Andy's Glasses

Just when you thought 2016 had had its fill of taking our beloved stars away from us, with just 3 days left its shown us once again that ‘where there’s life there’s hope’. Or, in this case, where there’s life there’s death. Since the weekend we’d already lost Ray Parfitt, the famously blond Status Quo guitarist whose head will bang no longer. Then, just days later, it was George Michael, and now, horror of horrors, Princess Leia has been taken from us.

I know that she was a fictional character and they die all the time, but Carrie Fisher really did ‘die’ as Princess Leia, never since achieving anything noteworthy careerwise. But Luke’s sister! That bikini-thing!!!! How I loved her. She wasn’t killed by Darth Vader, nor by the Klingons, Mysterons or even ISIS. She died really as the victim of celebrity-child syndrome, which claims so many. And the years of drugs and alcohol took their toll on that poor body. Even when it grew to try and accommodate the excesses. 60 years old. THAT IS SO FUCKING YOUNG!!!!!

‘Would you like an upgrade sir?’ said the gorgeous girl (they are all gorgeous here) on the check in for our early morning flight from Jaipur to Udaipur. ‘Premium Economy’, just 500 Rupees each. That’s 6 quid to you. Six pounds??? We’ll take two, kind lady.

Then we saw the plane. But heh, we get ‘extra leg room’ and ‘speedy boarding’ (there were 40 people on board, how slow can it ever be?) and preferential bag claim. Wow. Lot a benefits. I make that 2 pound a benefit. Bargain.

Flight good, in that loud way that turbo-props have and we’d all forgotten, extra leg-room but only after being trained as the ‘exit monitor’, fine, and 50 minutes after take-off, we arrived. And by the time we’d walked to the baggage claim (about 50 yards from the plane: this ain’t Heathrow), our bags were proudly on the carousel, all by themselves. As advertised. Brilliant.

Then came the trouble. Which I really have neither the time nor the patience to get into, but it was just sooooo fucking stupid/annoying/daft and Indian that to even think about makes me mad again. I shouted a lot. I’m never really a shouter. Only at football, when its my job. The manager came, all the staff, all morons, obviously, anyone who disagrees with me is, by definition, a moron. But when the manager resorts to: ‘you are right, we were wrong and will give you all your money back, BUT it will come out of the staff’s wages’, you simply can’t fight that. Stab me, punch me, but don’t use guilt, ya motherfucker. That’s dirty.

When I finally made it outside, I was greeted by an ad hoc fan club. Happens to me everywhere,(once). “Oy, you the bloke with the blog?” because my name was on the driver’s board. Oh God, who have I offended now? Would Chelsea fans come all the way to Udaipur just for some minor (if consistent) abuse? No, they were readers. Fans. I felt like a star. Not a dead one, fortunately. So thank you, MY FANS, for your words of… anything.

Happy (this’ll annoy you) really hot, cloudless, blue-skyed Wednesday

A xxxx

I went to a party in about 1986 at me mate Dom’s new flat. And I was the most famous person there (well, I certainly knew who I was, and how important I was). Until George Michael walked in. He was really famous by that time. Really famous. Wham’s finest player. He wasn’t gay yet. And we knew he was going to be there; there were murmurings. I was waiting for the spotlights to go on, the stars to shine brighter and that larger-than-life SuperStar to leap into the room, dressed in tight, purple satin shorts and a black leather biker jacket; all million-watt smile and blow-wave with that Mediterranean tan and Star Quality.

What actually happened was a group of totally average guys walked in and at the back was a surprisingly little dark-haired guy in plain jeans and a grey shirt with bad skin and a look like he wanted to be somewhere else. In fact he looked like he pretty much always wanted to be somewhere else. And that was my ‘George Michael Story’. We became best mates, went out looking at frocks together, blah, blah, blah and loads and loads of drugs. Brilliant times. Right.

Yet I loved (in a blokey, fan-ny, music-appreciating kind’a way, obviously) him. Careless Whisper, Faith, Carma Camelia… sorry, wrong George, but I loved the right George. Loved the voice. And yet he’s become 2016’s latest superstar victim. He died on Christmas day in Delhi. Oh, sorry, I was in Delhi, he died in Buckinghamshire.

And now we’re in Jaipur. Me and Mel. Not me and George. Obviously. And its a fantastic place. And you think its civilised and beautiful and its kind’a different to Delhi and Agra because there’s big, modern, fabulous buildings and wide, tree-lined avenues and its clean and… and… civilised. Then you go to Old Jaipur and you’re back in the ‘madness’. India is an ancient Sanskrit word that means ‘insane drivers’. Or just ‘insane’ for short.

Oddly I love the madness. Its more Indian. More ‘real’. And although you feel at times that the next person who pushes a ‘Jaipur Guide’ book into your face, or an elephant carrier bag, elephant key rings or coloured necklaces, you’re just gonna explode and either punch him or shout HOW MANY FUCKING ELEPHANT FRIDGE MAGNETS DO I FUCKING NEEEEED???? you instead smile politely and bite the item. Or just ignore them. Its their life, their world, their job.

I own 12 elephant key rings. Currently.

The Amber Fort here is spectacular. Though I must confess to being a bit Maharajah’ed out at the moment. Tomorrow we fly to Udaipur. Maybe I need just a few more elephant head-scarves.

Happy Tuesday (I think)

A xxxx

When we booked our India tour, our man in the UK was emailing the tour company in India to book everything, who then got back to him, who forwarded on to us… you get the picture. The subject line of the email originally sent by him was: “India tour for 2 white people”. Honest, that’s what it said. In 2016.

Yet its actually the way things are done here. Tourists are treated differently. A little deferentially, certainly more expensively. You get to a palace or a fort and it says: ‘locals 30Rp, foreigners 500Rp’. And you think ‘those little bastards!!!’ Racism, pure and simple. Here comes the ‘white man’ (not even ‘white person’ which would at least be just racist but not sexist) let’s fleece the fat pig!!

And I don’t even mind. Our money is worth much more than theirs. And they pay for these sights already with their taxes. Assuming they pay tax, or don’t use the forged banknotes when they do.

But at the Taj Mahal yesterday I appreciated the full value of my white person ticket. It was Christmas Day (in case you missed that), so India was on holiday. And it went, en masse, the entire fucking population of 1 billion, to the Taj Mahal because they heard we’d be there. And there was line to get into the building itself, the tomb. The queue was about 200 metres long. And in fact was 2 queues, one for men and one for women. And I thought, as always when faced with a queue for anything, I actually don’t need to go in, outside is fine. Then our guide pulled us inside the two long lines, to an empty couple of extra lines, separated by metal fencing, and we walked all the way to the front, not one other soul in either the white men’s or white women’s line, trying not to appear in too satisfied. And I thought, I wish I could pay an extra 470 Rupees in England every time there was a queue.

There’s something absolutely magical about the Taj Mahal. I can see what all the fuss is about. Even though I’ve seen a million pictures of it and eaten in 1,756 restaurants in Wembley named after it. It is simply beautiful. Achingly symmetrical in a way that you just want to keep looking at it. And it appears really ‘soft’ in a way that marble normally isn’t.

Ironically, the king who built this magnificent tomb for his wife, planned an identical one for himself to be built as his own memorial. Directly opposite the Taj, same design, but in black. Alas, his own son (a true little bastard) locked his father up in his own prison for 7 years til his death, so it was never even started.

Happy Boxing Day

A xxxx

Streatham Malkie always bemoans my lack of mention of his beloved Crystal Palace. They’re a football team. Apparently. In the Premiership. And, generally, I don’t mention them purely in consideration for him and his fellow sufferers. Sorry, fellow fans. Because if I’d spoken of Palace in the last few months, it was not going to be good. It would have been after another loss, another disaster, more heaps of shit. And I’m not the sort of man to inflict such salt into the tender wounds of poor, misguided sports fans. Unless they’re Chelsea fans, obviously, or Arsenal fans, for whom, pretty much, salt is too good and something more caustic is preferable.

No more. No more the poor guys, the fall guys, the lost boys of the League. Big Sam’s comin’ and its all gonna change. Palace sacked Alan Pardew this week, their failing manager and, in the current mode of such things, had the new manager pass through the old one’s still fresh exhaust fumes as he entered the club car park. Unless Pardew drives a Prius. Then we need another metaphor.

Personally I like Big Sam. And I don’t like many Northerners, on principle. Only my wife. But she’s never been embroiled in a Newspaper Sleaze ‘sting’ operation by the ‘now stooping to the lowest fucking amoeba-like life-form of gutter-breeding slime-Press’ Daily Telegraph. If she had, we’d be rich. Sam, on the other hand, lost his job as England manager after just 67 games and one measly match, due to the tragic work of fiction that awful newspaper fabricated to discredit the man. If the Sun had done it there’d be a public inquiry, but the Telegraph, steeped in its crusty veneer of Gentleman’s Club, Tory Establishmentism, was taken at face value.

Love him or hate him though, if your club was 4th from bottom of the pile at Christmas time and it was all going rotten, he would be number one on your list for Santa. His mixture of probably quite brutal authority (he’s a fucking bully) with the pragmatic approach (‘break their fucking legs if you have to’) wins him no fans ever from teams he plays against. But his team’s fans will appreciate that in most cases he does what is needed. He keeps teams up. As he did at Bolton, at Blackburn Rovers, at West Ham and Sunderland. Even a loud-mouthed Northerner gets credit for that.

Gotta lorra time for Big Sam, he may be the ultimate pragmatist, but he’s also clever, funny and in his own way, rather charming.

Come on you Eagles (that is the first and last time you’ll ever see those words by my hand)

Happy Christmas

A xxxx

This picture is not actually Mel photobombing a picture with a bunch of Indian schoolgirls. She would normally have done exactly that. Anything for attention. Never afraid of being a bully. But here in India the attention comes to her. And this was the result of a sweet little girl pleading to let her take a photo with Mel. Who is used to dealing with papperazzi, fighting off autograph seekers, selfie fiends and money lenders. But agreed to let the girl take her pic. Which ended up ‘the class of 2016/1965’.

We were at Gandhi’s house. He wasn’t in. Well, not as we knew him. He’s there in spirit. Its a cool house but there again, he was a cool guy. And so ahead of his time. He died in 1948. Killed by a Hindu who was annoyed that the great man had given too much of India away to become Pakistan the previous year.

Anyway, he’s dead now. Only his glasses and walking sticks survive. And a lot of his philosophy and the advances he implemented. He never got involved in ‘money’. Otherwise things today might be different.

You can’t buy Indian Rupees outside of India. And now you can’t really buy them here. There aren’t enough. Because this year the Indian government, sick of the number of forged notes in circulation, withdrew the 500 Rupee (about 6 quid) note, and the 1000 note (about… carry 4… divide by 7…) 12 quid. Suddenly they were no longer legal tender. Obviously you could change them at the bank. Until next week, 30th December, then they die too. So everyone went to the bank with their hard-earned biscuit tins full of cash from under their beds, and had to change them to the largest note then available. The 100 Rupee note. Worth fuck-all. Ok, worth about 80p. So after a few weeks of “I have 35,000 Rupees to change please”, they ran out of 100 Rupee notes. Einstein would have foreseen this problem. Gandhi would have foreseen this problem. Sadly both deceased. And no-one in the rest of the population of 1 billion souls did foresee the problem. No-one suggested; oh hang on, why don’t we print up some new, forgery-proof notes, big ones, BEFORE we get rid of the old? No? Ok, I thought it was a good idea, but obviously not. Instead they’ve introduced the 2000 note!! That’s a good idea. Except you give the chai-walla one of them for your morning cuppa (they don’t do the Starbucks grande cup thing here at all), and he has to find 19 of the 100 Rupee notes in your change.

As a consequence of this, tourists who are always not just encouraged, but encouraged to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND, are allowed to change just $75 into Rupees each. And the best bit: that’s per week. Its logged against your passport number and circulated. And the ‘black market’ simply has no cash left either. So that’s just one pair of shoes and we’re done. Or 32,000 cups of chai.

I’m living the fucking dream.

Happy Christmas Eve

A xxxx

So the phone rings in the room. I pick it up (like what else??) and a voice says, in a very strong, Indian accent: “is that Andrew Convay?”

Which, other than the regional mispronunciation (I struggle with Murgh Meganhi), is my given name. But the only people who ever use it are my mother, and as she was never an Indian, and she passed away 3 years ago, it was unlikely to be her, and telesales people. Because the lists they buy are from banks, official places and others in which I would be included in my full and proper form.

Fortunately, before I managed to lash out with the normal string of expletives about not having ever been (mis-)sold PPI, not wanting to sue my bank for holding my money, not interested in making a claim for a motor accident 3 years ago that I never had, I remembered I was in Delhi. And it was our guide calling to tell us of his arrival for our Delhi tour, part 1: ‘Old Delhi’. And he is, unsurprisingly Indian. I asked if he has a brother, maybe, who is involved in any of the above, but he doesn’t. Must be more than 2 Indians then.

And when you go to Old Delhi, you find that indeed to be true. There are 2 million cars, bikes, tuk-tuks, rickshaws and motorcycles, and that’s just on the side roads. Though its all pretty much side roads in the old bit. New Delhi is… errr… well, newer, bigger, more grand, full of forts and palatial embassies and governmental buildings of grandeur and splendidness, and wide roads. So the traffic jams are much bigger. There’s still 2 million on each of those roads, few horses thrown into the mix, cattle, dogs, goats, but mainly jams. Endless fucking traffic jams. Makes London look like the Nurbergring.

Fortunately there are very strict rules, otherwise it would be madness, pandemonium and sheer insanity out there. Here are the rules:

Never look for other cars/bikes/dogs/whatever; THEY WILL GET OUT OF THE WAY, you just go where you want, even if its the wrong way down the carriageway (as our driver did, into 3 lanes of the wrong carriageway).

Honk your horn to let other people know you’re there. Or if you’re no longer there. Or if you intend at some stage to be there. Honk to let people in (like they’d stop even if you weren’t), honk to stop people coming in (they won’t hear it) and honk all pedestrians.

Give way to no-one, ever.

If there are three lanes marked on the road; make a 4th. Then a 5th. They’ll squeeze up, really, they will. Oh, and never drive at more than 3mph. Could be dangerous.

We were on a cycle rickshaw. We survived. Just. OMG.

Happy whatever fucking day it is; I really have no idea.

A xxxx

We’re going to India today. I spend so much time speaking to call centres in Mumbai and Delhi that I thought it almost rude not to go and thank ‘Kenny’ and ‘Mike’ and ‘Ronnie’ personally for disturbing so much of our meal-time peace during the course of the year. I’m taking a baseball bat with me.

32 years ago we went to Sri Lanka. Our first ever ‘exotic’ trip (ie: beyond Benidorm, other than America which doesn’t count because its civilised, or was back then, not sure any more). The first of many expeditions to faraway lands. Dragging our screaming daughters to the corners of the world in an effort to ‘expand their minds’, to ‘open up their hearts’ to other cultures, other customs and really cheap food. But all they wanted, in Thailand, South Africa, Australia, Mauritius, wherever, was ‘pasta’. Dried. From Waitrose. Don’t want that foreign muck.

But I do. I love foreign muck. Can’t really get enough of it.

India is famous for its foreign muck. And I intend to bathe in it. Live the dream. Curry for breakfast. Samosas for lunch. Kebabs for dinner. Virtually no calories at all. Or, virtually no calories that I give a shit about.

And giving a shit is the problem with India. Delhi Belly. India is reputedly the best country with the worst stomach upsets in the world. And thus the advice is always: don’t drink the water, and DON’T EAT SALAD because its washed in water. How will I survive 2 weeks without salad? Just watch me. And pass another lamb-chop.

Tomorrow morning in fact we shall be in Delhi. An aeroplane is taking us. And after a few days there we’re doing a bit of a tour round the whole of India, except the parts we won’t see. Because its big. Very, very big. And populous.

Yours very excitedly, even though we just lost the cricket over there 4 tests to nil.

Happy holidays

A xxxx

Well, Ankara hasn’t been nuked. Yet. You can never rule out the possibility altogether, but strange things are happening. Calculated but strange in the aftermath of the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey. Putin and Erdogan are singing from the same song sheet. Allied against ‘terror’ and ‘terrorists’ like never before. Ok, you can’t trust either on their definitions of ‘terrorism’ as its generally used as a term to describe anyone opposed to their own best interests. But united they are. Besties. Nice.

In early Stephen King books (which I lurve) there was often a division of groups. A collection of, if not completely similars, at least of moral equivalents. Kids would divide into the bullies and the bullied. The ‘jocks’ and the ‘nebachs’. And in the ‘nebachs’ was always a really short-sighted, bespectacled one (as Stephen King is), a really poor kid (as King was again), a black one (errrrrr…) and others that never made anyone’s A-list out in rural Maine. But these were the good people. They had inner strength and an instinctive grasp of right and wrong. They became friends by default. The ones no-one else befriended. And unsurprisingly, they always won in the end. The stories were often about the coming together of these people. The Stand. It. Stand by Me. Carrie. Even the Shawshank Redemption, to a degree, all studies of ‘the outsider’ by the master of character building in late 20th century America.

And now the world is dividing once more. Like we really need more divisions. But Putin and Erdogan are the dudes on no-one’s invite list. But they need each other. Everyone hates the Turks and won’t let them into ‘Europe’ so they’re forced to make alliances elsewhere. Poot’n is pretty much hated by everyone and attributes all its unpopularity to America’s ‘distortions’ of events. Like the hacking. Like the doping. Bombing. Assassinations. None of it actually happened, its just a figment of the Washington Post’s imagination. Turkey and Russia actually, eventually, ended up on the same side in Syria. Amazing as they started off with different aims and intentions and certainly backed different teams. But there ya go. They were also joined there by Iran, another American hating nation, if not the most America hating nation currently available.

These 3 ‘fine’ nations are now teaming up with Kazakhstan and China, creating an anti-West powerhouse. Or ‘The Bad Guys’ in my little Stephen King world. Russia now has a massive influence in the Middle East, which it has wanted from that very first invasion of Afghanistan, Turkey has an ally that won’t keep banging on about fucking ‘human rights’ all the bloody time, like Europe does. And the Chinese aren’t exactly popular either. I know nothing about Kazakhstan that Barat didn’t tell me. None of which was good.

Shaping up for a very happy Christmas

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

On a scale of 1 to 7.5, rate each of these things for stupidity, with ‘1’ being ‘actually quite sensible really’ and 7.5 being ‘ARE YOU FUCKING MENTAL????’ Goddit?

Playing tennis with a dodgy shoulder when everyone’s told you not to.

Losing 2-1 to Manchester City after being a goal to the good.

Having a referendum to leave Europe.

Being Boris Johnson.

Voting for Donald Trump.

Shooting the Russian ambassador to Turkey.

Please keep your answers so secret that not even you know them. Mainly because I don’t care what you think. Barely care what I think.

But shooting the Russian ambassador. HOLY SHIT!!!!!! The word ‘repercussions’ was virtually invented for just that awful scenario. Maybe the off-duty cop wot done it had a case of mistaken identity and thought he was shooting the Swedish ambassador. In which case there’d be a diplomatic outcry, closing of embassies, strong words of condemnation.

This was a Russian. Putin’s mate. Not in a Trumpy way, a real mate. From the hood. Shot by some Turkish nutter. Sorry, I mean by some poor, misguided soul. But, like, really REALLY misguided. Because Putin is all about cojones. He not only has to appear tough, he has to act tough. To never flinch, never back down. And really, when you have the biggest and most dangerous army in the world watching your back, you can act as tough as you want.

It was about Syria. Revenge (???) for Aleppo. So the killer stated. Just before they shot him. So 50,000 Syrians killed by Russian bombs equals one fat Russian. Doesn’t add up. But it was just a ‘statement’. A short, loud statement. A phrase often used to describe my dear wife.

The Turks hate Assad. He’s the ‘neighbour from Hell’. So they supported the rebels. Especially as the Kurds were with the rebels and Turks hate Kurds. To actually simplify feelings in that part of the world, its probably more explanatory to just say ‘everyone hates everyone else’. And they all hate the Russians. Rightly so. Or wrongly so, depending which side of the insanity you view it from.

Then a lorry ploughs into a happy, Christmassy street market in Berlin. Terrorism is suspected. No shit. Who else but a deeply religious person would murder 12 innocent people?

Ich bein ein Londoner.

Tragic Tuesday

A xxxx

Read a very interesting yet odd article the other day by the Vatican’s Chief Astronomer. Can’t remember his name but it sounded a bit like a pasta dish. Who knew that the Vatican had astronomers? Yet they do. They’re into science. Apparently.

And this dude was trying to find an explanation for the Star of Bethlehem, the Christmas Star. In science. As if the action of a supernova, a collision of meteorites, the interaction between Jupiter and Venus, would actually prove, not just the nativity narrative, but that Jesus Christ was absolutely the ‘son of God’.

But the opposite happened. They’ve scoured records, they’ve re-wound the entire universe for 2000 years and at the time of Jesus’ birth, there was NO astronomical oddities of a bright, flashy nature. The planetary positions were wrong. We know when supernovas occurred and they didn’t back then. So rather than accept the somewhat inevitable conclusion that ‘its the Bible; the gospel, IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE FUCKING LITERAL!!!!’ Bishop Star-Gazer instead took this doubtful event as proof of a miracle. If it didn’t occur according to the laws of physics, nature and astronomy then it is DEFINITELY AND WITHOUT DOUBT a miracle. God shone the light to guide the kings to Jesus. Otherwise, without streetlights or satnav, they’d have struggled to find that barn in Bethlehem.

Which is why we should never, ever, let religion into the science lab. Otherwise the answer to every single question, from the splitting of atoms to the forces of gravity, from quantum mechanics to evolution has but one simple answer: God done it. Makes exam papers easier but doesn’t really advance the cause much.

Sajid Javid, the Communities Secretary for the Government, wants to implement an ‘oath’ to British Values, to be sworn by all those in public office, as a model for newly arriving immigrants who should do the same. To avoid extremism and extremist views. “Oh, no, I can’t join in that jihadi plot that I’ve been groomed for since I was 4 because I’ve sworn allegiance to British Values and it didn’t mention suicide vests so I can’t do it. Sorry.” No-one’s ever lied under oath to achieve a further cause, get a job, sleep with the woman…

And Arsenal lost.

Happy Monday

A xxxx