Love and roses

The strange thing about love is that although we spend most of our lives searching for it and desiring it and longing for it, no one can really define it or explain it or understand it.
And it has so many different forms, love.
There is the kind that sweeps you off your feet and sends your world spinning into  disarray.
There is the kind that grows slowly from the heart until it has wrapped itself around you like a warm blanket.
There is the kind that consumes you until you can think of nothing else and life has no other meaning.
There is the kind that hurts  and the kind that makes you laugh for joy.
There is the kind that anchors you and the kind that makes you fly.
There is the kind that makes you feel vulnerable and the kind that makes you feel strong. 
And then there is the unconditional kind that you take for granted:
the kind a parent gives to their child.
And that's the kind that makes us who we are.
That " no-strings-attached-devoted-love," that gives us the courage to take our first steps, say our first words, make our first mistakes,  knowing that someone will always be there to catch us if we fall.
It's the kind of love that comes with no expectations, the kind of love that is so unassuming you almost forget it's there.
 But if you don't have it, the world is a frightening, complicated, meaningless place.
 You don't dare try anything because there is no one to catch you if you fall.
Or you try everything because there's no one to care what you do.
It's not just that love completes you but that it supports you and gives your life meaning.
It is love that holds our fragile world together.

When my mum was ill last week, Ninesh, my husband, bought her some roses.
They were bright and beautiful, bringing warmth and colour to the whitewashed walls and polished floors. of the hospital wards.
But you're not allowed to have flowers in hospitals anymore.  They bring germs and allergies and the scent of hope.
So we took them back to her house and put them on the oval table just like she asked.
Like us, they were waiting for her to come home.
A reminder that no-stringss-attached-devoted-love goes both ways, that for now it is our turn to catch her if she falls.
They kept blooming, the roses, their colours almost glowing against the greyness of these rainy days.
They were still blooming when mum came home.
I hope she knew what they were meant to say.
That in the end, whatever form it takes,  perhaps that's what love is: a vase of constantly blooming roses that fills the world with hope and colour and dreams.

Stay with us Scotland

" What do you think about Scottish independence?" my father-in-law asked me as we were clearing out his garage last week.
I stopped, my arms full of old books, and looked at him, shocked.
Because I suddenly realised that I hadn't really thought about Scottish Independence at all.
That's probably because all we can do  in the South of England at the moment, is think about the weather'
The good thing about all this rain and flooding ( not for the people who have lost their homes to the floods of course) is that it legitimises the English desire to talk about the weather.
" Is this rain ever going to stop? Is it going to reach our houses? Have you seen all those fields that have turned into lakes? Can you believe its still raining? Look at those grey clouds. When are the government going to do something about it?"
And much as I love to blame the government for everything,  I find it hard to blame them for the weather.
But I do blame the weather for the fact that I haven't really thought about Scotland and its desire to be separate from England.
And I do understand.  
It has fought so fiercely for so many centuries to maintain its own identity.
It's not just the kilts and the haggis and the Hogmanay, it's the wit and the raw creativity and the stories and the beauty and the ability to survive against the odds.
Why should that all be part of someone else's country?
Why should what makes your country unique be lost to what makes another country important?
I can see why Scotland might choose to become independent.
Why it might choose to move away from a country that doesn't seem to care about it.
But I hope it doesn't.
Not just because we would have no Winter Olympic team without them but because we live in a world that already has too many borders.
Borders dividing the rich from the poor, the East from the West, the blacks from the whites, the Muslims from the Hindus.
It's easy to find the things that make us different from each other.
Easy to build fences or walls or borders to make sure those differences remain.
Easy to create something worth fighting for.
What's hard is finding the things that we have in common, the dreams we share, the peace worth hoping for. 
What's hard, is breaking down barriers, removing boundaries, opening borders.
Scotland is unique and beautiful and complicated and full of history and fairy-tales.
Perhaps if England had valued it better, found goals to share and successes to celebrate, perhaps then Scotland wouldn't be seeking to add another border to our divided world.
At the risk of sounding like David Bowie: stay with us Scotland. 
Give us one more chance to value and understand you- another hundred years should do it, as long as its stopped raining by then.

Beautiful Scotland

The Great Wedding Bake Off

I'm not really one for baking.
Over the years I have dutifully baked birthday cakes that usually come out flat and cupcakes for cake sales that usually taste of nothing.
But last weekend we were invited to a wedding ( I'm not really one for weddings either) and instead of a traditional wedding cake that most people don't eat, the bride and groom asked all their guests to bring a cake.
It was an inspired idea. 
A Great Wedding Bake-off.
And we all rose to the challenge.
It's not just the baking, it's the time spent searching out the best recipe, the hours spent pouring over pictures to find the right decorations, the days spent deciding what shape it should be.
We even did an uncharacteristic and disastrous practice run, boiling rose petals, simmering cream.
" Tastes like grass and vegetables," said Mia, pulling a face.
And she was right, more like rabbit food than wedding fayre.
So we returned to the recipe books and started again.

