Baishakhi Mela, Brick Lane

This was a fun event, and a great way to spend a few hours on a warm spring day in east London.

Two Cups of Tea

I sometimes find myself going calmly along a path of apparent insanity, as if it is the most conventional, well-ordered and sensible route to fine achievement that I could possibly have chosen. This morning, I awoke in a good mood, still rested from my lengthy April break, engendered by several warm days of London summer sun, buoyed up with the unassailable feeling that everything is going extremely well.

I slept deeply after being beautifully pampered as a result of going early to bed, having avoided evening television, which these days I find disturbing. My simple rule of thumb: any programme with either politicians or Bruce Willis, switch off. I do not want lies, explosions or Hollywood blood clogging my mental arteries.

I'm feeling quite fit and well, despite occasional bouts of sneezing brought on by early season hay fever (why is this not called "pollen fever"? - I see no fields of hay in inner London...) I have some sorting out to do with various business affairs, and I have some inroads to make, all of which are fairly unproblematic and of course now I am thankful for the great efforts I have made previously, since getting up frightfully early, travelling the world, explaining my particular creative take on internet media, and giving people good advice on podcasting seems to be paying off. I am enjoying my interactions with my friends and colleagues, who all seem to be talented, friendly and capable.

My underlying concerns are not too disturbing either, self-appointed tasks consisting of communicating the inner changes that I experienced in the mountains to the people in this and other cities who actually need to know. It's the age-old clash between urban and rural, as expressed via a boy from Croydon. And all this as a preamble to explain, no, to demonstrate my apparent sanity and level-headedness and to go some way towards proving to you, dear reader, that I don't generally do apparently insane things, like make two cups of tea at once, even though there is only me here.

Now it's totally clear to me how this came about. First, the initial cup of tea, made by GGF in a morning rush, was lukewarm and rather weak - unsatisfactory. Please note: this situation is often reversed, and we wait upon one other in a fair and balanced way, frequently attaining high standards both culinary and domestic. Since I love her, and she loves me, thus I have great compassion - particularly today, as she is I know still dazed from the excellent play we enjoyed before crashing out, stunned and exhausted by the sublime physical expression of the love we share. So, a model of tact, I said nothing, and merely waited until she was well into the clothes-donning part of her leaving sequence.

Then I went into the kitchen, and prepared my own cup of tea. Except that I calmly made TWO CUPS, as if compensating for the bad first cup. Making one cup immediately after the other, I can understand, but two at once? Then I get a hot cup and a going-on-lukewarm-again second cup. Actually, I rescued this outcome by using one of the ceramic lids which turn our cups and mugs into mini-teapots, and so, I'm drinking it now, and it's not too bad. But why did I make two cups at once? What was I thinking? I just found myself doing it, and went along with it, as if it were the most natural, normal thing in the world! For whom exactly am I making the second cup? Me! Me, and then me. Right. Right.

Now this may not seem all that insane to you, but I am convinced that this is how it begins - small actions, apparently insane, cropping up in the day-to-day melange of decisions and actions and consequences we call life, bizarre, counter-productive, non-sequiturs going unquestioned and unchecked. The brain, the regulating organ which is expected to keep us on track goes into a kind of "what the heck" mode, and the next thing you know, you're driving on the wrong side of the road with an oil-powered high-velocity wall of steel and glass moving towards you at a combined speed of 200 miles per hour, you're stepping off the very high balcony and whistling a jaunty tune as you cash in your kinetic energy and plummet fifteen floors into concrete, you're balancing the mains-powered music machine on the edge of your bubble bath...

Right now, I can live with the second cup of tea, enjoy it, feel good about myself. But what if this happens after some inconsolable badness has happened to me, when I am haggard and sleep-deprived after a mind-numbing credit-crunch of an argument with some deadbeat bigot, after the best bet I ever placed comes stumbling in last on broken legs and is shot dead at the finish, and I'm reeling like a tanked-up homeless piss-smelling drunkard looking for smack to take the edge off the brew? What then?

