vatican and were now en route to Lourdes, through Pau. Dot's French got us a wonderfully friendly cabbie who agreed to drop us off and then take them onward to the train station. We rode into town with Mr J and the daughter. He then proceeded to ask, like only Indians can, us how old we were, how long we had been married and why we didn't have children, and told us we should have children immediately because 'it's not good to delay'. Among lots of other interesting little stories, we exchanged numbers and they promised to 'return the kindness' if we were ever in California.

The weather was fantastic that day - almost 22 degrees and clear skies.









These pictures were taken from the Boulevard des Pyrénées which is a long elevated walkway that runs along one side of the city, with a magnificent view on the mountains. The interesting bit is that the portion of the walkway railing you are standing at, at any point, will give you the name of the peaks you can see from there. The clear weather made for some stunning vistas and a very shutter-happy Dot.












We thought it would be fairly easy to get to the mountains from the city centre but it was apparently about 60km away, not easily accessible by train the same day, so we decided to stay and explore the local area.































Sunday brought crazy weather and the tourist office suggested Lourdes which quickly appealed to my Catholic soul. It was only 30 minutes away from Pau on the terribly comfortable French trains. It turned out to be a wonderful experience. For one, it wasn't as crowded as I've heard it can get during the tourist season. The sky was overcast and it was very windy, and yet there was an eerie calm, like we were on the brink of a storm (which, as it turns out, we were!). We went down to the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, sat and prayed a while, and then took a long leisurely walk along the stream. The views were beautiful and we took pictures, as usual. We attended a service at the church. As luck would have it, we were indoors when the storm started and it was still raining when we made our way back into the town centre. Being Sunday, everything, and I mean everything, was shut. The Europeans take their Sabbath very seriously, I tell you. We made our way down winding roads and we could have well been walking in the Bandra Fair.


















Watching French TV on on Sunday night, we were introduced to the phenomenon the French call LE BINGE DRINKING. It is a vice they say has made it's way over from the neighbouring L’Angleterre and one that is causing the French much worry. The news item involved a first-hand report from a mother who said her son met some random people on 'le MSN messenger' and they met up in some isolated spot for a round of LE BINGE DRINKING. While we agreed the message was serious, we were in stitches about the newsreaders dropping their voices, going all grave, and in the Frenchest (sic) of accents, saying 'LE BINGE DRINKING'. One more for the Franglais diaries.

Monday, the last day of our trip, we trekked alongside the swollen Gave de Pau river for a few hours, and went across it into the Jurançon district, not quite making it to the vineyards the region is famous for. We also got some all important exercise along the way.































We got back to a surprisingly sunnier but as-terribly-industrial-looking-as-ever London Stansted on Tuesday morning. I have to say this trip was made more fantastic by the following:

My lightweight, completely waterproof and completely cool (and pink!) walking boots:

My fabulous (and very red) Peter Storm trail jacket: And our new trusty friend the Joby Gorillapod which makes taking 'together' pictures much more interesting than our 'nostrils' approach: