My name is "Mobi"; I'm an alcoholic

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I’m still drinking too much.

Yesterday was Visakha Bucha Day. All the bars were closed and most bar workers had the day off.

Tan’s ex -employer on the ‘Darkside’ was no exception and half a dozen of the girls who worked there decided to spend the afternoon at Pattaya Park, a water park just down the beach from my condo.

Tan is one of the few Thai girls I have known who looks absolutely stunning in a bikini and she decided to join her friends for a few hours. Afterwards I had a condo full of semi naked women.

I wasn’t complaining, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to have a few beers. The wine followed soon after.

The girls went out to buy some food and a bottle of Sangsom and they spent a pleasant evening out on my balcony chatting away and watching the sunset across Pattaya bay.

Tan doesn’t drink at all, and none of them drank to excess and they were all very well behaved.

It just reaffirmed my conviction that I am an alcoholic, while much of the world can drink in moderation – or not at all.

Tan drove four of them back to their rooms at around midnight, but two of them slept over and didn’t leave until noon today.

I had drunk a few beers and two bottle of wine and was trying to sleep through my hangover this morning, when the three girls decided to have a communal shower! Talk about shouting and giggling! It certainly put paid to my efforts to sleep.

I was bursting for a leak, and the girls showed no sign of vacating the bathroom, with ever more shrieking and laughter.

I finally had enough and went and banged on the door and told them I was coming in for a piss, whereupon the three of them fled – naked and dripping with water.

All good fun!

I have decided to keep away from Tan’s former bar. It is no good for me, as when I go there I start with coffee, water and so on, but after an hour or so I can’t resist the temptation to drink something a bit stronger. It happens every time so I have told Tan that of she wishes to go then she must go alone.

I have not attended an AA meeting since last Tuesday, but I will make a big effort to resume on Monday, when we have to get up early to send Tan to college.

I know many of you have advised me not to go to AA and in particular criticise the central plank of their recovery programme which requires a belief in God or a ‘Higher Power’.

The fact of the matter is that I too struggle mightily with this reliance/belief in a Higher Power, and the fact that I am supposed to turn my life over to him/her/it.

There was a time last year when I thought I was actually moving in that direction and becoming more spiritual, but the moment passed.

These days, I am as agnostic as ever and I regard many of the long term sober members of AA as benevolent, ‘religious nuts’ who cling to a belief in God as it is the only thing that seems to keep them from the demon drink.

Having said all this, there is much that is good and worthwhile in the AA Twelve Step programme. A lot of the ‘Twelve Step’ philosophy has been used by other organisations and medical experts as the basis of their own programmes, not only for alcohol addiction, but also for other addictions, particularly drugs, and in Tiger Woods’ case, sex.

So I see no harm in going to AA meetings, even if I do not embrace all the aspects of their programme. I feel that listening to other people’s stories, so much of which I can relate to, is definitely therapeutic.

Who knows? One day I may receive that jolt of electrical energy that transforms me into a God-fearing sober alcoholic – a story so beloved of AA members.

On the 4^th May, I wrote the following, about my alcoholic friend, Dave.

“Dave is still quite heavily medicated, still only sleeps fitfully, and leads a lonely, strange lifestyle.

We stayed with Dave for a number of hours and even took him out for a meal before dropping him back home later.

Both Jack and I felt that it was probably only a matter of time before he hits the bottle again. It was in his eyes, and in many of the things that he said. Sad to say, but we both thought that Dave actually wants to die, and sooner or later it will happen.

I hope we are wrong”.

I have not been in contact with Dave since Jack told me some unpleasant things that Dave had said about me.

I was a bit upset at the time, but I realise that Dave’s mind must be full of bitterness, resentments and distortions of the truth after all he has been through and it would be uncharitable of me if I took what he said at face value.

It is also possible that jack may be twisting what Dave allegedly said to him for his own purposes. I must remember that Jack was very drunk when this all spilled out, and at the time I was having a go at him for his patronising attitude towards Thais.

Anyway, I made a decision at the time that I should probably keep a low profile for a while, as my friendship with Dave was not helping my own condition very much so haven’t spoken to him for quite a while.

Jack has been stuck in Bangkok for the past few weeks with a similar eye infection to the one that floored me, and he has been seeing Dave quite regularly.

A week or so back Jack told me that Dave had started drinking again – quite openly. He said that the quantity of beer being drunk was quite minimal and that so far Dave was still looking and sounding fine.

But of course we all know it is only a matter of time now.

Today I called Dave’s lady, who had taken another brief trip to her home in the south of Thailand, and she confirmed that Dave was drinking again. She said that the doctor had increased his medication and was referring him to a psychiatrist.

Apparently he is suffering from depression, like so many of us I’m afraid.

I will call Dave soon, but I am not sure what I will say. Eventually it will all go downhill again, and many will suffer, especially those close to him.

He certainly has a death wish, but I wish he would just take a different route so that he doesn’t put people who love him through all that trauma again.

MOBI VIGNETTE

Nid (Preface)

Azzy, the Nigerian Lady, was my first wife, and Lynda, a Thai lady from Ubon Ratchathani, was my second.

This was the shortest by far of all my marriages as the marriage wasn’t even consummated when it fell apart. The break up happened on my wedding day.

I met Lynda in the early 70’S in HP Massage Parlour, on Sukhumvit Road, opposite Soi Five, on land that is now occupied by the Landmark hotel.

If you look in ‘Mobi’s Story’ (Part 2), I recounted the events that led up to Lynda being ‘kidnapped’ on my wedding day and how I had to pay a ‘ransom’ to set her free.

It was a miserable, but mercifully short affair, and I soon put it to the back of my mind when I eventually took up my new job in Jakarta, Indonesia.

So followed a very drunken year in Indonesia, (also recounted in depth in ‘Mobi’s Story’,) a return to Thailand where all my savings disappeared in a matter of months so I ended up scratching out a living, teaching English in a suburban, low class technical college to a bunch of unruly students  who had no desire to learn anything.

When even that meagre work failed to keep the wolf from the door, I managed to find my way back to England, where after a couple of months I obtained a job back in the oil industry in Tripoli, Libya.

This lasted almost a year, before I had to flee the country with the cops on my tail for making and selling illegal alcohol.

Back in Bangkok, after a wild couple of weeks in Amsterdam, I ran into my friend, Dave, who I had first met at the Fortuna Hotel some three years earlier, and it was he who indirectly introduced me to the lady who was to become my third wife.

At that time Dave was running a recording studio which had been built in offices in Wireless Road, not far from the American Embassy. He had a Thai-Chinese partner who also had their company offices in the same compound.

I have also written about this in ‘Mobi’s Story’; how I was persuaded to ‘throw in my lot’ with Dave’s partner, (the first, but certainly not the last occasion in which Dave introduced me to ‘trustworthy Thais’ who then did their utmost relieve me of my hard-earned money), and so kick-started my adventure in the pop music/ concerts / radio/TV entertainment business.

Most of Dave’s business at this time was concerned with writing and recording music jingles for the advertising industry. He had made a few friends in that business and it was through their introductions that he started to get commissions from the agencies.

Up to this point, there was virtually no original music or songs used in advertising in Thailand. Every commercial, be it radio, TV or cinema used music and/or songs dubbed or copied from music albums. Copy-write laws were totally ignored, and there was no infrastructure or history of studios in Bangkok producing original music for the advertising industry.

Dave’s arrival on the scene changed all that, although it was a long time before he was able to command reasonable fees for his productions, as the agencies simply did not budget for original music, and only came to Dave when they were unable to find a suitable song or a piece of music to fit their ads.

