Helpless in Hong Kong

Before we left London any mention of our move to Hong Kong invoked the universal response, “You’ll have loads of help.” I could hardly wait. Fully supportive of my aspiration to be a Hong Kong princess a Special Friend gave me a small book entitled “How to run your home without help” by Kay Smallshaw. First published in 1949, my book contains such gems as “Running a home may seem unspectacular and ordinary, but making a success of it, so that the home is a happy one for all who live in it, is creative work to rank with the best. Exhausting though it may be, it enriches the personality.” We laughed together at the thought of me reclining in Hong Kong, glass of wine in hand while someone else did my housework and I prepared to embrace my new pampered life-style with barely-disguised enthusiasm.

Our arrival in early August was much aided by our Bulgarian nanny who flew out with me and the children to help settle us in. After four weeks she returned home to get married and whilst I mourned her departure I did feel her husband-to-be might have a prior claim on her time. She was succeeded by our one-time Czech au pair who, after backpacking around Asia, arrived to spend September helping me out. “What is this? An employment agency for Eastern Europeans?” snorted my husband back in June when he heard of my plans. I wish. For neither of us could have anticipated the time or complications involved in employing the much needed amah we so longed for. The day dawned when the lovely Czech returned to her studies in London and I was left well and truly help-less in Hong Kong.

On day one my husband brings me a cup of tea in bed. He lays breakfast and gets the older boys going while I drag myself up. To be fair he does this every morning but today I appreciate him more than ever and am inclined to rechristen him the Domestic God. I am particularly sad when he leaves for the office. Once breakfast is cleared and packed lunches made, I go upstairs with the Little Ones, tidy their bedroom, get them dressed and clean their teeth before seeing them on to their nursery bus.

So now it’s just me and Kay Smallshaw alone in the house. She instructs me to “settle the order for the morning’s tasks.” I do quite well and plough through the housework, or the daily round as she calls it: I sweep inside (ant and cockroach prevention) and outside (snake prevention). I clean bathrooms and hoover rugs. Whilst hanging out the washing I notice that the dress that almost cost me my daughter has dyed the whole wash pink. Whilst I can live with pink napkins I'm not sure how the boys will feel about their pink pants.

I remove little handprints from glass doors and empty the waste paper baskets. Then I make the beds. Unlike Kay I do not find that “bedmaking can be quite a pleasant interlude from the dusting and sweeping” but perhaps that’s because I’m not doing enough dusting. I know I’m not matching up to her high standards when I leave cloths and detergents all over the place and have to go back and search for them for, as Kay says, “It’s the sign of a slovenly worker to leave jars and tins around!” Yup, that’s me! Next I take out the rubbish. As I lug the sack along the path next door’s two maids give me a friendly wave from where they sit in the kitchen enjoying a quiet cup of tea together.

By day two I’m bored stupid. The novelty of being a modern-day Kay Smallshaw and making a success of my housekeeping has already worn off. I get through the morning with the help of Diet-Coke and chocolate. If Kay Smallshaw is to be believed all this housework is having a beneficial effect on my figure so all extra calories are cancelled out.

In the course of the next few days I am relieved to discover I can still cook. My enthusiasm for being in the kitchen increases no end when it dawns on me I can set up my lap top and listen to Radio 4 while I work. I'm annoyed that I did not think of this earlier. I can barely hear the World Service murmuring live through the UK night so I “listen again” to the Today programme and am amused to hear John Humpreys saying, Good morning, this is Today, because in fact it’s yesterday. I am a day behind and am forever running to catch up. But the news is the same whatever day it is as stock markets around the world fall and fall.

As far as ironing goes I get better. The children’s clothes are at least relatively small and one advantage of eternal summer is that they only ever wear shorts and t-shirts but I really struggle with the king-size duvet cover. It strikes me that in a country with an immigrant population of 250,000 foreign domestic helpers I am possibly the only expat in Hong Kong to be doing my own ironing. And my husband’s, and my nine year old’s and my seven year old’s and my four year old’s and my two year old’s. This is not good. Whilst I can’t say my personality is being enriched by the experience I will admit to a feeling of relief when I reach the bottom of the ironing basket.

