As my final gesture of this year I would propose a new and uncompromisingly self-righteous morsel of vindictiveness, wishfully I would have it a valid snippet of legislation, and to dreamily one day became an act: an article of English law, irrevocable and gleefully malicious that would be punishable by the full weight of the law (which, as it stands in its stockinged feet, amounts to about 2 stone 3lbs and therefor equates, if the act were to be contravened, to a semi-public wrist-slapping and a fine of, ooh, at least several pounds).

I may be just a shade over-cynical today, you never know. The very idea of the title here serves only to alienate my meagre audience which is my fisrt act in the act of relaying the act. If I could have made a worse joke there I would have, probably involving a reference to `acting` or maybe even `acting up`. For your sake I'm not clever enough nor spiteful enough to make you sit through that, so be thankful.

Popularity, how I hate the word, the concept, the alien feelings of inate smugness all those who have any must feel without even knowing a life without it. What total, complete and utter fucktards.

Yes, I'm still generally depressed. Yes, I have been reading Stephen Fry lately, you can tell from the fruity language (not a reference to the fact that he is gay, just his language is, well, vibrantly coloured, deeply refreshing and almost certainly very good for you). He really is worth reading folks as apart from the wit and insight he is also wonderfully pompous and self-righteous and as a bizarre aside has consistently remained celibate for more years than he cares to remember. It seems we have much in common, Stephen and I

Right, the theory, such as it is, having been formulated within the last hour by a man containing too much bile for even an entire toxic waste sanitation facility to safely dispose of in one day, is this: popularity, you either got it or you ain't. It varies with each person you know and meet of course, but overall some people `are popular` and others are `smelling of effluent` or `named Hitler` or, if I stop trying to be vaguely funny for minute (and I'm aware it didn't really work) simply `pariahs` (look it up - www.dictionary.com ).
I smell a bit dodgy at times (most times, if truth be told) but I'm certainly not the relative of any demented Austrian fascists, that I'm aware of at least, and in any case I like to think I'd have had the good sense to change my name by now.
So, I just feel unpopular. But what if everyone was like me?

(by the way, I know I am not actually particularly unpopular, except with the City of Kingston Upon Hull, notably within the City Council offices with whom I had a drawn out bitching contest with once, and as a result will likely be swept up by extermination squads if I cross the city limits ever again. But that was a different lifetime, let alone a differnt country, and it's just that here, in an Indian paradise I feel ashamed to be unhappy in, I am surrounded - and I mean surrounded - by happy couples with none of my insecurities, fantastically beautiful women whose very appearance paralyses me sprout from every wave, sun lounger and beachside hut, and thousands of happy-go-lucky men and women who don't ever seem to be a prisoner of their own vicous minds and who have no problems at all striking up conversations with absolutely anyone, often simply coiling themselves around each other in blissful romance after about 8 picosecnds of apparently meaningful interaction. During these uncommon displays of joy all the while I sit somewhere on the verge of shamelessly public tears, desperately trying to avoid making my first drink of the day an event happening before 12 O'colock midday, finding myself unable to think of anything worth saying and generally wanting it all to just go away: hence my perceived status, socially, as that of a virtual leper)

Anyway lets drop the self pity for a paragraph or two shall we? Good-ho. Right - if there was no such concept as popularity:

There would be almost no envy among friends anywhere and certainly none amongst all these damnedly good-looking strangers on this beach, the concept that some people have fantastic-looking partners wouldn't matter because a) there would be a hell of a lot fewer couples, and let's face it, at the very least about 80% of all romantic relationships end up going nowhere, and b) we would all be of equal popularity (i.e. none) so there would be every chance that anyone could get with anyone. I'm liking this idea a lot, by the way.

False influence, the lack of objectivity when receiving ideas and opinions, would cease to be, and every notion and attitude could be weighed properly on scales devoid of any tactical thumb-placing, all memorials, past histories and obituarial evaluations would be viewed through glasses of mere transparence, being unhindered by pinkish tinges of the Lennon-esque reminiscence.
Jesus Christ I really have been reading too much Stephen Fry.

Pressing on (go on, make a gag about flower pressing and roses I fucking dare you): there would be none of that ugly superiority human beings are so quick to adopt; much as inferiority would be heavily cropped so would our egocentric urges to give ourselves airs and graces due to the fawning of all our social groupies, which might just be a good thing if we were to make more rational, and truly altruistic decisions.

Not only but also, the electoral system, especially in America, would return to what it always should have been and not a telegenic and photogenic experiment in mass hypnosis, peddled and perpetuated through the dark arts of hair products and advanced orthodontistry. Maybe a good but ugly leader could lead a nation more efficiently than some twat who looks good in good suits? I cite the case of Warren Harding: the immensely handsome and impressively built US President who totally fucked up everything he touched while in office. Look him up - an interesting case of what has been come to be known as `the halo effect` (itself an absolutely fascinating human behaviour).

And finally, lest you think this whole bizarre argument without any actual thought, imagine eliminating JUST popularity. Not like, or love, or personal attraction or care for others or friendliness, just the notion of popularity, that little ticker-tape counter we all carry above our heads and imagine within the minds of everyone else, the one that measures how many people like us, and how much, whether it is accurate or not we all hold an idea of it for us, and for everyone we know. How conceited and selfish and self-obsessed an idea is that? How judgemental and treachourously insecure?

I suppose it's almost as self-obsessed as someone writing an article about eliminating it.
Almost, but not quite.

Okay, so it didn't go quite to plan. So it goes.

And as it goes, my plans just went quietly into the night: my plan to get to Hampi - scuppered. My plans for a totally sober Christmas - hopelessly compromised.
My attitude? - fuck it. Let's make the best of it - especially as I'm paradise.

*The majority of this post was written 4 days ago, the last paragraph or three written on the 26th and today*

I was about to book my train from Vasco De Gama to Hampi about a week ago back in Anjuna but, overhearing an English couple across the room in the bookshop-cum-internet cafe bemoaning the officious Indian railway system, I had a sneaky feeling it was to be a case of All Change Please (and you'll have to pardon any weak puns from hereon in, folks).
Checking it out I found that to catch a train in this fine country requires you to book in advance, for all classes, all trains, no exceptions. You cannot arrive at a station wanting to catch a train ad hoc, but have to book it in advance, at this time of year every journey of any significance has a waiting time of - get this - 2 to 3 weeks.
Deep joy.

