Chocolate is not the only fruit

I know it's past midday, so strictly speaking I can't do the whole pinch punch thing, but I'm going to anyway. Who made that rule by the way ? Does anyone know ? Is it universal ? Anyway, that's not what this post is about. Like a lot of people I cannot believe it's November already. Not just because this means it's Hubbie's birthday next week and my sister's birthday later this month, but because it means we're almost done with this year. I still haven't got the hang of writing 2013 yet and before we know it's going to be over. Maybe that is a good thing as I might do better with 2014 than I did this one. Last year was signified by the Olympics and Paralympics, but this one didn't have anything quite so grand going on so it seems to have just gone past without any particular fanfare.

In addition to family birthdays this month we also have Diwali which is a big thing in my family and I'm excited that my boy is old enough to enjoy it this year. We're taking him to visit my Mum on Sunday and he'll be fed to within an inch of his life and he'll get showered with presents. My own memories of Diwali (in common with most indian celebrations) are all about the food, but here's my beginners guide to the festival of lights:

1. There will be food. Lots of food. Most of it sweet, or fried, or both. If you're going to visit indian people don't eat beforehand. Seriously, you may need a stomach pump if you try to be a hero. Hubbie learned this on his first visit to my parents and has never made the mistake again. He prepares by fasting for around a day and a half before a visit to the in-laws now.

2. Presents. You get them and give them and hence it's known by some people as the indian equivalent of Christmas - it's not, but I won't go into that here. It is, however, a chance to buy and wear shiny new clothes and for the indian lads in Southall an opportunity to drive slowly up and down the Broadway calling out to all the girls in their finery. It is primitive I know, but hilarious when the feisty girls put them down in their inimitable fashion.

3. Cleaning. Now if you know me at all you'll know that I am partial to a bit of cleaning so this is almost my favourite part. The idea is that you clean the house from top to bottom in preparation for a new start. I'm doing it tomorrow - I'm really looking forward to it. Don't call me, I won't reply, this is my therapy. I feel you judging me - I just don't care.

4. Lights. On the actual night we put a nightlight in every room in the house and some outside the doors to welcome the light in and keep the darkness out. It's a lovely tradition, apart from the one year that the nightlight burnt through the toilet cistern in my parents' house and I woke my sisters up as I'd smelled burning - we didn't have a smoke alarm - it was all a bit dramatic really.

5.  Fireworks. When we were kids we always had two bites of the cherry with fireworks as we'd have some on bonfire night and even more on Diwali. My Mum would always buy twice as many and we'd choose the best ones to save for Diwali night. You know the catherine wheel and rockets and stuff. Sparklers and bangers were just the opening act. My Dad went all primal with the fire side of things and it was truly terrifying watching him ignore all the safety rules, but he remains intact so his dangerman approach did no harm in the long run I guess.

If you're celebrating Diwali I hope you have a wonderful time. I'll be telling my boy all about it and hoping he's as excited as we used to be about it all. I know he's going to love the food, the lights and the presents.

In that - at least - he's proper indian :o)

Today was a rite of passage for our boy. He had his first haircut. I have been distraught for weeks since we decided to do it. We have grown his hair since he was born and it is gorgeous and curly and he gets compliments everywhere he goes. However, the nightly chore of combing through his luscious locks has become increasingly difficult as the knots and tangles cause him to scream and shout so much I am convinced the neighbours will report us to social services.

The reason we haven't cut his hair before is because my family are Sikh and keeping hair long is one of the articles of faith. Hubbie is not a Sikh, but we agreed that we would grow his hair and as much as possible raise him with an understanding of this part of his heritage. That made the decision even harder. I didn't cut my hair until the age of 26 (long after I left Uni) as I just believed it would be wrong and my parents would be disappointed if I did. I felt the same about cutting my boy's hair.

It is our decision as his parents though so I've been talking to him about it for weeks and he has been looking forward to it. His hair was so long he was having to constantly push it out of his eyes and at nursery I took to tying it back so that it wouldn't annoy him or get smothered in paint or playdoh. When Hubbie went to the barbers earlier in the week he took the boy with him - they were talking about the big day and the boy said, "when I get my hair cut short I won't have to wear a hairband any more." Can't say fairer than that can you ?