Far from being the multi-tasking genius I have always considered myself, I find that my days tend to fall into the laundry, cooking or cleaning category. Thus on some days we eat well in an untidy house and on others we have neatly ironed clothes but make do with leftovers. To my intense irritation I find I grow more rather than less exacting as time goes on. It begins to matter when the stairs look dusty and I become obsessive about using a sleeve board to iron my husband’s shirts. I even clean out the fridge. Perhaps I am morphing into Kay Smallshaw after all. What am I trying to prove, I wonder? I know I can do it but it is to the exclusion of all else I once enjoyed and at the end of the day, the daily round is mind-numbingly, back-achingly, relentlessly, finish-it-all-only-to-start-again DULL.

As for my aspiration to be a Hong Kong princess, the tiara has definitely slipped. Let’s just say that for now she’s more Cinderella than Sleeping Beauty.

Red Sky at Night

We’re playing a game. We begin a common phrase or saying and the children have to guess the last word.

Two many cooks spoil the.... “Books?” suggests our eldest.
Every cloud has a silver… “Lining!” shouts the seven year old.
One, two, buckle my…. “Shoe!” yells the four year old.
Red sky at night, shepherds’…. “PIE!” triumphs the two year old.

Out of Darkness Comes Light

While other families enjoy a lie in or a leisurely breakfast our Sunday morning rush (rugby kit x 3, water, sun cream, mosquito repellent, picnic rug, sunhats, mouth guards, shoes on) is caused in part by my own selfish wish to be dropped off at church before the others go on to Valley Fort.


St Stephen’s Chapel stands in the grounds of St Stephen’s College, a one time Anglican mission school established in Stanley during the early years of the last century. During the war the College was used as a hospital but on Christmas Day 1941 the invading troops entered it and killed many of the patients and staff. After Hong Kong's surrender the College became an internment camp for civilians. The Chapel itself was built in 1950 as a memorial to all those who suffered and died in the College during the invasion and subsequent internment.

The first time I attend I introduce myself to the vicar on the door.
“I’m from the Parish of Putney.”
“Oh Giles Fraser” he responds. “I read him in the Sunday Times.”
“Yes, the controversial Giles Fraser.” I say. “But actually I’m from All Saints, on the Common, the other end of the Parish.” I don’t add how dear it is to me and how much I am missing it. He doesn’t need to know how sad I am.

While the boys knock themselves about on the rugby pitches St Stephen’s Chapel offers me a little patch of personal peace. A simple square chapel with few adornments, arched windows, terracotta floor tiles and wooden pews. Dappled sunshine pours in through the flame trees outside and through the stained glass figure of St Stephen himself. It is light and airy. There is a pipe organ and ceiling fans hang from the high white rafters. The walls of the chapel are hung, not with tapestries or religious paintings, but with mattresses. Mattresses covered with cream brocade sheets.

Sunday is a day of rest and enjoying the peace and quiet I sit and ponder; why are there mattresses on the chapel walls? In the pew in front is a mother with a young son and a beautiful voice. If I shut my eyes and mouth the words I can pretend it is I who sings with a voice from heaven.

This morning, to my alarm, the visiting vicar faints during the service. Three anxious women rush forward to revive her. In the dash to be a Good Samaritan, I do not remember the mattresses.

I take my two year old daughter with me to church today. My little patch of personal peace thus reduced she climbs into my lap and nestles into my chest and I give thanks for her safe return.

Back on her feet the visiting vicar preaches, out of darkness comes light. She smiles at me and I think, this is relevant both for you and for me.

Missing Iona

Stanley Market is a favourite with the children. A veritable rabbit warren of small lanes and dark alleyways lined with narrow, open-fronted retail outlets, they beg us to bring them here to spend their pocket money. The shops snuggle together cheek by jowl whilst the hanging wares intermingle at the entrances as they flutter in the breeze; clothes, linen, jewellery, lanterns, souvenirs, toys, shoes, sports equipment, handbags, hair slides, pashminas and paintings.

My little girl takes me by the hand and points, “Want pretty dress.” I can’t fault her taste. She tries it on and marches confidently out of the shop while I pay, marvelling at the bargain for a genuine label or a genuine label copy. At that price who cares?

