Robert De Niro's Waiting

Robert De Niro’s waiting, at a bus stop in Brixton. He looks around 10 years older than he does in those films of his. It must be because there’s none of that moody lighting in the broad daylight and I don’t remember him wearing high waisted slacks on the silver screen. Here in south London he’s worn them every time I’ve seen him, so I guess they’re more comfortable due to that forgiving elastic waistband. Although the creases down the front of each leg are unforgivable. If you want to know the truth, he’s let himself go a bit but that’s probably because he’s out of the limelight here and there’s no one to notice him. Except me. Don’t think that means he's no longer handsome though. He still carries himself with a gentleman’s dignity and the lines on his face communicate every human expression of warmth, even when he’s staring vacantly into the distance.

I see him waiting at the bus stop at least once a week, when I’m on my way here and there. Not sure where he goes; one day it’s the council estate, next the fried chicken shop. He’s not a taxi driver now but a bus rider, an OAP with the freedom to hop on and off whenever he likes. He never talks to anyone or asks if they’re talking to him anymore, as he wants to remain incognito, you know. The 432 bus to West Norwood is the last place people would be looking for Oscar winning actor Robert De Niro, which is obviously the point for nowadays he prefers to be the spectator, watching out the window on the lower deck (as he can’t get up the stairs anymore), focusing on the blur of human tragedy and comedy through the murky glass. 

He’s probably getting inspiration for his next role, studying the South London Street Gangs - I saw a programme about them once on TV. Yet instead of looking mean and moody he glances timidly at the teenagers when they get on the bus, not wanting to look them in the eye and if he’s standing, he shifts nervously along to get out of their way. Maybe he’s worried they might recognize him and then confuse fantasy with reality, thinking he’s the leader of the Mob, when in fact, he’s just an old man. But they’re harmless teenagers anyway, as far as I can see. Well, they’ve never given me any trouble and I often travel home, alone.

I used to wonder if he was really lonely, playing this new part of his. I couldn’t imagine many of his Hollywood friends coming over to join him, or that wife of his. And you can feel quite alone in London when your friends aren’t around. I often thought I should go up and talk to him, you know, for a bit of company. I mean it’s nice to have a little chat every now and again isn’t it? But he always gave me the impression that he didn’t want any attention. Funny how he's travelled thousands of miles so everyone doesn't notice him while I wait for thousands of days for anyone of the opposite sex to notice me. If the truth be known, a cheery 'hello', little wave or perhaps one of those friendly winks would have satisfied me. 

I respected his privacy and kept my distance, sitting a couple of seats away. On the odd occasion I sat directly behind him, I tried to communicate with him telepathically. I didn't think that was such an invasion of his privacy, as I'd do away with all that tedious small talk by reading his inner thoughts and reassure him with words sent by my mind, such as, 'No Bob, Meet The Fockers was not your fault. You made it bearable. I promise.'

Then one day, this olive-skinned, good-looking kid of about 12 came clattering onto the bus with all his young friends, cutting through the silence (I’m so used to the sound of that bus’s engine, I don’t hear it anymore!). His friends all clambered up the stairs, but this one kid who stood out from the rest went right up to Mr. De Niro and started talking to him in Italian. At least I think it was Italian, yet some of it sounded a bit Spanish. I’m no good with languages without subtitles, so I assumed it was Italian since it was De Niro. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was Robert De Niro chatting and laughing away with this young boy, his face and body all animated, which was strange to me considering I’d never seen him talk or even smile in real life. 

This boy was obviously pretending to be his grandchild to try and not blow his cover. Obvious only to me of course, no one else was paying any attention. To be honest the way De Niro interacted with this young kid was some of his finest acting, and I was deeply affected by the fake intimacy between them. I couldn’t stop staring and wished that other people could see what I was seeing, so if nothing else, I could talk about it with someone over a coffee afterwards. Then they both got off the bus together. Just like that. It made me feel so happy to realise he wasn’t lonely after all that I went back to my flat and put on one of his films. The Deer Hunter, my favourite movie. Even though I was happy, I cried and cried. I ran out of tissues and had to start using toilet paper.

That was the last time I saw him. I really wish I’d had the courage to go up and talk to him, but I was too late. Robert De Niro isn’t waiting for my bus anymore. He must be back in New York, hailing a cab instead.

Sunday, 30th January, 2011

Al began his day with the intricate task of placing a cocktail of drugs into the fillings of various Costcutter sandwiches. Of course, as always, he had to make sure that the lids were replaced perfectly and the labels smoothed with the tears hidden, to give the impression that they had never been opened. He picked up some clothes from the floor, the bottom of the wardrobe and the washing basket, then stuffed them into his rucksack along with 10 metres of LED lights, enough EL wire to light up a black hole, his ipod nano and huge subwoofer speakers. He delicately placed the sandwiches down the side of the bag, protecting them from every angle with packets of Mentos, and finally the ‘piece de resistance’ of these weapons of mass distraction, his half-cyborg, half-badger costume with the big, furry mechanical paws and PVC claws.

