EPISODE 3: The Quest for Money + News Roundup

One of the first tips I picked up when I got to the UK is that your pocket is your very best friend. Firstly, to combat and beat nature, you need to always put your hands in your pocket. Even if you are wearing gloves, it gets so cold that hell fire actually begins to look like a good holiday resort. You actually start to fantasize about using a long fork to eat noodles with Satan and his minions if you are trapped out on a cold night. Simple things you take for granted suddenly become extremely difficult. For example, you can’t pick up a call, you can’t tie your shoe laces, write, type, button your shirt, remove money from your wallet and I actually dare you to send a text message! I have a lot of missed calls on my phone primarily because my hands were just too frozen stiff to press the green call button. Very frustrating I must confess.

Another reason why your pocket is your best friend is simply because your wallet resides in it. Over here in the UK, you have the most polite group of individuals ever, who would hold the door open for you, family who would stuff you with food, you have friends who are willing to help out but one thing I must point out is that it all ends when it is time to pay the bills, when it is time to show the money. When it comes to this, you are on your own!

It was when I got here that the cliché ‘It’s not easy’ or in Yoruba dialect ‘Ko easy’ started to make a whole lot of sense. It is easy for you to imagine when you are in Nigeria and hear that someone earns 10 pounds per hour. Dreamily, you convert it into naira and you suddenly start to dream that all you have to do is get to Britain and before long you would be building a house in Nigeria that could feature in an episode of Cribs. However, the harsh reality is that for every pound you make, the more bills you pay and less I forget, the Queen a.k.a Iya Charlie would also demand her ‘royal share’ to buy Prince Harry another Rolls Royce(Oops! Did I just speak against the crown? Strike that out, I don’t want to be deported). Even the air you breathe here feels taxed!!!

With this in mind, it beats me why folks back home could sell their right testicle; go through all means, steal, and cheat to come over here thinking all they have to do is turn up here and pick pound sterling on the streets or pluck it on trees. Think again.

 Well, putting my sermon aside and back to my sojourns, I managed to twist some arms and made false promises to get my plane ticket to Nigeria but then I faced another dilemma, a huge one. I felt very cornered. 

I couldn’t go home empty-handed; I had to show that I have been blessed by Iya Charlie. Even though it showed physically as I was looking tremendously hot and handsome with pink lips and all, I had to back it up with gifts, spray some cash around and pretend like I was P.Diddy. I envisaged a tough task convincing folks back home that I wasn’t picking pound notes on the streets. In fact I could already hear them saying miser and sniggering behind my back. With few weeks left before my trip, a friend alerted me about a job opportunity in London where I could make some few bucks. With pound notes obstructing my psyche, I boarded Britain’s version of Ekene Dilichukwu bus called National Express and made my three hour trip to London.

Remember in previous episodes when I felt like Rosa Park in the bus because I was almost the only black in Bournemouth? Well, the reverse is the case in London. London especially the eastern part is more like a Nigerian island in Europe. I think a white guy would feel odd being amongst so many blacks, so many Nigerians. In buses here, I basically feel like Kunta Kite in the slave ship. All around me, I would hear Yoruba, Ibo, and Pidgin English all spoken. It was a bitter-sweet feeling though. Anytime any phone rings, the ringtone would be a D’Banj, Terry G or P-Square song and to tell you the truth, most Nigerians are lousy when speaking on the phone. All their life details would be in your palm within minutes and the noise they make is worse than Answani Market on a busy Tuesday.

Walking down East London were Nigerian barbing saloons, shops, I actually saw a woman wheeling down semo and pounded yam in a cart down the road albeit in a classy manner. Anyways, I got to my friend’s house and prepared to work, to earn a quick buck or so I thought...

                              MEMOIRS NEWS ROUNDUP

With news that has been filtering since the arrival of our president from Saudi-Arabia, one begins to wonder what condition he is actually in. Since nobody has actually been able to see him to ascertain his health, it is not too hard to imagine that even the late Michael Jackson was in far better health than our president before his death. Compare this to this story in Daily Mail that thoroughly analysed the health of President Obama.

If Obama’s health is a cause for concern, then that of our president is a disaster. The fallout continues. The video below by a Nigerian senator(after the very lenghty presenter's cue) fully epitomises the confusion the country is in. His vocabulary is unrivalled and words that have not been invented and never will were freely used. Get your dictionaries out people to search for words that never were

Beats me how the guy got elected. Nonetheless i admire his cojones to make a mockery of himself on national television.

Moving on, the story I am going to talk about could possibly tempt you to out of school and become a cleaner or start gambling big-time. It is about a British couple who incidentally are Britain’s highest lottery winners after winning £56 million and gave their cleaner a £400,000 house. Read more on the story here. It just makes you want to drop your pen, ignore your assignments and go to a casino to either gamble or post your CV for a cleaning job for the rich and famous.

Well, this concludes this week’s edition. Many thanks to you all for reading about my not- so -glamorous life and experiences even though I wonder why you all do.

