Welcome to Weevil Scum

I noticed today, with no small amount of shame, that it’s been a year since I left India, to restart life in the UK. So I haven’t posted for almost a year. And what a year it’s been. This time 12 months ago I was living in a hellhole in Delhi, having a frankly miserable time, choking on the thick and noxious smog, fighting with the locals over Harley the Wonder Dog’s negligible contributions to the vast amount of shit everywhere, and wishing I was somewhere else.

Anyway, eventually I found my way back to the UK, and in particular to a quiet corner of west Somerset, and a little town I call Weevil Scum. Which has been nothing short of a revelation.

Weevil Scum is a gorgeous little town, nestled in the lee of the Brendon Hills, hard by the sublime Quantocks and only a couple of miles from Exmoor, and then the coast. It’s the highest town in Somerset, and is surrounded by rolling fields of grass, studded with sheep and cows. We overlook the town from our eyrie in a Victorian gothic tower, and all we can see is green. In our grounds are foxes and badgers, deer and polecats. Owls and buzzards flit by, woodpeckers and pheasants haunt the undergrowth. The woods are full of ancient trees and sparkling streams.

Harley, Hammer of the Dogs, and our house, and the moon

I walk the dog for a couple of hours every day, across magnificent landscapes with views to the sea, broad meadows and coppices, along ancient drovers’ roads and past chestnut hedgerows: I hardly ever meet anyone else. Then I usually end up in the town, for a restorative pint of local cider in the local pub. It is as close to perfection as I can possibly imagine.

Weevil Scum itself is a constant source of delight: it has practically everything a person might need. Within 100 metres of the town square are two pubs, a Chinese takeaway, a chip shop, a curry house and the certified best restaurant in Somerset.

There are two small supermarkets, a chemist, a post office, a hardware store and a fabulous butcher. Oh, and a charity shop, an estate agent, a launderette and a library. There’s also a swimming pool, a tennis club, rugby and cricket clubs, and no end of societies: brass bands and arts festivals, dance classes and meditation and yoga evenings. There’s even a foreign film night, every Sunday. There are two schools, one of which has a community radio station that seems to play nothing but live Stevie Ray Vaughan. Oh, and seven or eight local bands. For a town with a population of 2,800, it is truly staggering.

The local population is divided between older types, and farmers: ancient mud-caked Land Rovers are the most common form of transport, and the biggest shop in town is the gun shop. Which I find cool.

The Ten Parishes, of which Weevil Scum is part, consists of Ashbrittle, Bathealton, Brompton Ralph, Chipstable, Clatworthy, Fitzhead, Huish Champflower, Milverton, Stawley and Wiveliscombe: can you imagine anything more euphonious?

We’ve started to make friends: having a dog helps, as does being generally personable. I still miss Cambodia – India not so much, yet – but Weevil Scum is magical. Come down and see us!

Oh, to be in England

I started this blog, some six years ago, when I moved to Cambodia, with nothing more in mind, really, than to avoid having to write postcards to friends and family.

I’ve kept at it fitfully in the years since, poking affectionate fun at the foibles of wherever I’ve been, mostly, as well as irritating insane French paedophiles. But, for the last few months, I’ve taken a break from living abroad, and have recently installed myself, Harley the Wonder Dog and Blossom the Fragrant Wife, deep in the countryside of Somerset.

We’re now far from the gently perfumed tropical evenings of Southeast Asia; countless miles from the arid beauty of the Himalayas; a long way from Phnom Penh and Delhi and Bangkok and Vientiane. And so far we’re loving it.

But as I rambled through the thick red Somerset mud and the horrendous April drizzle this afternoon with Harley the Hammer of the Dogs shivering at the end of his leash, it occurred to me that I could probably to continue to write this here; occasionally at least. It’s still a culture shock, being back in the UK, despite the ubiquity of Radio 4, and builders’ tea, and crumpets, and reasonably well-spoken English.

We’re a long way, still, from grisly Shepherds Bush and stabby London generally, from taking the Tube and paying six quid a pint. It’s incredibly beautiful here, with (so far) lovely people, a solid community spirit, wild animals lurking in every bush: almost everything you could need.

So I thought I might occasionally write down some passing thoughts, on how it is to live deep in the English countryside. It’s certainly not as exotic as Cambodia, or as weird, but it is still different. Of course, if anyone thinks this is a crappy idea, just let me know and I’ll pull the plug.

But, as Robert Browning had it:

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!

 

 

The good, the bad and the ugly

In much the same way as the A23 is thought to be the best thing about south London, because it’s the quickest way out, I’m thinking that Indira Gandhi International Airport is the best thing about Delhi. I’ve been struggling to think of positive things to think about the city, and coming up with very little. The pollution is insane, the traffic pestilential, the built environment horrid, and the denizens of the East Bengal Displaced Persons Colony are, to a man, miserable frowny dog-hating killjoys with bad attitudes and a full-blown tendency to try and run you over or rip you off.

Among the good things I’ve found, however, are the local ironing men, who occupy little patches between parked cars, and press clothes. Using a vast iron filled with hot coals, they’ll smooth out anything, beautifully, for peanuts. And I love the mobile stalls selling fresh fruit and vegetables, every few yards in the evenings, which are also amazingly cheap. I worked out the other day I can buy a dozen bananas and get eight shirts beautifully ironed, all for £1. Which even I can’t complain about.

Other things that have made me smile include the following:

This notice, carefully painted on every side of a lavatory on a practically disused railway station near here seems otiose, to say the least. Because the gate is padlocked shut. Nevertheless, someone has gone to the trouble of painting the word ‘abandoned’ four times, neatly, in two colours, just in case anyone was tempted to climb over and relieve themselves, which, judging from many peoples’ bathroom habits here, is an unlikely prospect.

Or this mission statement from Delhi’s magnificently missing-in-action police force:

This seems a little, I don’t know, half-hearted? It could just as easily say “A step towards … being slightly better than useless.” Or “We’re not much good … but we might be one day.”

The other day I was out walking the dog through the grotty streets, when a man appeared and started remonstrating with me, because he alleged that Blossom had earlier allowed Harley, the Hammer of the Dogs, to crap on a garbage-strewn pile of rubble within sight of his ‘cloting shop.’ (He genuinely had not.) I mildly suggested that instead of bothering me, he go back from whence he came and resume the act of sexual congress with his mother, and he had to be pulled off me by passers-by.

But there is no doubt that many Indian men have a curious relationship with their mothers. Without further comment, I give you this:

‘Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is the author of a new book that uses data on the world’s Google habits as an insight into national consciousness.

 ‘The number one Google search in India that starts “my husband wants …” is “my husband wants me to breastfeed him.” Porn featuring adult breastfeeding is higher in India than anywhere else. In just about every country, just about every Google search looking for advice on breastfeeding is looking how to breastfeed a baby. In India, Google searches looking for breastfeeding advice are about equally split between how to breastfeed a baby and how to breastfeed a husband.’

 And that’ll probably do for today.

The stamp of authenticity

I’ve occasionally wondered why I don’t have a tattoo. You’d think that, being an amiable idiot, I would be a perfect candidate. But I’ve never seriously entertained the idea. I think it’s because I love the idea of being able to change my mind too much to be able to commit to anything that permanent (and they’re pretty ugly too). Over the years, I might well have had ink that celebrated Van Halen, marijuana leafs, the Om sign, Fender Stratocasters and Fulham Football Club. But nothing’s set in stone.

Every now and then, I consider getting one with a Gibson Les Paul being eaten by a flaming skull-shaped Cadillac, with lightning bolts. But not that much.

Occupying the hinterland between permanence and impermanence, for me, are rubber stamps. I once got over the border from Kenya to Tanzania by getting a geezer to fake a stamp to say I’d had a yellow fever vaccination. A great pal of mine was asked, on his first day in the territory, for a chop, by a postman in Hong Kong, and proceeded to karate chop the pile of mail. Oh, how we laughed.