As he sat down on the bus, he took out his iPhone and logged in to foursquare to check whether any dealers were out and about so he could top-up on some extras. Junglejim was at The Den, while Cat Stevens69 was in The Cock, although neither was worth going out of his way for, so he decided to just head for the station. He quickly FB’d the RHG gang to let them know his ETA, then simultaneously updated his status while tweeting, adopting a witty and upbeat tone that was discordant with the monotonous hangover buzzing inside his head, getting last night’s story about asking the tattooed stripper for a second-hand discount down to only 145 characters.

He then cleared the camera of the stripper photos, uploading them onto flickr while the videos of everyone but him went straight on his youtube channel. He was far more organised and tidy in the virtual world than the real one. It seemed to be more important to him. The next few minutes were spent adding ridiculously esoteric captions to the photos that only the RHG gang would understand, but before he was finished, Tag had SMS’d him to let him know that the sniffer dogs looked pretty vicious.

When he arrived and saw these notorious dogs he sent Tag an emoticon giving him the finger. The reply was swift and consisted of an emoticon making an ‘O’ shape with its fingers that were dripping with white goo. These springer spaniels were more interested in guys’ arses and women’s crotches than drugs. And he doubted that anyone had gone that far in concealing their stash. The sandwiches, Mentos and badger costume appeared to have been the killer weapons of mass distraction, as the spaniels and pitbull security guards paid him little attention, although he got a flirtatious smile from the girl giving out the wristbands. She must have had a badger costume fetish. He quickly went on the ‘Xray SexSpecs’ app and held his iPhone up to her. She smiled innocently and ignorantly, thinking he was taking her photo, while his screen revealed a pair of tits around her size and shape. He then clicked on FestX GPS to help him find his mates’ campsite, who’d plotted their trail on the map via the readers in their iPhones and the chips in their trainers.

“Hey look, Titmash finally made it,” MGM remarked as Al approached the gang.

“With all the gear I hope,” sniffed Tag quietly.

“Yeah but you’ll have to wait till I need a shit. What? It was the only way to get past those sniffer dogs Tag.”

‘Ha bloody ha. What did you get anyway? Please don’t say it’s that NRG 11 shite.”

“Nope, the latest designer drug actually, my dopey friends.”

“What?” Glycerine snorted toxically.

“These glow in the dark suppositories full of MDMA, LSD, DKNY and Special K.”

“Nice one!” MGM drooled, grinning inanely.

“Well it’s a good job you didn’t smuggle those in up your arsehole,” quipped Tag.

“Ha, yeah. Plus I’ve got enough mephedrone to kill a hundred teenagers.”

“Whack it out then. I’m beginning to be able to taste my own tongue.”

Al craved for the lollipop in the elf’s mouth and began to stop caring about what would happen to him if he simply stole it. Being polite to her - or for all he knew, it might have been a ‘him’ - had been of no use, so he was going to take a more direct course of action. He reached for the stick and snatched hold of it, attempting to yank it out. But elves are known for their strong mouths. In fact, they use them rather than their hands to hold the ropes when they’re helping young fairies to practice flying: one end of the rope is tied to the fairy, while the other they hold in their mouths, then they run faster than any other land magical creature can, making the fairy take-off. And in reality, some fairies are really quite heavy, even the young ones.

Therefore, instead of just grabbing the lollipop, Al got the elf as well and she-he flew forwards on top of him while he fell down with a wallop on the grass. The elf’s penetrating blue eyes stared down into his fiery red ones, the lollipop still in his-her mouth, and it was while they were both in this somewhat awkward position that he heard a familiar voice.

‘Ere Titmash, wot yeh doin’ down there for fawkes’ sake,’ it said with glee. He looked up and saw a half-giant, half-rabid goblin staring down at him with a mental smile that had the power to summon pig dogs with just one flash. It was his mate, Mad-Grin Molester.

‘Haw, haw, looks like someone’s in need of a quick four-four to the floor,’ he bellowed while the elf threw him a dark look, twisting the lollipop round expertly in her mouth. It was hypnotising Mad-Grin and he stood leaning unsteadily towards the elf whilst gawping at the spiralling sweet, which seemed to change colour with every turn, making his eyes swivel about so quickly that they almost popped out of their sockets. Luckily Titmash knew the command, and he got up, raised his arms in the air and shouted, “Tuuuuuuuuuune!!!!!!” before speeding off in the direction of the dance floor.

He pushed past crazy creatures waving neon wands in the air, and got to the middle just as the tune ended. He turned to see whether Mad-Grin had followed, like a giant rat after the pied piper, and there he was, right next to him, attempting to steal the elf’s lollipop with his tongue. Suddenly, Al felt a fierce burning sensation in his forehead; a vision of a badger appeared in his mind beckoning him over.

