Mobi Babble

There’s a bit of good news on the health front. After Noo called the hospital last week to report my deteriorating condition, they called back late that afternoon and I now have an appointment to see a cardiologist this coming Wednesday at noon. It is unclear what the purpose of this appointment is, but I was told to bring all my medical reports, details of my meds etc with me, so hopefully I will be given a date for my operation. Fingers crossed. I am now feeling a little better; it just seems to go up and down, day by day, but my BP is high pretty much all the time, despite my mountain of meds, so the sooner I have my op the better.

Here’s a couple of brief updates on my ‘Lakeside Gossip’ of 20^th May.

I reported that my friend Simon, the one with the ‘Wife from hell’, was still separated from his wife and that he had succeeded in taking some important papers and other personal possessions out of the house and was now back at work in some distant oilfield. 

It now transpires that subsequent this preliminary skirmish, the money-grabbing, scheming Porn did in fact succeed in enticing Simon back to the marital fold, as I had always suspected she would. Just before Simon left Thailand to go back to work, he sent a text message to another friend, advising him that he was now ‘back home’ and ‘everything had been resolved with his wife’. He even asked his friend to pass the information onto ‘yours truly’, and to thank me for my advice which, yet again, he has elected to completely ignore.

‘There’s none so blind as those who will not see’….nothing much more to say, is there?

I also wrote about my Dutch friend Dick who was seriously ill with a duff liver. It now transpires that it wasn’t his liver at all but his kidneys that had failed – almost as bad as a dodgy liver – but talk about ‘Chinese whispers’!!!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Dick was on dialysis for over a week, but when I went to see him yesterday, he seemed to be on the mend and was looking much better, thank God.

Bankers or Wankers?

Much has been written on the subject of greedy bankers and how they have brought the world to the brink of economic Armageddon.

From the ‘occupy Wall Street’ mob, to the ‘sit in’ at St Pauls cathedral crowd, to the rioting, unemployed in Athens, to almost anyone you care to talk to on the subject of the recession, you will find that all are united in their condemnation of the wicked bankers.

Bankers weren’t always that bad. I recently watched an excellent documentary presented by the estimable Ian Hislop with the tantalising title of ‘When Bankers were good’. It was a fascinating insight into the late nineteenth century English bankers, who not only made enormous amounts of money, but also put their ‘ill-gotten gains’ to a host of philanthropic good causes.

Indeed, it was many of the leading bankers of those times who were amongst the first to recognise the need to help the more disadvantaged in Victorian society. The charitable actions by many bankers eventually prompted the state itself to take measures to improve the plight of the poor in the early 20^th century.

So where did it all go wrong, and when was it that bankers became so selfish and greedy?

I firmly believe that many of today’s financial woes are a result of the unrelenting need to feed the insatiable demands of shareholders. In Victorian times, banks were owned by individuals, or families, and there was no outside lobby dictating to these wealthy bankers precisely how they were expected to dispose of their profits. These days, chief executives of public companies are answerable only to their shareholders.

And what do shareholders want?

More and more profits.

And how does an already profitable concern increase its profits? By expanding, by diversifying and by doing everything imaginable to add to its ‘bottom line’.

If profits do not increase and the company does not grow, year on year, regardless of how successful the company  has been in the past, then the executives will be replaced with new ones who are more capable of generating ever greater profits.

And just how do you get these executives to produce more profit in already  saturated markets?

By promising them untold riches in the form of bonuses if they succeed.

I am talking here about any public company you care to name; from Tesco, to BP to Cadbury Schweppes; but the market sector that is more profit /bonus driven than all the others, are the world’s financial institutions – the banks.

So how do the banks continue to meet shareholders expectations?

They do it by paying their key staff enormous bonuses to invent ever more convoluted schemes to generate ever more earnings.

As a result, over the last decade or so, a breed of bankers has evolved who live a rarefied existence in a world where their annual earnings are counted in millions, rather than thousands, and their desire for ever increasing amounts of money knows no bounds. Most of them earn so much money that there is no way that they could reasonably expect to spend even a fraction of it during their lifetimes, except on crazy and bizarre extravagances. These men are addicted to money and there is little they would shy away from in their business practises if it had the slightest chance of increasing their wealth.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am all for incentivising key employees in the form of good salaries and rewarding them with generous bonuses if they do a great job for their company; especially if they meet or exceed challenging targets. Indeed, in my own humble way, I – Mobi – was the happy recipient of a very generous salary and substantial bonuses to the extent that I was able to take early retirement and live ‘comfortably’ for the rest of my life some ten or more years ago.

But the level of salary and bonuses I was fortunate enough to earn, pales into insignificance when compared to the money made by these top bankers. For too many years it has got completely out of hand. I ask you? Just how much money does one person really need?

 I am not a liberal or a socialist and I believe people are entitled to keep what they have rightfully earned through the sweat of their own brow, and I also support a ‘laissez faire’ capitalist system, whereby market forces should determine what happens and that governments should refrain from undue intervention.

But enough is enough. These bankers have succeeded bringing the global economy to its knees and we are all a very long way from being out of the woods. The world looked on in horror as we saw such revered institutions as Leman Brothers go belly up and many more – such as Bear Sterns, AIG, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bradford & Bingley, Fortis, Hypo and Alliance & Leicester come within a whisker of also doing so and had to be rescued by governments.

We learned about the massive frauds perpetrated;of ‘sub-prime’ mortgages and of  the ‘hedge funds’ which nobody outside the banking industry really understood. But we learned enough to realise that these hedge funds  were nothing more than a convoluted form of high stakes gambling.

And we further understood that these frauds and high risk transactions were undertaken in order to produce ever greater bonuses for the bankers concerned, with no thought of the future well-being of the banks, their shareholders , and most of all, their lowly depositors.

So having brought the world to its knees and having earned the justified condemnation of almost everyone on this planet, you would think that going forward, the banks would straighten up their acts and that the countries within whose jurisdictions they operate, would make sure that they did just that, and never again would we be at the mercy and irresponsible whims of money-hungry bankers

Yet here we are, four years on from the start of the banking meltdown and what we do find are some very disturbing signs.

The dust has settled, the banks that managed to survive have been suitably chastened to clean up their acts, so everything is hunky dory.

Or is it?

So which are the major banks who are leading the global charge into the brave new world of ‘banks behaving properly’?

Well, I think it would be reasonable to state that two banks near or at the top of the list are:  Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

Do you agree?

So what have these two revered instructions been up to lately?

As far as I am aware, Goldman Sachs have not incurred any vast trading losses, in the past year or so, but what we do have is a very revealing and very worrying critical statement recently issued by one of its ex-employees.

In a public and scathing resignation letter, ex Goldman Sachs executive director, Greg Smith, has described the atmosphere at the massive investment bank “as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.”

“Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs,” wrote Smith, who was the head of the firm’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in an article in the New York Times entitled, “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs.”

Smith, who was based in London, was with Goldman for 12 years and went on to describe what he says is a deteriorating culture at Goldman Sachs where clients are called “muppets” and their interests are given short shrift.

“The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for,”

Smith blamed the culture shift on the chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and President Gary Cohn. “I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fibre represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival,” Smith wrote.

He further claimed that executives at Goldman Sachs haven’t changed their behaviour even after the firm paid $550 million to settle a fraud lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was accused by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of misleading clients.

“It makes me ill to hear how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets,’ sometimes over internal e-mail,” wrote Smith, who went to Stanford University on a full scholarship, and was a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship.

In an emailed statement, Goldman Sachs responded: “We disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business. In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.”

So Smith was at Goldman Sachs for 12 long years – right through the worst of the global banking crisis, yet he claims that the bank is ‘as toxic and destructive as he had ever seen it.’ Smith’s claims that his ex -employer was ‘morally bankrupt’ had the unsettling effect of wiping no less than 2.2 billion dollars of their market value.

Worried? You should be….

But what is even more worrying is that the founder of a major a hedge fund was quoted as saying: “The argument that Goldman has become increasingly profit- driven, sometimes at the expense of clients’ best interests, and that some employees use vulgar and disrespectful language, is hardly news. What’s the next ‘shocking’ headline: ‘Prostitution in Vegas!?’”

Now, how about JP Morgan? I’m sorry to tell you, that JPM has gone one step further than Goldman Sachs., as they have recently disclosed that they lost 2 billion dollars – and rising – after one of their top London based traders made ‘large bets on credit derivatives’

The losses were denied by the Chief executive for a while, calling the potential losses a ‘tempest in a teapot’; but eventually, he was obliged to admit the extent of the still spiralling losses which, by his own admittance, were due to the strategy being  ’flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored.’ He added that he should have paid more attention!!!!!

Has anything really changed since 2008?  

Bankers or Wankers?

I’ll let you, my valued readers be the judge.

Robin Gibb – RIP

I was very sad to learn of the death of Robin Gibb the other day, even more so as it brought home to me my own mortality and the fact that I should make the most of what remains of my life, as I never know when my time is up. Robin was 62, and I am just 2 weeks away from my 66^th birthday.

Being a teen-ager of the swinging sixties, I grew up with the music of the Bee Gees every bit as much as I grew up to the sounds of with the Beatles and the Stones. Between them they wrote some highly memorable songs and also had a unique and wonderful way of performing, much as the Beatles did.

Their longevity has been remarkable and over several decades they continued to reinvent themselves and provide endless musical pleasure to new generations of fans.

Personally, I always preferred their ballads, but have nothing against their ‘disco’ era which took the world by so much of a storm.

There are many Bee Gees tracks which, whenever I hear them, take me back to different periods in life.

