Some Are Different. Some Are More Different than Others.

Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different by Karen Blumenthal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These days if someone told you to “Think Different” you'd probably get no raised eyebrows, but if you'd said the same thing ten or twelve years ago you'd have raised quite a flock, and probably gained a few admonishments as well. It was bad grammar in those days because you were supposed to think different-ly.
Yet this article isn't about grammar books or anything like that : It's the advertising slogan launched by a computer company called Apple. And it was in Autumn 1997. The educationalists threw up their hands at the incorrectness of it all, never once pausing to take a closer look at how cute and clever the phrase was.

I didn’t know this, and now I know it I’m really glad I do, along with all the other factoids about Steve Jobs and his Apple Company. I have never owned any Apple product, and after reading this book I think I’m less inclined to go in for one than I was before starting it. Chiefly because almost every one of his products had some glaring fault, each of which happened to work against me — and my disability — in a direct way.

For some reason Mr Jobs hated the CD drawer on computers, so he removed it, to outcries from Apple owners. The same had happened earlier with the floppy disc drive (at that time users were heavily dependent on them). Then later on he then decided that he didn’t like cursor keys (arrow keys) on Apple keyboards. They are the keys which enable you to nudge your cursor up or down the lines, or left and right within the line so you can position it exactly where you want. They were removed without so much as a ‘by your leave’ with even greater outcries from faithful users, all on Mr Jobs’s whim. So far all the things he detested have been things which make my life far easier.

So why did a man’s products, which went so much against the grain against much of what customers wanted become the owner of one of the wealthiest corporations in the world with a customer loyalty base which verged and often over-tipped into the devotional?* And why did I find the Steve Jobs story so riveting, to the extent that I completely lost track of time?

As the tale moved on, my own and Jobs's visions drifted further and further apart. Jobs envisaged phones and electronic gadgets becoming intimately interwoven into our personal lives until their presence separate from the body-mind complex lost all distinction. The final step was his conviction that Apple gadgets should be built with no on/off switch. As the gadgets should be woven into the warp and woof of our life pattern, so too should their 'consciousness' never fall deeper than slumber.

Steve Jobs developed symptoms of pancreatic cancer which he initially tried to bully away in typical autocratic style, (initially with a shot of pethidine in the bum). At one point he'd lie about his condition by informing share holders that it had been cured, a story which aficionados and the markets must have swallowed whole. Certainly the lie prevented Apple stock from taking a nose-dive. The tiny Islets of Langerhans are, however, immune to bluster, genius and deception. Despite the best which modern medicine can do, carcinogenic spores infiltrated every cell of this phenomenal, maddening and brilliant billionaire. In the final weeks of his life, Steve receives a visit from his old friend and colleague Bill Gates and the two spend 3 hours reminiscing on old times.

Towards the end Mr Steve debated, deep within the labyrinth of his madcap genius mind, whether God existed or not, deciding that the odds must be 50:50. On balance though he thought it was more likely that it was like an on/off switch and that at the end we simply winked out of existence just as we’d once winked in. Maybe that’s why I never wanted an off-on switch on any of my devices, he chortled, and I had a little laugh too, even if it wasn’t for quite the same reason.

I found this a rivetting read, without being sure why.


*Because Windows' operating system is so awful?

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Yes I Was Haunted

The Last Talk with Lola Faye by Thomas H. Cook

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Yes I was Haunted ~ The Last Talk with Lola Faye

Just when I was congratulating myself that I no longer had anything to do with Kindle's Daily Deal I took a wee peek and saw that today's offering was the usual waffle-and-maple-syrup fare. Nice when you bite into it, but then you read the label more closely and see that it's only 10% real maple-syrup and the waffle mix had far too much bicarb in and you swear you're never going to eat one of those again.
   What I didn't suspect was that the label to this packet had a little Alice Door in it. The book didn't interest me really. I could easily prove it by downloading the free sample just to prove how right I was. The sample arrived, remarkably quickly too considering it was Kindle PaperWhite with its 'free 3G' which is so grotty it's almost a Con.

