Eight Weeks A.D.

One even I was idly chatting with my carer. Duties were done and differences put aside, on neutral ground when the subject of abbreviations surfaced. In a little quiz I asked him: “We all know what B.C. means. Know what A.D. Stands for?” “Yes” answered the proselytiser smugly, “I do. It stands for “After the Death.” I don’t think Benjamin really believed me when I told him it didn’t, even if it amounted to almost the same thing, so to keep the new peace I added that I was sure that in some small corner of my universe, A.D. will indeed stand for just that. That moment has now arrived. In my precarious hamlet known as Raj Acre we are indeed eight weeks After the Death. After the death of the matriarch monkey who lies buried a small stone’s throw away from where I write these lines, pondering at times what she meant to the community, what her position was in the society and whether she’s remembered.

She had a place all right. Opinion here seems to be that she was Chief Wife to the group leader. Being the largest and the best-fed female in the troupe, she was undoubtedly his favourite concubine. She carried his child. The child clung to her belly like anything, so much so that if you saw her in the half-shade you’d think she had an excrescence or overgrowth, a giant skin-tag attached dependently from her underbelly. Which course of he was. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take his leave of her independently. He could do that. He could wander one or two metres from her body as if he was a thread on a reel. But she never reeled him in. He reeled himself in, his instinctive recall leash triggered by the slightest fright. The slightest thing which happened and it was Back to Mum, because Mum was the safest place in the whole wide world of Raj Acre. Whatever nasty fights broke out amongst the monkey gang, or between the monkeys and the wild dogs here, things were always safe for our infant. Safe from everything he was when he was with Mum.

Dad in a Reflective Mood

The death of the matriarch saw a sea-change. Her baby was in denial. He had one solution to all his problems which was Go Back To Mum so that’s what he did now that she was dead. He wrapped himself tightly round her still body, sucking on her cold, black milk-less nipple, puzzled bewildered and unbelieving. All the troupe were watching from their hidey-spaces between the trees, and most of all the Leader was watching, very carefully. Of a sudden he ran down from the branches and scooped the youngster up, carrying him up and away.

It was a rude weaning for the infant. I wondered how he would eat and whether there was another female with milk, a wet-nurse who would take him on. There wasn’t. It was take what Dad offered you, eat it and enjoy it. It’s what he tried to do, and the child grew thinner and thinner. Then he turned a corner; forgetting about Mum, his allegiance was transferred to Dad who couldn’t offer milk but gave the best protection he could give, which was the best there was. There’s only one guy allowed to be Dad in the troupe, one guy who’s allowed the mount the females. He who must be obeyed and given the biggest, choicest share of everything there is.

The Orpan Tentatively Plays

The infant now clung to the male’s belly, pressed closer to him than a limpet. And the close bond soon turned to tough love. Dad would biff him, chasing him along a tree branch, toward the thinner end where it was thin and green. He learned that there was nowhere left to go, and after a few moments of junior’s panic twisting his wizened old face, Dad would lumber back into the bole of a tree, sitting there resplendent in his leadership. 

   And so it went on. The sea-change continued its progress slower than the hour hand of a clock. Members of the troupe were now more inclined to carry on their business amongst themselves, while we tried to mind ours, which usually included quite a bit of theirs.

Peeping Out from the Lower Fork

  When the caring troupe have left me to make my meal or wash clothes, leaving me alone in my Cave, the leader comes to see me, usually without baring his teeth and without making a rude noise at me.

  He keeps his willy well tucked into its fur pouch touch too which I gather is a sign of respect. I don’t treat him any different to anyone else. He comes into the ‛Main Hall’ room and has a look around and I chat to him as if he was anybody else, remembering not to smile. The other day I caught him looking in my cloth bag and I told him off. He just lay it to one side.

  The baby is the shyest one of all. He seems seems terribly in awe that Dad can be so bold as to approach a Monster Ape and not get chased away. That’s where I sign off from this file, abruptly and without notice, like the power-cuts we get so suddenly here. My days here are numbered, almost down to the fingers of one hand, and my laptop battery zooms toward the zero point. These notes will be posted soon.

17/02/12 05:28:07

Kanantham Poondi Village, India

The Leaf and the Lump of Mud

It was quiet in the forest, except for the blowing of the wind and the pattering of the rain. The forest grew when the rain fell, the soil became moist and thousands of leaves sprouted from the ends of the twigs and branches. In this forest there weren’t many flowers. They weren’t needed because the leaves were so very pretty. In the light breeze they danced on the ends of their twigs and as they danced they chattered away, as ladies often do.

Although all the Leaf Ladies were the same, each one was in her own way completely different from the others, and when they all whispered together, their chatter made a pretty twinkling sound which added to the music of the wind. The soil and mud however was very much the same as any other soil and mud, except that sometimes lumps of it would break away from the ground and when that happened each lump found that it could look around and see some of the plants and trees which had grown from their body.

“Look at the lovely plants and trees which have grown from our bodies” said one lump of mud, “And look and those beautiful green fresh leaves dancing like glamorous ballerinas from the ends of the twigs”, said another as they looked up to the sky.

And likewise all the Leaf Ladies began each day by casting their eyes down in humility as they remembered where they came from. “We may be pretty and fine and fair,” they said, “But we all grew from the common mud and soil beneath us. Let us not forget this, sisters. Their solid character holds us up and gives us all the food and water we shall ever need.”

“Then let us start each day by giving thanks,” said another leaf, “And let us end it by giving thanks again to that from which we came,” said her friend. All the leaves agreed and nodded and danced in the wind on their end of the twigs and the sound they made was so tinkling and pretty that all the plants and insects and birds fell quiet as they listened to the song. The Leaf Ladies heard their own song too and were enchanted with their achievement. The mud however had no ears to hear these songs and just kept quietly feeding the plants, trees and leaves, and after a while the Leaf Ladies forgot about the mud which had no ears for lovely songs. In short, the leaves had forgotten their roots and the ground from which they all had sprouted, because they’d become distracted by the music they could make, and little by little they grew to despise the lumps of mud which had no ears. “Why waste our time singing to those who are tone deaf?” said one Lady. “And after all,” said another, “It isn’t that we’re not grateful to our roots, but these days we’ve become so busy practising our new harmonies.” Furthermore,” said the next Lady, “It’s rumoured that the leaves in the next forest are practising too. They grow on the lower slopes of snow-clad hills which feed them with fresh cool water and their voices are strong and can even move a stone.”

Lady Leaf become Queen of the Air

A few of the Leaf Ladies grew angry at the thought of this, and a slight blush of red colour crept into the green. Several of them jiggled up and down in a pizzicato frenzy, and as they danced, some of the twigs became loose. One of them jumped off to be carried by the breeze and for a few moments this Leaf had moved from being Lady to reigning as Queen because she was held aloft by the air, higher up than all her brothers and sisters and even higher than the songbirds on their branches because they need to have their feet on twigs if they are going to sing.

She was very proud about being higher up than everybody else and believed she was the best. And for the few seconds she was indeed the Queen; but this was only because of the gust of wind which held her up in the sky, higher than all the rest, and it wasn’t long before she started to drift down, down below all her friends, tumbling below all the branches and the twigs and the trunks of the trees, all the way down to the forest floor where she landed right next to a lump of Mud! Within the space of less than a minute, Our Leaf had shifted from being the Highest of the High to someone who was so low that if she went any lower she’d be buried in the ground.

Not long ago Our Leaf had been practising her song hard, hoping to make her voice rise high above the others, so that other leaves and forest creatures would turn their heads to look at her and her alone. She’d just started to grow a set of frills on the edges of her leaf and she did look exceptionally pretty rolling and tumbling through the air. So when she finally landed next to the mud-lump the expression on her face was one of total surprise. For the mud-lump, our Leaf Lady was one of the most beautiful things he ever saw. Leaf Lady was startled. In a word, she hadn’t a single word to say. If she’d sat properly to work it all out, she’d probably have thought that the mud-lump was one of the most ordinary creatures she’d ever seen, and her sisters up in the branches might have said he was quite ugly. So perhaps it’s just as well she didn’t have time to think!

Lady Leaf Lands with a Bump!

Yet in a flash our Leaf Lady now realised that without her supporting twig, she had no safe place in this world. Everything up there changed and jostled and nothing was secure. Furthermore the wind which blew her off the twig was getting stronger. Soon it would sweep through the forest floor and then she would be blown clean away. So the first words she spoke to the lump of mud were, “Oh my! I never was afraid of the wind before, but now I think I must be swept away from the forest and the home I love.” Indeed the wind was rising up, but the mud-lump, although he was a clod, was also a fast worker.

Leaf Leaf is Safe from the Wind

“As I have no fear of the wind”, he said “I shall shield you from all harm, but I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me sitting on top of you” and with that, the mud-lump jumped on top of Lady Leaf, who would normally have been flabbergasted at such an unseemly action. After all he was just a lump of common mud and his dirty body would smudge her pretty sheen, still tinted all with pink. Yet from deep within, she felt that right now she needed a body with some weight, and what other body was ready to help her in this way. Nobody at all!


Lady Leaf thought about her life up in the trees with all her sisters whispering and singing away, and what fine words were used and how good they all made her feel. And then she thought about her life down here on the forest floor lying underneath a clod of sticky mud. For a moment she missed her life ‛up there’ and she even tried to wriggle away, but as soon as she poked out one of her frills she felt the howling of the wind. Then she knew for sure that without the Mud holding her down she’d be blown clean away, and indeed when she opened her eyelid a crack to peep out she saw many of her sisters crying and wailing as they were blown away from home. She found it a little strange not being able to move much, but when she thought about it (and this was the first bit of proper thinking she’d ever done) she could have been out in that wind and completely blown away just like her sisters! The moisture in her beautiful sheen would have dried out. And when she did a bit more proper thinking, she found that being still and quiet in the forest she loved was not so bad after all. In fact, she found it strangely peaceful, and a delicious sense of calm began to flow over her.

After some time the wind stopped blowing and the lump of mud, true gentleman that he was, managed to plop himself away from the Lady Leaf so as to leave her alone. She was a little stained with mud, but being a true Lady at heart she didn’t make unkind comments on inconveniences, especially as the one who had made her all dirty has also saved her life. Indeed, she’d had a lot more time to ponder deep within her self lately. She’d been protected during the wind storm by one who had kept her safe at home, and that’s something which had never happened when she was with her high up friends who never stopped jiggling about. She’d spent a long time with her muddy lump now. He never said much, and he only used a word when it was necessary, and the more she thought about it the more sense it all made. She knew that the mud lump thought only when he needed to think and when that was done, he stopped, content to settle into the forest.

However, something else was now beginning to happen: The sky grew dark overhead as rain clouds gathered and heaved. It looked as if they were going to burst and rain upon the forest. The Leaf was happy at this, and looked forward to being washed all clean so that she could look all shiny and pretty again. But the mud lump felt something he had never known before: He was afraid. A deep unknown fear had crept up behind him. He was moved to think and said out loud, “Lady Leaf! I AM AFRAID! Oh God in Heaven, I am now afraid of rain!” Our Lady looked at him astonished, as she had been feeling quite the opposite, and she sang out in a tinkly voice: “Why?”

The mud lump opened one of his hollows to speak but no word came, chiefly because a new feeling had crept over him and he didn’t have a word for it. “Things are different now” he said. “Many times I’ve crumbled off, in one shape or another, from the forest floor, every time with different bits from here or there, and many times I’ve melted back into Father Earth, sometimes to be reformed again. I never feared the rain before. In fact it was a relief for me to lose my funny shape with all its lumps and bumps; but now, somehow after meeting you, it’s all different. You see I think I’m....”

Lady Leaf Keep Rain off Her Friend

“Oh shut up!” said Lady Leaf who had always been very quick and rather practical too, “So many words don’t suit you at all. Can’t you see that the rain is going to fall right now? Not long ago you jumped on top of me without a word, and now the time has come for me to jump on top of you!”  

And that’s just what she did. She was far more nimble than the mud could ever be, so she floated rather than jumped, only to be pinned down by the first drops of rain which pattered from the cloud, wrapping herself over the lump of mud, who didn’t melt away into the ground. Furthermore our Lady had a very welcome shower.

Events happen quickly in this tale, although telling them takes longer, and it was only within the space of a minute or two that Lady Leaf had sung her heart out, been torn off her twig, floated like a Queen of the Air, landed on the ground and met a lump of mud who had introduced himself by jumping on top of her when the wind blew. Now their positions had been reversed and she was wrapped tightly around the lump and protecting him from the rain. It was an extraordinary meeting and a most unlikely friendship between two people who were such opposites in every way. Yet they had formed a delicate relationship, and both had changed. Lady Leaf was as beautiful as ever yet somehow the veins in her body ran deeper now; and they were a little drier than they used to be. Of course the mud lump made sure she had as much fresh rain as possible. He kept his body a little wetter than before. By sucking moisture from the ground he was able to give her the occasional massage and mud bath and this certainly helped. Some of the red colour from the Leaf’s earlier anger had now seeped into the mud, and sometimes you could see little streaks of red colour in the body of Our Lump, especially when it was twilight. It was as if he’d had a dab of rouge. Some of the Leaf Ladies remaining high up in the branches caught glimpses of the couple as they went around together. Peeping through the gaps between their crowded sisters they giggled and tittered and said the two had fallen in love, and did you ever hear of such a thing!

Meanwhile on the forest floor the couple continued to weather their storms, but the mud was starting to feel wetter than usual. Truth was that Lady Leaf had lost a lot of her pretty sheen, and every time it rained now she couldn’t quite manage to hold all the water off her lover and protector. One day the sun came out a little more and both had a chance to sit side by side, enjoying the Autumn of their days. Many of her sisters from up above were falling down now. Without protectors they were blown around, often mounding up in heaps in the boles of trees. “I’m glad that things have turned out this way” she said, and meeting you has made me the happiest Lady alive.” The Mud said nothing as he looked at her very deeply. Small holes were appearing in the body of the Leaf where the rain had penetrated, and he knew that they were both going to... “Oh don’t say anything!” laughed the Lady Leaf to the Mud, “Not even in your thought! Bless you, you have always been the Perfect Gentleman, so eager to protect me from myself, so keen to shield me from unkind words. But I know the truth, my dear! Separated from my twig, I cannot live for long. I am drying out, and my life up there and also down here with you is coming to an end.” If you looked at the Mud Lump now, you see he was a little redder than before he’d had a little pink on his cheek.. It was the effect of the slight drying out caused by the hazy Autumn sun.

“Heavy Rain Coming Tonight!” said the Mud. “Lady, will you cover me one last time? We cannot last through the deluge as two, but with your help, we’ll stay together for a little longer!”

“Oh need you ask!” she tinkled in reply: “Where in this planet would I rather be than here with you?”
The couple continued in their special relationship for the rest of the day, smiling, sharing, often joking together, and by the end of the day they both were Ready, happy in the knowledge that come the morn they would both be a couple no longer. The rain arrived, and Lady Leaf jumped on top of her partner. They continued where they always had been, and saw that nothing had really changed. It pelted onto her body and the Mud sighed, a sigh of contentment as more and more rain pelted through the holes in his lady love. Wetter and wetter became the mud and holier and holier became the Lady until she was far more Hole than Leaf. Soon all her colour had gone, and all the flesh tissue between the veins which held it all together. By the end of the night all that remained was a skeleton leaf, and the man she loved had joined joined his Father in the ground.

After that the rain stopped, and the forest fell silent as it waited for the new day to dawn.

The Leaf and the Mud are One

Acknowledgement: So many go to Ms Gabriele Ebert, whose sketches provided the fuel and the thrust for this tale.

An Engrossing Tale. Sort Of.

Drowning Rose by Marika Cobbold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


 I fell straight into this book and became absorbed to such an extent I began to swear every time I was interrupted by somebody wanting something. OK, what they wanted was to remind me that it was time for me to eat, or go to bed; or perhaps I’d care to get into the car which I’d called for earlier and it had been waiting for me for 25 minutes. Annoying irrelevant things like that. Things to do with Me. That’s the extent to which it dragged me away from my own annoyances. Opening my Android phone I pulled up a note, wrote “Did Sodding Life Get In The Way?” and emailing it to myself I added it to the list and put a tick in a new box for my list called Review Criteria. Then I returned to guffawing chuckling, smirking and nearly sniggering at  some of the antics three of the main characters, known as ‛The Princesses’ got up to. The theme outside this clique was unfolded by a fourth girl, Sandra/Cassandra  whom the other three kept excluding from their lives. Many little strings were tweaked for me here, and once the joking, smirking and nearly sniggering had burnt itself out, these situations always twanged the nostalgic air in a minor key. Most of all, the story reminded me of someone I knew a long way back. I loved the odd take she had on life, the pokes she gave to nearly any- and everybody, especially to herself, many little verbal quips which ignited, flared and died away.  Yet underneath this frolicsome, funny and yet rather cruel charade it seemed a deeper purpose was slowly moving, something which was distracting me from the subliminal underflow by all the frill and froth bubbling away in front of me. I tensed myself and waited for my jaw to drop .

The story kept me thinking further back to my own childhood as I remembered how desperately I wanted to make friends with other children, especially boys; yet most boys spent their time lying on their stomachs ruffling bedsheets and candlewick covers into mountains, dales crevasses canyons and rolling plains. They were positioning their little plastic soldiers into the smooth steps and slopes formed by the sheets. Many of the men were half-folded in a crouching position with rifles mounted on their knees. This set was ‛our’ people I was told, and the opposite set of people were called ‛Jerries’. The game was to lie in ambush behind folded rocks,  ruffled trees and crimped-up bushes  going “ack-ack blam-blam-blam!” to see how many ‛Jerries’ you could shoot down. It was all rather horrid. Considering my Dad himself had been a decade out of The War as a fighter pilot he must have been engaged in this, yet he’d always remained silent at home. When I wouldn’t join in with these boys they labelled me ‛sissy’ and some of the nurses added that if I didn’t like playing with boys I should have to play with girls instead. Which is exactly what I did.

The girls with their loves and hates sometimes spat poison at me like “Today we’re all ganging up on you” or “Linda says your radio’s no good ’cos it crackles” which would come out in an early morning hiss, followed later on by the making up with its love and smiles and whispered conversations about ‛Who’s going to cuddle Johnny next?’ or ‛Has anyone seen his willy?’ It all came hurtling back to flood my mind. Yet Drowning Rose was far more than these memories of half a century. Here it was the use of words and the gentle self-mocking of the protagonist — a girl called Eliza, who had grown on to restore porcelain pottery — which had me captivated and enthralled. A lady who loves to mend things in this broken world will always have a firm place in my heart.  Lovely phrases like “sitting there as if he belonged, the glass of wine in his hand, his legs outstretched, cutting the kitchen floor in half” and “This bore the nose-print of my mother and I had wanted to ask her to please not put ideas into an old man’s head” were examples which lingered with me for a long time. Here was a lady whose words and me would I hope make very merry partners.

On this ghastly system of awarding ‛Stars’ to the book, I was thinking Five Stars, Five Stars all the way. I just couldn’t think of any other score for it. At times I was chuckling till my chest hurt and I had to take a drink of water. In fact I was high on the ride of the narrative and I kept on wanting more.

Yet sadly the hope of finding a new author whose work I could merrily munch through became a little jaded when I reached the section titled “Cass and Ben”. I was puzzled at the complete shift in tone. It wasn’t that another element was being brought in, as I was expecting a gear change at some point in the narrative. It was just that the change was so sudden, so different; so alien that I checked my ebook several times to ensure that I hadn’t somehow jumped into the middle of another tale. I now seemed to be in a pulp fiction novel I’d picked up from the Bangalore Bus Station in 1985. I told myself never mind, it will all fall together and make sense. And fall together it did in a way which was OK. Sort Of. Still I kept asking myself “How?” “Does the way this falls together work as well as the rest of the tale?” and sadly it didn’t.
    For me it’s a matter of what you come to expect. The more the writing engages me, and the more it  holds me in thrall, so the more I anticipate —and require— that the standard be maintained. So any shift which is below par and below tone in the harmony of the piece cannot entirely work. Nonetheless I had a hell of a time with this story and would love to have given it its Five Stars. Miss Cobbold’s exercise didn’t quite pull off though, which is a shame as it’s such a good story and there’s plenty of meat and trimmings here. If only a few extra resources had been applied to giving it a good brush, comb and spray before the final presentation to the public it would have been a cut far above what the ‛Princesses’ in the narrative could have managed.  
    When I look back on it, I certainly enjoyed it. But the strange jarring of the Cass and Ben chapter with its sad consequences  certainly worked. But only Sort Of, and to an extent which appeared more limited every time I looked at it. I just couldn’t quite get rid of that feeling of being let down at the end. My jaw opened slightly, but it never really dropped. I’d been on a good ride, and I know the author has plenty of other rides available. So would I fork out on another one? Certainly the reader could do a lot worse than reading Miss Cobbold’s books. Yet many other artists out there have lots of different rides nuzzling me in all the right places and I’m giving their call more attention than listening to the capable harp of this author. It will be yet awhile before my hand lands on this author again when I give my book carousel another spin.



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Only in India...

Only in India...

• Can you go to the Government “Electric City” Office (as some call it) to pay your monthly bill and be turned away because of a power cut.
• If your coco-nut tree is struck by lightning you’re entitled to a grant. When the Claims Officer calls to assess the damage it’s customary to offer a cup of coco-nut milk from your own tree.
• If you’re destitute you’re entitled to a monthly government allowance. You must fill in the appropriate form declaring your sorry state and sign that you have no family and no friends and know nobody at all. The form must be witnesses and signed by somebody who knows you very well.

Quickly She Passes

21/12/11 3—4 pm

However much of a nuisance these monkeys are to our coconuts and banana crops, there’s always a moment of reflection when one of them dies. One minute we’re shouting and waving sticks and berating them with bared teeth and in the next one of them is found dying. This one, a female (you can tell by the red face and backside) became seriously ill in a shady area outside my little Cave. If it sounds romantic, I’m afraid the wood ants had already started crawling all over her body while she was still breathing and twitching. Sad, because they are some of the nastiest ants I know. Rumi took some insecticide powder and sprinkled it over her body and I think it deterred them a little.