Every time I hear Robin Gibb’s haunting vocals on ‘Massachusetts’, or ‘I started a joke’, they immediately evoke memories of my time in new York with Mardie, as they were monster hits at that time in the USA and were played over and over again on the radio. I used to sit in her apartment in Queens, waiting for her to come home from work, listening to those tracks and feeing  so lonely and melancholy – for even then, long before the final break-up,  I knew deep down that it was never going to work out with the lovely Mardie.

Other deep seated memories are of the Bee Gees’ younger, long departed brother, Andy, and his song ‘Shadow Dancing’ (written by all four brothers), and also the Bee Gees’ ‘How deep is your love’. These two tracks used to be played non-stop in the juke box  in Bangkok’s Grace Hotel coffee shop, in those long ago days when it wasn’t  a hangout for visitors from the Middle East and Africa. There was many a time I would spend half the night at the Grace, chatting up free-lance hookers, before adjourning to the trusty Thermae Coffee Shop at around 4 a.m., all to the strains of Andy, Barry, Robin and Maurice.

That beautiful ballad, ‘Too Much Heaven’ brings back memories of the time when I was running an entertainment company from my offices in Siam Square, Bangkok, in the late seventies/ early eighties .The song had just been released and we were promoting it on our radio station. It was just at the time when I made the momentous decision to quit my job in Thailand and relocate back to the UK with my then wife, Noi and daughter.

The memories of that song went with me. As I settled into my new life in England, I somehow felt an attachment to it, and followed its progress through the UK charts. In point of fact it only ever became a very minor hit. These days it is a ‘standard’ and recognised for the wonderful ballad it is ; but for me, it will always be the song in my heart when I made that life changing decision to go back to the UK.

I could go on and on.

This year, Robin released an album entitled ‘Titanic Requiem’, a classical composition, in collaboration with his son to commemorate the 100^th Anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking.

He was scheduled to appear and perform at its first public performance, but was too ill to do so. However, his recording of the track ‘Don’t Cry Alone’, was played at the performance and now, as a fitting to tribute to Robin, I set out the lyrics of this lovely song below.

Also, please click on the link and listen to Robin singing his very last song. His voice is as strong and crystal clear as I have ever heard him sing;   I’m sure you will love listening to it and maybe shed a tear for this talented singer- song writer who sadly is no longer with us.

Don’t Cry Alone – Robin Gibb

If your heart is breaking

 I’m yours whatever.
I will not forsake you ever,

Don’t cry alone.

Through the autumn rainfalls

I’ll be your shoulder;
If the winds of love grow colder,

Don’t cry alone.

Surely as the sun sets

New suns are rising.
As winter herald’s spring’s horizon,

Don’t cry alone.

Don’t you ever doubt me

 You lead I will follow.

Sweep away all pain and sorrow,

Don’t cry alone.

No, don’t cry alone.

No, don’t you ever doubt me;

I’ll be there for you forever.
Don’t you ever cry

I’ll sweep away your tears and sorrow
And I’ll be with you close tomorrow.
I’ll be with you

Don’t cry alone.
I’m yours.

Don’t cry alone.

Don’t Cry Alone

Butt… Butt…Butt…I don;’t give a Hoot….

Mobi-Babble

My new writing schedule is continuing to work well, and I can confirm that I am now much happier writing one blog per week on a weekend, and devoting weekdays to working on my novel.

Writing is helping to keep my mind off other things as it is now quite evident that my health is deteriorating fairly rapidly. Even after a just a couple of minutes of slow walking I am experiencing quite severe pains in my arm and chest, and I seem to have developed a permanent ‘ache’ in the area of my heart. I am wondering if the pain is coming from my damaged aortic valve?  Probably, I should think, and if so, quite worrying.

Noo was sufficiently worried to call the hospital this morning to try and find out where I am in the queue for the operation, as I am experiencing more severe symptoms. She was told that in view of my deteriorating condition, they would move me up the list, but I still have no idea of precisely  how long I will have to wait.

Fingers crossed that they get to me before the good Lord does…..

Anyway, in the meantime, here is Chapter 10, Part three of A Lustful Gent…

A Lustful Gentleman

-

PART THREE –TOBY

CHAPTER X

Na was ravenous. She hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and was starting to feel distinctly queasy. But she had no money – not a single baht – what on earth was she going to do? She had gone looking for Toby in the hope that somehow it might result in him giving her some badly needed cash, in exchange for her help. But he wasn’t there – the bastard!

She put her hand to her neck and felt the slender gold chain – her last line of defence. It was one ‘sahlung’ of pure Thai gold – worth about five thousand Baht at the latest going rates, but she doubted whether a gold shop would give her any more than four thousand. She hated the prospect of selling it, as it was her very last memory of better days, and the tiny locket hanging from the chain held a faded photograph of her long lost sister, Nid. Once this chain was gone, there would be no remaining assets for her to fall back on.

Resigning herself to the inevitable, she walked out of the police station and made her way along beach Road in search of the nearest gold shop, but had barely walked a few yards when she came across a Thai restaurant, which only served to reminder her of the dire hunger pangs rumbling in her stomach. She stopped wistfully and glanced across at the open air dining area; the restaurant was empty except for an elderly, uniformed policeman sitting at one table, and a lone woman seated at another.

God she was hungry, but without any money it was hopeless, so she stirred herself to resume her search for a gold shop, when after a second look at the woman, she suddenly felt that something about her was familiar. She thought had seen her before – but where? Na continued to stare at her, trying desperately to recall where she knew her from. The object of her attention looked to be in her mid to late twenties and was certainly a very attractive young lady. Then all of a sudden she knew where she had seen her before. It was at Pattaya police station, barely twenty minutes ago. The woman had been going in as Na was leaving and they had bumped into each other. On impulse, Na suddenly walked up the small flight of concrete steps, entered the restaurant, and walked across the open air veranda to the table where Ying was seated, eating her breakfast.

‘Excuse me,’ she started tentatively, ‘I’m sorry to disturb your breakfast but I couldn’t help noticing you as I passed… I am sure you and I have met you somewhere before, but I can’t think where…’

Ying looked up from her food and stared at Na in bewilderment.

‘And…and…it’s driving me crazy… I just can’t place you…at all…’

Ying continued to stare at Na in silence, trying to size up this striking woman and to understand what this disturbance was all about. Then, like Na, a few moments ago, she remembered her, and gave her a brief smile. ‘Yes, we have met before, well, to be accurate we have bumped into each other before – it was at the police station a few minutes ago, you were coming out as I was going in.’

‘Oh? Really?’ Na responded, in mock surprise. ‘That’s a pity, I thought I had found a long lost friend. That food looks delicious and I am so hungry – do you mind if I join you, even if we don’t really know each other?’

Ying, always one to gravitate towards lovely young ladies smiled and waved her to an empty seat at her table. She hated eating alone and welcomed the opportunity to talk to someone of her own age. After introducing themselves to each other, Na ordered some food, and once pleasantries were exchanged, Ying managed to extract from Na the fact that she was ‘between jobs’, whereupon Ying proudly informed her new found acquaintance that she was the owner of a hairdressing salon.

But Ying was still a little uneasy with this woman who had more or less foisted herself upon her, and was now in the process of devouring the food on her plate as though she hadn’t eaten in days. Fishing for more information, she decided to ask Na why she had been at the police station that morning.

‘Oh, it was nothing. I was trying to find an old farang who had a motor accident last night. I thought he was in jail and I wanted to help him, but it turned out he’s not there anymore.’

Ying’s interest immediately picked up. ‘A farang! Accident? What farang?’

‘Oh just a man I knew a few months back. I was going home this morning when I saw his car involved a terrible accident on Second Road. I have no idea how many people were killed – there were bodies all over the place. The farang was quite badly injured but the cops arrested him anyway – he was drunk and had caused the accident. He asked me to help him, but I refused – I was so disgusted with what he had done. But this morning, after I had a good night’s sleep, I thought maybe I should just go and see if he was OK; he really looked to be in a bad way. But he wasn’t there – he had already gone, so I guess he’s all right.’

Ying stared at Na in astonishment. ‘This farang…his name… it isn’t Toby is it?

Now it was Na’s turn to stare in surprise. ‘Why yes, it is. Do you know him?’

‘Know him?’ Ying responded with a raised voice, ‘Yes, you could say I know him… That fucking farang – Toby –  is my fucking husband!’

‘Husband? Toby – your husband? My God… then you must be…Y..Ying..’

The two women smiled at each other and then burst out laughing.

‘Yes, I am Ying, I told you that already.’

‘Toby told me about you – about your marriage – you don’t live together anymore… I know all about it.’

‘And you, Na… how do you know Toby?’

‘I lived with him – for about three months – at his condo in Jomtien. We broke up a few months ago – he drank too much and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I told him if he kept drinking and driving that car he would get himself into big trouble, and now it has happened, just like I said it would. So why are you here, Ying?’

The police called me last night – well, this morning – and told me if I didn’t go down to the station Toby would have a very big problem and might even die. But I refused. I have had enough of all his drunken mishaps.’

‘So why did you come?’

‘Same as you, I had second thoughts and worried if he was OK. But it seems as though we have both been made fools of.’

Na finished her meal and looked across at Ying, feeling distinctly nervous. She decided to come clean.

‘Ying, I’m afraid I haven’t been completely honest with you.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, you see, I didn’t really go to the police station because I worried about Toby. Sure I was thinking I might be able to help in some way, but I was also hoping that he might give me some money – in return for my help. I’m broke Ying – I’m completely broke and I have a family at home to feed. I lost my job today when my boss was arrested and the bar was closed. I’m desperate, so I thought of Toby, and then, not knowing what else to do, when I saw you sitting here I decided to come and sit down with you. I’m not sure what I was hoping for, I’m so sorry, you are a nice person.’

