Sunday 5 February 2023
From the perspective of my being in New Delhi, I’ve been thinking a lot about our move from London to rural Scotland and the differences.
Chris is in Scotland now, I am in India. I have been swimming in a huge, warm, outdoor pool most days, using the jacuzzi and steam room, luxuriating under huge, hot showers; I’m certainly not living the backpacker life in India. While Chris was in London, other than the timer being on for the hot water, he was able to have daily baths/showers, hot water from all taps, flush the loo without thinking twice. Now that Chris is in Scotland, other than a little bit of water still in the tank in the attic which has been dealing with a daily flush, he can’t have a shower, get water from the taps or have any water other than bottled water. Fortunately, the heating is dealt with via a sealed boiler so the heating is at least working.
We have no idea what caused what we can only assume is a leak somewhere across the garden between the water tank and the house. We may have really good-tasting spring water and not need to pay for mains water, but it would be great if there were someone else who was responsible for maintaining the pipes, etc, and who would have already been out and sorted the problem. It would appear that the only way to try to find the leak is to dig around the pipes to locate the leak. We’ve had someone in to do some odd jobs and he’s coming again today to start digging. He also came last week and, as we’d asked, filled in a deep hole in the area where we park. We (I say ‘we’; more like ‘he’ or ‘they’, I’m just observing this from afar) are wondering if he inadvertently dug through a bit of the pipe while getting it cleared to fill. In an ideal world, that would be where the leak is and it could all be fixed relatively easily and metres of the garden and bank wouldn’t have to be dug up.
So, yes, plumbing and heating issues are well and truly ongoing, and so many more than I could ever have really imagined. We are now braced for further new and unexpected challenges where heating and water are concerned. None of this in the flat in London.
I just looked out the window and saw a hawk slowly circling a couple of metres from the window. Buzzards in Scotland, hawks in Delhi, pigeons in Lewisham.
In Lewisham, if I fancy something to eat, I can pop out. I suspect this leads to more unhealthy snacks. In Scotland, we have whatever is in the house. In Delhi, we went to a fabulously old-school bakery, Wenger’s. We’ve both been before so could navigate the crowded shop much easier. You first wait at the counter you are interested in (biscuits), your goodies are then packaged and you are given a ticket with the amount owing printed out. You then join a long but fairly speedy queue so that you can pay. You are then given a print-out on that printer paper with the perforated edge with a series of hole punches. This, you take to another area of the counter where you started out, where you are handed your purchase in a paper carrier bag. The point there is that I have a box of very tempting, very tasty biscuits in Delhi.
In London, we live in a flat so don’t have far to walk while inside. In Scotland, we live in a house on two floors and have outdoor space. In Delhi, my suite isn’t actually much smaller than our flat in London (long story, but I don’t usually get a large suite). I suspect in combination with the snacking comments, I had lost almost half a stone in weight since Christmas and since being in Scotland for a month. I think the odds are extremely high that after almost two weeks being in London and Delhi, the weight loss trajectory has been reversed. In the interests of research, I shall continue with the biscuits and eating as much delicious Indian food as I possibly can.
Other than the bit of weight loss, our diet has definitely changed a bit in Scotland. Around the house, I am walking more, but I think we are also eating more vegetables and more good quality, butcher-bought meat. The vegetables, I think, is because when we go to a supermarket (bearing in mind, the nearest is about a forty-minute drive), I feel a need to buy fresh food, which mainly ends up being vegetables. There then end up being quite a few meals after the meat has all been eaten which are vegetable-based, eg veg curry, thukpa (spicy soup with noodles but which accommodates vegetables and/or meat). I do think that regularly going up and down stairs and walking a lot more around home makes a big difference too. In Delhi, we have been eating enormous, long breakfasts then having a dinner-type meal around 16:00 and either nothing or hot snacks (including delicious chunks of spicy fish, tandoori chicken, veg pakora) at the hotel club lounge, which we have access to for drinks and nibbles between 18:30 and 20:00. There are then biscuits from the aforementioned box (they are bought by weight. I have 300g to keep me going).
It is now breakfast time and all that talk of food has made me hungry. Water, plumbing and heating and diet is as far as I’m going to go with my comparisons today, I think.