Friday 3rd part 2
woke 8pm
Henry at hotel 8.40
Pay for 4 more nights
To internet cafe near Eros Eros cinema
To Dhobi Ghats near Mahalaxmi racecourse
Haji Ali Durgah – meet bloke from UP whose son is studying MSc in Genetics at Birmingham and collapse into giggles at this example of a small world.
Malabar Hill
Then bus to HSBC
taxi to near hotel [scary scam]
sleep, wash, xerox maps
train to Grant Road is full, yet at each station more people literally hurl themselves on
Walk for 3 hours around Grant Road/bazaar area. This teaches me what Bombay drivers mean when they use their horns. They’re saying either

1. hello
2. goodbye
3. I’m behind you [and I can’t be bothered to turn on my lights] so get out of my way
4. I’m behind you. Even though there is no way you can get out of my way because something is in your way (and you’re blaring to get out of your way, not that it can because…), I don’t care, get out of my way anyway!

Further definitions will be added once I’ve understood them. Unfortunately, like an orang-utan’s ‘ook’, all these are expressed in exactly the same tone.

I saw 4 taxis blocking each others’ paths. There was space for at least 2 to reverse out of the way but no….

However, Mumbai drives have to be the best in the world – no-one else I’ve seen could squeeze through the gaps they do. Also, I don’t think anyone should try to take on India in battle – everyone here is already used to the noise and confusion and to maimed and dying lying around.

Saturday 4th
woke 5.30
decide what to post home [I’ve realised that I have quite a lot of surplus kit]
decide what to do next

1. 1. today sightsee in Colaba/Fort/Churchgate area, try to contact local chess federation, see Mumba Devi [city deity] temple
   2. sunday Elephanta island, wash clothes
   3. Monday if possible, speak to local chess folk
   4. tuesday head for Goa
      so started by walking to Colaba. Met first scam – a holyman will almost force some sugar sweets on you, then tie a cord around your wrist, bless you and then ask for a donation. The way I can see it’s a scam is his wallet full of change, ready for folk with big denomination notes.

Another is the “buy my baby milk”. I’ve refused several of these and each time felt as if I had killed a baby. I can see the child is thin and dirty and I can’t see any reason why its life is any less valuable than mine (apart from I can do some useful things and it can’t yet), or why I have any more right to life than it. I can almost see why death-squads target street children – but don’t let that make you think I agree with their solution. Mine would be an airborne infertility virus that stopped over 90% of people being fertile, without discriminating between races or financial conditions. OK, it wouldn’t help much now but it would stop the next generation of utter bloody misery and the next generation of western capitalists from buggering the planet for the rest of creation. (Now call me a hypocrite because I flew here.)

Whatever the theorising, if anywhere could break my heart it’s here. I sat for a moment near the natural history museum to drink and cool off. A pre-teen girl was playing with a toddler and the fun they were having caught my eye – I love seeing children having fun. One came over and tried to insist I give her my water bottle – there was a playful battle of grunts since she spoke no English and I speak no Marathi.

Eventually, a woman who I thought was her mum came over to talk. It turns out she was the older sister (called Vayshali), aged 13 (I had thought about 18!). Their mother, Anita, also turned up. We (mostly Vayshali and I) talked about conditions here and in the UK. We talked about homelessness here and there – the only thing I could say is that not so many people sleep in the streets because it’s too cold.

They also asked whether I was rich. [My answer was “I used to be when I had a job. When I go back to the UK in September and get a job, then I will be rich again. For now, I have no job so I am poor”]. I suppose I should have said “yes by Mumbai standards, no by UK standards, even when I have a job”. Vayshali is in 8th grade, studying English and Marathi. She says she wants to be a doctor. I think she could, given the chance: she certainly seems bright enough. There’s no way I’d be as fluent in any foreign language as she is if I had to haggle for a living and lived on the street – I’d be too busy trying to get food to have time for school. Vayshali also was clean and bejewelled enough to say ‘I take care of how I look and am proud of it’ (unless she was yet another scam-artist).

So on Monday, I’m going to ask her to show me her school because it will have a postal address. If it turns out to be true, then once I am back in the UK, have a job, have sorted my finances and have some surplus, then I’ll send the school some money to be spent on Vayshali. If she can’t show me her school then I’ll walk…

Saturday 4th part 2 – synagogue blues
You may know that my mother’s uncle lived in Mumbai from around 1938, after getting out of Dachau, to some time in the 1960s. My mother tells me that during this time he became Indian chess champion. He was also a fairly religious jew. Part of my reason for coming to Mumbai was to see if I could find out ny more about him.

