Saturday, May 16, 2009

Saturday 16th May – Byron Bay.

I awoke this morning after a nourishing nights sleep. One of the many perks of sharing a bed with another human bean is the shared body heat, meaning you can manage to snooze away, toastily oblivious to the arctic conditions whipping thru the room. My beloved boy and I seem to have developed this slightly odd habit of intertwining our limbs throughout the night, so that we wake up completely bound together in some sleepy time pretzel formation, face to face, but comfy and warm as monkeys, leaving you with the age old conundrum of who’s going to make the first move and burst the bedtime bubble.
My plan for this AM, was to hot foot it down the road to blast thru a quick ashtanga class with Laura, Sams replacement while he floats around India, on a cloud of incense, pranayama and the remnants of Delhi belly I suspect. My new found love of my previous torture, has to do somewhat with the fact that I have finally mastered the jump back. Oh yes dear ones, I can now, finally, fling myself, somewhat gracefully from Uttanasana to Kumbakasana with a style and panache all of my own, thus bestowing upon me a new found sense of confidence as I ceremonially remove my yogic stabilisers.
Alas, twas not to be. The reasons being:
1.) During all jump backs in class yesterday, I must have finally stimulated my enthusiasm gland or something, as I spent the rest of the day showing anyone who would stand still long enough my new party trick. This meant that upon attempting to leap energetically from my pit, I was hit slap bang in the abdominals with the karmic sledgehammer, followed by “ah, ah, ah, ah, ah” as I instantly realised and regretted my foolishness, and tried to return supine with out tensing a single shredded muscle.
2.) Upon opening the fridge, discovering a distinct lack of Soya milk and yoghurt for my fruit salad, and drawing the ever increasingly short straw, I made my way out of the house to ‘go fetch’. Yawning widely and attempting to scrape my greasy mop back into some sort of ‘doo’, as I picked my way thru the undergrowth of our front yard to collect my trusty 10 speed, only to find….what the f*%$! “OLLIE!!! MY BIKES GONE!”
Yes ladies and jellyspoons, it is true. For the second time in a month some cretin has taken it upon themselves to rid me of my adopted cycle in the middle of the night. I held back the tears, stifling them with a small yelp as I spotted the smashed combination lock next to my parking tree, (of course I instantly collected up the pieces to be turned into some decorative neckpiece later, but I digress…)
“I just don’t get it, why do they always take mine and not yours. Mines a shit bike!” I whined into my beloved boys shoulder as he did the thing he does best during these times of distress, he gave me a huge cuddle and offered me his bike, mainly because he was hungry and wanted me to get to the shop quick time.
After a lengthy autopsy of the nights events over breakfast and Charlie, the temporary landlord, lending me a cobweb covered mountain bike that had been adapted at some point, to fit a dwarf with a handbag, as the seat was 6 inches too low and it had a crappy basket wired to the front that threw the steering wildly off, adding an element of “steer or die” to the situation, we made our way down the road to, our local, Tallows beach to drown our sorrows, literally.
Just as I was yanking the hopelessly rusted handlebars to the left to avoid my untimely demise for the third time, I heard Ollie yell “Sal, hold up, I found something for you.”
I swerved to a stop beside my lover who had spotted, amongst a pile of rubbish left on the pavement….a bicycle! It was a rather funky little BMX that had obviously been left in a garage and forgotten about. We heaved it out to get a better look.
“hmm… bit tatty, needs a new tire but otherwise its in pretty good nick” confirmed my hero. “It would be perfect for you baby, you’d look so cool cruising round on that!”
Just as I was giving it a test run and checking out how much of my underwear was on show as my knees ended up somewhere around my ears as I pedalled, a lady came out of the house, presumably the owner, tho she didn’t look like a BMX trickster to me.
“Go ahead, take it.” she said.
I couldn’t believe my luck, karmas a funny old thing aint it?.
I wheeled it home to await its new shoe and decided that it definatly needs to painted electric blue with large flowers, to make it truly mine, and hopefully deter any future stealing.
I spent the rest of the morning with Oliver teaching me to boogie board. A highly terrifying if slightly enjoyable experience that left me with a nasty stinging rash on my tummy, what, im told, the kids these refer to as ‘hose nose’, and a huge sandy grin on my face.
x
Friday 15th may – Byron Bay.

