Andy's Glasses

So we’re in Munnar and it’s famous for being in the mountains and thus a bit ‘hilly’ and it’s where they grow the tea. Because here’s something I learned this very day, tea bushes have to grow on an incline of between 30 and 45 degrees. Well, ya live and learn.

But I love tea. Drinkin’ it. Love it dearly. I have my daily coffee, of course, because I’m a Londoner and got conned a decade or two back like everyone else and drink a coffee first thing. But tea is my drink of choice. Ok, Laphroaig and tea. Either of which I’m happy to drink either inclined or on level ground.

And here’s the other thing: I love seeing where tea grows. Tea bushes are wonderfully spectacular, as they blanket the entire visible mountainside with ‘green’. So I took loads of photos of it, but instead decided to post another ‘selfie’ of me and the Mrs in front of a photo of tea-covered mountains, which sits in front of the real, tea covered mountains, at the very end of the path up the nature reserve, the name of which is as irrelevant as it is unpronounceable.

The drive from our resort to the reserve took fucking hours. Because all of India is on Christmas holidays this week and ALL of them, every single one of them, is currently on the road in Kerala. And, finally arriving at the ticket area, there they were, the entire population of India, 1.6 billion of the buggers, all queuing for tickets to take the tour to the top of the nature reserve. Longest queue in the world currently. However… and this is where it gets a bit good, whilst getting a bit bad at the same time. Because next to the worlds’ longest queue is an empty ticket booth. Which states that Indians have to pay 200 Rupees for the gig. Whereas ‘foreigners’ like us have to pay 500. But that’s… discrimination!!!! And it is racist, and… and… and it wonderful. Because you get to pay a bit more, but you get to pay it NOW, rather than waiting for sometime tomorrow, when they wouldn’t let you pay the ‘residents rate’ anyway. And then you take your privileged, white, foreign, fascist ticket to the bus and, basically, walk straight to the front of that queue too.

In normal circumstances, I would have played the ‘I i-den-ti-fyyyyyy as a south Asian man called Ramesh’ card and saved the 3 quid. But to pay a few bob to jump massive queues? Holy moly, that is, literally ‘priceless’.

Lovin’ it here, still

A xxxx

Ok, as you can see from this picture, my arrival in the Munnar, tea-growing, mountainous, eco-friendly, zero-emission, ultra-sustainability, oooh, put an extra one in the pot for me, Marge, region, has seen me go totally native. I’ve gone the ‘full namaste’ as it is known. Just because some babe from Kerala in a sari stuck a wodge of face paint on my forehead, it has completely realigned all my chakras to such a degree that I am now not just a Hindu, but a Hindu God. Well, why not, there are thousands of them, what’s another one?? Je suis Mahatma Gandhi, kind’a deal. Though, I appreciate, he was a Prime Minister, rather than a God and ever since Boris resigned we’ve been able to tell the difference once more.

The mountains are stunningly beautiful. And blanketed in tea. Like, plants. (Who knew tea grew like that? I thought it came in bags, like, from heaven? Or just, like, in cups?) Which makes everything green. Which is fab.

To get here (Munnar) from Kochi, would take, I reckon, about 45 minutes. Then you have to make a minor allowance for Indian travel conditions and traffic (travelling in seven different directions at once, all overtaking everyone else) and that adds about 4 hours. We’ll never get that time back. But the really odd thing is that if you asked me at which point Kochi gave way to ‘not Kochi’ which then became ‘Munnar’, I have no idea. The shops just go on and on and on. And its interesting; very interesting indeed…

Because I reckon that England, where I used to live before my awakening this afternoon, has a complete demographic from the super-rich, through an immense middle-class range, and working class, to unemployed at the bottom. Whereas here, in my new homeland, India again has its super-rich, but then a smaller middle class and a working class going from ok-getting-by to super-poor. So India’s ‘range’ of lifestyles is much bigger than YOU English bastards’. Hence some rows of shops are fairly ‘normal’, what you’d expect, kind’a deal. Nice clothes, pharmacies, food, boutiques, lovely lovely lovely. You first know you’re in a very poor area by the number of cement stores available. I don’t know if poor Indians eat cement, but fuck me they certainly have a lot of stores selling it. Almost only exceeded by the number of motor cycle/scooter/moped sales/servicing/spares outlets. And an hour on any road leads you to no concern as to where those vehicles go.