So having seen big synagogue marked on my toutrist map and it being sabbath (which means the place should be in use), in I went. I talked with a very friendly hazan who invited me to come back to the end-of-sabbath prayers because someone who’d worshipped in Mumbai all his life (and was now 75) would be there. If anyone could remember my uncle, it would be him. I burst into tears – I’ve been carrying this hope to get a bit closer to this side of my roots for years – and was reminded that it’s forbidden to be unhappy on the sabbath! I choked out “happy tears” and promised to come back later.

I did and met the elder. He can’t remember my great-uncle but suggested I try the University, the David Sassoon library (it was endowed by a rich jew in the late 1900s) and also come back during the week to look at the synagogue records. There are also a couple of other synagogues in Mumbai so I haven’t given up hope yet.

So, time to crawl into my pit to get up early tomorrow for a sea-journey…

from an internet cafe near the Taj Mahal hotel, this is a trnscription of my diary so far…

Tuesday 28th
woken at 4.30am, full of mucus
train 7 minutes late
on train with art teacher

crazed picknicking i the english countryside
and the cassette played pop tones

[at consulate] no system for enforcing number queues
[eat] subway
little ****** giving out passports with visas
big ****** receiving his
RA is impressive – contains Royal Society of Chemistry
Biting fingernails to armpits = Bruce de Milo?
rental permission sorted [rental agent put the head on mortgage company’s brickwall]
Momo
Bakhlavas
So however/luggage panic
Piccadilly [wish I could remember what I meant by this]
[other pssenger’s] leg caught in yube door
Bus to hotel short distance as crow flies but actual route as convoluted as a herd of cows’ intestines in a strong improbability field

Wednesday 1st
Dad sorts palm
On board, [piped music is] an instrumental version of HOTEL CALIFORNIA!!!!
Get three seats because of cough
4493 miles of turbulence to go
take off hour late
7387feet = 2462 yards = 1.5 miles
Marianne and I get pissed on Johnny Walker Red Label
Vegan food issue but staff very helpful
[fly over] Volga or Don ??? around 12.30 (1.5 hours flying = 1000 miles)
Slept 1 to 3.30 Uk time (awoke over Qyumran?)
[at Mumbai airport] change money, [taxi to] Golden Lion hotel in Andheri [suburb]

Thursday 2nd
Wake 10.30 am a bit dehydrated/tired
write off shirt and trainers
[hotel bod guides me to station and queues for my ticket – fantastic customer service!]
At Andheri station: anti-bush/european (products) rally and I’m a whitey with a cuddly pig
Feng Shui advertised
“7 days without bible makes one weak”
Henry
Liberty hotel
colours like poorer CA [khaki]
sleep, ****, shower, meander to Marine Drive
Say no to at least to beggars
Then see Pizza Express [and am torn between laughing and anger]
get lost after dark!
Found Liberty restaurant but not hotl
ate alu methi with steamed rice and ganga jamuna (orange and lime) juice, followed by fruit salad. BROKE ALL THE RULES [drank unknown-source water]
restaurant offered “sugar free chai for our diabetic customers”
spent ages looking for my wohnung []Liberty Hotel, 49 2nd Marine Street, near Metro cinema, behind Round Masjid, Dhobitalao, Mumbai 400002

Friday 3rd
Lay awake from midnight to 4 am, thinking about morality [much excised here] Only conclusion so far is that I am intellectually and morally deficient.
4 am dogs barking – tired but not sleepy

So, I’m still alive and have been ‘adopted’ by Henry, a ‘tour guide’ who has been honest and helpful. He’s shown me where to sleep for 175Rs (2UKP) a night, where to get my watch-strap repaired, to a toilet when I was in urgent need, to this internet cafe. My tum is rumbling but no problems so far apart from possible slight dehydration. With the exception of 1 glass of water and the fruit salad, I’ve eaten safely and if anything happens, I only have myself to blame.

Mumbai – think of every film you’ve seen with teeming masses, dilute it a bit, add cars where people live on their horn buttons, cellphones, the occasional beggar, lots of street life. Well, so far it’s Ankh Morpork but without the dragons and Thieve’s Guild. So far so good

Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi says Everything in the universe is ‘Muslim’ for it obeys God by submission to His laws… For his entire life, from the embryonic stage to the body’s dissolution into dust after death, every tissue of his muscles and every limb of his body follows the course prescribed by God’s law. His very tongue which, on account of his ignorance advocates the denial of God or professes multiple deities, is in its very nature ‘Muslim’…

So god’s law is that I deny him – yeehah!

