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Thailand Prices 2011

January 14th 2012 03:18

I’ve been to Thailand more times than I can remember. Such are the vagaries of international travel that I always seem to return to Bangkok. I’ve done most of the tourist things in the city, and so the city is only of interest for shopping, for getting visas, and for getting transport to somewhere I want to go.

I arrived in Bangkok on 24th December, 2011. Christmas Eve. I was curious to see if there were any visible signs of the horrendous flooding that struck the country in March of that year. The flooding on the outskirts of the City of Angels had buggered my plans to catch a cheap flight from the old Don Muang Airport down south to the islands. However from the taxi window I could see no sign of the calamity that struck the city earlier that year.

After an uneventful taxi journey to Khao San Road I found my hotel in Soi Rambuttri. Very unusually for me I booked the hotel in advance. I did so in order to arrange a place to meet my brother who had been living in Thailand for the past year.

Needless to say, Hotel Sakul looked a lot better on the internet than it did in real life. It wasn’t worth the 1,500 Thai Baht I paid. None of this bothered me as much as the fact that the room was non-smoking. It seemed that since I had been away from Thailand the powers that be had got it into their noggins to ban smoking from public places in Thailand. Very American and not really in character for the land of the free. I was later to discover that many bars and hotels in Bangkok and elsewhere in Thailand conveniently ignored this daft edict.

My brother and I hadn’t met for a couple of years. We caught up over a few spliffs on the tiny balcony next to our room and watched the Christmas Eve celebrations. At 12am the street was full of Santa hats. Every other bar along the street had a live performer singing mangled versions of classic pop tunes. The Singha and Thai whiskey enlivened the tourist packed street until 1am when all the bars promptly shut. Another daft ordinance – all bars had to close at 1am. Pretty stupid for a country that derived a lot of its income from party minded tourists. Politicians.

24/12/11

Bus to Narita Airport 4,500 yen
Japan to Thailand return ticket 69,460 yen
Sandwich in Narita Airport 241 yen
Presents in Narita Airport 1,000 yen
Taxi from Suvarnabhumi Airport to Khao San 450 THB
Twin room in Hotel Sakul 1,500 THB

Total = $1,029 (78 yen to $1 and 30 THB to $1)

25/12/11

A bizarre Christmas has become the norm living outside of the UK. This was different again in being a very busy day. I felt a bit shit all day. Despite wearing a mask on the plane I had a nasty dose of tonsillitis. There was no time to wallow in a slough of sickness. After changing hotels we head off to Chatuchak Weekend Market to buy bits and pieces for our house in Thailand. Again all the 27 acres of the market were non-smoking.

In the evening we decided to celebrate the big JC birthday in traditional style with an Indian curry. Our favorite Indian was several sois away from our Himalayan hotel so we decided to take motorbike taxis. Two young men jumped at our offer of 50 THB. They turned out to be Evel Knievel and his brother. They zipped between lanes, frequently played chicken with on-coming traffic, and took corners at frightening speeds. Age and having a baby has made me value my life more and after 15 minutes of defying death I told my mad biker to stop.

The curry was good. We walked back to the guest house and had a few sneaky smokes outside our room. I guess a more memorable Christmas than most.

2 coffees 60 THB
Taxi from Khao San Road to Sukhimvit Soi 31 120 THB
Twin in Himalaya Residence 800 THB
Water 7 THB
BTS Train from Sukhimvit to Chatuchak Park 33 THB
2 Donner Kebabs 100 THB
BTS back to Sukhimvit 35 THB
2 Beers in open bar on Sukhimvit 200 THB
Shop 425 THB
Motorbike taxi from Soi 31 to Soi 3 50 THB
Indian curry 1,030 THB

Total = $95

26/12/11

Our mission in Bangkok was not over. We checked out of the Himalaya Residence and headed for the MBK Center to buy some art work for the house. My brother wanted some screws for the house and made a quick dash for the Home Pro Center while I waited back at the guest house. He didn’t find the type he wanted. We made haste for Hualamphong Train Station and had time for a delightful al fresco meal outside the station. My brother treated me and bought First Class Sleeper tickets from Bangkok to Suratthani. I slept fine but the outrageous air-con kept my brother awake for much of the night.