Whilst the cement remains more of a puzzle.

Have a fab everything,

A xxxx

We’re here in India. Where its ‘movember’ every month. For all the genders. Where they have more Indian restaurants than, (I’m guessing), virtually anywhere else in the world!!! And, more specifically, cos it is a fucking massive place, is India, we’re in Kochi. Which used to be called Cochin. Until the Mumbaiians took over Bombay, Leningrad became St Petersburg and Ceylon changed forever to Sri Lanka. And in Kochi they have their very own martial arts, unique to the state of Kerala. It’s called kalaripayattu. Which translates from the ancient Tamil as ‘why are you fucking pushing me??’, and started way back in the 12th century, specifically to address the then nascent hobby of ‘barging’, which has blossomed, bloomed, exploded and mushroom-clouded since then into something of a national obsession. And it’s simply the best fun you, and your moustaches, can have. You go to, say, a lift in a hotel. Lobby floor, where everybody gets out the elevator. But here’s the great bit; you don’t wait for the 22 people crammed into the lift to get off, where is the fun in that??? No, as the doors slide open, you BARGE your way IN to the lift. And if you can make it all the way in before any single person has jumped out, then you inherit all their moustaches to add to your own. However, if one of the the people on the lift is a local and an exponent of kalaripayattu, he may well kill you with one of these vicous looking murderous weapons. So always best to check who’s dangerous before your barging begins.

The barging continues, as it does in all majors Indian cities, on all the roads. You just barge people from inside your car instead of outside. As chaos plays out on every road and in every direction on every road. Never limit or restrict yourself just because of a few road traffic signs. Really. A big ONE WAY!!!! arrow is most certainly something with sufficient ambiguity here in India, to be worthy of a ‘debate’. And to test the water, send a few cows, goats or water buffalo the wrong way along a carriageway, just to judge reactions, check the barging, be aware of any swords knocking around.

Tomorrow we leave Kochi and head to a place called Munnar, in the tea growing region. So, to celebrate our time in Kochi, which involved dinner at the hotel buffet last night which, regardless of the hotel, should never be repeated, we ate tonight at… McDonalds!!! I know I know but… its safe, its next to the hotel, and damn the expense! It cost, for both of us, including ice creams; 6 quid. Honest. However, here’s the menu:

Hamburger (made from chicken cos ‘we’ don’t eat beef here)
Cheeseburger (same, chicken only due to Hindu constraints)
Chicken burger (no changes made)
Bacon Cheese Burger (no bacon, upsets the Muslims, no beef, upsets the Hindus, so ‘chicken’ as above).

Odd and bizarre that McDonalds maybe the lowest of the low in terms of nutrition, desirability, healthiness, BUT is definitely a brand you can trust, anywhere, not to give you food poisoning.

Happy Boxing Day

A xxxx

Had a busy day yesterday. A very busy day. Starting, as usual, with Tai Chi at 8.15, but that after a week when half the class had covid. Not my half, unaccountably and thankfully, but as the wimpier and less resilient half recovered, normal proceedings had been suspended. But now we’re back, better, stronger and older than before.

Then to tennis. The daughter played, a rivalry going back at least 25 years. Not a normal rivalry, just that she hits the ball really, really hard, and I have learned to either field such assaults on my body in a way that keeps it going, or just duck for my life. Or sometimes for my testicles.

