The garden of childhood

“You can go other places, all right - you can live on the other side of the world, but you can't ever leave home” 
― The Mermaid Chair

Isn't it amazing how sometimes all it takes is the sight or a whiff of a familiar, long forgotten memory to send you across thousands of miles and back a few decades into the home of your childhood?

Hibiscus, always brings back memories of my parents
doing their daily worship of Goddess Durga and Kali with these.

The other evening, as I sat in the drawing room, sipping a cup of green tea and staring at the heavy downpour that was lashing down from the heavens above, suddenly an old and familiar smell crept up to me. 

"Kamini" I yelled, jumping off my chair in a flash. "Can you smell Kamini?" I continued to yell. 

The husband has seen me worked up many a times in the past, but to give him credit, he still came in to see what the commotion was about.

"Kamini" I kept repeating as if it was self-explanatory; except I couldn't understand why he and I still weren't on the same page. 

"My Didu used to have Kamini flowers in her temple" I had finally managed to get a grip on my excitement and blurt out.

"Oh, it is a flower" he said, letting go of a sigh of obvious relief as the realisation of who what Kamini was, slowly dawned on him. "It seems to be coming from our garden" he said.

Star of the garden - a jasmine plant in bloom

I rushed to the balcony.

And lo and behold! 

There they were! 

Two ethereal and delicate lemon blossom like white flowers, blooming in a bush that my gardener had dismissively called a very common Murraya; when I insisted I wanted to have one planted. He and I had then come to a compromise of sorts; to plant it in a little corner of the balcony, post which I had completely forgotten about it until now. 

A little jasmine bush

Two little flowers whose fragrance transported me back to a garden from my childhood in an instant. 

That whiff of fragrance that had wafted into the room had suddenly brought back the memory of my widowed grandaunt; who we called Pujari Didu (loosely translated, priest grandma) as she was always praying in a little temple in the house where she spent almost all her time. She passed away a long time back and it has been a while since I thought of her. But that night, suddenly I was back to being a little girl in a small temple surrounded by those heavenly smelling Kamini flowers around me, sitting patiently and waiting for Pujari Didu to dole out the most amazing sabu-r khichuri** after she was through with offering it to all the gods she spent her time praying to.

** An absolutely divine (pun intended) kedgeree cooked with sago and lentils tempered with loads of ghee and coconut, usually served as an offering to the Gods on a religious occasion.

The exotic heady fragrance of an Arabian jasmine (Beli phool)

The Beli phool, remains one of my favourite flowers
as it always reminds me of my childhood home

And as I stood there, surrounded by memories, I looked at the little Arabian jasmine plants, the star jasmine creeper, the pink bougainvillea and red hibiscus plants I had recently planted in my balcony, and each of them reminded me of another garden from a while back...

No, not the humongous and stunning and perfect English garden with it's roses, lilacs, azaleas, daffodils, cherry blossoms or the apple, plum and damson trees that we left behind when we moved to Singapore.

Not that. 

These were memories of a much smaller, rambling, whimsical garden from long, long ago.

A garden of red and pink Hibiscus flowers which my Dad would pluck each morning for his daily Puja or my Maa would massage into our hair hoping we ended up with long, beautiful, black tresses as befitting a Bengali girl. 

A garden filled with the heady fragrance of the Madhu Malti (Rangoon creeper ) creeping all over the front porch and adding a dash of colour to the entrance of our tiny home. 

A happy garden blooming with Zinnias and roses and jasmine and Black eyed Susans. 

A garden filled with two large neem trees that scared me to death because I imagined ghosts and ghouls creeping out of them at night. 

A garden from which my sisters and I plucked lemons to make chilli lemonade on summer afternoons and where I sat on a branch of the frangipani tree and talked to myself when I had no one to play with (a very frequent occurrence, that).

A garden where okra and egg plants and ivy gourd and every other vegetable I hated, grew in abundance and where all of my Maa's struggle to get the perfect cabbages and cauliflowers never resulted in success.  

A garden where I followed my Maa every evening as she watered the plants, watching her face light up with excitement as she saw a new bud or the beginnings of a new fruit or vegetable. 