Breakfast 70 THB
BTS Sukhimvit to Siam 25 THB
Marlboro lights 78 THB
Tom Yam with miso soup in MBK Center 90 THB
Water 10 THB
Internet 20 THB
BTS National Stadium to Asok 25 THB
2 Cokes 50 THB
BTS Asok to Hualamphong Train Station 26 THB
Taxi from Himalaya Residence to Asok BTS station 100 THB
2 packs of fags 156 THB
Beers on overnight train from Bangkok to Suratthani 520 THB

Total = $39

27/12/11

We got off the train very early in the morning. It was still dark. We waited in a café outside the station and watched the lights that festooned the trees on the other side of the road.

Our bus driver was slow getting on the road and made irritatingly long stops on the way to Donsak Ferry Port. It looked very much like he wanted us to miss the boat. He nearly succeeded. Some scrawny European got in a strop because I pulled his bag out of the way in my rush to catch the boat.

As the boat slowly chugged its way to Koh Phangan my brother and I had a couple of sneaky smokes. All was right with the world.

In Thongsala the usual palaver ensued with getting a taxi. My brother had a bike but I needed to get a taxi with all our shopping and my big pack. If you don’t arrive with the cheapy bus/boat deals there are never enough people going to Thong Nai Pan to fill a taxi. I paid 700 THB for my own taxi. As luck would have it 2 Scandinavians were standing at the Thong Nai Pan turning at Ban Tai. The driver stopped. They bargained too hard and the driver kept on saying ‘up to you’. I also made it clear to the driver that I had paid for a ‘private taxi’. In the end they paid 400 Thai Baht. The driver gave me 200 Thai Baht and I gave 50 back to the young couple. They seemed happy and I reduced my taxi cost to 550 THB. The Scandinavian couple was odd in having no idea where they were going to stay despite it being the peak season when most resorts would be full.

Arriving in Thong Nai Pan was like returning home. All the locals quickly spotted me in the back of the taxi. A mate bought me a beer and then gave me a free lift to the house.

Seeing what was once a shitty hillside full of trash, chickens and building materials transformed into a lawn and smart white house perched proudly on the hill was gobsmacking. I frequently thought the day would never come.

The rest of the day was spent marveling at the house, smoking and playing Frisbee with Cordless on the beach.

2 Coffees 40 THB
Bus and Boat ticket from Punpin Train Station (near Suratthani) to Koh Phangan 400 THB
Taxi to TNP 550 THB

Total = $33

28/12/11

My first full day in the house and my brother put me to work in the garden. We got up early and after he’d taken his Thai girlfriend to work we got stuck into gardening. I learnt how to do speed weeding. I was slightly worried because of my brother’s talk about snakes and scorpions in the garden. I encountered neither but did get achy knees.

In the afternoon I was given time off for good behaviour. I found Cordless and his missus. We had a sandwich at Phuwadee, went back to his bungalow for the obligatory greens and then hit the beach for more Frisbee competitions.

I walked back in the late afternoon and helped my brother make a roast chicken dinner. Mister Massage, Cordless and his beautiful wife came up to experience our first dinner party. The chicken and red wine were average but the location and starlit view made the night memorable.

Chicken Sandwich at Phuwadee 190 THB
Water 20 THB

Total = $7

29/12/11

More gardening and hanging art work in the bedrooms.

In the afternoon I drafted Cordless into helping me research the changes that had befallen the village of Thong Nai Pan Noi. This involved trying the food at the new Jip Shop (which wasn’t bad) and checking out the long island ice teas at La Hacienda (formerly Easy Corner, formerly Que Pasa).

Sweating thick globs of boozy perspiration I made it back up the hill for dinner cooked by the delightful Pong.

Spicy grilled beef salad 120 THB
Spring rolls and plum sauce 100 THB
3 packs of rizla 120 THB
2 small chang beers 120 THB
Long island ice tea 150 THB

Total = $20

30/11/12

The initial pain of early rising was assuaged by coffee and gear. My body clock was slowly getting used to experiencing more of the morning. On this fine day I was set to work cleaning windows. When designing the house we thought only about the whoa factor of having floor to ceiling windows to revel in the view, we never considered what ball breaking work it would be cleaning all the windows, especially those that could only be reached by a 10 meter step ladder.

I got through a lot of hot water and newspaper. My brother went around after me removing paint smears with white spirits.

In the afternoon we made it into the village to check emails and buy provisions.