But last week, I was walking past a stall that sold rubber stamps, and I decided to get one made. For a quid. The message I wanted immortalised was one that has held me in good stead since forever. I originally had it made as a badge with my last 50 pence at Reading Rock Festival in 1983, and it’s always worked for me as a motto

So I shelled out £1, and had the stamp made, and the next day I got this back:

 

Unless there is a spate of articles about immigrant birds into the UK, which is always a possibility with the Daily Mail, then that’s a quid down the drain. But you’ve gotta laugh. I certainly did. Anyone with a grievance against large grassland birds, I can do you a discount…

Democracy dies in Cambodia

Even though I don’t live in Cambodia any more, I still take a keen interest in what goes on there. I loved the precious little country, and am still amused, from a distance, by its cheerful venality and corruption.

Recent stories in what’s left of the English-language press in Cambodia have included these gems: ‘A Siem Reap deputy provincial prosecutor was released without charges last week after killing another motorist while allegedly driving under the influence and then trying to flee the scene. Deputy Prosecutor Samrith Sokhon drove his Lexus into a motorbike shortly after midnight … [dragging] the motorbike and driver almost 1,000 metres while trying to flee … Sokhon had been drinking. Despite all this, Sokhon was released, for reasons … influenced by his position. “After he crashed into the motorbike we arrested him and released him, because there was an understanding. Because we know him clearly; he works in the prosecutor’s institution.”’

And: ‘Police in Battambang province arrested an opposition CNRP official and sent him to the provincial court on accusations of illegal weapons possession, despite one officer admitting that they have not actually found the weapon he is accused of owning.’

But last week’s news that the Supreme Court of Cambodia has ordered the dissolution of the country’s main opposition party is, for me, practically the final nail in Cambodia’s coffin.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, often described as “pugnacious and dictatorial” is, in fact, one of the most evil men on the planet. In charge of the country since 1985, he is the world’s longest-serving prime minister, and one of the most corrupt, conscience-free, vicious, amoral, money-grubbing, self-serving tyrants ever to walk the earth.

The ruling effectively disenfranchises more than three million Cambodians who voted for the CNRP at local elections earlier this year, and clears the way for the ruling CPP to run unopposed at next year’s general election. In a televised address shortly after the ruling, Hun Sen said the court’s decision was based solely on the law, and promised that Cambodia would continue to “strongly adhere to democracy at the national level.” Cue the sound of hollow laughter.

This year Hun Sen has already arrested the head of the opposition, shut down one of the leading newspapers, kicked out American democracy-promotion groups, caused more than half the opposition politicians to flee the country and ranted, harassed and defamed the opposition. It would be inaccurate to call his party ‘the government’; it is, by any standard, a patronage network, and one from which he has cheerfully milked billions of dollars for himself and his family over the years.

Amnesty International called last week’s decision “a blatant act of political repression.” The International Commission of Jurists also attacked the ruling, noting that the president of the Supreme Court occupies a seat on Hun Sen’s party’s highest decision-making body, and is a close personal friend of the prime minister.

The international community has, since the early 1990s, spent tens of billions of dollars trying to make Cambodia a democracy. They might as well have gone out and just bought themselves a new hat, for all the good it’s done. Now, in response, the US says it will withdraw its funding from the Cambodian National Election Committee. Which will clearly have Phnom Penh quaking in its boots. Otherwise, nothing from the international community. Rather confusingly everybody’s favourite American, Donald Trump, has been cosying up to Hun Sen, who has clearly drawn inspiration from Trump’s playbook when it comes to his attitudes to the press, and to the truth.

China, on the other hand, has been supportive of the court’s decision. Over the past 15 years, Chinese cash has bankrolled bridges, highways, hydropower dams and property developments (although rarely schools or hospitals), entirely decoupled from demands for human rights or good governance. In exchange, Cambodia has been happy to be China’s poodle, and support China’s positions on a range of issues, from Taiwan and Xinjiang separatism to the South China Sea.

It’s like Eisenhower’s Domino Theory has come true: there now isn’t a genuine democracy anywhere in mainland Southeast Asia: Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos; now Hun Sen has extinguished the final beacon of democratic light in the region. It’s 2017, but things are getting increasingly dark in my favourite part of the world.

