A Kindred Surprise

Giiiirls

 The cold wind swept through my hair as we rushed along the quiet roads. On the back of T’s scooter, I hung on to his notorious beige leather jacket as we rode a

C, L and I

long the arching robot-like bridges. It was just over a year ago when I was in the same position with T and the gang in Laos and even longer with J and the girls, but with a bit of effort and some productive Facebook time, I’d made it to a very different part of the world and T's home country, The Netherlands. Bittersweet is the only adjective I can think of how to describe the ending. You can't be too down when your soul's so lifted. I looked next to me at the faces that I’d spent the last few beautiful days with… a chirpy Aussie, a feisty Swiss Latino, a sexy Spaniard, a cool German, a fist pumping Welshman, a gorgeous Canadian, a lovely Dutchman and a flower girl, what a mix! It was as though someone had brushed everyone over with a layer of serenity. Expressions were soft, movements were slow and the odd giggle would always peep out of someone every few minutes, the rest of the group either laughing or moaning together in response. It was the day after the deep house festival DGTL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXgwjSfaNSk) and instead of sulking in bed with the curtains closed; we took advantage of the sunny skies, though it took a while to actually reach that conclusion. I’m sure everyone knows how long big groups can take to get their act together, especially when no one’s too eager to move… So a few of us assigned everyone roles to get things going, we'd decided ours should involve the least amount of movement - that idea didn’t pass and we compromised by all agreeing to get up, treat ourselves to brunch and coffee (after all the hardship we’d gone through) and have a lie in the park. 20 minutes turned into an hour or two, I don’t know how exactly us girls always seem to take so long. In the fibonacci spiral, the golden ratio can either go the fastest root in a straight line (usually described as the masculine line) or the scenic route in a curved line (the feminine line) yet both end up in the same

The fibonacci spiral

place. This was definitely evident in our methods of getting ready, the boys would be at the door 5 minutes after talking about it and the girls would sit and suggest something on our to-do list... after another 15 minutes of all continuing with our minor routines we’d look up and discuss doing something about it… 15 minutes later, it would start getting done... a few hours later, we all ended up at the door, some just a little more agitated than others... With all the piles of girly clothes, make-up and rolling material that trailed around us, we can’t say we didn’t leave our mark J

Morning snuggles

So we found our breakfast spot and happily sat down outside on that sunny morning of 4/20 in Amsterdam. With our tummy’s grumbling we sipped on OJ and coffee, holding in the moans as 2pm struck, the thought of breakfast seeming so distant and each second feeling like hours. All of our desperate heads turned as the waitress finally walked through the door with plates of English breakfast, burgers and mozzarella sticks mmm, I think that was one of the few moments of silence during the holiday as everyone zoned into the bliss of long-awaited deliciousness. Before splitting the bill, B (an old welsh travelling mate from Asia) joined me in an all too familiar ATM hunt that lead us 20 minutes away through the city to the ‘nearest cash-machine’, on return we were told with a grumpy look that there was a closer and easier option 5 minutes away, haha! 

‘Regression Sessions’ is a great night in London that takes you back to your childhood with ball pits, bouncy castles and altered mind states. The day at the park felt exactly the same, lining up for ice cream, sipping on soft drinks and appreciating each other’s company. The sun danced in front of our eyes and shone through the gaps in the spring leaves that cast funky shadows onto our toes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fmKGQ-1we0

Wine night

The day before had been quite the opposite vibe. We’d woken up fairly late after a group breakfast and a pre-festival preparation sesh, made our way on/ off various modes of transport to get to T’s, hurriedly caught up with D and our fellow festival goers and began the day of madness. How great is it when a negative weather forecast is wrong?! ‘Cloudy skies’ were nowhere to be seen as we all got sunglasses out, slipped past security and the wagon-wheel like tables/ chairs and over to the booming stages where Soul Clap, Ben Pearce and Skream were just a few of the names playing (not that we knew who anyone actually was). Flowers, glitter and red lipstick were out so we dropped with desperados and spent the rest of the festival between the fire-hut and the various stages, dancing, laughing and having odd cuddles and deep and meaningfulls with strangers. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXgwjSfaNSk) It struck 11pm and the festival timer dinged so we went from semi-naked to fully clothed as the winter winds blew through the flat plains. We were herded like cows through the industrial-looking grounds, past the coffee shop and up to the beautiful apartment that overlooked a canal with about 15 people on toe. Day festivals are great because you can actually get to sleep at a reasonable hour, so curled up in sleepy snuggles, music and flower fumes, we slowly sunk into slumber, C, T and I spooning each other over the one pillow that we happily shared.

Hot tubs

But that was all before the journey! Getting to Amsterdam had been a struggle and a half. The complaints were kept to a minimal as we worked through the re-occurring obstacles… A morning of cleaning up from the party the night before took longer than expected, as did breakfast/lunch that got pushed back to about 3pm. Our ideal plan was to leave at 6pm so we get to the station only to realise that the train tickets needed to be printed off at home so J and J won the ‘most productive couple of the day’ award in sorting that out, having to de-tour as the internet wasn’t working etc. etc. etc. Loooord almighty.

B!

Meanwhile… the rest of us sat quite happily in the sun surrounded by flowers outside of Groningen station, looking fairly hobo-esque but keeping it casj with a few tunes on the computer and hot drinks from Starbucks. It took us about an hour of huddling up against the wind and watching the sun slowly disappear as we covered ourselves with super thin hippie cloths until someone suggested that to stay out of the cold, we could actually sit inside Starbucks, so for the last 10 minutes we regained a bit of the lost warmth until the others returned. Hours later we were on the train, trekking through Amsterdam with our big backpacks, bags of blankets and festival gear. A coffee shop was our second-last/ essential destination… ahh we made it! We then realised there were 3 ‘dampkring’s’ in the city and our friend ‘A’ who was collecting us, was at a very different one in a very different location… just our luck. We lay on the street outside the coffee shop at 11pm, the flash of C’s polaroid lighting up the scene for a brief moment to capture the excitement in our faces as ‘A’ stayed true to his  Dutch roots and rolled around the corner on his bicycle. We all shared long hugs, feeling with slight confusion how manly 'A' was after a year out of high school.

Balcony sesh's

Festival spider

The green peace boat that had been
freed from Russia

With laughs of exhaustion and hysteria we lunged with the weight of our bags and stopped at the nearest, yummiest looking pizza place that was soon followed by a flowery SLUMBER PARTYY. Before falling asleep, the OG kush rode with the laughter wave that passed through the room and bounced off the walls, hitting us all multiple times until exhaustion was our only defence. I woke up in the living room of A’s new furniture-less house, groin to groin in the centre of the blow-up mattress that was concave in the centre, somehow touching the ground because of our weight and inflated on the periphery leaving us all lying at very awkward angles. M was curled up on the armchair with all his clothes on from the night before and J & J had slipped off the padded beanbag and onto the floor below… the laughter resonated in the room and healed the broken sleep.

DGTL

There’s something about catching up with friends after high school that’s never quite the same. Well, either it is or it isn’t. It’s so easy to get along with people you’re taking the same subject/ course as because conversation can revolve around it, but once that common denominator’s lost, you really feel who you’re able to re-connect with when conversations can go beyond small talk… The talk of this holiday went above and beyond small, on our first night in, after a cycle around the city and a few warming rays from the afternoon sun, J and I picked up C and got into our bikini’s, B (another friendly KL face) told us of her amazing project that she described as a ‘human library’, an event enabling people to talk face-to-face with individuals who’ve experienced prejudice, they get to tell their stories and the audience gets to soak it in.

The journey to Amsterdam

Multi-coloured vino flowed and we soaked into the bubble filled hot tub with fairy lights draped on the outskirts of the room until a very drunk C returned from his frat-party and joined in. Dancing, polaroid’s, naughty snap chats and old cheesy 90’s tunes were soon cranked up as we drifted off in the wee hours of the timeless morning.

Venturing out the following day, our coins stayed buried in the bottom of our wallets during a slightly failed festival-shop but did leave the shopping mall with something, speeding out of there as the next victim to enter the bathroom held an impressively composed expression… Coffee shop next for a civilised puff and a coffee. It’s always interesting watching the people that go into coffee shops, is this their break from work, a sesh with their friends or a date? It’s so nice that the paranoia and grungy atmosphere turns into a… Buddha bar of sorts… Losing track of time, yet again, dinner took a while to sort out, and just as the house-party guests began to trickle in (3 hours late), us girls were just sitting down to a dinner of black bean chicken and a glass of wine. The sex divide was evident as boys hovered around the beer pong table in the corner and we all tuned into the girly vibe, getting deep and dirty. Plates cleared and we commenced the mingling. Party chat went from questioning ones identity to the structure of our political system to whether one would rather be a tree or a cloud until my brain could take no more so boogie, love, desperados, down.