In the evening we popped over to the neighboring Thong Nai Pan Yai beach for a few beers at Yai Bar. The bar was somewhat overrun with boozy ex-pats with whom I have nothing in common despite having lived away from the home country for most of the last 15 years. Us Trippy Travellers are dying breed it seems.

Internet 30 THB
Handsome laundry service 100 THB
Food and Beers 250 THB

Total = $13

That’s it for this installment. Still to come: New Year’s Eve madness, locking myself out of my room and more chores around the house.

Running total = $1,236
Most of this represents airline robbery.

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Man in the Mask

December 10th 2011 07:25

My name is Joey Nudd with two d’s: the final d is like a buffer protecting the inner core of ‘Nud’. Well my name is not really Joey Nudd but that is what I choose to be called. It’s complicated being me, and having the history I have. My mother called me Moses. I can’t be called Moses. Not here in Inglish Raj lan’: only Caribbean folk are called Moses. And another point is that Moses was such a loser. He did all the hard work getting his peeps out of Egypt, he was a spit away from taking the promised land and he commits minor infraction the big G gives the job over to this unheard of geezer. Nah, here in Inglish Raj I prefer to be Joey Nudd. It gives me space to breathe and think. I look weird as the proverbial fuck, but at least my name sounds Anglo, straight and non-minority. One less headache.

I wanna tell you a story about a man I met wearing a mask. He wasn’t skiing or doing some radical political stuff. He just wore a mask all the time in public. I discovered later that he also wore the mask in private. He might have worn it in the shower or when he went to bed. I never got the chance to ask; or rather I was never rude enough to pry into the details of how his masked life worked.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to give you the background to the first meeting with the man with the mask. In order to do that I’ll have to, reluctant as I am, tell you all about my background.

My grandmother and grandfather – I have no idea on which side – lived in Goa. They were Christians and got their daily bread through fishing. Granddad had a share of a boat. There was a big storm and the boat got damaged. The small boat cooperative borrowed money against the value of the small damaged boat with a clucky engine, hoping to pay it off with extra fish they would catch. Despite taking the bare minimum of the fish for themselves, the debt payments could not be met on time and the repaired boat was taken away from them. That sucked. The grandparents were desperate. An uncle –who turned out to be a shady motherfucker – said he had a job for them in Mumbai: he said they could both work in a shop. The shop turned out to be a small cart on wooden wheels from which they were expected to sell areca nuts wrapped in betel leaves with lime. In other words, they became paanwalas. The uncle told them in blunt terms that they were to fend for themselves and that he would find them near Jijamata Udyan Zoo at Byculla railway station to collect his monthly share of the profits. Like so many in India, my grandparents slept rough. They were shorn of the Christian community they came from, surrounded by Muslim and Hindu destitute people like themselves who bore them no goodwill because they had a different religion, were outsiders and thus not much better than dalits. My grandparents worked hard but couldn’t even make it up the economic ladder to the slums. And to think me, Joey Nudd, blood of homeless paanwalas from Mumbai could sit in a pub in the East End and tell you this tale. That, my friend, is the randomness of life or maybe the divine justice of karma.

Grandma and granddad had tried for a long time to have a baby. And eventually their prayers were answered. My mother was born on a pavement outside the zoo. It was bad timing, but a blessing from God is still a blessing no matter when and where it happens. They named my mother Sophia. They had seen a picture of this church in Turkey on some tacky Indian calendar and they thought it the most Jesus thing they had ever seen. Such a transcendental emotion of love for the big J was worthy to be my mother’s name as she was no less loved than the main man.

With another mouth to feed and the pantomime villain uncle to pay, grandma and granddad decided to do the one and only illegal thing of their brief lives. They fled the city with the paanwala cart. They got lifts with truck drivers to Delhi. They knew nobody in Delhi. The place was just as hostile as Mumbai but at least they had secured 100% of their paan business.

How do I feel about paan? Spitting red juice, rotting teeth, sidewalks covered in slimy red as if a recent killing had occurred. I hate it. It’s not much of a buzz either. One of the many dirty habits like smoking that the poor and the bored do to make their lives seem a little better. Inglish folk watch Eastenders and moan about fair play. That’s kind of like their paan high. My mother Sophia never touched the stuff.