It hurts my very heart.

A Foggy Day (In Delhi Town)

Good God, but the air pollution here in Delhi is bad. Quite startlingly bad. I thought Hong Kong was pretty smoggy, but it’s got nothing on this place.

The government has declared the toxic air pollution an ‘emergency situation’ and have temporarily shut construction sites and a coal-fired power station, closed schools and planned to introduce traffic rationing.

The concentrations of harmful particles so apparently high they cannot be measured by most air quality instruments. The level of so-called PM2.5 pollutants, which can breach the blood-brain barrier, have reached at least 999 in parts of the city, as high as the measuring machines go, and more than 16 times the safe limit of 60.

The government had planned to introduce a scheme to only allow cars to drive on odd or even days depending on the last digit of their registration numbers. However they scrapped this at the last minute because some green government council objected to exemptions for women, or something.  Planes and trains have been cancelled, but, as usual, the government is busy arguing with other regional governments; currently about dealing with the ‘menace’ of crop stubble burning, rather than actually doing anything concrete. A politician asked who was asked about what the government was doing for farmers, apparently said, “We have been doing more than we can.” Which is sweet, if clueless.

And a plan to use helicopters to fight the air pollution, by sprinkling water on it, has been grounded, because the choppers can’t operate in such thick smog. You really couldn’t make it up.

Apparently the problem gets worse at the start of the winter, with the celebration of Diwali, where people let off lots of fireworks. So this year the Delhi authorities banned fireworks. Which made not a whit of difference to anyone: our fairly quiet street was like the Somme until 0300hrs, and visibility was down to five metres the next morning. The suddenly cold weather traps the particulates and they don’t get blown away.

Blossom, who is a delicate little flower, has already gone down with a chest infection, and doctors are saying that going out for a walk is equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes. That would at least make life considerably cheaper.

Really not all that grumpy…

A number of people have suggested that I have, indeed, become too grumpy of late: not that I’ve seen anyone I know for the last six months, but apparently they can tell from the general tenor of my emails and this blog.

So, in an effort to seem more cheerful, here are some things I’ve seen recently, as I walk Harley the Wonder Dog around my neighbourhood, that have made me smile.

There aren’t very many of them: it’s an entirely crappy neighbourhood, called Chittaranjan Park, which used to be the sonorously-named East Pakistan Displaced Persons Colony. Despite it being fairly Indian middle class, it’s an armpit of a place: I have to keep my bedroom door shut to keep the rats out; the streets are ankle-deep in dogshit, the drivers are insane, and its all watched over by a cadre of super-miserable harridans who scream at you when your dog takes a leak against a flower pot.

But, in an effort to glean a pearl of pleasure from the shite-oyster that is life in Delhi, I present you with:

Eyebrow dog:

I don’t know what he’s actually called, or if he has a name at all. But, despite being comedy dog, he is practically the only beast who doesn’t try to take chunks out of Harley when he passes. So he makes me laugh, and he’s mellow. That’s as good as it gets.

And this is a shitty iPhone closeup. Those eyebrows are real…

Milk Bar Krishna

There’s no point getting into my thoughts on Hinduism. But I do admire the way people here integrate their religious beliefs into their daily lives. I’ve been party to any number of ceremonies in the office, or in the electrical junction room, where people chant, and wave incense and seem to take it entirely seriously. And they’ve always welcomed me, despite everything. So I liked this little religious figure, sitting on a disused cold milk shop, for no other reason.

Dog Shit

I just thought this was a curiously straightforward message, in a land known for its sesquidpedalian circumlocutions. Needless to say, I am the only person within 2,500 miles who actually carries plastic bags with which to enrobe the alimentary evacuations of my diminutive canine confederate. Because I’ll be damned if anyone can accuse me of making this country shittier than it already is.

And there’s the grumpiness again….

