The Kelly Gang

http://litandspoken.southbankcentre.co.uk/2010/07/15/the-kelly-gang/

Cozy Valentine R.I.P.

It is with a heart so unbearably heavy and with tears that refuse to stop that I write of the untimely passing of my precious Cozy Valentine.

She had been unwell since an operationlate last year and had borne the last few months of constant pain with extraordinary stoicism, great fortitude and, when she was able, her trademark humour.

Cozy was as bright as Venus on a frosty morning and as quick as a drop of runaway mercury. Her beautiful green eyes were as unique as the love she had for her family and her friends.

She read the post below before anyone else, as I wrote it, and it made her cry. Happy tears. She loved the fact that so many of you read it and followed the link to her music.

That she had only recently celebrated her thirtieth birthday makes her death such an unaccountable tragedy.

That she leaves behind her two beautiful daughters, Eluna Red and Grace, who she loved so completely, who she was so proud and so protective of, makes it a hundred times more so.

She delighted in her adored and adorable maidens, in life, in her music and in all that was good, true, authentic and heartfelt.

Please find time in your thoughts for her Mother, her sister and brother, for Ela and Grace and for Rodd and Taz.

Her name was Hannah. I called her ‘my darling’ and ‘my sweetheart’ for she was both. She called me ‘her dearest darling boy.’ I was.

We had been making such lovely plans for a gentle future of warmth, stability and 'niceness' together as she put it, as adored wife and proud husband, and I can’t believe that I’m having to write these words about the woman, the girl, that I loved with all of my broken heart and who I was so very fortunate to be loved by.

Rest in gentle peace my darling girl, my precious, adorable and adored, beautiful Hannah and know that you were so deeply loved by your dearest boy who wanted the world for you and who loved your true love for him as the dearest thing in his life.

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Cozy Valentine

Now then, I know that the whole point of coining the name LibraDoodle for this blog was to obliquely highlight the emphasis on various musings literary that exercised me, but I hope you will permit me a diversion into matters musical.

There is a slight justification for this as many years ago I made the foolish error of thinking that it might be easier – and so I also thought, more immediately profitable – to tell stories through the medium of song writing rather than through writing a novel. As much an act of idiocy and misdirection as it was of laziness, I of course eventually learned my lesson, but not before I’d performed before bemused audiences across Eastern Europe, unwittingly wasting the time and effort of some people that I seriously admired and respected in the process. Still, I tried and in the trying learned to respect those who can hold our attention and grip our emotions through song; those who can crystallise universal human truths within the parameters of verses, choruses, bridges and instrumental breaks.

More recently many of the authors I am honoured and proud to know have confessed to being rock stars, musicians or singers manqué. Many make reference to music in their novels; some having gone as far as producing CDs of the music that their fictional protagonists listen to. There is a correlation between musical and literary originality, the number of novels that have either a tacit or overt soundtrack being nigh on equal to the number of songs that make reference to literary inspirations. What we admire in great literature, the originality of emotional expression, is akin to that we admire in great song writing or musicality and while it is easier to recognise such originality retrospectively it is harder to do so before the passage of time has allowed bandwagons to coalesce and filter the wheat from the chaff on our behalf.

I have some precedents for this line of thought. Many years ago I used to perform, trialling my own new songs and new poems at a venue called the Troubadour in West London, which was famed for being the site of Bob Dylan’s first UK performance, or so the mythology claimed. I also occasionally played guitar for a young singer-songwriter called Alex Zapak who I thought (oh how I want to write ‘knew’ there) was a completely original voice and for whom I thought success was just a matter of time. Sadly it wasn’t to be for her, but I still stand by now, nearly twenty years on, what I then thought. At that time one of the many people who used the ‘come one, come all’ open-mike evenings to test new material was a superb young guy who had such an extraordinary voice, such a magnificent turn of phrase and who wrote songs of such emotional honesty, clarity and musicality that success - by the yardstick that then prevailed at least - was to my mind assured. As it happened I was wrong again and he disappeared for quite some time only to resurface years later with a string of huge hits. He was called David Gray, he still is, and he was as authentic an artist as is possible to be; no urge to be a celebrity, no shallow aspirations, just a hunger to be heard, to be given a chance.

In the intervening years I have privately bewailed the absence of such true talents, such originality, such artistry from the public arena. I admit that I have become cynical about the over-packaged, pre-digested, over-produced pap that fills the charts. My fault entirely as I’ve been focussed on other areas and have not been going to the music venues, the clubs and the evenings where real talent is nurtured. Until recently that is.