The Haunting ~
Hauntings are sneaky, let's not mince our words about this. They target the unwary. They're worse than that little old aunty who's no trouble to anyone, and whom you'd hardly know was there - at least that's the line she feeds you when she's touting for somewhere to stay.
   The second line such aunties feed you is that they don't eat enough to keep a little bird alive. It's true, unfortunately. They don't. They Nibble. They nibble at the the tastiest bit of pie which you were saving for later; they pull off knobs of cottage loaves and start into fresh blocks of cheese. They eat so many corners off rectangular food items you're left with little but curves and sculpted sweeps. You never really see them at it, until you could swear you're going to the shops far more often than you used to, and your weekly total food bill has crept way above inflation.

Double Disguise
Imagine that you'd dressed for an evening out at The Theatre. You're going to see Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and it's going to be your fourth time. You've selected your fondest, wistfullest, yeah bestest outfit in your wardrobe as you've heard it said that the new actress playing Blanche Dubois is Something Else. That's why you've gone to so much trouble trouble dressing.
  When you get to the Stage you find you're right. Spot on..
   Except that in this tale, Blanche isn't quite Blanche, is she? This lady who's described as drab, humdrum, shabby, a mere redneck girl, seems to have got a remarkably pointed mind, even if she gets it from the boring show Dragnet, or the magazine article she half read while waiting to see the doctor.
   If Lola Faye backwater education makes her perception little more than a rusty blade, it's evident to me at least that one one of those hicks sure got the knack of brewing poky cider vinegar to use in knife sharpening. When Lola Faye's blade is dipped in this acerbic brew, the knife becomes insidious. Yet she always remains the shabby, dowdy stacker girl who just asks a question or two. To clear things up, considering it's going to be their Last Talk.

Columbo Niggles
Before I knew it, I found that Lola Faye was creeping under my skin. Like chiggers*, it was hell to live with, but Heaven when I scratched it. And I did plenty of that. Lola Faye made her shabby entrance into my slumber, dropped a few words and made to leave. "Come Back!" I called. "Read on then!" came the rejoinder. Which was exactly what I did. At 4.10 am, with my cup of hot Darjeeling and my cooling fan, I read on, sipping until daybreak when I heard a voice through the window telling me my hot water was ready and it was time to bathe.
   My day's schedule was full and there'd be no time for Lola Faye today. Except after bathing and being swadled, there seemed little harm in slipping out a hand to peek at the Kindle. Especially when it tells you you've got 10 minutes remaining until you reach the end of the chapter, when she jacks out that there's 'just one more thing.'

*Chiggers don't really get under your skin. They just itch, making sure it's you who does the scratching. As well as the blame for the ensuing sepsis.

Home Sick
Dammit, I'm going to miss her, the shabby backwoods girl who educates herself from magazines and TV shows. Never has a humdrum character with such an exotic name made so much impression on me; without revealing too much of her own story, Lola Faye manages to expose ever increasing piles of evidence against the protagonist Luke.  Luke whom we're supposed to sympathise with. Our taste buds somehow grow against him and we warm to Lola, even as we also admit that we don't know why.
   It all seems so complete, so done-and-dusted, until we're almost convinced we had a peek of Lieutenant Colombo's tatty overcoat under that frumpy dress of hers.

Epilogue
This little review was written using the Android App called "NoteStacks" I'd been trying to use it for months now and felt perplexed because I didn't really understand it. I only had that unshakeable "This-Is-Good" feeling. By the time I'd reached the 'use or chuck it' stage I wrote to its developer in frustration. He replied very quickly with a few hints which got me up-and-running straight away. After I'd written 100 lines on This Is Yet Another App I thought "Time to do Something Proper with it".
    Yes, it passes muster. The Android App, and The Book too.



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Liked by Many — Adored by Me

People Like Us by Doug Cooper-Spencer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Life is nothing if not full of extremes, and at the beginning of the scale, what can beat the painful smelly business of being born? An early memory for me is white-coated men carrying tinkly trays of little bottles. Motley smells would waft along with them as they marched past. Some of those phials contained ether, and if I leaned towards them, provided the corridor draught was in my favour I’d feel my soul ascending on its path to Cloud Nine, all sweet and echoey, even if it wasn’t long before another man, this time carrying badly-stoppered phials of human waste pulled me back down to the scatole-laden vapours with a snap.

Yet no lasting enjoyment is ever truly known by ups or downs. Let’s wind the clocking forward to a time when the aromas carry a far more gentle hue, softly tinted with ochre browns and chestnut golds. Autumn is the time which greets my eyes and ears these days. The earlier tantrums are mostly over and the other kids have stopped laughing at my toilet jokes. The tang of hormones, love and crushes is making its entrance and I mopily empathise with Jane Eyre or Richardson’s girl-servant Pamela.

I mooch about in bookshops, touching and sniffing the books I can reach, and yearning for the ones I can’t. And there’s always that smell, of brown and gold and August, or the fusty waft of churches. Village bookshops were the first to arrive, then David’s in Cambridge for second-hand volumes, or even the palatial Heffers. They say it was all started by a Reverend with a loan of just fifty quid. They also say Bowes and Bowes is far better!

Then bones and muscles grew older as the books gained years and weight and before too long the reading habit declined with the burgeoning weight of paper books, only to rise again in 2010 with the birth of the Kindle — that magic grey ingot which sucked any number of books out of the ether and placed them on a screen for me to read. They whispered in feather-like and whether they were a Mills & Boone Romance or the Complete Shakespeare, they all weighed exactly the same. They all weighed nothing, that Magic Number which is both the marvel of mathematicians and refuge of the mystics. Kindles don’t really have a smell but if you were to dip a joss stick in water and light it while it’s wet, the smouldering sandal-and-cow-dung powder would give you a pleasing aroma not far off from the old leather-bound tomes, or at least they’d give an idea of what a Kindle would smell like.

Samples are downloaded. I take a look the publisher to see if a table of contents has been included, or whether any images are recalled. Canongate is good — but do watch out for the odd wasp in the ointment there; Icon Books — not bad; Bloomsbury — pretty safe as long as it’s not Harry Potter or other kids’ stuff—Mr Creecher was painful; Faber — not bad at all, and they’ve got a nice thick medical tap root in their soul. Gollancz: Even though they’ve lost that plain yellow dust jacket, I’m pretty much a fan, even if the new stuff does get pretty scary. If there’s no publisher, then I’m very wary indeed. Why ever not? If they’re that good, you’d’ve thought they’d’ve been picked up by now.

This was the factor which initially prevented me from purchasing This Place of Men by Doug Cooper Spencer. I felt its price was steep. Yet never have I been so pre-judgmental, never so cautious in making my purchase, and never have I been as delighted as when on that unforgettable morning I pressed the download button for this book and began to read it. I didn’t warm to it gradually, I didn’t find my protective shell of withering ice gradually softening ….what happened wasn’t even some mid-point between these extremes. For me, it was... Well let’s say that were this book a pavement and I was taking a stroll on its cover, a crack opened between the flagstones and I suddenly fell right down into the gap. I was Alice in Fiction Land, except that the roles were reversed. It was all so very real for me. The lovely Terrell with his good wife Karen and her spiteful sister Tess, their huggable kids Kenya and Abassi. Karen with her Director of Studies and the beautiful troubled student Luther — all were people I felt as if I knew. Even though they all bore their own weight, I continued to feel, on my second visit, welcome to be the invisible budgie perching on their fictional shoulders, even if the problems they were undergoing were private, painful and nothing to do with me.

It’s a world of heart-break and pain. Terrell is a thoroughly good man and an excellent Dad to his children Kenya and Abassi and his wife Karen is caring and full of love too. Yet all this is spoiled by their church’s attitude to homosexuality. Somewhere in the murky past, the community church has worked its malice by splitting up the love between Terrell and his teenage chum Otis. Lovers in their mid- to late-teens with Terrell just six months younger, the Community Church hierarchy waits for Otis to reach the age of majority before pouncing on Otis who is taken to court where he serves a prison sentence for having an inappropriate relationship with a minor. Terrell is deeply programmed into changing his sexual orientation, and introduced to Karen, who’s to become his wife. I dropped into the world of the character and the Kindle disappeared, as did the mundane domestic chores I needed to attend to.

