Entering the Brown Kiwi

Entering the fetid Brown Kiwi guilt and shame overcame me.

When it came to leaving the hot tub we'd shared with 25 wedding guests New Zealand's South Island was bathed in hot sunshine. I'd persuaded four of them to fly to Auckland with me to find tropical beaches but instead of sunbathing we found ourselves in a typhoon.

We should have stayed where we were.

Auckland had nothing on Queenstown - where my 'Lord of the Rings' location guidebook and soundtrack had taken me to Isengard, Rohan, a cross-dressing nightclub and a wedding. As expected it was like Scotland - only on steroids. Everything was familiar but bigger - trees, mountains, glaciers, hobbits - it even rained and had unpleasant biting insects.



Obsessive British conservation alongside 19th century gold and sheep bonanzas has created a land that mixes the Wild West with small town 1950s America, full of pioneering Scots. Unlike the US there's been little subsequent modernisation and so for the anglophone visitor it's a beautiful timewarp where men are men and the country's quiet.

Sadly the 'Brown Kiwi' was the only hostel in Auckland with space for us. The Lonely Planet's "gay friendly" description proved accurate. In pouring rain the only thing to do was to drink champagne at the races in our wedding gear. Remarkably my 4 companions didn't blame me and everyone else won on the horses.



Craig was a forty-something Kiwi who lived in the hostel because "it's a good way to get to know people". Sharing our stinking dorm, reeking of 8 men and their damp kit, Craig seemed particularly keen to get to know Chief, a strapping Cherekoe-Thai-Nigerian-Englishman. Filling up our Wingroad, hungover at 7am, he announced to the petrol station forecourt his top 3 favourite smells: petrol, surf wax and vaginas.

Still ashamed at the enthusiasm with which our week long post-wedding adventure had ended (dressed as dancing girls in Wanaka's only nightclub) Chief gave Craig a wide berth for fear of what else he might learn about himself.



Entering the boy's shower room I found Chief was explaining at length how he had narrowly escaped death in Somalia while working as the Royston Crow's gardening correspondent.

"I knew you were brave! Was that the only time you've found yourself biting off more than you could chew in foreign parts?" asked Craig as he brushed his teeth. As I closed the door silently Chief launched into a tale of Congolese mishap.

Craig finished brushing his teeth and left. I caught the door as it swung shut, gently pulled it to and affecting my best camp Kiwi accent asked Chief, "is it true that in Congo sexual violence is used as a weapon of war?"

"Yes it is actually. Apparently 70% of the world's rapes happen in DRC, although quite how they know that I've never found out. There was an interesting study by Amnesty. Very sad. Awful thing." Chief continued in awkward half sentences, oblivious to the fact it was me, not Craig, asking him questions.

"And did you ever find yourself threatened, sexually, out in the bush?"

"No Craig I didn't, I'm pleased to say, I managed to avoid that sort of thing." Chief was sounding increasingly defensive so I decided to cut to the chase.

"You never experimented on your travels?"

"I see where you're going with this and the answer's no"

"What about in the shower, Chief? A lot of guys find it quite liberating to touch..."

"Fuck off Craig!"

"I'm coming in!" I cried and stuck my hand round the shower curtain.

"If you want to get punched in the face you're going the right bloody way about it!", Chief thundered.

Chief was covered in shampoo and at this point I told him Craig had left a while ago. "Oh right", he said, "you total bastard. I thought I was going to have to fight him off which was going to be tricky with soap in my eyes".

And with that he was off to find himself on the banks of the Ganges.

Why I recommend not contracting Entamoeba histolytica

Throughout the last 3 weeks my fortune in having an extensive and remarkable collection of aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, granny, sister and friends has really hit home. I’ve had visits, texts, phone calls, emails, wall posts, cards, gifts and loans of books, DVDs, magazines and pyjamas. All of which have been appreciated and reinforced the suspicion that if you are going to be ill you should do so at home in England where health care is free, expert (if slow) and love and worry can be most easily translated into soup, grapes and hot water bottles.

I’ve been recovering from an Amoebic Liver Abscess. As someone ameobable to a good reason to step back from the relentless cycle of emails, briefings, meetings and events that make up a working day this rare tropical disease could have come at a worse time. It has been nice to feel special. The estimated an annual incidence for liver abscesses is 2.3 per 100,000 people per year in the UK.

My illness has increased my connection to the global village. 10% of the world's population is chronically infected with the amoeba I have been home to. Infection occurs most commonly in tropical and subtropical areas. How that 10% survives without antibiotics I can’t imagine. I guess a lot of them don't.

For those interested in such things transmission is via the faecal-oral route and most common in areas of poor sanitation and overcrowding. It is likely my trip to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo last August was when I picked it up but as my abscess was calcified and was in my liver rather than intestine it is possible that it's been hanging out in my guts for 2 years, dating back to when I lived in West Africa. This ability of the amoeba to present months to years after travel to an endemic area allowed me to show off to an array of doctors the tropical countries I have visited over the last 10 years and the fluctuating performance of my bowels in these places.

Amoebae are unpleasant creatures – they invade intestinal mucosa and gain access to the portal venous system. Entamoeba histolytica causes amoebic colitis and dysentery but liver abscess is the most common extra-intestinal manifestation of infection, and while I was lucky to have but one of around 3.5cm (some people get several simultaneously and when over 10cm they drain them with a needle in case they pop although this can cause infection and septicemia) I was unlucky that mine has probably been in there a long time undetected and will take up to 6 months to disappear.

It started 3 weeks ago with prodigious night sweats and a stabbing pain below the rib cage that got steadily worse until I checked myself into A+E. My 7 hour wait there was a low point. More foolish was my decision (with the doctor’s agreement after examining and giving me very strong painkillers) that I was fine to go home.

Lying in bed at 4am screaming and biting into a T-shirt I shoved down my throat having woken my flatmate as the painkillers failed to work was the lowest point. The next 3 days sharing a ward (which took 16 hours lying in a cubicle in A+E to get into) weren’t great either. Dennis was 89 and a former boxing champion who shouted: “I’M GETTING OUT OF HERE!” all night and spat constantly all round his bed. Everyone else was old and mad except for one 23 year old who had been there for 3 weeks and no one seemed sure what was wrong with him except for him being very sick. The security guards with batons and stab-proof vests who patrolled A+E and the wards were also unsettling.

Archway’s Whittington Hospital is regularly threatened with closure and while the doctors were good everything seemed over-stretched and to take a long time. After 4 days they established I didn’t have gall stones and a week after that they discovered what I did have, 3 days after I was discharged. The contrast with the excellent (and also) NHS Hospital for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases was stark. After my liver got more painful 3 days after leaving hospital, and with the Whittington showing no interest in me, I went Tropical and was given rapid test results and stronger antibiotics which seem to have done the trick. In future I intend to only get exotic ailments.

My work colleagues plied me with fruit, magazines and a very nice football they’d all signed. My sister and parents were constant presences and supported by granny, flatmate, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends which was great. As I’ve got better I’ve expanded my intellectual portfolio from radio, to DVDs, to books, to lengthening daily walks to Highgate, Hampstead Heath and Alexandra Palace even while continuing to feel consistently slightly nauseous. My antibiotics are what they give to alcoholics to get them off the booze – the merest drop makes one vomit uncontrollably. The addition of "anti-nausea" happy pills has been helpful.

I’m now in the odd position of feeling better but not well. I’ve decided, with agreement from doctors, that going to New Zealand on Thursday will be a useful final component of my recovery. Today's my first day back in the office, so far it has proved hard to concentrate. Even sending this email which I wrote last week has been quite an effort.

As a young fogey I have come to accept being overtaken by other pedestrians, having to make regular use of park benches, finding buses far better than tubes and gazing wistfully at elegant folk on bicycles.

While I would have preferred not to be ill it has provided time to reflect on what is important, where I am going and all that sort of navel-gazing stuff. Love and thanks to everyone who has made me feel loved, missed, cared for and supported during an uncomfortable few weeks - it has made a huge difference.

How I tried to get the British Government to do something

Ahead of next week’s UN Summit on the Millennium Goals ONE, Results UK and the Global Poverty Project (GPP) teamed up to show British politicians why continuing to increase overseas development aid spending when everything else is getting slashed is the right thing to do, even in these tough economic times.

I co-presented with GPP’s Elisha London “1.4 Billion Reasons” – a ground breaking, multimedia explanation of the causes and solutions to global poverty.

It took a fair amount of learning. I was at a wedding in Tuscany last weekend and had to leave friends drinking in a vineyard to go practice in an olive grove, declaiming to the sun my thoughts on how to solve global poverty. A fairly self-induldgent if not Messianic way to spend one's holiday but also an interesting process. How do you talk about the 1.4 billion people who live in abject poverty without sounding smug, patronising, boring and worthy?

I don't know but a bit of passionate realism never hurt anyone. Also some good videos and visuals which are inspiring, along with real people telling their stories helps.