A garden in which unknown to me, I had started looking forward to mundane things as picking fresh spinach leaves or the sight of little bottle gourds sprouting on the creeper that had covered the fence or  something far more magical as waiting by the Sthal Padma (cotton rose) plant to catch a glimpse of it's flowers changing colours as the day went by.

And then, as I stood in the rain, taking in my little garden in the balcony, a happy thought suddenly struck me. 

I had in my own little way, in a tiny little balcony, ended up attempting to create a piece of my mother's garden. 

The garden I grew up in.

My childhood garden.

The last rose of Summer

'Tis the last rose of summer

Left blooming alone;

All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone;

No rosebud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes,

No flower of her kindred,

To give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!

To pine on the stem;

Since the lovely are sleeping,

Go, sleep thou with them. 

Thus kindly I scatter,

Thy leaves o'er the bed,

Where thy mates of the garden

Lie scentless and dead

- Sir Thomas Moore

The last rose of summer.. for our garden

It's the last day of August. 

Summer, glorious summer, with its beautiful blooms, its riotous abandon of colour and heady fragrances, its long and sometimes sunny days, is officially almost over. 

The nights will now get longer, the flowers will vanish as will the greenery and soon there will come a time when I will no longer be pottering in the garden with my 2 little brats carrying the hose pipe, unmindful of the fact that they were spraying their clothes rather than the plants.

The pristine beauty of a white rose bud 

Having put down this very melodramatic (Well, what do you expect? I am Bong, everything I do is melodramatic!) and poignant goodbye, have got to admit that this was one of the best summers I have ever had. The day I walked in and saw what shall hopefully be our home for the next few years, I fell in love, even before I entered the house! There were roses and poppies in bloom, a grape vine climbing all over the garage and apple trees and camellias in the backyard. For someone like me, who spent her free time at florist shops and spent a significant part of her income on fresh flowers, nothing could have been more heaven sent! At that point, if the roof fell over my head, I wouldn't have cared! 

I have spent most of my free time in these last few months of summer in the garden - weeding, watering, and sometimes planting flowering shrubs that I thought would a little more colour and whimsy. I have learnt the hard way that working in your garden is nothing as romantic as Victorian ladies wearing gloves and carrying baskets and cutting flowers for the vases that they show you in BBC's Pride and Prejudice! I have learnt the art of ignoring and conquering the pain that comes from spending hours weeding the strawberry beds! 

I have made friends with the lady who runs the nursery nearby, I talk of plants and the weather and the rains not being enough for the plants with the elderly ladies who run the church playgroup, I buy plants at the Village Fairs and I read gardening books and magazines in the loo! 

But the best part of this summer has been seeing the flowers bloom and watching my 2 little 2yr olds develop a love for gardening; carrying the pots around in their little hands for me to water, carrying their own watering cans around to water the plants (they will very wisely inform you that plants drink water just as we eat food), and stopping to kiss the dandelions and chat with the earthworms and the snails (which always fills my not very animal loving husband with horror!)

As we say goodbye to this summer and wait for a even more glorious one next yr, I would like to share some pictures of flowers from my garden.

My favourite picture of 'em all  - of some enormous roses that I put by my bedside table 

A cluster of Rose spray

Another white rose

My favourite rose of them all - as large as a medium sized cauliflower, with no thorns and
an extremely heady, woody, non rose like fragrance 

Trailing geraniums on the kitchen window sill - spent a day trying to pull the ivy out and then finally just emptied out the pots, threw away the ivy, put in new soil and planted the geraniums and Viola!

A magnolia in bloom

Lilies (I think)

Dandelion - the Vs current favourite as they go blowing the seedheads and chasing the seeds 

Gardenia - One of my all time favourite flowers and one of the first I planted. This was its very first bloom

Poppy pod - for a Bong who loves Poshto, even these are as gorgeous as the blooms

Faded beauty

Another of my favourite plants - the snow daisy

More snow daisies

Achillea Pink. Still waiting for the yellow Achillea to bloom

Chrysanthemum

Bought this Cosmos at the Village Fair for 50pence per plant. Had no hopes of them surviving.
Not only did they survive, they keep blooming nonstop

A petunia. Never appreciated how pretty it is till I planted it as a filler between some other plants in the flower beds

A Pansy growing wild. The day the first one bloomed, spent quite a few hrs on Google to find its name! :)

And finally the beautiful Clematis. I hadn't heard of it or seen it before.
I picked the creeper on an impulse after a stranger who watched me unable
to make up my mind on what creeper to purchase, recommended this.
This is what the flower turned out to be. Now can't wait for next yr when the plant will be climbing all over the walls.