In an agonising sequence which sees Terrell chucked out by his wife (I know what that’s like!) he ends up renting a room in a poorer part of town, among the down-and-outs, hustlers and drug pushers. Bleak indeed compared to the plush home which he and Karen had built up over the years, with the cream filling of the children holding the sponge cake of the marriage together. Gone are the Sunday roasts with Terrell carving at the family table, gone the land line telephone and gone the car. In comes the draughty room with its bed-bugs and and their acrid whiff, the flickering shadeless light and the moody money-meter, economy buns, tinned baked beans and just-pour-hot-water snacks.

Memories of hardship always bring their smells back to me: Damp bedding, stale cigarettes and rotting tomatoes when the Soho veg market sweeps up its peelings at the close of the day, sparring with the thrill of the monthly cruise where the under-whiff of males in rut contrasts sharply with the sudden ammonia tang of the unzipped fly. The following day Terrell rises to survey the street from his window. Opposite doors are opening in other houses as commuters prepare to go to work, most by ’bus or tram and a few by car. Others like Terrell don’t go anywhere. He doesn’t have a job now. His three weeks of 50% compassionate retainers have now expired and he doesn’t have a job any more. Winkling a hermit crab out of its very own shell will have that effect. With no job and no respect any more his home diet is now one of scorn and ridicule, his new digs are unhappy and ill-fitting. The door opens opposite and an old lady lets out a middle-aged man and waves him good-bye. She doesn’t shut the door behind him but scans the street with her ancient X-Ray eyes. The street and its doors having passed her scrutiny she levels her gaze up a plane and inspects the windows. A friendly wave is made to Terrell who cautiously returns it.

What a nosey old so-and-so I think to myself, wondering what business it is of hers logging everybody in and out as they come and go about their own affairs, never thinking that in this new arena of loneliness there have to be events apart from the interminable telly, the arranged fortnight of being allowed to take your own kids and the occasional street prowl when hunting for a mate for a few moments of ersatz affection and mutual sperm release. Returning home with cold bones and a starved heart, Terrell is seduced near his own front door by an aroma of something cooking. It sure smells good. A car comes home and parks and another wave is given to Terrell. Introductions take a little loner than usual. The smell of cooking increases as the door opens. It’s the nosey old biddy again, who is making something and seeing the two men in conversation she invites them up. Just stew and dumplings with a bit of leftover veg, she says, but she’s made a bit too much and would he like to join them? Who feels the cut of a sharp pang of guilt at writing off the lady opposite as a ‘nosey old biddy?’? It certainly isn’t Terrell who hasn’t got that kind of blood in his veins, so it must be he reader and the reader is me, I only am the one who needs to learn to tread far more carefully through the story, even if the author writes it and the reader gives it life.

15/11/12 Many days now have passed since I first read this tale. At some point I dipped in again to note the beginning. As the story unfolded I noticed little details, marvelling at how I’d missed them the first time. Before I knew, again I’d reached the end. I saw details I’d never noticed before, felt sad yet also there was hope. Before I knew it I had reached the end again. Now the final volume waits for me. I think I’ll begin it when I’m settled back into my nest in India, stretching in the warmer mists, a bag full of electronics and reading material at my side. I think it could be rather painful, yet pain is something which I’ve come to know, is not a thing to be avoided or welcomed. It has to be taken as it is. If any weight can be lightened by helping to carry Terrel’s burden I, the humble reader, will gladly take my share.









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The Vanishing Girl

I’ve seen it happen so many times, it shouldn’t surprise me, disturb me or affect me in any way, and yet it always does. I’m thinking of the vanishing Indian girls I have met over time. Here in the West we see see them growing up in the usual way. The fits, the starts, the moods, the dresses, the parties. They stamp their feet and scream “I hate you” before storming up to their rooms. You know it’s all fine when that happens. At least that’s what I’m told that happens, in a circuitous kind of way, over here in the land of the setting sun..