Since I have a mortgage for 13 Eddie Court, I need my mortgage provider’s permission to rent out the flat. I applied for this at the end of January, once I was sure of the names of the tenants. I’ve been checking on the progress of this application ever since.

However, the mortgage provider’s head office help-desk-bot tells me now they haven’t received the form. Their lettings department doesn’t take incoming calls so the help-desk-bot has emailed that department to ask them to contact me.

I’ve also contacted my mortgage provider’s local office: they can’t speak to the head office letting department either. However, my lawyer/rental agent has retained a copy of the application and is now trying to use it to beat ‘seven shades of shit’ out of the mortgage company via their local office.

Meanwhile my sister’s dealings with state agencies crawl on interminably. She’s been denied tax credits for 2003-4 and 2004-5 because she didn’t provide proof she’s still disabled. Because she’d already received these credits, the inland revenue now want them back: over £1500. The only consolation is I now know she can pay this.

Also, the Department for Work & Pensions now want to check up that she’s been looking for jobs assiduously enough. They’ve denied her JobSeeker’s Allowance for several months because Morrisons told them she’d resigned her job ‘for a change in career direction’.

Of course, Morrisons have yet to put their offer of reinstatement in writing. Their latest tale is that their lawyer doesn’t know whether the written offer should come from the lawyer or the HR department.

I thought I had it yesterday and today all planned out:

• lunch with a friend in Edinburgh
• take the 2·10 train to Leuchars to meet with MsInvisFem at 4 pm. (She’d told me she wanted to contact me about issues resulting from our separation and, since I’d come back to Scotland to see old friends I hadn’t been able to meet in January, tweak some final pieces about renting out the flat and to have my final vaccinations, it seemed reasonable to offer to meet face-to-face.)
• spend the evening with friends in Gauldry, then either stay with them or go back to Edinburgh
• if Wednesday’s meeting with MsInvisFem hadn’t covered all she wanted, go back to St Andrews to meet finish it on Thursday morning
• get my final vaccinations in Dundee
• get back to Edinburgh around 5pm to have a final evening with Elly before heading back to Worcester on Friday

Here’s what actually happened

• as planned until 4pm, when MsInvisFem said she was cold. I offered to turn on the heating and found the boiler’s timer (which wasn’t replaced when the old boiler was) had died.
• That utter god of CORGI, Paul Johnson, arrived about 5pm to try to fix it. He had to remove the old timer from the wall and fit a new one above where it had been. This then left an open junction-box where the old timer had been and Paul didn’t have any blanking-plates to cover it. However they are easily available at DIY stores so I should have no problem buying and fitting one on Thursday.
• MsInvisFem didn’t have time to finish the things she wanted to cover that evening but said she would finish a draft for me to see on Thursday morning.
• My friends in Gauldry were going through various hassles and so couldn’t offer me a bed for the night. Elly offered to come and collect me from their place and take me back to Edinburgh. There was a few phonecalls back and forth to agree a final plan, during which I feared I’d upset her and was just about ready to jump out of a window: she’s been so supportive of me, especially over the last few months that even coming close to upsetting her is totally out of order.
• I met up with Gauldry-dwellers. Emily had to go to bed as soon as we’d eaten: their 6-month-old had hardly slept for the past few days and so needed attention all the time. Barry and I chatted until after 10pm when Elly arrived. On the drive home, my brain seized up and my mouth dried out so conversation was difficult, and hampered by my fear that I’d embarrassed Elly when she arrived at Gauldry.
• Got to sleep around 1am and woke around 5pm, full of emotional issues and annoyance about the flat not yet being sorted.
• took 9·10 train back to Leuchars. Just before I left Edinburgh, MsInvisFem phoned to ask when we would meet. I told her that I would be in St Andrews at 10·30.
• MsInvisFem arrived at the flat at 10·50, bearing teabags, sweeteners and soya-milk. (Many thanks to her for this.) She hadn’t finished the draft the previous evening and so took a while finishing it. Discussion of it took more time. I then visited my lawyer to discuss the draft and look for some documentation Julia believed I might have in the files I’d left there.
• No joy with the files, but plenty to alter in the draft before it ceased causing me problems.
• Then rush to Dundee and wait for over an hour to be seen.
• Get out of hospital at 4pm back to St Andrews to buy and install the required blanking plate.
• take the 5·44 train back to Edinburgh, arriving 6·45 – almost two hours later than I wanted and dog-tired.