Garden Goddess hard at work!

The first real (as against virtual) vegetable/ fruit that I have grown in my entire life!!!
Dedicated to U, without whom, this great accomplishment would never have been possible!
Love you U and you too, tomato!  :-))

My friend U is, after my mom, the most gardening obsessed madcap, (lovable, but madcap nevertheless) I have ever come across. Each time we would go out shopping and I would wander towards the bags and the shoes, U would invaribly make a beeline for the shop that sold pots and soil! While I was busy tending to my 2 large farms on the cyber world of Farmville, U had her own real garden with coriander and mint and tomatoes and chilli!!! Before I met U, I hadn't come across a single person inclined to grow tomatoes in their balcony!

So when we were moving to this new house with a humongous garden, it doesn't take one to be a genius to guess who was most excited about the garden! After a while, U's enthusiasm started rubbing off on me and I outlined my plan to fill the garden with flowers - roses, dahlias, lavender and tulips and corn flowers and well, whatever flowers one could grow in the wet and cold British weather!

So here I was, envisaging myself running in slow motion in this flower filled dale, carrying a basket and plucking flowers from my pretty garden and sticking them in vases, when my reverie was broken by a look of utmost horror on U's face.

"What's the problem?" I asked

"Can you eat them?" U said stiffly.

"What??? Seriously what???" 

Did I hear correctly? Did she seriously ask me if we could chomp down the beautiful tulips and dahlias and lavender....

"Can you eat them?" she insisted.

"Err...... no" I said hesitantly, thinking oh well, you never know! Maybe U, who by the way, is also a brilliant cook, knew recipes that I hadn't even heard about.

But before I could ask her if she knew any recipes for rose sauce or lavender flavored gravy, U spoke again. Sounding a lot like my MOTHER, she said, 

"What's the point of growing things you cannot eat!"

"Err, because they look pretty" I ventured. Why else does one grow flowers I wondered, ready to quote Shelley and Wordsworth if need be.

U shot me a withering look that would have been more effective than the best weed-killer in the market. Now if she had been me, she would have said "Screw pretty" or "F@#$ pretty". But she is far more polite and well behaved, so she just said, 

"Well, you can't eat pretty. You better stop wasting time on Farmville and on growing flowers and grow something useful instead! And if you don't, I shall come down and kick your ass!"

Now I may have my faults but I do have the good sense to recognise a threat when I hear one. So to pacify her, I promised I shall most definitely grow something "useful", hoping in a few days it will be forgotten. But No!! U spent the next few days, scouring shops for books on gardening and on growing "useful" things, which she then handed over to me along with the promise of making good on her threat in case I reneged on mine. Once we moved into the new house, and I had my fill of planting flowers, I thought, what the hell, let me try some tomatoes. I got 2 plants; one as a backup in case one of them died and planted both in pure compost so they would have no option but to grow! 

The little tomato that started it all!

And guess what? I found one of them sporting a little baby tomato and my relief and joy knew no bounds. And all along I had been torturing myself with this (now seemingly erroneous) belief that I just couldn't grow anything. And all because I had killed a cactus once by feeding it beer (the underlying thought was to give it a taste of weekend revelry) and because I have bought plenty of mint plants from the market only to find them wilt and die in the next few days in my expert care! 

So, this was nothing short of a miracle! As the no. of tomatoes grew, I got myself some more tomato plants - cherry tomatoes this time. And soon enough they seemed to burst into tomatoes as well! Now, I think I have grown enough tomatoes to have my very own Tomatina festival!

And then I decided to spread my wings for the next level of difficulty - herbs. I got myself some basil and mint and surprisingly even they seemed to thrive. Looks like I was on a roll!!! Brimming with new found confidence, I set my sights on conquering that one herb, Coriander, growing which till now has been for me a task of Himalayan proportions; and one where I have not even managed to reach base camp. I had tried to grow it in my garden in Jakarta and failed. I had tried to grow it in Mumbai and failed. I had tried to grow it in Singapore and well, failed! 