Things seemed to be going well for the family unit when granddad was hit by a white taxi speeding down the road that joins Connaught Place and New Delhi train station. He pushed the paanwala cart and his family out the way and got thumped onto the bonnet. The Sikh driver got out threw down a few hundred rupees and sped off with his VIP passenger. Such is the Indian system that grandma could get no more justice than those few rupees in the dusty road. She went to the police and had even memorized the number plate of the Ambassador car, but Sergeant-ji could or would do nothing to collar the Sikh and the VIP.

Grandma didn’t survive much longer than granddad. She developed a coughing sickness and started spitting the red of blood not of betel. She could afford a few Ayurveda and Chinese powders but the disease increased its virulence until she succumbed to her fate and left my mother just 5 years old to fend for herself.

My mother displayed the vitality and ingenuity of the young. She sold paan, she got herself cleaning jobs in cafes in Pahar Ganj and she taught herself English. She was a beautiful child and the Auntie-jis of the tourist area near the station took it upon themselves to save the young Sophia from the mobsters looking for the freshest prostitutes. They also saved her from the mutilation handed out by the beggar masters who press gang children into the horrific business of using disfigurement and disability to rouse brief moments of generosity.

I know these same Aunties – not real Aunties – in Pahar Ganj and I often go to see them, bringing calendars, umbrellas, DVD players and other stuff from Ingland Raj for them. They see my mother in me and remember the small girl, Sophia who led the Oliver Twist life until she was rescued by Daniel John-ji.

My mother was 18. She had already been raped by a rich boy who had given her a few hundred rupees for her maiden head. Just as with granddad and the murderous taxi driver the compensation was non-negotiable: the likelihood of judicial proceedings as likely as Moses parting the Red Sea. The Aunties felt it was their fault for letting her sleep outside so they found a corner in a kitchen for her to lie down her weary head at the end of a day’s toil.

Anyway, my mother was 18. She was beautiful if not pure. She sold paan on the busy backpacker street of Pahar Ganj. She also spoke some English as well as Hindi and the local village dialect from Goa. Daniel John was a firm believer in the Big JC, young himself, doing the Middle Class kid thing of travelling the world before settling down into work, mortgage and bland food. He was quirky and adventurous and decided to try some paan. My mother grabbed her opportunity – she spoke English and flashed him a smile.

DJ came every day for a week to buy paan from my mother and chat. They soon discovered that they were both people of the Nazarene prophet. It freed Sophia from the binds of caste and made it easier for her to cross the line between desi and videsi, between Indian and outsider.

My mother kind of ruined my childhood by telling me all this when I was far too young to have to know about car accidents, rape and seduction. My mother had a heart of a saint – would never steal or hurt another soul – but in DJ she saw her chance; after all, her religion had the built-in mechanism of sin first and do penance later. She flirted and acted coy and gave DJ just enough encouragement to keep him interested in the chase. She submitted to his advances in his cheap hotel room in Pahar Ganj, but only after she had wrung from him a promise of marriage and a new life in England.

It wasn’t straight forward. Sophia didn’t have any legal identity; Daniel’s parents were shocked and were keen to sweep their son’s foolishness under the carpet. While the aunties were thrilled for Sophia and her one chance to escape the fate of her parents – life and death in obscurity and a grinding poverty – the other Indians treated her as something more objectionable than an untouchable.

Daniel spent weeks doing the circuit of embassies and Indian officialdom. He was helped by Sophia’s understanding of the judicious use of baksheesh. It took a month and a lot of Daniel-ji’s money to finally get the application together for my mum to come to England. Back in those days such things were possible without having to pass some daft quiz on British life. Back then the white man in the Inglan Raj was doing all right for himself and didn’t need to vent on foreign immigrants.

To cut this story short, they got out of India together and set up home here in London, Hackney. I was born and Daniel-ji became daddy-ji. He is a good man and I will always love him for saving my mum, and saving me from being born on betel red splattered pavement with a near zero chance in life.

____________________

I bitch about my life. I fit in and I don’t fit in. I am two radically different cultures that seem to only to be reconciled in my DNA, in curries, in cricket and in the belief that it is only bureaucracy that holds back chaos from breaking down the door. I go to India a lot. I have more friends in Pahar Ganj than in London. My home feels more alien to me than the land that my mother escaped. Anyway in a nut shell that is me. But this tale is not about me. It’s about the man in the mask.