Nadhaswaram
Courtesy The Hindu

Yet in rural India it’s all very different. When the girl goes into puberty, a lot of things start to happen very quickly, not only within the complicated chemical circuitry of her own body, but in the family body too there’s a whole load of frantic activity taking place. The family store room is raided for camphor, turmeric and kumkum red powder. There is great excitement generally as older sisters and carefully selected aunties are summoned to the family house. Senior male members gather together bundles of rupees and cycle or motor themselves to the out-caste village where the Drummers and Nadhaswaramare summoned to attend the house at 8 pm.

All through the night drummers are drumming and people are excitedly talking about the fact that the girl is now technically, biologically ready for marriage. Nothing is really going to happen, apart from all the clamour and excitement, but the gossip, even though marriage is a long way off, is mostly about who the husband might be. Nothing is known, nobody usually knows as only a few days earlier she was a girl, but over here, people will speculate further down down the road. The more uncertainty there is, there more is there talk, and when eventually a husband is decided upon, even more village talk is generated, most likely all about the nest of future uncertainties this might create.

I wake up groggily from such interrupted and clanging sleep, worried at what it must be like for the poor girl who has been kept awake all night, seated in the small throne they have created for her. I need to go to see her, for the last few minutes she is with us. I approach the throng and the crowd gives way as I approach to have a look. She smiles a little wanly at me and asks if I am all right. I return the courtesy, asking if she got any sleep, even though I know she didn’t. She is really fazed by now. She’s getting ready to boost herself into another bout of false, second wakeful day, a day which is to be her first as well as her last.

Aunties, sisters and cousins suddenly appear to be thick upon the ground. Gathering thicker and thicker they begin to swarm and cluster round her. The men are thinning out. You begin to notice that they are paying their respects and beginning to walk away and go about their duties. It’s time for me to pay mine and I look upon her for the last time ever. Childhood memories flood into my mind, and perhaps they do into hers as well. She rushes forward for a hug, which I return as best I can before giving her a peck on the cheek and wishing her good luck: a select gaggle of women will be gathering round her now, making preparations to take her completely away.

And then something very mysterious happens. She’s carried off to an unknown place, known only to a few select female relatives. She will be moved to this secret location for 3 or 4 days. No man is allowed to know any detail of the process which will be taking place. The women are so tight-lipped about what happens during those few days, you couldn’t slide in a sheet of rice paper, and even if you could the moisture from the lips would turn it gradually to pap and only form a tighter seal.

When she makes her return to society the little girl has gone. The walk is different, the entire body-language, the dress the face itself. From the inside out she has gone and in her place stands a confident young woman who will greet you in Namaskaram. From this point on, she will tend to shun the company of men, and all her dealings with them will be in a lighter, firmer, altogether more respectful mode. It leaves you feeling kind of stunned, until you start to look at other folks. Any hunt for the ones you knew may well end in failure. No-one’s quite the same. Society is changing in every direction. Nothing remains the same for very long.

Our Hilarious Monarchy

The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish by Christopher Hitchens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One day early in the morning I was feeling ever more broody as I mooned around the landscape of my Kindle. I’d been clicking and sniffing between books I could read next, in that horrible in- betweeny mood in which I found myself. I’d just finished reading the second volume of an excellent trilogy and I needed a break, a breather, a period of recuperation and recharge before plunging into the explosive third volume and it was in this ‘need a short, sharp break’ frame of mind that I browsed my 5-way button to The Monarchy ~ A Critique by Christopher Hitchens, for no particular reason apart from the need for a total change. By the time I’d reached the end of the free sample I was chortling away as I hadn’t done for many a merry month and rarely have I clicked that ‘buy’ button with such eagerness. ‘After all,’ I reasoned to myself, ‘£1.49’s just over what I paid for a pint of IPA draught at the local when I moved to this village 30 years ago.’

So without further ado let’s take a look at the The ‘News’ presented as if it’s set in stone. As Christopher Hitchens (1949—2011) writes: “We know that this strident, bombastic noise is a subliminal appeal to think of ‘News’ as part drama, part sensation and part entertainment”. The beauty of this opiated numbing show is that you never know whether your trip is going to be good or bad. The same thrumming monumental brass rhythms will tell us either that the Queen Mother has got a fish bone lodged in her throat, or that we’ve just severed diplomatic relations with Iraq. YOU are left to decide which item carries the greater weight.