The group!

Polaroidss

I hope the lack of chronology emphasizes the timelessness of a holiday. I have 2 hours to go out of a 17-hour journey via buses, trains, scooters and ferries but it was only £50 return J. I will say, to anyone making the megabus journey to Amsterdam go in the day as the Euro tunnel is open and the journey’s a lot smoother. Somehow I made each bus about 5 minutes before departure, gained back my passport after misplacing it twice and re-kindled flames with my girls and a few new friends. I’ve just been turfed out of the best seat on the bus by a persistently rude man who I have no energy for, so instead I let down my guard, move back a seat and gaze over the lush English countryside on Easter Monday of 2014, thinking how beautiful life is and how sometimes it just takes a holiday to remember it again.

Airy Fairy I

Wanderer

Dancin with the fairies

It amazes me what an intense effect stress has on the brain, I watch my amazing housemate work through a full-time masters and a half-time job, buzzing along the mood spectrum from calm to hysteria, those of us with slightly less stress showing pretty similar symptoms (if living in a house of girls is a reliable reference point ;) ) … it makes the importance of finding something to calm you down whether it be meditating or monging out to TV so important. Without the balance we’d all end up in asylums or …slow-down camps. The point of the stress rant was what has just happened yet again, on the start of an Easter adventure to Holland to catch up with a few of my favourite girlfriends from high school.

Just about where my head's at

Tralalala

I woke up this morning with a foggy head that soon vanished after a long sesh of yoga, a scattered feat of packing and a run in the spring sunshine. Packing always takes so much longer than anticipated doesn’t it? Doing it the night before is what we’re been taught for so many years but for me, it still hasn’t sunk in.

So of course, I look at the time, hoping it’ll be 2pm (I actually learnt the psychological phrase for this the other day… ‘false hope syndrome’, ha) but of course it’s 3pm instead and as I sit leisurely blow drying my hair, the cortisol levels rapidly rise and I realise I have 30 minutes until the bus leaves and I still wasn’t ready... so trying to get my priorities in check, I put down the hairdryer...

It's never seemed more
appropriate that both our
names begin with J .. for
this holiday at least <3

Chuk mung nam moi B! See
you in Dam B <3

Fast-forward mode began, what a familiar feeling. A taxi it had to be. A gulp of coffee and a regrettable puff of a J and the taxi arrived. Bags in, door shut and finally, feeling somewhat reassured we were on our way, 5 minutes down the main road. Shit. Please don’t tell me I just put my phone down on the kitchen table. 20 minutes left. Arghhhhh. After a brief inner-battle as to how necessary a phone was compared to a new bus ticket to Holland, we turned around. Run in, grab phone, back in the taxi. We arrived at the megabus to London with 10 minutes to spare; I check in and sit down. Realising I’ve put my laptop under the bus … um a 3 hour bus ride isn’t going to entertain itself. Gawwwd. The bus driver mutters under his breath and lets me climb into the luggage compartment and start rummaging while he eyes me suspiciously. I manage to awkwardly pull out my laptop bag, lying on everyone else's bags in the process and rolling onto the pavement next to the driver who was tapping his foot and shaking his head, making sure the items in my hand had actually come out of my bag. There's not much trust left in the world is there... but then again, after just watching 'the pursuit of happiness' and seeing the peace and love looking hippie run away with Will Smiths scanning machine, I can understand the association :p. I sheepishly walked back onto the bus, straightening out my clothes to then receive a call from the taxi driver notifying me that I had left my only warm jacket in the taxi. Eeek. As a lovely gesture, he was going to come back to

From Laos to Amsterdam -
Seeing these travellers soooon

A long awaited reunion
with these 2 beauts <3

return it to me. So I get back out of the bus, repeating ‘thank you’ in my head every time a late-comer walked up to the bus driver with their reservation numbers. Oh my god pleeease hurry up!! I stood, biting my fingers nervously with a foggy head, my inner-clock getting louder and louder as the minutes ticked on. The taxi driver arrives, I breathe a sigh of relief, run to grab my jacket, thank him and then scramble onto the bus. The engine finally starts. Ahh J we’re about to leave. The engine stops… I could hear the bus driver storming back onto the bus. “Who’s lost a black wallet?”. I laughed in my head… how bad would that be. He comes up to the 2^ndfloor and what do I recognise in his hand but my.black.wallet containing my passport, bank cards, bus tickets and money.