In the past few months my unhappy and uncomfortable musical cynicism has been blown away, evaporated like cold fog in warm sunlight, and the reason is this. In much the same way that I am aware of some extraordinarily talented writers and poets whose inability to find a publisher I fail to understand, there are a number of musicians, singers and songwriters who have hitherto failed to trouble the music industry but who have been quietly adding to the colour, range and vibrancy of the nations artistic spectrum.

I have in previous postings extolled the virtues of such artists as Aruba Red and Woe and I would now add to them the extraordinarily original and deeply affecting talent of a singer, songwriter and musician who travels under the stage name of Cozy Valentine.

A solo artist, she sings songs of love like T.C Boyle writes novels of life, without fear, without dilution. She tells of the harsh, heartfelt and fragile facts of romance’s reality with the same frank honesty that Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis employ to write the uncomfortable truths of machismo and insecurity. Her poetry of the heart defines the grit that forms the pearl. I have heard her sing live and have wept, wept uncontrollably and unashamedly at the truth of her sadness and for the sad truths of which she sings. Imagine pure love sung in the minor key of Jack Daniels, imagine tunes of the tarnished sadness of emotional reality strummed on a guitar strung with broken heartstrings, imagine tears of disappointment made diamonds of despair.

But also imagine hope, imagine a dogged, optimistic refusal to give up on the dream of the love that we all sense is possible. Indeed imagine a pure, fairytale princess who is trapped in the shallow, venal world that allows X factor to exist and who despite this knowingly, bravely bears the weight of that frustration and knowledge. If ever there was a Cinderella of our time, it is Cozy Valentine. If Edith Piaf had a 21st century sister, it would be Cozy Valentine. As cozy as Boudicca on a rampage and as close to the fluffy pink Hallmark card version of St. Valentine as Eros is to an AK 47 firing a dum-dum bullet to the heart, her music draws you in, strokes your hair, holds you tight, kisses you softly, warmly and passionately and then bites you hard on the lip so you never, never forget her.

We live in a sad and confused world where such words as ‘fame’ and ‘celebrity’ are imbued with a value, bestowed with a currency they do not deserve having no longer been earned by the honing of a raw talent to the point of mastery, to a level of excellence. For my money then contemporary fame and celebrity are a sham. The words that describe the true essence of value to me are artistry, talent, dedication, authenticity and honesty and in these Cozy Valentine has wealth beyond compare and deserves great praise for creating pure, beautiful, dark pearls of perfection in song.

Yours ever,

LibraDoodle.

(Cozy Valentine can be found at http://www.reverbnation.com/cozyvalentine)

A Seductive Business.

Writing is such a seductive business. Or perhaps more accurately, writing is the business of seduction.

Such an exercise in blind faith. Although you don’t write for anyone in particular, with the possible exception of yourself, as you embark on the long journey of optimism that is a novel what you are really hoping for, truly longing for, is to be chosen. Chosen by an agent. Chosen by a publisher. Chosen from the thousands of other books that are published that month, that year, all lined up, shimmering on the shelves like nervous boys at a school dance.

The best that you can hope for is that one girl, one reader, will like your jacket from across the room, across the shop, will come over, pick you up and see what you have to say for yourself, like it enough to spend some more time with you, open you up and let you take her on a journey into the world that you have created for yourself, for her. All you need, artistically, is just that one reader, that one lover, that one girlfriend, one wife.

Of course the business part means that commercially you need to whore yourself out to as many hundreds or thousands as you can manage. Perhaps writing is the seduction of prostitution. For the brief time that you spend together you make someone feel special, make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel less alone in the world and then when the last page has been turned, you fold quietly away, leaving them to sleep, to return to their normal life. It’s perhaps no accident that authors, like prostitutes, are paid in advance for their wares.

But while you are together and she gets to know you, to explore you between the sheets of paper on which your heart is laid bare, your very soul exposed, that one reader is your entire world and if you’re lucky, you are theirs.

Yours,

LibraDoodle

The Brief Life of Oneword

The following is a piece I wrote last year for the Society of Authors which they have kindly published in the Winter edition of their magazine The Author. I post it here for the record:

It was a grand plan; an idea so evolved, so ambitious and pioneering in its conception that what occurred over the next 9 years could hardly have been planned for, let alone expected. That one of the prime movers behind it had been the man who ‘invented’ Radio 1, that it had support from an industry that had never seen the like and that it embraced a new and exciting technology should all have played into its favour. But it was not to be.