In those days, The Derby King bar in Patpong was the place to go for all farangs who were in some way engaged in the advertising business in Bangkok.

The place was packed with advertising executives during very long, daily lunch ‘hours’ and then again after work in the evenings.

It was inevitable that Dave would take me down to the Derby King one evening, shortly after I had returned to Bangkok from Libya and it was there, on my very first visit, that I met the girl who was to become Mrs. Mobi number three.

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

A good friend observed yesterday that I am always writing: “Today I have been sober, for one – two – three – four days and so on” many times and it is all pretty meaningless as these days my sobriety never lasts more than a few days.

He is quite right, and from now on I will refrain from putting the length of my sobriety up in lights until it reaches some kind of meaningful stage, but I will still mention my current state of abstinence or otherwise  in the narrative of my daily(???) blogs.

I haven’t written since May 16^th for a number of reasons.

Some of these reasons are concerned with excess alcohol consumption, but in the main, there are two other reasons that have kept me from my blog.

The first is that I have been suffering from severe “red eye”, (infectious conjunctivitis), for the past ten days. It has been so bad that I could hardly see and it took a great effort to use my computer keyboard to write even a few sentences.

The infection has been really stubborn and despite a load of meds, regular eye cleaning and application of drops and ‘paste’ in my eyes, I have been feeling very ill, and it just wouldn’t go away.

It was probably because I have been running myself down with excess alcohol and the body didn’t have much in reserve to fight it off.

Yesterday, I finally detected an improvement in my condition, and today, although my eyes are still red, I feel I am definitely on the mend. I can see much better, the redness has reduced and the pain and watering have more or less subsided.

The second reason I haven’t been blogging is all the trouble we have been experiencing lately in our beloved Thailand.

This blog is not intended to be a political blog, and although I may from time to time make the odd ‘political’ comment the state of things here, I do not wish to try and impose those views here as there are plenty of other blogs and forums where this is being done.

Nevertheless, I do care very much for this country.  I have been coming and going since 1973, and have lived continuously here in two separate spells totalling almost twenty years.

I read a great deal about Thai politics and what goes on here, and I have pretty strong opinions on a number of matters concerning Thailand, its political system and how the country is run.

The recent troubles in Bangkok have bothered me enormously, and frankly it has occupied most of my attention.  I really haven’t been in the mood to blog about my personal life, which, however troubling it may be, pales into insignificance when compared to the daily tragedy that has been playing out daily in our Capital City.

I also assumed that it was unlikely that my readers would be particularly interested in reading about Mobi’s pathetic little life when such tumultuous and dramatic events were unfolding around us.

Indeed, I received no comments during the height of the troubles, and it is only since things have started to settle down a little that the comments are starting to trickle in, which I think proves my point.

So here I am, back in the driving seat, and I guess I’d better do a brief re-cap of what has been happening in the life of alcoholic Mobi in the past two weeks.

In my last blog, of 16^th May I wrote that I would be driving to Nakhon Sawan the following day to take Tan’s daughter, Fon, back to her mother’s house as I considered Bangkok to dangerous a place for us to drive to, and also too dangerous a place to leave a baby until the troubles are brought to a conclusion.

We were duly on the road in the early morning and it is now clear that it is high time I bought a ‘sat- nav’ system. Although I had made the journey from Nakhon Sawan to Pattaya, via the Bangkok outer ring road without any hitches, I made a serious error when driving in the opposite direction.

At the end of the ring Road, in the Bang Pa In region, I should have made a left turn to pick at route 32, a fast six to eight lane highway that goes directly to Nakhon Sawan, and then joins up with highway 1 which continues northwards to Chiang Mai.

But instead of turning left, I turned right onto Highway 1 which  meanders all over the place as it  sort of ambles it’s winding way to Korat, before turning west again to meet up with Highway 32 at Nakhon Sawan.

I had been driving up highway 1 for over an hour before I realised I was on the wrong road and that if I kept going I would be taking a massive de-tour which would add hours to my journey. After a quick perusal of my trusty map I decided to take a left onto a minor road and drive directly west across country to meet up with Highway 32.

This was a big mistake. For some reason this rough, pot – holed two lane highway was chock-a-block with trucks and it took a very long time before we finally made it back to Highway 32, only to discover that we were not really that far North of the outer ring road we had left hours ago!

So instead of a two and half hour journey to Tan’s home, it took us over four hours.

Tan is truly different to just about every Thai lady I have lived with. My own stupidity was completely responsible for the additional two hours we had to spend on the road, and she had even suggested that I might be going the wrong way when we turned off the ring road and I completely ignored her.

Yet not a word of complaint and there were no recriminations that I had not listened to her and doubled our journey length unnecessarily.

I even joked that we had taken the ‘scenic route’ and she laughed indulgently at her crazy boyfriend who always gets lost.

In spite of all that we made it to Tan’s house in the early afternoon where it was incredibly hot. As before, I was greeted warmly by Tan’s family – her mother, father, grandmother, brothers, sisters and in-laws.

We had stopped to have a snack in town before driving to Tan’s home so we weren’t hungry. I decided not to stay long as I wanted to get back before nightfall and who knows what obstacles I might encounter on the way back.

It was still the height of the troubles in Bangkok, and only the previous day the ‘reds’ had blocked the Viphavadee/Rangsit Highway which was not far from where I would be passing.

Additionally, I had lost my driving licence, forgotten my passport and was travelling alone in uncertain times.

The journey back along highway 32 was without incident,, although several police road blocks had been set up, but when I reached Highway 1 where I should have picked up the outer Ring road, yet again my navigation was faulty. I soon realised I had passed the turn off and I was hurtling on my way towards central Bangkok.

I drove some distance along highway 1 before finding a U-turn and retracing my steps in very heavy traffic to the Pang pa In area, to have another try at finding the entrance to the ring road.

But I was on the other side of the road, and as I have mentioned previously, entrances and exits aren’t always duplicated on both sides of a connecting highway.

Eventually I saw a sign for the airport and although the other place names didn’t ring too many bells, I assumed it was the ring road and took a left, paid a toll and was soon on my way to ‘somewhere’.

I quickly realised that it wasn’t the ring road because it only had four lanes, and the ring road has six – eight lanes.

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what road I was on and looked for an opportunity to retrace my steps – but of course there wasn’t one.

Then I saw another sign for the airport, so I decided whatever road I was on it would eventually bring me out where I wanted to go – back to Pattaya on highway 7.

Ten more minutes and it suddenly dawned on me where I was.

I was driving down the Cheng Wattana /Bangkok Highway that runs right through the centre of Bangkok. To get to the airport and beyond I would have to follow it into Bangkok, via Din Dang, and out the other side on the Rama 9 expressway and then Highway 7.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Bangkok riots of the past few weeks, Din Dang was a flash point area and a number of buildings in that area had been torched. It was a ‘red’, no-go area.

But I had no choice and followed the traffic ever closer to the troubles where even from several kilometres away I could see billowing smoke filling the sky with an unearthly grey pallor.

We went slower and slower and at length we were right on the top of Din Dang and had a bird’s eye view (or maybe a sniper’s view) of the troubles below. My luck held and we kept on going. I heard later that it wasn’t long after I passed through that area that the road had been blocked off as police and fire-fighters had commandeered it to try and deal with the fires and the rioting reds.

I finally reached Jomtien at 7.30 that evening and was completely exhausted. I had been on the road for  nearly twelve hours with a few brief breaks.

I had one small snack in Nakhon Sawan and was very hungry but proceeded to get absolutely plastered.

Tan stayed at her home for three nights, and each night I stayed home but drunk myself silly. God knows why.

She was originally going to come home on the Thursday, but when she went to the bus station they told her that no buses were running that evening due to the curfew. So the following day her brother drove her to Pattaya, together with another three adults and three kids!

They arrived around noon and told me they would spend a few hours on the beach and then make the return journey.

In the event, they were getting ready to depart at around six p.m. when the brother called home and realised that he wouldn’t make it back before curfew.

So I had four adults and three kids to put up for the night!

Tan told me they would leave at the ‘crack of dawn’, but when I emerged from my bedroom at 8.30, the men were still sound asleep. I asked when they were leaving, starting to worry that this invasion might drag on a few days.

Tan told me: “When they wake up”.

It was with some relief they all finally departed at noon and I got my condo back.

Tan started full time college on Monday, (after going for half a day on Friday to be ‘hazed’), and she looks very smart in her white and maroon uniform. She is studying Business accounting.

We have to get up at six thirty as she has starts at eight and it’s a good twenty five minute drive in the morning rush hour.

It is good for us both to get up early and we are slowly slipping into the habit of rising early and going to bed early.

In just a few brief days Tan has made a number of new friends at college and I am hoping that I will slowly ‘wean’ her away from the bar she used to work at where she also has many friends.

She’s a really good kid, full of character, and disarmingly honest.

We chat and joke all the time, and Tan delights in telling me all the gossip about her friends and what she’s been up to at college.

Our first sexual encounters were very tentative, but after a week or so I started to enjoy the best sex of my life. Tan is sometimes insatiable, and my only worry is keeping up with her. I know that she is enjoying it as much as I am, and I genuinely believe she is very fond of me.

During the past two weeks I have had sober days; days when I didn’t drink much and a few days when I got very drunk and suffered for it.

Recently I attended a few evening AA meetings, and this week I went to two morning AA meetings. I stopped drinking  for three days this week but yesterday i started again, and today I have had a couple of beers while I am writing this.

I am thinking about what to write in my next ‘Mobi Vignette’. I have a number of ideas but haven’t made a decision yet. Hopefully I will be putting fingers to keyboard very soon.

I finally made it – 1 day without alcohol!

For the past few days I have been attempting to wean myself off the booze by gradually reducing my daily consumption.

I try to stay dry for as long as I can through the day but when the ‘pain’ gets too much, I have a few beers or a couple of glasses of wine to steady the body and  nerves.

Within a day or two I had managed to last through to the evening time without taking a drop, and then I limited myself to a few glasses of wine. (I am trying to stay off beer completely because I have put on to much weight and the sugar content is very bad for my diabetes.)

I have already blogged that last Thursday I followed this procedure, only to throw it out of the window when I experienced a perceived ‘slight’ from Tan, and secretly drunk about a third of a bottle of Sangsom late in the evening.

It was the realisation of what I had done that finally persuaded me that I probably cannot control my drinking without help, so on Friday evening I went to an AA meeting for the first time in months.

It was a good meeting, but it didn’t stop me having a few glasses of wine later that evening, which I decided would be my last – at least for a while. Then, yet another perceived ‘slight’ and I couldn’t wait to open the last remaining bottle of red in my collection. My twisted brain was waiting for the slightest excuse to pick up. So between about midnight and four a.m., I drank the whole bottle, while Tan slept.

I felt pretty bad yesterday morning, both mentally and physically and I knew that I had better get my act together.

Last night I attended my second AA meeting on the trot – another good meeting where the notion that alcoholics can only stop drinking  when they decide that they are really ready to stop – was a powerful, oft-repeated theme.

Then I collected Tan from her friend’s place and went home. The idea was to have an early night as Tan had to get up early today to go to her new college for a special ‘registration day’.

In the event we didn’t sleep until after two a.m. and I slept right through until almost noon. Tan awoke early, put on her sexy, maroon and white college uniform, and went to college on her motorbike.

I have finally made twenty four hours without any alcohol, so today I am on day two.

I don’t feel great, but not that bad, so hopefully I am on a roll.

Tomorrow we were scheduled to go to Bangkok to take little Fon back to Tan’s aunt’s house in Nonthaburi, but as Bangkok is increasingly descending into a state of total anarchy, I told Tan that it wouldn’t be wise to go.

The ‘Bangkok dangerous’ map provided by Thai Visa, showing all the trouble spots indicated that I might have to drive through ‘live fire’ zones, (i.e. ‘war zones’) to get to the Aunt’s home.

I suggested that instead of taking her to Bangkok, we should take Fon back to Nakhon Sawan, where she will be safer until the troubles settle down.

Tan has agreed, so tomorrow morning, early, we will drive to Nakhon Sawan, skirting Bangkok on the ring road, and hopefully avoid any troubles. I will return to Pattaya tomorrow evening, but Tan will stay for a couple of nights and return under own steam on Thursday, as she has to start college on Friday.

So it will be a big test of my resolve to stay sober – three nights on my own!

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

“Of Name confusion and pseudonyms”.

As I have mentioned previously, all the names in my blog have been changed to protect the real identities.

Unfortunately I sometimes get confused with my ‘re-naming’, and have occasionally used the person’s real name by mistake and, as I did yesterday, I got my pseudonyms confused.

In yesterday’s blog I confused Geoff, (The wife abusing alcoholic who swore at me), with Jack, the friend from Oz who passed on some hurtful comments made by Dave about me.

Anyway, the names have now been corrected, and I apologise for any confusion this may have caused.

Yesterday afternoon the three of us went to the bar/restaurant where Tan used to work and of course a great fuss was made of Tan’s daughter, Fon.  I sat at the bar, wrote my blog and sipped water.

When I had finished I had three glasses of wine, and then Tan drove us back to Jomtien.

Fon was tired, but refused to sleep and was playing up a bit. Tan became a little frustrated as she wanted her to sleep so that she could do some housework.

I had seen it all before and took it in my stride and took care of Fon for a while, freeing up Tan to wash the dishes and tidy up. (The best of a bad deal, methinks)

We put Fon to bed but she still wouldn’t sleep. At least she wasn’t crying, so I wasn’t too bothered, but Tan was feeling a bit tired and stressed and was a bit curt with me.

It was nothing really, but I became a bit upset and the result was predictable. I had about a fifth of a bottle of Sangsom in the kitchen and I quietly drunk it with cold water as Tan went about her business.

I did this in secret, which is the sure sign of an alcoholic, and I am not proud of what I did. It was silly and childish.

Tan is such a nice person. No one is perfect and she is not used to taking care of a young baby and was entitled to be a bit ‘out of sorts’. God Knows I am often enough.

Anyway, no harm was done, Fon finally slept at around eleven thirty and Tan and I were asleep soon after midnight.

We all slept and slept and slept.

We slept right through until almost one p.m. this afternoon when I finally got up, leaving the other two still asleep!

(Fon had woken a couple of times in the night but was given a bottle of milk and was soon nodding off again)

Today I feel better than I have felt in days, and will redouble my efforts to keep my booze consumption to an absolute minimum.

MOBI VIGNETTES

MARDIE (Part 10)

I hung up the phone and looked at the immigration officer.

“My lawyer has told me not to sign the document,” I told him.

He looked at me for a long time in silence, and then picked up my passport and handed it back to me.

“If you try to work you will be prosecuted”, he said, and then told me to report back to his office in two weeks’ time.

Back at Mike’s employment agency, I recounted what had transpired and Mike called the lawyer who assured me that it was all bluff and that nothing would happen to me if I started working.

Between them they pretty much convinced me that I had nothing more to worry about. So Mike started to set up interviews, and I decided it was time to move out of the guest house I had been staying in since my arrival and find more permanent accommodation.

I found a lovely studio apartment in downtown Montreal at a rent I reckoned I could afford, based on the kind of salaries that were on offer for accountants, and somewhat recklessly signed up for a one year lease.

Once settled into my new bachelor pad, complete with TV and telephone ( a luxury for me in those far off days), I decided to call Mardie to let her know how things were going.

Although I had been preoccupied with immigration and other matters over the past few weeks, I was now starting to miss her like mad and was quite desperate to hear the sound of her sweet voice.

To my dismay and disappointment, Mardie’s phone appeared to be out of order and however many times I tried, I was unable to get through.

In desperation I decided to call my American ‘benefactor’, Jim, who I had met on the bus and had been so kind to me.

This time my luck held and Jim answered the phone. I explained to him how things were going and all the trouble I had had with immigration and he immediately suggested that I take an overnight bus to New York that weekend to visit with him.  He was sure he could find me a good job in New York if I wanted one.

I explained that I had pretty much burnt my bridges now and was committed to staying in Canada, but he still insisited that I come for a visit and assess the situation.

He even told me that he could arrange for me to obtain a green card, which would allow me to live and work legally in the USA.

It was very tempting, for all I had wanted to do in the first place was to move to New York and be near my Mardie.

I told him I would think seriously about his offer, and in the meantime would he kindly do me a big favour. I explained that I had been unable to contact my girlfriend, Mardie and was concerned that something may have happened to her.

Ever the gentleman, he said it would be no problem at all and asked me for her phone number and address and he would see what he could find out.

The following evening he called me and told me that he hadn’t been able to contact Mardie by telephone so he had travelled up to Queens and gone to see her. He reported that both Mardie and her flatmate were at home and were fine, and that their phone was simply out of order.

He then repeated his request for me to come and see him in New York, and after all he had done for me I didn’t feel I could refuse, and agreed to come the following  Sunday and stay for a few days.

I reasoned that if I was going to new York, I had better go there before I started working.

But by far and away the greatest incentive to go there was that I would be able to go and see Mardie, now that I knew she was at home and well.  I was missing her so much.

True to his word, Jim met me at the New York bus terminal and escorted me to a huge black limousine of a certain vintage and drove me to his massive apartment in downtown Manhattan.

I was shown my bedroom and introduced to Jim’s daughter, who lived with him. She was Marie, a lady probably in her mid thirties who was very large and obviously handicapped, both mentally and physically. They lived together in this enormous place and Jim doted on his only daughter.

I believe there must have been people to help take care of Marie when Jim was away, but during the brief period I was there, I never saw any sign of them.

The following morning, Monday, Jim took me to meet some people in a large Mahattan office and copied all my ‘employment documents’ and I filled out some application forms.

He explained to me that the company was engaged in classified work for the government and that I would require security clearance, but he felt sure he would be able to arrange that for me.

I was interviewed and the company was very keen to employ me. There is no doubt that the letter of reference from the senior executive of my ex employer, (the American oil company) seemed to carry a lot of weight.

On our way back to his apartment that afternoon, I asked Jim about the green card. He explained that through his contacts he would find a US citizen to marry me. He would pay the fee involved, and as soon as I was issued with my green card he  would arrange for a divorce.

This plan came as quite a shock, but as Jim seemed so in control of the situation and was clearly able  to pull so many strings, I came to terms with the idea pretty quickly.

Except that in my own mind I began to dream that the obvious solution to avoiding any ‘underhand dealings’ was to persuade Mardie to marry me.

Back at Jim’s apartment, I tried Mardie’s phone number. To my surprise it was back working and Mardie’s flat mate answered the phone.

I asked to speak to Mardie, but was told she was out. I enquired when she would be home and asked if it would be OK if I popped round later that evening to see them.

There was a long pause before the girl finally said they would be pleased to see me and suggested I see them there at around eight p.m.

With much eager anticipation I rushed up to Queens that evening, looking forward to seeing my love at long last.

The flat mate answered the door, and when she showed me in, there was no sign of Mardie. My heart sunk.

It sunk even further when the girl informed me that at that very moment Mardie was winging her way to Puerto Rico for a vacation.

“Puerto Rico?..… Vacation?…. why?…. with who?….”

“She’s gone with friends – it was a last minute decision.”

“But why? You told me she would be here, to see me…”

“Mobi, she asked me to tell you to come. She asked me to speak to you.”

I sat in silence, staring at her, not believing what I was hearing.

“Mobi, Mardie has been very distraught and stressed out lately. It has been affecting her health. She has been quite ill and has had to take many days off work. She’s not as strong as you think she is.”

“I don’t understand, why is she so stressed?”

“You really don’t know?”

“No,” I replied, but was starting to get an inkling.

“It’s because of you Mobi. She is so upset about you. She knows how you feel about her and she feels so guilty about it because she cannot return the feelings.

She is so grateful for everything you did for her in England and she is very fond of you and worries about you.

“But she doesn’t love me? ” I asked, forlornly.

“No, Mobi she doesn’t love you, but she doesn’t want to hurt you. She doesn’t know what to do, so her friends told her to take a vacation and get away from it all.”

“How long will she be away?”

“ I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I was beginning to sound desperate.

“I don’t know because she didn’t say. She will come back when she is feeling better.”

There was a very long silence as I absorbed this information. The reality of the situation began to take hold in my love-struck mind.

“So what you are telling me is that Mardie doesn’t want to see me again – ever,” I mumbled in a low, croaked voice.

“Yes, Mobi. I am sorry, but that is what I am telling you.”

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

Silence.

“Does Mardie have a new boy friend?”

More silence, then finally: “Mobi, don’t ask that question. I think it’s time for you to go.”

I looked at her for a long time before slowly and wearily getting to my feet and somehow finding my way out of the apartment, onto the subway which took me back to Manhattan and Jim’s apartment.

I was in a daze and I didn’t know what had hit me. I knew that things were not so good between us, but I put it all down to my uncertain situation and had always convinced myself that once I had settled into my new life, then our relationship would return to how it had been in London.

I was so young, so naive and so devastated. And to make it worse, I was all alone on the other side of the world.

‘A stranger in a strange land’.

It was enough to turn a good man to drink.

The next day I told Jim that my affair with Mardie was over and that while I was very grateful for all the trouble he had gone to in helping me find work and stay in America, I had decided that the best thing was for me to return to Montreal and start a new life there and try and forget about Mardie.

As ever he was very gracious and wished me good luck in Montreal and implored me to stay in touch and come and visit again, whenever I had some free time.

He took me to the bus station, bought my bus ticket, refused all my entreaties to pay him for it and helped me on the bus.

Although that wasn’t the last contact I had with Jim, it was the last time that  saw him, and I often wonder what may have happened if I had decided to accept his offer of help and stayed in New York.

I would probably have become an American citizen and spent the rest of my life there.

I never knew who Jim really was. He was an enigma.

What was a person, of his apparent wealth, doing on an overnight bus to Montreal? He seemed to have incredible connections, and sometime later when I wrote to him that I was in Nigeria, he wrote and asked me to check out any available oil concessions as he was keen to do business there! He wasn’t a ‘bullshitter’ – because as far as I was concerned, he delivered.

He was a kind, generous man who helped a fellow human being when he needed help, without asking for anything in return.

A true Samaritan – something of a rarity in this day and age.

I returned to Montreal, prepared myself for job interviews and resolved to put everything behind me and start again.

A few days after I was back , I received a call from London.

On the bus back to Montreal I had written to one of my ex colleagues in London, telling him the sad saga of what had transpired in North America, including the break up with Mardie.

All in London had known her well and knew that it was because of Mardie that I had decided to leave my job in the first place.

My immediate former boss was on the other end of the phone. They had an immediate vacancy in Nigeria if I was interested. At that time Nigeria was in the throes of a civil war, but what the hell?

It didn’t take long for me to decide. I asked him about the cost of a ticket back to London, and he said that if I could pay for it up front they would reimburse me when I got back to London.

A quick check of my finances revealed that I had just enough cash to cover the fare, but it would clean me out entirely.

There were problems – the lease on my apartment, my commitments to Mike at the recruitment office, and even the lawyer, but in spite of all this I decided to take the plunge and return home.

I had come to North America in pursuit of love – and that dream was now dashed. There was nothing really keeping me there.

A few days later, after writing letters of abject apology and grateful thanks to Mike and the lawyer, I am ashamed to admit I did a “moonlight flit” from my apartment with all my belongings and made my way to the airport where I boarded an Air Canada flight back to Heathrow.

I never heard from or saw Mardie again.

When I was in Nigeria , I did write a couple of letters both to her New York address and to her parents’ address in Las Vegas, new Mexico, but never received a reply.

I often wonder what became of her. Maybe she married ‘six foot four Chuck Jr’, and had loads of Chuck junior- juniors.

I will never know now, but I still remember her with much affection.

Mardie was my only true relationship that wasn’t based on whore’s gold.

Justin wrote on 12^th May:

Be careful ………….

I am no doctor/shrink whatever but….. Reading your blog & having lived thru watching my parents drinking problems….

I do wonder if you can in fact be a casual drinker…
At times I read your blog & think you cannot….

But at other times I must admit for your age & what you have been through & still can look at it pretty objectively…well I give you credit for that & hope you do well.

That aside I must say I do enjoy your blog & always look forward to another instalment.

Glad you’re having a nice time with Tan in the end happiness is where ever you can find it.

Good Luck & Good Health to you!

Yes, I too am unsure about this.

Although sometimes I behave like the very worst of hopeless drunks, for most of the time my drinking is fairly well under control.

Most of the alcoholics I have either read about, observed personally, or have heard their dire stories in AA meetings, appear for the most part to be far worse than me.

On occasions I can certainly match their worse behaviour, like crashing (or losing ) cars, getting into fights, having serious blackouts, indulging in two to three day non- stop binges, and so on.

Yet for me, these events are by no means a daily occurrence, as seems to be the case with most alcoholics. For the most part, they seem to happen when my state of mind is seriously disturbed by some domestic trauma, real or imaginary.

For the rest of the time I just have a few beers (rarely more than four large bottles), or I sip slowly on glasses of Sangsom soda, or share few glasses of wine, or maybe a couple of bottles of wine with a friend or friends.

Surely by the end of the evening I’m feeling little pain, but I am far from being paralytic.

The trick is to know when to call it a night. I always used to be in bed not later than one a.m. when I first came back to Thailand – partly because that’s when most of the bars closed, and partly because it was my lifetime habit. I’d simply had enough and was happy to call it a day. But when, with ever increasing frequency, my beloved Dang would not return home until four, five, six o’clock – or not at all – I gradually slipped into the habit of drinking longer and longer into the night.

If I talk to any of the long term, sober alcoholics from AA, and describe my drinking habits, as I have depicted them above, they will say, without any doubt whatsoever that I am an alcoholic. They will further assure me that if I don’t make a determined effort to stop for good the booze will drag me down and eventually kill me.

Up to quite recently I believed this absolutely. Now I am not so sure. It may well be that they are right, but as my dear AA friends would say, I still wish to do further ‘research’ before deciding.

Even one of my original AA buddies, an American of my age who spends most of his time in Cambodia, sent me an email the other day and suggested that I was doing myself more harm than good by continually stopping and starting the booze and worrying about it.

He suggested that for me, maybe the best thing would be to carry on drinking, and try to keep it under control.

He may be right.

On Tuesday I drove to Bangkok with Tan for her follow–up outpatient’s appointment which was at a hospital in that road jungle in Nonthaburi.

We left Pattaya at nine a.m., was in Nonthaburi  by ten twenty, but it was only just before twelve that we reached the hospital.

No, this time we didn’t get lost, but the traffic was so totally horrendous. It reminded me of one of the main reasons I moved to Pattaya from Bangkok in the first place.

WTF???  Tuesday mid-morning – total gridlock!!!

The log jam over the Rama VII Bridge was unbelievable, and while I was waiting for Tan in the hospital I noticed that even Thai TV Channel seven was publicising the road problems in exactly the area we had just driven through.

Fortunately, after the appointment, the traffic was a little better when we retraced our steps to Tan’s aunt’s house.

I had met the first ‘tranche’ of Tan’s extended family in Nakhon Sawan a week or so back, and now I met the second tranche, who all lived  in Bang Khen.

You may recall that Tan’s family occupied several houses all close together in Nakhon Sawan, and so this pattern was duplicated in Bangkok.

We arrived as many  family members had gathered to celebrate  the birthday  of a two year old.

I looked around and yet again there was clear evidence tom me that the family was middle class.

There were plenty of decent looking vehicles parked outside, bedrooms were air conditioned , computer and  work station lined the wall and so on.

The main thing that has struck me about Tan’s family is their obviously love of children, of which there seem to be endless numbers, and also how well behaved they are.

There is even the obligatory ‘lady-boy’ who was so good with the kids, and Tan told me that his (her?) mother was a lesbian!!

They were all very friendly to me, and it was such a pleasure to be able to listen and understand some of what they said and even join in a little. (No Issan spoken in Tan’s family).

Tan is so different in many ways from all the ladies I have lived with before. She has many endearing features.

I may have mentioned this before but she is just about the first Thai lady I have known who is happy to spend her own money – even on me – and will refuse if I try to reimburse her.

She never fights me, and if she thinks she has done or said something wrong or given me wrong information or turned up late she always apologises.

When we go upcountry or go to meet her friends and family, she doesn’t ‘dump’ me and immediately disappear for long periods like all the others used to do – leaving me totally bored with nothing to do. She is very attentive and stays with me for much of the time.

We actually talk about things and laugh and joke together. Sometimes when we are driving somewhere we talk for hours – belying the huge age gap between us.

I could go on, but that will suffice for now.

While at the birthday party in Bang Khen, Tan asked me if I wanted some beer. I had resolved to stay dry, but quickly became unresolved when the offer was made.

I had three large Singha beers with ice over a period of three hours, so I was far from drunk, but even so it was agreed that Tan would drive back to Pattaya.

We brought back Tan’s little seventeen month old daughter with us for a week. We will take her back to her aunt’s house next Monday, when Tan has to take her father back home from his hospital appointment in Bangkok.

I am enjoying having the little one with us, she is so cute and her mum loves her to bits.

I have suggested to Tan that if we still together in a few months I will rent a house and she can bring her daughter to live with us in Pattaya, to which she readily agreed. We will need a baby nurse/maid because Tan is going back to college.

I have a feeling deep inside me that this may well be my last chance to live a decent, normal family life.  I want to give and not be selfish. I want to make others happy, because as so many have said, that may be the key to my own happiness. That’s the theory anyway.

If this fails, then I will probably be embarking down the slippery slope into my own private hell.

I’ve calmed down about the nonsense with Dave and what he told Jack about me, and why Jack felt the need to pass on Dave’s comments, as he must have known my what my reaction would be.

Somebody commented in the blog that they thought that Dave and Jack are right about me and that I am indeed a self righteous prig who is prone to anger.

Maybe I am at that.

I asked Bob what he thought, and he said that like him, I have very strong opinions and sometimes people feel they cannot argue against me, but that I have never forced my view on people – if they want to argue their case then no one is stopping them.

I fail to see what is wrong with a ‘spirited’ discussion. I never ‘throw my toys out of the pram’ and storm off if I can’t convince anyone of my point of view.

I have even been known to change my opinion if the counter argument is telling enough.

In spite of all his alcohol abuse, Dave is still a very intelligent person and is perfectly capable of stating his own case, if he really believed in it.

I sometimes feel that only stubborn people, who know they are wrong, but hate to admit it, make accusations of the kind that Dave has made about me.

Anyway, whether or not this is all down to me, is not really important in the grand scheme of things.

I have come to the conclusion that I must ‘cool’ my friendship with Dave for a while until I am mentally stronger and better able to handle him and his problems.

Right now, I just feel that he is dragging me down with him.

The same applies to Jack, not that I expect to hear from him for a year or so.

It’s been a funny old week since I last blogged……

Tan and I returned to Bangkok on Tuesday night from Nakon Sawan after she had finally obtained her ‘double’ driving licence.

At the last moment, she decided to bring her twin sister and her daughter with us to Bangkok to stay at her Aunt’s house, in the ‘wilds’ of Bang Khen.

So it was after ten at night when we reached the perimeters of Bangkok, drove down the Don Muang Expressway towards central Bangkok and completely missed the turn off to Bang Khen.

We sped on, took a random exit after we had passed Ding Dang, in a desperate attempt to retrace our steps and immediately became hopelessly lost.

In the past, with almost every Thai girl I have ever travelled with, this would have instantly resulted in major row in which I would be inevitably blamed for the situation. I was actually feeling very tired and somewhat stressed myself as I had been night driving along busy, heavily congested highways.

So we were clearly lost. I pulled up by the roadside and asked Tan for suggestions as to  which direction we should proceed. Tan said she didn’t know!

Wonderful, what to do next?

Calm and collected as ever, she phoned her brother who was living at her aunt’s house and she described our location (I had parked near an intersection which had road signs) and he understood where we were. He then gave her precise directions on how to get to Bang Khen.

I was amazed, because most Thais are absolutely hopeless at trying to explain where they are and how to get anywhere, but sure enough, we set off and had to drive for a good forty minutes through heavy traffic, but we finally made our way to the area of Tan’s aunt’s house and once in the local vicinity, she knew the way to our destination.

After dropping off sister and baby, Tan’s brother gave us further instructions on how to get back on the expressway, which was located a couple of blocks away, and find our way to Sukhumvit. It couldn’t have taken more than fifteen minutes before we were driving into our hotel in Soi Nineteen off Sukhumvit  Road.

Bangkok’s expressway system is as wonderful as it is frustrating. If you don’t exactly where you are going and where the exits and entrances are for your destination, you can become lost very quickly or end up going in completely the wrong direction. Not every exit to the expressway going in one direction will be matched by a similar exit on the other side of the road going the opposite direction.

In other words sometimes, you can get on, but cannot get off at a particular junction, and vice versa. You have to know the ‘ins and outs’, or you will be in deep trouble.

Then there are the road signs, most of which are thankfully written in English as well as Thai. But many of them show a destination which at best is pretty obscure, and at worst are not even shown on most road maps. The numerous signs showing ‘Dow Kanong’ are a good example of this.

Last Tuesday when we took the expressway from Bang Khen to Sukhumvit, it was more luck than judgement that we made it without getting lost. I told Tan that I knew there was a sign for Ploenchit if approaching from Rama IX, but I had no idea if there would be a similar sign if driving in a different direction.

We kept our eyes glued to the signs, and suddenly Tan yelled; “Left, to Ploenchit”. I told her I hadn’t seen the sign. She explained that it was only written in Thai!!!

Ah well, at least we made it. Thank God for Tan on several counts. She is a smart, alert young lady. And not a whisper of a mood, anger or blame. For much of the time, especially in public, she speaks to me in very polite, respectful Thai – something that no other Thai lady has ever done with me.

Early Wednesday morning, Tan took off to a hospital in the suburbs for a minor procedure, and I slept in. Later I caught up with Jack and we commenced our consumption of Singha beer at noon in the hotel coffee shop, and finished in the early hours of the next morning.

We repeated this the following night, although I did get back at around twelve thirty as by this time Tan was back with me in the hotel.

Friday morning I drove back to Pattaya with Jack and Tan and spent the afternoon and evening at Tan’s old bar where she caught up with friends.

I now have a ’live in’ chauffeur – Tan is an excellent driver – and she drove us back to Jomtien, as both Jack and I were in a highly inebriated state.

Yesterday, Saturday, I tried to cut back on my drinking, but when we met up with Jack last night for dinner I started again, but thankfully I didn’t get too drunk and was home by eleven p.m.

Jack left this morning on a bus back to Bangkok and thence to Laos, so I doubt i will see him again during his current trip to South East Asia.

While It would be self delusional to blame my binges on Jack, now that he has gone, I feel I will have a better shot at keeping my drinking under control.

I will try not to drink today. I am seriously considering giving total abstinence another shot.

How many times have I said that? I know…. so many.

I am still not convinced if I can keep my booze under control.

I do enjoy drinking, I do enjoy the fun I have with friends and women when I am pissed, but I don’t enjoy the hangovers, the effects on my health (the inevitable diarrhoea, high blood pressure and so on) and the fact that I feel my life seems to drift aimlessly, out of control.

Later this month, Tan will start full time college and I will have a lot of time on my hands. I have to seriously consider how to find a life and interests that doesn’t include booze. For when I am drinking, I really can’t do anything else, including writing this blog.

I wrote about Geoff on 29^th April, the alcoholic who recently screamed abuse at me in public for no good reason, other than he was drunk. This was the third incident of a similar nature.

A couple of days after this incident he sent me an email which was a  half – hearted apology in which he apologised for calling me an ‘arsehole’ but still insisted he was justified in getting mad at me and that Dang was the cause of all his marital problems.

If this was the first occasion when he had screamed at me, I might have accepted  his apology and forgotten about it, but this was the third time he got completely out of line with me in public and I want no more of it.

His blind, stubborn refusal to accept that it is his drunken behaviour that drives his wife to Dang’s house for solace is also a stumbling block to us remaining friends. Sooner or later it will blow up again and he will still be blaming me and Dang for his problems.

So I penned a strongly worded reply, telling him that as far i was concerned his behaviour was totally unacceptable, and that ‘three strikes and you’re out’.

Then the ‘fun’ started. Over the next few days we each tried to outdo each other with insults and abusive emails. Even though I say it myself, I think that drunken Geoff is no match for ‘erudite Mobi’ when it comes to writing insults, and he became very, very upset when I told him a few home truths, and some other stuff which must have hit a very sore spot.

It was getting ridiculous and we were both writing when drunk. It came to a head when Dang called me a couple of days ago to tell me that Geoff’s wife was with her and she was asking if i would stop sending her husband upsetting emails. She said he would stop if I would.

Of course I could see the funny side of it, especially when Dang said:

“You two, stupid, drunken old men should know better. Haven’t you got anything better to do than send silly, rude emails to each other?”

We had a good laugh over the phone, and I could hear Geoff’s wife laughing in the background.

So I have stopped, and so has Geoff. But I won’t be renewing our friendship. One thing is sure, he would never see the funny side of it, as he has no sense of humour as far as his personal life is concerned.