Ying looked at Na, sympathising with her plight but unwilling to become involved. She had enough financial problems of her own.

‘Ying,’ Na continued, ‘if you can do me a big favour and advance the money for my meal, then we can both go together to the nearest gold shop where I can sell my necklace and  pay you back.’

Na unclipped her necklace from around her neck and showed it to Ying. ‘See; it’s one ‘sahlung’, I’ll get about four thousand Baht for it.

‘It’s OK, Na,’ Ying relied with relief. She had been fearful that Na was about to tap her up for a loan, and was overjoyed to discover all that Na wanted from her was the price of a meal. ‘You can have the meal on me – it’s my pleasure!’

‘Are you sure? I feel terrible… well, thank you so much, I don’t know what to say…’

‘Well after all, we are ‘wives-in law,’ Ying joked. ‘So what happened to all the money that Toby must have given you? I know him; he was never a ‘cheap Charlie’ as far as his women were concerned.

‘Toby didn’t give me that much – sure, I suppose he spent quite a bit on me one way or another, but not a lot of actual cash – well a bit , but that is long gone – on my mum and my babies – and I haven’t been earning much at the bars – it’s the low season, not many punters around.’

‘Toby used to be so rich – I don’t know where it all went,’ Ying mused. ‘He used to keep on and on, moaning about a world recession, but I never could understand what he was talking about. All I know is he has lost most of it.

‘He told me he used to be insurance, is that right?’ asked Na.

‘Insurance? Yes, I think he was. But before that – when he was young, he told me he was in the oil business.

‘Oil?’ I never knew that.’

‘Yes, he told me he used to work in Arab countries… aagh!, I hate those fucking Arabs! And before that he was in Africa…then I recall that he once told me that he used to work in Indonesia… Not sure when that was… he has certainly been around a bit… before he ended up in Thailand.’

-

***

-

Toby had never felt quite so ill in his entire life. As he fastened his seat belt for his departure from Jakarta International airport, he thought for one brief, scary moment, that he would throw up – something he hadn’t done in years. His head was pounding and his hands were shaking and he was drenched in sweat; he was in a very bad way indeed. He just wanted to die, and he worried that he wouldn’t be able to survive the short flight to Bangkok without making a complete ass of himself – maybe passing out, or throwing up, or just moaning so loudly from the pain he was in; or quite possibly a combination of all three. He had experienced some pretty nasty hangovers in his time – particularly during the past twelve months – but never anything as bad as this.

The Thai Airways jet revved up its engines and within a few minutes it was hurtling skywards, carrying Toby into a new and unknown chapter in his eventful young life. The four paracetamol tablets that he had swallowed just before he embarked were starting to kick in, and the pounding in his head eased a little. Mercifully, the reduction in pain had alleviated his nausea, and he was able to relax a little – seemingly no longer in imminent danger of embarrassing himself.

But he was still in a bad way; both physically and mentally. After eight years of working hard and playing hard with Santa Cruz, he suddenly found himself unemployed on the other side of the world, with no idea what direction his life would take or what he was going to do for a living. Sure, he had a few thousand dollars tucked away in his wallet, so there was plenty of time to decide what to do next, but as the reality of what had transpired over the past few months finally started to dawn on him, he inwardly grimaced, and tried to unscramble his alcohol fuelled thoughts to figure out how and why his promising career in the oil industry had come to an abrupt end. Where, precisely, had it had all gone wrong?

-

***

After Toby’s initial overseas work-baptism in the ‘hell hole’ that was Zubbaya, he had returned to his employer’s London offices for a couple of months where he hung around, doing very little, when at long last he finally received the green light to take up his permanent assignment in Lagos, Nigeria. Although Mardie was still very much in his mind, his painful memories of the break up were starting to fade, and once he found himself thrown headlong into the cauldron that was Africa’s most populous nation in the throes of a bloody civil war, Mardie, and all that had happened in new York  soon became a distant memory.

Toby was entranced by the African culture from the first day he arrived. He had been brought up in a predominantly white community in east London and had never seen so many black faces in one place in his entire life. But he immediately fell in love with the happy-go-lucky people with their infectious smiles and their even more infectious, heavily rhythmic music which seemed to pervade every aspect of their lives. He enjoyed their volatile natures, their love of bright, coloured clothing, their complete lack of inhibition when dancing to hypnotic African rhythms and above all – their sheer zest for life. It was all such a far cry from England, New York and certainly that fucking Zubbaya. Nigeria in the late 1960’s was tailor made for a young, fearless Englishman, bursting to have the adventure of his life.

And adventures he had indeed, almost from the first day of his arrival, when his new boss had set off late to pick him up at the airport and Toby had impulsively jumped into the nearest ‘unofficial’ taxi and was lucky not have been robbed or kidnapped before he had even had a chance to get his feet on the ground. He spent the first few months of his life living at the most prestigious hotel in the country – the Federal Palace Hotel, and it was there that he was introduced to the two ‘deadly sins’, that were to become the dominant features of his life for many years to come: alcohol and ‘loose’ women.

The Federal palace Hotel, situated on a large, sprawling tract of land on Victoria Island, bordering the Atlantic Ocean, boasted one of the most popular, expatriate, out-door bars in the whole of Lagos. Many were the hardened drinkers – resident and non-resident alike – who would gather there of an evening and weekends to drink the days and nights away – to the sounds of live music provided by the local police band, and to enjoy the wiles and conviviality of the local women.

It didn’t take Toby but a few days to discover the delights of Nigerian hospitality and within weeks he had become a fixture of the hotel’s bar, where he made many new drinking friends and familiarised himself with the delights of the opposite sex. Indeed his first foray into the mysteries of Nigerian whoredom involved an extremely curvaceous young lady who had ‘picked him up’, (he was still too shy to make the initial approaches), in the Hotel’s casino. This was Toby’s very first experience with a lady from the world’s oldest profession.

It turned out that this particularly delectable piece of Nigerian womanhood was also screwing Toby’s married boss, so once he had absorbed this alarming snippet of news, he gave her a wide berth. But it proved no serious impediment to his sexual adventures, and once his friends had also introduced him to some of the night clubs in downtown Lagos, it was all Toby could do to keep a level head for his daily stint of work at Santa Cruz’s offices. The beer of choice was Nigerian Star beer and in those early days of Toby’s drinking career, it was nothing but Star beer that quenched his daily need for alcoholic sustenance.

For a while, Nigeria became Toby’s paradise on Earth; despite the many dangerous, even life-threatening situations that he frequently got himself into. Once he had persuaded Santa Cruz to provide him with his own downtown apartment, his carousing and whoring exploits knew bounds. Not that he was any worse – or any better – than the dozens of young western expatriates who were also enjoying life to the full in a wild, crazy city, in a country that was at war with its own inhabitants and with cheap booze and an incredible supply of  cheap prostitutes. One way or another, it seemed  as though every girl in that vast, sprawling, exciting town was on the game; either as full time hookers, or in what might be termed a part time capacity – to supplement their meagre incomes as secretaries, maids or whatever their daytime employment happened to be; and Toby lusted after them all.

But the volatile nature of the Nigerians meant that trouble, or ‘palaver’ as it was known, was always hovering just below the surface for these groups of drunken, western slobs, who worked and played in  Nigeria’s capital city. They would shack up with a whore on a whim for a few days – or even for a week or two – and then, when a more beautiful hooker took their fancy, they would summarily kick them out. Toby got into many a scrape with such whores and  their families, and even on occasion with the pimps and unofficial taxi drivers who used to drive him – and the women –  from bar to bar in the small hours of the early morning. He would occasionally arrive at work with a black eye or a bloody nose, but by and large he lived a charmed existence, and no major catastrophe befell him. He soon discovered that money – or dash – would make most problems magically vanish.

Occasionally, he was required to drive down to the mid-west of the war- ravaged country and deal with some local accounting matters at one the few oil operations that had remained in government held territory. The disintegrating, two lane road from Lagos to Warri, was long and very dangerous, and it took a full day to make the journey. This meant that you had to leave Lagos as soon as the night curfew was lifted at six in the morning, and make it to Warri before the town’s curfew came into effect at sundown. If a car failed to make it by curfew time, then it had to remain stuck outside town, in the bush, until the following morning. And the bush at night, during the Nigerian civil war was not a place any one wanted to be.

Toby’s trips to and from Warri were fraught with danger, as he had to drive like crazy on crumbling road surfaces, full of deep, life threatening pot holes, in order to make his destination before the curfew. He had never seen so many fatal accidents in all his life, and the roads, together with frequent military road blocks, were journeys that Toby would never forget. The rowdy soldiers at the road blocks – many of whom were illiterate and had been hauled out of their jungle villages and press-ganged into the army – were invariably drunk, and always demanded something in the way of money, or more usually a bottle of whisky before they would let you pass. On more than one occasion Toby put his life on the line by refusing some of the more ridiculous demands.

In one particularly memorable road block incident, one of the drunken soldiers had pointed his rifle at Toby and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t hand over a substantial amount of money. Toby had refused and the sergeant had actually shot a couple of live rounds at Toby’s feet before being led away by a more sober and slightly more responsible senior officer. Toby was to learn that not long after his little confrontation, a group of three oil company Brits, had all been shot dead, at that very same road block.

-

*

-

As he tried desperately to find a comfortable position for his still throbbing head on the hard, unforgiving airline headrest, the wisp of a smile crossed his face when he thought back to those hair-brained, adventurous days in West Africa. He had been too young and too naïve to be really scared, and like so many young men in similar circumstances, fate was invariably on his side. Fearless, frequently intoxicated and not a little crazy, little in the way of serious misfortune had come his way, even though so many of his elder co-workers and friends around him had succumbed to the disease ridden tropical climate or to the almost lawless society where guns were readily available and life was so cheap.

