Helena Handbasket

By Tivoli

Blip 2K

The plant-pot farmyard has no conception at all of either “seasonal” or “produce” and is stoically popping out butternut squash flowers in the vain hope of a passing bee carrying a stranger's pollen.

2000: Before it was time to get ready for the fortnight we had booked in Goa in 1999, a colleague decided to return home to Australia and get married. I was invited to the wedding in Adelaide, exactly one week after the trip to Goa was due to finish. Well, halfway there? It'd be rude not to! And if we reached Australia it would be rude not to hop over to visit my brother in New Zealand. My partner had grown up in Malaysia and was keen to show me some of that and we had an open invitation from friends in Bangkok. The original fortnight in Goa morphed into the It'd Be Rude Not To Tour which lasted a little over ten weeks. We saved up every single day of our annual leave allowances for both 1999 and 2000 to make it happen.
And so it was that I welcomed in Y2K standing in the South China Sea just off the North coast of Borneo with a Singapore Sling in hand, just over 20km from the Indonesian border.

The tour taught me that I prefer a temperate climate and that I am too fond of potatoes to live anywhere they are not grown. 
Rice and noodles are both fine, but  .  .  .
 just saying.

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