He came into one of the cafes on the backpacker strip. He was wearing clean khaki shorts, a black T-shirt and a black woolen mask. There were holes for his eyes and mouth. From what little I could see, I gathered that he was a white man. Auntie Aashi shooed me away from the fan seat and called for the new customer to take the most comfortable seat in the dirty café. The masked man and I were the only customers.

At first I pretended to watch the TV quietly playing Bollywood song clips. The masked man braved the first communication:

“Why don’t you join me, friend? I can buy you a lassi or whatever.”

“You’re not some molester, are you?”

The man laughed. “You’re funny. You sound English. I’m English too.”

I moved over to his table and I ordered a drink. He got another chai. He told me to call him ‘K’ or perhaps that was ‘Kay’. Who the fuck knows? We sat there for an hour and told each other stuff about our lives. This all probably sounds strange to you the reader, but that was what strangers, travellers often did in India. The country is like an ocean, formless in its seething burden of humanity. Every now and again an individual would appear before you like a wave, with shape and identity and for a moment a connection would be made, only for the person to fall back into the undifferentiated bulk of the human ocean. That is one of the reasons I like India. It’s random and picturesque. London seems all concrete and purpose; things slotted into an order. Not an ocean.

Kay had been travelling in India for 5 months. He’d been all over: Bombay, Nagpur, Madras, Manali, Varanasi, Calcutta, Puri, Pushkar and so on. He had seen more of the country than me. He had done it all alone. He gave me the impression that despite his friendliness that he felt more comfortable doing things by himself. He had a self-deprecating sense of humor. He made the occasional comment about the difficulties of travelling with a mask: how some hotels refused him a room. He didn’t at that point explain to me what was going on with the mask thing.

I for my part told Kay some of the details I’ve already mentioned about my family history. I told him what I did in London and how I frequently quit one shitty job after another to come back to India just to hang out, get stoned and maybe see the occasional temple, fort or museum. Neither of us was going to put all our cards on the table, but we made a connection. He could see in me something of the outsider that he no doubt thought he was.

Eventually, he said he had to go. I suggested we meet later and have a chillum or something. Kay paused for a moment as if weighing something up in his mask hidden mind.

“Why not? Here’s my hotel. It’s just off Connaught Place. It’s well posh. They even have a bar. I’ll meet you in the lobby at say seven. OK?” He handed me a card that he took from his tattered nylon wallet.

When he left Auntie Aashi came over and squeezed her huge behind into a seat next to me, and started up a flurry of questions in Hindi about the masked man. For some reason she had got it into her head that he was some type of weird sadhu or holy man, and she wanted to know what wisdom he had imparted to me. Despite my denials of his sacred nature, Auntie Aashi couldn’t put aside her reverent curiosity for the masked man. It both fascinates and infuriates me that Indians will often see the divine hand in the most mundane things - just as the British will see profanity in the things that should be sacred. For some reason the British will start to talk about the Queen’s vagina and find it hilarious. Not that the Queen’s vagina is sacred or anything.

____________________

At seven I got out of an auto-rickshaw outside Kay’s hotel. I wasn’t expecting it to quite as big and five star as it turned out to be. No wonder the rickshaw-walla bargained hard. The lobby was all shining marble and endless mezzanine. The heat and dust of outside was replaced by perfect air-con. Rich Indians and tourists milled around the many lounge areas looking born to the manor. I knew Kay would be in an obscure corner, and I was right. His body language even from a distance made him look like a fugitive hiding from the authorities.

After making eye contact he got up out of hiding and boldly walked across the wide lobby towards the elevators. Eyes looked up from papers and conversations to watch the masked man traverse the marbled floor. With the smallest nod of the head he indicated that I should follow him.

When we got to his room on the fifth floor he seemed to breathe again. He ordered a bottle of scotch along with ice and mineral water over the phone and he again seemed to clam up until the waiter had left the tray in the room and departed.

We smoked chillums and drank the whisky and it seemed to do Kay some good. He relaxed and he revealed more about himself.

“I guess I have some type of psychological problem. Maybe it’s even metaphysical.”

Oh shit, I thought, he was going to go off on an Indian pseudo-religious tangent. But he didn’t.

