Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 1. Curtains

We may have sold our house. I say 'may' because we have accepted a low offer from our potential buyers, and they are doing a full structural survey. Who knows what further wranglings may result, even if I believe (as I do) that the faults of the house are as visible as its glories.

But we're far enough down the track to have instructed a solicitor. She was recommended by a friend who is also a solicitor. You may never be able to get an electrician if you're middle class, but you can source good conveyancing within minutes. And now we have forms to fill in, many many forms.

One of them is about fixtures and fittings. What is included in the sale? We get to tick and cross boxes (including putting prices on things we are prepare to leave but only if they are prepared to pay for them), and then if the buyers disagree (or want to haggle over a price) we negotiate via our instructed third parties. This seems potentially confrontational to me, and I'm not in the mood. And who'd take *light fittings* with them anyway?

So basically, my first thought was that I'd just tick everything. But then I got to the curtains.

We only have three pairs of curtains. Two of them I could happily never see again. But the ones in the living room are different. We bought them at Seasons Furnishings in Delhi in January 2003, a shop recommended by Plumbing S which was the devil to get to, not because it's hard to find, but because it's hard to find a rickshaw driver who will take you to a curtain shop that isn't owned by his cousin.

When we got there, M realised he'd forgotten to bring the window dimensions. So we used their phone to call the UK, woke up then-housemate S at 7 am, and made her get up and measure the window. She was really pleased about that.

It took us about 30 seconds to agree on the fabric, a deep red raw silk that we both loved on sight, and the deal was done. On the way back to our hotel we stopped in a market to buy shawls and eat momos from a street seller. It was chilly, we were happy, and the curtains were delivered to us two days later as promised, just before we were due to leave for the airport to fly home.

The red curtains have not been an unqualified success. They came with the cheapest, flimsiest possible curtain hooks, which we a) had to insert ourselves, and we did a bad job and b) have never got round to replacing. They fall out regularly and the curtains droop off the rail. They aren't very warm in the winter. And most pertinently, raw silk is a terrible choice of fabric for south-facing windows. The edges of both curtains have faded and shredded. We swap them round every couple of years (while still not replacing the hooks) to try and mitigate the worst of it, but they are basically now shabby chic, without that much of the chic.

But I love those curtains. And they're coming with us.

joella

NB The photo above was taken in 2004. That coffee table is no more (M put his foot through it one New Year's Eve), but the curtains look much the same on a sunny Sunday morning.

Playing catch up

Two months later, I've finally finished sorting through our photos from India. It feels like half a lifetime ago. These are a few of my favourites, but there are lots more on Flickr if you happen to like photos of India...





A couple of weeks ago I changed some kitchen taps for a graphic designer. In return he's going to tidy up some of my favourite digital photos and print them for me. Let's hear it for the no-cash economy!

joella

When we're open we sell jewellery for babies!

Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.
I have cheered up a bit and have uploaded some of the photos from our India trip, for those as is interested...

joella

Shower power

Yesterday was a long old day. We finally, and sadly, bade farewell to Haritha Farms (not to be missed, should you find yourself in Kerala), and set off in a taxi at 8 am for a day on the backwaters. We were navigated through narrow waterways by wizened men in orange lunghis with excellent punting skills. They pointed out the water snakes, the kingfishers and the wild pineapples as we went. It was like the River Cherwell on acid.

But it was also bakingly, steamingly, meltingly hot, and we were dropped with our bags at about 5pm at Ernakulam Junction wanting nothing more or less than a cold shower followed by a cold beer. There was no prospect whatever of the former, however, so we made the best of it by visiting one of South India's gloriously dingy air-con bars, full of men drinking vodka on ice and doing deals, and followed that with a fortifying masala dosa at one of the incomparable Indian Coffee Houses. Where else in the world would a worker's cooperative run a restaurant with turbanned waiters?

Then we settled on Platform 1 in the warm clammy night to read our books, slap mosquitoes and wait for the night train to Madurai.

Twelve hours later we emerged blinking onto another Platform 1, after a decent 8 hours sleep and several wake-up cups of Indian Railways' super-sweet coffee. Deflecting the most persistent auto-rickshaw drivers to date, we hoisted our ever-expanding rucksacks and walked to the Hotel Supreme, which I have been looking forward to visiting ever since I found its website about six months ago.

It hasn't disappointed yet. Our room has cool marble floors, the ceiling fan is whirring, I've scrubbed 30 hours of grime off me, and there's a thali out there somewhere with my name on it.

I love this place.

joella

Slickedy doo dah

Ayurvedic massage tables look a bit like wooden pool tables, I have discovered. They are rock hard, dead flat, and have holes at the corners. These are for drainage purposes.

You clamber aboard in a paper loin cloth (basically a bit of string and a length of loo roll) which has no discernible function and last about three seconds, lie on your back quivering slightly, and then two nice ladies (or gents, if you are of the gent persuasion) pour a gallon of toffee-smelling oil over you and make vigorous synchronised circular and up-and-down movements designed, I believe, to loosen deep seated toxins.

