Andy's Glasses

Ok another reason for loving India. This a really big, really profound one, transcending the normal, the cultural, even the spiritual. This is a big one.

Since we’ve been here Spurs have played two matches. And won them both. By the same score. 4-1. Big wins. Dominating performances. Great results against at very least ‘stubborn’ teams (and please, find me a team that isn’t ‘stubborn’, other perhaps poorly Swansea). In the same period Arsenal have played bottom 4 teams and just about managed dull wins. Have you noticed that Arsenal seem to play all the bottom 6 teams 3 times each and the top teams hardly ever? That’s surely not fair.

Anyway, I think this is some form of Karma. That great Indian way of looking at life. That the Gods will redress imbalances, punish past evils, reward all good deeds. In which case, really, Arsenal should have lost at least one of those matches. But heh, even Gods fuck up.

So now we need to extend that vibe until Wednesday. When we play Chelsea at the Lane. I’ll still be in India, continuing my good work here for the good of my team (? I never said I understood karma, just don’t knock things when they seem to be working). When we played them at the end of last season it was more karate, more kung fu, other eastern things. But karma is stronger. In its own quiet way.

When you venture out into ‘real’ India, which even hardened western tourists like us are forced to do on occasions, the first thing you notice is: ‘the world is your toilet’. I think there are less rules about where you can take a pee than there are about traffic control. And there are absolutely no rules for that. And despite Hindu protestations of the value of women (3 goats and a pashmina) and egalitarianism, in terms of pissing its always a patriarchal world. Men are just better at it. Far more versatile. We don’t need a flat patch of land behind a bush. We just need… well, anywhere. But there is one social protocol that’s quite rigidly adhered to: when you need a pee; FIND A WALL. Anywhere there are walls there are men, stopping their cars, getting off their bikes, leaving their donkeys, to piss against them. Maybe its a religious thing. Its rude to pass a wall and not piss against it; I don’t know. Just makes it a bit more ‘third world’, a bit more ‘like they writ on the tin’.

Next time we’ll venture into the world of spitting. India are in the Premiership of all forms of expelling fluids from the body. But next time. Getting a big gross.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I think I’ve ‘gone native’. A week in India, soaking up their history, eating their food, living their culture, its actually happened. Not that I’m some re-born Hindu (they’re all ‘re-born’; that’s the whole point of being a Hindu), mainly because I have difficulties with having one God. Having 14,000 gods fails to facilitate my scepticism. Though I really like Ganesh. He’s cuddly. Half elephant, half tandoori chef; how bad can he be?

But when I wake up on a Sunday morning and I’m oblivious to the fact that in another world there have been football matches played which effect my team, my life, THE ENTIRE NEW YEAR!!!!, then I know something is profoundly different. Ok, I was minorly hung-over from the New Year party here on the Goan resort, but really. This is football, for Ganesh’ sake, its always on my mind.

And I’d like to thank the many people who sent me security warnings last night when Israel declared Southern India ‘the place most likely’ for terrorist attack on New Year’s Eve. Which caused me something of a dilemma.

What do you do when you think you may be a target? Lock yourself in the room and ram the bed against the door? Not go to the ‘new year extravaganza’ that all hotels in the world force you to attend and you’ve already paid (handsomely) for? Not that its about the money. Its about changing your lifestyle to the point where you may be safer but then ‘they’ have won. Its a moral issue: freedom from harm against free curry. If you change your ways the bad guys have achieved a victory. They don’t want us enjoying our normal freedoms. Well fuck ’em. I hate bad guys. And I love curry. Unfortunately it got a bit too ‘Bollywood’ even for this neo-native, so we still managed to get in the pool for our laps at 8.30 this morning. This is Mel beating the crowds. I was the crowds.

Tragically they did strike last night, but in Istanbul rather than Goa. May they rot in hell.

But we have a new year. Resolution time. Too late to make pledges about Europe, Trump or, so it would seem, Chelsea. And as someone told Mel last night: ‘I’ve already scrapped my resolutions because no-one likes a miserable, sober, skinny bitch’. So my resolutions will be the same as last year. 1. Don’t make any resolutions. Just do what you do but better and most importantly; enjoy it. Or there’s just no point.

Happy 2017

A xxxx

India is soooo different. Wonderfully, loudly, brightly, olefactorily, different. It assaults the senses, all of them. Simultaneously. And at once. but you have to be careful. First there’s Delhi Belly. Then we left there and we’re in Goa. Where, presumably, you can get Goa Gut. Generally, you are careful of India Intestine. But the colours here, the smells, the sights are sensational.

The other main difference between ‘home’ and India is moustaches. They’re everywhere. Mainly on men, but by no means exclusively. In Britain when you see a man with a moustache you know it must be November and he’s doing it for charitable purposes. Over here, every month is Movember. And you have to consider why? Why would any nation with aspirations to be an economic super-power, a rapidly developing society, keep such an oddity as the moustache? And they appear to wear them with no sense of irony whatsoever. I call it ‘Sultan of Brunei Syndrome’, in which the desire to look like a Bollywood superstar overtakes common good sense and style. I’m going to set up a charity: send all your old razors to India to help keep them in line with the west where, as a rule, you can have a moustache or a sense of humour but you can’t have both.

Barak Obama; saintly pioneering first afro-Am Prez ever, or hateful Judas-tosser who left his last 3 weeks to show his true colours (no pun intended) and upset everybody whilst he still can? I make no judgments. Ok, I make loads of judgments and he is a tosser. And remember, this is a man we all loved to pieces when he first won, 8 years ago. Following that, he’s done virtually nothing of any substance for 7.95 years, until last week. When America refused to use its veto on the Israeli settlements bill which was passed. Not that the UN knows or means anything, as has been proved… every time its said or done anything, itself a rare occurrence. But that’s not the point.

I can even forgive Obama his misguided failure to stand by its ‘ally’, but never for allowing John Kerry to whitter on for 45 minutes of lip-licking (what IS that all about?) boredom as he tired to explain the decision, seemingly oblivious to the old adage: when you’re in a hole, STOP DIGGING.

I love Isreal; hate the settlements. But, unlike, apparently, Obama and Kerry, I appreciate that the settlements in the West Bank are not ‘the issue for peace’. Its so stupidly naive and moronic to think otherwise, let alone bang on about it when everyone else in the room has fallen asleep 20 minutes ago. Maybe Kerry hasn’t read the Hamas charter, or that of Hezbollah, which wants the complete destruction of the Jewish state for ever. No mention of settlements.

Then Obama sent home 35 Russian diplomats. Wow!! That’s tough! Though not exactly Kennedy’s Cuban missile crisis. Putin, in the sweetest ever retaliation states he ain’t sending nobody home and invites all the American diplomats, and their families to the Kremlin for a New Year’s party. And intends to wait for ‘President Trump’ before doing anything. See, Putin has no moustache but a wicked sense of homour.

Happy hot Goan Saturday

A xxxx

Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. Most gorgeous city in… in… well, anywhere. Other than Tottenham, which has its own, unique beauty. Because some geezer, not just a random geezer, but a Maharaja, about 500 years ago, built a palace here. Not like the one/two/three in Delhi, they were built by a conquering King, nor like the three/four/five in Jaipur, which were indeed built by a Maharaja, but (probably) a different one. Taller. Fairer. Spoke with a lisp/stutter. Possibly. It all starts to get a bit dizzying. Its called Maharajitis. The names start to blur, the wives (about 9 each), blend together, the architecture: Islamic, Hindu, Persian, Turkish, McAlpine, all starts to induce migraine.

Which wasn’t what happened to Mel at the fabulous ‘City Palace’ here. No, that was more Delhi Belly. She suddenly, horribly, went from pink to white to green (she does have ‘Hulk’ moments), started sweating and, the real tell-tale sign with Mel, she went into the shade. Something she never, ever does when awake/compus mentis/breathing. So I knew it was serious. Thus unfortunately we missed the other 2 palaces here on offer, built (I’m fairly sure) by the same Maharajah, might have been his brother Mikey.

And because building 3 palaces lacks sufficient ‘show of wealth’ to attract anyone’s attention here, he also built 3 massive lakes around which he constructed everything. Ya wouldn’t want a palace without a lake, would you? How tacky would that be?? The result of all this is a spectacularly beautiful city. But like all Indian cities, has its myriad of back alleys in their ‘old town’ parts, which are wonderful. Loud, dirty, congested and filled with a million people, cows, dogs, motor-bikes, cars and ‘auto-rickshaws’ (tuk-tuks by any other name).

I’d already figured out last night, on our way back from the restaurant ‘probably’ responsible for Mel’s tum issues, things about this fantastic mode of transport. Because here in the back streets it is the only way to travel. And what they are is a little frame stuck onto a motor-scooter. Not just any motor scooter but one with a twist grip gear-shift. Which I haven’t seen for 40 years. So they are using a scooter built 50 years ago to take Roger Daltry round the set of Tommy, to carry a metal frame and up to 8 people round the city.

We took one home today. ‘Our’ car would have resulted, it was estimated by a local, to put 20 extra minutes between Mel and a toilet. So the tui-tuk won easily.

Bit like Spurs last night. Spurs always win when I’m in India.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

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