That's what GPP do and it's so clever I wanted to get involved. They re-work the script and the content depending on audiences so it can be targetted at faith groups, businesses and students from 4-40 and any age in between and above. They're funded by the Gates Foundation which I find impressive for a bunch of Australians in their 20s and have all done remarkable things from getting Bono to perform at their Make Poverty History gig, to getting Hugh Jackman to become their patron to projecting anti-poverty messages on Sydney Opera House.

And they don't just talk about stuff they get on and do it - 40,000 people have already seen this presentation. I sometimes feel that working in politics you never actually see what change anything you talk about is actually having. What excited me about GPP is that it's a bottom-up process. If you can get people inspired off the back of an hour's presentation to do something they wouldn't have done otherwise that's about as close as you can get to helping change the world.

They asked me to help out with their political work - if you're going to tell MPs and Ministers what to do it's best to have a British accent. We also rewrote and shortened the presentation to make it more appropriate to them.



In addition to Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell (photographed above with ONE members) over 20 MPs attended from all major parties – several of whom invited us to bring “1.4 Billion Reasons” to their constituencies and the Houses of Parliament in the future.

Along with the MPs and other attendees, ONE members were there in full force and had a chance to grab Andrew Mitchell ahead of the event to tell him about ONE’s new Baby Protest – our campaign to ensure no child is born with HIV after 2015.

ONE Member Alan Riegler said:

“Meeting with Andrew Mitchell was great, we explained to him our hopes for the upcoming summit on the Millennium Development Goals in New York City – that with the right plan and access to simple medicines, we can ensure an HIV-free generation by 2015.”

You have been listening to the Boight Family

Soaring a capella harmonies draw a crowd sheltering from the midday heat. People sit on the floor, lean against pillars and stare at the painted tiles like tired pilgrims in an Indian temple, only with a choral soundtrack.

The young family’s soothing vocals provide welcome respite from the New York heatwave. Children play hide and seek between the pillars. Mr Boight stands like a general, leading his troops in song, beating out time with shiny leather shoes. His teenage son, lanky and awkward, checks his watch, yawns and closes his eyes to hit a high note.

After 20 minutes they stop.

"You have been listening to the Boight Family with Mark Redstock on saxophone", Mr Boight announces.

The pretty Miss Boight approaches onlookers for money. Then they break into 'Ave Maria' for the second time. Central Park tourists wander on from under the arches of Bethesda fountain but are quickly replaced. I remain, unable to find anywhere else to escape the sweatiness, and think about the Jacksons.

After turning down the offered $5 CD for a second time from the embarrassed looking teenage daughter I notice that much of the harmony and backing vocals come from a tinny portable CD player, masked by Mr Boight's strong tenor lead and Mark Redstock’s sax. The 2 smallest singers are barely singing at all. It's the older girls who balance their father's strong tenor and stop the whole performance sounding ridiculous. The music shifts tempo as all 5 children start swinging and clicking their fingers to a jazzy sax solo that turns into, "A few of my favourite things".

The children playing in the arches have all moved on apart from two: young Boights too little to stand still and pretend to sing. If this is the Family von Trappe where's Maria?

The longer I sit under the arches the more questions I have: how long have they been doing this? Why? Religion - the songs vary from classical to gospel to generic r’n’b. Dreams of musical glory – they only have 5 songs which the children sing reluctantly. Enjoyment? Apart from the serious Mr Boight and the creepy Redstock the children all look miserable, tired and bored. How important is the income from the hat and CDs that his daughter touts to the family’s income? How does proud Mr Boight feel when he leads his family home after a long afternoon singing ‘Ave Maria’ to tourists in the Bethesda arches?

The Mayor of Strawberry Fields

Every evening at 6 the Mayor of Strawberry Fields lays fresh flowers over John Lennon's memorial, the black and white mosaic which says "Imagine".

He lays whatever's in season: today it's rose petals, sunflowers and cow-parsley in patterns and colours with the reverence of an Indian priest in his temple. Young tourists take photos and leave, older visitors stop and contemplate.

It takes about an hour for the Mayor to fully dress the mosaic. Onlookers on benches surround him, watching his show – a rare, free New York tourist attraction.

A man with a strong Eastern European accent starts playing guitar well while singing like Borat. A severe looking middle aged lady harmonizes prettily over "Norwegian Wood", one of the more catchily meaningless attempts by Paul at realism.

He breaks into 'Imagine'. 40 people smile, look at each other and join in, "you may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one".

Evening sun breaks through the green canopy. Borat continues with 'Help', 'All You Need is Love' and 'Instant Karma'. Central Park feels like Sherwood Forest.