Further to the case of Indian Railways Versus Common Sense (I'm backing the latter would you believe) is the reservation system itself where, as I understand it, one buys a ticket and that's all good, you have a ticket and a seat. Well done, pat back, recieve prize, consume cookies etc.
If you don't make it onto the normal ticket allowance quota (and tourists and railcard holders have their own special quota and are not allowed into regular seats - just to make it more complicated) though this is where the fun starts. Missed the boat, as regards your train ticket? You get to sit on the RAC list, or Reservation Against Cancellation list, which is self explanatory: no guarantees of a seat, but given that there WILL be cancellations, you have a chance yet. Of course, even the hypothetical RAC places have a limit though, for some reason, so if you miss that quota for your train too then you simply get waitlisted.
If there are enough cancellations than the RAC-listed chaps and chappesses get allocated seats, and the first waitlisted bods get put upon the RAC list. Quite why this is necessary is beyond the simple powers of this individual, suffice to say I'll be booking a train in the next day or three

Still, a little bit of overcrowding (okay, well, they do move almost 9,000 trains, carrying more than 15 million people every damn DAY) and bureaucracy and confusion must be expected of the world's largest commercial employer. Indian Railways is, quite simply, both the largest employer and the largest utility company on earth, in terms of people power if not actual turnover or unit sales. It runs as an arm of the Indian government, and independently employs more than 1.6 million people (that's over 1,600,000 salaries to pay out) across the whole country.
So it goes - so it went.

-

So, fuck it, chaps, lets stay in paradise, and what beter paradise to stay in than Palolem?
None, that's what. Okay none in Goa, as far as I can tell, and honestly you could do worse almost anywhere in the world.

Palolem is the most beautiful, most scenic beach in Goa according to popular concensus, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I came here by a stroke of luck and by crikey I was lucky indeed. In Anjuna I took a room in a place recommended by the old LP, and after a couple of days spotting the wildlife and tactically avoiding Club Paradiso I found out the bloke in the equally delapidated and meagre room next to mine (round the toilet block and up the back stairs, cross a shittily kept hidden rooftop courtyard, open a flimsy door and - hey presto - I'm home!) was American (Yes a goddamn yankee, curse them) by the name of Greg.
Bizarrely enough he is a travel writer, and has been on the road for 5 months now, so, after one night of utter silliness after which it was proclaimed to me that "you are NOT allowed to be in charge of drinks any more" and a couple more in and around Anjuna, including our farewell evening (which left us with royal hangovers for the three hour-long taxi trip the next day), we upped sticks and transfered to the idyllic beach of the saintly Palolem.

Even now I think it's the best place ever, and it's Christmas sodding eve!! (what did you do on the day before Christmas then, Tim? `Well I had a fried breakfast and wandered down a mile of perfect beach then climbed around an offshore island looking for monkeys, then I hung about in blazing sunshine before transfering to a series of pubs and retired eventually to another bar in the company of 6 Norwegian girls, before skinny dipping with the lot of them in the Arabian sea; Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night; ho ho sodding ho!!!

Okay it was/is not quite as suggestively rude as you might think, but still, that's a hell of a way to spend you're day. Am I feeling smug?
Well, actually, yes, yes I was. Extremely so.
I am not going to receive any nicely wrapped presents tomorrow, and you are not going to loiter arout a beach-scape with half a dozen Norwegian woman who seem remarkably, astoundingly ready to get naked, for no especially compelling reason. We each have our crosses to bear

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It is a remarkable little town though, more of a village by European standards, but very well equipped (although also suitably equiped with the traditional tri-daily powercuts of Goan towns) and nicely spaced-out (ho ho) with plenty of tracks, roads and walkways between the beach-shack enclosures, local homes, restaurants and ubiquitous paraphenalia stalls; and the whole is friendly beyond and quite utopian and also handsomely sprinkled with lush palm trees at all intervals and in all places. The sellers are less pushy, the scenery infinitely more stunning - this is the beach of beaches in this fine state of Goa.

So now, here, I try to find more profitable and practical things to do. I still have had a few utterly ridiculous nights of revelry, including one where I was drunkenly keen for a swimn, mimicking the more confident and socially adept than I within my companial circle, the result of which was a mildly terrifying and highly painful exercise where I became lost at sea after leaving a bar and a table of friends, never having even come back from my swim, so I must have somehow rounded the rocky headland at the South of Palolem - beached myself like a tatoo'ed whale - and passed out on some bit of sandy wasteland at an unspecifiable distance down the coast.
Needless to say that leaving Greg with all my shit to take care of - and be suitably worried about whether I was even alive or dead - was bang out of order, and I've been a good deal more responsible since.
As it was, on this occasion I awoke in darkness with no shoes (having removed them for the aforementioned swim) finding myself in amid alien rocks and excruciatingly sharp shingle, with no lights and no torch, and absolutely no idea where I was.
I walked around cutting pieces of my feet off for an hour or two, then found a hut complex on a hill and, using the tiny lights near the edges, scouted out an empty one and hijacked it for the few hours until daylight threatened my impromptu sanctuary. Turns out it was a yoga centre, only a mile or so from home so I had at least walked roughly North towards the slim slice of civilisation I was familiar with - but still I had to walk barefoot to get back and being more sober than previously the sharpness of each stone was a good deal more pronounced.
Now, 5 days later, my feet still aren't really loving me much.
Stupidity still often prevails, unfortunately.

That, plus the most depressing Christmas and boxing day I have ever considered let alone actually lived through, lead me to just try and do something different, though I'm not holding any hope of staying sober. I am aware for the first time that my happiness relies too much on my own initiative for me to be able to actually count on that in itself, so I need some help.
So far Greg, the American bloke, has been a real stalwart in providng assurance for me as I mope and commiserate myself on various negative topics, and has been of immeasurable help and friendship despite his own grievances with the world. We may collaborate on a literary project as we have around 10 days left here before we split and go our own ways, and wehave the internet's aid to stay keenly in touch in future - I would like it very much, and hope my own contribution is up to the grade. Greg's blog/journal/website readership is impressively in excess than that of my own, and he recently applied to Cambridge university with every right to achieve and expect acceptance. I hope I'm not a mere tabloid to his broadsheet, that's all I can say

Honestly, if any of you are still reading, I'm astrugglijng with a deep and most self-indulgent depression at the moment. The past few years, some of you may be aware of, I have tried to revive the spirit and excitement of Christmas in myself by giving large, extravagant, hopefully appreciated and gloriously unnecessary pointless presents to my very best of friends, and this made me feel an awful lot better than it made any of them feel, I can guarantee it.
This year, without this crutch on which to lean, I was left pretty defenceless in the face of the festive onslaught - not that I ever had anything but longing and longing and love for the occasion when I was younger, I knw my Mother will appreciate and know this to be true: no-one could have done it better I promise you that.

Now though as I make my way in the world I feel nothing short of anguish, despair, jealousy and misery having to face it on my own. Petty and irrational envy of people who have found a partner in life forms the most part, basic biological depression at my personal loneliness rounds the picture off.
I didn't after boxing day, being the most miserable one of my 25 years so far (and I've been to lackpool, remember ), drink a thing until about an hour ago. I feel better now, but I am acutely aware that every single drink I ever have in my life from now on takes me one step further away from being happy, and from finding a girlfriend, partner, woman or wife, whichever eventuates.
You may be able to excuse the impulse for yourself but for me, nothing else even matters, not whether I abandon this journey and come home to failure and embarassment, not whether around me people live or die: for me, this is the zenith of human experience, because for too long have I languished somewhere at, or even below, the nadir.