I am quite sure that as I write this, he is sitting with drunks around the lake, embellishing the whole affair, telling them how he ‘saw me off’.

It’s all too pathetic for words, including my part in it.

This is another reason why I think I have to quit the booze. I am almost as bad as Geoff, and that’s quite worrying!

One night in Jomtien, Jack and I got extremely drunk. It must have been around three a.m. and we started arguing with each other. I took exception to a rude, patronising comment he made about a Thai girl who had been sitting with him and one thing led to another, developing into a full scale argument.

Jack is normally a pretty laid back sort of character and we get along pretty well, but I suppose the alcohol was taking over our brains.

Jack decided to bring our mutual friend, Dave, into the conversation and revealed some discussions he had had with Dave about me! He told me that he thought Dave’s views about me were right.

“Oh – so just what are these views?”

“Dave says that you are always insisting that you are right.

“Dave told me never to take you to my favourite restaurants as you don’t know how to ‘savour’ food”.

“Dave told me that Mobi claims he knows more about Thailand because he reads the Bangkok Post!!!”

And so on and so on and so on…..

I won’t even try to argue on my blog about many of these accusations. To my mind it is all so pathetic.

All I can say is that I have loved Dave like a brother for nearly forty years, and since I have been back in Thailand  I have done everything I can to keep him alive, (including providing financial support), to keep his spirits up, and make sure he has had all possible help to keep him alive.

I never recollect a single occasion in the past forty years when Dave has ever bought me a meal, yet it nearly a difficult to remember us dining together when he has even paid for himself.

I have never argued with him or tried to force my views down his throat. Yes I have expressed my views in a strong erudite manner, and that is as far as it has ever gone. If he didn’t agree, then it was left at that.

I know I am over reacting to this, but for Dave to tell another friend stuff like this is about me is extremely hurtful. Especially to a friend like Jack who disappears for two years at a time and leaves people like me and Bob to pick up the pieces.

Even if there was any truth in Dave’s criticisms of me – and I am always prepared to listen to reasoned arguments on this and admit it if I am wrong, it doesn’t justify Dave bad mouthing me to another close friend.

I don’t know what I am going to do about all this. I was very hurt when Jack first told me, but now I am trying to be calm and philosophical about it all. But I can’t yet bring myself to talk to Dave.

But I don’t want to make a big deal of it with Dave. It will lead nowhere and possibly accelerate his descent back to booze.

It was only a few weeks ago that he implored me to call him every day because myself and Bob are his only friends. Another thing he told Jack was that I have no friends left because of my unreasonable behaviour!

What a strange thing to say! He has absolutely no knowledge of my circle of friends here in Pattaya, and indeed across the world.

It seems what I really have to do is get rid of all my drinking friends. There will still be  quite a few left, not that I’m particularly bothered whether I have friends or not.

When all’s said and done, I still have my beautiful ladies to prevent me getting too lonely.

So it’s been a funny old week……

Last Saturday I drove to Bangkok with Tan, and on Sunday met up with Jack, yet another old colleague, from the late 70’s Bangkok scene, who now lives in Sydney. He is here for a month’s holiday and is also a good friend of Dave, my “Lazarus” buddy who keeps getting raised from the dead.

We went together to see Dave on Sunday afternoon. Dave has continued to make incredible progress in his health and is now almost back to his old self and has put some weight back on. He is still slightly unsteady on his pins and can no longer ride on the back of a motorcycle taxi, but apart from that he seems to be the same old eccentric, stubborn Dave that I have known for almost forty years.

Dave is still dry, (or at least claims that he is and to be fair, we saw nothing to suggest that this was not the case), and he still insists that he now understands that he can never take another drink. He  openly admits he is an alcoholic (which he never did before), and has also come clean about the quantity of beer he was consuming – close to two cases a day! He had always previously insisted that his beer consumption was very low and it was the medication that had caused the problem. I knew this to be untrue because his lady had told me so on many occasions.

So there is now a degree of honesty and acceptance of his condition that was never there before, but in other ways he still lives in his own fantasy world and continues to say and believe things about his work and his life which at best are self delusions and at worse are outright lies.

But in spite of all his self destructive tendencies, he is still an intelligent person with a sharp, incisive mind, and it seems inconceivable that at some level of consciousness he doesn’t understand that much of what he says contains a high degree of self deception.

Maybe this refusal to accept the truth about things in his life is partly the cause of his mental sickness and which leads him to booze and medication.

Dave is still quite heavily medicated, still only sleeps fitfully, and leads a lonely, strange lifestyle.

We stayed with Dave for a number of hours and even took him out for a meal before dropping him back home later.

Both Jack and I felt that it was probably only a matter of time before he hits the bottle again. It was in his eyes, and in many of the things that he said. Sad to say, but we both thought that Dave actually wants to die, and sooner or later it will happen.

I hope we are wrong.

My own alcohol consumption is getting worse and worse. Both on Friday night and Saturday night I drank far too much and woke up with bad hangovers. It is becoming out of control again and if I can’t sort it, I will be in trouble soon.

Tan spent most of the time in Bangkok with friends and in-laws and has come back to the hotel at night, sober and on time.  She always gives me a welcome smile and we always have a ‘good time’.

(It is all so difference from Dang, who would rarely come back at all, never sober and would always fight me when she did eventually reappear.)

On Monday morning we drove to Nakhon Sawan, a distance of two hundred and fifty kilometres, which due to torrential rain for most of the journey, took me about two and half hours. After stopping by her old high school to arrange to get some copy certificates, we drove onto Tan’s home where we received a right royal welcome from Mum, Dad, Grandma, sisters, brothers and various other relations and kids.

Tan and her mother cooked some wonderful Thai food and I stuffed myself silly – all washed down with some ice cold Singha beer.

Today Tan is off with her aunt to obtain a driving licence for car and motorcycle, and hopefully sometime later this afternoon we will return to Bangkok.

I am thinking a lot about my new relationship. I know it is ridiculous and cannot last. But we get on so well together and i know that Tan is very happy with me. She is not acting – I have been with so many Thai women that I hope you can give me credit for knowing their true feelings.

I always knew that Dang and others didn’t care about me, it was just my perverse nature that made me continue to try and change them when deep down I knew they would never change. (I was in self denial – much like my mate Dave).

But Tan likes me and is happy with me, and we make great love and much of the time she is the one who demands it – not me. In fact sometimes I wonder how long I can keep it up.

Tan’s family are lovely, friendly and very polite – and remember, they are NOT poor. Tan’s mum owns substantial farm land and it sees like everyone either has a decent looking pick-up or a shiny new motorcycle.

Nobody in the family has ever been involved with a farang before, but that doesn’t seem to bother them.

If anyone starts on the house building or sinsod crap, you won’t see me for dust.

Tan wants to spend three years at technical college and then another four years at university. By the time she finishes her education she will be twenty nine and I will be seventy.

I will be very surprised if we are still together in seven years time, but in the meantime I will enjoy myself and try to keep her happy. It will certainly make me very happy to put a girl through university. For me, it will be an achievement, of sorts.

I have told Tan to tell me if she ever gets tired of me or if she meets a new boyfriend. She has promised faithfully that she will do this, and I believe her. She is a nice person.

MOBI VIGNETTES

MARDIE (Part 9)

I was left alone for a few minutes and the reality of my situation was starting to sink in.   Surely they wouldn’t put me in jail? This was civilised Canada!  It was an ex British colony for God’s sake, and was still part of the British Commonwealth!  What on earth was going on?

An officer i hadn’t seen before entered the detention room with my bags on a trolley.

He sat down behind the desk and asked me very politely to open the bags and show him some proof of my finances – that I would be able to support myself if they let me enter Canada.

