Chemists Shop

Product proudly displayed in the window: “Nice N’White Skin Bleacher”. Oh.

Pondicherry

We went to Pondicherry because it had a nice-sounding name. It’s an old French beach resort, so the streets have those quaint blue-tin-and-white-writing signs that say things like “Rue du Renard”.

There’s a lycee in town, so every now and then a chic French girl will putter past on a scooter. All the restaurants serve gourmet French cuisine. Or at least, a version of gourmet French cuisine. And anyway, when a steak’s 40p, can you really complain?

Pondicherry contained the first nice hotel – Hotel de l’Orient. It appeared to be a restored chateau, with vast rooms, four poster beds, and slowly stirring ceiling fans. It was luxury, especially after Bombay, where Rick’s room overlooked a kitchen yard where the chef was butchering chickens. And it was about £20 a night.

Going out at night, we found a tiny little bar. The kind of place that North London bars aspire to be – the sort of chic filth you associate with Cuba. Cockroaches chased across the crumbling plaster, ashtrays overflowed onto the floor, and wires dangled from the ceiling.

When we walked in, a couple of “travellers” at the bar glared at us. The look said, “Fuck off, tourists. We’ve suffered to find this place. This is the real India. You have no part in it.”

Rick and I grinned and started to work our way through the interesting collection of fake whiskies behind the bar, with names like McSporran, Bagpiper and Old Tartan. Rick brough a packet of fake Marlboro lights. They looked like Marlboro, but were like smoking soap, and turned teeth instantly black, like joke shop cigars.

By the time we were a little drunk, Traveller Girl was dancing ethnically to that song about Milkshake bringing boys to the yard.

By the time we were very drunk, we’d spent £1.20. As we left, Traveller Girl was sobbing at her table, muttering, “I love this country so much.”

We were followed home by a little man on a scooter, who looked rather like Ralph from the Muppets. He kept asking us whether or not we were married, and grinning.

Cures for Travel Sickness

1)Mildly successful cure for travel sickness
Run over a dog. It'll take your mind off it.

2)Incredibly successful cure for travel sickness.
Run over a cow a few minutes later.

Rather nicely, Rick leant the taxi driver his bottle of water so he could wash the blood off the car.

Notes on Vermin

I've never really liked rats. I can't see a point for them, although India has taken them to its heart.

There are, by the way, no cats in Bombay. Plenty of sick-looking dogs living off dust, but no cats. It's as though they got together, took one look round and said, "Fuck this, let's build a raft."

But rats - rats are everywhere. Which is a shame, as I've never liked rats. One of my earliest memories is living on a housing estate in Northampton. We'd only just moved in, so there was no furniture, and the TV just rested on the floor. I was watching Star Trek, and a rat ran in front of the screen. I've never liked Star Trek since.

The only nice fact I've ever learned about rats came from a man I met in Hyde Park. He was so remarkably under-endowed he made a cat look well-hung. I was gamely trying to go down on him on a park bench, and he just stopped me. "Never mind," he said, "Let me tell you about the Royal Parks instead."

One of the things he told me was that Hyde Park has almost no vermin, as it is large enough for foxes to live in. And foxes eat all the rats. This is the only nice thing I've ever heard about rats.

Platform Fag

It was 2 am, and we were 12 hours into a 26 hour train journey across India.

I popped out onto a train platform to smoke a cigarette.

I got three drags in before a guard stopped me. "There's no smoking here!" he yelled. "India is a clean country," he admonished me, as a rat scuttled across the platform towards a fresh turd.

Indian Train

"I should like," I said, "to go to Pondicherry. It's supposedly an old French town, but plonked in the middle of India. Sounds cute."

"Sure," said amiable travelling companion Rick, "I'll book us a train."

Just buying the tickets took three visits to Bombay railway station, walking along a nasty little gutter where people were buying fast food on one side, and defecating on the other.

But we got the tickets in the end. As we left the train station, I walked past a rubbish bin, which someone had tipped coffee grinds into. Then, as I passed it, I realised they weren't coffee grinds.

One thing I soon learned about Bombay - if you're not sure what it is, it's probably human excrement. It's a city where 6 million people don't have access to a toilet at all. Of any kind. Even in the nicer slums, the ratio of people to toilet is 1,500:1.

The train itself was surprisingly nice. A bit like a prison on wheels, only without the showers or sexual tension. Everything apart from the bedding was nailed down, and the beds themselves were made out of the same pallets they use in gay saunas.

