Archive for 2010

  • Snow

    I have peaked on snow. It may seem a strange thing to say but the more I think about it, experience it and sit here looking at it, the more I feel that it is exactly how I feel.

    My snow karma over the past few weeks has been beyond the pale: I have driven in it, been stranded in 18 inches of the stuff, literally, I have hitch hiked through it, packed a van in a blizzard, sat in a plane at Paris Airport being hosed down by cranes spraying orange anti-freeze all over the exterior, landed in a another blizzard just five minutes after the runway re-opened. This morning I looked at the endlessly falling snow and cried. I had had enough, and I still had to face a 20 minute walk uphill, thankfully, in leather soled shoes with two cold children to find an RER station to take us to the Eurostar. All our luggage is lost in it, we have sat for two hours now, stationary, in the 1st class cabin of the train waiting whilst the train in front of us has got itself embedded in more of the white stuff….. I feel that I have done my bit as far as full-on snow is concerned.

    Ironically I spent several days in Iceland recently and there was not a flake… but I digress.

    What has been interesting through all of this is how much I have had to battle with myself.

    Whilst stuck in Kent I was alone. That in its’ self was a trip. A rented long wheel-base white van stuck in a snow drift takes me to places that all my travels with nomads in India and elephants in Africa cannot touch. The voices in my head whilst I marched through the snow, hitch-hiking to get to a main road and being ignored, were quite wild; not only was I astonished by how little a good handbag does for one, but I had not really taken in that I might look dangerous or scary enough not to stop for in 18 inches of snow. It was rather an eye opening experience. When a car did finally stop, and it was just a Golf, none of the tractors or Range Rovers saw fit, I took a moment and a sharp deep breath to get myself into the car. The driver seemed perfectly respectable, but who the hell were they?

    Luckily they were the manager of the place I was finally headed towards and I rode with him all the way. Delightful.

     

    In the last few days getting to and from Morocco on a schedule provided by the film producers and travelling with an 8 year old girl and early teen boy I have met a whole raft of other aspects of myself that I could honestly wish would go to hell.

    The 24/7 experience of sharing every moment of my waking, sleeping, bathroom, food and walking life with two kids is one thing. To have every strand of patience, tolerance, calmness, reserve, and charm torn to shreds by the plans badly laid by another and blasted to smithereens by the humour of the Divine has been something else entirely.

    I have talked myself through pretty much all of it with aplomb, I have. To an outsider I have been calm, amusing and kind. Inside I have been a boiling pot of fury, helplessness, rage, irritation, and insane longings to be left alone just for 5 minutes. It has been a wild and trippy journey just watching myself.
    The delightfully amusing steward on the Air France flight last night who informed me, in front of both my children that not only were we taking off into 190 kph winds, but we would hopefully land and it would be a blizzard, joyfully told me how calm and serene he found me in the face of 24 hours travelling, no food, missed connections and lost luggage. The ability to smile sweetly, to keep the illusion and keep going onwards are aspects of myself that I rather like.

    But I really have hit moments, minutes and hours, when I have wished I was a better person. Not an experience I have ever enjoyed, feeling like that.

    The upside has been the indomitable aspects that so many of us have in a crisis: the people we have spent fleeting moments with, the hilarity, like when all the lights went out at Casablanca Airport last night after 8 hours of waiting for a plane, and the man next to me started singing Happy Birthday. Such a great humour!

    Last night I waited in a blizzard with freezing kids and grumpy other displaced passengers for taxis that would take Air France vouchers. None would. I finally peaked and organised 7 of us to share a large van thing and we all, strangers, travelled through the surreal Paris snow storm to a hotel for the night with a driver who must have been heaven-sent he was so wonderful.

    Now I sit on a Eurostar train, having abandoned the idea of flight and all luggage, with a woman sharing our table who is funny, thus far enduring 36 hours of travel from Singapore. She is a delight and makes the whole thing the adventure it really is.

    The thought of Christmas in an Ibis Hotel on the outskirts of Paris was too awful, but heading out into the snow, the moments, the meetings, the dialogues and the positive energy that one can meet and manifest make it all an experience I am pleased to say I am having. And I am incredibly proud of my children who have been amazing throughout. Taking it all in their stride and only loosing their cool for short moments.