So now I sit on the bus that’s finally moving, cringing behind my seat and feeling successful at having ticked every box on the ‘what not to do when you start travelling’ list. Let’s hope the rest of the holiday gets better from here… :p

17 hours later at a (real) coffee shop
... AMSTERDAM

Recipe of the day: Easter egg fairy cakes
http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/7083/easter-fairy-cakes.aspx

A breather in the light

Tribe of Frogz

I pop my head out of the rabbit hole for just a minute to feel the breeze on my face. It gets a bit stuffy down there sometimes, the darkness is infinite and the falling sensation starts to get a little tiring. I can only imagine how it must’ve been for Alice, right after eating that mysterious cake as well! Imagine the indigestion..

I’m on the road again J only a short distance this time, Bristol to London for a weekend away with friends and family. It’s funny playing a different role in the city you’re so used to living in. Walking around with a backpack and a beanie suddenly elicits a cocked head ‘where’s she going’ kind of look while the other backpackers give me a familiar nod. It’s different to the reaction I get when I’m looking slightly hobo-ish in trackies and an oversized jumper keeping my head as low as possible after a night out. That’s when you get the sympathetic look, I once received a pat on the shoulder by a passer by and kind words of ‘you’ll be alright love’ right before a truck swerved an inch from my face. Oh gawd, hide!

Countryside!

The rest of the time I just blend in. It’s great living in such a studenty city, despite the fact that we all look the same with our grey beanies, flannel shirts, black tights and boots – everyone’s of a similar mind-set. Stokes Croft (where I work) has long been known for its outspoken and independent stance. There are lots of gorgeous independent cooperative cafes and I recently learned about the Bristol Pound – I didn’t understand the point of the cartoon-like notes that so few people pulled out of their wallets, but after the barista explained it to me the other day, the light-bulb in my head illuminated. If a currency can only be circulated within one city (only in certain shops/ cafes that give you a discount for using it) and not used outside of it, then the focus on developing Bristol and its independent businesses suddenly grows. A great concept I reckon!

You know I read in the newspaper the other day that the Swiss government was going to start giving everyone an allowance/ free money to allow its civilians to engage in more intrinsic activities and possibly become a happier and more productive population? Sociology on the brainn.

It’s the beautiful season of spring at the moment, we’re inching towards ‘the hottest summer since 1910’ apparently! I’ll be here for a few months of it and then am jetting off to an Australian winter, hmm. I doubt their winter will be much to whine about though ;).

Bus journeys

Bristol is the green capital of the Europe and on all the patches of grass around the city; rich yellow daffodils are sprouting while bluebells sit timidly in clusters close-by. Occasionally, a piece of cherry blossom will get caught in my hair, a pit stop on its journey with the Bristol winds. The clocks went forward on Saturday while we were all spinning around to hard-core psytrance at ‘Tribe of Frog’. Dressed like ‘frogz in space’ we arrived, ciders one hand, fags in the other. One night blends into the next and suddenly we’ve jumped back in time to last week, drummers in white headdresses and glitter galore, hippies sitting around in the tunnel of timbuk2 (the underground club hosting the glitter festival) carving wooden mushrooms and feather hair garments. Mushroom in pocket we skipped along to join the circle of colourful pens and large sheets of paper, I’ll never forget the one boy that spent about two hours writing his name, what was going through his mind during that time I’ll never know. Jump again to the 3-pound electro night at the cavern! Vines spread all over the ceilings, 40 year olds giving passers by drops of trips from a white limo with fluorescent blue lights. Jump. Now we’re at a dub night in attic bar, jamming along to a one-man-band that somehow managed to layer beat boxing, electric guitar, harmonica, rap and live sax in one performance.

Fonthill

The hunt :)

Oooh the feel of music! Doesn’t it just make you squirm? It tingles every part of your body, teasing you, getting your heart racing and then dropping you in mid-air. Leaving you helpless and falling, but it’s there to catch you too! And cradle you and lay you down so that you’re looking above and below and straight ahead all at the same time, breathless and empty but so content. Just yearning to be bathed in the song and let go of physical reality to merge into one with the universe. That’s what a good song does for you anyway and that’s what every weekend has done for us. I remember opening my eyes during one of our jams and peering around the room, not one pair of eyes was focusing on anything else but the music, in a trance of ecstasy and presence everyone was connected together but totally lost at the same time.