This is the fabric of the world - we are trapped beneath the warm duvet of stultifying convention and scared to be without it. Like Reggie Perrin, who faked his own death to escape, after ordering ravioli followed by ravioli followed by ravioli until he was sick, what we need is not more of what we like, but the freedom not to care about what we know to be valueless.

I Feel Fine

No really, I do. Fascists are taking over the world and we're all doomed to starve, trapped inside a polluted, depleted ecosphere, but I do feel absolutely fine. Nothing can shake my fabulously good mood, because I know how to handle the situation:

Go with the flow



The flow is towards the sea, and so upon my small boat, I am carried down towards that great inevitable ocean, containing all things. The flow is to the peaks, and so upon my miraculous hang-glider, warm air currents float me upwards until I rest upon the smooth, breast-like surface of the welcoming mountain top, from where I may view the entire visible universe. Oh yes, the forces are no stranger to me, and I shall not resist them.

But I can do better than that. Witnessing the oncoming rise of the right in Britain, in this newly conservative world I now inhabit I've decided to anticipate this more punitive, curmudgeonly, old-fashioned, archaic, and fundamentally anti-celebratory culture by initiating a new regime of financial penalties for activities that are deemed to be herewith unacceptable.

As from today, there shall be non-appealable, mandatory, on-the-spot fines for:

• Public Nose-Picking - this habit is revolting, and people simply seem to have developed a complete lack of respect for public decency;


• The Playing of Loud Popular Music on Mobile Phones - opera will of course be exempt;


• The Wearing of Informal Clothing - outside of working class areas, and in all shopping centres and places of public assembly;


• The Making, Watching or Participating in So-Called "Reality" Television Shows - these set an entirely bad example to our young people and so will be replaced by coverage of Ascot, Badminton and other pre-eminent equestrian events;


• Frog Hunting - this torrid stain on our nation France must be stamped out!


• Sirens - police, ambulance, fire - all banned, to be replaced with the music of string quartets

The Hammer Falls

As newshounds trumpet the worst Labour election results in 40 years, and Londoners contemplate the ghastly spectre of a TV personality with a history of public idiocy and insults taking control of the capital, the left in Britain is reeling.

The journalists' tendency is to believe completely in the success of the dumbing down of the past twenty years, but the UK population is more far savvy than the media and politicians give us credit for being. We remember, we assess, we are sensible and cynical, and we are not fooled by newspapers or television to the extent that their acolytes believe we are. We come to our own conclusions, and so we have.

No longer can these results be blamed on anti-Blair feeling, I read somewhere. Oh yes they can - do they really think we are such idiots? The current administration "stood shoulder to shoulder" with that particular conscientious Christian soldier while 200,000 innocents were cut down and slaughtered for the Democratic West's oil greed, the carnage continues daily, and we have not forgotten. Politicians decry the lack of respect our armed forces personnel are given, but fail to mention the dishonourable war they sent them to fight. Among decent people the guilt lingers, and since decent working people vote Labour, Labour will suffer for that until they sincerely revisit their morality.

We know that the change of face does not mean a change of heart. We know that these proto-socialists have done too little to bring about the changes we voted them in to effect - the system of government itself partially, badly reformed, insufficient attention given to ecology, a decade of glib assurances about the economy now turning sour, food prices rising, and now the very poorest suffering with the removal of the 10p tax bracket. Neither did people like the shoe-in of Brown for Blair - even though that is the way things are done in this country, we feel that we want a say in who runs our country. Dour Brown does not cut it - he's just not likeable enough on a human level, and people cannot relate to him, even as they did to Butcher Blair.

Politicians ultimately think only of themselves and retaining power. We all know that by now, Labour are thoroughly corrupted and will have to go.

The terrible truth is that the right, gathered hungrily in the corner, and now edged by real fascists - the ultra-right in their shiny new PR suits, glossing up their policies like the French Front National - are preparing to take the country, and they know that barring accidents, the slide back to them is gathering pace and will probably be achieved within two years.