The idea? In the words of said prime mover, Tim Blackmore MBE, the man that wrote the original application for the programme contract:

‘We wanted to create a commercial radio station that was more than just a jukebox. Commercial radio had not yet provided an intelligent speech station… I believe that would have been our achievement.”

That plan became the Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) station Oneword, which from May 2000 broadcast a range of content from serialisation of audio books to weekly publishing industry news, from film reviews to a unique thirty minute, daily author interview programme ‘Between the Lines’ that for some eight years was more than just my job, it became my life and my passion.

The team that had been formed to put the plan into action included professionals that were as inventive and keen as they were committed to the ideals of the new station. Not least Managing Director Ben Budworth, formerly the head of radio traffic report company Metro and Paul Kent, formerly Head of Readings for BBC Radio 4. Good people, solid people with impressive track records. People who knew and understood both the dynamics of arts programming and of radio’s commercial sensibilities and could apply their knowledge to the new station and the new technology.

In the year 2000 digital radio was a nascent form of broadcasting. At Oneword’s outset there were barely any DAB radios for sale. Few people had heard of DAB and understood what it was let alone owned a DAB set. Manufacturers were in a race to overcome various technical issues such as short battery life caused by the early DAB chip’s hunger for power. Digital One, the company responsible for erecting transmitters and to whom the stations paid hefty fees to use ‘their’ airwaves, were working furiously to extend the reach of the early service beyond the main motorway corridors. It was an exciting time, full of hope and optimism. It felt like a modern version of loading up a wagon and heading west across the plains and over the mountains. Pioneering stuff. At times one could imagine that the spirit of Marconi moved among us.

It was all part of Oneword’s plan though, that as the DAB industry grew, we would grow with it. The early days would give us time to try out new programming ideas, test the water and to slowly find our feet and our audience. In the beginning it worked well. We started to make some good programmes. A company called Pure started to make some good radios, not least the little pine box called the Evoke that soon became a highly desirable kitchen radio. Oneword won the first of its two Gold Sony Awards, the Oscars of British radio. It all looked as if the experiment might just work.

But soon after, the first of a string of problems hit. As Tim Blackmore, by then Oneword’s Chairman put it:

‘The take-up of DAB by its potential users was slower than had been anticipated, our most enthusiastic launch partner, Chivers Books, was bought by BBC Worldwide and with that sale we lost a major shareholder and a valued director… following our initiative, the BBC then planned Channel X which eventually emerged as BBC7 which with its guaranteed income was able to invest so much more than our resources would allow. The Chivers shareholding went to a Hong Kong based venture capital company who were bewildered by what they’d acquired and soon opted out.’

It was a hard time to be in the office. Suddenly all the joy and optimism had evaporated. All thoughts of our becoming the ‘biggest shop window for the publishing industry and it’s output” as Budworth put it at the time, were put on ice as we fought for survival against fleeing shareholders and stiff competition from the BBC. It is worthy of note that the BBC were later much criticised in a report for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, by Tim Gardam. But the damage was done.

The trick in commercial radio is the commercial aspect. Oneword had set its stall out for listeners and slowly we were building a keen and loyal audience. Advertisers were another matter however. Media buyers, those gatekeepers of advertising revenue, were understandably slow to recommend that their clients spend their money on a new, little understood medium that had such small audiences compared to the more developed mainstream options. Even the publishing industry was unwilling to support what seemed to us to be a hugely effective medium for appealing their core market, and this was long before credit crunch hit. All this made Oneword highly dependent on the capital expenditure of its shareholders for it’s income and radio is expensive.

Oneword sustained its activities with a budget that barely made it into the “two commas’ category and the bulk of that was swallowed up with licence fee, transmission costs and such technical considerations. The little remaining went on office overheads and (very) modest salaries. With Chivers gone it couldn’t last and one fateful Friday afternoon Tim Blackmore and Simon Cole (MD of UBC, the majority shareholder) came to 19 Charing Cross Road to impart the bad news that redundancies would have to be made. It was painful. It was the end of the first chapter and the beginning of the second and, as it turned out, final phase.