Till next week...Cheers.

EPISODE 2: Kings of the Loo+News Roundup

To kill the boredom and loneliness, my snow-infested brain formulated 3 fail safe plans. First was to get a six pack of my favourite drink in the UK called Stella Artois. Stella is quite a notorious drink over here and is fondly called the ‘Wife beater’ because when the Euro Nationals drink it, it intoxicates them so much that in most cases, their wives bear the brunt. I tried that and it didn’t work, in fact it made it worse, I proceeded to Plan 2 which was to go on a night out and party.
Dressed like an Eskimo in the wintry conditions, I manoeuvred myself into a bus going towards the club. In the bus, I reflected on my life so far. Back in Nigeria, going to the club with my ‘hooliganic friends’ was like a ceremony in itself. From bar to bar we prowled, making Arthur Guinness smile in his grave as his earthly pockets swelled with our Naira. With our brain molecules mixed with the barleys of Guinness we would enter our cars and form the most joyful procession ever, a convoy of promise, a night train. On the way there, we would break speed limits, punish our tires, bribe the police with money and booze...Back to the present, I winced, looked at myself through the glass and couldn’t discern the difference between myself and Santa Claus with the amount of clothing I had on. Only the beard remained, it seemed.
If you are a regular club-goer or alcohol sympathiser then you know that the toilet is one of the most frequented arenas to get rid of the life-saving poisonous liquid inside you. On my numerous trips to this hallowed place did I come to this scientific observation. I observed that from empirical studies, Nigerians are undisputedly the Managing Directors of toilets in the United Kingdom. Truth be said, I have not gone to any club in the UK from Bournemouth to London without seeing a Nigerian overseeing the night-to-night activities of the lavatory. My research led me to the fact that most of these ‘Toilet Research Administrators’ are from either Edo State or Port-Harcourt.
I have talked to a couple of these distinguished ‘Managers’ but the love of the pound sterling to them far outweighs the respectability of their jobs. If these same dudes go back home to Nigeria, it is this same you and I that would descend on them as fast as a LASTMA official on an offending driver passing one-way. When these dudes come home, we see them as established, millionaires, successful but from my vantage point here, I call them Kings of the Loo.
A sobering thought indeed so much that after most of these discussions, my inebriate mind clears making me waste the precious pound notes I used to buy the beer that was supposed to keep me tipsy and ‘loneliness proof’. Damn! Worse still, at 4am when most leave the club, there are no buses at that time, only cabs.
Due to my rare illness called ‘Cabophobia’, a strange illness caused by watching a cab money-meter increase by the pound thereby making me all sweaty, nervous and broke. I elected to keep fit by pulling my hoodie on my head and walk the 40 minutes back to my room in minus 3 degree conditions. How thought and mind sobering could that be? As if the Man Upstairs wanted to take a piss out of me, the clouds opened up and it started raining. Terrific. Just my luck.
Arriving my room and shivering like Jack in Titanic and cursing in languages in which I understood and didn’t, I switched to Plan 3. It was the last card I had to play; it was all I had left lest I lose my mind. I decided a fortnight in Motherland, Nigeria would cure my craze. The thought in itself warmed me up...

                 MEMOIRS NEWS ROUND UP

Last week, after months of debate, expectation, controversy, our president finally came back home after months of being incommunicado in a Saudi Arabian hospital. Just as acting president, Goodluck Jonathan was just coming to grips with Aso Rock and probably thinking about redesigning his ‘new home’ shows our president.

Don’t let that picture deceive you, according to reports, especially those of 234NEXT, our president is not as fit as a hip-hop star but still in a hospitalized condition. In fact if conspiracy theories are your thing, you should read 234NEXT’s version that might lead to suggestions that our president is no longer a he but a SHE-his wife Turai Yaradua.

 The Nigerian political tussle gets more interesting,more interesting than a chilled bottle of small stout and Nkwobi. More here to come as it unfolds.
Talking about tussles, last weekend in the world of soccer saw another between former team-mates John Terry and Wayne Bridge come head-to-head for the first time after the truth about an affair between the former and Bridge’s partner. After the disclosure, Bridge sensationally quit playing for England and the eyes of the world focused on the pair to see if they would shake hands. Bridge snubbed Terry big time and ignored shaking him in one of the most anticipated handshakes of all time.

Wouldn’t blame him though, if I was Bridge, I would be sorely tempted to take it a notch further and kick him in the nuts till I hear it crunch and see him writhe in agony.Well, that is my own opinion anyway but i still feel boys need to arrange Terry even though justice seemed to have been done with Bridge's Man City beating Chelsea 4-2. You just don't shag your pal's gal and expect three points after.
Hope you enjoyed this week's edition? For comments and suggestions, you could drop it in the comment box below or alternatively on my Facebook wall(Akin 'Nizzle' Solanke). You can also follow me on twitter by searching for me typing akinizzle.
Cheers

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