“Thank you for not asking me about the mask. As I reward for your good manners, Joey, I will try to explain myself. Of course I have to take the mask off at airports and the like. When I do, I feel paralysed. It’s as if I’ve become nobody. I get giddy with this sense that I’m losing my ‘me-ness’. I’ve been like this since I was 16 years old. I have no idea why it started. It must be rooted in some episode from my past. I’ve tried therapy, hypnosis and even re-birthing breathing exercises but the truth about my phobia, or whatever it is, hasn’t come out into the light.

“I don’t like wearing this mask. It gets stifling hot, especially here in India.”

“Why are you in India?”

“I’m not sure really. Heathrow with no mask and the long flight was hell for me. At one point I had a panic attack and locked myself in the toilet for 30 minutes. Only the fear of getting into trouble made me leave the toilet. I eventually got some relief by wearing an eye mask and wrapping a scarf around my mouth and neck.

“Anyway, why India? Well I thought this is a country with a cultural identity, indeed many identities. It’s the birthplace of religions, yoga, meditation, and that sort of thing. So I’ve been travelling around the country hoping to find something that will help me regain my confidence in showing my face, in revealing my identity. I’ve been to see fakirs, sadhus and Ayurveda specialists. Most types of Indian mumbo jumbo I’ve tried. Even that Amma woman in her pink palace down in Kerala. It took a lot of persuasion to let me get the hug with my mask on. I got nothing but body odour from her.

“I just feel me when my face is hidden. It is hard to say any more about it. India has been a failure in terms of curing me, but nevertheless, it’s one hell of a country. I’d like to come back when I’m cured and see the place without my mask.”

That was Kay’s big confession. We were both pretty far gone by the time he had made his speech. I was strangely moved by his tale. His eyes peering through the whisky wet mask held mine and spoke of a profound loneliness. I had no advice or trite encouragement to give him. Instead we hugged; probably more sincerely than Amma guru did.

As I left his room we shook hands. I thought he was going to take his mask off, but he didn’t. He just said, “I think we will meet again.”

____________________

About three years later we did indeed meet again. This time back in London. I had made very little progress in my life: still reeling from cultural dislocation. I had moved out of home and only saw my parents a couple of times a month. I had a job at a post office, sorting out the mail. That was an odd experience as I thought Anglos held things like British Mail in high esteem. Rather they seemed keen on willfully throwing boxes around in the hope of breaking things, and occasionally they would open letters that had the unmistakable feel of coins inside. I just kept my head down and made sure I was not guilty by association.

After one late shift that ended at 11am I was walking through the city, just getting lost in the crowds, trying to wind down before going back to my damp flat and cold bed. I just wanted to finish a year’s work and then I would go back to India and do nothing.

“Hey, stop. Stop, Joey.” I was walking past a pub with a beer garden cordoned off from the street by a low wall of hanging baskets full of flowers - daffodils and the like. It was one of those brass and plush red sofa places with a hundred year history that cost a hundred pound to get drunk in. Full of suited yah yah city types. As I looked around one of those types was rushing towards me. I stood my ground. I had no real class hatred, I just felt detached from the Anglo caste system. I was born of untouchables and I would remain a new species of trans-continental untouchable until I was hit by a white taxi or a disease of old age. I didn’t care much which one it was going to be. The man caught up with me.

“Joey, it’s me: the man in the mask. Only now I’m cured of the mask business. I say, why not stop and have a drink?”

We sat at a table and a waitress appeared. Kay ordered scotch and water for us. Like the old times. Kay was incredibly handsome. A firm jaw line, immaculately shaved, an expensive haircut with just the right amount of fashionable up sticking tufts. I remembered his deep brown eyes. They seemed lighter and less limpid now. No longer forlorn, his eyes seemed shallow and less revealing. His face had a strong symmetry to it. He could have been a model or a gay porn star. Instead the suit and the milieu told me he was probably just a city whiz. Some buyer and seller of toxic numbers, an Anglo magician that pulled cash out of a hat.

Joey talked with confidence, too much confidence. He told me how grateful he was to have met me in Delhi and how that meeting had somehow started him on the road to recovery. I listened politely. I was happy for Kay that he was better, but I was acting. I was revolted by the man in fronted of me. He was so full of himself. There was no interest in me, what I had done, my plans. He talked only about himself, his fiancée, his job, and just how wonderful his life was.

At one point he pulled out his smart phone and barked at someone, no doubt a junior as I sat in the weak London sun sipping my expensive scotch and water.