-

*

-

His adventurous journeys to Warri in the Mid-West, were nothing compared to the journey he had to make to Port Harcourt, in the east of the country, barely a few days after the rebel Biafrans had surrendered and hostilities were finally declared to be at an end. Santa Cruz’s immediately took advantage in the ceasefire by flying an advance party of Santa Cruz employees into the town’s recently reopened airstrip, to set up an outpost, in preparation for the re-opening of the oilfields that had been shut down since the outbreak of war. But within days of this event, Toby was told that he must make the journey by road in a large, ancient  station wagon, taking with him hundreds of company records, accounting files and other items urgently needed by his fellow workers in the liberated Eastern capital.

The memories of that long tortuous journey would surely remain with Toby for the rest of his life. It had taken him two very long days to get there, including a scary night in Owerri, the last Biafran stronghold to remain in rebel hands before they had finally been over-run. Everywhere on the road Toby witnessed  evidence of the recent fighting; bomb craters, blown-up and badly damaged buildings and dozens of mutilated corpses which had been dumped along the road side. He had finally arrived at the mighty Niger River only to find that the main suspension bridge had become a casualty of the conflict; So he had been obliged to drive down the steep river bank and manoeuvre his car onto a military pontoon  that would take him across the wide river. Up until then, his journey had been quite shocking in terms of what he had seen, but was otherwise, without incident. All this changed when disaster struck and he managed to burn out the car’s clutch whilst attempting to manoeuvre his vehicle onto the makeshift wooden gangway which led to the ferry.

How he had succeeded in getting his car up the river bank on the far side of the Niger River, with a burnt out clutch; thence to Owerri, and finally to his destination in Port Harcourt, was something he knew he would never forget. It had cost him a small fortune in Nigerian pounds to pay a vast army of semi-starved locals to push his heavy jalopy up the long, steep slope, and once he had made it onto firm ground, he then had to pay out another small fortune to engage an ancient, dilapidated ‘mammy-truck’ to toe him for the remainder of his journey, at a speed of no more than fifteen miles per hour. The countryside on the far side of the river had been an eye opener; far worse than anything he had previously encountered. The road was littered with shell holes, the remains of military munitions, bombed out tanks and other mutilated military vehicles and dozens upon dozens of bodies.

But the worst part of all was not the dead bodies, but those who were still alive. It was as though there was a mass exodus of war-displaced Biafrans, who were wandering along the sides of the road, going God-knows where. But the state of those starving Ibos was totally unnerving for the young and impressionable Toby. By rights, most of them should not have even been alive. Their bodies were little more than emaciated skeletons and Toby couldn’t stop himself wondering how most of them even managed to stay upright on their matchstick legs with their bloated, emaciated stomachs, bald heads, horrific, sunken eye- sockets and protruding bones that looked more like skulls from a medical museum than the heads of living human beings.

-

*

Intermission

My God, those were really the wildest of ‘wild west’ days, Toby thought, as he lay back and at long last, started to drop off to sleep, only to woken within seconds when the plane hit another air pocket. Once more he was wide awake – and his monstrous hangover returned with a vengeance.

Port Harcourt, now if ever there was a Wild West town back in the late sixties, then Port Harcourt was it. There were no banks, he recalled, so all transactions were carried out in cash; which meant that companies like Santa Cruz had to carry huge bundles of notes with which to pay its bills and wages. This naturally attracted gun toting, desperate, war-displaced  gangs, who would run riot though the town, breaking into company offices and robbing their safes at gun point. It had even happened once at Santa Cruz’s office, Toby recalled with a grimace, situated as they were on the edge of town, making them vulnerable to such attacks. The gang had blocked the whole area off in a well-planned attack that prevented any attempts by the military – the only ‘law’ in the region – to come to their rescue. Thank God nobody was hurt, he thought, and how lucky they had been that on the day when the gang had pounced,  they had been running low on cash, so their losses had been relatively light.

Then there was Azzy; beautiful, sexy, crazy Azzy. Toby’s thoughts drifted to the incredibly alluring lady who had become his first wife. Once he married her, his joyous days of happy-go-lucky carousing came to an abrupt end, and the paradise that had been Nigeria started to transform itself into a Hell on Earth. He remembered – as if it were yesterday – the day when he finally realised that he had made the mistake of his life by marrying her.

-

*

-

It was two a.m., and Toby was driving slowly home along a deeply pitted, two-lane, rock strewn road that was Port Harcourt’s only serviceable highway. He was moderately drunk, after drinking steadily all night at the Hotel Presidential. It was only six months since the cessation of hostilities in Nigeria’s bloody civil war and the Presidential was the town’s only properly functioning hotel. But even that building, which had been the scene of some serious fighting, was still pockmarked with bullet holes and was currently undergoing extensive repairs following the damage caused by grenades and small arms fire.

Sitting next to Toby in his newly acquired Ford was Azzy, his Nigerian wife of six months. Azzy was very drunk, and as usual, she was giving Toby a very hard time, berating him for his ‘crime’ of  looking too closely at the well-endowed lady in the cabaret act that they had been watching at the Presidential night club some twenty minutes earlier.

‘You bad man Toby! You like white woman. You no like me…’

‘Azzy…I love you, I was just watching the act – I’ve told you a million times…’

‘You lie! You lie!’

Suddenly, out of the darkness ahead, Toby spotted some flickering torches, and as he slowed down to see what was going on, he realised that there was a large army road block ahead.

‘Shut up, Azzy, look, there’s an army road block.’

‘Road block! I don’t care about a fucking army road block! Just drive straight on!’

‘But I can’t – there’s a barrier, Azzy, I’d better stop.’

‘No! Look again! There’s an open gap in the middle of the road – drive straight on!’ Azzy insisted.

Toby was far more scared of his highly volatile, sometimes violent wife than a few soldiers lounging around at a temporary road block, so he did as he was instructed. Slowing down to around fifteen miles an hour, he steered his car towards the un-barred section in the centre of the road and was half way through the police lines when all hell broke loose. Through his open window he could hear the soldiers screaming at him to stop and before he had time to take in what was happening, a military land rover parked on the far side of the barrier, sprung to life and careered across the road in front of Toby, blocking his exit and forcing him to take evasive action to prevent a collision. Toby’s car ended up in a deep ditch on left side of the road.

Shaken but not hurt, the couple tried to get out of the car to check the damage, but were immediately set upon by about a dozen soldiers, screaming and shouting at the top of their voices. Azzy was the first one out of the car and she gave as good as she got. There was no way that this tough little drunken, ball of fire was going to take any nonsense from a bunch of ignorant, illiterate foot soldiers. She stood her ground and screamed at them at the top of her voice; scolding them for what they had done and exhorting them to push her car out of the ditch so that she could continue her journey home.

For a minute the sheer vehemence of Azzy’s verbal assault, together with the sight of a well-dressed Nigerian woman in ferocious ‘palaver mode’ was enough to stop these angry soldiers in their tracks. They froze for a few seconds, but within seconds, an irate officer approached the scene of the accident and started yelling at the angry woman.

‘You fucking Nigerian Yoruba Whore! What you doin’? You don’ drive through my road block! How dare you!’

‘What you say? You da fucking army scum! I’ll have you put in prison for that – I swear on my mudder grave!’

‘Prison! Prison! It be your fat arse dats gonna do jail time…’

The officer screamed at his men and they rushed over to Azzy and pushed her to the ground, kicking and punching her for all they were worth.  Toby, having emerged from his crashed vehicle, was appalled at what was taking place and immediately rushed over to try and pull some of the crazed men off his wife. But his paltry efforts only served to make matters worse as some of the men turned their attention to Toby. He was shoved violently over onto the ground, next to his screaming wife and felt the full force of several pairs of heavy army boots in his stomach, his chest, his face and on the back of his head. 

For a few seconds, Toby thought that they were both truly’ goners’. These soldiers were clearly out of control, probably high on drugs, and who knows where it would end, short of their bloody demise?

But he was in luck – if that’s what you might call having the shit beaten out of him – as the lieutenant who had been screaming at Azzy was joined by his superior officer – a Captain – who was smart enough to realise that no good would come of beating a foreigner to death. He realised that in all probability the young foreigner was working for the foreign oil company and there had been enough trouble with oil company staff getting killed at road blocks during the recent civil war. The good Captain decided that the last thing he needed was any foreigner–killing witch hunts directed at his command.

He yelled out an ear-splitting order at the top of his voice which somehow managed to rise above the non-stop screaming from Azzy, Toby and the frenzied soldiers. Upon hearing their feared Captain’s order, the men instantly desisted and moved away from the badly battered couple, who were lying in front of them in a heap of blood.

‘Throw them in the land rover and take them to jail, and make sure that they don’t die on the way there.’

It was music to Toby’s ears; he had been so numbed by his recent beating that he didn’t feel a thing as four of the soldiers grabbed hold of him, lifted him up and literally threw him onto the floor in the rear of the army vehicle. A similar manoeuvre was carried out on Azzy, whose screams had now been transformed into a soft moaning. She had met her match and she knew it. The soldiers obeyed their CO’s orders and without further mishap, duly delivered the pair to Port Harcourt jail, where they were unceremoniously dumped onto a dirty concrete floor along with a dozen or so other miscreants who had been rounded up in the course of the long night’s law enforcement.

-

*

-

‘What a bloody disaster that marriage was’, Toby ruefully admitted to himself, as once again the Thai Airways plane hit air turbulence and jolted him back into full consciousness. After all this time, and after having been thrown in jail on no less than three separate continents, he still reckoned that the night he had spent on the floor of Port Harcourt jail, dripping with blood and writhing in agony from his untended injuries, was one of the worst nights he had ever experienced.  It was even worse than his current, parlous state of health, which had brought on by severe alcohol withdrawal after a year of non-stop drinking, as opposed to the boots of crazed African foot soldiers.