I'll just try to drink a lot less - and think a lot less- from now on too.

In the spirit of providing something more useful than tales of my little mishaps and hastily cobbled-togeter opinions, You may wish to hear a little about a beach called Anjuna and it's wildlife, as that is where I hung around for almost a week.

It was the most popular and famous rave beach for a number of years in the late '90s and early '00s (we need a proper name for this decade by the way, and the next one, too. `The noughties` and `teenies` are simply unacceptable) but has been home to hippy travellers since the '60s and was (according to one source: some ancient hippy there) one of the traditional stopoffs on a popular route through India, skipping hand in hand with psychadelic liberalism all the way from Kerala (which includes the southern tip of India) and trekking North along the West coast of the country taking in the tiny state of Goa about halfway up, then through the interior of the North and on into Tibet and Nepal, or indeed going the other way as most actually Europeans did.

Now, its days have certainly faded, and it has lost both its rave credentials and its sense of tranquility, and certainly has something of a challenge to offer to the novice traveller, although I was pretty damn lucky as it happens. Hotels are often ruthless in charging rates even above the usual high-season increases, and one fresh-faced person I spoke to had been paying Rs. 700 a night for a tiny, ill-equipped room that sounded like it should cost around half of that, even now in the run-up to Christmas.
The people here have been wise to what they can get away with for a long time, and this spot has seen waves of (often unwary) tourists for several decades now. The taxi men there are some of the wiliest and most persistent I've seen so far!

Still, the village is very spread-out and only sports two relatively short gauntlets of stallholders and only one taxi-ridden crossroads, and far better than that the area is fantastic for wildlife.
Despite my generally high levels of evil thought and dastardly

plottings when it comes to the fate of my fellow humans, for a long time I have been fascinated and enchanted by just about all kinds of animal life.
From reptiles to mammals (and everything that looks and behaves similarly) to marine life of all kinds, the animal world is often so much more interesting than our own. It's more bloody honest, for one thing - if a snake wants you dead it'll go about it as best it can, in your face (or leg, or arse, or foot) and without excuses. It's just doing its thing - it wont pretend to be your friend and scam you out of money, metaphorically typing. Yet I didn't go a bundle for birds despite the dawning brilliance of the critters. Maybe it was the calculatingly instinctive sense of cold reason they seem to give off (On noticing a person or car: "I can't eat it live in it or screw it therefore I shall empty my bowels in its direction") or maybe it was as Terry Pratchett once commented that they simply have the eyes of an insane thing, and often claws and beaks that look appropriate for something that lurks in alleyways chuckling dangerouly, I don't know.

I do know I've seen more birdlife than anything else in Goa (except ants. In fact I'm still not hugely fond of insects I gotta admit), from tiny owls (got a photo of one, at night too!) to eagles or buzzards or kites or whatever they are - big bloody birds of prey all through the clifftop skies.

The kites (they are red and I know one gets a brand of kite called the red kite, so I'm going with this for the time being) are really quite impressive. I've taken to walking up all and any beach-hemming headland I can find and the views are well worth the effort. The parasailing happens from up here and I'll have another go at it at some point, but mostly I go (apart from the views) for the kites; they fly up around the level of the top of the headland, sweeping as low as 10 feet from the ground at the top, so seeing these creatures - with wingspans of up to 4 feet - so close is simply awesome. I am so glad I left my Fluffy Lickle Bunny hat at home.
Apart from anything else, they look as if they weigh a dozen kilograms but they glide along with no movement or apparent effort for hours, even though it is obvious they are using thermals and updraughts from the cliffs as well as too-subtle adjustments of their feathers, it's still an incredible sight up-close. The flight of birds is a truly wonderful thing - I can see what Da Vinci was so keen on.

In the face of stereotyping and despite the lushly verdant setting, I haven't seen any more than a pair of parrots, and they were almost lost to me in a mad burst of native display that happened as I walked a tiny, immensely lumpy and potholed back lane with no definable surface level, in the farmland behind the beachfront (which is nonetheless used at high speed by ricketty motorbikes, naturally) I had just mumbled something like `it'll never work love, I'm sorry` to a cow that had keenly plodded up to me across her field in the dumbly curious way of cows everywhere, and not gone ten feet when something made a noise up ah on the road up ahead and a creature like a martin or weasel but with a much larger, fatter body - like a cross between a beaver and a ferret - trotted onto the path. The beast took one impassive look at me, clearly decided I wasn't worth much effort and casually ducked into a solid wall, which turned out on inspection to have a couple of good BeaverFerret-sized holes so I still don't have to believe in magic, and the universe is one step closer to that long-overdue utopia of cold reason.

Looking up immediately I saw two flashes of bright green zooming in a perfectlyparallel flight, from a stand of trees behind me to some others in front, my pair of parrots, screeching out an avian duet and going about their business in tandem. The second they disappeared from sight a blue blur zipped out from the same grove but at an altitude of only 2 feet, and followed the path the parrots had taken, to my right and back to the trees they left - a large kingfisher which showed up as an incongruous blue against the yellowing paddy field. They are to be seen everywhere in Goa and are far less shy than in England, I've got photos of a couple of them already, perched on rocks and phone wires, but they're just too damn fast to catch in flight!

Within the next 30 seconds I spotted a horned lizard, impressively thorny and looking uncannily like a monster from the cinemas of the 1960s or '70s, if only a lot smaller at about 7 or 8 inches long. And the butterflies. The bloody butterflies. There is a species here that must be common as muck to the locals but looks kind of amazing to me, and I haven't even seen it yet, for the most part. They apparently never need to land, the mid-air refuelling aircraft of their kind as if in some vastly accelerated evolution they have bred themselves into a lepidopterist's nightmare, unable to ever properly be seen, only glimpsed as a bizarre and intriguing fluttering shape and colour, the sneaky little bastards. Three pairs of them came out of bushes in different directions to taunt me and inevitably skitted around the air without stopping once.

Yet more birds hang about the beaches, plenty of waders are available
in any size between `small novelty keyring rubber duck` to `oversized
plastic hideously tacky lawn ornament` including herons stalking on the
beach, and even something that looked quite like a secretary bird (very
much like a heron, but with dramatic long, thin, backswept feathers coming back away from the head like a pen behind a secretary's ear) although I have no idea if they even have those birds here. I've seen 3 heron-like bird types so far and that's all I can faithfully tell you, one of them looked poised to take notes.

Amphibians are pretty healthily represented too, frogs can be found in lots of bar/restaurant toilets, attracted by the moisture and seemingly oblivious to all the crap and filth, which is lucky for them because I personally would rather never use a squat-down toilet frequented by millions of drunks of potentially dubious hygiene. Newts or something very newtish hang around in wells, there are some deep ones in Anjuna so close analysis isn't easy, and I don't fancy sinking any closer to the water table than I absolutely have to. Lizards hang about here too, usually the semi-transparent types that look quite featurless, and a lot less badass than the little Godzillas you see by the roadside. Also on the amphibian front there is some kind of climbing frog native to these parts, and shooing them out of washbasins lets them show off how good they are at scaling vertical bathroom walls.