So today we all took the train to town to get his hair cut with my hairdresser - Anderson - who I love and trust. He was absolutely delighted when I asked him to do it as he knows how big a deal it is. We arrived and the boy got to play with a water spritzer - which he could have done all day - then the gown was put on. Anderson suggested I sit the boy on my lap and wanted me to do the first cut. It was very emotional.

Do you recall how a few years ago there was a major public health scare over CJD in beef ? The photo call with a minister feeding his children burgers in front of cameras ? Every public authority from old people's homes to hospitals trying desperately to distance themselves from having fed those in their care contaminated meat products ?

And now we're hearing news items practically frothing with excitement that horsemeat has been found in supermarket foods that are labelled as beef. Headline writers have been free-flowing with puns (hence the terrible title of this post for which I apologise) and foodie writers have been terribly smug about 'the end of cheap food.' For it is the budget lines and the processed meat products like burgers and packaged meals that have been found to contain very little beef.

Why anyone is surprised by this baffles me. A meal that costs £1 and purports to have meat in it is going to be padded out with something cheap and in some cases it is rusk or water. When my Mother used to work at Walls she told us that she never saw any actual meat go into the sausages so she still doesn't eat them to this day. I've read the contents of cat food (I get bored) and found it contains ash - which is more often a hair colour or a paint chart description, not an ingredient surely ? To discover that the padding is actual meat is a revelation to me as I was under the impression that foodstuffs like cheap sausages were practically vegetarian anyway.

The big deal with beef that is horse is the fraud for some and the cost for others. So we've been lied to about what is in the food and have paid too much for a meat that is cheaper than the one we were told it was. Except I haven't. I don't eat beef - unless the next discovery is actual beef in Quorn lasagne in which case we have some serious ethical issues - so in theory it's not my problem. However, upon closer inspection it turns out that some sweets and desserts contain beef gelatine, so I may have inadvertently eaten beef in the days before clearer labelling. It would appear that as well as being worried that our chocolate 'may contain nuts' we now have to worry that our cheesecake 'may contain hoof.'

Back when the whole CJD thing was going on I joked to my friends that if only non-beef eaters were left the planet would be solely populated by practising Hindus, Sikhs and vegetarians. Yoga would become compulsory on school timetables, orange would be the new black and not believing in reincarnation or karma would be considered 'kooky.'

How ironic would it be if the beef that everyone worried about being contaminated with 'mad cow disease' was horse all along ? Would that make it better or worse ?

I can see the makers of vegetarian foodstuffs rubbing their hands with glee (and a lovely lotion made of organic beeswax) at the thought of all the new converts to meat-free living. Personally I'd just issue a few words of caution - sausages in trifle aren't just a nightmare meal choice on Come Dine With Me - it's possible you've bought something similar in the budget puddings aisle.

Oh, and I don't eat trifle either.

My show today was about international migrants' day which is tomorrow. It made me think about the reasons that people choose to leave their home country and live somewhere else. For my parents it was aspirational (well for my Mother it was to join her husband who had already settled over here). For others it is to escape a regime that they don't support or cannot live with for their own safety.

A childhood friend of mine moved to Australia last year after planning the move for around 5 years. I admire the bravery it takes to move your family and start a new life in a different country. I love the idea of living somewhere else, but the move from West London to South London was so traumatic for me at first that I think I'm a long way off from realistically emigrating anywhere. I love some countries that I've visited, but there are drawbacks to living there. Nothing as important as not being able to get Marmite (which you can in most places now) but the trivial things that I've learned are important to me :

You cannot get salad cream in Romania - on a visit to a colleague she asked for some and was presented with 8 bottles (one from each guest) which kept her going until she came home again.

Tea is awful in America - in fact Liptons is only sold outside the UK and it's not good. They do a nice line in hippie teas, but not a good old fashioned proper cuppa.

It's pretty much impossible to buy tampons in India. I have tried over the years and can only surmise that it's a morality issue and the final frontier for sanitary product manufacturers.

Plumbing in Greece can't take toilet tissue (seriously after all these years still ?) I just can't imagine living somewhere where you keep used tissues in the bin next to the loo. Eugh !!

The cuisine in Cuba is inedible. Yes they have universal healthcare and education for all, but no food of note (the alcohol is good though). How did Hemingway cope ?


