Heard in Deal

I was told I would need to take some items to Cuba to make the holiday more enjoyable.
Certain things are, apparently, difficult to get. Coffee, of the instant variety, for example. Tea bags, Shower gel, toothpaste and….toilet rolls!
Cuban paper of the lavatorial kind has a bad reputation it seems. Not only for its occasional scarcity in the shops but, when it is available, the quality is somewhat lacking.
Now most of the first items I mentioned are available in some stores. They are out of the financial reach of most Cubans though. A bottle of shower gel would be in the region of £2.50 In our money. Not too bad you might think until you realise that this, in a totally government sponsored regime, represents about two weeks wages for a working Cuban.
So, one of the necessities of human life, good toilet paper, is very much at a premium. The paper available, and affordable, to Mr Average Cuba is of the FST type – ” fingers straight through ” in other words. This can be avoided – just – by tearing off many, many sheets, doubling them up, twice, to form a slightly more substantial sheet of paper. Even then the risk of a “digit breakthrough” is very high.
Of course using such a quantity of sheets does bring on high feelings of guilt as you realise that, that for the sake of an enjoyable poo, with no mess after, you have left your Cuban host in penury for possibly the next six weeks.
I kid you not! I will try and describe life in the “barrios” later, but enough to be said at the moment that expected guests may well find toilet paper and soap borrowed from neighbours to ensure adequate supplies for their stay.
The same goes for coffee, tea, milk and, possibly, the extra food required as well. Visitors may well be hosted by a proud and welcoming Cuban household using supplies sourced from the local neighbourhood community.
Such resources to be paid back, somehow, at a later date or in a reciprocal situation.
So being forewarned, I armed myself with many sheets of Andrex quilts from one of the several rolls packed from the UK. It was easy for me to tear off sheets, fold them up, place them in my pocket prior to my stay. These could then be added, as a “thickening agent ” when those times came for personal relief!
It all worked so well too.

Well, here I am in sunny Manchester, gateway to the sun I am told.
Actually I am in Manchester airport waiting for my flight to Cuba. Manchester is cold, big, wet and busy. My couple of days in a Premier Inn here, getting ready for the holiday, has been quite interesting.
The locals have been extremely friendly throughout.
Ericsson was the night porter at the hotel. He is from Estonia and speaks seven languages! He has traveled throughout Europe for the past several years earning money to build his own house back in his native country. Very interesting guy and so articulate. He works for an extended period, goes home and carries on the building project, with his dad, until funds dry up then off he goes again to earn more! In almost all of the Europian countries it seems. Fascinating, interesting and I just wish I had more time to have spoken.
Stoje, pronounced “stodgy”, is another local from a thousand or so miles East of Wythenshaw. His English is better than mine.
He works in the Trafford centre, a huge shopping complex in Manchester. Crowded shops galore! What recession in the North ? Anyway, Stoje works as a manager in one of the shops cum restaurants there. Talk about friendly! Like Erikson in so many ways but obviously not from the same birthplace as his accent is more Romanian. God, he knew his rugby. He should manage the England team such was his astute appraisal of all the countries and players in the World Cup. What made him and Erikson so alike was the ready smile and the, apparently genuine, appearance to want to help and be friendly.
Madga, I think that was her name, was one of the waitresses who lived nearby and works in the Prem Inn restaurant. Wicked sense of humour for someone from Bosnia. Again a wonderful , friendly attitude. She, like the others took my ribbing in great humour and gave as good as she got in pretty good English.
The mini cab driver who took us into central Manchester on Tuesday had a name I couldn’t pronounce. Mid twenties, heavy accent but still clear English, Black as midnight. His route took us past Old Trafford, home of Manchester United. Pointing at the ground I asked if he was a Red or a Blue. Everyone in Manchester, whether they like football or not has to have an allegiance, either as a United red or the blue of Manchester City. He completely threw me by saying he supported Arsenal!
“What” I asked “is a Black guy in Manchester doing supporting a North London team?”
“Christ knows”, he said, teeth gleaming, ” I always supported them before I came to this country”. We spent the rest of the journey happily laughing at and insulting the two Manchester clubs.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed the Northern friendliness. This influx of ” local ” inhabitants has made Manchester a far more friendly place than I remember it thirty years ago when I last visited. Either the new faces have influenced the mood or perhaps I just never noticed how easy going the Mancs are and they, perhaps, have made the immigrants such a smiley bunch.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed the Northern friendliness. Apart from just one or two of the more local locals. Unfortunately summed up, I think, by Katriana.(? Or so her name tag read). Obviously born somewhere near Trafford Park, she had a face like a smacked arse and a mouth permanently pointing to her feet. I couldn’t understand a word she said in a blunt northern accent. Apart from the obligatory northern greeting of “yerolrite?”. She condescended to serve me my order of two coffees with a mere sneer. Or perhaps it was just the chewing of gum that gave the impression of sneering.
Whatever, the two coffees at two pounds each sent her, mumbling, away to fetch a calculator.
Made me, as a mere Londoner, feel “reet at ‘ome luv”