We rushed home, showered and prepared lunch. A competitive sandwich making competition, from which there are really no winners, in a calorific sense, but many victors in terms of pleasure. Just take a couple of massive slices of challah and put in between everything left over from Friday night. Chopped liver, roast chicken, stuffing, slice an avocado, add the condiments of your choice and you have the best thing since sliced bread. Ok, that doesn’t work in this context, I understand that…

Then we went to Spurs. And as I think every time I’m near that stadium: this is the best fucking place in the world. Ok, it is in Tottenham, which could do with a bit of face lift, in the way that Donald Trump could do with a bit of a new hair-do, or Kim Jong-un could do with losing a couple of pounds, but it is just sooooo magnificent at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium of Unknown Naming Rights, that it takes your breath away. When we can eventually refer to it as ‘The Hornsey Tandoori Stadium’ or ‘The Houthi’, possibly even ‘The Sportswashing Jihadi Stadium’, then we can handle it. Though for at least a generation it will always be ‘White Hart Lane’. As it should be.

The match was fab. What neutrals call ‘exciting’, what fans call ‘PANIC-STRICKEN!!!’, but we won. Nothing else matters.

And now, at 8.30 tonight, we’re off to India. This time… The South. We’ve done the north. Ok, possibly not ALL of it, but enough. Now it’s Kerala. Which is a totally different kind of curry altogether. And I’m sooooo excited.

Happy Christmas. Can Santa get onto a 747 in mid-flight? I bloody hope so.

A xxxx

I don’t watch darts. I’m scared to. Because if you watch so much as one solitary dart winging its way to the board, then you’re there FOREVER!!!! You can’t look away. Its compelling, compulsive, addictive and revolting. It was an error of God, when he made Adam; he forgot to set the ‘stop’ button on the ‘watching darts’ program. So you watch one, then two more, that makes ONE HUNDRED AND TWEEEEEEENTEEEEE (scores have to be loud otherwise they don’t work properly). But by the time he’s finished saying it, you’re already trying to work out how many points are now needed and whether he should play “double fourteen-triple nineteen bull” or “triple 17 triple 18 double top”. So the best way is, when you see that a channel is showing darts, look elsewhere.

But then once in a while that sport(? is it a ‘sport’? Really?? Its kind’a ‘leisure activity’ really, like golf) makes it onto the news. As it did yesterday. Because Luke Littler, (given the honour of today’s pic), is just 16 years old and won through to the third round… possibly 5th, of some tournament or other. You know the one, played up north, loads’a great fat people frowin’ arrers, crowds of screaming, tattooed drunks in the audience… that one. And that is great for sport, great for Britain, great for kids, even if they look like grandparents, and fabulous for fat people in general.

Luke’s secret? How he did so well? It was all down to the kebab he ate the night before. Which, I’m guessing a bit and ‘judging by appearances’, is not really a rare or unusual occurrence in his life. Yet in this morning’s paper they actually had a photo of him eating the kebab, the one that is his inspiration, his stimulation certainly his satisfaction. Never likely to be his constipation.

Is that how we want our kids to be? Do I see Joey, at age 16, being ‘shit hot’ at darts, semi-literate, grunting monosyllabically and morbidly obese from kebabs? I can only dream… Otherwise he’s destined to become a hit-man.

Happy not-many-days-before-Christmas Day

A xxxx

Issa funny ole game, is bridge, said Jimmy Greaves. Whereas in fact, it’s a game of immense skill and cunning and geniusness. And a bit’a luck. Just a bit. Not enough that when I win I can’t run round the table performing ‘goal celebrations’, breaching all protocols of propriety, gentlemanliness and decorum, but enough that fate has to provide you with good cards. Without which, however fucking clever you might be, there are limits to what you can achieve.

And, like number 7 buses, you wait all week for a good hand and then three come round at the same time. Which was precisely my experience the other night.