“You know, Joey. I was lost back then. Trying to find my past and fill in the puzzle. I just gave up in the end, let that sensitive me go. Got on with my life. You should do the same. Get ahead, Joey. Let go of your precious identity. I say, have to take a leak, back in a mo.”

As soon as he vanished inside the pub I got up and walked off. What a wanker!

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Friendship Association

October 15th 2011 07:58

It seems like a contradiction in terms: friendship is something profound. Blake said: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” Association is something else. You get damned by associating with the wrong types. Association is a proximity born of necessity not a love of your fellow man or woman.

The oxymoron is lost in officialese. Friendship Associations do grand things like ‘promote cultural exchange’. Again another odd phrase – ‘exchange’ is the language of money, of barter, of profit; ‘culture’ is the word I give to Michelangelo, Dante and T.S Eliot.

Anyway, hold on to your hats here come Susono and Frankston and their friendship association brimming with cultural exchange.

First up was Japanese school kids dressed as waiters doing an energetic waiters dance to the piped sound of festival music. Not in time, but an endearing effort by the wippersnapper waiters. The Australians were hoping to get some points on the board early and so went toe to toe and pulled out an entourage of kids. They were dressed in black and did something I can only imagine is Australian. They did some lame side stepping dance to some hoedown techno music. The effect was mesmerizing, and I felt an example of cultural pollution at its finest. I made it 1 nil to the home side.

Things went quiet on the stage after that. Japanese and Australian MCs mumbled into the mike like they weren’t sure if it was on. Nobody was listening. The crowd was getting their faces painted and eating rice bubbles dipped in chocolate and coconuts.

Eventually things moved down a notch in terms of entertainment and the real business of friendship association got under way. This was of course the important dudes making speeches. We had chairmen and mayors and other important bodies reading platitudes about friendship and cultural exchange. The mayor of the fine city where I live looked like a retired transsexual roué. He pulled an unexpected cultural keynote by bowing to the piano as he approached the podium. The Australian mayor wore a big gold medal and was an astonishingly young man. He had approached me earlier and I had assumed I was talking to some Aussie student until he introduced himself. Nice chap. Bit of exchange there. He gave a speech that did justice to his ‘nice blokeness’. He quoted Kennedy and said nothing of purpose.

Next up was a cheeky Japanese chap who missed the opportunity to bow at the grand piano on the stage but had a pub entertainer atmosphere about him. He started with some garbled English that got a round of guffaws from the Japanese suits and pointy shoes standing next to me.

The whole thing pinnacled with an exchange of gifts. The Japanese dug out a picture of Mount Fuji (I guess they have hundreds of these in sister town back in Frankston) and the Australians presented the Japanese mayor with a complete box set of Johnny Cash. The restless and painted crowd high on sugar was finally treated to the underwhelming site of the reaffirmation of city friendship with a piñata of streamers.

The deal was done. 30 years of friendship association was marked and the future assured. Like Gorby and that cowboy signing non-proliferation agreements. I needed to be alone to absorb the significance of the event; so I snuck off for a fag.

When I got back musicians had taken to the stage. I had met the chaps back stage -3 Japanese and 1 Italian Japanese man. They played jazz music with an Australian aboriginal flavor (namely a didgeridoo). That was 2 nil to Japan. They had pulled out the wild card of doing Australian culture better than the Australians. And to add insult to injury the piano bow had given the Japanese the finest moment of entertainment.

With things swinging Japan’s way and friendship just banging along. I went off for lunch; but not before being waylaid by an old Japanese man who had walked around the world. He seemed to be frothing at the mouth. Had he be bitten by a rabid dingo? Apparently his global peregrination was to cheer up the victims of the Tohoku Earthquake. I’m sure that all those homeless people in the North of Japan were given a real fillip by this man’s efforts. Just like we in England are much enlivened when Rooney gets caught banging an escort in a hotel room. I’m sure the number 10 did it for the poor and needy of Liverpool. After all, he paid 200 quid for a pack of B n H. That money probably paid off the mortgage of some scouse grandma back in Poland.

I returned to the fray an hour or so later and the jazz group were still playing. The audience had thinned out. All this professionalism had clearly driven away the old ladies and the gaggles of kids. The jazz group finished their last 15 minute epic piece and left the stage to muted applause. This puzzled me. Here was originality and creativity. This surely was culture, and a culture that embraced Africa, Australia and Japan. I guess you need to smoke something to get into culture. The Japanese plan had clearly backfired. The moral advantage was back with Australia.