Feeling more than a little nauseous, he battled his way back through the manic wands and balloons. When he broke free from the crowd, he looked down at the mechanical badger paws on his hands. They suddenly seemed real, somehow. He realised then how much he was sweating, no he wasn’t sweating, he was raining from the inside out; typical that when there’s not a cloud in the sky, he still got soaked. He fell on the grass, face-up, exhausted, the sound of music and laughter now muffled in the distance. The piercing pain came back to his forehead, as the ground seemed to shift, now feeling cool and smelling earthy. He saw worms emerging from behind the sky, wriggling out of tiny holes in the blue, and he had the strange urge to eat them.

Then a silver-white substance appeared before him in the air, neither gas nor liquid. It drifted forwards, dissolving the worms as it floated past them before hovering over his head. It sparkled in the sunlight, and he thought he could make out the shape of a dove. He watched it intently as it glided away from him and stopped still in a spot before vanishing into the ether. It wasn’t for a few more moments until he noticed the door. There were no walls, just a door, as if it was the entrance to the sky. Steps led up to it, and he was unsure whether he should discover what was behind this door. It could be his greatest fear: or his happiest moment. Then he noticed some more of the white substance, floating around the door from the other side: he took a deep breath, went up the steps and opened it.

‘Oi Titmash, where’ve you been?’ he heard a voice call from behind the pervasive silvery-whiteness. He stepped through the haze and saw his mate Tag sat in a circle of gnarled beings who looked like they’d been there for so long, they’d grown roots under the ground and bark over their skin. They were all holding magic wands. He then realised that the white essence was emanating from these wands that glowed at their tips.
 

‘Ere, what’s up, you’re looking a bit mental. This’ll sort you out,’ and Tag passed his magic wand over. Al held it delicately between his badger claws, staring at it until he heard a whistle, and looked up to see Tag raising his eyebrows at him and making the motion of putting his fingers to his mouth. But before he could do anything, a hideous shape came rushing towards them from beyond the pale. It was only when it was right in front of his nose that he could see its full gruesomeness. A scarred lizard’s face looked fixedly back at him, covered in piercings and foaming at the mouth. It was making a low, menacing sound.

‘Shit, crap, he needs another suppository!’ yelled Tag. Al had no idea what that meant and didn’t have the time to ask, even if he had been able to speak. He just pointed the wand at the lizard, and mumbled something under his breath. In an instant, the lizard calmed down and looked almost human as he grabbed the magic wand and put its tip to his lips. But the wand was disappearing fast, and was already half the size it had been a few moments ago. Al wasn’t going to hang around to see what would happen when it had vanished completely, so he jumped up and started running for his life.

He ran and ran, not daring to look behind him, not knowing what was in front of him. Everything now looked unfamiliar. He stumbled as his forehead throbbed with pain, felt the ground give way beneath his feet, his stomach lurching like on a rollercoaster, and he was falling, falling through the air. But it smelt so earthy, and he found it hard to breathe, as if he was being buried deep in the ground. He tried to focus his eyes on something but everything was a blur: with a jolt, he felt the ground again, his legs and arms reaching it with a thud. The pain in his forehead was now so intense that it obliterated any aches caused by his collision with the mud.

His face was interred in dirt and his mouth opened and closed automatically; he had no control over it. He was eating earth, or was it earthworms? There was a fight going on near him, he could feel the violent vibrations all over his body. He wondered whether his limbs were fighting of their own accord because his mind was too weak to help them, and lifted his head to find out. This is when he heard the sound. A low, howling growl that roused the fear that his eyes made clear as they stared with horror at two giant paws with gigantic claws; then slowly up to the burning, milky-white eyes that looked like they’d been ravaged by the darkness. But they could still see him.

What was this monster? Had he fallen into the set of the King of the Badgers? These thoughts raced through his mind while his body decided to make the decision to flee. But all around him were walls of earth, caging him in. He looked down at his hands that were still wearing the mechanical paws with plastic claws. Desperately he tried to dig himself out, before he was buried alive: then he was plunged into darkness.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a mr badger living in the ground and this mr. badger met a nice little boy named ally wally who came to visit him in his house underground. Ally wally was scaredy at first coz mr badger is very very big but he gave ally wally a cup of tea and a biscuit and a little chair to sit down on.

He had heard this story before: he liked it so much that he kept on wanting it: he cried for it when it ended.

He was ally wally. Mr Badger knew the way back to his friends: he pointed to the path.

Tralala lala,

Tralala tralala,

Tralala lala,

Tralala lala.

His friends were all in a circle, dancing and singing. His friend Stephen Taggart looked at him through a dark glass: he had a funny face.

When you wet yourself first it is warm then it gets cold. Stephen gave him a funny look and said:

O, his nappy needs changing.

Saturday, 25th September, 2010

Recently my life lost all meaning. I woke up one day and couldn’t string a thought together with the noodles of my brain. I felt it was time to soak them in something with values, beliefs and ancient knowledge. The Chinese Year of the Tiger was on the prowl, the astrological symbol I was born under, so it made absolute sense for me to try and live my life by the rules and principles of Chinese philosophy.

Once the decision was made and I’d found my new path, it was like a huge profound weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Immediately at once I felt like losing myself to wild abandon. This was a very fortuitous state for me to be in, seeing as I was destined to go to a party that very night.

My heart was full of joy with the promise of the enchanted evening only about five miles away south on my new path. The darkness was winning the battle against the light, quickly seeping into the colourless sky, like black ink in water. I breathed in its intoxicating fumes, happy for it to pollute my mind once again with unreachable fancies that forever twinkled at me, enticing me farther and farther into its unfathomable dimensions. Because now I had my new path and it would guide me through the tricky temptress that was the darkness.

Birds sang at the streetlamps as they industriously radiated a yellow glow of light, an attempt by man to defy the natural order of things and to make sure money could be made and spent eternally, without rest. An instinctive desire to visit the cash machine one more time pulsed through my veins, and the feeling of the fresh, crisp notes in my hand comforted me ineffably and beyond my mortal comprehension.

As I approached my enchanting evening, I was shocked by its unnatural appearance and extraordinary proportions. It was as if the fabric of spacetime had been stretched and then a rather crude and somewhat delusional attempt had been made to gather it back to its original state, the result of which was a crumpled heap in the middle of nothingness. My unfaltering belief in my new path meant that I didn’t stop myself from entering this enchanted evening, but instead let every atom of my body and soul become absorbed in it absolutely, until I didn’t know where the evening stopped and I began.

After what could have been years, minutes or mere nano-seconds (much later when such things could be understood, I discovered that it was in fact 25 hours) I found myself staring into an abyss, the most tangible part of which was made of stained porcelain. I was retching like a cat with a fur ball, the strangest sensation of this experience being that my cognisance of it was only through my reflection in the water below my head. This water continued down into an ominous black hole.

I was shaken and confused, but then heartened at the realisation that the water wasn’t yellow. One of the teachings of my new philosophy was “Not having arrived at the Yellow River, the heart is not dead.” So I knew that hope and life was still with me. And my body certainly followed this doctrine literally as although my bladder felt like it was fit to burst, not even a yellow trickle, let alone a yellow river, could be tempted to flow out. I finally managed to crawl away from the abyss and into sublime oblivion, thanks to the trusty transporter of incomparable softness and comfort; my own bed.

For the following 5 days I undertook the necessary work needed to rebalance my accounts and play my part in ensuring that the readings on the machines that run the world are kept in the safe zone. And then like a dancer with strong thighs and an invigorating rhythm, the weekend was upon me once more. I embraced it and rode it along my path, which took me to club after club after club. These became so infinitesimally small and dense that in the last one I entered (and I don’t for the life of me remember how I physically got into such a tiny, packed place) I closed my eyes and waited for the resulting implosion of matter.

It didn’t seem as if it was going to happen anytime soon though, and eventually, I was brave enough to re-open my eyes. And when I did, there in front of me was such a strange-looking fellow that I couldn’t help but stare. His head was the shape and texture of a peanut husk, one that has been left out in the sun for too long and has become withered and paper-thin. So much so, it gave me the impression that if anyone was to touch him, he’d immediately crumble and turn to dust. At first I couldn’t see his eyes, as I mistook them for being more blemishes in his skin. But then a coloured light flashed over them, briefly revealing their greedy intentions.

I suddenly realised that I was regarding him through the thick bottom of my empty pint glass. I steadily lowered it, yet noticed that it had provided no visual trickery and that he was exactly the same abomination he had been behind it. He ran a dry tortoise head across the crevices and protrusions below his broad, flat nose, and only by their position could I conclude that they constituted his tongue and lips. He then cracked a smile and inside his mouth, I discovered gold in the form of teeth.

I knew I should have just turned away, but my morbid fascination got the better of me. He appeared to be beckoning me over the few feet to where he was leaning against the bar. I took comfort in the idea that he possibly couldn’t make his way over to me without the aid of a walking stick, so I had the gazelle’s agile advantage, should it be required.

I waited apprehensively for his next move. He wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to the glass collector, who came over and passed it to me, a look of bored bewilderment on his face. I unfolded the paper, and saw a series of numbers on it, followed by the moniker, Alfonso. I looked back up at the old peanut husk and he was making the sign of a telephone with his hand, holding it against his ear. I didn’t need him to be any clearer, and stumbling slightly in my haste, I made my way to the dancefloor to look for anyone I could still recognise. I cursed myself for not remembering sooner one of the key teachings of my new philosophy. “ The old horse in the stable still yearns to run 1000 Li 1.”

The disc jockey was pumping out a short anthology of the history of dance music, in no particular order, and I paused in nineteen hundred and ninety-five to dance next to a fellow with invisible maracas and another who looked like he was attempting to take off. Then totally unexpectedly, a shaft of the brightest, whitest light my eyes had ever looked upon, cut through the dancefloor. Those split in half by it shrieked, while everyone else cowered in the shadows. I looked in the direction it had come from and saw that the door to the club had been opened, letting in the midday sun.

I recalled the doctrine that “All crows in the world are black” and understood that my new beliefs were telling me that you can’t turn day into night, no matter how hard you might try. So with a keen determination and resolute march, I left the club and my path took me home to where I found a basket of laundry that desperately needed attention.

Another 5 days passed where I was forced to work to prevent the machine’s readings from becoming dangerously low. It was the next weekend that I came across a teaching in my philosophy I hadn’t noticed before. “I dreamed a thousand new paths. I woke up and walked my old one.” After reading it for the tenth time, a change came upon me, one which was almost undetectable to my human mind. It was unimaginably subtle and incredibly meaningful. In one moment, the air and everything within it was clear. I tried to put it into words in my head, but the more attempts I made, the less sure I was that I had had anything meaningful to express in the first place, until I knew that it had just been my imagination playing tricks on my rational brain.

And the only thing that dawned on me was the sad fact that my life had lost all meaning. I decided that maybe Buddhism was the answer to where my ‘true path’ lay. I cracked open a beer and looked it up on wikipedia.

From The Recesses Of The Mind This Month

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Sometimes it feels as if I can’t smile. Like there’s some strange power operating my facial muscles with strings that pull down the corners of my mouth to create a grim, unapproachable expression. I catch my face in the reflections of shop windows or mirrors in public toilets and the sight of it scares me. I try and smile, standing there, staring at myself. But instead, a sinister grimace forms, that’s even more horrific than the down-turned mouth.

Yet I’m not the only one. Everywhere I look as I walk down the street are dour expressions. There’s a woman whose face is so screwed up and sour looking, it resembles the bottom of a lemon where all the creases are, with the facial features drawn on. And a man who has let those invisible strings cause permanent damage, pulling all his features down from his eyelids to his bottom lip, which hangs off his face like a full-up leech that’s waiting to fall off.

The other day, I walked through this never-ending misery to the market, where the atmosphere darkened even more, as the cloying stench of dead flesh filled my nostrils and the eerie sound of bones being chopped hit my eardrums. Bang, bang, bang. I looked at the freshly plucked chickens hanging upside down and the pig’s head displayed on its tray, their expressions of boredom and emptiness reflecting mine. Pathetic fallacy, really.

Then a young halal butcher cut my morbid mood dead, with a chirpy, ‘Hi, beautiful day isn’t it?’ I looked at him, trying to hide my amazement at this outrageous show of cheerfulness on such a gloomy day in the middle of one heck of a miserable year. Not only that, but he was also in the middle of toes, tails and tripe. He smiled at me warmly, a little flirtatiously and with such ease that I couldn’t help but be slightly envious. I attempted to smile back but the strings were conspiring against me once more so I ended up just pouting, now looking more like the fish in the next shop. Although being the consummate professional he evidently was, he pretended not to notice and cheekily asked me if I fancied one of his hearts, obviously not really his, but some poor cow’s.

And that’s when I caught it. The strings appeared to break, as I felt a broad smile smoothly spread across my face. It got so wide that it went from my lips to my throat to my chest and into my belly, where it produced a little giggle. This then jumped out of my mouth up my nose and into my eyes. Now a giggle trapped in the eyes is an interesting phenomenon. It makes you see things differently, in a way that’s maybe similar to what the Rastas who sit by the mobile African food stall constantly smoking spliffs experience. It made me see that all the butchers in his shop were laughing and joking as they worked amongst the carcasses.

Well, I thought, if they could laugh with all that death around, then maybe I could amidst these shop carcasses and living corpses. The eerie chopping began to merge into the sunny and relaxed beat of the reggae blaring out from the stall selling Lee Perry and Jimmy Cliff CDs. I walked towards it and one by one like damaged dominoes, the scruffy Jamaican guys who were hanging out there turned and flashed a smile at me.

So, like a social disease destroying the angst and animosity that keeps people apart from each other and society’s barriers in their place, the smile ravaged through the streets of this London suburb, taking people by surprise and invading their eyes. Now I noticed the elegant symmetry of the buildings that sit above the modern shop fronts, and the gentle curve of the market’s road, mimicking the smooth, slight arc of the plantain. Or, could it really be? A smile.Then through the bus window I saw the council estate. But with these eyes, the colourful washing hung out on a few of the balconies gave the front of the block of flats the look of a Mondrian. Aesthetic, horizontal and vertical lines constructed and brought to harmony and rhythm by intuition and the weekend laundry. Ha! I laughed to myself and the effect became stronger.

