Godshill

A couple of weeks back my US relatives visited. They don’t live close, so when the opportunity arises to hang out the chances have to be well and truly leapt for. For me, this meant moving all my midweek appointments, storming it down to Portsmouth in the middle of the night, catching the last ferry of the day to the Isle of Wight, and then heading back to London just 24 hours later. What fools family makes of us all, eh?

St Patrick’s Day

Happy St Patricks Day! I know it seems like just yesterday I was waffling on about being part-Welsh but I couldn’t really write one post about my roots and not follow it up with another…

Happy Birthday, Dad!

My Dad and I have always had a very strange relationship. We lived apart for a long time, he’s never understood my creative bent and we have had extremely different upbringings in almost completely opposing cultures and classes. But as I get older I see the similarities between us. We are both critics, tough, precious with our time and complete workaholics. I frequently look at my Dad for reasons to stop and take more breaks; he is a constantly exhausted night-owl and just a few years into my professional life I’m exactly the same.

Despite being so serious, my earliest recollections of my Dad are of him making people laugh. I think my Dad has always been “the funny one” in all of his circles, and from a young age I’ve seen him use humour not just to entertain but to diffuse tension, bring people together and make people feel comfortable. As a small child, all I can remember thinking is “when I’m older I want to be funny like Dad”. Not smart, beautiful, attractive, rich, famous or anything: just funny. I wouldn’t say I can match him for laugh-a-minute, but I get the occasional gag in where I can.

My Dad was quite hands off when I was growing up. As I get older, I realise that although I’m his first biological child, he has been stepping in and helping to “father” all sorts of people in the years before I came along; cousins, nephews and nieces, family friends, neighbours. He’s a calm listener, and his brain works in a very methodical and logical way – so his advice is always measured and rarely complicated by emotion. It’s another trait I’d like to inherit. I think I get my blunt honesty from him, but I’m not yet as well-tempered or patient as he is.

On our recent trip to Mauritius I saw him taking up the head of the family role: we’re not all together very much, but in many ways he’s a natural leader and patriarch. I’m grateful to have him in my life. Happy birthday, Dad!

Previously: Happy birthday, Mum! / Family

 

Autumn in Mauritius

September and October aren’t normally the times of year I set off for the Mauritian sunshine but that’s how it happened this year. It was slightly odd digging through my jumpers and winter dresses to find all of my recently packed away summer clothes; coupled with our last-minute booking I had some bizarrely mismatched outfits in Mauritius that I would have never thrown on in London. But then again, it’s holiday: time to live in the moment and just go with it…

This is a slightly random assortment of photos, I’ve already told you why I was there and my thoughts so as you might expect documenting the trip and everything we saw wasn’t really first priority for me this time around. I’ve written a lot about Mauritius before (LINK SPEW), it’s a pretty amazing country with lots of tiny islands to explore and a crazy geographical range; mountains, rainforest, woodland, beach and city. People often describe Mauritius as paradise; I’m completely biased of course but I definitely agree, aside from the natural beauty of the landscape (JUST LOOK AT THE VIEW FROM OUR FLAT IN THE TOP PHOTO) it’s got an endearing charm all it’s own amongst the welcoming people and ramshackle little towns. All in a country smaller than London!

We stayed in a flat near to Port Louis (which I’ve posted about before here), the capital of Mauritius and home to a lot of my family as well as some of the most evocative buildings I think I’ve ever seen. The colourful, slightly dilapidated constructions always stick in my mind when I’m back in the UK. Last time I was in Mauritius James and I stayed in a super-fancy hotel (post here) so it was a totally different experience this time sharing a flat with my Mum and Dad, especially as it’s been about 8 years since I last shared a house with my parents/spent longer than a couple of days with them. Again, it’s holiday, time to just go with it…

Family

Whilst in Mauritius I spent a lot of time with one of my cousins and his adorable kids (pictured, do you see a likeness?). He’s the eldest cousin and I’m the youngest. Despite the differences in age and circumstance there is a lot the two of us share beside our grandparents; a sympathetic disposition, a tendency to laugh off serious statements, a keen interest in how our families have shaped us.

My eldest cousin spoke touchingly of his dream; to have the four of us cousins, our four collective children and our one remaining parent (mine) all together in a room. To just be together like that. He spoke so wistfully it made my heart ache. I have many friends who see their entire families every Christmas, every wedding, every funeral. I’ve met my cousins only a handful of times through my life, divided as we are by continents and expensive flight routes. I wish I were of more use to them, lame as I am with my poor grasp of language; my alien career choice; my bizarre hometown; my youth and naivety; my sincere unknowing of life.

My eldest cousin noted the similarities between all of us cousins. We are all independent, almost to the point of being loners. We are all sensitive listeners who try and help everyone out, but none of us are any good at asking for or accepting help of our own. We are actually terrible at accepting help: quick to retreat, happy to analyse our problems in solitude. We don’t like letting people in. We are all pretty laid-back about the trials of day to day life, saving ourselves for the bigger dramas. The kind of dramas that brew up over a lifetime because nobody knew what to do. The kind of crisis that can cause the rest of the family to dash across the globe and throw their best of intentions at; well-meaning but rashly executed.