    Perhaps I can adjust my feelings about snow, after all……  but then I have to be careful. I am still on the train and it has taken almost all afternoon to get to Calais and we have stopped, just short of the tunnel….. massive snowflakes abound…. 32 hours later…

     

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  • Life Changing Decisions

    If you have been a regular reader of my weblog you will have noticed that there has been a decided lack of writing over the past year.    

    My life has been too personal to be able to write without it seeping onto the page and colouring, in a far too intimate way, the text. So it has been easier to keep silent.

    Whatever has been going on is irrelevant, but the effects that it has had upon me physically and emotionally are important and hence the time to write has come around again.

    I have a long history of drug and alcohol addiction. This has affected my hormones and particularly my stress response: When I am stressed or feel fearful I shoot a large amount of cortisol into my body. Cortisol is the hormone responsible for the sensation of stress, that feeling of sand in your blood. There are several side effects from elevated levels of cortisol in the blood, including weight gain, especially the tyre that some of us get around our waist. Another aspect of this hormone that affects me is that it causes aching and loose joints.

    As a runner this gives me knee and back ache. I run to still my mind, to gain perspective, to master depression. So anything that disturbs this very important aspect of my life has to be dealt with. Over the first few months of this year my joint problems, due to stress, became intolerable. Endless visits to the chiropractor to fix the twists and kinks were wasted trips.

    Finally I was told I had to give up all sugar.

    Why? An interesting question and one that Adi, the man I see for my bones, explained that the sugar is the initiator of the stress response. That the excess sugar in the diet is stored in the waist as glucose, and that all of this, including the cortisol, makes the ligaments of the body loose and stretched.

    So since early August I have not touched any sugar, honey, aspartamine, agarve syrup or fructose. I do eat fruit, but in moderation.

    It has been utterly transforming. My temper has subsided. (Please do not ever think it has gone, but it is much more manageable.) My joints are good, I run faster, I sleep better and do not get that awful stressed sensation so often. But the main, and most surprising aspect is that so far I have dropped 12 kg with no effort at all.

    Within a week of stopping sugar, and like with all other addictive substances I went cold turkey, I realised just how much of it crept into my consumption every day. I worked out that I was averaging about 15 teaspoons of sugar per day. Yes, it seems like a huge amount but it appears in the most insidious ways: in cereal, marmalade, puddings, drinks. Plus I took sugar in tea and coffee.

    The withdrawals lasted about 10 days and since then it has been easy. To remove sugar from the diet has another side effect in that the appetite changes completely and the need for food is very diminished. Sugar needs sugar needs sugar. One easily ends up just acting out an addiction: drinking tea or eating a cake just for the sugar. Once this has been removed the appetite becomes far more moderate. It is a relief, truthfully, and very relaxing to be out of the spiral.

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  • Tangiers

    My 8 year old daughter is the 3rd lead in a Bollywood movie. It is an action adventure romp kind of thing. We are shooting in Morocco, in Tangiers.

    So, another busy day on set and we have been in the most awful sand storm all day. Endless buffeting, sand everywhere and a heightened feeling of angst from the extreme conditions.

    We are shooting in a house on top of a hill overlooking where the Atlantic and the Mediterranean seas meet. It is beautiful. The drive here was exquisite and there were so many stunning villas, gardens, woods and different landscapes that really took us all by surprise.
    We all stood to attention yesterday as the King of Morocco drove past the hotel. Today we went beside his massive house on the way to our very isolated location.

    Camilla and Louis came with us but were too feint hearted to take the full day so naffed off in a  taxi back to Tangiers. We are here, on the beach till five in endless waves of sand blowing tempers, hair, clothes, props and attendant camels all over the place. Isadora has a few more shots in these hideous conditions then we are into the main house which is rather lovely. A beach house over a ravine. The kind of place I would like to escape to right now. There are two set ups with her inside the house then we are finished for the day.

    She slept ten hours last night and also ate a huge breakfast and managed a good lunch, too, so that stress has diminished. All the crew are seriously delightful, especially the Indian crew who are so positive, charming, kind, interesting amusing and fun that it is rather awesome to experience them.