Within the last few weeks I’ve turned 20, signed for a house for next year, booked a flight to Aus and almost finished the first year of Uni. Wow, it hits you fast doesn’t it? 

Picnics in St. Andrews :)

J left to Australia a few weeks ago and on our last weekend together (after Paris) we got into our fancy clothes again, somehow managing to get them in and out of the washing machine dry, fairly un-wrinkled and on time; making an effort to play into a more socially acceptable image than scruffy travellers. We stayed at the beautiful Fonthill estate that was once owned by the richest man in England, William Beckford, a highly controversial character due to the fact that he was both traditional, English and gay! His dimes and lavish lifestyle soon slipped through his fingers and everything was sold! Luckily we have the option of going to stay there with family every now and then… so J and I had a lovely weekend together, we sipped (and spilt) wine, ate yummy food, star-fished in big beds and got hot and sweaty… playing squash. We bonded with most of my family members that weekend in a very civilised fashion and both experienced our first British ‘hunt’ with hundreds of hounds, horses and guns. I felt like I’d been transported back to 1920! It was great to watch and so beautifully done; my cousin T wore a GoPro on his head and watching the footage afterwards was a great vicarious moment.

Bathtiime

The most dramatic moment for me at the hunt was attempting to befriend one of the hounds and somehow attracting the whole pack… oh my god, a whole pack of dogs running towards you is not an exciting site…  a man on a big horse had to come galloping over and shoo them all away, not exactly a knight in shining armour but close enough?

André :p.. this guy was drumming
live DnB it was incredible

J and I strolled in the sunshine over the green fields and past the running river to my granny’s ‘vine cottage’. We looked through old photo albums and laughed at all the old hairstyles and flared jeans… It’s quite sad that now photo’s are so abundant to us and we don’t have to go through such a long process of developing them etc. they lose so much of their value. I don’t know how we’re going to choose what photo’s to put in our photo albums when we filter through our Facebook snaps… My granny on the other hand has one photo album for 80+ years! We listened to stories, ate lunch and sipped on coffees before heading back for a cheeky film and a bubble bath. The bus was late leaving my aunties and I made it into uni for my presentation (worth 20% of our final grade) a minute before class started, phew.

We bumped into Panda from
Skins on this night out :)

Hugging trees :)

It’s tough balancing pleasure and work when one always overrides the other, I guess uni’s the one place that you can get away with it right? I savoured the few days that we ate and drank like royals and forgot about student living for a bit. Eating yummy meals at ‘atomic burger’, chai-coffee latte’s at Rojak and drinks at ‘The Social’ after work. Oh work, work, work. Work is… a handful? Being a social carer you have different clients but tend to work with a small handful more closely once you get to know them. I’ve somehow become the primary carer for A.L, a mentally insane woman that has severe autism and amongst many other ‘things’, Münchausen syndrome (a disorder where people pretend to have various illnesses etc.). So some days she’ll be unable to move and other days she’ll be banging her head against the wall and crying/ screaming till she collapses in exhaustion. It’s pretty heavy work but it is rewarding and always different. Despite her madness she does have little moments of being pleasant (little, little, tiny, miniscule moments) but having J waiting outside for a hug after a shift was always the highlight. The day he was supposed to leave he made a spur of the moment decision to delay the flight by a day, ironically a few weeks later when I’s boyfriend was leaving back to Portugal, he happened to delay his trip by a couple days too. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdxYiCd782c)

Frogz in space :)

I was walking home up 'happy lane' the other day, red and flustered from a run around the park. I turned the corner and a surprising influx of bubbles came floating towards me! Each one acted like a little window, the focus was on them but through the transparent layer I suddenly noticed the tree on the side of the wall, it had such delicate branches they looked like they had been sketched out with a fine artists pencil. The bubbles reflected the dusk in micro-rainbows that drifted over the chimney tops and disappeared with silent pops. I stopped to reflect for a moment with the school kids all running past me; 

Recipe of the day: Burgers with fresh figs, Caramelised onions and goats cheese
http://www.jasonandshawnda.com/foodiebride/archives/16510/