Finally, I also saw my first Elephant! I've been looking forward to seeing them like you can't imagine - I just love them after all the coverage they get from Mr. (Sir, actually) D. Attenborough and his peers, and they are just wonderful and interesting and capable of so much kindess, rage, intelligence and even dexterity, despite their size. The one I saw was with his/her mahout (trainer) doing a brisk trade in tourist photos on a back road in Anjuna (the village has a lot of widely-spaced connecting lanes with sprawled out stalls and business', including this elephant-for-hire) and was only a young one I think, an elephant teenager; it even had too much makeup on (an overly painted face). I did't get close enough to have a conversation, as it were, and didn't really want to as there were a few too many people clustered around, and Mr./Mrs. Pachyderm didn't look to be at his or her most natural or relaxed. I would rather meet a happy creature in familiar surroundings and without a man and his stick sitting on their head (although it must be said that I don't think mahouts are usually cruel or bad keepers, quite the opposite in fact, it is just that I'd like to see and meet and ride on elephants somewhere away from touristy groups, and ideally in wildlife sanctuaries and the many national parks.)

Hope that was more interesting than yet another saga of drunkeness

1) I realised this morning how inane and dull these posts have been lately. Also long, far too long!

2) People don't much care what happens to me in minute detail, so I'm going to give you something more useful or informative from now on

-

The police here aren't just corrupt, they're totally inept. I don't mean to sound negative, I really like this country despite the moans. I think this is something you just have to accept in Goa, the nation's tourist state and the Indian equivalent of Blackpool seafront, albeit vastly superior in numberless ways.

I have been to Blackpool seafront. In my humble opinion it is something like being the ball in a demonic pinball machine, repelled between fluorescent souvenir stalls and luminous slot machines to garishly-clad, sticky, grossly overweight tourists, being fuelled by your own sense of revulsion and appalled at the tackiness of it all.

By contrast, while Goa has irritations like the police, battalions of tacky stallholders and the ever-irritating taxi men, it also has the most incredible sea views, fascinating and beautiful plantlife and an incredible array of native animals (South India is one of the twelve most diversely-populated regions on Earth, one of the 12 `megadiversity` zones that contribute to 80% of all life on Earth.)

And even though most people not historically native to the state (i.e. everyone who has come along to cash in on the tourists) will harangue you mercilessly, and are far from honest in their financial dealings, they are almost universally friendly all the while, even after they finally grasp that you're not going to buy another flimsy garment assembled in 4 seconds or less by vindictive amateur tailors in total darkness.

I hope to prove the rest of this huge country to be rather different to Goa, and experience the warmth and hospitality these people are famous for. Getting my shy and resolutely monolingual self off the city beats, and away from many of the tourist haunts, I'm looking to find something else here, even better than the plants, animals and people. No, I'm not going to say enligtenment, that would be too cheesy, cliched and monumentally unlikely. No, I'm looking for a couple of chapters in a book, and hope I do okay at it because they are going to go right at the beginning!

-

I am Leaving the beach, the state, and all hopes of a drink behind me in 3 days, so I will have a totally sober Christmas for the first time since about 1995. People are shocked when I tell them this and at all other times when I publically vocalise the idea that alcohol migt just not be the right idea this time.
This always happens. In fact this is the real problem in some ways: everyone likes a drink and habitually reassures themselves - and everyone else - that it is relaxing, fun, and simply the thing to do.
I've done that thing (get wasted, one way or the other) almost every day or night for ten years, and frankly, I'm getting a little bored now.

I'm going East across the country to the fairly central South Indian town of Hampi, popularly known to travellers for it's temples and rock formations and friendly atmosphere, and is also known to be a `dry` town, where alcohol is all but religiously outlawed.
Of course many of the locals get around this pesky little cultural taboo in their own way, according to the good old LP book, and my opinions of the universality of human nature. I plan not to join them, but get in for a few days and look around, then move along to the next place when I get dangerously close to seeking out an illicit bar or permit room, as I'm sure I would if I stayed too long.

-

Anyway, the corrupt police: (okay this is an entry all by itself, and it's all about my experience, but it's interesting this time so go on, get yerrself another cuppa ) last night being Saturday night they were out everywhere in Anjuna, because of its reputation it still attracts a lot of people hoping to get in on a rave, and the mighty club Paradiso is actually right in Anjuna, not a mile from my hotel.
[I went there on Wednesday and did my usual trick of getting blind drunk on rum & cokes beyond counting, and dancing over everyone else like an epileptic scarecrow, technically going at it for hours on end but in fact only managing numerous 20 minute stints due to tiring myself out in my overenthusiasm, and having to sit down so drenched in sweat that I look like I'd come from the sea, and inevitably spending the whole of Thursday feeling like an ungodly wretch. It must look like I'm an escapee from the 1990s: apparently we don't dance like we're making spastic shapes in mid-air any more, but I'm unlikely to learn any other way when the music is trance and techno at 130 beats-per-minute.]

So the police were everywhere, stopping all bikes on the pretence of searching for drugs, but basically stopping them on the assumption that sooner or later one of their victims will be massively scared at the prospect of living for years in an Indian jail (and who wouldn't be?) and therefor will pay them tens of thousand of rupees for it all to go away.

This happens often enough for entire families, and this is the most unbelievable thing, entire families will give up their entire salary and sell whatever they have and generally obtain the funds in whatever way they can (I wouldn't like to guess at half of it) to put a young male from their ranks through the police training courses, who then, once an officer of the alleged law, takes every scrap of baksheesh (which in this case just means bribes) they can swindle, and they have to, now, because their family is destitute and they are often the only person capable of working or making enough money to get them out of trouble. This is madness, clearly, but as I say it works often enough to be the reason almost every young cop is where he is.

It's only a shame then, for their families if not their attempted victims, that they are to a man so hopelessly fucking moronic. We were stopped on the beach last night by two of them, 6 of us guys that I had met that evening (I have a room next to an American guy who, as it happens, is a travel writer. I guess that's what I have to call myself for the next couple of years because I ain't got anything else to do - New Zealand notwithstanding.)

Stopped by 2 cops, they called out to us after we passed and I had a little red keyring light on me which, for it's size, is immensely bright. One of the new-fangled LED lights, basically very effecive. I registered their uniforms from about 10 feet (it was otherwise almost pitch black, the moon was just a melon-rind of light and we were a hundred yards or more from any open beach bars) so, emboldened by drink and a vindictive urge to prove corrupt policemen to be wrong in all their doings, I walked right up to them with a not unfriendly but hardly warm "who are you?" while shining the light straight into one of them's eyes, held 6" above my eyeline which would make it at about a foot above the copper's, getting up close to the guy myself, and generally being as passively intimidating as I could manage after drinking kingfisher beer and gin all night. Which is probably actually reasonably intimidating, thinking about it.