Having betrayed their core vote, the British left is now in disarray, and like Italy, France and Germany, will soon cease to be electable. A new generation, oblivious to the penury and destruction of Conservatism (witness the USA's last eight years) will vote Cameron, that rich, pretty boy, pretending to give a fuck, into office; and the rich and privileged, the bigots and the bullies, the oppressors of the weak, marginalised and voiceless, will be back in power.

Which gives me 24 months to get the hell out of here!

Lemon Meringue Fever

I don't want any mizness
I just want a little bit of business
No champagne, just fizzness
And a witchy-wizard kind of whizzness

Open a bottle, screwtop
Shake it out lovely fruitypop
Nice big boots, no flip-flop
Deep breath, count down, make it stop

Back In Blighty Day

Today is Back In Blighty Day, in the Grand Calendar of All Things.

Our carefully booked flight was supposed to deliver us at 10pm on Saturday, but the BA jet coming to get us broke down on the way and had to land in Venice, stranding about 50 people in Cyprus. We were stuck in 5 star accommodation in Lemesos (Limmasol) overnight and caught a flight leaving at 5am and arriving at 8.30am UK time. Turns out that had we arrived as intended, we'd have walked right into some heavy violence, at just about the time there was a stabbing and shooting on the Holloway Road. My neighbours and local shopkeeper told us all about it - most of the lower stretch of Holloway Road was blue-lined and Bobby-shut as we tried to go and re-stock with provisions upon our happy, hungry return. We went a different route. I feel strangely to be so relaxed about absolutely everything and it makes me realise what stress I am forced to accept in order to live in snobbish, status-obsessed, vain, anxious modern London.

I didn't miss internet at all while I was away, nor news, nor family, nor friends. I missed making music and playing backgammon, so I bought a cheap Chinese acoustic six-string guitar which GGF has decided is now hers and regularly uses to learn chords, and a backgammon set, which we played regularly and competitively and which we left at the villa for all to play and enjoy. We read a lot, walked, conversed, swum, ate good food, and, in our cheap, economical hire car, we explored the island with it's fabulous east-meets-west natural abundance, its arid heat and its strange schismic, subliminal violence, its generous, charming, honest, greedy, careless, philosophical, ex-colonial inhabitants.

I really appreciated the difference in thinking time that this brief interlude afforded me, time for deep thinking which just doesn't occur when the cylinders are firing keeping everyone else happy. Perspective has been achieved and I have had some realisations and revelations, including one spectacular moment high in the Troodos mountains in the centre of Cyprus. There arose a spontaneous moment of truth such as only comes when you are unprepared and mistakenly believing you are doing something else, in which all was revealed to me. And when I say all, I mean all.

Better still - due to the wonders of technology and the nature of fate, I made a video as this enlightenment actually happened. Now as you, dear reader, may or may not know, this is not the place for that kind of rich metaphysical experience - I run a personal podcast for that over at deekdeekster.com - and soon I shall post it up there, but not right now as I am still putting things in order.

Since I got back four-ish hours ago, aside from opening a stack of snail mail, I've checked over 1500 emails (not spam), filtered the same number of emails (spam / unwanted), deleted a couple of dozen spammy Twitter users who have decided to follow me in the past three and a half weeks, and now I'm uploading around 200MB of photographs to Flickr. I also received a most marvellous present in the post which I am totally enjoying - the new Unio and Petitio album, entitled Cheers fanx ta - which if you've a mind for sheer anarchic fun and audio beauty, I urge you to purchase.

Food is ready - time to eat!

Water and Junk

What ho, brethren. Still here in sunny Cyprus and experiencing water shortages and land development frenzy as the locals attempt to build as many concrete houses and sell as many plots of land as they possibly can before the VAT deadline - which is July 1st. Cyprus joined Euroland January 1st 2008 and VAT is an EU requirement on land sales, but they sensibly negotiated a six month respite to avoid stalling the relatively buoyant economy. So, the Euro currency is in but the laws are delayed, and just as well when building and development are 20% of GDP.