We follow her into the crowded lane. It is crammed with browsing tourists who move like sluggish brack water along the street. Keeping sight of all the children is hard. It is some minutes before I realise I can’t see my daughter. I press on, calling her name and peering into the shops as I pass. My husband retraces our steps back to the dress shop. The older boys catch on and run ahead to conduct their own shop by shop search. I hope they won’t get distracted by Pokemon cards but they return and to my dismay say she isn’t there. I take my four year old very firmly by the hand. It would be just my luck to lose two children in one day. We meet my husband coming back the other way. He shakes his head. This is every mother’s nightmare; it’s been ten minutes, maybe more. My blue-eyed, golden-haired girl is gone, and I have lost her in a street market with a hundred tiny shops and a thousand concealing pashminas.

In the shop where we bought her dress I grab an identical one and implore the assistant to remember if she has seen the little girl who left wearing this dress. Another customer hears and says they saw her heading down the lane but in the opposite direction to the one we took. I fling down the dress, command my boys to move from the spot on pain of death and run. Pushing through the crowds, shouting her name. How long does it take to lose a daughter? No time at all.

Faced with a choice of streets, I choose the way we came. I am wrong. Blank faces look up to see a desperate mother fly past calling for her daughter. Too much time has passed. Panic is rising in my chest. How to raise the alarm in the streets of a thousand shopkeepers when I don’t even speak their language? Someone catches me up and points back the way I’ve come, says something about the police. I run back and see a crowd of anxious onlookers. In their midst is an officer and in his arms, smiling away, is my baby girl in her new dress. I fold her into my arms and weep tears of relief and joy into her warm little neck. "I thought I’d lost you." I say. "Was gone. Was lost." She tells me. "Where were you?" I ask, hoping for a clue. "Clapping at lanterns," she beams.

Dim Sum

We go to eat in a Dim Sum Tea House. My husband, who’s done this before, takes charge of the ordering while I throw in a few additional suggestions for good measure. When the food arrives in steaming bamboo baskets the children go very quiet and look on, curious yet disbelieving as we lift the lids.

To preempt the normal cries of “Errghhh, yuk! I’m not eating that!” we have ordered egg fried rice and stir fried vegetables for the children. Our four year old gags on the vegetables because they are green but happily eats his way through giant prawn wonton. Our nine year old bravely agrees to try the crystal prawn dumpling and will say only that it’s “Interesting.” Mostly however they use the chopsticks to play xylophone on the tea cups and charm the waitress into not noticing the mess they are making.

Dim Sum, a Cantonese speciality, is meant to be eaten with pots of Chinese tea for breakfast or lunch but arriving dehydrated from our ill-planned hike we gulp down water. I have been longing to sample it ever since we arrived but I have to admit the slimy translucent parcels do not look quite as appetising as I’d anticipated and picking then up with chopsticks is a skill which eludes me totally. One dumpling is too big to put in whole and my chopsticks don't appear to have a cutting edge.


My husband’s choices are spot on; steamed shrimp and vegetable dumpling, “Char Siu Bau” or barbecued pork bun, and glutinous rice and chicken wrapped with lotus leaf which even the children enjoy. My own selection of steamed mushroom and salty fish dumpling tastes and smells like the scrapings off the bottom of someone’s feet and I am thus relieved I didn’t insist on the crispy miced [sic] fish cake. I make a mental note to leave the ordering to my Dim Sum savvy hubby next time.

Hong Kong Hikes

I happen to mention I am missing the green spaces of home. A long-termer suggests we go on a hike. It isn’t hiking I’m missing. I didn’t hike round my garden in London after all, it’s barely big enough to sunbathe in. Nor did I hike on the Common; more often than not I sat on a picnic blanket drinking tea with my Lovely Neighbour while we watched our children exercise themselves. Yet going on a hike is the challenge thrown down to all those inclined to think that Hong Kong is a bit of a concrete jungle.

We went on a hike.

It starts innocently enough, downhill, along a road and through the Tai Tam Nature Reserve. We could have brought the buggy, so tame is this hike. We cross a reservoir or two and must have taken a wrong turn for each time we see a “You are here” arrow on map we are not where we want to be. We cross another reservoir and take a right turn along its eastern shore hoping to get back on track. Suddenly the walk becomes more Indiana Jones than Sound of Music. We scramble up and down along a narrow dirt path, crossing dry riverbeds on make-do stepping stones, whilst looking nervously at the signs telling us to “Beware Flash Floods”.