-

*

-

Up to that night when Azzy had thrown those tantrums – firstly at the hotel while he was innocently watching the hotel’s cabaret act, and later at the road block, Toby hadn’t thought too much about his wife’s domineering and controlling behaviour. He acknowledged that she had bullied him into marrying her, but he was so infatuated with the most gorgeous piece of womanhood that he had ever set eyes on, that she had been literally able to do what she liked and could talk him into anything. Azzy was a very beautiful lady. She could have easily passed as a model; she was very slim but with a lovely, curvatious figure, and her enigmatically haunting face could have been out of a Da Vinci painting. She also had a great clothing sense, and was always dressed to kill, with figure-hugging, micro miniskirts, or in a low cut top with skin-tight, flared trouser bottoms; she would turn the heads of every man whenever she entered a room.

Azzy had met and moved in with Toby just a few months before he was reassigned from Lagos to Port Harcourt, and from almost from the first day he had been much enamoured with her. But he wasn’t yet sufficiently sucked into the relationship to conclude that once he was transferred permanently to east, he must forget about her, move on and find someone new. But ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, and the longer he stayed in Port Harcourt, the more he realised how much he missed her, and he couldn’t find any local woman who came close to matching the beauty and sexual allure of Azzy. One day it occurred to him that although he had completely stopped dreaming of Mardie, it was now Azzy who seemed to have taken Mardie’s place in his heart and was occupying his every thought; he was missing her like crazy.

Quite by chance, Toby was out at Port Harcourt airport one afternoon to greet some new employees who were arriving that day, when who should he see climbing down the airline steps, but none other than his beloved Azzy. She had evidently decided that Toby was too good a prospect to pass over and as he had not been in touch with her since his move to Port Harcourt, she had better take the initiative  to track him down.

He frequently recalled that fateful afternoon at Port Harcourt airport. At the time it seemed to be  a wonderful miracle. Azzy had been increasingly in his thoughts and he had been wondering if he would be able to swing a few days off and fly to Lagos to go and see her, yet here she was, as bold as brass, walking towards him along the airport tarmac. My God! She had looked so gorgeous that day; there was hardly a man the entire airport who could keep his eyes off her.

‘Hello Azzy – what on earth are you doing here?’

‘What do you think? I’ve come to see you.’

‘But…but…how did you know I would be here at the airport?’

She smiled at Toby. ‘I got my ju ju working…I know you gonna be here..’

‘But how? I don’t understand.’

‘It no matter Toby, I’m here now; you here now. We go.’

‘Go? Go where? I’m living in the company’s staff house – you can’t go there, it’s full of oilfield staff.’

You got no hotels in Port Harcourt?’

‘Well, yes but they’re a bit rough, except for the Presidential, which would cost a small fortune.’

They stayed together at a local hotel, at Toby’s expense, before flying back to Lagos a few weeks later to get married. Once married, Toby started putting pressure on his employers to change his contract to ‘married status’ which would entitle him to free housing and a special ‘marriage allowance’. Initially, his boss had resisted the request as Toby had been hired as a single man and by rights he should honour his contract; but in the end, a compromise was agreed whereby most of his housing expenses would be reimbursed, and his newly married Nigerian wife would be officially recognised within his employer’s social circle.

Once again Toby had let his heart and his raging hormones to rule his head and he was saddled with a woman with whom he had little in common and who was proving ever more difficult to live with. The incident at the road block was just a taste of things to come, and Azzy’s behaviour towards him, fuelled by alcohol, became ever more erratic, controlling, violent and even bordered on the psychotic. For a long time, Toby felt there was no way out, as if he dared to leave Azzy while still working in Nigeria he was genuinely worried about what she might do to him – with good reason.

But his chance came during an ‘end of contract’ trip back to the UK when Toby took his wife back home to East London with him to meet his parents. He had been fearful of his father’s reaction to his son marrying a Nigerian woman but needn’t have worried. Remarkably his father welcomed the two of them into his home and treated them better than Toby had ever been treated when he had been growing up. Maybe his father had mellowed in his old age?

But put two stubborn, volatile, unstable characters in the same home together and sooner or later the sparks will start to fly – and fly they did when one day, the two of them refused to give ground over some stupid argument. The row escalated and before long it was out of control. Azzy was holed up in the bedroom, waving a large kitchen knife and threatening to kill herself if Toby’s father wouldn’t back off.

David Stark gave Toby an ultimatum: ‘Either she leaves the flat by herself, or you both go. I will not have her under my roof for another day.’

Toby decided to take Azzy away and found a nearby room in a small hotel where they spent the next few days. But Azzy’s behaviour was becoming increasingly violent and bizarre and was she was making ever more outrageous demands on his hard earned savings; so one morning, after Azzy had announced she was going out for the day – alone – to spend the large wad of money she had forced Toby to hand over to her, Toby packed his bags and walked out on his first wife for good.

He still vividly recalled the aftermath of that affair, when Azzy had somehow succeeded in tracking down his father’s address and had refused to believe his father when she was told that Toby was not cowering inside. She had become very loud and very violent and in the end David Stark had been obliged to call the police to restrain her, whereupon she decided to have a fight with the police. Azzy’s fall from grace – if she ever had any – was fast and furious. She was held in jail for her own protection and underwent psychiatric reports. Eventually, three psychiatrists agreed that she was mentally unstable and she was legally ‘sectioned’ which meant that she was obliged to spend the next few months in a London mental hospital.

Toby had already taken more than his allotted time off from work, and once Azzy was put away safely for a few months, he returned to his post in Nigeria, to commence a new contract – this time reverting back to a ‘single status’ basis. But what with the trauma of his break-up with Azzy, and his new-found freedom, he started to go off the rails. He befriended some local Nigerian army officers, whose officers’ mess was located near to his home,  and every night they would do a circuit of the Port Harcourt bars, get rip-roaring drunk and pick up a coterie of young ladies with which to spend the remainder of the night with.

Up to this point in his young life, however drunk Toby might become on a given nights debauchery, he  had little problem in getting himself up in the morning and arriving at work on time. But now things were starting to slip, and he would frequently arrive at the office late, often in a dishevelled state, sometimes unshaven and unwashed – occasionally with cuts and bruises on his face – but almost always in no condition to do a proper day’s work. He was spoken to on several occasions by his immediate boss, but it had little effect on his subsequent behaviour.

In the end, it was Toby himself who realised that he better take some action before his employers decided to take matters into their own hands. He had received a lot of support and understanding from a company to which he had given much in the way of work and dedication above and beyond  the call of duty over the past few years, but he knew that their patience was fast becoming exhausted. He decided to put in for a transfer to a new location as the best way for both sides to save face. He  reasoned that it was his recent memories of Azzy that had caused him to go off the rails and that a fresh start at a new country, where he could put all the troubles and memories of ‘crazy’ Azzy behind him, would surely put his career back on course.

Mobi-Babble

The sun is out today, but thank goodness, it seems to be little cooler than it has been of late, and fingers crossed, no storms and no power outages today.

It has been quite a week for weather. Over last weekend and earlier this  week, it was very – very – hot and on a couple of occasions it was so unbearable that I even put the air conditioner on in my large living room- diner ; the first time I have done this since I moved here in 2010. I guess the temperatures must have been hovering on 40 degrees and the humidity was right up there as well.

Then, on Tuesday evening, all hell broke loose. Firstly, in the fast gathering dusk, the power went off, and we could see the probable cause from the black storm clouds in the distance. Then it hit us – one of the most spectacular lightning storms I have ever seen. The wind must have been nigh on gale force, the rain was unremitting in its intensity and the thunderclaps and lightning was virtually non-stop for a period of well over 2 hours. We hardly needed any alternative illumination as the nonstop lightning provided us with all the light we needed.

Our three dogs were terrified and sat shivering in fear; Cookie, the golden, between my legs and the two shih tzus in our arms. After about two hours, the storm started to abate and we inspected the damage, which to be fair, considering the number of home- made sun/rain shelters that Noo had erected outside the main building, was quite minimal. Only one small part of one of her ‘lean-to’ constructions had collapsed, which was more due to the overhanging branches of an adjacent mango tree that had been blown onto it, than to shoddy workmanship. A bit of judicious mango tree  pruning by the little lady the following day, has hopefully prevented a re-occurrence.

I later learned that the storm had covered a wide area of Pattaya and beyond, some areas having it worse than others, but a lot of structural damage was suffered and all the local schools in Mabparachan postponed the start of the new school term to clear up the mess and repair damaged buildings.

We had little respite from the heat on the night of the storm and sweated in the dark until the obscene hour of 4 in the morning when the power was finally restored. Needless to say, not much sleep was had that night. Of course, nights like that are all part of the ‘trade off’ for living in a tropical paradise, and I would much to prefer to be without power in 40 degree heat, that without power in the UK, with sub-zero temperatures.

Since Tuesday, the weather has been much more tolerable, with overcast skies, short periods of sunshine and occasional rain storms being the order of the day, and for the past two evenings we have managed to take a short walk with our dogs along the road by the lake. I haven’t taken a great deal of exercise of late, as I am definitely finding the walks more and more taxing on my heart. I feel fine physically, but within five minutes of relatively slow walking,  I start to feel the pains and tightness in my chest, and after about 20 minutes of exercise, I am really all in.