We normally play 8 hands. Because you can’t let a few playing cards get in the way of a good cake. Or fruit. Biscuits. All three. And normally, I reckon I’ll get a couple of ‘decent’ hands at most. And if on one of those ‘partner’ gets a decent hand too, then that’s the normal bridge experience. Conforming to statistical probability. But I had 4 amazing hands. And on all those hands, partner had a near perfect ‘fit’. Something else that rarely happens.

I won’t bore you with the details because if you don’t know bridge it’s meaningless and boring, and if you do, you’d doubtlessly have done much better, and then I’ll hate you, but it was wonderful. And now I’ll have to wait another 7 months for the stars to align with Jupiter and Sagittarius to disappear up its own trouser leg.

Meanwhile, back on planet football, all is not so wonderful. Arsenal sit at the top of the table, Liverpool are flying, Manchester City have (thankfully) lost the plot and Spurs and Aston Villa are on the ascendant. Aston Villa? Yes, the team which, for those old enough to remember, were biiiiiiig back in part of the 70s, winning the ‘old’ European Cup and being generally… big, have risen under the fantastic stewardship of Unai Emery, the Arsenal reject manager, to be currently ‘presuming’ on the title chase. I’m not sure teams from Birmingham are allowed to harbour such aspirations, but teams from Leicester aren’t either and look what happened there. The Christmas program normally sorts things out a bit; 14 games in 4 days, that kind’a thing. And on Saturday I’m going to White Hart Lane to watch my boys (I simply can’t do gels football: I keep trying but… but…) play Everton. Who, since being cruelly and horribly docked 10 points by the league for wilfully and persistently NOT being Manchester City, have won every game they’ve played. We can only hope that ends NOW!

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

The French are such a contentious, divisive and stroppy race of people. They always have been, which is why we’ve always loved them. Well, we love looking at them. Best to leave it there, really, the problem only starts once you ‘engage’.

And now THISl!!!! Short-hair-gate!!!! Coupled with ‘flat-chest-gate!!!!’

First you have to accept that there are people in the world who put some kind of stock into ‘beauty pageants’. Most of the civilised world, and all of the ‘woke’ world, has no time, place or bovver for such a fatally flawed concept as parading women around to see which one looks the nicest. Miss Whatever competitions are basically objectification on steroids. Though as always, the contestants would (have to) say that ‘it empowers them!’, because you have to say that to avoid being burned alive by the feminist army.

So basically: all decent, correct people pretty much have no time whatsoever for these most banal of competitions. So, obviously, the French love them and take them very serious-ment indeed. As does 90% of middle America. Less popular in the Arab world. For… errrr… obvious reasons.

And they’re pissed off with the competition for having a victor(ia) with short hair!!! Who is not, by any definition, as ‘curvaceous’ as they’d like. As we’d all like. Roger Rabbit’s wife, kind’a deal. All waist-length curls and tits like watermelons. And hips. BIG hips.

And in steps Eve Gilles, the most exquisite little elfin, pixie-esque beautiful-of-beauties and…

NON! She ‘as short ‘air!!! She is not, ow you say, ‘curvaceous’!!! No Miss France in a ‘undred years ‘as never ‘ad short ‘air!!! Sacre bleu!!!!

They worry that she’s androgynous. An accusation always made BY those uncertain of their own sexuality and living a partial lie, thus if a woman looks ‘boyish’ in any way, it stirs parts of them which create immense cognitive dissonance. Which is a long way of saying ‘all French blokes are poofs’.

I think Eve is gorgeous beyond gorgeous. In that wonderfully Audrey Hepburn way. There’s a world of women out there who aren’t Dolly Parton. And there’s probably some French people who aren’t tossers, but I’ve yet to find one.