So this time, I decided to enlist the help of an expert blessed with green fingers. I followed her instructions but once again, nothing happened! Looked like growing coriander was going to be one of those things I would never ever succeed in doing! So in a fit of irritation, used the soil with the coriander seeds in planting some more lavender. And then suddenly, 15 days later, I found the first coriander sprouts coming out of the lavender! And this time it was not joy that hit me but the worry of what was going to be worse, lavender flavoured coriander or coriander flavoured lavender.

Relocated as many coriander saplings as I could salvage from the lavender

With this success under my belt, I was no longer the struggling gardener but a Garden Goddess in my own right! So for the first time in my life, I decided to do some forward integration and make something useful from all the damson plums and the apples falling off the trees and being eaten by the birds or squashed under the feet of my 2 little monkeys

Damson plums

Which led to what till now I would have called the Unthinkable - me making a Spicy chutney, / jam, an act that until now I thought was the prerogative of my mom and people from a few generations back! This time, however I justified it as the vagaries of the Unemployed and also blamed it on the fact that I was spending too much time reading the cookery blogs!

Now it is a different matter that in a burst of enthusiasm I completely forgot that I detest all forms of jams, even the ones called chutney. And that both and V2 are not sweet eaters either! So the only people eating this painstakingly cooked fruits of my labor (bad pun!) are little V1 and my Gujju cook, both of who love all things sweet! Well, one lives and learns! Or in my case, cooks and learns!

As of now, given the grand success of this yr, there are much bigger plans for next - 

There shall be an attempt at growing onions, garlic and radish and carrots! 

And who knows, for all you know I shall be making wine from the grapes and the damsons growing in the garden. Now that definitely won't be the Unthinkable, will it? 

Cheers to that!

Grapes that haven't yet ripened..

Of Ghosts, Foxes and other Creatures of the night!

When I was a child, we lived in a house with a huge Neem tree, which grew in our front yard, right by the gate. 

I was a morbid, lonely little child who spent most of her time engrossed in books; by the time I was 10, I was borrowing books from 3 libraries. And when I wasn't reading, I would spend my evenings staring at the skies expecting aliens to show up in a flying saucer; and during the day, would be busy making little matchbox graves for ants and mosquitoes I had killed, all of whom would then be buried with great pomp and ceremony under the trees in the garden. It is a mystery how I didn't turn out to be a serial killer, because to the adult me (and probably to anyone who reads this), it seems like the child me was exhibiting every promise of turning into a she-Dexter!

I spent an inordinate amount of time under trees until someone told me that Neem trees as a rule, tend to be a refuge of sorts for all types of ghosts, demons and spirits as well as being the abode of choice for the scariest Indian demon there is, the "Bramha-daitya" - who comes into existence when a Brahmin priest dies an untimely, violent death (If you thought the priests you encountered in the numerous Hindu temples were obnoxious, then as per legend, these are supposed to be a thousand times worse.) ;)

Once that little nugget of information got stuck in my brain, my morbid, over active imagination started conjuring up scenarios where in the ghostly denizens of the Neem tree would creep up at night, stick straws through the open window, suck my blood through the straw & turn me into a zombie (Didn't I warn you I was morbid, though it makes me wonder now just how much more morbid my friends must have been to make up stories about ghostly spirits sucking blood out through straws!!)

Anyway, I was so terrified, I would never sleep with the windows open; and after almost 2 and a half decades, I still don't. On nights when it was my turn to lock the gate, I would sing, croak more like it, given me being completely and hopelessly tone deaf, Bhajans (devotional songs) dedicated to Lord Rama, who I was told, has the powers to chase away all evil spirits. My mom used to tell me on those nights, people living even a km away would know that it was my turn to lock up for the night thanks to all the devotional songs that I would be belting out at the top of my voice!!!

I grew up, went to a hostel, moved out of that house & that little town. While I may still sleep with my windows tightly shut even on sweltering hot summer nights, years of living alone & watching Criminal Minds have taken their toll; I am now more scared of serial killers & axe murderers than of ghosts, demons, poltergeists, witches whose feet move backward when they walk!