I am also sleeping for ridiculous lengths of time –  sometimes more than 9 hours in a night – and I can only put this down to the poor state of my heart. Next week will be a full month since I had my final round of tests and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I might get a date for the operation sooner rather than later. I was warned it might be anything from 1 – 3 months, so who knows? It’s not very pleasant just waiting for something that is going to be extremely unpleasant and painful, and in which I stand a 1 in 20 chance of not coming out of alive. It doesn’t do much for my mood swings, and I do feel quite low for long periods of time, but I do my best to snap out of it and try to stay happy well adjusted.   But sometimes, it’s not easy.

Azzy

The other day, quite by chance, I happened to come across the alarming fact that a large chunk of my text was missing from the Mobi-Vignette entitled ‘Azzy’. (Originally entitled ‘Azzy- my Love’, but subsequently shortened).

Upon investigation, I soon realised that  the absent  text had been omitted when I copied it from the main body of my blog to the ‘AZZY’ Tab. This was was due to the fact that  when I originally published it in ‘sections’ in the main body of my blog, I had inadvertently designated two consecutive sections as ‘Part Three’. So, as I was either in an inebriated or in a hung over state when I did the copying and pasting,  I had simply ensured that the section numbers were sequential, without bothering to check that the text made sense.

Anyway, at this very belated point in time , I apologise for  omitting a key piece of text, which has now been reinserted, as it must have caused some confusion to many trying to make sense of the story.

For those who may be interested, the start of the missing piece of text has been ‘emboldened’ for your easy reference, as has the final line of the previously missing piece.

It starts with:  ”That morning, when Bisi calmly informed me that she was my General Manager’s regular girl friend, a chill went down my spine….”

and finishes with: “But who and where would I find such a person?”

Sorry for the mess up, folks, I’ll try not to let it happen again.

Mobi’s Lakeside Gossip

Last Friday, I did a few hours’ work on my novel, and then in the early afternoon, I decided to catch up with a few of my drinking buddies and find out all the latest gossip. In particular, I wanted to find out the latest news on my friend Simon who, the last I had heard , was planning to make a trip back to the family home to retrieve a few personal possessions, following a breakup with his wife.

First off was Rick, the guy who I fell out with a few months back but have since resumed normal relations. We met for a spot of lunch at one of the many new bar/restaurants that are forever springing up around and near the lake.

For those of you who live out this way, I will give this place a plug, as I have now had two meals there and they serve very palatable, freshly cooked, English fayre; ranging from snacks and sandwiches to fully fledged meals; roasts and the like.  Owned and managed by an Englishman with a charming Thai wife, It is called ‘Dao’, and is located on the road that runs from the  major Soi Siam crossroads at 7/11, (just past the lake going south – often known as ‘chicken’ cross roads), through to the Chayapornvithee junction, near to the turning that leads to the Crocodile Farm. Sorry, its difficult to explain – but easy to find. Like most places in Thailand , you really need a little direction map.

***

There was no real gossip worth passing on to my readers from Rick, so I moved on to pastures new where I met up with one of my old drinking mates who gave me a rambling, and yet to be verified account of the latest state of play with the unfortunate Simon. (See ‘The Wife from Hell’ in my blog of 12th May). My drunken friend told me that Simon had indeed made the trip back home on the appointed day, but he was unable tell me if he had gone alone or had been accompanied by ‘protectors’, as he had intended.

Surprise, surprise, his wife Porn, had indeed been waiting for him, despite promising to be out for the day. As far as I was able to discern from the drunken account, Simon was successful in getting hold of his house title deeds and other personal papers and managed to get out of the house in one piece. I will need to get this news verified from a more reliable source, as it sounds a little unlikely to me – but who knows for sure? Anyway, it seems that Porn was not successful in enticing or in some way persuading Simon to return to the marital abode and he is now back at his work in distant oilfields. So if Porn has any devious plans afoot to do something nasty to her errant husband, it is unlikely that her tentacles can reach as far as an offshore oil rig – at least I assume that is so.

More on this in due course.

The bar where I was getting this information was awash with a gang of mainly pot-bellied, beer swilling Brits who getting very drunk in the afternoon sunshine; and the level of discussion was becoming ever  louder and increasingly  asinine. Then, when two of the participants – an elderly, very inebriated Brit, and his repulsive, equally drunk Thai wife, started hurling drunken insults at each other, I decided it was time for Mobi to down his Coke zero and move on to pastures new.

***

Next stop was at a bar that was located in a small soi near to Pong market; it was run by a husband and wife team (Dutch husband/Thai wife), Dick and Toy, who I had known for many years, and I decided on a whim drop by to see how everyone was doing these days.

To my surprise and dismay, the bar had vanished, but my disappointment was short-lived as when I drove further into the soi to find a place to turn around, I saw a sign on the right advertising a new ‘rooms for rent /bar’ complex bearing the name of Toy. I slowed down to see if this was indeed owned by the couple and sure enough, a young lady waved to me from inside the compound, gesturing me to park up. The girl looked vaguely familiar, but she certainly wasn’t Toy, so I wound down the driver’s window to get a closer look, and the girl screamed in excitement and came running to my vehicle, virtually dragging me out of my ‘Mobi-Beast.’

‘Mobi! Mobi! How wonderful to see you. I haven’t seen you for years! You look so good!’

Feeling more than a little flattered, I retuned her proffered embrace as it slowly came back to me where I had seen her before. She used to work at a little bar I patronised, which was located in the garden of Dick, my friend. He called it the ‘Best kept Secret’ and tucked away as it was, in a soi a couple of  kilometres east of the Lake, it was impossible to find if you weren’t shown its location, as outside the house, there was no sign to indicate what was going on inside.

And just what was going on?  Well it was a beautifully designed open air bar, set in a large garden, full of towering plants, trees and flowers and had  piped music, cable TV, plenty of booze and – most important of all- plenty of women. It was intended to be an afternoon stop off for predominantly married or ‘cohabitating’ men, and for while it became  my home away from home during the final, tortuous  months of my life with Dang.

I had some rip roaring, wonderful times there with Dick, his wife and the ladies. Dick was a big drinker – like me, with a wonderful sense of humour, and almost from the first time I met him we hit it off. I guess we had the same mischievous, cynical sense of humour and we spent many – many – hours getting drunk out of our minds at his wonderful little bar.

But like most heavy drinkers, the booze started to get the better of him and he was prone to bad moods and temper-tantrums during which he would scream at the girls and have endless fights with Toy. The end result was that the girls walked out,  the bar was closed, and Dick and Toy separated. Toy moved to Pattaya and opened her own bar, and Dick just carried on drinking and resorted to  bringing an seemingly inexhaustible supply of young ladies to share his bed in what used to be the marital home.

I saw them occasionally during this period of their life – Toy in Waking Street, Dick getting drunk in one bar or another, and then a few months ago I discovered that they had got back together again and were running a small bar in Pong, where I subsequently went to see them and catch up on old times.

And now here was Boo, one of Dick’s long departed bar girls from ‘Best kept Secret’, as large as life, apparently working in his latest complex. Surprise, surprise, Boo was quite tipsy.

‘Where’s Toy?’

‘She go see Dick.’

‘Where’s Dick?’

‘Dick in hospital – he very sick!’

‘Oh dear what’s the trouble.’

‘Dick – his liver no good. He drink too much.’

‘So how long has he been in hospital?’

‘Three days. He not want to go to doctor, so Toy, she bring doctor to see him at home and he tell Dick he die if he no go hospital. His liver very bad. Dick, he drink too much every day, he never eat – just drink. He very bad.’

I don’t mind telling you how distressed I was to hear this news. Sure I knew he was an alcoholic, but he always seemed to more or less hold his life together, and the last time I saw him he was full of enthusiasm for the future. He was telling me about a new bar complex he was planning to build with Toy, and seemed full of life and hope.

 In the past few years, I have known  many friends and acquaintances die of alcohol related causes, but somehow I always thought Dick was one of those who would go on forever. He is a big man and – I thought- a very strong, sickening robust man, who always seemed to be in rude good health, regardless of his depraved and damaging lifestyle.  Worst of all, he has only just turned 50. The others who had passed on were much older, like my lifelong friend, Robert Newton, who died a couple of months back.

Anyway, he’s not dead yet and I plan to go and see him as soon as possible and see precisely how bad he is. If there is any way he can recover from this, I will do my very best to try and steer him away from alcohol, but I realise it will be an uphill and probably impossible task. But I have to try.

If I needed any reminding of the destructive nature of alcohol and how sensible had been my decision to forsake it forever, then this is it. Somehow, the death of Robert Newton  in November last year did not register in that way, as I had been expecting his demise for years, but Dick’s current state of parlous health is a timely reminder to me never to consider turning away from my chosen road of abstention.

***

Promising Boo that I would come by the next day, I took my leave, and decided to pop into a bar that I haven’t been to for many a month. Some of you may recall the place in my earlier blogs – it was the Frogger – and as ever, it was empty.  I took my place at the bar and immediately  noticed that most of the previous ‘ladies in residence’ were gone and that only one of the old gang still remained. It was a young lady by the name of Kat, who has a beautiful body, but unfortunately has a face which could definitely be improved with some judicious plastic surgery. However, There was a new, very slim, quite pretty, very young looking girl, sitting shyly behind the bar, called Lilly.When I enquired as to her age, there was an embarrassed pause before she eventually managed to choke out, ‘20’.

Now I know that many of these young ladies are genuinely older than they look to us farangs, but I have been around long enough to sniff out a bit of ‘jail bait’ when I see one, and if Lilly was 20, then I’m an Chinaman. If she had said 18, I might have believed her, but 20 – no way. Anyway I decided to do the decent thing and buy the two of them a drink, and we settled down to talk about the girls who used to work there.

The first girl I enquired about was a young lady by the name of Pen, who for a short while, I was quite taken with, even though by that time I already had Noo set up in the Mobi-home for several months.