A Scottish couple drove an electric car from the North Pole to the South Pole. 18,000 miles. In order to redefine ‘range anxiety’ to stratospheric levels. I couldn’t make it to Suffolk and back without collapsing in a heap of EV-related mental health issues, and they went half the world’s circumference. I don’t think its the electric acquisition that’s the problem, just keeping your shit together whilst you’re setting up your solar panels and mobile wind farm. I need to consider those as options. God help us all.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Shakespeare pondered such concepts, in that very… Shakespearian way he had: if music be the food of love, then play on. So opens Twelfth Night. But what about food? Food is the food of love too. With or without the music. Ok, eating your sushi to some oriental plinking in the background, or shovelling your meat madras to the accompaniment of a sitar is very culturally consistent, but to be honest, I’d rather they played Nirvana. Maybe Simon & Garfunkel (not for curry; need something more powerful for that) or Taylor Swift, the world’s most successful… everything. Because you can enhance the atmosphere with music, but it won’t improve the food. That needs to be done by the chef, not the pianist.

And hence today’s sandwich. Or: The Masterpiece, as I humbly consider it. But this isn’t just a ‘sandwich’, it is a complete meal. It is the ultimate stimulation to your taste-buds. Well, my tastebuds, you ain’t getting any. But it just looked so wonderful I wanted to share. The photo. Obviously.

The roll is a challah roll. Nothing is finer in this world. And it is a massive one, making it finer still. On one half I spread hummus, on the other chilli mayo. Then there’s potato salad (why NOT, ffs, I had it there and I made it yesterday so its the best), cheese, coleslaw, sliced gerkin, chopped jalapeno, a sliced boiled egg and… tomato. For ‘elf. Tomato is a ‘superfood’ and thus negates all the carbs, fat, salt, more carbs, more fat, bit’a sugar and makes it almost ‘zero calorie’, in the same way companies become ‘carbon neutral’ whilst spewing out enough clouds of toxic shit to melt Antarctica.

And I only mention this wonder (and I just ate it: O…M…Geeee…), because apparently in the Uk, we have 3,000 people a day entering hospital wards due to obesity. Three thousand. I wasn’t aware that you could cure obesity. And had to wonder what they do with them all. Put them on diet? Are the beds big enough? But I suppose its actually 3,000 a day with the effects of obesity; diabetes, heart conditions, failing hips and knees, fat bellies.

So you have to wonder if this is the best use of NHS money? And, more importantly, NHS beds? We could send the obese over to Rwanda, obviously not on boats because of the danger of sinking, but fly them over because its a safe haven with not much food. Orrrrrr… we could educate people on quantity and, in particular, quality of food. A take-away pizza is way more expensive than a plate of home made spag bol with vegetables. Any food that is sold by the ‘bucket’ is never going to be good for you. Simple rules. Less time on computer, more chasing real women round the streets. And eat green stuff. Not because you want to, obviously, who does?, but because you should. Good for ya.

Eat well, but in a considered way.

A xxxx

This man is Grzegorz Braun. He’s a Polish MP. And on Tuesday, whilst there was a little celebration of chanukah in the parliament building over there in Warsaw, he took a fire extinguisher and blew out the candles on the menorah, the special Chanukah… candle holder. And really, that’s not very nice. Not very nice at all. But what do we know about Braun?

His great, great grandfather was Adolph Braun. Who lived near the little village where my maternal grandmother’s family had their mud hut. And every Friday night, Adolph and his friends would mount their horses, whilst drunk on the local potato liqueur, ride into the shtetl and beat the living shit out of all the jews they could find. Only stopping when they found someone to rape. Then they’d go back home, sleep off their excesses and do as little as they possibly could until next Friday came around. Which is why, in 1900, my grandmother’s family moved to London. They were potlessly poor, spoke no English, arrived on a boat (big one, probably) and were really pissed off that they weren’t going to invent ‘benefits’ for another 48 years. But anywhere was better than Poland.

Grzegorz’s grandfather, Greg, was living in that same village when the nazis came a’knocking in 1940, looking for local recruits. Greg was illiterate, worthless, had no skills and terrible halitosis. Making him ideally suited for Nazi enrolment. Which he thus did, along with hundreds of thousands of his co-countrymen, helping the Germans with the vital task of rounding up and murdering every Jew in the land which had been Poland until a few months ago but was, at that time, the latest addition to the German empire.