Grumpy old man

There used to be a truism trotted out by Old India Hands, that went something like: “Oh, India will drive you mad. You get to the airport, and think ‘I can’t wait to get back to Blighty.’ Then you arrive at Heathrow, and suddenly realise ‘I absolutely have to get back to India.’” Well, I’ve been pondering that. Because I think India may just have driven me completely around the bend.

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m a fairly peaceable chap. I’m not a shouter, I keep my thoughts largely to myself: in short, I’m quite a mellow proposition.

Well, not recently. Recently I’ve had meltdowns at taxi drivers, lost it in shops and been on the verge of doing bodily harm to innocent passers-by. I’ve gone off on waiters, mobile-phone salesmen, bank staff and random drivers. I’ve employed some of the fruitiest language ever heard in this region since Elphinstone’s retreat from Kabul; stuff I wouldn’t want my mother to know I knew. And I’m not proud.

But this country does it to you. And I can’t quite figure out why. I knew that India was hopelessly inefficient, populated by wage-taking babus with no incentive to do anything other than line their pockets and enforce stupid rules. But I thought I was used to that. But it seems not.

I went into a chemist’s shop the other day to buy a 20 pence tube of antiseptic (for my scores of necrotising mosquito bites, which haven’t helped my mood, along with my scurvy), and it took five people to serve me. Five! Then on the way out, I held the door open politely for a fat cow in a sari who looked at me haughtily and refused to say thank you. She heard a word from me her mother never taught her, I can tell you.

I was sitting in the living room of my grubby guesthouse yesterday, watching a tiny grocery shop over the road. It’s run by two brothers, young, pleasant enough fellows. And I was thinking that ‘gosh, they work hard, open from six am to eleven every day,’ and then I thought ‘no, actually that’s bollocks: they don’t. They sit on their stool all day gazing at their mobile phones, and letting even poorer people do all the work.’ Which is true.

But, but, but, but, but. They provide employment to half a dozen people. They probably don’t earn a fortune, but they make enough to survive, and they’re a valued part of the community. Probably. When did I decide that economic efficiency was the only measure of success? And, more importantly, when did I become such a shit? A spittle-flecked, puce-faced whiner, choleric and intolerant?

The truth is that India has worked some sort of weird and malign magic upon me. I need to get to the airport, and spend a week or two in Switzerland, or Finland, or somewhere cool and efficient. And then I’ll be fine. The truth is, this country wasn’t made for me, and I need to be able to remember that more often.

Small-town blues

When I was a mere child, relatively, I spent a summer working on a cattle station in Far North Queensland in Australia, for reasons that escape me now. Suffice to say that it was both an eye-opener, and one of the most brutal and terrifying places I’ve ever been. When I get around to writing my autobiography, there’ll be a chapter on Escott Station, and it won’t be cheerful reading.
But one thing that has stayed with me is the feeling I got when I made it back to Brisbane. Now, Brisbane in the mid-1980s was not the dynamic, get-up-and-go cosmopolitan world city that it is today. Back then, it was Cow Town. But to a rube like me, freshly in from months in the sticks, it was a place of astonishingly urbane sophistication. I’d spent an age in a place with a single copper telephone wire, 1,000 miles from the nearest church or bar, with a population of 40. 
I remember clearly being astonished by escalators, car parks and restaurants. Traffic lights were a renewed revelation. Crowds were frightening. But obviously it all wore off pretty quickly, and cities became my natural home again.
But I’d thought that maybe the same thing would happen again over here in India. I’ve spent the last few days in Bombay, population 20 million, after living in Thiksey, Ladakh, population 2,500 for the last few months. So I was ready for some cognitive dissonance, with all of the world, good and bad, outside my hotel room. In Thiksey, there is a shop, but the man who runs it is not well, so it barely opens. In Bombay, you can get almost anything (except steak).
But no, being in Bombay was the same as being in Thiksey. Just another place. Small town; big city: same same. Shame really. Now I’m sorry I made you read all of that.