Wide-eyed in her Final moments
Her Nipple Swollen with  Undrunk Milk

 The human Mum with two of her children came out to see and to take a few photographs. You have to be very careful when you’re dealing with a dying ape because the others are near-by watching what it is you’re getting up to. Even if she’s there because they’d given her a good decking they still don’t really want us horning in on their act, and they have been known to bide their time and to take revenge. Moreover a dying monkey can easily deliver quite a nip, as a final sign of affection I’m told.

 Nonetheless we took a stout bamboo cane and propped her up a little so she could sit for a few seconds and see that someone had a little concern for her, holding her no grudge. She opened her eyes wide and looked straight at me. They were very bright and very clear and it look as though her mind was clear too. Just a straight look, all difference between man and animal swept away in that brief moment. “You’ll be all right in a minute, you poor old thing” I said. As if in reply she blinked at me and then she closed here lids. Her eyes were wide open one second and in the next they’d closed, long lashes she had like a doll, and her eyes closed just the same. It’s somehow tough not to sniff back a tear in situations such as this.

An Awesome Moment

22/12/11 10:28:03 AM

With humans it’s customary to leave the body outside all night in order to give it some air and to check whether death really has occurred. After we’d established her death, Rumi went on to give her a bath, her first and final ablution. All the relatives must have been watching from the trees because after we’d retired they came one by one to sit at the new flat patch of ground, to pay their final respects to a lady who must have been well known in the community. I get the feeling that the abandoned child will have found his place within this microtribe and that perhaps lessons have been learned by both sides.

While they were gathered round her grave they were quiet but they melted away on our approach. She’s buried by the side of the Cave where I go each day and I can see the spot from where I type these lines. I guess we could have put the camera against the fine-gauge mosquito mesh in the window frame and snapped the shutter, but it didn’t feel right. They showed us more than a little respect by coming to the place where we had dug and shovelled, and it was right to return that measure of propriety, to show that though the war still rages between us, we don’t hold any personal enmity.

How Many Leaves Does It Take?

I sometimes wonder how many leaves you need to call a book a ‘book’ and how many blades you need to call a fan a ‘fan’, and when I’m nonchalantly musing on that I wonder how many books you need to read before you can call a person a ‘fan’ of a particular author? I’ve probably got more dictionaries in my house than most people (one of which runs into eight volumes), but no person who’s perused my once expanding (yet now mercifully contracting) bookshelves has ever said “Oh I see you’re a fan of dictionaries” because people who like dictionaries for their own sake are often called other names, which it would be best not to enter into here.

Now apart from the sort of which which spins round and keeps you cool, the first time I learnt about another sort of fan was when I was 13 or 14 and heard about a rising group of young men who called themselves The Beatles. When I saw them on the telly, girls were jumping up and down in their seats and screaming, with tears were pouring out of their eyes. As plumb lines of mascara ran down their faces they hollered “John”, “Paul” and sometimes “George” and they did that because that’s what fans did, and that description’s as good for me now as it was then.

Rolling the clock on twenty years or so, a young priest had insinuated himself into my wee dwelling and was judging my character by my bookshelves. “Ah,” he said, “I see you're A Fan of Susan Howatch.” I had picked up one of her novels from the mobile library that turned out to be a trilogy which revolved around the internal dramas and wrangling within the clergy in the Church of England. I did find it interesting, even enthralling at the time because the first novel pulled me into the second and by the end of that tome I just had to go on to read the thrilling ecclesiastical conclusion. So much for my earlier notions about the dusty clergy. The shenannigans which went on behind the scenes coupled with the “making it all right in the end” somehow kindled my reflirtation with the Christian Church. I was a Hindu fish gasping for air in England's agricultural belt, and I felt I was, perhaps, still young enough to change my spots and swim in the Ocean of Christ. After all, water was water and I felt I'd rather live than die.

Later on I was called A Fan of Orchid, a term I thought wasn’t entirely inapt as the plants must have moving air in order to thrive. So I bought them a fan of their own, along with a Burg Humidifier and a lifetime's supply of Osmunda fibre. Yet I wasn't really their Fan according to my definition of the word. I was just nuts about them and I thought and dreamt about them morning noon and night. They were totally fascinating. From the moment of their husky microscopic births, they’re hurled into a life-and-death struggle: Born to be the prey of a Borg-like fungus, the orchid husk surrenders itself to the greedy mushroom but, like all living organisms the fungus has to excrete, and this fungus excretes simple sugars which to an orchid infant is like being fed mother's milk straight from the nipple. Human milk makes babies grow big and strong and the shit of a fungus is not only nectar to a mewling testiculloid seedlet, it’s also exactly the right ingredient for it to make a powerful fungicide known now to be a Phtyo-Alexin. Poof! Squirt! The baby launches its own poisonous ejaculate into the face of the monster, and the fungus retreats. The infant’s victory is short-lived though for the fungus, now given the equivalent of a bloody nose, nurses its wound in the corner of the ring while planning its next deadly assault. After all, it’s sure that babies aren't that hard to obliterate, so the micro-toadstool plans a renewed attack on the tasty babe, excreting an extra amount of sugary dung as its armoured plating grows.

