NF at home

My Bangalore belly is nearly at an end. The sublime, ridiculous, fantastic 5-1 scoreline certainly kept me going whilst vomming shit and shitting vom over the toilet early Sunday morning in our grimy hotel. Ants climbed out of the shower tap. A cockroach scuttled around my feet. Chicken Biryani was recreated in the sink. But how many wonderful thousands of Kightly, Iwelumo and Jones goals did I recreate in my head. And I’ve seen them. They are wonderful.

Anyway, be careful. Don’t drink sugar kane juice in Bangalore. Or in India*. Or in the world, maybe. You might not always have a 5-1 victory to fall back on.

I have a new flat. It is in a block called Adarsh Heights in Adarsh Nagar and is with maybe twelve other trainees from everywhere who are all lovely but not yet close. I sleep in a room with a Russian and a Pole. My Johnny Foreigner poster and landscape of a sunny Brighton seafront are mixed with an unexplained Turkish flag and the aforementioned countries’ colours. An industrial fan thankfully sits in the middle. It is pleasant, and we have a much better living area (in this flat we have a fridge and a stove and everything) but it is often difficult to get my treasured time alone without which I fear I go slightly insane. Worse still when ill with randomly increasing temperatures.

So it was with some perhaps childish excitement that I decided to climb to the roof of Adarsh Heights this afternoon. I had no idea it existed until that morning when Oskar, my Polish roommate, nonchalantly declared it to be too hot up there. Up where?!

So I took my novel and mp3 player and climbed the five flights. Before me lay the roof, the flat top of all the apartments, a lone arm chair sleeping in the centre and all of Hyderabad laid out beautifully in each direction. A lone child flew a kite from the roof opposite. The kite danced and twisted amongst tens of birds of prey (what species I could not say, but wingspan of 3ft maybe) as the sun dipped behind them. The great Birla Mandir Temple on its hill to the East, the Old City to the south, the Hussain Sagar Lake to the North. It was perfect, and I sat out there for at least an hour and a half, not reading a page, just watching the world and suddenly getting the lovely compilation my cousin had made me before my travels. I was indeed Comfy in Nautica.

Tonight Ace Bushy Striptease ** will continue on their rapid adventure and play their 12th, and arguably most important gig. Not their first without me, mind, yet their first without me within a continent bugging them and more importantly the first ‘real’*** gig with new vocalist (hopefully longerlastingthantheotherswedroveaway), Emma. As I sleep here at 1:45am, a small pub in Birmingham will be standing bemused as ESBA scream into their set. Bas will be off in his own world, guitar swaying, Arj dancing like a maniac like it should be, Emma perhaps nervous, perhaps nerves gone, screaming like she’s not allowed to, and Simon twisting absurdly, probably shouting cunt at his parents unconsciously who are watching us/them for the first time. Rachel, trusty yet tired drum machine, of the 70s and who knows how many stories (a penny for your past, my dear), will spray out some beats I wrote once. I will sleep. And miss them all.


*It has often been known for a lizard to get caught in the sugar kane juice making mechanism and then be promptly crushed and served to unsuspecting customers.

**Hi ESBA when you yr really bored in the future and google our name and find this blog. I predict Simon to win.

***I am still struggling to comprehend the events of the night of the actual first Emma gig as ‘real.’