I unfolded my bedding. It contained pubic hair and two muddy footprints, probably tracked in from a squat toilet.

We were sharing a tiny cubicle with a snoring businessman and a polite young naval commander, who kept us sane for the next 26 hours.

26 hours is a long time to spend on a train. It was suprisingly lovely - just sitting back and reading, drinking endless cups of coffee.

The best thing of all was discovering a Western Toilet at the end of the carriage, which was strangely reassuring. Although after a few hours, someone did to the toilet what we'd all like to do to K-Fed.

Bombay After Dark

"How nice," I thought, "It's 2am in Bombay and the roads seem quiet. I'll go for a little stroll."

The road seemed lovely and empty and calm. And then... It was like one of those magic eye pictures. But a magic eye picture that's watching you.

I was aware that all around me, I was being watched. By the road. From the long shadows under cars... And by the pavement, with it's little individual cobbles. Each cobble was staring at me. And then I realised what they all were.

Vermin highway.

Bombay

Filthier and sadder than I could ever have imagined. Where there isn't poverty, there's shit. And trailing through it all are people, people, people. Ooh, and cute little taxis with almost no gears.

In my first day, I've seen the official welcoming of the Prime Minister of Belgium, and mistaken my mosquito cream for toothpaste. My gums have stopped bleeding.

Spark plugged

A straight electrician followed me home the other night.

In his defence he was very drunk. I was out drinking with the Gay Royalty of Cardiff - a couple of staggering handsomeness and style. And suddenly, he sat down at our table. With a slight whoosh of bacardi breeze.

He announced he was straight. Very straight. And then looked at one of the Gay Royal Family. "You are gorgeous, mate."

"I'm straight," said one of the GRF. He pointed at me, "He's my gay brother. And that -" with a gesture at his partner, "is his ex."

Confused? Now add eight pints.

It was all good harmless fun. Until the electrician said that one of the GRF looked like Barry Manilow. Then we figured we could be as nasty to him as we wanted.

So, we got drunker, and he just sat there, believing every lie we told him, until at one point, quite without us noticing, he took his trousers down and rested his member on the pub bench.

"Ya see?" he said, grinning. He'd obviously just proved a really important point in his head.

We glanced at it, and tutted.

Quite why or how he followed me home, I don't know. But he did. Placidly. Like, I suspect, cattle trot off to the abbatoir.

He sat down on my sofa and waited. I pottered around, getting ready for bed.

"Right," he said. "I suppose you know I'm a DJ, yeah? I've got a residency at The End."

"Um." I said. It could have been worse. He could have wanted to talk about sport.

"Now, guess who my favourite DJ is. Go on."

Out of my depth, I shrugged. "Armand van Halen?"

He looked at me, blinked, and shook his head. "No, man, he's like number 15. I want the top, the first, the best DJ in the world ever. What's anal sex like?"

"Fat Boy Slim has to be in the top 10," I ventured.

"Seven," he nodded, "Not that I'd ever do it mind, but I'm curious. Just want to know what being bummed feels like, you know. Never do it. Now guess who number one world DJ is, faggy."

I never did guess who the number one DJ is. But I did answer his other question about five minutes later.

The next morning he turned out to be a surprisingly good kisser. "It's being straight mate. Pretty much all my girlfriend wants to do."

South by South West

"It would," said the doctor, "Be so easy to make you into a zombie right now."

Instead, she told me about Flu Season. "It's why I gave up general practice. 37 people sitting in surgery every morning, and another 40 in the afternoon. I was having panic attacks. I was terrified of going in every morning - but I loved being a doctor. So I did this."

She'd opened up a small private surgery. Which was very flexible about appointments, letting you see a doctor at a moment's notice for a small fee. Which meant that when, halfway through an email, I thought "Well, I can't do this any more," I was just able to pop down and see her. It's like how GPs were 10 years ago. Even the receptionist was chatty, rather than a terrified harridan hidden behind bullet proof glass covered in Hindi.

Anyway, the point is I'd reached a stage where I just couldn't work. Now matter how much I loved my job, every time i'd try and do something - whether work or email - I'd just feel an incapacitating wave of panic and misery. Every morning, I'd wake up, shaking with fear. Every evening, I'd stumble to bed, miserable.

Which is what found me in the doctor's surgery. With her explaining that there were all sorts of exciting new pills to try before hitting the heavy stuff.

My pills, it turns out, are pink. And immediate. True, they stop me laughing as much as they stop me crying, but this merely means that I can watch the West Wing with dignified composure, and allowed me to have an evening out with my parents without feeling despair.