The D Monster!!

Hello petals

Well, here in Colombo there is an autumn of sorts happening! As most of you will know, autumn is my favouritestestest ever ever season and I thought that I would miss it dearly... but Sri Lanka has its own, somewhat tropical version. For one thing, it's considerably cooler than it once was (back in April I was almost baked Bec on toast!) and for another, every day is presenting the most spectacular storms. Absolutely stunning. Sometimes they're right above us and they make the house shake (that's not my most favourite part!), but at others they're distant rumbles, or silent flashes that illuminate the whole sky for a split second - that's what I love.

Lately life has been making me slow down and simplify and, although it was a bit of a painful process at the time, I'm now starting to feel the benefits.

Part One Of the Slow-Down Process

On my second day in Malaysia, at the beginning of a holiday that should have been KL, Melaka, Singapore and then Borneo, I had all of my stuff (with the exception of clothes and toiletries: phew!) stolen on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Two people on a motorbike whisked away my shoulder bag before I had time to say, "Goodness me!"; depriving me of my passport, all cash, all cards, MP3 player, mobile phone, digital camera, watch AND my Lonely Planet Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei! You can imagine the implications of this! (Note to self: split up your valuables and wear your money belt on your person. Fool!) As luck would have it, I had friends in the city who were absolute angels and rescued me! I had a somewhat sedate break in KL and, briefly, Melaka... awaiting my new passport and exploring the country as cheaply as possible!

The Slow-Down Process Part Two

One day I suddenly developed a rather high temperature - the first time in my life that I've felt boiling hot AND freezing cold at the SAME TIME, plus a number of other yummy symptoms. After a hellish night of trying to make myself stand up and go to hospital, I finally made it there in the early hours of a Colombo morning and, da da daaaaa, the dengue monster had got me! Eight days, pain, nausea, rash and far too many needles later, I emerged from hospital and flopped into my own bed to begin the recovery process. Three weeks later (from the onset, that is) I'm still able to do little more than go to work and sleep (although writing this much in one mega writing fit is a definite sign of progress!). I'm sure you see the theme: slooooooooooooooooowing down! Most of the dengue time I wasn't able to read, or look at a TV or computer screen, so there was lots of time to contemplate and just be.

Doing battle with the

dengue demon

Apollo hospital, Colombo

Llch, rugby ball at the ready, making his

contribution to my recovery

Post-hospital confinement within my pink mozzie net...

wondering if the world was still out there

The outcome is that I've made some decisions. How delicious it is to make decisions... especially for someone like me ;) I'm not going to write about them here yet, but suffice to say that I feel great about having made them. The future is looking brighter again... I think I may have created the time and space that I need to finally move on from the last two years. Here's hoping :)

More on that next time... the energy levels are finally giving way. Home for the festivities in a MONTH! Woooooo!

Wishing you health, happiness and an encounter with something thought provoking each, each and every, every day!

x X x

Do you know something?

I think it's time... time to finally fill you in on the story of Bec over the last year or so. It's no novel - parts of it still make absolutely no sense, but that's why we sit down with a book rather than watch our own lives the whole time: reality is less structured. But it's real. So here we go... Bec the book:

It started with a bump

The last blog post I wrote before this episode of the story began was December 22nd 2007. What followed was a jovial, festive, sparkly Beijing Christmas, made all the jollier by the fact that I was to fly home for a mid-year visit the next month (Chinese new year holiday). On January 17th 2008, I sat in Beijing airport and wrote the following on the first page of a brand-new, funkily arty Chinese A4 diary scrapbook:

在飞机场 (at the airport)

Airports are good places to begin. Not only because they afford time for beginning, but because every journey necessitates the start of more than itself - as it does the ending. This book, at its beginning, is dedicated to being whatever it wants to be. Its purpose and format are neither preordained nor fixed, but I anticipate that it is going to record, perhaps unreliably, and probably sporadically, a very interesting and transformational year. A year in which structure develops

I didn't finish the sentence because something or other interrupted my train of thought... it transpires that the timing was perfect. Little did I know the extent to which those words would prove true, or how far from my expectations the definitions of 'interesting' and 'transformational' would turn out to be.