Along the way, I also acquired a ghoulish love for horror movies, most of which I watch alone, on TV and late into the night. I get scared, I scream and I watch them with my eyes half shut, I put the sound on mute when something scary is about to happen but I continue to watch them nevertheless!! 

But with most of these movies I don't suffer from any residual after effects (except the Ring which really, really scared me & I couldn't sleep for atleast a week) - I almost never sleep with the lights on or stay up nights waiting for something to jump out of the cupboard and I don't jump in fright when the door creaks. In my mind, I was secure in the belief that ghostly spirits tend to prefer living in large, old houses rather than apartments; atleast that's how it was until Ram Gopal Verma tried his best to sabotage this entire belief system with Bhoot!

So when we moved into this 100 year old house with an attic - which usually is the centre of all spooky activity in old houses, I was understandably a little apprehensive and scared.

One night, after a couple of weeks post having moved in and not encountered any scary experiences, I gathered up the courage to sit up late, all alone in the ground floor, working on my blog. But I was a wee bit jittery & with every strange noise I heard, my heart would skip a beat; and let me tell you that there were quite a few strange noises I heard, like the wind rattling the windows or the foxes howling in the neighbourhood - seriously spooky stuff even by a non horror movie addict's definition. 

And then it happened..... 

Just as the howling of the foxes started to freak me out, I heard a new sound - that of someone whimpering. At first I thought I had imagined it but it continued and gathered momentum. I gathered my courage & came out of the room to check the source of the sound, all the while reciting the Gayatri Mantra. Then I remembered what a friend had gleefully pointed out while I was living in Indonesia - according to him, only Hindu ghosts would understand the significance of the Gayatri Mantra. But the ghost of a person belonging to another religion would not know what the words in the mantra meant and thus, the mantra would be useless against them!! 

So here I was in the middle of the night, in a large, old English house which had been empty for the last one year. Now what were the chances that I would run into a spirit perfectly capable of understanding the Gayatri Mantra? Not very good I guess. So I decided on the next best option - to flee for my life! I gathered up my laptop and other stuff and ran up the stairs. The whimpering sound seemed to follow me up the stairs. It seemed to be coming right behind me, except there was NO ONE behind me. Holy Mother of God, I was being followed by an invisible spirit!!! At best I would end up like the kid in M. Night's Sixth Sense, going around whispering "I see dead people". At worst, I could end up ...... Oh I didn't even want to get down to imagining what the worst could be, the possibilities were endless, and each scarier than the last!

But as I continued to run up, it hit me - Wait, something's not right with this scenario!. Why was this whimpering sound so close? Almost as if it was coming from within me! Was I possessed already?? Petrified I stopped to glance down, only to discover myself holding a baby monitor, from whence all the whimpering had been emerging all along!!!! 

Now we may not have any ghosts in this new home of ours, but we do have a resident fox who very generously provides a spark of adventure to the place. He has half a tail and so is quite easily recognisable from the other foxes who meander in once in a while to rummage in our garbage bins. He is a cheeky little fellow and is not shy of humans unlike the other foxes who run away the minute they see you. The Vs are fascinated with him and call him the Fock! (making this mispronunciation, the source of quite a few laughs). 

Now while I do feel pangs of worry about his existence; after all I have 2 children running around in that garden the fox frequents, I also have discovered many fringe benefits of having this little wild creature around. My 2 brats happen to be quite scared of him and so I drop his name liberally each time I want them to eat their food, to not pick flowers, to not throw the pebbles from the driveway at each other. Every time they say No, they throw attitude, they dilly dally, they pluck my flowers, they try to walk into the hedge of holly, all I need to do is drop the F (fox) word and then watch them immediately fall in line! :))

And because of that, as potentially dangerous as he may be, he is currently the best Boogeyman a harassed mother of twins could hope for!

Its been raining all day. 
As I look out of the window, I find the Fox crawled up in the garden.

I try to shoot pictures from inside but am not happy with what I get.
So I carefully tip toe out side and walk up to him.
He still continues to sleep as I click pictures

I make a noise that startles him.
He wakes up and sprints away and watches me from a safe distance

When he realises I am not following him, he yawns and stretches.
And goes back to keeping himself warm (didn't I say he is a cheeky little fella!)

