Well, tanned and suitably refreshed - except for one night when I was convinced I was dying (that “pins and needles in your hands and feet” they talk about you getting when you’re pregnant is a lot more than just that… it’s like the last 10 seconds before you pass out with a general anaesthetic, only again, and again, and again, and again…). Anyway… where was I?

Oh yes, Portugal was sunny, warm and satisfyingly full of fresh fish - hours old most of the time - and suitably gloopy eggy puddings. I have been trawling the net for recipes for their egg custard tarts and almond tort both of which are like having angels tiptoeing across your tongue! Mmm…

Came home yesterday and reacquainted myself with my hatred of people who go “ooooh” and “aaaaah” at fireworks like brain-dead sheep. I think the main cause of my ire is that it always seems a bit phoney, like they’re doing it for effect rather than because they want to. Then again, I’m the kind of person who hates it when you’re in the audience at a show, some music comes on and everyone starts to clap along. I feel completely phoney doing that, too.

Maybe I’m just an uptight, undemonstrative, anal retentive stereotype of a Brit. Yeh. That must be it. But then I refer you to this post, here… which, to me, shows exactly why that kind of attitude works!

On the writing front, the Snowflake Method has proved excellent. I’ve only done step 1 and half of step 2 out of 10 (don’t laugh) BUT I have worked out how the first book ends… hoorah!

I’ve also discovered I must have crossed wires with my usual printer but in what appears to be a very good way. I explained I wanted to print up to 4 cards and asked how much it would cost for one so I could work out how much 4 would cost. What they didn’t tell me was that to print 2 only costs £50 more than printing one… so I’ll have to ask them for a quote for all four (wahoo!). It’s Sunday now, so I can’t ring them to check until tomorrow. More on that story… Later.

I should have two in a couple of weeks but if it works out, I’ll have four.

Feeling a bit… well… credible, after the way some of you reacted when you heard I handle spiders (phnark) I thought I’d share a true and bizarre story with you about how I gained some street cred under false pretences. Mainly because the real ones were so unbelievable… This is story is just one of the many examples which have led to my being known to my husband as Babychaos, the woman THINGS happen to. Still, at least it means he now understands why I never usually bother to plan.

A long time ago in a capital city far, far away -well 75 miles to be honest - and it was only 15 years ago because it was when I lived there, my brother, who lived “out of town”, came down for a day or two and we agreed to meet at a pub on High Holborn.

So, the pub is a huge old place and as it’s just after work, it’s heaving with big yuppies who play rugby in the top league at the weekend (before they all turned professional they had day jobs). On the whole, the few yuppies who don’t play rugby are just big. We get drinks, I don’t recall what but mine is something with ice in it and of course, before long we start arsing about with the ice, trying to eat it in the fastest possible time, throwing it at one an other etc.

I pick a great lump out of my glass and hold it between my first finger and thumb, probably to say something like “why the fuck have they put ice in this, I hate ice, it gives me a sodding headache!” Or something like that. I want to hold onto it while I’m gesticulating with it so I grip it quite hard. The inevitable happens, it pings out of my hand and flies high into the air. Oh dear.

I may have mentioned there are a lot of large gentlemen in the pub, none of whom, I reckon, would want an ice cube on the head. We watch it arc high across the room in fascination, which quickly turns to horror as it comes down into somebody’s pint with a splash. The results are impressive. As it lands, the impact of the ice throws a foamy finger of beer into the air. It fountains about 3 feet skywards from the glass and by dint of not coming down the way it goes up, most of it lands on the table and the man holding the glass. Oops

Brother and I take one look at each other and lose it completely, laughing so much we are crying like babies but at the same time, mortally afraid one of the party will come and knock our blocks off. Sure enough they turn and stare over in our direction.

“Shit.” I say.

“Baz!” Says my brother.

“Baz?” I say.

“Yes. Thank fuck!” Says my brother, a palpable aura of relief emanating from him.

The four youths are making their way towards us, even the one covered in beer.

“Hi Brother BC.” Says the beery one, actually he doesn’t he uses my brother’s name but to preserve the few shreds of anonymity left on this blog I demur from typing it in. Anyway where were we? Ah yes.

