A quicky

Starting to get active again, trying to lose some of those accumulated pounds. I look at myself and I don't like the way I look, I think 'what do the women think?' It's superficial I know I know I know but that's the way men and women think. The genuine girls, well they are all taken up, well most are anyway, or they don't like me, so there...there there, take comfort.

In Khulna

Tuesday, our second day in Bangladesh. We flew from Dhaka Domestic to Jessore. A small flight in an even smaller plane, but we passed over the mighty Padma river, which turns into the Ganges when you get into India.

A few hours later and i'm sitting, with fans blowing furiously in our room, a mosquito net trapping most of the cool wind and leaving me with heat and sweat and humidity.

Our bathroom doesn't work. There is a urinal with a leak in it, the shower is on but no water comes out. I washed myself with a potty jug, pleading with the tap to let me have some water. It wreaks too, of egg. Best just washing, don't smell it. I couldn't write my diary that night. The pen scrawls are reminscent of the huge spider that got its muddy leg prints all over the bathroom floor in the morning. I lay awake for most of the night, starkers, insect repellant in between my toes.

There are these little sandy coloured lizards running up the sky blue walls. They frighten me a bit...."what about the fucking cockraoches and rats" i think. The compound here is a lot more rural, and birds that sound like they're having it off squark around us. It's magical but i'm too hot and tired to appreciate it. Only when I get back to rainy grey Ilkeston can I appreciate it!

Lines composed on Day 1 of Dhaka traffic:

Bangladesh, with its colours, sights and sounds. Dhaka, never far from a car horn, whistle or bells, a shout, scream, curse. The city's life blood is its many inhabitants, travelling through the hundreds of veins that make up the hectic and dangerous roads.

The hoards of people pressed against the iron gates of the airport, waiting for brothers, sons, fathers to come out with bags of chocolates from the Middle East. They work there and come back home now and again to see their family.

We leave the airport and pass by hundreds of people lining the streets where they make their living. Shops selling all sorts, an old man feeds sugar cane through a mangle collecting the juice to sell, small children are bullied by the bigger ones scouring the rubbish for bits to sell.

Stopped on the road, surrounded by cars, the heat rising. You hear a light tap on the window from a fingernail, then a hand, then a fist thumps, getting your attention. A lonely mother surrounded by her children, she carries a limp babe in her arms. Tured, the baby has been carried around the streets as an object of sympathy so her mother can feed them, or just feed her, or take drugs. No one knows. Then the eye contact, they have you, every thing

STOPS

Returning to the war zone

"The reason the house smells of shit is because of the chip wrapper in your room from last night."
No-one said my Dad didn't over-react. God I wish I was back in the Desh right now, but, alas, I have endured and enjoyed, reflected then refracted onto the bed. Home is moribund compared to the vibrancy of Bangladeshi life, the colourful driving conditions and equally colourful array of new people, new friends that stared for hours at our white new western faces.

I commandeered a diary whilst on my small travels (in duration, but big on experiences) and I am currently in the process of selecting various entries to put here.

In other news there's a lot coming out about poetry and it makes me wish I was writing the bloody stuff, it's frustrating as I know that as soon as I get something on the page i'll be able to perform it. I hope more venues in Notts start bridging the poetry gap!