A HAPPY NEW YEAR WAVE

support tsunami relief effort

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I've had a lovely couple of days. It's been sunny, I've got a lot done, felt relaxed and eaten really well, slept really well, excercised, made sweet music, been some great loving. The back beat is wicked. Don't feel too bad at all.

After walking my now rather downcast girlfriend (not looking forward to) and her chirpy Mum (going home today) to the station, I went to get a refund from one of my local newsagents. The guy in there had bad english and he had just sold me me Lotto Hotpix, instead of the 3 random Lotto lines I had wanted and asked for.

Truth is, I had walked in 15 minutes earlier with two respectable middle-eastern women, and casually asked him to explain the lottery to them, and inadvertently, I'd really put him on the spot. He floundered, said a few badly pronunced words, and gave me 3 lines of Lotto Hotpix. This wasn't what I had asked for, but I realised I had to take the lovely ladies to the station and I couldn't stand there arguing.

He thought he'd got away with that. So he was pissed off when I came back after 10 minutes and politely but firmly demanded my money back, and said, I asked you for 3 lottery lines. He denied he had not sold me what I asked for. I pressed him, and he indicated the lottery slips at the other end of the shop. He had not pointed that out previously. I raised my stunning eyebrows, revealing naked determination. He gave me 3 quid right there and then.

Instantly chucked a quid for the tsunami relief into a dodgy white cardboard box on the counter and said to the guy, "Thanks, no hard feelings."

I realised a while later, this guy is a Tamil, possibly mourning relatives, or worried about the fate of loved ones. He probably does have hard feelings right now. He did look kind of bombed out and frankly he wasn't really with it. There are 120,000 Sri Lankans in London. That really was the 5th largest recorded ever. Shit.

Old friends of mine, a London family I have known for years were on a Sri Lankan beach when the wave struck. I've been slowly digesting how close I was to losing them. I was really worried about them when I heard the news. Then I thought, no, they flew out a day later. But they didn't - they were on the beach, they saw it coming. They escaped both the waves and the awful aftermath, and they are now back home OK.

After coming back from the shop, I found this disturbing image (be careful of giving small children nightmares) which spurred me to add Blog of Funk to the possible routes for donation, construct a little pop ditty, and give something more than a quid myself before 2005 begins.

A huge wave of human grief is now spreading out from this collossal loss of life and health and family and places and ways to exist and even geography. Send them cash, girls and boys, for a prosperous New Year.

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