We sought paradise ... and
SArAH ALDERSON was watching Mad Men in bed at 10pm when she heard the sudden clatter of her daughter’s building blocks toppling to her bedroom floor. Creeping from her bed towards the light switch, she braced herself for the sight of a mouse.
But what she actually saw was a 2m snake sliding behind the bookcase, close to where her little girl lay sleeping.
when the local snake expert arrived to deal with it an hour later, the snared reptile bared its rows of deadly poisonous fangs and voided its bowels all over the floor.
Then the man casually turned to the terrified family and said he had a dozen baby cobras at home — would they like one as a pet?
Though many of us spend September fantasising about living in the places we’ve spent our summer holidays, Alderson’s frank and funny account of her family’s move to Bali is a timely reminder that every paradise comes with its serpents.
Back in 2009, Alderson was a working mum with a good job for a charity; her husband, John, was a successful graphic designer. They lived in a comfortable London home crammed full of precious possessions: shelves sagging under the weight of his beloved vinyl record collection, her luxury cosmetics and three-year- old Alula’s pink plastic tat.
But they were tired of ‘ spending most waking moments juggling childcare, work, housework and paying bills’.
what had happened to the wedding vow in which they had promised to live a life of ‘outrageous potential’? They decided they would relocate a country with more sun and less stress.
So they told the bank they needed a loan (true) for a new bathroom, a marble one with gold taps (not true), and put the rest of their clutter on eBay.
It took them ten months ‘to make it out the door and on to the plane with just two rucksacks between us, a confused toddler in a pink tutu and hearts bursting with an almost ketamine-level paralysing mix of excitement and fear’.
This funny little book about the eight months her family spent home-hunting through Australia, America and Asia ( before f i nally settling i n Bali) is a travel- sized version of the blog that Alderson wrote as she went — so there is no retrospective romanticising.
She gives full details of every terrifying tuk-tuk ride, parasitic worm and dodgy bikini wax she gets along the way.
Making money as she goes by writing