The boys bound ahead like puppies and remembering a recent tale I heard of a python in a Hong Kong garden which ate the neighbour’s cocker spaniel, I say to my husband, “What about S-N-A-K-E-S?” “Quite,” he says, “You’d better go ahead.”

“Why are you going in front?” ask the boys and without thinking I say,
“In case of mines.” Only then do I wonder if mention of L-A-N-D-M-I-N-E-S might actually be more scary to them than mention of S-N-A-K-E-S.

My eldest son says, “Do you think we might actually fall down a mine shaft Mummy?” and I can't help smiling for he is right there with me in Indiana Jones country. “Well, not really,” I say, “But if we do, Daddy would like me to go first.”

In true form we have not taken the day’s activity seriously enough. We have no map and, as soon becomes evident, too little water. My husband has to carry our two and a half year old daughter in a ruck sack more suited to a 10 month old. He is working harder than the rest of us and I insist he gets the lion’s share of the remaining water. The going is rocky, rough and narrow. We are eaten alive by mosquitos and as usual it’s too hot. It's a good thing we didn't bring the buggy.

I hear snakelike movement in the undergrowth on the bank beside me. “What was that?” chorus the boys. "Oh, just a lizard or something." I say. “Big lizard” says my eldest.

Let’s hope it slips down the mine shaft before we do, I think.

More Equestrian Events

My pet-loving, cuddly toy obsessed seven year old announced he wanted to learn to ride. I rashly agreed to go too, wondering as I did, why in four years of living in London we had never taken advantage of either Richmond Park or Wimbledon Common to get him on a horse. It all seemed so urban at the time but now we know that horses love skyscrapers, Hong Kong is an obvious place to start.

Riding is one hell of a kit sport. We traipsed to Kowloon in search of a tiny saddlery shop tucked away on the 17th floor of one more skyscraper. I needed jodhpurs and was inclined to insist on lightweight ones. I eventually found some which are, I suspect, produced for the local market as they only reach to mid-calf on me but under boots who’s to know.

More surprising than the length is the effect they have on my “seat” (technical riding term of course) when I sit down. A seam which runs up the back of my thigh (think seamed stockings, on second thoughts, don't) then dissects my behind and returns down the other thigh. This has the bizarre and not entirely comfortable effect of dividing my butt into its more and less fleshy parts thereby creating a natural cushion. I was under the impression my backside was fleshy enough but this was clearly not the case and, courtesy of my eye-wateringly expensive new jodhpurs, I now have an additional padded area made up on my own excessive and malleable spare flesh on which to sit. I’m not quite sure if it is I or the horse who benefits from all this but if it is the horse I think he might offer to help out with the expense.

We met at school, I already feeling very conspicuous in too short, bum-dividing jodhpurs. Fortunately we found the right bus, snuck on and sat down. What a comfortable bus, I thought. But no, it was my own redistributed padding I was benefiting from whilst everyone else sat on hard seats. I must remember to wear my new jodhpurs when we next go on a picnic.

We set off. There were a number of young girls asking each other if they could canter. I can but thought perhaps I wouldn't admit to it just yet. Then again, when they spot my jodhpurs they’ll doubtless assume I’ve turned up late for the Olympics. Or else that I’m one of those, all-the-gear-no-idea-types you see on the ski-slopes, like, well, like me in fact.

The bus took us almost to China. Just short of the Lok Ma Chau crossing to Shenzhen we drew into the Lo Wu Saddle Club. Our mounts were ready for us. I’d been told they were mostly ex-race horses, one time property of the Hong Kong Jockey Club and in view of our recent outing to Happy Valley I was not convinced I was ready to be raced over the border to Guangdong. Besides, I hadn’t bought my passport.

Ben’s was called Abo. Mine was called Prodigy. Ben’s was the oldest pony in Hong Kong. Mine was surely the most stubborn, prodigiously stubborn in fact. Nor was he in the least impressed by my jodhpurs and told me he certainly wouldn’t consider contributing to the cost.

Ben loved it and wants to come again. He did “round the world” and rode without a leading rein. I am reserving judgement, as are those leg muscles which have spent the last four years in retirement. Ask me tomorrow.