Portrait of a Joel

And the winner of the inaugural 'Wonderful Indian of the Year' award is none other than.......

                                  Mr J.Joel Rajesh.

Anybody who has read more than 2 of these posts will have heard his name mentioned in passing and I felt I probably needed to devote a couple of sentences to my 'fixer' before I left.

I arrived in the country at very short notice and at a time when the regular volunteer flats were full. Step forward Joel, who provided me with a bed to sleep in. And when I say 'provided a bed', I mean he arranged for a bed to be built for me, moved out of his flat for two months and slept on his cousin's floor whilst I stayed there. Not only that, he also drove me everywhere on his bike for about 2 months and helped me negotiate the not-so-swift process of settling into Chennai by doing absolutely everything for me. Plus, he had to perform the unenviable tasks of a school administrator at the same time.

Recently, he has organised my trips away, welcomed me into his family for Christmas and bought me a bunch of roses for my birthday. Truly, a Chennai Super King amongst men. The sad thing is, he'll probably never read this and realise how appreciated all of his help was. So I suppose, in many ways, he is like Van Gogh. Apart from Van Gogh never did shit for me.

Joel - 1, Ginger Earless Prick - Zilch.

Landmark

I managed to finish a fiction book for the first time in god-knows-how-long. I did, however, need 24 hours stuck on a boat with no access to a television or the internet to accomplish the feat. We were on a houseboat cruise of the backwaters in Kerala and it might speak volumes, but I threw my toys out of the pram (expressed mild disappointment) when I first realised there was no television on the boat. I'd had my heart set on ignoring the second half of my holiday and taking in every single delivery of the World Cup quarter finals. I was under the impression that holidays were meant to be about relaxing and doing what you wanted, but it seems that the hotel industry insists on following some sort of barbaric regime which dictates that you must follow strict itineraries and punishes those who like to sleep late by not letting them have breakfast. Maybe it's a generational thing but I, Andrew Jameson, dream of a brighter future when I can wake up past mid-day and still tuck into pineapple slices and reheated bacon at my leisure.

Anyway, all this time alone without mind-frazzling contraptions forced me into hours of reading. The book in question was Simon Kernick's 'Relentless', a selection from Richard and Judy's Book Club. Peace of mind, i'm sure you'll agree. I personally can't pick up a novel that hasn't had the seal of approval from Britain's retired King and Queen of daytime TV. The quote from The Times on the cover said that the book was 'Unputdownable', which is the literary equivalent of a patronising pat on the back. In other words, the book was trashy shit for idiots. But I tend to be a bit of sucker for the opinions of critics, so whilst I enjoyed it, I was keen to make sure that I kept any enjoyment at an arms length and if asked to write a short review, I would probably say something like "pfft, just a holiday read, you know". And that is how to be a snooty bastard.

The houseboat itself was a bit of a strange experience as we had 4 staff working for a total of 3 guests but that is fairly par for the course out here. At 6.30PM, the boat anchored down in the middle of a huge lake and we were told that we'd be staying there for the night. We always knew about the arrangements concerning sleeping in the boat, but I think it caught us a bit off guard to be quite so stranded. It was a little too like the film 'Dead Calm' for our liking. In truth, I have no real recollection of what happens in that film but I know it's something to do with water and that it wasn't all plain sailing (1-0!).

Lap of Luxury

My parents flew out to India last week to have a quick look at how their self-professed 'special little boy' has spent the last 5 months. Of course, after staying in a nice hotel for a few days, they think that Chennai is a lovely city filled with Indian charm and character. To some extent it is, but then again, it is also the world's biggest khazi.

It doesn't really matter because the perk of their visit is that I've been whisked off to some wonderful destinations where I would less likely find ants in my towels and more likely find 'Welcome' chocolates on my pillows. This did initially pose a few moral questions as to whether it would be appropriate given all the do-goodery I've been practising recently. Then I told myself to stop being such a bitch and to tuck into my lobster. After all, I never claimed to be Mother Theresa.

This brings me nicely onto a conversation I had yesterday when, whilst watching the hotel's communal TV, a Frenchman actually did suggest that I was only here to be like the old bird from Calcutta and that I was searching for spiritual cleansing. I took a great deal of pleasure in pointing out to him that I'm only here to add to my glaringly empty CV, that I never do anything for anyone else and that it would be rather nice of him if he could just 'hop along'.

The last bit never happened. In fact, I surrendered the remote control to him and left quietly but with little dignity after pulling a 'push' door. Every bloody time.

We're currently in God's Own Country, or Kerala to everyone who doesn't work for the Keralan tourist board. The hotel is called Coconut Lagoon and it feels a bit like I've gatecrashed a honeymoon but it is an undeniably alright part of the world. We had a high-octane elephant ride yesterday which was very entertaining except for the third-degree burns I managed to obtain in a misguided attempt to 'stand on my own two feet'.

Mum: "Put some suncream on Andrew"
Andrew: "Nah, you're alright. I'M FINE. I'M AN ADULT NOW."
M: "But I can see your skin burning, it'll really hurt later."
A: "STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO."

Lots of egg on my face as well as some agonising burns which, naturally, formed around the wifebeater vest I had boldly chosen to wear for the day. British.

One Night in the Sun.

Finally, after 22 years in the wilderness, I fulfilled my destiny. Some doubters may have believed that destiny to have included a pot belly, £30k of student debt and a lifetime of 7p ASDA noodles; but I've proved them wrong. Because on Saturday night I had a pint, a massage and a poo in England cricketer James Anderson's hotel room.

I first noticed Ian Bell on the way into the club, which had me excited enough. Imagine my surprise when Graeme Swann then marched his way past and hi-fived the diminutive ginger batsmen. After it quickly became apparent that the whole team were there, we sniffed them out and managed to worm our way into an incomprehensibly surreal group situation with them.

The drinking continued into the wee hours and back in the rooms of Anderson and Bell but the unfortunate thing about the rest of this story is that most of it is x-rated and certainly not suitable for a family blog like this. All I can say is that if World Cup points were dished out on a basis of being able to drink, smoke and womanise; then we'd be laughing.

Incidentally, almost all of the players I spoke to believe Chennai to be a godawful shithole, apart from Matt Prior who commented that it was, "like fucking London compared to Chittagong". Cross Chittagong off my 'to-visit' list then.

The BBC

The temperature has risen considerably in the past week and in the heat, I tend to rant.

Consequently, I've been sitting in this sweatbox of a room tonight, mulling over all my angry thoughts relating to the treatment of the BBC. The level of disrespect that the organisation has been treated with in recent years is mind-boggling. I've been out here for almost 5 months now and when asked what I miss most about our wonderful home, the answer always has to be the BBC.

Brought up under the watchful eyes of Andi Peters, Moira Stuart, Ian Beale and Steve Ryder; my life wouldn't be the same without the BBC. Whilst ITV manages to plough on with its campaign of hate and mockery against the British public, the BBC has managed to maintain their standards and provide us with continually fantastic news, sport, comedy, music and entertainment (they also provide us with supposedly excellent history, science and nature content but I couldn't give a Jonathan Woss about those).

Some of the criticisms have included:-

License Fee - I think they should raise it because our money is safer in their hands anyway. And we might still have Adrian and Christine on The One Show if 'we' (firmly consider it like supporting a football team)had a bit more cash (in the Attic).

Ridiculous Salaries for Top Stars - Everyone would have been perfectly happy if some Murdoch-related media storm hadn't been concocted and made everyone realise that £2million a year is QUITE A LOT OF MONEY. I blame the expenses scandal as it kicked off all this public scrutiny about earnings. That was ridiculous anyway because it seemed fairly obvious to most that it had been going on for years, so the public outrage was a bit unnecessary. The whole thing was a bit like banning drinking on the tube. Nobody thought it was legal anyway, so why bother making such a big fuss about it?  