“Hi Big BC.” Says the beery youth. It turns out he is a mate of my brothers from university, as are the others so they join us and we settle down for a good old gossip. “Did you see what just happened?” Beery Youth asks and he begins to explain how some eagle eyed so and so had thrown an ice cube into his beer, how it arrived with almost paranormal out of the blueness and before it gets any worse I admit the truth.

We spend a very enjoyable evening in the pub with them during which I try repeatedly to convince them that the ice cube incident was an accident, a freak of nature and nothing to do with any freakishly excellent aiming skills I might posses. They don’t believe me.

I have gained kudos under false pretences. It’s still with me the next time I see them, without my brother this time. They still do not believe. They still think I am cool. Eventually, I let them.

Is there a moral to this story, something about life? What does it tell us? Nothing. Although it might explain why I took to stand up, with this kind of high “incident” quotient it was just a question of going on stage, chatting to the audience for a while, reading out a couple of poems until something like this happened and then hoovering up the credit by pretending it was deliberate.

While in Bali, I kept a holiday diary, it lasted one day. Cue Michael Jackson from his and Paul McCartney’s nadir “The Girl is Mine” where Michael says - “I’m sorry, I’m a lover not a fighter” or in my case, “I’m sorry I’m a starter not a finisher.”*  The world is literally littered with the projects which I’ve started. Oh dear, where was I? Yes, my holiday “diary”. Here it is.

*My bid for the laboured joke of the year award.

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Today I experienced my first taste of Tamarillo and Durian fruit. Tamarillo looks like passion fruit which should be orange and smooth not purple and wrinkly and tastes pretty similar. Durian. Hmmm…

Ok, imagine something that looks like an enormous two lobed conker - a kind of conker hybrid, perhaps - the spikes aren’t sharp or pointy enough for it to be a spiky conker but they’re too big for it to be a smooth one. Imagine the skin of a lychee but with a but more er… texture.

Here it is -

Durian fruit are famous for smelling grim and tasting great. What durian does not share with other great tasting items like Amis De Chambertain, Epoisse, Pont l’Eveque, Stinking Bishop, Munster or Goat is that it’s not savoury and it’s not a cheese which most of the other great tasting vile smelling things, apart from goat that is, tend to be.

So, after seeing them for sale at the side of the road we mentioned we’d like to try one and our kind guide Made (pronounced Maddy) negotiated the purchase for us. I suspect this was after seeing me buy some cashews in the market which approximated to gold dust in value per gramme. Put me in a country where the currency is in hundreds of thousands and I get completely confused - I thought 100,000 was a bargain, actually, 10,000 would have been a bargain, 100,000 was well… not. Hey ho… I digress, where was I? Oh yes… Durian.

So while I watched the negotiations, I couldn’t help noticing that some of the durian on offer were looking a bit rank, mouldy in parts with fruit flies buzzing around them. I suspect Durian may be a bit like Stilton, some people like stilton rank and salty and vile, others - me, for example - enjoy our stilton young. Made chose a durian which was not mouldy or flyblown in other words, I suspect he was kindly (and sensibly) protecting our sensitive western palattes from the onslaught, plumping for young and mild rather than old and rank - thank you Made!

So nostrils twitching, we watch as the lady prizes it open. The smell hits us immediately but it is not what I expected at all, not nearly as bad - I had assumed “rank” would equal “pooh” but this was not the case - although it is, undoubtedly, grim.

Thank your lucky stars the world wide web is odourosly mute.

How to describe it. Well if you grew up in Britain in the 1970s and 80s describing the smell is of durian is easy it’s gas. Durian smells of British Gas but natural gas has its smell added - did British Gas use eau de durian perhaps? Who knows… Except of course that it isn’t just gas and anyway, not everyone understands what 1970s and 80s British Gas smells like.

Imagine onions without the tears or if you’ve ever bought fresh leeks and then realised, stuck in the confined space of the bus on the way home, how powerfully leeks can smell you are some way there. It isn’t strictly leek though, there is something sulphuric too.