Following a move to UBC’s offices in Marylebone and to a much smaller studio to save money, there was now a skeleton crew. Ben Budworth had gone as MD and been replaced by Simon Blackmore, Tim’s radio industry professional son and the inheritor of Oneword’s somewhat poisoned chalice. Paul Kent became a freelance programme director working part time. A much smaller team, with a much smaller budget, those that remained worked so hard to try and keep the spirit of Oneword alive in the hope that a rescue could be effected. UBC were covering costs on their own, a situation that couldn’t last for long. Soon enough a new partner was found in Channel 4 who made assurances that they wanted to expand into radio and that taking a 51% stake in Oneword would enable them not just to invest but to cross promote the station on screen. It all sounded hopeful. It began to seem that a hiccup had been cured and that Oneword could get back on track. But the assurances failed to become commitments. Channel 4 then pitched for and won the second, national commercial UK multiplex, a rival to Digital One’s multiplex on which Oneword remained, but without a sound economic future.

The harsh truth was now staring the station in the face. Simon Blackmore summarises it well:

“Through almost constant challenge and without enormous resource, the various teams at Oneword produced [prize-winning] output which both stimulated and enhanced the digital radio offering. It was a worthy competitor to anything offered by the BBC, and on a fraction of the resource. It was a station that attracted loyalty, press attention and revenues out of all proportion to its size. The fact that those things did not in the end add up to a business… is a matter of regret, but an inescapable truth.”

It would be easy to write of what could have been. A radio station that did for the publishing industry what most others do for the music industry; a true radio window for Britain’s enormous writing and publishing output. ‘Between the Lines,’ my own show, was listened to by so many who then told me of their joy in buying and reading the books that I’d discussed with their authors.

It all could have worked, if DAB had taken off faster, if the BBC hadn’t been allowed to start their own version, if UBC, that most loyal of shareholders, had had deeper pockets, if Channel 4 had stuck to their commitments, if profitability had been more of a short term possibility than a long term hope. If, if, if.

In Tim Blackmore’s email to me, summarising the history, he starts:

‘Looking back at the creation of Oneword I can’t help but feel a deep sadness…’

I know of authors, former listeners and literary festival attendees who come up to me and express the same sentiment. I know how they, Simon, Ben, Paul Kent and Tim feel. As the only staff member who was there constantly from the beginning to the end I feel it myself. Deeply. Still.

The Allure of Chanel

When Jack Black sang “It’s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock and roll” in the 2003 film School of Rock, he knew of what he sang. That line, a perfect ohrwurm if ever there was one, wormed through my own ears yesterday evening as I headed to North London. It got slightly altered along the way to “It’s a long way up to Hampstead if you have to walk,” and indeed it is. Especially from Mortlake. On a cold December night.

Penury had forced me to take Shanks’s Pony to Keats’s House in this charming part of London as I had accepted an invitation to chair an event for Pushkin Press and Daunt Books. It was however to prove worth the shoe leather as something extraordinary happened.

The occasion was the launch of a new Pushkin title, The Allure of Chanel, originally written by Paul Morand and published in 1979 in French. Now available in an exquisite translation by Euan Cameron, it contains quite superb illustrations by none other than Karl Lagerfeld and photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Jean Moral, to name but two. It tells the story of ‘Mademoiselle’ in her own words, as recounted to Morand over a number of days and weeks in 1946 when the writer and designer met in a hotel, the Badrutt’s Palace in St Moritz, Switzerland, awaiting post war calm to allow her return to France. Chanel was at this time unemployed, exiled and ‘waiting to become wealthy again.’ It was a difficult time for her, the sulphurous whiff of collaboration hanging about her, perhaps fittingly for the self styled “only volcano from the Auvergne that is not extinct.” It may be that feeling oppressed and unhappy, she chose this time to tell her story and to self-mythologise parts of it, especially her childhood years. Some believe this to be the case. I, however, am no expert on her and her life and cannot comment. What I can say is that it is a fascinating read and a wonderful insight into the mind and character of a force of nature, a pioneer of both couture and arguably feminism. And all this despite the fact that I'm probably not in the target demographic for the book, but a good story well told has universal appeal.