Controversial Plotlines - 
Dear Worried Mother from Beckenham,

please fuck off back to your cotton wool factory and let us watch some entertaining tv.

Love from Graham Norton.

Ageism - People like pretty people. That is the way of the world. Deal with it.

Outside of television, they oversee brilliant radio stations, internet coverage, a free iplayer and the shit darts at Lakeside. The BBC is most definitely a British institution to be proud of.

I realise I should have sent this to Points of View rather than put it on a travel blog, but that hasn't stopped me before.

 p.s. I will never understand the appeal of Strictly Come Dancing. It's just dancing.

Snooty Ooty

The final leg of my journey saw a quick trip into the mountains to the small town of Ooty. It was billed in the guidebooks as the British Madras government's mountain retreat; for when the South Indian kitchen got too hot for them at summertime. It was a fairly idyllic place (except for the extreme poverty) and the guidebook had mentioned a few 'must-see' tourist attractions, such as the botanical gardens. However, after spending five and half hours on a coach to reach my destination, I was a bit mutinous towards the shackles of sight-seeing and had also realised that, whilst travelling alone, I don't have to pretend to be interested in non-popular culture.

So I went Go-Karting. Alone.

After the Go-Karting, I was at a bit of a loose end so I found the town's only bar and watched the vital Cricket World Cup tie between Pakistan and Canada. I had a fun afternoon and made friends with some Sudanese chaps as well as a very friendly Indian couple who were away on a weekend fueled by forbidden love. He was a Christian and she was a strict Hindu. They said it could never work!

On my way back from the bar, I thought I'd have a little look at another relic of Britain's past dominance of the town, Ooty's famous racecourse. After walking round the track for what must have been at least ten furlongs, (not a clue as to what a furlong is, I thought he played for Chelsea) I came across some horses with very long faces. I deduced that they must have been a bit peckish, so I started to feed them some chocolate biscuits from my bag. The horses were very appreciative but their owner, who also doubled as an auto-rick driver, came up to me and ordered me to stop feeding them. I panicked and started to try and lie myself out of the situation, telling him that I was British, owned horses and knew how to treat them. He then sidestepped my lies brilliantly by telling me that, "these horses not British, these Indian horses". You can't argue with that sort of logic.

Mysore

I've gone travelling alone for the week just to give it a try. At the moment i'm in Mysore, the home of a historic palace that was the seat of Karnataka's royal Wodeyar family for centuries. Or some shit like that anyway.

It has such a stupid name that I had to resist the usual urges to make a pun in the title of this post. It would be like tabloid newspapers suggesting that the shadow chancellor had made a 'Balls up' every time he made a mistake. Far too easy.

Without playing my violin too loudly, it turns out that sightseeing alone is a bit dull. I know that the only reason I would normally pay to visit monuments or famous landmarks is so that I can take the mick out of it. Walking round the palace today, my exterior was silent but my insides were bursting; with both fresh comedy gold and piss. I am drinking a lot of water.

After giving the palace a once over just in case there was anything more stimulating than 'impressive architecture', I tried to make my exit. However, I took the wrong path and soon found myself face to moustachioed face with a dumpy little guard. He didn't seem to comprehend my enquiries about an exit and started pointing towards elephants. Uh-oh. This was the point where I knew I was about to make a fresh withdrawal from the Royal Bank of Mysore. He walked me towards the elephants, (who he assured me were Royal Indian elephants), and introduced me to their keeper whilst also having a quick check to see if there  were any officials watching. Next thing I knew, he'd taken my camera, whipped me on top of one of the surprisingly hairy monstrosities and become David Bailey. About a minute later I had my feet back on terra firma and there were four arms outstretched, expecting the easiest payday since Hans Segers forgot to make some saves for The Crazy Gang. I chucked some cash at them and walked for my life.

I suppose that after all my complaining, I'll forget about the rest of the day within months but should have some pictures of me atop an elephant 4 lyf. And for a lot less than I paid for a key ring from Cadbury World of myself and some friends posing with a massive model of a cocoa bean.