I'd love to live in Vancouver. It's been rated as one of the best places in the world to live and has clean air, a thriving Sikh community and fabulous skiing an hour away. The honest truth is if I don't see my family for a few weeks I miss them terribly. They drive me crazy after a few minutes of seeing them, but if I couldn't just make the decision to visit, if it took a flight and weeks of planning to see them I'd struggle.

So for now I won't worry about uprooting and moving away.

Oh and I'll call my mother.

Two years ago someone who I loved very much passed away and on the same day someone came into my life who I love more than I know how to express.

A face only a Naniji would love

My beloved Naniji was the only grandparent I ever knew. She lived far away in India so I only saw her every few years, so my Mum used to send her photos of us all growing up. When I visited her aged 11 she had all my school photos and many others I'd never seen before that she kept lovingly in her special cupboard of valuables.

Even though I didn't see her often she was still the person I consulted on the big decisions in my life. It's from my Naniji that I get my love of tea - she never turned down a brew and teatime was a big deal in her house. Snacks, cakes, biscuits, savouries, etc. all laid out with endless cups of tea. This was all just a few hours before dinner !

I trusted her and found her wise, sassy and hilarious. Once during a family visit to a Rajastani palace we turned round to ask her a question and she'd raced on ahead of us to make sure she didn't miss the tour. She was in her late seventies and faster than all of us.

When Hubbie and I were struggling to have a baby she talked to me honestly, openly and without judgement. Despite her speaking no English and Hubbie speaking no Punjabi they watched cricket together enraptured and in complete agreement. She wandered off again when we'd gone out shopping one day only to be found over an hour later in a coffee shop watching the big screen with local lads who were fussing over 'Ma-ji' and arguing with her assertion that India would win until she was proven right yet again.

She was fearless and held her own with anyone. As a young woman she went away to study with the support of her husband who took care of the children while she trained to become a teacher. This was unheard of at that time and in that culture. In her subsequent career she taught in a small village school bringing education to children who would not have gone to school otherwise and retired as a headteacher and widow.

I've lived for 42 years and in that time I've been made to realise that there are a lot of things about me that other people don't like. Some of them I can do something about - like talking too much, or having the wrong accent, or making a face that looks a bit too smug, or correcting poor spelling unasked. There are some things I can't do anything about, like the colour of my skin.

It amazes me that there are still people who think it's perfectly ok to make offensive remarks about race and treat it as normal or justifiable to do so. It upsets me, because my parents faced so much racism for so many years that I'm sure their only hope when it happened to them was that their children would be spared the indignity of the same.

My husband hadn't come across racism in his own life so when he married into an asian family it suddenly became a personal insult for someone to make derogatory remarks about asians as they were talking about his wife, or his mother-in-law or now his son. Imagine how much worse that is when it's a member of your own family making the remarks ?

When I was at university I shared a house with friends and we lived in an area on the outskirts of Coventry. On one occasion when I was walking home with one of my housemates and the local kids shouted out racist comments to me I ignored them and she went ballistic. It's not that I wasn't bothered. As I explained to her there is little point in telling them what they're saying is wrong when it's what they hear their parents say.

In the same vein I met up with a friend I used to go to school with when I was 8 just before she emigrated to Australia and we reminisced about some of our classmates. I have few fond memories of my school in Greenwich in the '70s when the National Front were still marching in the streets and me and my brother were the only asian children in the school until the Patels sent their daughters to the school.

My friendship with Nichola was one of the only things I recall with happiness. I was in a classroom where the teacher sat me with the only black child in the class - a strange form of selection as the other tables were based on academic ability not skin colour. One of my classmates gleefully shared that her mother had asked me to let her know when my Dad's head was better - as a Sikh he wears a turban.

Nic remarked that one of our classmates used to sing racist songs which I have no memory of at all. Maybe I've blanked it out like so much else that I don't want to recall. The interesting thing is that this lad had a promising career as a footballer, but his father was unwelcome at the Arsenal training ground due to his unreconstructed comments about people of other races. So that apple didn't fall too far from the tree then.

This has come up now because I read a comment on Facebook tonight that stunned me so much that initially I called it out for the racism is blatantly was. Then I decided that was probably too strong and decided to just say that it was offensive and inflammatory. When something like this happens I have to maintain my dignity and my ability to walk away.