In other news, WAR! Indian and Chinese troops apparently clashed only a couple of hours drive from here just the other day. I got very excited about this, journalistically. Until I read the wire story, which said “Chinese troops threw stones at Indian soldiers near Pangong Lake…” Throwing stones? The two largest countries in the world, both armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and they’re chucking stones at each other like schoolboys? Perhaps this’ll be followed up by a round of pigtail pulling, or some super-tense international ringing-the-doorbell-and-running-away. It’s certainly more charming than the current impasse on the Korean peninsula.
And I also laughed yesterday, Indian Independence Day, at a half-page ad on the front page of the Times of India, which read “Mahatma Gandhi believed in himself. He believed in you, and me, and India. In our skills and ability to match up to the best of standards worldwide. Jaquar salutes that spirit of Indianness. By adopting the highest quality standards in our products, Jaquar has become India’s most trusted bath fittings brand.” Bathos, that is. There isn’t much I can add to that.

His Holiness and His Harliness

Hello, wage slaves! This is me calling, from sunny Kashmir.

Actually, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to rub it in. But it struck me quite forcibly last Monday morning. I was driving through the mountains; we’d just gone over the Khardung La pass, which is (not) the highest motorable pass in the world, at 17,650 feet. The skies were a wonderfully succulent cornflower blue, the snows a gleaming white. The mountainsides fell away to distant valleys and vast churning rivers: the Shayok, the Indus, the Nubra.

I looked at my watch, and saw that it was noon. Or 0730hrs in London, when scores of people whom I know and like would be forcing their way on to crowded Tube carriages, negotiating the hell that is the London Underground, on their way to jobs that they do simply to pay the bills. And here I was, on a Monday morning, driving through a huge and fascinating paradise, along ancient trade routes, past unclimbed mountains and uncharted valleys, all in the name of work.

(Oh, and it’s cheap here. Since I’ve been in Ladakh, I’ve only been to the cashpoint once, and have only spent £100. In two months. Back in London, it seemed like just leaving my house caused money to fly out of my wallet.)

Anyway, we were on our way to the Nubra Valley, up near the border with Pakistan and China, and a stone’s throw from the Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest armed battleground. We got to the camp, which is ringed by 18,000 foot mountains, crested with snow, in the lee of an ancient monastery perched precariously on a crag looking out over the valley.

We were there to organise and host a lunch for one of the most remarkable men in the world: His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama. He comes to Ladakh most years to teach and meet fervent Buddhists, and he had agreed to come and have lunch with us.

I won’t go into the work that went into hosting HH: it was quite a lot, but didn’t involve getting on an urban mass transit system at any stage. But he came, and was incredibly nice and warm, wise, generous and full of a genuinely benign radiance.

We had locked Harley, the Hammer of the Dogs, in a distant tent, but somehow he managed to escape and get past the perimeter of soldiers with machine guns hiding (asleep) in the bushes, and before we knew it he was bounding around under the Dalai Lama’s feet. I dragged him away, mortified, but HH put up his hand and stopped me. “Let him come,” he said, and Harley was allowed to frolic around his divine ankles and disport himself freely.

Afterwards, His Holiness blessed Harley (His Harliness, now) and was generally a fantastically good man. I’m not very often star-struck by famous people (ie, never) but the Dalai Lama is different, up there with Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi (before she was corrupted by power and became a vicious Islamophobic stooge) in being a genuinely wonderful man and a wholesome force for good in the world.

After the lunch, I was standing around with His Harliness and a group of very senior Ladakhi rinpoches, when one of them decided to feed the dog, by grabbing handfuls of cream cake and offering them to the little beast. Normally, this wouldn’t be allowed, but who am I to argue with one of the most powerful figures in Tibetan Buddhism?

After Harley started to visibly and cheerfully bulge around the midsection, the venerable rinpoche looked around him, and, seeing nowhere to clean his cream-covered hands, leant down and wiped them on Harley’s back.

I was, I must admit, somewhat taken aback. It was a bit like watching the Pope blowing his nose on the curtains. Harley didn’t, of course, mind in the slightest, except that he couldn’t reach around and get all the liberal crusting of chunks of cake and cream off himself.

So, all in all, it was a fairly good day in the office.

As it were.