I don’t really know what the role of family is. People to teach you, to support you, people who know you best, people who cared about you unconditionally? These aren’t really things I associate with my family. My local family is just me and my parents; three people with a backlog of misunderstandings and confusing geography. With the rest of my family, I know we are all similar people but we’re just too far away – and there’s not enough to go on, not enough to be getting on with.

The attributes of family are instead are the things I associate with my friends. It’s my friends who lift me up, it’s my friends who enlighten me, it’s my friends who support me. Why is that? Is it the age I am and the society I live in? Is it because I see my family so little? Is it because my family and I share the same flaws and therefore cannot look after each other properly? The same cracks in alternate mirrors, the same blots on our differing landscapes. It’s difficult to say.

Dubai & Mauritius

I’m currently in Mauritius, a tiny island off the coast of Africa best known as a honeymoon destination. I’m not here for a holiday but sadly due to a family situation that is reaching crisis point. This trip was completely unplanned and last-minute, arising at the most inconvenient time in the way these things tend to. We had a few days stopover in Dubai (as you may have seen from this jubilant post) and I am now in Mauritius. Mauritius is one of my favourite places in the world and I’ve written a lot about it before.

Even given the present circumstances I’m grateful to be here in this beautiful country, although I feel very displaced right now. I had planned for September and October to be about recording, rooting myself in projects for the next couple months, writing round the clock and laying the foundations for next years work. Instead I’m a million miles away from home, trying to reschedule and mentally readjusting to effectively pausing my life for a bit. I feel like somebody’s taken over the reins for a bit and it’s pretty bizarre. If I don’t get much chance to blog in the next few weeks.. you know where I am, and I’ll try and share this incredible place on Instagram (@lailapictures) from time to time as well. 

Golden Hour

Aren’t sunsets wonderful? I wanted to share these photos from Prineville; many are just from my Aunts garden but there was such a gorgeous light in Prineville every day we were there. I tried to capture the beauty and stillness. The sunset seemed to last for hours and every evening we were drenched in this stunning golden light.

My family has had ties and connections to Oregon for about 5 generations now and on this trip my Aunt took me to visit certain key areas where ancestors of mine were born, married, buried. It’s strange to think that we live an entire life and eventually get distilled into a handful of places and sentences. “Hers is the fourth plot from the left. She liked playing the piano and was a big animal lover.” “His birth entry is on the second page. He had grey eyes and everybody mentioned his big smile.” We’re left to fill in the gaps with our imagination. Maybe when our generation is gone it will be different, and we’ll leave acres of mundane photos and comments strewn across the internet that our great-grandchildren will never read.

Sharm El Sheikh

I watched Dirty Dancing a couple weeks back followed by a documentary on Butlins (seriously) and I was thinking how that kind of all-inclusive, family fun, summer camp, resort-based holiday of the sixties doesn’t really exist anymore. At least not outside of kids summer camps. You know; days filled with bizarre activities, sloping off to illicitly hang out with the hotel staff, being cut off from the world back home and entering a “resort bubble” with an unfamiliar cast of people you don’t know very well. The kind of vacation which is more about being in a vacation mind-set with a load of other vacationers, rather than being in a vacation destination with a load of strangers, or alone.

It was about halfway through my time in Sharm I realised I was on that exact resort-based holiday. We were lucky enough to be staying in a really swanky hotel. Given the situation in Egypt we were advised not to travel into Cairo or Luxor and just stay in the hotel and although we were definitely in a gorgeous part of the world the holiday ended up being more about the resort and the people than about the country. With barely any internet access we found other ways to kill the long balmy hours. I went with my family and our close friends. All of us mixed race kids look vaguely related (and in my case Egyptian apparently) and two of us spent the week fending off marriage proposals and being told we looked like twins. The whole huge group of us bundled in for extended meals and lounging by the pool, arguing over seating and who was accompanying who to get a second dessert, who gets to hold the pen in the pub quiz, whose turn it is to fetch crisps from the bar. It was an experience of family I’ve never had before; family as tribe.

We tried archery, snorkelling, water polo and aqua zumba (apparently a thing). We spent two hours getting ready to go for dinner, watch the evening entertainment show (including two disappointing England games) and sip endless cocktails on the balcony. 3 of us kids formed a splinter group and spent hours chatting to a local shop worker and some of the hotel staff who were our age, learning hieroglyphics, names of Egyptian gods, arabic swearwords, what it is about my facial features that makes me look Egyptian (wide-set eyes/eyebrows and straight nose, “like African crossed with Indian. Egyptian. Like Nefertiti”). We heard what life is like in Egypt for our peers and told them about our lives in turn. We sat around drinking tea, all of us with smart phones and sharing photos of our friends and homes; videos of nights out and drunken dancing; hours passing quickly.

We’re lucky; we can pretty much study what we want, wear what we want and get with who we want regardless of age, gender or marital status. It was telling how the native workers fared compared to the UK employees at the same hotel. One of the Egyptian workers told me how much he hated work (long hours, minimal pay) and how long he’d been waiting to get a Visa to come to the UK. I asked him what he would do in a dream world where money, Visas and location were no obstacle? If he could choose any life at all for himself? He replied that he’d be doing the exact same hotel job except here, in the UK. We live our lives bigger and maybe as a consequence we dream bigger.

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P.S. Thank you those who contacted me after my last post, I was very touched.

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