The evening was an enchanting one. Sitting next to an illuminated Christmas tree, in a beautiful room, in the former home of such an illustrious poet was inspirational. The 50 or so members of the audience were engaged with the conversation between Mr Cameron and myself and engaging with their questions and comments. There was a warmth to the proceedings, a literary conviviality as Cameron’s beautifully prepared piece on Morand and Chanel met with interest and approval. The publisher had flown in from New York and two of the doyens of Pushkin arrived by Eurostar. Richard Strange, the actor, musician and man of letters, one of the finest fellows I know (he once trashed an art gallery with Jack Nicholson) and who is possessed of charm, talent and extraordinary generosity was there, fresh from the film set of the latest Harry Potter film and with his brilliant wife and lovely daughter. The questions came and when neither Euan nor I had answers, other members of the audience offered their insights.

One of the joys of a smaller event is that it can be run less as a performance and more an open talking shop. One audience member, sitting in the front row, who gave her name as Emma, shared insights that belied her youth. As we delved deeper into Chanel’s life, she seemed to be possessed of yet more answers, more rejoinders, all delivered in a voice, an accent, as sweet and soft as crème Chantilly. I laughingly asked her “You’re too young to have known Coco Chanel, but I don’t suppose you’re in some way related… are you…?” She paused and looked at me. I thought she was insulted, that I had in some way ruined the evening for her and was half way through stumbling out a hurried, defusing, apology when she said “Not to Coco no, but my Great Aunt and her husband were two of Mademoiselle’s closest friends,”

Oh boy. Not only could you have heard a pin drop but you could almost feel and hear the goose bumps rising throughout the room. Emma’s great aunt and her husband are mentioned throughout the book and have a chapter devoted to each of them. One of Karl Lagerfeld’s illustrations is of Emma’s forebear wearing none other than an early ‘little black dress.’ It was an extraordinary moment of the sort that happens so occasionally at such events and is gloriously unforgettable when it does.

When at the beginning of this piece I said that something extraordinary happened, I may have slightly dissembled, for as if that wasn’t enough something else occurred. Sitting across the aisle from Emma, also in the front row, was a beguiling, elegant angel. Graceful, alluring and shining with calm intelligence, she was tall enough that when I stretched my legs out at one point, our toe-caps nearly touched and I swear a Michelangelo, Sistine chapel ‘spark of creation’ moment occurred. Whether she felt the same thing is as yet unknown. I therefore can’t write “but that’s another story.” Not yet at least.

So while it may not have been an evening of rock and roll, rock and roll was indeed present. Even when it is a 'long way up to Hampstead when you have to walk' and twice as far if you have to walk back, the return was on feet so much lighter than those that took me there. Chanel’s allure was indisputable. The allure of “The Allure of Chanel’ evening only goes to show that there is still romantic inspiration to be found at Keats’ House.

Yours,

LibraDoodle.

Kerala

Imagine Kent, the garden of England as it used to be known, with its endless orchards, fields of hops and fecund woodland. Now turn the thermostat up to the mid thirty-degree mark, crank the humidity machine up to full and paint in a range of dramatic mountains. Add in the smell of woodsmoke, spices and aromatic cooking, then turn the volume up so that you can hear the gentle susurration of the cooling breeze through the tea plantations of the highlands or the rhythmic chug of marine engines as houseboats sluice their way across the coastal lakes and slowly a picture of Kerala begins to emerge. Kerala the fertile, Kerala the fragrant, Kerala the beautiful. Like Kent, but with the colour, contrast and volume turned to maximum.

This southwestern state of India is rapidly becoming the destination of choice for travellers of all tastes and budgets. They are not wrong. The variety of landscapes and cultures it has to offer are second to none, but so too is the range of accommodation. Homestays are becoming the newest ‘new big thing’ since eco-tourism - the two concepts are not unrelated – and they are playing a key role in the growth of tourism in the region.

On a recent three-centre tour I started in the highlands of Munnar, just west of the border that separates Kerala from Tamil Nadu and the centre of the tea growing industry, started in the 19^th century by Scottish planters. The air here, 6000 feet above sea level, is cool and clear. The roads wind and climb the hillsides giving glimpses of spectacular waterfalls one minute and the verdant green, hobbity, topiary of tea fields the next. The highest tea plantation in the world, the Kolukkumalai Tea Estate is here, just fifteen miles from the colourful, pungently aromatic, bustling centre of the little town of Munnar. Not a huge distance, but three hours by bouncing, lurching jeep up an impossibly vertiginous turnpiking track on the private estate. Worth every bruise and scrape of knee for the views from over 2km above sea level and for the purest, freshest tea it’s possible to drink.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the region and not just tea. Cedar Woods, the homestay that was my billet for two nights, is set in 75 acres of cardamom, vanilla, coffee and cocoa plantation. Nutmeg grows wild here, its pear shaped fruit falling and exploding on the ground to reveal the nutmeg within, wrapped in a red sheath that looks for all the world like a waxy, alien, lacework version of something that normally covers a Dutch cheese and which when dried is better known as mace. Cardamom curing houses dot the hillsides, the sweetly fragrant smoke hanging in the air like cathedral incense. Not for nothing is the adjacent homestay, an award-winning pepper plantation, named Spice Garden.