Here’s what I wrote about Pen back on 26^th May, 2011, almost a year ago.

‘I have been particularly taken with one lovely 21 year old, who has a stunning face, slim figure and legs that most girls would die for. She is all sweetness and light – ‘butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth’. She is such a contrast from most of the brassy, forward girls I encounter around the Lake that she is a refreshing change . My sex addiction is always on the lookout for something new and different and this little lady, Pen by name, may fit Mobi’s bill. Will I bed her? I honestly don’t know. Probably not – I still wish to keep faithful to Noo’.

Kat informed me that Pen had long since returned to Phetchabun and was no longer working in the bar trade, which was good to hear;  but when my enquiries turned to another young lady for whom I had also developed quite a soft spot , Kat clammed up and was very reluctant to talk about her.

The girl was Noo – the namesake of my Noo at home – and here’s what I wrote about her in June last year.

‘….We rounded off our little adventure with a stop-off at my latest watering hole where they have the most delightful collection of young ladies from Phetchabun that I have encountered on many a carousing, whore-monger’s foray. On my first few visits there, I started to chat up a lovely little 21 year old, but as she has had to gone home for a few days, and as she really is a bit in the young side for this youthful pensioner, I have now transferred my affections to a slightly older little lady, by the name of Noo. (Yes…. same-same as Mobi’s Noo..)

Noo No.2 is 28, slim, pretty and childless and I am grooming her as a ’standby’ for Noo No.1. I know I am being a bit of an underhanded bastard, but after a life of disappointments and heart breaks from Thai members of the sexy sex I am not about to let anything like that happen again. I am not sleeping with Noo 2; I am just getting to know her and make sure that she will be a suitable replacement, should the need ever arise.

Why would I think the need may arise?

Nothing really, but who knows? I’m afraid I just don’t trust anybody any more. Sad, ain’t it?..’

When I continued to insist on some information on Noo’s current whearbouts, Kat just commented briefly that she was long gone and was now ‘working in Soi Bua Khao’ but wouldn’t volunteer any further details as to why she had left or where she was working. Her disinclination to discuss the matter made me even more curious and eventually, the cashier, who had been listening to us nearby, decided to spill the beans.

‘Noo, she stay in Cook!’ she informed me.

‘Cook! Prison? Why? What happened? What did she do?’

‘She steal 100,000 Baht from farang, and the police catch her and put her in prison.’

‘My God! How long will she stay there?’

‘Don’t know – a very long time – many years.’

This was sobering news indeed, and although I had been  a long way from dumping Noo No. 1 for Noo no. 2, there was little doubt that if for any reason Noo. No.1 hadn’t worked out, Noo No. 2 would have been high up on my list of replacements.

Lucky escape? Probably.

Maybe there is a God out there after all…

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT… I don’t give a hoot.

Mobi-Babble

No, don’t worry; I’m not going back on my recent decision to just post my blog once a week.

Today I am publishing the next chapter of my Novel, and all being well, this will continue to be a mid-weekly event. So far, I am very happy with my decision to post a new blog on weekly basis, as it seems to have relieved a lot of admittedly self-imposed pressure, and I have been making good progress on my novel. As well as this week’s chapter, I am well advanced on the next chapter which I will publish next week.

Some of you may find that the current section of my novel draws much material from ‘Mobi’s Story’, ‘Mardie’, and ‘Azzy’. I did think long and hard about this before deciding to go this route, but after all, budding authors are always told to ‘write about what you know’, and this is what I know. It is still a work of fiction, which sometimes sort of crosses over to a world of real events and real people; but as you will hopefully read one day, it eventually returns to the world of ‘Mobi make believe’.

The novel is turning into a monster by today’s standards, and is rapidly approaching 100,000 words, longer than most modern day completed works. I am still quite a way from the end, but I have stopped worrying about how long it will eventually turn out to be, as I feel it will be easier to cut it down to size when finished, than try to restrict my creative instincts at this stage of the process.

Who knows? Maybe it will be fine as it is.

Anyway, in the meantime, here is Chapter 9, Part three of A Lustful Gent…

A Lustful Gentleman 

-

PART THREE –TOBY

CHAPTER IX

‘It wasn’t all bad… was it? – Those five miserable years at Grammar school?’

‘It wasn’t all that fucking good, either,’ Toby thought wryly to himself; and it was another long, five years before he finally managed to become almost free of his father’s suffocating influence – even though he been working in a full time job throughout that entire period.

Toby was still lying prostrate on the cell floor, feeling too weak to even lift his head to see what was going on around him; but his mind was remarkably active. Once again, he wondered if he was close to death. He had heard about people who were on the point of death having their whole life flash in front of them, and this seemed to be happening to him. He was recalling events from his childhood and life when he was a young man that he hadn’t thought about for many a year. Maybe it’s true – he thought – maybe you really do see your life in vivid detail before you die.

His mind drifted back to the day he had completed his GCE examinations and came home from school and announced to his father that he had decided to leave school and look for a job as a trainee accountant. He had absolutely no interest in being an accountant, and barely comprehended what such a job would entail, but after 16 years of living with his father, he strongly suspected that his choice of future profession would please him. His father had always complained about how the ‘fucking accountants’ controlled everything and how rich they all were.

He was right. For once in his life, his father was pleased with his youngest son and told him he had made a very wise decision.

He had then spent the next five years ‘articled’ – a euphemism for enslaved, Toby used to think – to the senior partner of a small firm of Chartered Accountants in the City of London. He was paid a pittance for this so-called privilege, and as well as doing a full day’s work for his new employers, he also had to study in his spare time for examinations on mind-numbing and unbelievably convoluted subjects such as Mercantile Law, Corporate Tax, Bankruptcy, Liquidation, Receivership, Advanced Accounting and a host more besides.  In order to become fully qualified as a Chartered Accountant at the age of twenty one, he would be required to sit and pass two major examinations; the intermediate examination, after being articled for about two and a half years, and the ‘finals’, which were normally taken just before the completion of articles.

‘What a fucking nightmare’, Toby thought to himself. Even after all these years it came flooding back to him as if it were yesterday; those supercilious, jumped up bosses, who he had to say ‘Sir’ and jump to attention every time he addressed them, and who had virtually treated him as their skivvy for five years. His reluctance to study at home had barely changed from his days at grammar school, but he now realised that he had little choice other than to put his nose down at home in the evenings, notwithstanding his father’s intimidating and brooding presence. But he found the study matter so tedious and unfathomable that  for much of the time, he would sit at his desk in his bedroom with his study papers spread out in front of him, while secretly reading a new Thomas Hardy novel – or some other 19^th century author. The book would be surreptitiously perched on his knees, ready to be dropped onto the floor, and kicked under his desk, the moment anyone entered the room.

Toby inwardly smiled. His fucking father never actually caught him and hadn’t realised that anything untoward was going on for years. Even after all this time he still delighted in the thought that he had pulled the wool over his father for so long; but in the end, it had all come crashing down around him. After failing his intermediate examinations two times in a row, his father confronted him one night with his long held deception. It transpired that Toby’s examination failures had prompted his father to contact the college that had arranged his correspondence courses. They had duly informed an angry David Stark that his son hadn’t submitted a single test paper for many, many months.

He inwardly shuddered when he recalled that night. He was eighteen – already a legal adult – when his father had finally discovered what had been going on. Toby was now too old to be taken across his father’s knee for a good spanking, but his father’s fury knew no bounds and his temper tantrum had been so loud, so prolonged and so frightening, that a concerned neighbour had called the police, worried that murder was being committed in the nearby flat.

After that incident, Toby resolved to take his studies a little more seriously and eventually succeeded in passing his ‘intermediate’ examination at his third attempt – the only professional ‘nearly-qualification’ that he was to hold for the rest of his working life. But by the time he passed that examination, he was already so far behind in his studies that he was never going to be in a position to sit his ‘finals’ before his ‘articles were completed. So at the age of twenty one, he bade a hasty and long anticipated farewell to the firm that had held him indentured for five long years of his young life and went to seek a real job in the outside world, with his newly acquired title of ‘part-qualified’ Chartered Accountant. 

It was 1967, and the ad columns of  the newspapers were flooded with commercial job vacancies, and in particular there was a desperate shortage of accountants; so the fact that he was only ‘partly qualified’, proved to be little impediment in seeking out a decent job.

Toby wondered if his career would have gone in a different direction if he had somehow been more diligent and had succeeded in becoming a fully qualified accountant – but he doubted it; certainly in those early days, when every company seemed to fall over backwards to hire him, and even later, once he had proved his worth, very few seemed to care what qualifications he held – all anyone was interested in was whether or not he could do the work.

‘A far cry from these days’ he thought to himself, ‘now, without countless ‘A’ levels, plus a university degree, plus a full professional qualification, nobody would give you so much as the time of day.’

But back then, in the 70’s and even the early 80’s, things were very different; once he had established a reputation as a good experienced financial manager, it was his work record and accounting competence that had propelled him up the corporate ladder, not some stupid exams which  he had or hadn’t passed back in the 1960’s.

‘Was it that first position with the oil drilling company that had shaped the remainder of my eventful life?’ he wondered. Suppose he had decided to opt for the accounting job with a glass manufacture who had offered him such an attractive package? Would his life have taken a different course? Maybe, but he would never know.

But it was a good decision – even a great decision – to accept the offer of a job with  an American Oil drilling company, working in their prestige offices in the  west end of London. Toby had felt instinctively that this was for him, and although the position was to work in the company’s London offices, he could always dream that maybe one day he might be posted overseas; somewhere exciting, away from the hum drum life of post war, economically depressed England; and more importantly, away from the ever pervading influence of his father.