At this point I feel sorry for the poor guy and ask Vj to get  him some bread.
Vj throws a fit when I ask him if he could toast the bread before we can give it to the Fox.
"For heaven's sake, that creatures eats out of garbage cans! And you want me to .... what!!" he yells. :(
But Fox doesn't seem to mind the cold bread

He takes it and moves off, back into the hedge.

A recipe for a pick-me-up!!!

One would have thought that it would be the English weather (Kindly explain to me again why they call this a "summer"??) that would have dampened my spirits but let me tell you from first hand experience that dull grey skies, cold winds accompanied by sudden drizzles and capricious weather are simply no match for trying to manage for 3 weeks without a bank account, a credit card, a Wi-Fi connection, a TV connection, a post paid connection, being stuck with a pre paid scheme that has been demanding top ups like some insatiable black hole and on top of it all, finding out that there is no 24/7 repair service for a refrigerator that decides to conk off on a Saturday when it is full of baby food!!!

So, what do you do when you discover that life in the First World is more like being teleported back into the Stone Age instead of living in the midst of an Inception meets Matrix vision that you had created in your head? 

1- You bloody well feel low. Understandably so. You yell at the husband off and on. After all he is the one who got the transfer and put you through this misery in the first place! 

2-You live on Maggi for days at a stretch and ensure Nestle profit margins register a dramatic upswing! At the same time you cross your fingers and secretly hope that the mutual funds you have invested in have atleast a teeny tiny finger in the Nestle pie, so you are atleast sure you are making some profit out of your own misery!

3- If its Les Paul's b'dy, you use the Google doodle guitar to strum "Beta sabun ki shakal mein, tu to nikla sirf jhaag.... Bhag bhag D.K.Bose, D.K.Bose.... bhaag" to capture the mismatch between your expectations and your current reality...

4- Alternately, if you are vocal and unafraid to share what you feel, you rant and vent all your frustrations on the medium that makes every other agony aunt pale in comparison - I am referring to the mother of all agony aunt columns - Facebook of course!

And so I did, all of the above. But before I could perfect point No. 4 into an art form, concerned friends started sending email links about the guy who got sued by Vodafone for doing the same, i.e. using Facebook to vent his frustrations with Vodafone. 

WTH!!! 
What is this world coming to?? 
Ghor Kalyug I tell you!!! These days you can't even say what you feel without worrying about someone suing your a@#e!!! 
Now how the hell do you pull yourself out of the gutter of despair that you have landed in if you aren't allowed to spread a bit of the despondence and misery you are currently wallowing in??

So, after a bit of trial and error (the process is always a work in progress) I did come upon an almost perfect pick-me-upper that comes without the risk of getting sued. It is somewhat time intensive, labour intensive but the brilliant thing is, unlike hitting a shopping mall and regretting it when you get your credit card bill next month, this one isn't too heavy on the pocket either. How much more perfect can it get??? 

So the next time you are wallowing in the depths of despair, shedding large tears online about your state of life, this is what you could do instead! (Applicable for anyone who has recently relocated to England!)

1- You walk to a park nearby. (Pl try this at your own risk if you don't live in the UK) Anyone will do, chances are there are at least 3 within a mile's radius of where you live. Choose the one least crowded with screaming kids on the loose. Now lie on the grass and admire random dandelions and daisies in bloom while reciting Wordsworth in your head. Imagine yourself transported back into Victorian England with dashing gentlemen on horses and graceful ladies carrying parasols passing you by.

Hang on to this prim and proper mental image for dear life. Remember, the next time you get mad about the infrastructure, the response time, the works; this vision will help you bite back all the swear words forming in your head! And it will help you remember that as far as keeping pace with technology is concerned, UK, atleast the 'not MI5/6' and 'not 10, Downing Street' part of it, is still stuck in the Victorian era!!! (Although I am no more sure any longer about the MI5/6 part of it! If you did notice, James Bond has started using his fists these days instead of all those fancy gadgets. Now what does that tell you? Cost cutting or aversion to all things hi-tech??)