The moment is broken by a terrible rendition of "A Yellow Submarine". Many leave. No one joins in. Of those who stay it's the first to get a clap.

The Mayor looks up from his newspaper and surveys his warm, green kingdom. He tells a succession of confused girls trying to preserve their modesty while crouching for photos in low cut summer dress to raise their index and middle fingers.

"It's the peace sign!" he says loudly, “stick your fingers up!”

The peace that might have drawn John to this calm oasis on the edge of Central Park, opposite the Upper West Side apartment where Yoko still lives, is suddenly destroyed by noisy Italian students. They are to tour groups what the Israelis are to backpacking and mosquitoes to summer barbeques.

The mayor zones out when these groups arrive. "I've been doing this every day for 17 years. It all comes from him. There was the Dead for a while but then I started doing this... Yoko's been down 3 times already this year".

The group leave.

The Mayor's friend Barry offers the Mayor a huge blunt, "where you from?" he asks me.

"London"

"You know who the King of Flower Power was, son? Donovan - fucking mellow yellow".

He heads off into the park to score. He has a gig to go to.

Both wear old ripped jeans and waistcoats covered in patches depicting marijuana leaves, peace symbols and bands. Baseball caps are festooned with badges.

Smiling as he rearranges his rose petals he says, "I think John would have liked it. My work is to remind the people what John and his brothers and sisters were talking about: peace and love".

Development Horizons from Lawrence Haddad: The Development Manifesto Watch

Beyond the manifestos it's interesting how each party leader chose to respond to ONE Vote 2010's question: "what would your Government do if elected to fight extreme poverty?" For videos of what they said, and to compare their positions check out:
www.one.org/international/blog/uk-party-leaders-go-on-the-record

Zander

Too much love will kill you

Queen was my first rock love. Aged 10 I was given their Greatest Hits. The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley was my first gig (on TV). It rocked. I abandoned MJ, acquired the entire Queen back catalogue and devoured biographies of the greatest band ever. Brian May loved his guitar so much he bought it a seat next to him on Concorde. He’d made it himself out of a fireplace and he has a Phd in astronomy. Freddie was born in Zanzibar. Queen were cool: at massive 80s parties dwarves circulated with bowls of Bolivian marching powder strapped to their heads.

As a teenager I realised that ‘Queen’ were actually quite gay. This put me off but you never forget your first love.

A decade later ‘We Will Rock You’ written by Ben Elton (of Blackadder genius) premiered at the Dominion Theatre. I was excited but disheartened by the terrible reviews. The Guardian reviewer said “'it wasn't just bad, it was traumatising'. The Times said it was unlikely to last more than a few weeks.

Ten years on and it’s still sold out most nights. The gold statue of Freddie on Tottenham Court Road has always beckoned but I couldn’t bring myself to pay to see something so embarrassing uncool.

So when Dad phoned and asked whether I’d go with him I agreed, provided we didn’t tell anyone. It started badly. The plot was appalling: a musical set in a distant future where music had been banned yet everyone sang; a rant against the commercialisation of rock music which charged 60 pounds for a ticket, 4.60 for a beer and produced terrible covers of ‘Somebody to Love’ and ‘Under Pressure’. At over 2 hours it felt an hour too long.

In the interval I considered leaving. Especially after a bag of Galaxy Minstrals cost me 3.50 and I remembered half way through I had decided to give up chocolate for Lent. The crowd was old and mostly English (everyone laughed loudly about Northern Rock and blow jobs).

“Who are all these people? Is anyone sitting next to you?” Dad asked a large Northern woman. He’d bought the cheapest standing tickets and we’d already been moved on by the Japanese tourists whose seats we’d borrowed in the first half.

“No love, help yourself. It’s better from close up, especially the second half”.

“You’ve seen it before then? How many times? Isn’t it the best musical score in London?” he gushed.

“Oh yes” she replied, “I can’t remember it’s been that many times. The story’s not great though and I reckon the music in Hairspray and Avenue Q’s better”.

Somehow an uplifting last half hour (helped by being in the second row and the dancing girls in fishnets and PVC bikinis singing ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ waving pink feather dusters) sent everyone home happy. Bohemian Rhapsody was the inevitable encore. It followed the discovery of the world’s last electric guitar in the rubble of Wembley Stadium by Scaramouche and Gallileo Figaro, thus resurrecting Cliff Richard and the rest of Heartbreak Hotel while destroying the Evil Killer Queen in the Seven Seas of Rye. Sadly Britney Spears died before the interval in order to save rock’n’roll.

We Will Rock You mostly served to show how extraordinary Freddie’s vocals really were. Even without him the songs still have power. I love Queen.