So, in summary, leeks, sulphur oh yes and not forgetting a dash - a really tiny hint, squashed on the road 10 miles away levels of tiny - of the nicer bits of skunk with additional sugary undertones. Not a lovely smell but not completely off putting… Inside it’s divided into segments, much like the inside of a horse chestnut but imagine the conkers inside have a layer of fruity covering over them rather than being au naturel.

At first glance it’s a greenish white sausage-shaped chunk, unpleasantly reminiscent of the innards of something only the wrong colouring for that. Although Mr BC swears it’s actually spot on, I am not so sure but then, he’s seen tripe close up and I haven’t. It certainly brings to mind the phrase “internal organs” although which one, where and in what kind of animal I can’t say for sure. It looks vaguely alien - the sort of thing you might expect to dig out of a giant space bug or which would feature as a side order on the menu in Mos Eisley Cantina.

The pieces don’t give the impression of being easy to separate but it turns out they are and that picking the seeds out one by one is pretty straightforward.

The texture is bizarre, it reminded me of panacotta in colour and gloopyness but the consistency is wrong for panacotta. Panacotta is too elastic. Likewise, flower and water paste.

You know when weightlifters rub their hands in that white chalk before attempting a lift, well durian flesh is rather how I imagine the gunk that’s left behind on the bar would look after the weightlifter has finished. Sort of like thick flower and water paste only with no elasticity at all. It sticks to your hands, too, in a way that I can only describe as disturbing. The closest I can get to describing it accurately is matt custard.

When it comes to taste, matt custard is a pretty good description, too. Well, for me at any rate. It has those soft, rounded taste, tones although there is no doubt it’s a fruit but the fruitiness is more the banana end of the fruit acidity and general fruityness spectrum rather than say, the passionfruit end. Not that it tastes remotely like banana but then nothing I’ve ever eaten does taste remotely like bannana except for other bananas. Durian, same deal. It’s got the banana-y non acidic fruit deal going on but it tastes like Durian and should imagine that if I were to search for something which tastes like the durian I ate today chances are the only thing which would measure up would be another durian.

So… Did I like it? Hmm… not sure about that one. At the time I ate it, yes, for pretty much the same reasons I like custard, sweet, gloopy, not exactly runny consistency. In fact, at the time I gave it a 7 out of 10 although I was tempted to bump up its score because it deserved bonus points for sheer weirdness.

Do I like it now?

Well, after 2 hours in a car with the other half I’m not too sure. I don’t recommend post durian burps either, ack they were gopping all smell like raw onion burps are only raw durian smell is much nastier than raw onion. Then again, it could simply have been the all pervading pong from the uneaten half of the durian leeching through the plastic bag it was sitting in behind me. Post durian pooh* I am yet to enjoy but I suspect it will be grim.

So would I eat it again? Um… I think so, although I wouldn’t really know until somebody served one up to me. Would I recommend it? Of course, nobody should pass up the chance to experience something that bizarre. If you are ever offered one you should definitely eat it… if you can. Mr BC thought it was vile but me and Made, we ate half of it.

*With hindsight, I can confirm it wasn’t too bad, unlike say… roast onions or chile, durian has no negative colonic effects, nasal or otherwise.

I am back and tanned but peeling like a leper so I can’t really show it off.  Damn!  Even better, nobody sat next to us on the plane on the way home so we had 3 seats to ourselves.

Wahoo… more on that story. Later…

Well… ok… Bali but things may be a little quiet round here until 25th April.

I’ve just finished painting the hall and the stairs, three floors - that’s a lot of wall and bannisters. About 5 days worth to be honest…

Then, there’s those pre-holiday alarums and excursions. Take today, for example. Drama has overtaken me. I lost my prescription sunglasses on Good Friday actually I lost them the week before but I didn’t notice until then (grrrrr!). So, having found an opticians with the facilities to make me another pair TODAY I have to go haring off to the next town and sit for one and a half hours while they sort them.

Who said holidays are restful, I reckon chaos that proceeds them as you try to sort everything out is so huge that a holiday swimming nude with crocodiles in the Everglades and surviving on a diet of only slugs and pond water would be restful after the prep for most people.  Especially me after the prep for this one!

Never mind. I will be back to gloat on 25th April! Until then, I leave you with the tumble weed!