And then I saw him. Sat in the corner at the back of the bus. An old man, ancient even, was laughing silently to himself. His face now a collection of laughter upon laughter line, spreading from the corners of his eyes, nose and mouth to the edge of his receding hairline, as the smile had slowly taken over it. A bright twinkle had permanently infected his eyes, and as I watched him they creased up easily while his mouth freely dropped open to reveal just a few remaining teeth, which smiled back too through the curve of decay. When he spotted me looking at him and smiling, he laughed even harder, throwing his head back. He then put his hand to his eyes as they wept from all that laughter, before checking to see whether I was still smiling. Then he cracked up again. This carried on for at least 4 stops.

I appeared to be the only one who could see him, as everyone else was just staring forward with stony expressions, apparently uninfected. I began to wonder whether he was really there or just some hallucination of this disease. But as I watched him laughing and really cracking up, nothing else mattered anymore but giggling freely back, not caring what anyone thought and this vaguely familiar, exhilarating buzz that it was giving me.

And in that moment I got the joke. And it’s so simple, but for one reason or another, these days it’s become hard to do and we leave it for so long that we actually forget how to do it. But the joke is all you have to do is laugh, the most natural thing in the world, because when you do problems are attacked and ugliness is mutated into something beautiful. It would be easier if the world laughed with you, but if it doesn’t want to or can’t, then, like the old man, just laugh at it. You see, the more you laugh at it, the sooner it’ll become infected too. And unlike Swine Flu, TB or Fear, this is one contagion humanity really needs to catch.

Thursday, 29th July, 2010

Rajgir, the Indian town that time, tourists and terrorists forgot.

The district of Nalanda may contain one of Buddha’s Holy sites, but it’s also where you’ll find Rajgir, an Indian town that’s a bit of a hell hole. You know, the kind that’s a nuclear bomb short of perfect. In fact, it’s as if an atomic explosion has gone off and the town is the apocalyptic aftermath. Everything in Rajgir seems to suffer from the nuclear fall-out of its past glories. For once it was the capital of the first Indian Empire, had a mention in the Buddhist and Jain scriptures, as well as the epic Mahabarata (the Indian version of the Illiad), yet now it’s just a diversion on the Barauni and Patna highway.

The hotel we were staying in hadn’t escaped the nuclear fall-out either. When the taxi pulled up outside it, we nearly locked the doors and refused to get out. Yet curiosity, or whatever it is in horror films that makes the victims wander off on their own down dark alleys in the direction of a funereal wailing sound, got the better of us, and zombie-like, we dragged ourselves towards the empty shell of what might have once been a luxury hotel, well, by Indian standards at least. 

It was clean, but very, very basic. There was 1 bed, 1 sofa and 1 hole in the ground, or ‘squat and drop’ as we fondly nicknamed the Indian toilet. And 1 old television set, although as soon as our backs were turned, this was almost nicked by the guy who’d shown us to our room. Although we took comfort from the fact that he was stealing the hotel’s belongings, and not ours. Fortunate, because there weren’t many comforts to find here.

When we took part in the Indian hotel ritual of signing the visitor's book for their record of who’s stayed, which is usually full of names, we saw that the last people to stay in this hotel had stayed there over a month before. We wondered if Steve McKenzie and his fellow travellers’ jaws had dropped too when they’d entered their hotel room. Not because of the Eastern European prison-style hard bed, floor and naked light bulb, but the yellowing Winnie The Pooh and his Friends curtains. Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore were all there, with fixed, stunned smiles on their faces, as if aware of their fate of being left hanging there until the building falls down.

So we were in a bit of a lime pickle. We had a whole afternoon, night and day here. But the hotel room hadn’t been the nuclear bunker that we’d hoped for. Now we knew that a little adventure outside might cost us our lives, but staying in, staring at the lizards dart between the cracks in the ceiling and watching countless programmes in Hindi became so tedious that we all decided to venture forth into the abyss.

And what did we see? Well, let’s just say that terrorists probably wouldn’t bother to attack Rajgir. There aren’t any 5 star hotels, and any plans to cause damage to buildings with grenades and bombs would be scuppered, because no-one would notice the difference.

So what do you do when you’re stuck in an Indian town that Shiva destroyed, but which creation itself couldn’t be bothered with? Well, drink. And conveniently, Rajgir is in Bihar, the poorest state in India, yet also the one with the strongest beer. For reasons that become apparent the more time you spend there, Kingfisher brew a special beer that’s only available in Bihar, with an alcohol content of between 5% and 8%, as it says on the label. It’s a lottery, as you may get the one with only 5%.