    My moments are odd. I battle with the experience of being no one but Mummy. I find it hard, to just walk the edges of it all having been in the middle for so many years. But I suppose it is getting easier. I sat in a shelter this morning that was held down by several Moroccans to stop it blowing away, and tried to think. I tried to get perspective and distance but the conditions are so extreme it was really hard to focus my mind. It was wandering all over the place. In the end I decided to sit and meditate. My favourite meditation. I pulled my shawl around me and crossed my legs. Put my hands as they needed to be to activate the neutral mind and found it easy to go off on the mantra and chosen route into the ethers. It was lovely. And the man holding down the tent prodded me to ask me if I was asleep! Too funny.

    Lunch was in a café nearby and really was superb. My first good meal here. And now we wait to be called back down to the sand blizzard.

    Saturday Night

    They did not tell us this was a night shoot which is annoying and tiresome. So getting us both mentally prepared for the experience had to be done on the job, at 11pm when we discovered that it was not just one shot but several in the Casbah Museum which is very lovely but totally open to the elements.

    So like the naughty mother that I am, the only way to stop her being sleepy and tearful was to feed her coffee. So I did. I told her she could go onto therapy later over the moment but that we needed to get through the night and this was the only way.

    We are now faced with 5 days off and I really have no idea what we can do! All suggestions most welcome. It is at this point that I wish I did not have Louis, or that I could send him off to Spain with Camilla but how to get him back, She keeps suggesting or perhaps even insisting that we go to stay with her for a few days but it is expensive, cold and dragging all the luggage and them across Spain is quite low on my list of things I would like to do right now.

    We had a good day today: we had a lazy breakfast and they swam whilst I updated the website and pretended to be working. We then took a cab to Café Hafa, the other side of the harbour, It was cold, windy and utterly the most unhygienic place Isadora had ever been in. She was not amused at all! But at least we can say we made the effort to see it. Built in 1921 it is the oldest café in Taqngiers and has seen all manner of luninaries pass through its’ grubby portal.

    From there we walked back through the city for about 30 minutes, mostly downhill, to try to find somewhere slightly decent to eat. We did. A Moroccan version of an Italian restaurant. The pasta was disgusting but the pizza delicious, the coffee superb, the service belligerent and the ice cream excellent. It was another amusing meal and we then carried on downhill back to the hotel.

    Isadora and I slept for 2 hours and then we went to find a good Indian restaurant we had heard about. It was fine. All cooked to order which meant it took 90 minutes to get our meal but Camilla taught us to play Rummy with Harry Potter cards whilst we waited. Again, great fun, then a high speed dash to meet the driver to come on set and to hurry up and wait.

    It is now 2.30am. Isadora is fine. Coffee seems to be the way forward. Isadora drank a cup of the milky nectar and has been smiling rather than tearful ever since. The security guards are all ganged up in the dark by our bags, smoking hashish and I found the body guard of the main actor quietly eating vegetarian pizza. I joined him and now feel, after another cup of coffee, a little more up to the next couple of hours.

    I have been sitting in one of the exhibit rooms, surrounded by Roman bits and pieces, writing text for the new website. When I get into the zone it flows.

    Isadora is doing really well. Better when I am on the side, in view, but not part of her immediate circle. Somewhere, somehow, there is a competitiveness or an uncomfortableness for her with me too close. She likes to have her own circle around her but to know that I am in the wings.

    I think she has a future, I think she will do more of this, especially now she knows what it is. The opportunity to teach her to master her mind is something I do not miss. Her mind is as awful as mine. I watch it engulf her, I have watched it since she was two or so, and these long days, moments of commitment when she wants out but cannot go, are all perfect times to teach her about how to manage herself. I suppose I learn too, as I have to present perfection in this aspect to get her through. So it is a learning curve all round.

    They did her master close up at 4am…….

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  • Just Because the Weather is Very Awful

    I decided that the way forward was to spend a day in bed. I am so over the endless rain, the myriad of snails ignoring me as they gently eat their way across the garden, the endless terror threats and the shorter, darker days. Somehow I missed the clocks changing, too, which is odd. It must be because all the timepieces I own are electronic and they change automatically. It happened without my noticing but I miss the drama of it! I think I get a perverse pleasure out of wondering, each year, why they do it. But perhaps it did not happen at all and all the cows are fine. I have always thought it was linked to farmers having to milk cows in the dark.

