I am breaking with my usual custom of wearing the featured scarf today. Why is that? I bought it fairly recently on a wintry day to cheer myself and as yet I have not worn it. Nor will I ever! Yesterday, I posted it as a birthday present as the future owner admired it hanging in my bedroom awaiting its turn to feature in a blog. She will not receive it until she gets the surprise of reading about it first. I was looking forward to the joy of wearing such brilliant oranges, yellows and creams accentuating the grey and black filmy silk. It folds into a tiny space on account of the fineness of the silk, yet it is large enough to be worn as a sarong. I imagined myself sitting by my orange and lemon trees, eating an ice cream if it is a warm day and perhaps dreaming I am on an exotic holiday wearing a sarong. Now, that’s maybe taking colour coordination with one’s surroundings to another level. If it is a cold day, it would be wound my neck many times as a scarf and keep me warm. I might be wearing a cosy grey cashmere cardigan and the bright colours would perk it up. But no, I know my daughter will get a great kick out of her eccentric mother passing up on this one. She is having to share this surprise of reading about it with you, my readers. Happy birthday, dear Lorne.
I thought I would photograph it draped around the blue Balinese painting, which really belongs to the afore mentioned daughter, but I admired it many years ago and she kindly let me have it. It has been on loan for over forty years! Of course, the sarong is worn by men and women in Bali as you will notice in the painting so my daughter will have to watch out for her four grandsons borrowing it as they like fancy dress parties. My visit last week to Wiltshire was to a three year old’s Spider-Man themed garden party. No sarongs worn by Spider-Man, Batman, Wonderwoman or Beerman. As one of my granddaughters says to me....Keep up Granny! I am not too sure about all these Marvel characters. Too much action and not enough relaxing!
I am just realising the pleasure of passing on something one treasures personally. Maybe that is one of my reasons for sharing my memories. What can I share with you from Bali? In an earlier blog, I told of adventures on our first trip and nothing can match those. A later trip was a hotel owners’ world conference. The island was still quite unspoilt but already one could see changes. We had a lot of planned cultural visits, but I managed to slip away from the main party in Ubud and buy hand painted wooden tables in the form of a tiger and a turtle, ethnic jewellery, a painting, but no scarves. One doesn’t usually travel home with two tables in a suitcase, but fortunately the tiger legs and tail were dismantled, as were the turtle legs. I am glad they don’t have giraffes in Bali.....I was not travelling with a steamer trunk! The tables are still in my Jungle Room in what was the loft of the house. The tiger’s tail never fitted tightly again and had to be padded out with toilet paper and glued in! Old T-shirts and shoes have been discarded from the luggage at the end of trips to accommodate Pakistani rugs, a complete canteen of Thai bronze cutlery and the like. (Had to talk my way out of duty in USA over the bronze, saying that it was my custom to always travel with my own cutlery....the airport guy thought I was some religious fanatic) So which memory will be my last of this magical island which I was privileged to visit before too many tourists found it? It has to be the haunting sound of gamelan music as the pastel sun fades from the sky at Kuta Beach. A sunset to remember.
Foreign travel is still not easy. I understand my daughter is investing in a splash pool for her Wiltshire garden. Let’s hope for sunshine when she can laze in a silk sarong, dipping her tootsies in the pool. I don’t think she will yearn for a Bintang beer or glass of arak rice wine. There are hefty taxes on imported liquor to Indonesia, so she will appreciate a Gordon’s with Fevertree tonic in her own back yard!
As a precaution, I slipped my last silk mask made from a Liberty scarf into the birthday envelope. It matches the scarf perfectly. My birthday wish is that she gets lots of wear from the scarf and less from the Covid mask which I photographed hanging from the Rolls Royce Spirit of Ecstasy. Now I do hope my other daughter doesn’t admire that beauty. That would test my willingness to share!
Busy Bee, Scarf Face!
Series 2, Blog 48.