This is not a wealthy area. As the younger generation flock to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to find work in the hotels and restaurants, the pool of agricultural labour has diminished. A worker in the spice trade who five years ago would receive 60 rupees for a days work can now command 250 rupees. But the value of the spices they pick and process has not risen and so the owners of smallholdings are opening their homes to visitors to supplement their incomes. Warmly welcoming and eager to ensure that guests are spoiled with truly excellent home-cooked food, the hosts of these clean and comfortable family homes manage to be superbly hospitable, attentive and informative without becoming intrusive. They have taken the adage “Invite a guest, send back a friend” to their hearts.

Six hours westwards along pitted roads where monkeys wait for handouts on the verge is Pala. Larger than Munnar and straddling the river Meenachil, it is a lively little town set in the rolling hills of Kerala’s mid country. Here the landscape is more tropical. Palm trees abound. The humidity is turned up another notch or two. The Indian street orchestra of constant car horns and puttering auto-rickshaws (three wheeled Vespa scooters with bench seats and flat bed rears for loading with wood, families, furniture or fare-paying passengers) is louder here, more cacophonous but somehow pleasantly and curiously calmingly so. Outside the town are stands of rubber trees, private groves that support entire extended families one of which were to be my hosts.

The Meenachil Enclave is the heart of a small industry and a good example of the diversity that one family relies upon for its sustenance. It is also properly luxurious, opulent even. The house looks like a Thai temple. Beautifully ornate wood panelling, doors and carvings rise up from the pristine lawns on which are dotted bird cages alive with budgerigars, love birds and in one three very impressive eagles. The marbled interior, with its central atrium open to the sky so that rain feeds the water feature, would not look out of place in a five star hotel anywhere in the world. The bedrooms, crammed with dark wood furniture, designer bathrooms and skin-caressing linens, belie the fact that this is not just a family home but an ancestral home.

Rubber is the mainstay. The result of the mornings tapping brought to the rear of the house for processing, rolling and finally smoking in the lofts above. The cured sheets of latex, thick bathmats of browned rubber are then stored, hung over wooden dowels until the market price meets with the owner’s approval. The rear of the house is where the chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs (oh yes) are kept in hutches or roam the pasture. No pets these though, but good organic ingredients for superb Keralan cuisine. The byre hold cows for milk. There is a pool. There is family warmth. There is impeccable hospitality and gracious attention to one’s comfort. There is even gold cutlery.

Finally to the coast, not that of the Indian Ocean however, but of Lake Vembanad and the town of Alleppey, the Venice of the East.

Here there is a delightful breeze and life takes on the slower pace that proximity to large bodies of water instils. Here there are endless paddy fields of rice. Here there is Vembanad House, a family home surrounded on three sides by water, a spiritual retreat and a balm to the world weary. Here there is lobster fishing from wooden canoes that leave from steps at the bottom of the garden, where clams can be raked from the lake bottom and cooked for you over open fires under waving palms. This is where time can be spent gently, swinging in a hammock, visiting the Church of St Mary in Champakullam, a site of Christian worship since St Thomas founded a church here in AD 52. Here the beautiful husband and wife owners and their wonderful small son will play cricket with you, cook you exquisite Ayurvedic inspired meals to be eaten at night under the star-studded velvety skies by the lakeshore and then treat you to a captivating Kathakali performance by masters of this oldest of theatre forms. Here there is India, glorious India. A little like Kent and at the same time nothing like Kent at all.

Paul Blezard stayed at the following Mahindra Homestays locations:

Cedar Woods, Munnar, Kerala with Jean and Anita Jayan

Meenachil Enclave, Kottayam, Kerala with Jose and Mariamma Kuruvinakunnel.

Vembanad House, Alleppey, Kerala with ‘Bala’, Sandhya and Dhanush Balakrishnan.