He wasn't prepared for this, and he seemed only to have a few prepared phrases with which to try and extort money from people, but his procedures, his practices, were simply laughable.
The opening line of repartee was something like "you got drugs?" - as if anyone has or would ever say `yes` to a question like that - and then after frank denials from us all he seemed at a loss for something to do for a minute.
Then he timidly asked if he could search us. Honestly, if we had said no he couldn't do anything about it, and he was broadcasting this fact in everything he did. As it happens the sheer novelty of being stopped by the police and NOT carrying anything illegal was so remarkable that I happily volunteered. He patted only the outside legs and chest pockets of us a few of us, others he didn't even search, so we could have had half a kilo of cocaine in our money belts and flick knife on each arm and he would no be none the wiser.
He found wallets, MP3 players and mobile phones in our pockets but, here's the kicker, took our explanations at face value, he never even saw that what I said was `my wallet` was, in fact, an actual wallet and not, for exmple, half a kilo of cocaie. What a dickhead.

Even so wallets should be emptied and checked, I'm sure, and proper searches actually carried out. Clearly these guys hadn't even been paying attention during all that expensive training their families were now suffering for.
One bloke with us, apparently, seemed to have something in the way of narcotics and he had been singled out, and was being grilled by one of them while the other searched a few of us. Seeing this and thinking it unfair, and being too drunk to change the self-righteous course of my thoughts, I advanced torch-in-hand and engaged the other copper in what excuse for conversation we could manage between us, taking care to blind his glaze with my little LED light and fuck up his night vision for a good while, and, while the copper was trying to say "drugs him, you stay" to my polite "is anything the matter? Hi, what's going here on please?" the bloke who seemed to have more to lose than the rest of us ran away, legging it down the beach at commendable speed given the drifting sand.
Pleased that I had aided in his escape by providing an unintentional distraction, I wandered back to the group, where the cops were entirely unable to decide what to do - in England there would be a beefy 6-foot man armed with bits of metal and adequate training bearing down on him for the sheer cheek of running off, and would almost certainly have caught him, but these two wasted half a minute beofre one trotted away in the same direction as the escapee.

The remaining fella gave us another pre=prepared line of "the truck is coming, you stay here" and again, another "van/lorry/truck is coming, you in trouble, stay here" and made sure to tell us we were in trouble every 5 to 10 seconds for the next half a minute.

I had had enough. They had nothing on any of us but the threat of the truck was almost certainly his closing line, and had worked in the past on people too impressionable or too sober to think sensibly so, thinking more sensibly than I have done in years, I walked away, only answering that he had no reson to detain me when challenged.

This turned out to be the best thing anyone could hae done, as they other guys, seeing me saunter out of there and up a step or two into some darkened bazaar adn around a corner, all walked away, too. I had set them free, and none of us had any hassle, fines, baksheesh to pay nor any trouble for the rest of the night.

I wish someone had told me. I walked off plotting my footfalls and route in precise detail, seeing where was good solid rock that I could push away from and start my spring if I needed to. I heard nothing following until round the corner, but once there ducked into a running crouch and made for the first alley entrance I could vaguely see, sprinted down it halfway, jumped up and over a garden wall and cut across some scabbly yard, around the house, into some other garden and out again off across some patchy wasteground.
There really was no need for this at all, those coppers couldn't follow an elephant through wet cement and, quite frankly, couldn't fight their way out of a soggy paper bag and if they had tried to arrst me might have actually entered a fight. This was how drunk and belligerent I was feeling, you see.

So the next 10 minutes I spent in engaged in evasive manoeuvres throug alleys and gardens and closed restaurants, through a fair bit of semi-rural wasteground in the village and generally saying well away from any roads, such as they are in Anjuna. The James Bond fashion of wall-scaling was a lot of fun, nipping out the second after bikes and cars to cross the road when needed was a bit of thrill, and ducking between cars and behind walls at the first hint of sound kept me feeling rater aive for a bit too, and it's really something of a shame that I wasn't being pursued by officers of the law threatening horrific jail sentences, as that would have been seriously engaging.

So it goes. When you're actually ready for a bit of danger, have the nerve to pull it off and the adrenalin plugged in - not to mention the memories and knowledge from hours and days of sneaking practice thanks to a one-time obsession with airsoft - the bastards don't even have the decency to hunt you down.

Now that's what I call dissapointing.

After the last entry being all about just one day, I then spent the next 4 days pretty much in my hotel room, slowly drinking cheap rum and surreptitiously smoking the odd ciggie, despite the Gestapo hotelier with God's worst joke for a haircut patrolling the corridoors, jackboots a-clattering. The occasional sound of single gunshots led me to crawl further and further away from the door while doing so, summary executions being a pretty regular way for this guy to deal with his customers, apparently.
It could have been the TV or one of the many thousand malfunctioning Enfield motorbikes in the city backfiring of course, but two second's reflection on the fact that `Enfield` was the manufacturer name for all British and Canadian rifle used in the 2nd World War didn't make me feel any less inclined to risk it.
Needless to say I spent a good part of those 4 days standing on the bed exhaling upwards into the ceiling fan.

I wasn't being lazy though, no, I had unfortunately managed to catch some kind of a rash where one really would rather have no rash at all, I'll leave it at that. Walking anywhere not within line-of-sight of the hotel doorway was simply not an option. I would have liked to have invented some other less awkward and embarrassing medical ailment, but frankly it was intensely fucking annoying and really just cause me pain for 96 hours as well as costing me 4 days of my holiday, needlessly spent in a bad hotel - the one mercy being the TV.

As it happens, this was like a holiday in itself; as some of you may know I don't watch TV unless I'm at other people's houses or am completely and utterly out of drink, and it's a complete novelty to find something good on the vile little boxes - this is because I don't have cable/satelllite TV at home and a good fucking job too. Even 500 channels blend into one stream of mush after a while, I'm sure.

But for 4 days in a room with good air conditiong (read: quite a big fan) with a movie channel that plays the same movies that it did last night from about 6am the next day (meaning you can catch up on the last 1-and-a-half films that you passed out before watching) was a rare treat, and some of the films were actually good, too.
If you like, in even the smallest way, kung-fu or martial arts films or you just like a good comedy, go get a copy of the Amercian dubbed version of `Claws Of Steel` - it's a 1993 comedy starring Jet Li and it's frankly brilliant, much better comedy-wise than Jackie Chan films even though I love Jackie's stunts better. It is, of course, choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping (or Yuen Wu Ping, Wo Ping Yuen or Yuen Ta-an, Yuen Heping etc. Take a look at this guy, seriously: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0950759/) who seems to have been constantly employed in choreographing every martial arts movie made since time began (as well as almost all Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Yuen Biao etc. movies from the early 1970's - including Drunken Master and Once Upon A Time In China - he became famous in the Western world for directing all the action in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the three Matrix films, Kill Bill Vol.1 & 2, Unleashed, and Fearless. You hear the phrase used of product ranges and quality assurances, but all on his own this guy IS the industry standard).
Brilliantly funny too, check it out.

-

On the 2nd or 3rd day of my imprisonment I wandered downstairs for water or something, wearing my kevlar body armour just in case Herr Shittendrawerenn was on the loose, and bumped into another inmate speaking English and introduced myself with some glib and highly unfunny remark about something. Ended up finding out that this bloke was Swedish, called Fredrik, operated a children's charity from an office across the river in Panaji, and was completely, utterly, inexcusably fucking bat-shit looney mentalist. He really was something else.

He seemed to think he was the most dangerous man in Goa because he antagonised the local government regardingt he setup and operation of his charity, and he was right, he did and massively so - but all it takes to antagonise the boys in power around here is for you to not pay them huge bribes for doing the job the Indian government pays them too anyway and/or being foreign. I don't mean to sound cynical here but the red tape situation in India is legendary and to be honest all the stuff he had to document his mistreatment at the hands of officials - failed Visas for him and his colleagues, refused Visa applications, suspension of contracts for renting premises and the refusals for medical supplies being allowed into the country - are pretty much standard around here I think, given that they want more boxes ticked than any other group of humans alive. He never once tried to bribe anyone: I think that's where he went wrong, to be honest.

We went to his office across the river for a few beers, got quite drunk, I perused a load of documents relating to the above situation and he also had prepared a report for some body or other detailing the two times when he was dragged into alleyways and beaten shitless. Now this, it's fair to say, is more than just red tape, apparently neither time was he actually mugged nor told why it was happeneing, but he was apparently attacked while getting close to setting the charity up in a full and legal form.
Fair enough. If he was the most dangerous person about of course he would have been killed of course, so this indicates the actual level of threat, but apparently he was stepping on some fairly serious people's toes setting this thing up because in providing accommodation, health benefits and education it would have deprived certain regional industrialists of vital child labour that they needed to make stinking profits, and yes, maybe, this was indeed the case.

Mind you, after sinking half a fridge full of beer we then cruised off into the town on his motorbike, one of the under-functioning Enfields that Goa is so fond of, and tried to find the only bar in town that seves genuine draught lager. We found it, it was close, so we promptly staggered across the road to the riverside, accosted the people guarding a large, very private boat, Fredrik talked his way past them and so it was that we gatecrashed the wedding, at about midnight.
I could see this was a bad idea - lots of rich, fat men in very expensive clothes staring at us calmly and mildly while their wives were probably dialling up the family assassin and arranging for us to have a little accident - we were both wearing some kind of shorts/unwashed shirt ensemble, stunk of drink and were quite clearly tourists. Fredrik went to stroke the newborn baby in one fat man's arms. I prepared myself for being shot in the back of the head and pushed overboard.

Incredibly the few blokes clustered round didn't even move, but in faultless and impressively calm English told us that we shuldn't be here, then after Fred's baby-stroking behaviour told him with a fixed stare that he really, really should not have touched the baby.
I dragged the crazed swede out backwards, thanking the fat guys for their discretion in not shooting us and, protesting wildly, got him the hell out of there. I swear there were a couple of long shadows following us as we went back to the bike and I made sure Fredrik did not go down the alley we used to get to the bar, but took the long route around the block, to his utter confusion.
With behaviour like that I can see why he might get poeple's back up all on his own, no need for irritating charity work.

So we went back to his offices again and drunk the other half of his fridge, I'm so very glad it was still dark when we rode back and that the streets were empty.

-

So the next couple of days went painfully; feeling lowly and humbled the day after the Swedish Incident I only left my hotel room twice, both times on the mighty 35-yard odyssey to Hotel Venite (which mercifully was within line-of-sight of the hotel doorway) a place of infinite charm, cuisine and decor, if not exactly top-of-the-class for speedy service, and accordng to the blurbs the `most enchanting restaurant in Goa` which is pretty fair from what I've seen.
The entire entrance hall and half the stairway is lined with a mosaic of miniature tiles and around half a million individually-set seashells. There is an overflow room which has been used by hippies as a doodling pad since the 1960's, and it has a series of tiny balconies each seating two people and overlooking the street-scene below. It is quite delightful.

Too many, in fact practically all restaurants seem like copycat identikit places with no originallity in them at all, certainly every beach bar has almost the same menu wherever you go, right down to the layout and ubiquitous, generic choices of Indian non-veg, chinese, indian veg and american chop-suey categories. Every place will offer you a Lassi menu, a burger menu that holds no place for actual beefburgers, and a pizza menu where you can guarantee the cheese will be only semi-fermented and not a patch on a decent mozzarella. In fact they usually use parmesan as the one and only cheese on the thing, and believe me, it just doesn't work, so Venite with it's unique decor and genuine food choices such as the stuffed steak (real beef! wow!) and rosemary-flavoured pork chops was a breath of fresh air, and it was of course still all done with an Indian twist, as only these universally spice-loving people can do.

-

And my budget seems to be sorting itself out, too. I think I'm still just about on-course for the whole daily spending thing, just got to use public transport and not take any more flights until I leave and it'll be okay. I've actually been in another beach resort, Anjuna, for the past 3 days and even though I was still feeling quite rotten on leaving Panaji I stayed awake and didn't want to miss a thing. travelling by taxi in Goa is awesome, the colourful lifestyles, the clothing and buildings and scenery, is always a pleasure to gaze out at.
I was accosted by a French bloke with his Chinese girlfriend on the streets of Panaji 4 days before, asking about another restaurant (the A Ferradura, when open a truly magnificent eatery catering to a level of poshness not usually entered into by little ol' me), and again we happened to bump into each other.
Even though I was trying to find a place to stay for 2 days until I could next get a train to Hampi (shitface nazipants back at the hotel had rudely refused my offer to extend my stay by the required 2 nights. Dickhead) via Vasco De Gama (yeah, they named a place after the old bastard. I'm guessing it was done while he was still alive ) I decided to share a taxi with them to Anjuna instead, stay here for 6 days then get down to VdG on the Monday, ready to get aboard the Hampi train at 7 O'clock Tuesday morning. Not sure if this will work out okay, but hey.

We'll just have to see.