    So I lay in bed in the pretend daylight and read the latest book by my favourite author Haruki Murakami, who is a fabulously evocative writer, and then decided that the next step was to reduce some pieces which have been lingering…

    So if you are, like me, needing a little lift, there are some lovely SALE pieces to warm you up in this horrid damp time…. especially the coats made from the hand stitched sari fabric and the heavy winter gagra. The long side split tops in velvet are deliciously soft and strokeable and the velvet trousers look great under all sorts of different things, including the Comfort top…

    If you are interested in bodypainting or have children who are, the brush kits and the bodypainting kits are half price and alongside the instructional DVD can produce hours of fun as the days close in or as an original Christmas present….

    If needlepoint is your thing, and it has always been mine, I am wanting to sell off the kits that are left. These are one of the first things I ever made. I particularly love the one of Guru Nanak. They come with all the thread needed and a needle. A great way to while away the hours of the next two seasons as the repetitive act of stitching calms the mind.

    There are lots of very desirable new jewellery items added to the website so you can want them for Christmas, and there is a collection of men’s shirt by Brigitte Singh and Lucknow (the hand stitched) shirts, and the very evocative Nehru collared waistcoats added, too, all on the same link.

    I find it hard not to wear the Comfort Dress every day, all day, and have now worn it in bed, too, whilst writing this piece. It is utterly perfect for winter and I will have lots of them at the Devotion Emporium at Chelsea Town Hall on October 26th & on November the 30th should you need to stroke it before purchasing!

    Please do come and see me at home if you would like to shop in peace and quiet. The picture in this piece is of the shawls displayed in the Emporium at home. There is now a link to a map on the right hand side of this page which shows how easy it is to get here by train, bus and tube. It is by appointment only and a great way to get exactly what you want from Devotion without lots of interruptions from passers by. 020 7701 9269

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  • Cashmere Simple Dress

    It is time to look forward. September always feels much more a time for renewal than January. I do not think it is about school timetables still marking my life as much as moving into a different season. Summer is expansion, open and light. Autumn, which is just licking the leaves and manifesting in the weather, is internal, warmth, containment, preservation and commitment.

    As ever, it is my preferred time for my wardrobe. I love all the layers, the stories that come into my mind when I think about “who am I today?” as I open my wardrobe and consider the look for the next two seasons.

    I have been working on this collection for several months now, sourcing the fabrics, refining the lines and making sure it all works together.

    It is time to look forward. September always feels much more a time for renewal than January. I do not think it is about school timetables still marking my life as much as moving into a different season. Summer is expansion, open and light. Autumn, which is just licking the leaves and manifesting in the weather, is internal, warmth, containment, preservation and commitment.

    As ever, it is my preferred time for my wardrobe. I love all the layers, the stories that come into my mind when I think about “who am I today?” as I open my wardrobe and consider the look for the next two seasons.

    I have been working on this collection for several months now, sourcing the fabrics, refining the lines and making sure it all works together.

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  • My New Website

    Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors…

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  • Stillness in a high speed whirl…

    Things do not get simpler, what can change is how we deal with life, how we accept what is happening, how we process it all and how impersonal we can make it.

    This last part may need clarity: We take things personally, we get upset and stressed. But most of what happens is not personally directed at us as a punishment, it is just life, it is just how things are, what is… resistance changes nothing and in fact can make it all a whole lot more unmanageable and painful both physically and emotionally. As the fabulous Stephen Levin says: “Hell is your resistance”. A sentence that I spent two years meditating upon.