Already long, our Prince's face lengthens
even more as the news worsen

Chris (Yes, let’s hob-nob for a bit!) invites us to look at absurdities like the ‘Investiture’ of Royalties which to most of us mean a lot if we don’t think about them, but examined closely they amount to absolutely nothing. Just look at this on the myth of the ‘Investiture’: “The official guide to the ceremony dissolves in contradiction here, because it says of the sacral moment that it comes from Zadok the priest, who anointed Solomon as King of the Jews, and that the ceremony follows the old Saxon ritual, and that the moment is to be accompanied by the singing of Handel.”

The more we bring our pet-theories into the light, the more threadbare, nay mendacious our propaganda seems. ‘Invisible earnings’ may indeed be comforting dummies to suck in times of crisis, but in these days of costing everything up why do the powers that be seem incapable of coming up with an estimate? And while we’ve revelling in contradictions, what exactly is this ‛special relationship’ which we apparently hold with the USA? — What does it amount to? In these days of costing everything up, listing and categorising every aspect of our lives, which boxes does it tick? And what exactly is the ‘unseen hand’ of the money market?

The End of This Post
Back-chatter :
End, what do you mean, ‘End’? Monarchies and Dreams don’t have an 'End'. They dissipate in the morning mist when the sun rises, only to re-form with the coming of the night. Monarchies keep folks dreamy, happy ready to chase the rainbow to its end.

Think Barbara Taylor Bradford, man, finish with all this Woman of Substance fantasy and begin to Hold That Dream. Never mind about subscribing to The Sun or Mail, just keep to the news for your daily fix. Suck the curate’s egg of the ice-cream cone, starting with the sickly raspberry ripple and the tang of the lemon twist. Lick your way through the chilled artery-clogging fat of the ice cream and don’t stop until you reach the sickly nugget of treacle at the end. Worry not, you’re in the Ukay. Just keep taking the tablets and watching The News.... Dang, dang, Dang 16/08/12 13:51:10 Stop Press (Dissected) (1) The Duke of Edinburgh has been admitted to hospital because of a bladder infection. (2) This is just a routine and it’s giving no cause for concern. (3) He’ll be in for a few days he’s receiving intravenous antibiotics. In juxtaposition to this we’re asked to also know that: (a) The Duke is 91 years old and it’s always serious at this age. (b) (Invisibly: He obviously can’t swallow tolerate tablets, hence the anti-bio’s) (c) This is the 3rd time he’s been in hospital in the past 9 months, the first time being before Christmas when he was admitted because of a heart problem 20/08/12 06:24:36 The Duke is having to spend a fifth day in hospital. Remember it’s (a) Just routine and nothing to worry about. (b) He isn’t allowed any visitors (Only one telephone call from The Queen so far) (c) If the stay extends to a sixth night, there will then bee ‘cause for concern’ Despite their apparent longevity, (Long-faced Prince) Monarchies are really a transient and ephemeral phenomenon which are lent their solidity solely by the careful presentation of choreographed images flashed onto our retinas, much in the way that ‘movement’ in a movie is really a sequence of still images. The images presented here now need to be frozen in aspic, at a time when very little appears to have happened. Let’s keep in that way before the routine of the fifth day lapses into the concern of the sixth. If it gets to that, matters will be a little more serious than the tragedy of our Duke missing The Boxing Day Shoot of Christmas 2011. Hurried Royal Notes scribbled frantically as I try to close this blog entry (again). I blink my eyes awake after a late night, first carefully checking my limbs and hair to see whether I’ve woken up as Nicholas Witchell. Fortunately I haven’t, as my hairs have no trace of gold or red in them, they’re just showing me an agéd grey and I’ve woken up as me, the same me as I’ve always been:

Will The Duke have to miss the
Boxing Day Shoot?