It was 8AM somewhen last week when I started making notes for this, I'll not go through the whole lot, that would be quite cruel. Having finished just now, I still have 2 pages of them. Timmy is my name, Loquaciousness (loquacity? Loquatuity?) is my game.
It really is quite long. Get a cup of tea, maybe a small pot. And cake, we all like cake.
So! I actually started doing something interesting then, eh? I got off my pasty AngloSaxon/Viking/Norman/Roman arse today and, well, went on the internet. Go me. Actually I did manage to move my multicultural behind to the capital of Goa, Panaji, also known as Panjim.
The dual name thing is true to many towns and cities, is a little confusing because both are used in the same places (on questioning the locals in Panaji/Panjim some call it one name and some then call it the other, and most of them haven't even heard of the other variation. It can't be my pronunciation because I've asked loads of folks using both names, it's really quite odd).
Of course a lot of re-naming came about after us lovely Europeans stopped popping over to borrow half a million tonnes of sugar every other month, not to mention the casual slaughter and financial appropriation (Read: daylight robbery) of their trade sectors, crops and natural resources. Understandably some people's great great great grandchildren weren't exactly happy while they were living, let's say, in a road named after the glorious chappie who once made a curry out of hands and noses of their ancestors in Kerala (Vasco De Gama stand up and come to the front, please) or who merrily supported all that wholesale theft and pillaging of the East India companies, which is why streets in Madras – now itself re-named Chennai – formerly honouring Messrs Harris, Lloyd and Merryweather have been given a more appropriate cultural flavour.
Anyway, despite the name changes and stuff the language itself is easy as hell; most people know a little English, many know a lot. Certainly everyone who ever stops you in the street knows `hello`, `excuse me` `hello friend` and `yes hello` which they repeat an infinite number of times as the precursor to them removing large amounts of your money from you, and you would be forgiven for thinking sometimes that this is the national pasttime.
-
Panaji, as I have chosen for my own nomenclaturial(?) preference, is a lovely city, I arrived about 4pm last Wednesday and immediately took a tour down MG road - every city's main road throughout most of Southern India is called MG rod, after Mohattma Ghandi. He's the only person on banknotes too - every size of note features the grinning little peace lover, and just a geographic or ecological image on the reverse side, and rightly so I suppose. This city is small but well formed, you can walk across the tourist-happy area in 30 minutes and see everything in the main city of any interest in less than one day. I proceeded to do this on Thursday, and it was good.
There were some moments of early confusion as I wandered away from my mapped route on a whim wishing to follow a mammoth series of stairways running up the hill near my hotel (the Comfort Guesthouse, nice place, cable TV, shared bathroom and an owner who posessed the worst combover hairstyle known to mortal man. He turned out to be an aggresive twit in the end, and genuinely resembled all the worst bits of Basil Fawlty but with infinitely less charm. I'm so glad I left a steaming turd under the bed. No, I didn't. But I wish I had).
Said stairway (sorry for the digression, it happens too often, I know. I only wish I could get all the stray- I'm doing it again aren't I. Sorry) really was quite massive, and I didn't have a clue where it led or where the hell I was, I was off the map before I knew it and ended up in some governmental compound eyeing an armed guard across the cobbles, who was in turn eyeing the idiotic white boy clutching a Lonely Planet and a dim expression, in the hope that one or the other would lead him back to known territory.
They didn't really, but I ambled off down a road and, after 20 minutes of doubling back and aimless side-street-spotting I aimlessly glanced up to see through some iron railings a gigantic statue of Jesus our alleged lord and saviour, painted silver.
A beaming, staff-wielding, metallic-fucking-silver figure of Christ, 12 feet high if it was an inch. Only the Catholic church, eh?
This was the residence of the Archbishop of Goa, not a man with an inferiority complex I'm sure, and I remembered something in the Good Book (yes that's right, the Lonely Planet) about this and finally divined (ha! bloody! ha!) my precise location.
No more puns I promise. Only Jason and my Dad can stand them
I went on to see the temple of Hannuman the monkey god, which was downright bloody impressive and the documented evidence might actually be on display here soon, honest. It's a multicolured hillside edifice of stunning visual splendour, really very cool to look at (plus anything to do with monkeys always gets a few bonus points, too)
Also a bunch of other things I spotted along the way were:
Some Massive Huge Great Church Thing - knows as the church of our lady I think, the main church in the city (the cathedral is actually 9km across the river in Old Goa) and from whose steps the local Krazy Khristians throw nightly parties, getting the local kids involved in elaborate plays and pseudo rock concerts (so it seems there is no way of stopping them do this, no matter where you are in the world) all with the aid of a totally shitty sound system and approximately a quarter of a billion fairy lights.
It's looks nice at night, I'll say that much for 'em.
A statue of an evil Sith Lord telepathically throttling a busty young maiden. I wish. Actually there is a statue of some Goan hypnotist (Abbe Faria, in case anyone's ever heard of the geezer) that looks remarkably, in fact comically like Senator Palpatine A.K.A. The Emperor from those Star Wars films, plying his wicked trade in strangulation on some woman wearing inadequate clothing. Chris, if you're reading this I know you will appreciate it - I rounded a corner and did a double, triple-take, then proceeded to guffaw embarrassingly for 20 minutes while taking multiple pictures. Quite what locals think of chuckling skinhead tourists photographing their statue from all angles is thankfully beyond me.
And I have to say, I love the plantlife in this city; as in Goan beaches you see some amazing birdlife, in the cities and villages the flora (that's Leafy Green Stuff to the rest of you) takes centre stage, when the birds manage to leave you alone, and palm trees of magnificent provenance fly over the central municipal park (they don't get a lot taller but they get VERY fat in the trunks as they accrue years) alongside circular leaves of several dozen blades spanning literally 6 feet in diameter. Banana plants (they're not quite trees, only reaching about 12 feet from what I've seen) commonly sport leaves over seven feet long, more or less in the shape of a banana as it happens.
And they are really big on balconies. Seriously, I don't know how they fit them all in or quite why, but my, they sure look pretty to me.
-
I meandered along a route of maybe 10 miles altogether, and did so leisurely, taking most of the day to do it and pursuing it through every park, green, public space and collection of ragged weeds that was on the map, which unfortunately failed to distinguish which was which. Still, I saw the lot, along with neighbourhoods from the oppulent (the Bishops palace, across the way from the First Minister's residence: far less grand than Jonny `Silver Jesus` McBishop's, but did have the advantage of a lot more armed guards. Yes, I knew precisely what makes & models of guns they were carrying. No, I'm not [too] ashamed of this) to neighbourhoods, backstreets and kerbsides that are just appaling.
As a lifelong European, you really haven't seen poverty like India does poverty. In a country of well over 1 billion people and quite staggering bureaucracy & corruption there are a LOT of downtrodden masses.
In Goa there are beggars on every street, the chief job in the slums is litterummager/shitfilterer, and the police actively entrap tourists on drugs charges (they've tried it with me 3 times so far) and now, in Goa at least, you must have a passport or driver's license with you (the details of which must be copied in full) to legally use the internet. WhatTheFlyingFuck??? Surely some of this needless time could be better expended minimising existing red tape and maybe getting some of the money wasted on paper-pushing out to aid agencies, employment schemes and food programs.
Back to the city tour, however: Couple of things that happened along the way:
I found something called the KALA Academy, which seems to be the cultural centre, and I found some awesome wall murals playing on perspective in an interesting way. The students or artists here obviously are quite talented then, because directly outside one of the entrances I encountered an 8-foot recreation of a statue of the elephant god Ganesh, made entirely from coconut husks! Very impressive, the tusks seemed to be coconut-hair rope wrapped around cones of, probably coconut shell, and all the trinkets he holds were of a similar design. Brilliant.
Ganesh is, I mean this seriously he actuall is, the god of removing obstacles. Unsurprisingly he is the most popular and commonly worshipped god around India, and one can't help but marvel at the sheer bloody connivance, I'm sorry I meant convenience, of organised religion once more
Anyway the KALA Academy was impressive, even though I only wandered in, through, back in and out again, losing myself purposefully along some maintenance corridor and eventually having to jump a couple of walls to escape. Again, my presence breaking out of rts establishments went thankfully uncommented on.