Except of course that our infant is no longer an infant. It’s already grown to be a toddler after sucking in its first sweet load and toddlers can wield considerable damage. Even now I still reach for my temple which gives me trouble on a rainy day as memories of things my sister found she could do with a poker when she was aged 18 months are still a little too green in my memory, I'm afraid. In the meantime this orchidoid toddler has grown formidable power of its own. The latest pulse of primitive sugars excreted from the ravenous fungus has now fuelled the brattish seedling and an extra dose of fungicide is squirted into its fungal receptors, to make the orchid think it’s now got enough power to sprout a nascent testicle.

Of course this is a speeded-up version of what goes on in that mini world. It’s the fast-forwarded version yet the real process is extraordinarily slow and far more progress would be made by a human playing a game of chess by post, even if he used snail-mail and had to put a stamp on every move.

So I was perhaps (despite my earlier denial) a fan of orchids, although spelling the abbreviation full into ‛fanatic’ would have been far more appropriate for me. But what about my electronic book collection? Terry Pratchett? Does Amazon Dot Co Dot Ukay really think that because I’ve purchased three of his books for my Kindle that I Am A Fan? When I “Shop in the Kindle Store” I Am Greeted by them with “Kindle Best Sellers”, “New & Noteworthy” and “Recommended for You”† followed by a list of 27 Terry Pratchett Novels, interspersed with a peppering of other books one of which went under the name of Butterfly Knight. Now don’t misunderstand my point. I have nothing against Terry Pratchett, apart from the fact that he’s far too rich, far too famous and has far too many fans, quite apart from being far too clever with words. for my liking and now know that It is dangerous to read this man. Allow me to give one example:

Last year I was touting for cheap titles, and saw that Equal Rites was on offer at £1.99. So I bought it and actually started to read it, while marvelling at how a book can be delivered to me by Magic somewhere in an obscure paddy field in South India. I started to read it with googly eyes and soon I didn’t feel quite so good, which wasn’t really much to do with Mr Pratchett but probably quite a lot to do with being in the Land of Delhi Belly, even if I was 2,000 miles away from the capital. Knives were stabbing my guts and our heroine Eskarina was hobnobbing with the laundry ladies in the bowels of the Unseen University and plotting against the Male Chauvinist Pig Wizards Upstairs who had ruled the roost for far too long. This lady could attend to washing clothes and deliver a punch in the Goolies which, when you think of it, is far cleverer than being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. My guts hurt like mad, and laughing at Eskarina hurt even more, but what hurt most of all was a batted remark in Tamil which I heard the boys deliver amongst themselves, namely, “Well if he’s laughing at a bit of writing on that Kindle things he can’t be that bad.”

“Can’t be that bad? Can’t be that bad?” I thought, “Man I’m bloody dying here!” I was gasping my final breaths. There’s three words for three different types of breaths in Tamil which a dying man takes, with a special one signifying the very last gasps. Unfortunately I can’t remember even one of them, but I’m sure that the final one must have had variation or tone which meant convulsed in unpleasant laughter, because that’s what was happening to me. And why the heck shouldn’t times be modern and I be leaning and dying over my Kindle with my mind on Disc World, even if that’s the last place I’d want to be at my departure?

That’s the place I was now: Dying, and all because of this book it seemed. Except that the old wizard in the story only had seven minutes left to live before passing on his Hat to a baby girl, and I unfortunately had to live for about as many days, and the baby boy I passed all my worldly and ethereal things to had since matured into a young man aged twenty-six. He had a great body, but sadly not much clue as to what’s Really Going On Here and I had very little time to teach him what wasn’t happening and would probably have to sum it all up in four small words which are NOT A LOT, REALLY. Which when you think about it is probably the best way of saying it in the first place.

So with the convulsive death of my body we appear to have come round full circle, and we ask, ‘Have we ended up in exactly the place we were before we started or is there a difference?’ The answer of course depends on whether you have a viewpoint. If you have, then you’ve moved a long way by the time you reach this point, and if you think you’ve moved, the amount of movement will be in direct proportion to your thought. But if you ponder deeper, diving beneath the choppy surface waves of thinking, you’ll see you never really moved because you were never ever really anywhere to begin with. The fan needs to cool you because it chops the waves of mind, but that can only happen as long as you believe you have a place here, and when you realise you don’t there’s no ‛you’ to keep itself apart from the rest of the stuff that isn’t there.

