I'm not in Kansas anymore...

It's been seven years since I have posted anything on this blog, but enforced isolation, the need to fill time and turn the current madness into meaning has brought me back.   In the intervening years since I last posted, my adventures have continued. I'm going to summarise them here, but will return to write about them - and hopefully link to other posts - periodically.   I spent nearly four years living in a conscious community in a big Victorian house with seven other people in North West London. This time enabled continuity from community / spiritual life in Asia. It also gave me a safe haven whilst I navigated the traumatic life event of losing one of my best friends, very publicly, in an unresolved incident. I played a role in an international media campaign to find him and later decided to change my career to mainstream media and PR.  Living in the house allowed me to save up the deposit to buy my first home in Brighton.  I've been her...

India Documentary Promo

But readers, readers, readers - my long neglected readers. It didn't all end there. No matter how much I would like to have ended my last post with "and they all lived happily ever after", I can't do that. Although it has been a hard realisation to have over recent months, I have come to know that life does not fit neatly into a narrative. It is a journey. and although the scene changes the action, the adventure, continues. For better or for worse. And that is what makes this beautiful ride so bloody exciting. We just don't know what the future will hold...

East End Girl - before my travels When I started my journey across Asia back in December 2011, I had no real plans, ideas or expectations. I knew that I wanted to make some big changes because, although I had been living a very comfortable and fulfilled life in London (on the surface, at least), I was in search of something deeper.  And so it was that I, in that clichéd sort of a way, dropped it all and went off to India, that magical place which has stolen the hearts of so many seekers before me. I sat in temples. I worshipped the deities alongside thousands of devout Indians. I undertook an Ayurvedic detoxification of my body. I  even learnt to stand on my head. Embracing my natural beauty in Rishikesh Stripped of make up, high heels, my pink vintage car and all of the props I had previously needed to make myself feel good, I began to open up to my inner beauty. The gorgeous people that I met reflected this and, as my heart gradually began to open up and I beg...

Koh Phangan - the fantasy island where I lived. Photo courtesy of the gorgeously talented Clara Jansen In Cambodia I fell ill again. Very ill. In fact so ill that I was trapped in a hotel room for several days, unable even to clamber down the 4 flights of stairs to get fresh water. I paid a Khmer man in the corridor to go and fetch me some. He came back with a bottle half filled. I couldn't trust it. I didn't drink water for 2 days and I watched myself waste away in the mirror as ants crawled up the walls. Losing weight was supposed to be a good thing but my cheeks were sunken and even my (formerly rather buxom) chest began to wither and sag. I felt alone and scared. I had to get out of Cambodia but I was trapped on a border town without my passport (on a last minute whim I had paid someone to send it back to Phnom Penh to get a 2 month Thai visa stamped in). Yet again I had to trust that it would come back to me on a local bus. I had to hope that I would g...

Entertaining a village full of Khmer children in a Muslim settlement outside Battambang Khmer BBQ! Squid and chilly sauce at Phsar Thmey Central Market Stunning Khmer architecture at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh Beautiful Buildings in The Royal Palace of Cambodia The atmospheric indoor Russian market in Phnom Penh Tasty and cheap street food in Phnom Penh My lovely friend Tim Tim, professional clown, yoga buddy & street food dining companion The 'best iced coffee in Phnom Penh! in the Russian Market. They actually have their own  Facebook page And this is the reason why it's so good... It is full of sticky, sweet, condensed milk!   Half  a tin of the stuff!   Tuol Sleng Genocide Musuem or the S-21 prison, a former school where inmates where tortured to extract confessions. Over '17,000 'suspects' were 'processed' here, of which only 12 survived. Nightmare-inducing stuff but es...