The night before the wedding found us weighing and stirring and whisking and pouring.
And it was fun.
It made us feel as though we were part of the preparations for the big day.
As though by pouring our heart and soul into a cake, we could pour love and happiness into the marriage of our friends.
In the end we stopped trying to be clever and went for simple. 
 A rose-flavoured sponge ring covered in multi-coloured hundreds and thousands, the centre filled with a bunch of white roses and tiny edible roses circling the edge. 
It wasn't sophisticated or perfect but it was so much better than anything Mia or I have ever baked before that we were bursting with creative pride.

The hardest thing was getting it to the wedding without dropping it.
 But amazingly, we managed.
Breathing a sigh of relief, we handed it over to be added to the table, already groaning  under the weight of mango pavlova, kitkat special, chocolate dream, butterscotch wonder, death-by-chocolate-brownies, flapjack royale, rainbow surprise and more sugar, icing and sweets than a dentist's worst nightmare.

When all the first and main courses had been eaten, when all the loving speeches had been made and the embarrassing stories shared, it was time for the cake eating to begin.
And we guests took our task seriously, piling plates with as many cakes as possible, sharing on tables so that nothing went untasted.
By the end of the evening, just  the thought of cake was turning us all green.
And our creation didn't win.
The engraved cut-glass plate for the best tasting cake went to the mango pavlova and the plate for the bride and groom's favourite went to our neighbour, Gill, for her  chocolate and flower covered letters C and D ( Caroline and Dez- the bride and groom ).
And when the dancing was over and the happy couple well and truly married, we climbed into a taxi home. 
Sitting in the back, Gill clutched her plate close to her heart.
" I never thought I'd win," she sighed.
I looked at Mia and smiled
Because the best thing about this Great Wedding Bake Off is that the right person won.

And anti-weddinger though I am, it truly was a beautiful day, full of love and happiness and warmth and joy.... and a tableful of colourful cakes and delicious dreams.

So Caroline and Dez, may your life together be full of love and laughter and lots and lots of chocolate cake.

Switzerland, surprises and 40 year old headbangers

Last weekend Ninesh and I spent a wild weekend in Winterthur, Switzerland.
For a few years, when our daughter was a tiny baby, we lived in Winterthur. 
 And although it is more than 14 years since we left, going back there always feels a little bit like going home.
Its cafes, delicious coffee, cobbled streets and strange wooden statues fill me with a comforting sense of warm familiarity that you only have in places where you have been happy. 

Wooden statue resting in the streets of Winterthur- the jury's out as to whether he has a very long penis or just very long legs

As a foreigner, Switzerland is not an easy place to live.  
There are so many laws and rules that the Swiss are born knowing and everyone else just has to find out the hard way.
When we first moved there, I was 7 months pregnant and had to fly back to England for the last month because we didn't have health insurance in Switzerland. While I could speak German, Ninesh hadn't yet learnt it. I was staying at my parent's house when we received a phone call from the Swiss police. Ninesh had broken the law. He had put out a bag of rubbish in the wrong place with the wrong sticker. 
And it is not that anyone tells you which sticker to use or where to put the rubbish. 
 If you are Swiss, you just know that.
" How do they know who's rubbish it is?" I asked one of our friends when Mia had been born and we returned to Switzerland.
" Oh," she explained, " there is a special policeman whose job it is to go through rubbish bags that have been put in the wrong place until they find a name and address!"
" Do they have a special rubbish-sorting qualification?" I asked.
My friend just laughed.
And there are lots of other laws we found out the hard way:
If you live in a flat you may not take a shower after 11pm.  
You may not mow the lawn or go to the bottle bank on a Sunday....

But once you have learnt all the rules that and laws that are important for to you, Switzerland is one of the most beautiful, relaxing, friendly places you could live. 
We lived there for such a short time but the friends we made are still some of those closest to our hearts.
Which is why, last Saturday night, we were back there for our friend's surprise 40th birthday party. 
It was in an underground bar, the kind that you only seem to find in Switzerland  with metal art on the walls and car doors suspended from the ceiling, 

The whole place was ours: a tableful of food, unlimited cocktails, a dance floor and the familiar smiles of long-ago friends.
And we might all be over 40 ( almost all) but we danced and drank and laughed the night away until it was almost light outside.

Age cannot stop us headbanging

And when we woke up the next morning in our friends' beautiful flat, floating above Zurich, the world was white and sparkling and covered in snow.
Exactly as it should be in Switzerland.
And as we trudged and slid and crunched our way through the snow towards the tram and the airport and rainy England, it was hard not to wish for just one more day of chocolate and cheese and Swiss relaxation.
But however many times we fly away from Winterthur, we always know we will be back. There are some places that you never quite leave.

And there's always our friend's surprise 50th to look forward to.

Happy Birthday Christine.