I have 2015 kilometres to go. The on board computer on the screen in front of me just told me so.
It also tells me we are over Trabzon. Yeah, I know, I think we’re lost too!
But the pilot sounds pretty confident when he comes on so I ‘m not going to up and leave in a huff.
He has just come on the PA to announce that the Wireless Internet is not working. He is ever so sorry.
I’m glad, as the first thing the airline tells you is turn your computers off for safety! They might interfere with the multi million pound equipment that Boing have spent trillions of dollars developing. And here they are screwing it all up with their own Wireless Internet. Huh I ask you?
It’s strange to think that Hamas and the like, need a guided missile to bring down a plane.
Apparently we can do it by not switching off our IPad.

I have earned some Karma points on this flight.
I got on board and fell into a nap whilst the crew (who between them can speak fourteen languages you know) continued to cram the other five thousand passengers on board.
I awoke when a very pretty stewardess nudged me awake. I was in an aisle seat. no one between me and the guy in the window seat. I had already noted this earlier and wondered if there was to be a little more room for me this flight.
Well the stewardess, you know, the pretty one, woke me to ask if I would mind giving up my seat for a family that somehow couldn’t get together. Aw shucks! what could I say but yes, ok. Up I got and moved to another seat in the middle cabin. I gave up my aisle seat with no one in the middle to move between two young Indian guys. Both about the size of Hulk Hogan. I was in the middle seat! I had been suckered by the stewardess, you know, the pretty one with no sense of decency.
The man on my left looked like a fat faced Richard Prior with huge beer belly. He smelled of Islamabad. The one on my right had a beard, two beer bellies and smelled of Mumbai.
F****** wonderful.
Still, think of the Karma points being banked.

Now, the meal. I was wondering how this was going to go. With the three of us being a little on the largish size. well, them anyway…I am the smallest.
Its the elbows. we cannot, all three of us, move elbows at the same time. I am in the middle and am constantly nudging them. first one, then the other. They nudge me but only with one arm obviously if they nudge me with the arm that’s furthest away from me I would be forced to consider it a deliberate act of aggression and defend my position.!!
Now the food itself is fine. relatively so. I would only suggest that my lamb should have been slaughtered first and that the spinach should not need a spoon.
Basically,its not what crammed onto every square millimetre of the tiny tray, so much as the packaging that it’s all in.
it is all sealed for freshness. And so it should stay fresh ‘cos you can’t open anything. Not without a f*******crowbar. Imagine, us three men. all with bunches of bananas as fingers trying to open little Gullivers people type of packaging that has been welded shut.
I don’t speak indian. they don’t appear to speak English. They don’t appear to speak to each other. So we end up sort of taking it in turns by mutual, unspoken consent.
We get rather good at it actually.
One opens a packet, lets say the bread roll, the other two watch to see how the first has found the weak point to prise it open.
He doesn’t eat the morsel of food retrieved but puts it down whilst we follow suit opening the strong polythene bags. We then go back to the first guy and he eats, then the next, then the third man.
We move on to the next ‘course’ and repeat the process.
It’s very intuitive and we cope well, getting a fluidity going. It’s basically synchronised noshing.
But its the little box of “Light Bites” that beat us. We get out of synch. It becomes a free for all as all three attempt to be the first to find a way into these separate boxes on our trays. They are like safe deposit boxes. It’s a shame we haven’t got the Brinks Mat bullion robbers on the plane to help. Well, we probably have but they are up in first class.
I shall describe the “Light Bite” container, about 8″ long 1 1/2 ” square and packed to the brim. it has a white plastic base with a clear, formed plastic cover. Around all of this is a clear cellophane wrapper adhered to the plastic base. This is sealed further with a band of clear wrapping some half inch wide going around the middle of the whole thing. This band has a handy little red tag on it that you would pull around to undo which (should) start the opening process.
Inside, temptingly glaring at you, are a packet of Jacobs Crackers (2) a small Kiri cheese spread (1), a packet of lightly salted bruschetta slices (5) tomato and piri dip (1) and a packet of tic tacs (4) .There is also a wet wipe packet, and a handy leaflet that lists the contents …(you didn’t think I was not just copying that list did you?) It also informs me of the calorific content of the lot, that the packet itself weighs 49g and, a fact to enliven my life, that there are over 7500 different varieties of tomato in the world.
This I swear is all true.
What is not told, is how to open the fucking thing.