“I’ll be there in 10 darling…oh and order me the schnitzel!” she shrieked down the line before promptly hanging up on me. I hung up the phone and placed the order mentally so as not to forget.
That was the voice of Honu, the 64yr old Buddhist nun who I have befriended and been ‘hanging out’ with for the past 2 weeks.
She is infamous on the Byron social scene and refers to herself as an ‘action nun’ who prefers to make her mark on the community rather than simply prey for it, choosing to spend her early mornings at the local farmers market chatting up the young farmers rather than preying to the divine. There for, attempting to have a simple brunch with her is how I would imagine tea with mother Teresa. A constant stream of individuals “not wanting to interrupt” but doing so anyway, crouching by her side to whisper a word of thanks, or wanting to hold her hand, all while I sit across from her trying not to slurp my banana smoothie too loudly.
Over our lunch we discussed the project at hand.
Together we are attempting to start and run the first charity in Byron bay to feed the homeless and anyone who has a rumbly in their tumbly and no money to feed it, from the left over foods from supermarkets and donations from people that would other wise go in the bin and therefore, to waste.
An incredibly worth while cause in my book, and seeing as I have a distinct lack of work at the moment I am ploughing most of my time into helping out and have become ‘Honus second in command’ not the catchiest title I admit but one I am somehow proud to lavish upon the ears of anyone who will listen as it seems to have some sort of kudos within the realms of the community centre. Somewhat similar to being Madonna’s PA I like to think.
Along with such topics as ‘do backpackers deserve free goods?’ and ‘what to do if a violent hobo attacks you’, we also stumbled upon the topics of Ayer Vedic and macrobiotic eating. I know the basics of both of these rather lengthy subjects but have never really put them into practice other than what little food I consumed at yoga camp, which I am informed, was strictly Ayer Vedic. Honu regaled me with tales of how she came back from India ‘fat as a pig’ and thus underwent 2 years of strict Ayer Vedic eating, before announcing that she was officially ‘over it’ and threw herself in macro biotic eating before finally deciding she had had enough of it all and has since returned to her one true culinary love. Chicken schnitzel and chips followed by the odd sneaky muffin and a cappuccino to wash it down.
I love this woman.
As well as hanging out with religious royalty and feeding the local bums, I have been putting my yoga teaching in practice finally and running my own classes. They are private/miniature classes that I am running from my very own studio. My beloved boy convinced me to hold out for a little while longer in ‘the house that crack built’ until our lizard of a landlord had buggered off to Thailand to become a sex tourist. As soon as he had slithered away we skipped yogically into the enormous room and after completing a few celebratory laps we set about dividng it in half with bed sheets to create our long awaited love nest/yoga studio complete with altar, candles, incense and my precious teaching certificates pride of place for all to see.
In my very first week of opening mine studio aptly named ‘Honey House Yoga’ by Adam and Ollie in honour of the amount of the sickly sweet substance I manage to consume weekly, I have taught virtually every day. My classes are admittedly very small as my room can only accommodate 2 students (3 at a push) at a time, plus myself, tho I feel this is a good thing as they get a lot more personal instruction and we get to have a bit of a giggle too, plus they get to hang around for a cup of chai après class, on my rather voluptuous veranda whilst playing spot the possum in the enormous tree in our front garden that encroaches on our dear dwelling a little more each day.
x

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Sunday 10th May – Byron Bay.

Spoke to my parentals this morning, tho I did manage to get the time completely wrong which meant a very sleepy daddy on the other end of the line reminding me sweetly that it was infact midnight in springy time England. I offered to call them back in the morning but my dearest daddy insisted that it was fine for me to be calling when the rest of the united kingdom were tucked up in sleepy time, and urged me to tell him all the latest news, which I am sad to report, was a little depressing.
After at least half and hour of filling papa in on my latest unemployment ventures, and giggling at my most unfortunate situation as only my daddy and I can, he passed the phone over to mother.
I must admit that upon hearing my mummys voice asking me sleepily how everything was going, I immediately found myself choking back a huge lump of homesickness and tears, rendering me unable to answer for a minute or two.
Somehow with just a magical word or two she manages to draw every last morsel of tangled truth out of me, even tho I try my hardest to keep it locked down inside, I find myself verbally vomiting my true feelings about any situation without a second thought. A handy, if not slightly annoying, talent that she has around me and one that I hope to bug the fruits of my loins with one day too.
So I told her all about my frustrations of the joblessness of Byron bay, and my sudden and shocking lack of inspiration and motivation that was, only a week or two ago, a fountain of energy and enthusiasm, that had me oozing a certain euphoria that I felt I could easily live on for ever, laughing at those who choose to drink and take drugs. Yet now I find my self sitting here eyeing up my beloved boys pouch of tobacco, reaching for yet another cup of caffeine filled chai, and wandering if I might someday have to change the name of my unsightly tome to ‘The Demise of Salpant’.
A change that has rendered me feeling lost, hopeless and I hate to use the word depressed as I feel it is ‘oh so overused’, yet my mental thesaurus that is usually lying back with gay abandon, its pages flopped open like some spaghetti western strumpet, ready to be thumbed thru at any given moment to stumble upon an underused and utterly brilliant word, to describe, explain and analyse my marvellous monkey mind, has decided to pack up its pages and remain firmly shut until the madness has stopped and normality has resumed.
Adam assures me that my cure is definatly surya namaskars at 9.30am with Sam, the ashtanga teacher who seems to be made of Play Doh, for another week. In my desperation to regain my yoga toned body that seems to have taken a fair old battering this week as I have given in to the full force of ‘womens time of the month’ and have had a whole 7 days of no exercise, and my sudden and unexpected cravings for chocolate have been granted for the one and only time in my life, I have agreed to return to the ashtanga ‘chamber’ for another week.
So dear devoted readers lets have fingers crossed that the next time I write, I will have untangled the ball of wool that resides in my head and calls itself my ‘mind’, have dropped at least 60 kilos, and taught a few pigs how to fly.
x