I wish that I could believe I will never have to explain to my son what racism is.
I pray that in his life he doesn't hear the insults or the ignorance that make me so sad.
I hope that he is a kind and loving person regardless of what others say and do.

That's not too much to ask is it ?

Ignoring a royal jubilee is easier than you'd think. I mean the swimming pool was practically deserted this morning which meant I had a lane all to myself and my son really enjoyed paddling around without lots of other children in the pool.

Now I'm no republican (I have an ironic royal wedding thimble and somewhere in my Mum's house we have a Charles and Diana mug), but I'm so not interested in bunting and union jack cupcakes it's just not funny.I do recall the silver jubilee in 1977 when I had a day off school and stood on the pavement outside my parents' shop as the Queen's car drove past and I was convinced she waved at me.

My parents knew a lovely Sri Lankan family who were staunch royalists and the pictures of royalty in their home were only outnumbered by photos of the Pope. This was all pre-Diana so there was a general sense of respect and deference to the royals rather than the fakery that 'they're just like us' that we are cajoled into now. I mean if Kate can wear the same dress as Tulisa (albeit Alexander McQueen) what more proof do we need that they're just normal people ?

I've been far more excited about the Apprentice finale tonight than the flotilla on the Thames. From the snippet of news that I just watched it looked pretty pointless, but my Mum enjoyed watching it and was very excited when she spotted a Sikh standing next to Her Madge. As a longstanding civil servant my Mum was invited to the Queen's garden party a few years ago and she was so proud and delighted. My Dad went with her and apparently mistook the Duke of Edinburgh for a shambling drunk as he ambled past (well you can see why he might can't you ?).

Their generation of immigrants from Commonwealth countries have an admiration of the royal family that seems to have ebbed away in subsequent generations. The tea towel count in homes of parents of friends who come from the Caribbean has always struck me as unnecessarily high. It's when they're framed that I think it's gone too far.

As I say I'm not committed enough to be an actual republican. My friend Nic abhors the royal family, but I treat them like I do the people who bullied me at school - I just ignore them. Of course if I use a stamp or money I come into contact with HRH, but otherwise she doesn't really impact on my life much.

It's nice having Hubbie home for 4 days though, so for that thanks HRH :o)

In the last week there have been many calls to prayer from the family and friends of Fabrice Muamba, the football player who collapsed during a match last weekend and - despite stopping breathing for a very long time - survived. His family pleaded for people to pray for him and fellow players wore shirts asking us to pray for him too. This has caused a range of reactions in the media, from cynicism at the possibility that footballers could be so religiously inclined to sincere explanations of the power of prayer.

I realise not everyone prays and some people only have a conversation approximating prayer when they are at the racecourse or the plane is a bit wobbly at 30,000 feet. In one of the early episodes of Homeland we see the lead character Brody in his garage praying Namaz having returned home from being held captive for eight years by Muslim captors. The suggestion is that he has been turned into a traitor and seeing him pray as a Muslim offers further proof that this may be the case. I, however, thought it was a profound comment on how he took solace in prayer as comfort while in captivity. The act of submission to a higher power is a personal one and that he chose to do it in private was (for me) more about not letting his Christian family know that he had converted.

It's often the case that as people get older they become more interested in faith and certainly in the Asian community you see older people attend temples with great frequency. When I was at university I used to travel on two buses to a Sikh temple the other side of Coventry. Partly it was to see other Asian faces and to spend time with people who had something in common with me in a space that felt familiar. Partly, I went to pray. Even now prayer is something that is a part of my life and when I find things are difficult I pray. It's not to ask for a higher power to intervene, more to share the burden that is on my mind.

It has become a cliche to hold a minute's silence when a tragedy occurs, isn't this moment of reflection or meditation an act of prayer ? In the same way singers and actors thank God when accepting an award as a public declaration of religious belief whether devout or not. I've always been surprised to meet people who express heartfelt atheism with a fervour that most religious people would struggle to muster. I attended a school where the Lord's Prayer was recited at assembly every morning and at no point did my parents object or ask for me or my siblings to be removed from the room. In fact very few kids from families of faith were removed, maybe as praying in one faith is pretty much the same as another.

Prayer is not at all cool and it's profoundly strange to talk to someone who isn't there. In days gone by we used to lock people up for that sort of thing. For the time being I'm going to just sit quietly where no one can see me and keep it to myself.