I saw on my map a large area called Campala park near the Academy and after wandering in a few yards I could see it was that most desperate of public facilities, the out-of-date public gardens. The paint was peeling on the 1960's railings, the shrubs were dead or dying and the grass was worn. In a desperate attempt to bolster the shabbiness someone had slapped yellow paint loosely around, covering benches, railings, scabby brick walls and the edges of the plants with equal enthusiasm. It looked pretty shit.
And I heard the ubiquitous cry of the Indian wanting white-boy's money from behind me, once again, and perhaps spurred by the sheer tragedy of the park itself I actually answered him after the tenth call (they do not give up until you've walked half a mile from the initial Point of Attack) with a bisk `hello` and a marginally more friendly `wht do you want, please?` although he didn't seem to want anything, just talk. I kept on walking, assessed the guy as being a good deal smaller than me and therefor if he did try and mug me he'd find that a) my camera is tied to my belt, so grabbing that would end in tears, and they would not be mine b) my wallet is in a hidden pocket so all there is available in my trouser pockets for casual theft is half-empty pack of cheap cigarettes, and he's welcome to those quite frankly, and c) I still weigh well over 15 stone and have been known to do a bit of heavy lifting in my time so could probably punch a hole clean through his chest if it was a fight he wanted, so not worrying much, and in an attempt to politely look too busy for conversation, I took out my camera and snapped a massive tree palm/fern thing, but Mr Insistent wanted to see the picture - and this is quite common as a lot of folks haven't ever seen a didgital camera before - and then offered me his hand to shake, again, from experience this is extremely common and fitted the situation, but when the bloke started scraping a curled finger gainst my palm, and I noticed a couple of finger's worth of crimson nail varnish, I rather too quickly realised he was in fact a male prostitute touting for business.
For fuck's sake.
So I withdrew myself firmly but nonetheless politely, and scrambled up the mercifully handy steps and over the nearest wall to safety, on the unbidden fear of being flipped upside down and buggered, right there in the street. I have to admit I was a teensy bit shaken up, not because of any latent homophobia, as it happens, the same thing (palm-scratching and all) has happened to me before, but I was the one time in Soho, the premier gay, clubbing, and gay-clubbing capital of London, and another time at the gay pride Mardi Gras in Manchester, just off Canal street so in both places, quite frankly, an average felow would almost be insulted if they didn't get the occasional come-on from their own sex, in such places.

I think the actual worry here was the underlying persistency of Indians, particularly the Indian male, as anyone who has ever gone to a beach in Goa will know all about (an endless monologue of `Taxi`, `hello taxi`, `hello friend taxi`, `taxi`, `taxi`, `taxi`, `friend`, `taxi`, `hello taxi` from every single one of them - and you know they all charge 3 to 4 times the legal rate, too).
So, in summary, I think Campal park might just be a favoured spot for either prostitution or as a gay sanctuary in this country that barely acknowledges their existence. Avoid it if this makes you uncomfortable, or just never forget rule #1 of survival in India: If they offer any service, product or invitation to you themselves, go somewhere else and find it for yourself!

So having not been summarily violated or robbed, I thought I owed myself a treat and I found what I had actually been looking for, the INOX cinema. The affair of seeing a film here was much the same as in the UK except UK cinemas don't have metal detectors and searches when you go to watch a film.
They also might do them properly, as even though they lass 'n chap knew I had a camera in my bag, they simply told me not to use it. Oh really? Good job you told me, it's got vieo as well and I could do with a nice new copy of the beowulf film!! Muppets.

Go and watch Beowulf when it comes out by the way, it's quite brilliant, although I was a little drunk to begin with having calmed my post-encounter nerves with several mega-strength beers and a passable omelette at some random bar in a sleazy part of town (these seem to be better than the ones on main streets, and they're only a hundred yards from them in any case, as main street bars and restaurants contain swarms of locals all looking at you relentlessy, which kind of actually is the national pasttime. Plus, they all have two price lists -one for tourists, one for locals, prices differ by up to 400%, and just guess which group they favour ).

The film is superb, I had no preconceptions at all and, having never read the story for myself, didn't have the myth ruined by the inevitable croppings and shortenings of the plot. The whole thing is digital too, no live actors, which I didn't know beforehand, but then again they obviously had them all in to work that day because all the characters are digital versions OF real actors: Brendon Gleeson, Anthony Hopkins and the amazingly even-slinkier-than-real-life Angelina Jolie have all been filmed, digitally analyised, then been made up again as completely digital actors. I can see why they did it though - Ray Winstone takes the lead role and, frankly, although we love Ray and he is undoubtedly a very seriously hard bloke, slim and youthful he is not, and Beowulf is a bit of an acrobatic sword-slinging murderous gymnastics-on-steroids-and-cocaine type of badass, so Ray's ample frame just wouldn't have done.

On the extra plus side, the makers have also contrived to make Ms. Jolie pretty much naked throughout her entire range of scenes, without actually having to actually do so therefor pay the hugely expensive `famous actor nudity clause` contract, and without actually showing her sans wardrobe, either, thereby reducing the classification ratings. Very clever indeed, probably the reason they started making the film, actually.

-

So I have waffled on enough, and there's more to come too, but on this particular day I think that was about it.
After taking a carefully devised route back to the hotel, passing internet cafes, government tourism offices and public monuments as displayed on the map and as visited by little Moi for various purposes on the route home, I passed as an afterthought another huge array of stone steps leading at 90º off a busy road and, having got two pictures, I was nearly rammed by the second of two mopeds or bikes simultaneoulsy overtaking a 3-wheeled truck while going right past where I was standing.
A single carriageway road, and I was on the very edge of the rough rocky ground that served in place of a footpath - while travelling along a single carriageway road someone on a bike was cheerfully overtaking a small truck, and then, seeing more than half an inch of space around these two someone else on a bike was overtaking both of them at the exact same time, even though a pedestrian was effectively standing in the way of about 50% of his vehicle, and this was anything but uncommon, only the idiot foreign pedestrian was even slightly surprised.

Only in India.

(thankfully the lightening reflexes of this narrator saved the day but, alas, didn't much help the narrator's laundry bill)