Days Like These

Just as I wished a lazy weekend………

It started quite well at the beginning. I had a coffee with a Mum whose son was attending the same Arabic school like mine and was tempted afterwards buying a Sisley’s navy blue Mac. While she went back home to her ironing, I was enjoying Vikram Seth’s Two Lives during my daughter’s nap. I was indeed gripped by the beautiful biography of the author’s great uncle and great aunt with whom he used to live in their Hendon’s house when first came to London to do his A-level. In fact, his highlighting his indelible hitch-hiking trips to Germany-speaking countries made me daydream on a similar time in my youth. “….Perhaps it is true that, for all the evidence of the mirror, one pictures oneself in some deep niche of the mind as forever eighteen” (p.18).

But then…….

“Where’s the key?” I called my better half on his mobile, my voice impatient. The back door was left ajar; it was rather cloudy and chilly in the afternoon so the temperature inside the house dropped to 17C. It was five pm. Having collected our son from the Arabic school, he went straight with him to a golf course. “Don’t you have the spare key?” he answered, his voice was broken due to bad reception. “NO,” I snapped, implying a don’t-ask-me-to-find-one tone. “How about having a [dining] chair to block the winds?” I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, still, it’s freezing here”. The latch had broken a few years ago so the only way to close the door was by locking. So I had to put additional layers on us; sweaters and socks. On seeing me downstairs having woken up, the first thing my daughter uttered,”Can I watch TV?”

It was her birthday the next day: it begun with a burst in the early morning. After a very early Subuh prayer, I was trying to resume my sleep. At first I thought someone was in the shower so I pulled the duvet over my head. The sound of gushing water nonetheless continued and therefore I dragged myself out of bed only to find that no one was in the bathroom. Heavy rain? On impulse I was galloping down the stairs and saw the rain was actually happening inside the house. I stood still looking at my flooded kitchen and living room screaming, “Maaaaassss, banjiiirrrr!!!!”**

It attracted my son to come down after his confused father switching off the electricity and the water supply. The cold water pipe burst, for it could no longer withstand the pressure built up over years. “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” he piped on seeing our half-awake daughter standing on the stairs at 5.30am. “Happy birthday,” I chimed in and got up, having knelt down with a mopping bucket while squeezing water off a cloth into it. Strange as it seems, during the three hours dried-up time I recalled a small water pump, being my father’s, which was used to pump out the flood water which went into my childhood’s house. “Can we pump out the water?” I sighed in despair. I wished I had had the precious thing with me.

While I was having my breakfast, my better half went out to buy the replacement pipe. Furthermore, I had to cancel a lesson; on Sundays a son of a friend and mine suppose to learn Arabic alphabets and Al-Quran together. Munching my bread, I looked up to skim at “a whole in the ceiling” in the kitchen. Well, if only it had been a whole in the wall I always wanted.

“Mum, Mum, can you see me?” There was the high-pitched voice of my son above me. Apparently there was a hole under the bath tub as a result of the incident, which enabled him to see me through it. “Oh, yes, dear,” I replied, trying to be enthusiastic. In their excitement, my children took turns dropping tiny things through. In the evening, my daughter squealed after her father demanded his torch to be returned. “I haven’t got my turn!” protested she, even though I reckoned she had done flashing the light through the hole quite a few times.

“Did you know where the key was?” My eyes were so heavy trying to stay awake for Isya prayer commencing at 11.03 pm (GMT). My better half had just got back from the golf course. Yes, he went back to get our son’s jacket which was left there. Then I remembered that he had gone far too long for a jacket. “Where have you been?” He looked at me quizzically. “I was playing in the driving range. I told you that”. Huhh???? My eyes were on computer the screen when he was passing me murmuring “playing golf” in Bahasa. “No, you didn’t”. I was adamant. The thing is I am not used to with a sentence without a pronoun, ie. “I” as a subject, for it is nearly impossible to do so in British English. This kind of shortening is usually done in colloquial Bahasa Indonesia.

“Where did you find the key then?” “In her [our daughter’s] bag”. In bed we were giggling; I recalling noticing a jingling sound of the key while she was taking out all the contents from her blue sling bag in front of me the night before and he laughing at her wit.

“How come you didn’t hear the burst? It was loud”. I was intrigued and envious at his ability to sleep soundly. “I heard you scream”.

At the end,

we did not forget about her birthday; going out for a meal in My Old Dutch’s Pancake. The three dollops of ice cream in the middle of the birthday girl’s sweet pancake were the cake. Then she blew her virtual candles to our clapping. She was merry going around the King’s Road’s exquisite shops and a stroll in the Regent’s Park after praying Ashr in the nearby Central Mosque. As for me, Cath Kidston’s cherry-patterned plimsoll had cheered me up a bit.

** Maaaaassss = Mas, a calling to a husband/brother or to a person to whom someone pays a respect in Bahasa Indonesia.
Banjiiirrrr= banjir means flood in Bahasa Indonesia.