I first grabbed the little red tag going around the outer wrapper. It split down the middle and I ended up going around the package, holding a thin strip of plastic in my hand and the whole thing still sealed. I now had nothing to hold onto. It was a bit like the sellotape roll. No end to pick on. I got my knife and fork from the tray and attacked.
I got the wrapper off, only to find every time I screwed it into ball it sprung back to full size again.
The knife and fork worked well for the man from Mumbai too. He sliced his way in same as me. Islamabad got his done with his nails, poof. We now had three sheets of wayward cellophane doing the rounds of our fold down trays. this together with the empty plastic trays and packets of the previous courses meant our three seats were looking as though they were in the middle of Sandwich Bay recycling centre! It was chaos.
At one point we all laughed at the ridiculousness of it.
But now, our game faces were on. Having opened the main packet we had to crack the individual items!
I admit, I gave up on the Jacobs Crackers. I could not open the packet at all. I did manage the cheese spread, and, eventually, the bruschetta slices, but the crackers……nah! I was forced to ask a stewardess to use her scarlet nails to open them. Seeing how easy it was for her, Mr Mumbai did the same.
She gave us a funny look.
Although Mr Islamabad had some nails, he couldn’t crack the Jacobs. He was too proud to ask the stewardess, even though she silently offered. But no, he insisted on trying himself. Stubborn though he was he finally gave up minutes later with a mumble of words as he flung the packet on the floor in frustration.
I do not speak Hindi, Urdu, Pashmiri or whatever it was he used. But i know “fuck this for a game of soldiers ” when I hear it.

Come on Emirates……look at this packaging.

Oh, as an added part to this, on the main tray comes a round tub of water. It has a foil top to it. When you peel back the foil you can get a fine jet of water slash out ….straight at the guy sitting to your right.
I did this at lunch and immediately apologised as he got the full squirt.
He was fine.
Less so when when we had afternoon drinks And I did it again!!

Well, I will stop here as we have arrived at Dubai. Time has flown writing this. I didn’t realise it was so long!
I nod a farewell to the two Sumo wrestlers and silently pray never to see them again let alone sit between them.

Gatwick Airport

I queued up in W.H.Smiths.
Honestly, I did.
I hate W.H.Smiths.
‘Cos they make you queue.
I have never been in a W.H Smiths and not queued.
I hate W.H.Smiths with a passion.
They make you queue just to form a queue!
I bet even in the Outer Hebrides there is a queue in W.H McSmiths.
I bought a paper, that’s why I queued.
Yes, I bought a newspaper, honestly.
I don’t buy newspapers, hardly ever. They depress me. I don’t queue. Not in W.H. Smiths, they depress me.
I certainly don’t go into Smiths for anything, unless it’s to increase my anxiety and bring on a feeling of total futility with my life.
On a point of principle I would never go in Smiths to wait in a line ……for a newspaper!
But I did.
I thought I might need one to read on the plane. And do the crossword. And Sudoko. And bone up on Jose Mourinho, self proclaimed son of God.
So I got in line, paid for a paper and left, feeling as though I had let some true principle inside me die.
I get to the Emirates gate and they gave me the same newspaper for free,
Bollocks.