Due to a handling incident at the neo-natal unit of Warsaw General, in 1967, baby Grzegorz was dropped on the floor when being passed from the midwife to his father, Grzeg, and he landed on his head. Emergency room x-rays showed that the damage was so severe that the only way to save the baby was to remove all the useful bits of his brain, leaving just the hate, the evil, the uselessness, the moronic and anything remotely decent or ‘nice’. But it was that or lose him altogether. So his parents decided that he could always have a career in politics and they chose to save him.

Thus the man we all know and love today. He is quite openly anti-American, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Semitic, anti-Protestant and anti-pretty-much-anything-else-you-can-think-of. Hence he runs some far right wing party committed to the sanctity and purity of all things Polish. He IS pro-Russian. Ironic that the far right sides with the far left for purposes of being hateful. But thus we must forgive poor Grzegorz, because he knows no better and banged his head as a child. We must not judge all Polish people by his standards. Some of my absolutely favourite builders are Polish.

And yet, from the pogroms to the eager and willing help they gave towards ‘the final solution’, to their committed participation in concentration camps, right up to extinguishing the lights on a fucking menorah, them Poles live up to my grandmother’s oft-quoted saying: The Germans learned anti-semitism from the Poles.

Good to learn from history.

(All of the above is verified, validated historical fact, other than the bits I made up, but they’re true too. Just in a different way.)

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

What they should do, wiv dem small boats, is turn ’em round and make ’em faarkin’ sail over to Rwanda demselves, in dem little dinghies, da’s what dey should do. Den dey won’t come back, will dey???

Probably because they’d have run out of petrol half way to Spain or been eaten by sharks or giant Octopus-ninja things off the coast of Portugal. Never ever to reach the wonders and splendour of a barracks in Rwanda.

The problem is that there are actually two conversations going on simultaneously and neither makes much sense anyway.

The government’s conversation is all about stopping the boats because its an illegal and immoral result of the trafficker-bastards putting all those refugee-seekers at great risk. So we must stop THE BOATS. Even though we’re not, kind’a, offering refugee-seekers any alternative route or method to come here to seek asylum. But that’s not the point: the boats must end!

The conversation Johnny Britain hears is: we’ve found a way to stop foreigners of unspecified origin and unspecified colour coming here in boats. Now if only we could work on trains, cars and planes, Britain would be ‘saved’. It’s actually the conversation he has with Nigel Farage.

A cynic (errrrr… that might be me then) might think that the government have found a pretty good vote-winner, as anything reducing immigration is unfortunately a vote-winner, disguised as a humanitarian action of protecting those poor people from exploitation by the dastardly traffickers.

Either way, ‘Rwanda!!!” is both the solution and the problem. Not, necessarily, from an economic standpoint, as we’ve pissed away £400million on this so far and not one refugee has yet set foot on African soil. But from the government perspective it looks like a plan. And from Johnny English’s perspective, Rwanda is definitely ‘anywhere but ‘ere!’

But the devil is in the details. And thereby hangs the issue. And hanged Tuesday’s vote in parliament which almost looked like a vote of confidence in Rishi Sunak but was a vote on whether to pass the ‘Rwanda bill’.

The Tories were completely split!!! Not between those who want the Rwanda thing to happen and those who don’t, but between those who think, like Rishi, that his wishi-washi plan will pass legal muster, and those who think it needs shoring up on various points. Like taking us out of Human Rights conventions and implementing a structure which precludes legal appeal.

Rishi won. But at what cost if, when someone finally does get sent to Rwanda, they’re pulled off the plane and entangled in legal proceedings for the following 3 years with the ‘deportee’ kept at Claridges whilst the trial continues. With Johnny English as his butler.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx