HOLIDAYS

 One of my Father’s  oldest friends you could basically say he was his brother, he and his brothers were into the Movie Business.! When I first met Ajit Sippy was at the preview of a movie called SHOLAY. It turns out that the Sippy Brothers were owing a lot of money to some people in India and if the money was not paid they would not release the film to them, as always my father would do anything for his best friend and my father ended up financing the movie for them, paying of the people and then carrying the movie reels to london for the preview, the movie went on to be one of the biggest movies ever made in Bollywood and actually it passed even some of the biggest box office movies in Hollywood !. the best part about all of this they never paid back what my father had paid to get the film released. 

Every weekend when i was not at school, we would end up going over to there house in Hampstead for along and extremely boring lunch, which meant all the adults would drink and drink till they passed out. On one of the weekends, the main actors from this movie were at his place: Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malani, I remember AB making me sit on his lap and then proceeded to feed me strawberries and a few sips of champagne much to my mothers anger at a eight year old drinking. 

Most Sundays we would either go to AS or we would go for a nice lunch, to either The Bell Inn or The Kings Head both places were always 90minutes away from were we lived, the car journey was always horrible as we had to listen to Indian Music 😂 The bell Inn was more chilled and we would always order Roast Beef, Yorkshire Pudding, Roast Potatoes and plenty of Gravy most of the time we were eight in total and the lunch would go on for maybe three hours or more, during this time one of two things would happen, my uncle would manage to remove the clips that held the table extensions together and once the clips were out, everything that was on the table would either fall on us or fall onto the floor. My mother made it a point to always make us dress in white, still to this day have no idea why she would make us wear white, but after a few times of my uncle dropping everything onto us - which included Gravy, red Wine, any food that was left over she stopped making us the wear white.! and the second thing that would always happen was we would be the punching bag for the adults, we could never do anything correctly . 🤷🏾 The Kings head was more upscale and was owned by a lovely gentleman called George, who passed away last year and also the restaurant also closed down, I always wanted to take my kids for lunch there but unfortunately we never got round to it. My mother would make it a point to order one tray of bread and butter pudding and then have the pleasure to force us to eat this pudding which I HATED. 

As the years went on I started to get closer and closer to my neighbours and we were always together (3 Musketeers) either we lived at my place or at there place. One evening we found some old fireworks in there garage and as all teenagers would do, we decided to stupid things with them, while trying to light one of the fireworks it exploded and all the hair on my chest got burnt of and also my t-shirt was totally burnt, had to borrow a t-shirt from Steve. 

Some weekends we would light the barbecue and use the indoor swimming pool and my parents would invite over there friends, my mother used to marinate the chicken, steaks, pork in a yogurt and Indian spices and when you put it on the barbecue and it was cooked properly wow the taste and smell was out of this world, Steve and Dave would sneak over get a take away for there family, but after a few weeks, they just became part of the family and always be invited over for the barbecue along with there parents, they could never pronounce my name correctly and ended up calling me SON 

One of my first summer jobs, was delivering newspapers to all the houses around where I lived, so by 4am i would have to get up and ride my bike down to the Village and collect about 100 newspapers and deliver them to the houses on my route, My Bodyguard (mother) used to follow me in her car driving at 1Km to make sure that I managed to deliver the newspapers and get home safely, after doing this for 3 mornings my mother ended up paying me more than I was earning not to do the newspaper run ❤️

We lived in the country side and when it snowed 60% of the time it was bad, this one weekend we were actually snowed in and since my house, had the indoor heated pool, sauna, private nightclub and also fully stocked wine cellar Steve, Dave & a Few Female Friends decided to camp out at my place, since my parents and sisters had gone to India for a week or so 

On one of my birthdays I decided to throw a small birthday party and at the same time my parents told my two sisters they could invite a few friends also, this meant to my sisters to invite half the school to the party!! Some of the people that showed up, had tattoos and did not understand the No Smoking In the House, by 11pm my parents had had enough and told me to shut down the party!! Which honestly was one of the scariest things i have ever had to do ! The following morning when we woke up and came down for breakfast the house looked like it had been through a earthquake, tables broken, the beautiful white carpet was not multi colour 😂 and the smell of booze and cigarettes was disgusting, my parents we livid with the 3 of us, I still cannot understand why I was in trouble as the thugs that destroyed the house belonged to both my sisters 

I don’t want to make this blog too long , to be continued 

XOXO OLD MAN