We found this nectar of the gods in the first bar we could see, past all the empty bicycle rickshaws, disturbing lack of beggars and tumbleweed. The barman hastily ushered us away from the 3 local men sat inside by the bar with their vacant zombie-like eyes glued to an Indian soap opera and their mouths stuck on their beers, and into our own private booth complete with shabby curtain. In most places in India you don’t really see people boozing, and in some cities you can’t even buy alcohol, such as Pushkar and Varanasi. There are no such problems in Rajgir. And our fear for our lives was justified, as after just two of those large beers with an alcohol content of 8% (or maybe even 11 or 14, I mean who’s counting?), we were annihilated. And what didn’t help our survival was our beer-soaked desire to befriend the local policeman who’d popped his head in to check on the bar. Yet after a few mug shots and countless questioning along the lines of ‘where are you from?’ and ‘what is that you’re drinking?’ he finally let us go, but not before he’d dutifully escorted us safely back to our ravaged hotel.

So after our first 12 hours in Rajgir, we’d just managed to cheat death by intoxication and policeman’s lathi. Yet who knew what was going to happen in the next 7 hours? If you’re a Buddhist, Jain or Hindu, Rajgir is jam-packed full of fascinating sites and must-see attractions. If you’re not, then you’re left with just the Vishwa Shanti Stupa, a beautiful peace pagoda made of white marble that was built by the Japanese. It sits on top of the Gridhakuta Hill, where Buddha spent months meditating and preaching. And the only way to get to this top attraction is by, well how else in Rajgir, a life-threatening chairlift. Or chair drop, as I liked to call it, seeing as it consisted of a thin piece of rope from which fragile metal chairs were hung, with only a feeble, barely attached bar to hold the passenger in place.

To add to this living on the edge experience, we thought we’d fill our empty bowels first, and handily, right there at the base of the chair drop was a café in the style of those dirty stalls you get by the side of the Indian road. It sold pakoras and vegetable curry made by a cook with an interesting technique, which may be particular to the cuisine of Rajgir. Always follow every other stir with the pick of the nose, and finish off the dish with a sprinkle of coriander then a scratch of dandruff. Well if we were going to die anyway, what were a few contaminated pakoras to us? And in any case, they tasted great.

Unfortunately we had a long queue of almost an hour to regret this decision ten-fold, as we waited for our turn in the chairlift. The gaps between each bowel movement became shorter and shorter while we got closer and closer to the front of the queue. Overhead, legs dangled and we heard the sound of metal screaming as the chairs bumped over the pulleys. And then the screaming stopped, and it all went deadly silent. An electricity failure. The chairlift was left stationary for a few minutes. A different sort of screaming started, a child’s. Fortunately the chairlift started up again, and the metal screams drowned out the child’s. And our own. 

Then before we had time to reconsider for the fiftieth time, it was our turn. The secret is to never, ever look down. Just keep your head up and admire the beautiful scenery. You see, one of the best reasons for visiting the Stupa is that it gets you out of the town and into Rajgir’s verdant green hills. Yes you really feel close to nature on the chairlift, perhaps because you’re so near to death and of becoming one with the trees and flowers. It’s a different way of understanding Aum. It’s a lot quicker than years of meditation. The fear makes you believe in the oneness instantly, and clears your mind of everything, except that one thing.

What really gives you confidence though, are the infinite smiles of the constant stream of people coming back the other way. Their friendly faces and greetings of ‘Namaste!’ take your mind off your impending doom, and compel you to smile back, muttering a feeble, ‘Hi’. Children, Mums, Dads, Grans, Grandads and teenage boys’ faces all break out into huge grins as they pass you, giving you the assurance that people do actually make it to the top and back again in one piece. And when you reach the summit, one of the first things you hear is a deep, mellow reassuring drum coming from the temple – the sound of Aum. It’s the sound that signals the end of your journey from the hell of the modern town into the heaven of Rajgir’s serene countryside. And on top of the Stupa you feel so peaceful and calm, that you could just stay there forever.

You see, in the end, everyone comes up smiling in Rajgir. Even us. Because not only had we cheated death, but we’d also successfully killed time.

Wednesday, 30th June, 2010

http://matadornetwork.com/nights/londons-best-pubs-for-a-sunday-roast/ 

From The Recesses Of The Mind This Month

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

If I was going to tell the story of the first decade of the 21st Century (aka the noughties) to a distant future generation, I’d use South Park. It’s a neat, concise DVD collection of our recent history, perfectly packaged to fit into any time capsule. Hang on, you say, it’s not history it’s a cartoon! Well, consider this. Politicians, dictators, historians, religious prophets and the media have always tried to skew history in their favour or rewrite it, and a recent trip to see the British Museum’s Babylon: Myth and Reality exhibition proved that they’ve been doing this for centuries.