Spent half hr gazing at these pretty lavender 

blossoms in bloom in the park

Tip : If you are a mother of 2 brats, make sure you send the kid(s) off to chase some random birds and dogs so you can gaze at the D&D (dandelions and daisies) in peace. 
Alternately if you are more likely to fall under the social creature rather than the flower gazer segment, you could spend your time gawking at the hot men jogging in the park (Why should men have all the fun, I say! After all, living in the 21st century should have some perks!). On days you feel particularly adventurous, you could even strike up a conversation with one, something you unfortunately can't do with the D & Ds.

The Vs are chasing the pigeons in the park while I lie admiring the Ds and Ds

2. You drop the kids off at play school and take a nice looong walk all by yourself. Make sure you don't wander aimlessly but head purposefully towards the nearest flower shop. There, buy yourself a nice bunch of exotic English flowers that you have so far managed to see only in your online Farmville England farm!!!

I bought myself some nice bright blue cornflowers which till now I had seen only on my FV farm!

3. At the flower shop, also buy yourself some nice flowering plants. And then plant them in your pretty English garden and admire your handiwork every single day. 

Remember, give a woman a bunch of flowers, make her happy for a day. Teach her to grow her own, and make her happy and the husband relieved for a lifetime! (Okay I just made that up, but doesn't that make infinite sense?)

Tip : Buy something nice and hardy like geraniums which won't die even if you exhaust your newly developed enthusiasm for gardening and forget to water them. And if you are the kinds who gets mad a little too often like me, you could do well to invest in a couple of lavender bushes for some free de-stress aromatherapy benefits in the future!

Sensible moi bought some pink and red geraniums, some pink and white calla lilies & some lavender.

4. You sit in your patio, sip a lemonade (diet) and make sure you take enough pictures to post with the sole objective of making your friends envious. But ensure that you don't dilly dally and finish this task quickly as the patio chairs are still wet from the rains and the cold breeze is freezing your a#$e every minute you stay outdoors! But don't be stupid enough to tell your friends that! Just focus on getting the "I am lazing outdoors in my own garden while you poor sods are working your a@#es off" part right!

See how cleverly I have edited this picture to brighten
up the dull grey skies and have cropped out the wet chairs!

5. If you are really lucky, then you may get your very British neighbour to give you an orientation course on the neighbourhood and the way of life! I am extremely lucky to have such a neighbour so I got mine!

So, now I know that my bread has to be from Warburtons, my cucumbers from Kent, my ham from Wiltshire and my eggs have to be bought at the butcher and not the supermarket shelf! I've also been fortunate enough to have been introduced to a real English butcher, who talks in monosyllables, who scoffs at you for missing the heat of Singapore & for eating store bought sausages that he calls "American trash", and whose sausages are so bloody amazing that once you've had them, even you start referring to every other sausage you have ever eaten as "American trash"!

Remember if all this doesn't work for you, all you have got to do is walk to the nearest shopping center; and you might just stumble into a 50% off sale at Gap or Debenhams! 

WORD OF CAUTION: 

No matter what you do,

1. Do NOT re-read this post. You will realise just how many times you have mentioned the term "walk". Then all this carefully nurtured sang-froid will get shattered into smithereens by memories of the good old days when you texted for a cab to drive you to the mall which was a mere 7minute walk away! And then, you will definitely need to hit Gap, sale or no sale!!!

2. And most definitely do NOT go tinting your meagre & almost invisible eyebrows jet black! Not only will you end up looking like a grotesque and grossly untalented version of Frida Kahlo, with new facial hair now visible from outer space; you will also have to suffer the additional humiliation of having it go unnoticed by the husband. 

And make sure unlike me, you are not beset by the urge to commit harakiri by proceeding to mention the coloring of your eyebrows to the unobservant husband of yours & then asking him for his opinion. If you do, then you bloody well deserve to hear him ask you this priceless gem of a question, "So if you coloured your brows black, then what colour were they all these years?"!!! 

Yes, I was asked this little priceless gem of a question; and that too by the man I have known for 15yrs and have been married to for almost 11!!! 

You know what? To hell with the pick me up!!! Situations like these call for more intense measures! Maybe its time to take the credit card and hit the shopping center after all!!!