Well here I am travelling again.
Only a fortnight after coming back from Thailand I am off to Abu Dhabi via Dubai.
Gatwick is awkward to get to. At least from Deal it is. Its either a car ride up to the M25 and around or a train. If you take the car then it has to be parked and paid for. Not only that, but the neighbours can’t break into your house, steal the key and drive it around France if it’s parked in the long stay at Gatwick.
I decided to take the train.
It was completely and unremarkably uneventful.
So there. Bugger all to report.South Eastern was on time, Perfectly so. As I arrived at Tonbridge, the first change, my next train was waiting just yards away. Similarly at Redhill, the final train to Gatwick was waiting – although I had to cross the bridge to the next platform which I considered a bit of a chore ! So, nothing happened, no disasters, no altercations, at least not on the trains,no problems at all. Nothing to report except I arrived exactly on time at Gatwck as promised by SouthEastern Trains. Brownie points for them I guess.
Ahhh, breakfast at Weatherspoons in Gatwick. Luxury. Bloody luxury.
Well alright, its not fine dining at the best of times but it was not half bad at all. And the tea was fine. I even had another cup.!
Well something has gotta go wrong.
But it didn’t. Well, I had already had a slight argument with some dickhead foreigner who, ‘cos he spoke good English thought he would try it out on me. Well, perhaps he wasn’t a foreigner. Perhaps he was a home grown Brit . who knows….who cares! He was wheeling two suitcases behind him. A handle in each hand trailing them behind.You know, the small carry on type cases with wheels.Not that difficult to do, pull two cases along but I suppose he thought this a feat of some kind. I wouldn’t put it past seeing him on Britains Got Talent someday.
As I rounded a corner he was coming towards me some ten or fifteen yards away. There was a desk jutting out and I had to walk around the corner of it but he expected me to stop so he could walk past, with a whole concourse he expected me to stop and let him pass presumably to satisfy some macho ego trip by forcing me to stop.
Wrong. I just carried on. He was forced to take, well, only minor evasive action, but enough for him to throw back over his shoulder about being impatient etc, etc, crap, crap. Boy did he pick the wrong man on the wrong day. I’ve been in a mood for a couple of days. A bad mood. And he got it.
All of it. In your face all of it.
I stopped on hearing his voice. turned, walked back the four or five yards I gone past and he knew, I could see it in his face. He knew.
“Listen dickhead. You saw me coming from ten yards away. You have a concourse half a f****** football field wide with nobody on it! and I can only either stop or walk into a desk. As you can see I didn’t walk into the desk and I didn’t f****** stop. You steer those things away to give people room, not force them to wait on you. We are not all here to get out of your way . Prat”
He turned and walked away.
I was so disappointed.
I wanted the full half hour argument.
But I felt so much better as I sat down to brekky ten minutes later.

It’s 5,30 in the morning.
I can’t sleep.
They read my blog.
The pigeons, they read my blog.
Must do.
Since I had my rant….nothing.
Not a sound.
That’s why I’m awake early,
Too quiet.
Far too quiet.
Spookily quiet.
It’s just like they have disappeared.
But they haven’t !
They are still there.
Just silent.
I know they are there.
I look out my window and there is a pigeon.
Just sitting there.
Looking at me.
On the opposite roof.
Just looking at me.
Bastard.
Not a sound.
Just looking.
I can hear other pigeons in the distance.
But near me – nothing!
What are they up to?
It’s a war of attrition.
Attrition and silence.
I peek.
He’s still there.
Just sitting.
Doing nothing.
Sitting.
Looking at me.
Since I wrote about them – silence.
But I’ve developed a cough.
That day in fact.
At first just niggly.
Now it’s getting worse.
A racking cough.
Tears to my eyes cough.

Bird flu!

The bastards have given me bird flu!
I knew they were up to something.

F****** pigeons! I hate ’em.
Honestly, I do.
They are evil little f****** that have woken me every morning since I’ve returned.
What sort of God invented f****** pigeons.
They sit on my window cill and f****** coo.
But it’s not a coo.
It’s more than that.
These f****** have their own raucous coo.
It’s a f****** Karcoo-coo type of noise.
And they repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it and f****** repeat it.
Karcoo-coo, Karcoo-coo, Karcoo-coo, Karcoo-coo, Kar……..you get the f****** picture.
Is it a f****** mating call ?
Do they want f****** feeding?
Are they pining for Trafalger Square?
Do they miss having a f****** early morning poo on Nelson.
Why can’t they shut the f*** up?
Why can’t the seagulls rip their f****** wings off?
I bought a plastic Hawk. It is meant to frighten f****** Pigeons away.
Frighten the f****** away ! they come and visit the thing at five in the f****** morning.
Probably asking if he wants to come out and have a f****** coo !
They should all be f****** shot and roasted in garlic.

Do you think I’m over reacting? Not being reasonable? Not appreciating Mother Nature?
Well think of this…..
It’s only my f****** house the little b******* come and sit on at five in the f****** morning ……….and coo!
What the f*** have I done to deserve this ?

Sea gulls……..they’re OK ! ……………’cos they eat dogs apparently.

Dogs !! f****** dogs! don’t get me started on dogs !!!…………………