Most of us think of Babylon as this evil place or a ‘city of sin’, which eventually suffered an apocalyptic downfall, as portrayed in fantastic stories and awe-inspiring images in paintings, such as those of the Tower of Babel. We’ve got most of these porkie pies about Babylon from the Old Testament, which was humankind’s history book up until fairly recently. The main reason for all the lies is because the Jews were pretty ticked off with the Babylonians and particularly King Neduchadnezzar, because he captured Jerusalem, destroyed it and deported its elite to Babylon. So the religious prophets had an axe to grind, and painted the city as this evil, downright dirty place, representing the antichrist and despicable side of all humanity. And this we accepted as the truth until archaeologists dug up the reality and discovered that Babylon was a centre of learning from which we inherited the division of time into minutes and hours, the zodiac and useful knowledge of constellations. But a large percentage of people still believe the myths of the Old Testament.

So what’s South Park got to do with all this, I hear you ask? Well, let’s start by comparing its stories to those of the Old Testament. Both use over-the-top, dramatic narratives that are crude and surreal to capture the audience’s attention and to get their point across. They both criticize society. Yet South Park does it through satire, ridiculing the vices and follies of the whole of humankind. Whereas the Old Testament slanders and maligns to bring certain groups into disrepute, those which don’t tow the Christian line. Although isn’t history about learning from all our mistakes, not just a chosen few?

The Old Testament has its tale of the Whore of Babylon, a figure who’s unmistakably cast as the evil bitch of the earth. She’s described as having a golden cup in her hand that’s full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. Well I never. And on her forehead is written, ‘Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.’ She also gets drunk on the blood of saints. Meanwhile, South Park has the ‘Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset’ episode, where Paris Hilton represents the overt sexualisation of society. Her cartoon character wears lewd clothing and constantly coughs up semen, while her new shop, ‘Stupid Spoiled Whore’ encourages the young girls of South Park to emulate their role model, by wearing skimpy outfits and throwing sex parties.

The Whore of Babylon never existed, and is just a Christian allegory of evil, representing the sins of the world. The Stupid Spoiled Whore of South Park on the other hand, although exaggerated for comic effect, it can be argued that she does actually exist. 




Then there’s the Old Testament’s story of one of its most hated figures, King Neduchadnezzar, the geezer who captured Jerusalem and deported its elite to Babylon. This conqueror of Jerusalem, according to the religious prophets, got his comeuppance by going mad, becoming a crazed and terrified man, who spent his last days crawling on all fours like an animal and eating grass. In the South Park episode ‘Trapped in the Closet’, the former King of Hollywood Blockbusters, Tom Cruise, is depicted as a fanatical follower of the Church of Scientology and is seen exhibiting insane behaviour, for instance, he locks himself in the toilet when Stan (who he considers to be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard) says his acting’s not really that great.

The Old Testament created a slanderous myth against the reputation of King Neduchadnezzar, as archaeologists have found that it wasn’t him who went mad at all, but the more insignificant King Nabonidus. But again, it can’t be said that South Park’s portrayal of the erstwhile King of Hollywood and Paramount Pictures is entirely inaccurate.

Of course, it’s not just the Old Testament that has attempted to create myths of the past for its own ends. Many leaders have too. Take Saddam Hussein in our recent history. The British Museum’s exhibition shows how he attempted to create an image of himself as the modern day successor to the Babylon Kings, as Babylon was where Iraq is today. He had a painting commissioned in which he’s illustrated as this huge Colossus of Rhodes, standing tall above Babylon’s famous Ishtar Gate. In another, he’s transformed into a heroic warrior, riding a chariot into battle.

In contrast, South Park portrayed him as a whiny-voiced homosexual, who had a love relationship with Satan. Again, you can decide for yourself whether you think that South Park’s interpretation of events is a great deal closer to the truth than Saddam Hussein’s.

The point is (and there is one), that these days it’s harder to tell myth from reality, what with all the media spin, conspiracy theories and political propaganda. We don’t know the truth now about certain events in our recent history, let alone in over two thousand years. So why not have the noughties’ history represented by South Park? Every episode is based on the truth, albeit occasionally a small grain, and its creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are ‘equal opportunity offenders’. This means they don’t just represent one view, but lampoon all sides of a contentious issue, so in that way it’s pretty objective as far as historical accounts go, and it doesn’t preach. And yes it illustrates the sins of humanity, but also its virtues, as every episode ends with the identification of one of society’s morals in the form of an important lesson from which the young of South Park, that is Stan, Kyle and Butters, are seen to have learnt from.

The reality might never be separated from the myths of our times, but I for one would much rather have South Park as our historical document than, say, Sky News reports or any religion’s interpretation. For one, it’s likely to be more honest, and most importantly, a hell of a lot funnier.