    An interesting way of sitting with this as a possible attitude to your reality is to stand still. Calm and peaceful.
    (I find it easier outside as I feel as though I am more a part of the madness when I am outside of my calm and beautiful house and aware of the speed with which life screams past.)
    Look at your feet and then take your attention up your instep, into your ankles, through the shins, knees and thigh muscles. Follow the energy up through the hips and into the main torso.
    Around the centre of the chest is where the Soul is said to reside in the body.
    Let your attention sit here for a while, becoming calm and still, open-hearted and present. Aware of sounds, sensations, perfumes and the pieces that want to pull you away from the present moment, but stay with yourself.
    From this still and perfect place look out and let your self see life roaring past, fast, noisy, high speed and determined. But become conscious that you can stand there and refuse to attach yourself to any part of it. You can stand still, ware and awake, and let life and the dramas, stories, pain and intensity of it all fly past you without having to grab onto any part of it.
    This awareness can be rather startling if it is your first time with it, but just keep breathing and take stock, take a distance and see that your need to attach to the dramas and grab them into you is what creates the dramas and pains that you are ultimately, endlessly trying to escape from.

    Take a deep breath. Feel your feet and relax. But as you walk back into your life be aware that you attach yourself, nothing else does it for you.

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  • As we wade through the joys of electioneering

    Such fun, the boys and their competitions.

    I am finding rather challenging at times to tell which party paid for the poster! But hey, this is how it is done here and what a glorious waste of money it all looks to be.

    Politics are ever the tricky topic and I am happy to steer sideways from here into stress levels, and management of the aforesaid using several tried and tested methods.

    It is a testing time, It is hard to see the future as rosy and despite all the bank’s bonuses I think there are many who still think there is another dip to come. The uncertainly can raise stress levels and after so long, who needs more?

    So, my tips and tricks here may well help you to move forward with a smile.

    If you understand what happens when you feel fearful or stressed it makes it easier to understand how to deal with the feelings and restore balance and a sense of humour.

    When you get agitated, stressed, fearful or the sensation that it is all too much and there is too little time it is usually caused by the kidneys shooting out a hormone called cortisol in response to a strand of thinking that may have caused you to feel a little fear. Many of us shoot huge amounts of cortisol very quickly and sadly the easiest way to tell is if you have, or you easily gain weight around your waist…

    Cortisol is a hormone that produces the feeling of stress in the body. It also generates the notion that you want to eat because somewhere inside you know, subconsciously, that the eating can bring on an endorphin rush. Endorphins are our pleasure hormones and they eat the cortisol which can last for up to three days in the body. It is easy to see how one can spiral round and round and end up overweight and chasing your tail.

    There are various things that will produce endorphins. It is a long list, but the top favourites are:
    Any exercise which raises your heart beat, so swimming, running, briskly walking, sit ups, etc
    Dancing to a great piece of music
    20 press ups
    Lying on a bed of nails. This one I cannot recommend more highly. I do it every night, reading in bed. Currently I am stressed so I lie in bed reading Georgette Heyer novels and sleep beautifully after.

    The trick is to produce endorphins to eat the cortisol and lower the stress levels this way. The gain is huge in as much as most of what you can do is good for you, self esteem goes up and you have the sense that you are in control of your emotions. The art is in the remembrance, that is the tricky part.

    I also have a list of 25 ways to master depression which I am happy to email should this be part of your current experience. It is scarily common right now.

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  • On the way back…

    As I write I am sitting in Delhi Airport. A 5 hour drive to get here which was fairly uneventful beyond the usual camels all going the wrong way down the motorway, trucks with no lights looming out of the dark, stray dogs everywhere and the small fires lit by the truck driver who all huddle in small groups wrapped up in filthy shawls against the chill spring morning.

    I had to get up at 4.30am to be ready to leave. The usual platoon of staff were all up, too, hoping for tips. I know all their life stories, how much they earn, what they send to their families, how much they would like in tips… I confess I find it irritating rather than endearing, so just to wind them up I gave the tips all in one bundle to the hotelier to pass on. I know he will, I just do not feel like Lady Bountiful so early in the day.

    By 8.30am I was awake and hungry. We still had a 100 or so kilometers to go and I asked the driver to stop somewhere. He knows I like bhuria chai (good chai) so he pulled over to a famous truckers stop where they are renowned for their parathas.

    Of course all the customers stop in mid mouthful as I glide past and head for their divine toilet. How long can I really hold my breath for? And can I pee standing….? Minutes, and yes, of course I can.

    Sitting at a rickety table under an acacia tree on a crooked plastic chair I arranged myself. Water was brought in a lovely red plastic jug, black with grime and the table was diligently wiped with a cloth that musty have just given the toilet a once over. Squirrels tried mating under my table and the sparrows were having such fun.