(** Prince Philip has been taken to Papworth Hospital rather than a local cottage hospital. Rather. Rather. What on earth do they mean “rather”. There is no RATHER about it! Cottage hospital are totally incapable of inserting stents into a coronary artery. Papworth Hospital is the main, the only hospital in the area which is capable of performing the procedure.) STOP PRESS: The Queen’s corgis have got into a scrap with Princess Beatrice’s dog Max. I don’t think I can stand any more of this. Off with them, all you get out of my sight! Mad Hatter, I call to you. Please make yourself welcome in my house any time you want...


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Killi’s Very Civil Ceremony ~ A Sweep Through Time

 About 20 years ago, in some middle of nowhere track in India I met an eleven-year-old boy who said his name was Killi. Killi attended (from time to time) the local village school and his favourite lesson was called... Truant. “It’s simple,” he explained to me, “School is about learning things, and when I go to class I learn nothing, apart from the fact that the teacher either isn’t there or doesn’t do anything when he is. Even were he to beat a boy one day, we’d all have a little entertainment spiced with our resentment, but more often than not he can’t even be bothered to do that. He just tells us to carry on studying.”

Not Really 11

It wasn’t long before Killi’s lost the isolation of his Jungle adventures. “After all” added a school-chum, you need to have a buddy with you in case of snakes.    “And I suppose my parents would miss me” said Killi in reply. “More like they’d miss someone lugging jars of water from the village tap at 3.00” a.m. grumbled his mate Vibhu. You know  how we stand in there in all weathers keeping each others’ places in the queue before grabbing a bit more sleep until we go to attend classes that aren’t there!” Killi simply didn’t reply to this, but he welcomed the company nonetheless, and soon there was a gaggle of four or five boys playing hooky as they explored the jungle nearby.

In the course of time, Killi and his mates would come back with many things, mostly Nellikai or wild gooseberries, their ragged pockets bulging with the hard green fruits along with string and unprotected razor blades. These became a currency with the boys as they emerged from the forest, sharing them round, but only with kids who were prepared to do other work in return. I swear these children had several sets of eyes. They’d shared and bagged the prestigious job of pushing the wheelchair, so I would use this free form of locomotion to explore as much of the mountainside as I could with wheels permitting. It wasn’t long before I’d scream out NIL (STOP!) because I’d seen a wiggle of movement under some plant and ordered them to bring it to me. Astonishingly, most boys were terrified of some of the creepies like bristly devil-headed caterpillars, advising me to be careful and not to touch. Persuading the diábolo to leave its stalk and wander along my hand while I blew mock kisses in its direction. That raised my social status even more, and I must admit I much enjoyed the power which was heaped upon me.

It wasn’t long before my room was filling up with bugs, millipedes and inch-worms, not to mention the odd sweet-jar which contained soil and ant lions, and occasionally a flower-pot snake or two. As the specimens poured in I soon realised that I was biting off more than I could chew, or indeed feed. And what is more I saw that all this gathering and collecting “for John” had very little to do with me until the small runnel of regular absenteeism from the village school turned into a river. John would be well and truly in the spot-light if it was traced to him!

It Was Like This: Thanks Getty!

Matters came to a head one day when I found that unasked, a boy had cycled a further 12 miles into the depth of the jungle and came pedalling furiously back.  He presented me with a live chameleon he had captured there and thought I’d like to keep it as a pet. A live chameleon was something I’d never met face-to-face before; I’d always wanted one as a child and now my wish had been granted in a quite unexpected way. Even so, I had a strange surge of emotions sweeping through me at the moment; Deeply touched that a boy had cycled so far on my behalf and that he’d correctly guessed what I would love. At yet at the age of 44, I’d also learned that the creature would be thoroughly accustomed to the deeper jungle world which was his home that very morning. After giving the boy a hug of thanks, I told him that it could not be.

On opening the little box, the lizard had done its utmost to convince me that it was a Fischer-Price Plastico-rubbery toy which had pipe cleaners embedded in its limbs. The creature seemed frozen & dead, but after leaving it alone a little it started to move jerkily and roll those googly eyes. The boy pleaded for me to keep it but I explained through my friend that back home in Tiruvannamalai the conditions were totally different. There wasn’t the humidity and the greenery there, and even if he lived he would never find a mate. Without his jungle cover he’d soon become a target for a hungry crow and rat, or perhaps he’d simply die to have his flesh picked off by ants. I think that of all the futures I saw, that was the saddest possibility.