Citizen Barney Leaves the Hive

“Welcome to our crazy country Barney: We’re lucky to have you!” is one of the most delightful SMS’s —text messages— I’ve ever heard. The message was delivered in a roundabout way to my carer Barney as we arrived at the Cambridgeshire County Council headquarters, Shire Hall no less, on our way to the pomp and grandeur of the Civil Citizenship Ceremony.

While my left ear was receiving this message of charm and welcome, my right eye saw a councillor dash out to the delightful West Indian car park attendant called “Fred” to ask rather urgently “Has the Mayor arrived yet?” “The ’oo?” said Fred as his face lifted in a gaze of total puzzlement.

The occasion was the Citizenship Ceremony of my carer and friend Barney.

I first met Barney somewhere in a paddy field in India when he was three years old. I was trying to dandle him on my knee, but he was far more interested in showing me the progress he was making in saying his ABC. Barney raced ahead but stumbled on the letter Q. His face twisted in frustration as he began to wonder why the alphabet was racing backward, so I handed him back to his uncle to help him with “koo” and RST.

The next part I remember easily was when he was a rather weedy little boy of ten. By this time he’d picked up English well, and when he started answering me back in that tongue I felt he was well and truly on his way. He said his English teachers were telling him about a film called “My Fair Lady” which he was asked to see but couldn’t. So when I told him the tale he gazed in wonderment and asked whether we could play that game and would I take the part of Professor Higgins. “Well you’re neither a lady, and your hair and complexion’s a bit light for this rôle, my little bantam chick” I answered, “but I don’t suppose I’d be terribly good at being Professor Higgins either. I suggest that you just stay as Barney without the Rubble and I’ll just be John without The Sir. Let’s put all we’ve got into this project to see how far we can take it. It may not work, but rest assured we’ll have a lot of fun along the way.”

A few more little hops, and all of a sudden my little bantam has grown into a strapping young man, and we’re in Cambridge Shire Hall, the nerve centre of the County of Cambridgeshire, the fastest growing county in the UK, which operates a dual world system of administrative realities. One of them is a paper world where everything is strict, magnificent and correctly managed. In this world the Citizenship Ceremony is managed with an opulence which reflects the past glory of the British Empire. Places are allocated, names are taken and everything falls into place with precision split-second timing. Messages are left on my answering phone that I may bring an extra guest, adding that everything is laid on for the wheelchair user. The car park attendant will show us to a Disability Parking Slot, where-after we’ll be directed to the Service Floor and Lifts.

But in the real world of concrete not paper it’s cold and wet with driving drizzle and slippery steps. There’s an amiable but jobs-worthy car park attendant who doesn’t seem to know what a Mayor is. I’m chilled and raw and I’m waiting right at the bottom of a flight of stone steps, which is as much of a nightmare for wheelchair users as it’s always been.

The ceremony is received deep in the Inner Chamber of the Hive, where The Queen or Her authorized portrait receives the citizens of foreign lands, citizens who through associative contact with the UK have fed and grown, worked and turned themselves into plump budding pupæ, ready to hatch into fresh, opulent British Citizens.

The Hive is vibrant and buzzing now, mainly with the background hum of Musac which the Master of Ceremonies adjusts with his volume knob. A friend and I la-la along with it and receive a slight scowl from one of The Suits. We’re evidently not supposed to celebrate by voice until the National Anthem begins. After to-ing and fro-ing with some official worried looks when the Mayor and his wife appeared to be late, we begin. Citizens all have to exit to divide into two groups. One is for those who want to Swear their allegiance to Her Majesty and the other’s for the swarm who find that quietly affirming their intention is enough. The Musac rises to a volume sufficient to cause a few members to dab their eyes, everyone says their name —Barney’s warble is especially clear— and the new pupæs’ skins are popped as they duly emerge from their cases, eyes and skin shiny, iridescent and a little moist.

A cup o’ tea and a biscuit together with a chat from the Mayor is enough to harden their tender skins and drones, workers and future politicians are ejected out like popcorn from the warmth of the Hive out into the driving November drizzle. The ritual and the ordeal has past, we’re heading home, preparing to have a celebratory meal and put our heads down for the night. Sooner or later he’ll find that waking up British is much the same as waking up as anybody else...

Away from the cocooned warmth of the hive where he was swaddled with Musac and ritual, Barney must now pursue the hunt for the his own queen. Or she for him, as he may well soon find out!

L → R: Mr Adam Mars-Jones, The Mayoress, Barney and The Mayor