What none of the local headlines are saying is the effect that this huge splurge of urban expansion and fast-track modernity is having on the local ecosystem. Cyprus hasn't had rain for many months and even hospitals are suffering water rationing. It was of course not a real hospital which found its taps running dry, but merely a clinic in the old Limassol hospital, housing (among several other things) a drug rehabilitation centre. This scandalous situation took many days to remedy. Meanwhile people living in districts high up in the hills and mountains are not recieving even their ration of water.

We've coped pretty well due to the fact we're living in a luxury villa with tanks on the roof (most new houses have these, along with efficient twin solar panels) and so on the days when drinking water is out, we're still able to shower and wash up, and we drink from the litre bottles of water we stash when the drinking water is running, which is around 50% of the time. But we also have a swimming pool, which aside from the appalling loss of life it wreaked upon the insect life when we pulled off the covers (they seem to have got the message now, for I'm just fishing out the dumbest of shield bugs, small spiders, and the odd millipede now - or maybe we killed most of them on days one and two!) takes up gallons and gallons of the precious stuff.

Still, all around where we're staying, the building continues. Yesterday I was woken at 7am by the sound of an earth moving truck, and a medium to large caterpillar bulldozer, which proceeded to spoil my early morning appreciation of the wonderful bird life by removing a good proportion of the local shrubbery and creating a moon landscape between us and the building site we've adjusted to already. I became disconsolate, depressed. I come away from London to relax and find myself thinking deep thoughts about humanity and greed and brutality and lack of knowledge and respect for nature. As I top up and chlorinate the pool.

The rest of the countryside round about is agricultural; orange and lemon groves, olives and artichokes, and the scent is so intoxicating we wind down the windows of the little efficient Nissan Sunny we've rented and breathe it down into our city-tarnished lungs to keep it there forever.

But look closer and you'll see junk everywhere - this is a working environment and farmers are the least sentimental about nature you'll ever meet - not just empty agrochemical containers and spent shotgun cartridges, but abandoned fridges, food wrappers, coca-cola cans, dumped vehicles and the whole appalling detritus of modern living tipped without care into any available gully. Every roadside is littered with cigarette packets and lighters and metal and more food packaging; and every beach, even the protected ones where turtles nest, has a high tide mark of multi-coloured plastic which makes me wonder whether there is any concept of nature guardianship operating here, and feel embarassed to be a part of the culture which is creating a rubbish tip from this paradise.

Cyprus Hots Up

I have ten minutes left in this internet cafe so this is going to be a case of speed blogging.

After a week, I cracked - in a nice way, like a mature cheese - and bought a guitar. I could sense my fingertips becoming soft. After a month of playing for hours a day, they were hot-coffee-cup-pick-up hardened and I didn't want to lose that. So I found one of two music shops and bought a cheap Chinese steel-string acoustic, a capo and a set of strings.

Now Cypriot detente is a fact, looking forward to visiting the north of the island in a couple of days, for a couple of nights. Also it's now hot enough to justify taking the cover off the pool and adding some chlorine to make it nice and baby safe.

Oh the sunsets the fruit the birds and the British... but actually it's a lot of fun, my first real proper holiday in over two years, and just in time for my precious insanity...

Polis

-------------------------------------------------

The Real Cyprus

I've come to Polis, the Greek north of the island to get away from the
plastic which is strewn everywhere around Paphos. It's been a
delightful and successful journey. I'm amusing myself by observing the
clash of old and new, rich and richer, functional and decrepit. And
moblogging, as I drink thick coffee and wait for my grilled
mediterranean fish, silver bream.

--
Sent from Google Mail for mobile | mobile.google.com

http://funk.co.uk/funkblog.html

The Beauty Of Potato

Potato is a handsome creature
A tasty skin is his best feature
And when invited to your feast
You will agree he's quite a beast

He'll kiss you with his crusty lips
He'll lay across your stomach, hips
Lumpy, fluffy, straight or wavy
Mashed he'll soak up all your gravy

Potato is a lovely lad
As a foodstuff not half bad
Baked, boiled, chipped and fried
He feels great when he's inside.