They certainly loosen something. Your job is to slither around bashing into the edges and trying not to think about what this must look like. Your last shred of dignity departs when they've finished your front and want you to turn over. There is no purchase to be had anywhere, so you flail helplessly while farty oil sounds emanate from the small of your back.

When they're done with you (and not all of it is vigorous pumelling, some is delicate circumnavigation of the navel which is strange but very pleasant, like being tickled with many small rubbery funnels) they help you up and then leave you with a bucket of hot water, some twigs ("scrubbing!"), a bag of brown powder ("also scrubbing!"), a tiny pot of brown goo ("hair!), a mini bar of soap and a large-ish tea towel. You therefore come out of the bathroom covered in nearly as much oil as when you went in.

Never again, you think, and then two days later you have another one.

joella

Coconut oil and ayurveda to the rescue

Happy New Year! We managed to stay up until all of 10.30 on New Year's Eve, and that was only thanks to a bottle of Indian Cava and a lively game of Corx with our fellow guests. When daylight fades on Haritha Farms, you tend to fade with it.

I did, however, wake up the next day feeling decidedly peaky in the ear, nose and throat department, something which had been brewing for the previous couple of days and which has annoyingly kept me from the first two cooking sessions on our seven day course. M has had to do double shifts at Coconut Central. The food's helped though. Pepper and ginger can cut through most things, in my experience.

I also had to miss my first Ayurvedic massage, due yesterday at the Dhanwanthari Vaidyasala, which M said made him feel like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed at both ends. Instead I sat with a nice lady doctor who prescribed me some Anjal, something unpronounceable and some Septilin. The first two are tablets and therefore easy enough to deal with, the last is a black viscous liquid which tastes pretty alarming.

I don't half feel better, mind. So much better, in fact, that I got up at 6.30 this morning and rode on an elephant before breakfast. And tonight I get my apron on and get to work on those coconuts.

joella

Not very bleak midwinter

It will be hard to leave the Nilgiris, though leave them we must (tomorrow in fact). I can't imagine anywhere else where you could head up into the hills on Christmas night to an old wooden colonial house with braziers burning in the garden, a local music teacher singing Silent Night, a Father Christmas who wobbles his head sideways, and young men in light-up Santa hats providing tandoori cauliflower and 'handkerchief rotis' (so called because they are as thin as handkerchiefs). We drank local red wine with our hosts (a passable substitute for sloe gin) and went back for seconds and thirds (wontons, beetroot salad, fried rice, tandoori paneer...).

I am also now the proud owner of my first sari, a Christmas gift from our hosts. First of all I thought the top was too tight, but then it turned out I had it on back to front. The rest of it I couldn't hope to get on by myself, but help was at hand. I still don't think I would be able to go to the loo in it, but I will confess I did feel rather splendid, though it's a long time since I had my midriff on display... M got a kurta which also looks pretty amazing. The question is, where to wear them?

joella

The night before Christmas, Nilgiris-style

I came to the Nilgiri Hills a long time ago, when my Significant Ex and I were backpacking round India on a shoestring. I remember it rained, and everything felt grey, chilly and overpriced. I didn't really see the point of hill stations anyway (all those *hills*), and was happy to move on.

This time, I feel like I could live here. This is in no small part down to the wonderful hospitality of our host family, who have fed us royally, given us a cosy cottage to stay in with views of endless green hills, and taken us places we would never have found by ourselves. But it's also down to the sheer beauty of the place, the sparkly clean air, and the relaxed pace of lives lived largely in harmony, rather than competition, with the suroundings.

We've been walking through Shola forests and tea fields, and down winding roads past blue and pink villages with technicolour temples. There are little tea shops (and government liquor shops) and snack stalls, like everywhere, but there is also broadband and fully computerised banking. The cows are milked by hand, and the roads are mended (or not) by barefoot men and women balanced precariously on hillsides, but these same men and women have better mobile phone services and more TV channels than we do. It's a lot to get your head round.

Most everyone's a Hindu round here, but Christmas is celebrated too, in a slightly surreal kind of way. I'm looking forward to it.

joella

Chilling

This morning, I had to check my packet of malaria pills to find out what day of the week it was. Now that's what I call Being On Holiday.

We arrived at Misty Heights the day before yesterday, via an overnight train to Mettupalaiyam. Thank Krishna it was the last stop, as I couldn't undo the combination padlock with which I had chained our bags to the luggage rack. We could have ended up anywhere. But thankfully our hosts were waiting and sorted it out (how, I don't know), and we were off into the glorious Nilgiri Hills.

We're now at somewhere around 6600 feet. The air is thin, the stars are huge, and we are ourselves getting bigger by the hour thanks to three home cooked Indian meals a day. We've done a little walking through the tea buses and eucalyptus stands, a lot of sleeping, and M had purchased some shiny new Indian specs, having stomped on his two days before we left...

Our to do list is getting smaller, which was the plan, and I feel we are, you know, acclimatising. I even have an Indian mobile, which could text in Hindi if I wanted it to, and which reminds me when it's Kingfisher time (about now).

You don't need as much beer up here. I am sure there are myriad reasons for this.

joella