Last week was a jolly little week in Little Pink Kitchen land, wasn’t it?
Not the actual Little Pink Kitchen, obviously. It was holding the fort in Belfast, crying out for a pain au chocolate.
But the owner of the Little Pink Kitchen was having a jolly old time of it, weren’t they?
Actually, I’m not sure what the Nationwide Building Society were up to exactly last week.
I’m sure it involved suits and numbers and small print nobody actually really reads.
But the person who will own the Little Pink Kitchen once she has paid off her mortgage sometime in about 2099 had a jolly time, didn’t she?
There was coffee, and cakes, and beating her sister up with sticks, and getting a tiny bit lost on French roads, and sun and things.
This week, dear readers (HI MUM!), there has been yoga.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all bloody navel gazing like I did in India.
That was painful.
For you and me.
Sorry about that.
But I have been doing one hell of a lot of Ashtanga yoga this week.
Basically, there is this guy from Mysore in India called Sharath who is The Actual Dude when it comes to Ashtanga Yoga.
His grandfather was the one who sort of brought it to the Western World, so he is a Very Big Deal.
And this week, he is in London.
I, the person who will own the Little Pink Kitchen when she pays off her mortgage, am in London too.
Studying with him.
Now, although Sharath is The Actual Dude when it comes to Ashtanga, he isn’t like some diva who wafts into the room and gets us all to swear into a cult.
In fact, on the first day, he walked right past my mat and I barely knew it was him.
It is for reasons like this I refer to him as The Actual Dude, and not just The Dude.
Well, in my head anyway.
Saying it out loud, or, you know, posting about it on the Internet would make me a crazy person.
Oh.
And basically, Ashtanga yoga is a series of postures that never change.
You can move through to a more advanced series of postures.
And then another more advanced than that.
But that is for crazy people, who spend a LOT of time working on it.
So The Actual Dude comes into the room, and hardly anybody notices, and he stands, and he counts us through these postures.
Not like a diva.
Not like a scary school-teacher.
Not like a cult leader.
Just a slight man, counting us through what we already do on our mats every day.
Which all sounds very civilised until you realise that it starts at 6.30 in the morning and this means setting an alarm for FOUR THIRTY to be there.
Which all sounds very civilised until you realise a lot of the words are said in Sanskrit and are quite hard to understand, never mind pronounce or remember.
Which all sounds very civilised until you realise the person beside you can bend over backwards and grab her ankles, while you hyperventilate like a loon just trying to push up into the shape of a crab.
Which probably has you shouting ‘WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, YOU CRAZY WOMAN? GO HOME TO MR. P AND EAT CAKE.’
Which is kind of what I was shouting at myself first thing this morning.
And then The Actual Dude magically appeared at the front of the room, and started counting, and I started my practice.
My body has changed beyond recognition. I have actual muscle definition.
I can sort of touch my toes.
Some days.
And then, there is the other stuff.
The Actual Dude told me on Sunday to ‘do your practice, and devote to God’.
Well, there was a roomful of about 150 of us, but I asked the bloody question, so I like to pretend that the answer was mine. All mine.
I mean, he is The Actual Dude.
Now, I come from a little town called Ballymena.
In Ballymena, devoting to God seems to involve lots of rules, and what you can’t do, and drinking Shloer out of a wine glass and pretending its a fine Picpoul, and being a little bit square, and LIVING IN A CREAM HOUSE.
*shudders at the thought*
But then I remember The Actual Dude is a Hindu, and he will come from a background with just as many rules and decrees.
Hopefully not Shloer in a wine glass.
And, if he can be so sweet, and unassuming, and kind, and helpful by following two simple instructions, I want a piece of that.
He actually is The Actual Dude.
*Warning.
It may require some navel gazing.
*gulp*
