THE REVOLUTION IS NOW

I am making my first visit to India on Thursday, paid for by Cressida's guilt money. In the last week my multi-millionaire ex's wealth has fallen faster than morale in the Upton Park dressing room after Fat Sam's managerial appointment - I know Mr Allardyce prefers "Big" Sam but I think he shares more qualities with the corpulent deluded crime lord from Bugsy Malone than any wrestler, cowboy or porn star who properly earned the sobriquet - but luckily she offered me the tickets before some Actuary with an MBA from Harvard, the foresight of the Mayor of Pompeii and the sense of responsibility of American Psycho stuck a pin in a chart and lowered the credit rating of the only country he has ever visited.

I shall visit the jewel in the crown of our former empire with the requisite humility of a hitherto spoilt Western consumer... and the swaggering glee of a cricket fan who shall never fail to enquire as to the health of Zahir Khan's hamstrings while munching beef burgers and pouring scorn on reincarnation. As an avowed internationalist anti-Imperialist and communist I feel less personal guilt about the Amritsar massacre than I feel suspicion about MS Dhoni abandoning the technology for LBW reviews. Consequently I am far more obnoxious a visitor than any British bourgeois liberal who forgives any foreign misdeeds as penance for Cecil Rhodes, the East India Company, the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion and all those deportees from these shores who exterminated the Aboriginies.

I do feel bad about being clothed head to toe by Primark - partly the globalization thing, partly the fashion thing. But obviously not as bad as the young black revolutionaries of Haringey who strode peacefully past the doors of that high street thrift icon on Saturday night with the purposefulness of the Angel of Death on Passover, on their way to JD Sports, Currys Digital and Tesco's Finest Range. And before you send a link to this blog to the Daily Mail bear in mind I speak as a man who took active part in the 1981 Brixton riots. Yes it was partly a white man's ire at not being able to score his weekend's ounce of dope on Railton Road but it was also a frustrated cry of defiance against Thatcher's war on the working class and the police's racist persecution of my black brothers and sisters. 2011's Tottenham's trigger was less a heroic insurgency against neo-fascism and more about grievances over Spurs' probable sale of Luka Modric to Chelsea and a deep social hunger for a new telly, some trainers and a nice bit of carpet. Cynthia Jarrett was an innocent old lady who died during a police raid on Broadwater Farm in 1985, "Starrish Mark" was a known armed gangster. He has less connection to Rodney King than to Burger King, and the subsequent setting fire to people's front gardens more in common with the KKK than the NAACP.

So I temporarily leave this island collectively trying to figure out if the face behind the mask is that of Zorro/Batman/an extra from the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut or a the Dentist from Little Shop of Horrors / a knife-weilding truant after an XBox 360; and I
begin my latest adventure as The Class Warrior in a Panama Hat quenching a thirst built up touring the Taj Mahal with chilled Evian while the masses pray for clean tap water while nobody will lend the United States of America a single biro lest they not give it back.

Life hasn't been this confusing since Araucaria' last bank holiday crossword with a grid sans numbers and the theme of the novels of Honore de Balzac.


FCNaylor

(On Twitter @FCNaylor)