Killi With Brother Ramana

And then one day he decided to clean my floor with a brush, push the chair even more and make my breakfast. Jungle adventures were left behind as time’s broom swept us all on. I missed him sorely when I returned to England I determined   I would bring him, with his brother, to help me throughout the year. Inevitable difficulties followed, the most formidable of which were the Home Office Dragons who made it an almost forgone conclusion that entry to the UK would be referred. “Highly unlikely” was the term used in their letter to my MP.

Surprise followed on from surprise. Who knows what happened in the intervening years. Somewhere along the road that chameleon lizard must have traded places with an axolotl. In the course of leaving the watery humid jungle a veritable dragon has emerged to begin his life as a fully-fledged UK Citizen.

Killi's UK Welcome Ceremony.

 In the picture, in front of the portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, we see Killi with the High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, Penelope Walkinshaw as well as Councillor John Powley. Killi has just received his Certificate of Nationality.

"YOU" ~ It Had Its Moments

You by Joanna Briscoe

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Sat Jul 28 09:06:41 BST 2012
    I need a little bit of intrigue in a book to give me the energy to read through the following acres of prose. Unless the prose itself has such entrancing properties that I can wallow in it at any and any point, I invariably I need bribing. I'm a fish who's too lazy to swim any distance unless somebody's dangling a worm on a hook to pull me through, and the first little worm was the snippet that a school-girl has a raving crush on the English master, whilst her mother  carries on her first lesbian affair with the English master's wife. What a delightful set of ingredients, I thought. With those items loaded into my trolley it wouldn't matter too much at the checkout which plot I selected from the range dangling on their hooks for to select. If plots were sweets, Maltesers would guarantee a thoroughly enjoyable read.

     However, I noticed that the Publisher was Blooms bury and they are a firm with whom I feel that (despite the fact that they do the Harry Potter series and are consequently swimming in far too much money) you can hardly go wrong. My prayer that Maltesers would be the dangle-plot for Ms Briscoe to adopt were swept aside as I looked for something more obscure. I needed a sweet I quite enjoyed as a child but wasn't really sure about. Something like marzipan which I convinced myself I would love once I'd become a proper grown-up. Newberry Fruits sprang to mind. They were a sugar-crusted jelly in lime, orange and lemon and they had a liquid centre which gushed all over your tongue when you bit into them. For some reason I fancy I'd plumped for those. Or had they been pre-selected for me?

     I slogged and groaned over this book, wading heavily through the chick-litty e-pages, which stayed drearily parochial at their best or navel gazing at their worst, not that I have anything against deep contemplation. But you are, I feel, to come to an inner peace, love and understanding when you do that.

     It dragged on and on. I kept looking for something else to do, something tantalizing to read, and managed to get myself thinking, madly, that if I left it alone for a bit it would somehow have magically have read itself on a bit further. The Siren whispers advised me to dump it as there was plenty else for me to enjoy. But I don't do that, and at the time I firmly believed that 'proper readers' simply didn't do it. Nonetheless, by the time I’d reached the halfway mark I was as teed-off as ever and sorely tempted to dump it as 'failed to finish'. When a book does that with me it's in serious trouble.

     It perked up quite a bit at the 60% mark and I sailed through the batch of pages, deciding that I was quite enjoying it really, and that it had reached the 'all forgiven' point, as long as it kept up the pace and didn't slacken its hold. Something more needed to be dangled on the hook now, and I demanded a diet of shrimps followed on by succulent high fat low cholesterol Dublin Bay Prawns.

Unfortunately there was no tasty diet. In true seventies style I found I was munching my way through a slice of wholemeal mung-bean pie, and all I really got was he ocular equivalent of jaw ache. As the story dragged its fuggy hash fog, I began to care little what or who Cecilia’s mystery baby was and by the end of the novel, despite the occasional description which held me captivated, I found that I simply couldn’t care less.


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