I had one of those great seats on the plane, right next to the door with all the space a Bec's legs could want. Ever since I was old enough to really know that I'm able to die, I haven't been overly fond of flights. That said, I lived in China for three years, so the fear was clearly manageable. Anyway, this flight was a smooth one with a friendly, communicative captain (which always reassured me for some reason...)

Here we are making our descent to Heathrow:

Of course, the plane is far, far, far too close to the house below it because at this point both engines had stopped responding and there was not enough power to make the runway. We were dropping from the sky towards a busy London road and I, ensconced in my deliciously leg-roomy yet windowless seat, had no idea.

We just made it over the perimeter fence before slamming into grass the other side and skidding towards the end of a runway... there was the bump to end all bumps and the crack of my top teeth slamming into my bottom teeth and then... nothing... haziness... snippets of recollection but little else: a man running from another section, desperately wanting to get off the plane; the firm, well-projected voice of a member of cabin crew taking control; jumping onto the emergency chute and wondering why I wasn't going anywhere; running across the runway and answering an, "Are you okay?" with an, "I don't know!"; starting to cry then being too shocked to continue; the kindness of other passengers: the man who gave me his (ankle-length!) emergency jacket, another who offered the use of his mobile phone (from which I forewarned Ma who was waiting in Terminal 4 for a flight that had frozen in the information board world), and the girl who pointed out the wheels of the plane lying in a far-off field and made me laugh with jokes about Chinese hats; using accumulated loose change at a pay phone to send my mother on a parent-hunting mission for a fellow passenger... to tell them he was safe and unharmed; the nun in the secluded section of the airport where we spent many hours, speaking to me with warmth and sincerity; free Pret A Manger sandwiches accompanied by exhaustion and a desperation to see my family; inarticulately answering question after question; waiting; feeling dazed; wondering which way up I was.

You see, my seat was in the space between the third door and window where there is no window. The chute I tried to slide down was the incredibly on the wonk affair behind the wing - is it any wonder I wasn't going anywhere?

The wheels of the plane in a field over yonder.

The scene of my dramatic, non-slidey escape.

These men, Peter Burkill and John Coward, saved my life. It's thanks to their skill and presence of mind that I stood and walked off flight BA38. Yes, they were doing a job, but they did it so well that day that 152 people danced with death and came out the other side. Besides which, they are the ones who faced the ordeal that we, in our blissful ignorance, were spared. The word gratitude has a new depth and significance in my vocabulary.

Why is this the start of the story of Bec? Because everything changed on that day. Everything. Why am I writing it now? Because I am finally ready to admit to it.

More next time my lovelies. Be well and be careful and don't give up. Remember: for better or worse, no experience lasts for ever. Much love, Bec x

There was a time...

when life was slower. When a day lasted twice as long as it does these days. When there was time to plan the future and it seemed as if far-off dates would never arrive. When some days, although good, were fairly inconsequential... unremarkable...

Life is unrecognisable when compared to what it was, and I don't think it really has anything to do with where I'm located on the globe. Issues of life and death which were once too huge and too far-removed to be tackled, push their way into the comfortable routine of existence, stepping on the toes of the familiar figures in everyday life. Death is not something to be faced one day, it is a constant companion to those who are alive. Where there is life, there's the promise of death. It's the old two-sided coin; night and day; main course and dessert. One inevitably goes with the other: they are inseparable, although who knows which is which? The challenge now is to accommodate this truth within the confines of a 'normal' life. To be neither too hedonistic nor morbid as a result, yet achieve a degree of awareness. To keep plodding through a story that we are only permitted to know a tiny part of: the gap between the end and the epilogue, which is devoid of words.

Yet again, there is much to tell, but now is not the time to tell it. I will squish a little update in here, however:

I'm in Sri Lanka! It's rather incredible.

More on that later, I'm all typed out.

Be well, and if you're not, be honest. Let's look after each other in any way we can.

x