Destructively testing an iPod nano

How much of your kit could cope with this kind of abuse?

Sunhair – Ozric Tentacles

Artemis Indeed, you are 62% erudite, 58% sensual, 70% martial, and 58% saturnine.

This Greek Goddess was patron to young girls and provided comfort to women in childbirth. She was known as the Virgin Huntress, and she chose to spend her time among a clan of toughened nymphs living in the great outdoors of a land called Arcadia.Just like her Celtic equivalent, Artio, Artemis was also called “Mistress of Beasts” and “Goddess of Wild Things.” It’s not surprising then that she was also considered a Fertility Goddess. What is surprising is that this Fertility Goddess was a perpetual virgin. The race of warrior women called the Amazons worshipped her as the Goddess of the New Moon. Strong, athletic, and temperamental, this was no Goddess to irritate. Even looking at her could kill. She was also very demanding when it came to her worship. She was known to bring down entire empires simply because a sacrifice might have been overlooked. The Fifteen Goddesses These are the 15 categories of this test. If you score above average in … …all or none of the four variables: Neit. … Erudite: Minerva. … Sensual: Aphrodite. … Martial: Artemis. … Saturnine: Persephone. … Erudite & Sensual: Isis. … Erudite & Martial: Sekhmet. … Erudite & Saturnine: Nemesis. … Sensual & Martial: Hera. … Sensual & Saturnine: Bast. … Martial & Saturnine: Ilamatecuhtli. … Erudite, Sensual & Martial: Maeve. … Erudite, Sensual & Saturnine: Freya. … Erudite, Martial & Saturnine: Sedna. … Sensual, Martial & Saturnine: Macha.

Digitize – Nick Sentience & Andy Farley

finally had enough of chewing my ‘tash: I have a face again!

Why an incomplete success? Well, the grey’s still here. However the face-fungus recontouring situation is entirely satisfactory.

Tag history query
I’m still wondering about the ease-of-use to value ratio of LJ-tags. Has anyone noticed, either in the standard LJ browser-interface or in any of the OSX apps (or even in a classic mac OS app) a list of the tags they’ve used so far?

Ryan-air news
This afternoon the atmosphere in the Ryan household was more relaxed than it has been since I arrived. Susan’s told Morrisons this morning that she is ‘minded to accept their offer’ of reinstatement and back pay, so long as it’s given in writing and Morrisons’ records either don’t show the suspicion of pilfering or do mention it but state that it was later proved to be unfounded. Morrisons are also aware that ACAS are talking to their solicitor who submitted the piece about eating some sweets and putting others into a carrier bag, with a view to getting that nonsense expunged. So the chap who ran the Grievance Hearing needs to talk to M’s solicitor and will get back to Sue. However, it still seems that they’ve accepted they were wrong to accuse her in the first place and wrong in how they dealt with the suspicion.

snap crackle pop
Also, mum’s been examined by the doctors working for the insurers of the plonker who crashed into her and wrote off her car a few months ago. They’ve accepted that she has been battered and bruised and that it’ll take her six months to recover to her state before the crash. So she’s feeling vindicated and relieved that this little indignity is over – and is looking forward to feeling less achey in a finite time.

Iconoplasty?
I like my current icons:

• a clip from me curing a leckie laptop with a hammer:
• MsInvisFem’s ‘pissed-off Bruce’ drawing:
• MsInvisFem’s impression of me flying the sexiest laptop ever:
• MsInvisFem has also drawn me a ‘cambo pig’ icon:

I’m very grateful to MsInvisFem for the latter three!
However, since my Random Bozo alter-ego is about to take over, I think I need one that celebrates my randomness. Any volunteers? Here’s a few pix that could be worked with:

• My first ever passport photo (from when I was 16)
• My mini-parents and I
• Tramping around
• Marianne, Latimer and I
• Me about 17 years ago

bigger versions of these pix are of course available.

… but I took a couple of photos of my parents while we were waiting in Morrisons’ lobby for Sue and her MENCAP advisor to come out of the Grievance Hearing. So you can see what 40 years of parenting me has done.