It was time for the Aussie comeback. The spawn of criminals and Welsh people took to the stage and started off by baffling the hall with an animal story. The Aussie contingent put on animal masks and the mayor read a story about a watering hole running dry from too many animals drinking from the pool. The overweight kangaroos slightly distracted my appreciation of an allegory that clearly spoke to me that we the motherland, England should have culled some of the Aussies back in the infancy of the colony or else introduced Jamie Oliver to try and limit their consumption of natural resources.

Overall the attempt flew wide of the uprights. I still had Japan 2 nil up and the clock was ticking. The Aussies pulled all their subs from the bench and they belted out ‘We are Australia’, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and drew level quickly with the Far Easterners. What a comeback.

The Japanese had completely capitulated. They never got the ball back. The Aussie’s laid the killer blow with a conga line style Macarena that was poorly mixed into Tina Turner’s Nut Bush City Limits. ‘Let’s do the Nutbush’. I needed some bush myself. Hordes were leaving the Japanese camp and joining in the nutbush. My God the Aussies had done it. 4 -2 to the visitors was the final score. Pure Aussieness and a game plan of wearing the Japanese down with hoedown, joie de vive, bizarreness and a blatant disregard for culture had secured a famous victory.

Bragging rights had not been won yet. As the little ladies left clutching Australian flags and balloon poodles the Japanese team were preparing for the evening show that was going to climax in a fish dissecting exhibition. Would they show the Samurai spirit? Somehow I doubted it.

The point of all this? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that only people in London, Rome, Paris and New York want culture. The rest of humanity prefers Ricky Martin, the Macarena and associated friendship.

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Tripping on a Train

August 20th 2011 06:03

“There are two types of men in the world,” In Arthur’s mind he was styling; his wife had irony fluttering around her full lips, “those men who have to unbuckle, unclip, unzip and make a huge deal about retrieving their little man when standing at a urinal, and those men who simply unzip, remove and piss.”

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Yellow Taxi

June 25th 2011 03:33

That was not Shnade’s finest moment, giving a blow job to the boss’s son for money. Shnade would try to keep this episode out of his biography. His mouth was full of Taka’s gloop. He went to the kitchen to spit it out. He drank some water as he boiled inside with shame and fury.
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Meeting the Chief

April 30th 2011 03:51

‘Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts

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Candy and Shnade Make it Happen

March 5th 2011 07:51

Back at the capsule hotel Candy was quiet and sullen. Hiro tried to be solicitous but seemed to be failing in making a good impression. He wanted to ask her what the matter was but at the same time he sensed that if he did it would make matters worse. He was always been accused of asking dumb questions by the women in his acquaintance. Hiro didn’t want to make Candy more sullen and distant. He thought that he had some good news but her refusal to make eye contact in the kitchen as they waited for the kettle to boil made him reluctant to break the strained silence. He had a thought. Maybe I did something wrong or said something wrong. Maybe I should just tell her I love her and try and kiss her. No that was a bad move. Yet Hiro was pressed for time. He could only tarry in Tokyo for a couple more days and then he had to go home. He wanted to stay but he had promised his parents and he needed to save for the next University term

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Thoughts on Fatherhood

January 17th 2011 09:58

Wordsworth wrote

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Tears and a Clown: Candy and Shnade in Japan

December 11th 2010 13:09

Shnade had it all planned. He had thought it through and despite the risks he had formulated a plan. If there was money in Taka’s jacket he would take it and run; if there was nothing, then no harm done. And even if there was money or something, he could always back out at the last moment and Taka would be none the wiser. Delaying the ultimate decision made it easier to proceed. And besides Shnade thought, “What do I have to lose? This sucky job; paying for an apartment; a useless band and little in the way of selling weed

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Trippy Movies

October 27th 2010 07:00

I thought since that pagan mushroom taking festival is nearly upon us, when Siberian’s drink reindeer piss and Christian’s worship that big fly agaric called Santa Claus, it would be a good idea to get a good list going down. I know that lists are a favourite of all slack-arsed bloggers looking to steal the transient limelight with prurience or nostalgia but I'm not above such cheap tactics myself

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January 2012

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December 2011

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October 2011