    The driver was thrilled that I took it all in my stride and personally wiped down the newly delivered, wet, greasy plate. Once it was gleaming it was mine. The obligatory swarm of flies had discovered his bare arm and all waited there, patiently, knowing that food was on it’s way. A couple of mangy curs came and hung out, too, great long black nipples dangling from their exhausted bellies. One of the dogs had lost the ability to pull in it’s tongue and it just lolled there dribbling, hoping that the site would induce me to give up and throw my breakfast at her. But I held fast. Declining the fly ridden chutney I just went straight for the most delicious paratha, dripping in fresh ghee, filled with hot potato and sliced chilli. It was delicious and I was transported away from the roadside cafe with the endless flies and sounds of horns into a culinary bliss which did also require constant waving with my hands to stop my food being engulfed in flies.

    I got up from the table feeling so very much better. Only one dog had the patience to wait till the end and I threw her my crust.

    I do love India….

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  • Monday and it is hot

    A long dusty day in the sun

    I came to shop and I confess to having been somewhat reticent until today. Not entirely financial withholding as everything here takes hours. Time is not always mine and the best laid plans often go awry off the bat. The last few days have seen my open-mindedness swell to exquisite proportions as I expand to allow for Muslim Demonstrations, Suicides int he street, arrests of politicians and credit cards being switched off.
    Today it was the turn of the banks to slide my day into disorder. My first attempt to shop after my morning chai was thwarted by the bank closing down all my cards. I stood in a shop handing over one after the other until I have to give up. I returned to the hotel with not enough cash for a cup of tea and waited for the bank to open in London. Charm personified, mine, got things opened up again and I headed back out, this time into the nether reaches of Jaipur where, strangely, I have never been before. All army barracks, mess halls, smart soldiers and tree lined shady avenues with pavements. Quite bizzarre, but then lots about this trip has been odd. I feel as though nothing exists until I arrive to see it!

    We, my delightful driver and I, were on our way to meet a Charity Bus that drives to a different temple each day to sell spiritual accessories. This day was the main Shiva Temple.

    Arriving there was unexpected. I had not thought about it. It was like arriving at a farm. Cows everywhere and piles of methi or fenugreek leaves that they are given to gain boons. The perfume of cow dung and fenugreek was great. We walked down a long wall past all the beast and methi hawkers. Along the wall were ranged all the Shiva Sadhus with their begging bowls and colourful clothes. Shiva, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is the God of Creation and Destruction. He governs addictions, depression, our inner demons and in perfect balance is a delightful being but he is also all our darkness manifested. The temple was an interesting display of his darkness. Thick sweet piles of incense buring all over the place, the floor was awash with swarms of flies, trees bark blackened by the endless smoke from the burnt offerings and the temple itself had two huge statues of Shiva Rampant, looking really scary. I covered my head and went in to see the Lingham and yoni being washed and prayed to. Shiva is worshipped with a symbol of an erect penis set in a female vagina and it is always washed with water and venerated with flowers and incense. The act of washing is continual and very serious, the intensity of whoever is taking part is quite something to witness. It was a darka nd excessive place. Rather lovely, as I like that kind of thing. Lots of longing and desire all mingled with the malas and curling smoke. Om the way out I had a Shiv Tilak painted in blood red on my forehead and it is there, still.

    We finally found the bus parked in a layby on the main road in the full sun. Packed to the gills with books, malas, incense, beads, trinkets and puja kits it was great to sit on the floor inside whilst the man unpacked yard after yard of beautiful malas. All perfect, all lovely.

    Lunch at the Anokhi Cafe was the usual parade of westerners in Jaipur and the food was delicious. Pasta, good pasta, in India is such a treat. From there to the Lucknow salesman who is charming and efficient. I spent a fortune in almost no time at all and then decided to go back tomorrow and pick it all up. I walked the 3 miles back to the hotel and was harrassed every step of the way. If not by salesmen, it was beggars, women, kids, monkeys, chai wallahs, rickshaw wallahs, dogs, fruit sellers, chappall wallahs, rickshaw drivers, skinny boys in tight trousers holding hands with each other…. the list is endless but it was fun and I arrived back feeling clear headed and very happy.

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