I started to relax and found the file containing my bank statements and other banking documents. I showed him my latest UK statement, and also some details the bank had given me of banks in Montreal where I would be able to open an account.

He studied all the documents, and then took them out of the room and left me alone once more.

I had been sitting there there for half an hour when he eventually returned with a bundle of papers in his hand.

Firstly he handed my bank documents back, and then my passport. My heart leaped – they were letting me go.

Then he said:

“We cannot accept those bank documents as proof of assets. You may or may not intend to transfer money to Canada but we have no way of verifying your these intentions so it cannot be taken into account when deciding whether to grant you an entry visa.”

Oh God! I thought, they are sending me back to the USA.

“You are carrying fifty pounds with you. That should pay for a room and board for a couple of weeks. So we have issued you with a tourist visa for two weeks. If you overstay your visa you will be arrested and jailed. If you can transfer money to Canada with two weeks, you may go to the immigration centre and apply for an extension.

But I warn you sir; under no circumstances will you be allowed to work. You may stay longer if you have money and can prove it to the immigration authorities, but you may not work. If you do you will be arrested and jailed!

You may now leave”

With that he got up and waved for me to leave the room with my bags.

“But the bus has gone, how am I supposed to get to Montreal?”

“You can take the next greyhound that passes through. We will speak to the driver and he will let you on. It happens all the time.

Another hour later I was back on the bus with a visa that allowed me to stay in Canada for two weeks, and a large stamp which read: “YOU ARE PROHIBITED FROM WORKING”.

I had been sitting on the bus for a few minutes when the man sitting next to me, a well dressed, middle aged man looked at me and asked me if I was O.K.?

He was an American, also on his way to Montreal and he seemed genuinely concerned for my welfare, having seen me being escorted onto the bus by two immigration officers.

We got chatting and I told him my story. His name was Jim Donnington and he told me he was in the oil business. He asked me where I was staying in Montreal, and when I said I had nowhere to stay, he offered to help me find a place when we arrived there.

When I told him about my visa problems and showed him my passport with the “forbidden to work” stamp in it, he told me not to worry about it. He advised me to find a job first and then go to immigration and ask them to change my visa status. He told me that they were crying out for accountants in Montreal and he was sure that they would grant me a work visa once I found a job.

By the time we reached Montreal, Jim had become a firm friend. I judged that he was genuinely concerned for my welfare – a young, shy, naive ‘limey’ trying to make a life for himself in a strange land.

I was far too innocent in those far off days to think that he may have had other motives for helping me, and we shall see as my story progresses whether or not I should have been concerned about this “Good Samaritan” who had come to my rescue.

Upon my arrival, Jim helped me with my bags – he only had a small overnight bag – and we made our way from the downtown bus terminal and then took a cab to a decent looking residential area where we started checking out guest houses.

It didn’t take long to find a nice room within my price range, but to my surprise, Jim paid the deposit to the landlady and refused to let me reimburse him. When I protested, he told me to pay him back when I was settled and had a job.

Once I had my bags in the room, Jim made his farewells. He told me he had business to do that day and that he would be returning to New York that night.

He gave me a card with his phone number on it, and told me to call him any time if I needed anything, and that once I was settled, to get on a bus and go and visit him in New York. He said he had a large apartment in downtown Manhattan and would be glad to put me up there.

I really didn’t know what to make of him, but I could only conclude that he was genuine and that I was extremely fortunate to run into him.

After I sorted the things in my room I took a walk around the area I was staying, the first of many walks I was to take during my stay in the town.

It was early spring but still very cold. Montreal was only just emerging from winter and there was still plenty of snow on the hills and on open land. It was a beautiful city with a picturesque blend of modern and ancient and I grew very fond of it and its people during my time there.

I decided to take Jim’s advice and start looking for a job, and then go to immigration to see what i could do about my immigrant status.

The obvious place to start was in the classified ads of the daily newspapers, and I soon found that Jim’s advice about there being an abundance of accounting vacancies wasn’t misplaced. There were columns and columns of ads for accountants, and I picked out one ‘punchy’ looking accountancy employment agency that seemed to have hundreds of vacancies, and called them for an interview.

I found the place the next day and came sporting my ‘part qualification’ certificate as a Chartered accountant, (I had passed the intermediate exam and completed my five year training article- ship), and more importantly, a glowing reference from my boss at the firm of Chartered Accountants. But my ‘piece de resistance’ was my terrific reference written by one of the senior Vice presidents of my previous employer, the US oil company.

Quite how much my Canadian friends understood about the UK Chartered Accountants training system I have no idea, but all these papers seem to impress them mightily, and within ten minutes I had been ushered into the office of the man who bore the name of the agency and also whose name was on all their ‘punchy’ ads.

Mike was a brash, no nonsense, fast talking professional and was extremely ‘bullish’ about finding me a decent job and seemed totally unconcerned, if not a little upset when I related to him my problems at the border and my immigration status.

He said he would write me a letter to the effect that they were finding me a job and that I should go straight down to immigration and get the matter resolved. He said they were thousands of Brits working in Montreal and he had never heard of anyone having this kind of problem before. I was to call him from immigration if they gave me any problems.

The immigration officials were all French Canadians, and it became immediately clear that they were not going to be very cooperative in my attempts to have my status changed. Their hostility was palpable, and when I showed them the letter from the employment agency, they threw it back at me with disdain.

I asked for a telephone and called Mike and told him what had happened. Mike was outraged and became more determined than ever to get his way. My problem had become his mission.

Mike made some enquiries through his contacts and came up with a ‘human rights’ French Canadian lawyer who had a lot of experience in representing illegal immigrants and fighting the immigration department.

The lawyer agreed to take on my case, free of charge. He told me that what the immigration department was doing, was illegal, and that under Canadian law, once I had been legally admitted into the country, I had a right to apply to be a landed immigrant and that it was in contravention of other Canadian laws to forbid me to work while my application was being considered, as it was tantamount to forcing me to starve.

He explained to me that recently the French Canadians had become very aggressive in trying to impose these ‘no work’ restrictions and that their actions only affected immigrants who were not of French origin. It was blatantly racist and he planned to challenge their actions in the court.

Armed with this information he told me to go back to immigration, with a letter from him, and ask for the forms to apply for landed immigrant status.

This I did and this time I received much better and respectful treatment from the officers. They gave me a stack of forms to fill in and about two hours later I was called into an office where an officer was holding my passport.  He told me to sit and told me that that my application for landed immigrant status had been accepted and it would take approximately six months to process. In the meantime he said I would be allowed to stay in Canada and he had stamped my passport accordingly.

I assumed my problems were at an end, thanks to Mike and the lawyer, but my joy was short lived when he placed a document in front of me and asked me to sign it.

In essence, he was asking me to sign a paper declaring that I would not take gainful employment in Canada until my immigrant status had been approved’

I asked him how I was supposed to live for the next six months, and he said it was not his problem.

I decided to call the lawyer. He then asked me to pass the phone to the immigration officer and they had a long, obviously confrontational conversation in French.

Finally the phone was handed back tom me and my lawyer told me that I should refuse to sign the paper.

I asked him what would happen if I refused to sign, and he said he wasn’t sure, but just refuse to sign and see what they do. The lawyer said that they had already stamped my passport up for six months and as I was now being processed as a landed immigrant they would not put a ‘no work’ stamp in there. Hence the document I was being asked to sign.

I asked him if they would keep my passport or maybe even detain me, and the lawyer said that I shouldn’t worry – that whatever happens he would help me.

I was going to be a test case!!.