He smiled to himself. Somewhere exciting’…hmm…well, his very first overseas posting hadn’t quite worked out that way.

Interesting? Possibly…Challenging? Definitely…but exciting? Hardly…

***

-

In his wildest dreams, Toby could never have imagined that anywhere on this planet could be so hot, so humid and so debilitating. He had been reliably informed by the crew back at base camp that the ground temperature in the Zubbaya region of Abu Dhabi was around forty five degrees Celsius in the shade, and out there in the exposed desert, midday temperatures easily exceeded fifty degrees. Worse still, the sabkha, or salt flat temperatures, barely a few hundred meters from where he was presently standing had been measured at sixty degrees, while the water in the shallow lagoons, that lapped intermittently over the sabkha, were a sizzling seventy degrees! And he didn’t even want to think about the humidity, which at this time of year, hovered close to one hundred per cent.

Base Camp had been bad enough, but at least at Base Camp he had been able to cool off in his air-conditioned porter camp. It was only a few days since he had received his shock initiation to the climate extremes of the newly independent Trucial States – now re-named The United Arab Emirates – when he had flown in to the desert strip, with its nearby tin shacks, which masqueraded as Abu Dhabi international airport, in those far off, oil pioneering days of the late 1960’s. As soon as he had disembarked from the cabin of the BOAC VC10 and started to walk down the airline steps to the sand below, the hot moist air made him gasp for breath.Within seconds, his light tropical clothes were a sodden mass of sweat-stained, clinging cotton.

Then there had been the perilous ride in an ancient Mercedes Benz from Abu Dhabi airport to Base Camp, a distance of around seventy miles. It had started well enough, as they had driven out, along a smooth, four lane highway that snaked its way through the desert towards the fledgling Abu Dhabi township; but they had only gone a few miles along this newly built road, when the Arab driver, with barely a touch on the vehicle’s squeaky brakes, suddenly swung his wheel sharply left and they headed off, along a pitted sand track, towards the virgin desert beyond.

The car had no air-conditioning and as they gathered speed, it was so hot that the wind rushing though the open windows was scorching his exposed skin to such an extent that within a few minutes, he was obliged to shut all the windows. The almost unbearable heat inside the car was preferable to the burning, sand-filled air that had been stinging his face. The driver was unbothered, as Toby could barely even see his eyes behind the white Arab headdress that he had wrapped for protection across his face, covering all, save a small slit for his eyes.

But the two hour trip to base Camp had been nothing compared to the three hour land rover trip over truly virgin desert to the oil company’s storage facility at the distant outpost of Zubbaya, way out on the Abu Dhabi coast. The previous evening he had been warned that Zubbaya was truly the ‘arsehole of the world’ and he had taken it to be a joke; but he now realised that any attempt at humour was a long way from his work colleague’s mind when he had made that telling remark. By comparison, ‘Base Camp’ – stuck miles out in the desert as it was – was a relatively civilised place, with its air conditioned, private quarters, a comfortable staff canteen with a daily choice of freshly cooked western food – even an ice cream machine – and amazingly, there was plenty of ice cold beer available to while away your evenings with your expatriate co-workers.

But out here in Zubbaya, there was nothing. No air conditioning, no decent food, intolerably high temperatures, and with nobody for company except a few Bedouins who seemed to spend all their time either tending their mangy camels or sleeping underneath them! They had set out at the crack of dawn – Toby and an oil company clerk – in an old rusty land rover that looked like it was ready for the scrap heap. It had been a truly terrifying journey for young Mobi, as they drove a roller coaster ride over towering desert sand dunes, sometimes slipping and sliding down almost vertical slopes, sometimes almost getting stuck in the deep sand at the dune’s base before their Arab driver succeeded at the very last moment in freeing up the vehicle to climb to the peak of yet another dune.

They were out there to count the oil company’s oil ‘casing stock’. Toby’s employer was contracted to drill wells for a British Oil company and as part of their contract, they were responsible for the ‘custody’ of the oil well casing stock – and some had seemingly gone missing. Either that or the stock records were in a mess. Nobody really believed that any of the stock had gone missing, as a single piece of the metal pipe casing could weigh well over a ton; so who would steal it and where would they take it – out here in one of the most deserted places on earth? So Toby had been sent out on a special assignment from London – his very first overseas job – to sort the stock records out. However, unbeknown to him, not only did he have to physically count and check all the stock records at Base Camp, but he also had to make this dangerous trip to the ‘arsehole of the world’ to count the stock which had been offloaded from cargo ships and stored there, awaiting its deployment in new oil well shafts.

Toby looked at the middle aged, oil company employee who had accompanied him, an ethnic Indian stock clerk, and wondered which one of them hated this assignment the most – himself or ‘KC’ – as he was known.

‘Come on KC, we better make a start or we’ll not finish before night fall and I don’t know about you, but I’ve no desire to make the return journey to Base Camp in the dark.

Using  the local gulf dialect, KC called out to one of the nearby Bedouins, and  after rummaging around for a minute or so, the Arab somehow rustled up a blanket underneath a pile of junk and handed it to KC. The Indian then located a cool place near a corner of the tent, spread the blanket out on the ground and lay his weary body on the blanket, with the soft sand beneath acting as the perfect mattress.

‘Call me when you’re finished, Toby.’

‘Aren’t you going to help me count them? How do you know I won’t cheat?’

‘You’re an Englishman Toby. All Englishmen are honest. I trust you.’

With that, he closed his eyes and within seconds, he was fast asleep. Toby looked at the forbidding rows of massive metal casings, stacked up in the sand beyond, and then to the batch of stock sheets in his hands.

‘Honest Englishmen? Well, we’ll see about that, shall we?’ he said to himself, as he located a small bench at the far end of the tent and sat down with his stock pad. As he started ticking off the numbers on the stock sheets, his mind wandered back to 1967, when he had first become an employee of Santa Cruz Drilling Company – his first real job – after he had completed his articles as a trainee Chartered Accountant.

He had always hoped that the job may lead to an exciting overseas assignment, but never, in his wildest dreams, did he imagine that he would end up in this God forsaken hell hole – Zubbaya;  the hottest and most miserable dump in the entire universe.

-

***

-

Much had happened in Toby’s life during his brief career with Santa Cruz. Once he had secured his new, relatively well paid new job and had become financially independent, one of his first acts was to announce to his parents that that he was moving out. He told them that he had found a room to rent in the Bayswater area, not far from his work place in London’s Mayfair district, and due to the pressures of his new job, it would be much more convenient if he lived nearby, rather than having to make the hour-plus daily trek from his parents’ home in East London. He had been fearful of his father’s reaction but was quietly determined to have his own way, whatever it took.

But he needn’t have worried. His father, while by no means overjoyed at the news, seemed to accept the decision without too much rancour, confining himself to few well-chosen nasty barbs along the lines of: ‘The only thing you fucking kids are interested in is having a good time – never a thought for your poor mother stuck at home. You’ll break her heart you selfish bustard!’

But Toby was twenty one years old and there was little David Stark could do to stop his son leaving, short of physically restraining him. His older brother Danny had long since fled the tortuous and poisonous nest, and Toby’s departure meant that of the three siblings, only his sister Jeanette, now remained at home. He felt for his poor mother, but there was little he could do to help her for as long as she remained under the control of her domineering husband.

Although Toby’s final breaking of the ‘apron strings’ was partly predicated by his desperate desire to get as far away as possible from the suffocating influence of his father, it was also due to his now urgent need to find a place where he could spend quality time alone with a young lady by the name of Mardie – the first ever love of his short life.

Mardie was a very cute, very sexy, golden skinned, micro mini-skirted young American girl of Lebanese origin, who was working as an ‘exchange’ secretary at Toby’s London Offices. Toby’s excruciating shyness meant that if the girl had been English, the romance would have stood little or no chance of blossoming; but Mardie, being a very forward young American lady, who espoused the very embodiment of ‘women’s lib’, made all the initial moves. Toby was simply swept along in the joyous bliss of at long last having a member of the opposite sex to soothe the flames of desire that raged through his testosterone filled body.

He was enchanted by Mardie’s exotic features, her incredibly sensual body and her wonderfully cute, American accent. For her part, Mardie was fascinated by Toby’s unbelievable shyness, along with his English good manners and his adorable London accent. It seemed to be a match made in heaven, and for a few magical months, Toby enjoyed one of the most exhilarating periods in his entire life. He was an ambitious, presentable young man, with money in his pocket and he was there the heart of London – revelling in one the most exciting eras that the citizens of London  had experienced during its long and illustrious history.

It was the ‘swinging sixties’. Toby took his new American girl friend to all the normal tourist attractions – most of which he himself had never been to before; and in the evenings, they would go to West End Shows, such as ‘Hair’ and ‘Sweet Charity’, or enjoy balmy summer evenings in riverside pubs listening to live sixties music, and then hang out at endless house parties with friends, where they would relax to the sounds of the Beatles and the Stones, and get gloriously high on a mixture of alcohol and pot. It was heady stuff.

Heady stuff indeed, but it wasn’t to last very long. Even before Mardie broke the devastating news to Toby that she had to return to New York to deal with some legal problems connected with her leased New York apartment, the cracks were already forming in a relationship which, once the initial euphoria had died down, was proving more and more problematic.

Although there had been some understandable ‘culture clash’ issues –misunderstandings arising from different interpretations of a common language – it was starting to become apparent that underlying these minor squabbles, there were some serious incompatibility issues between the two of them. But Toby was blind to the ever frequent arguments and became completely distraught at the very idea that Mardie would have to go back to New York. Mardie had become the centre of his universe – the love of his life. He was absolutely besotted and couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.

To Toby’s dismay, and despite all his pleading, a change of heart by Mardie was out of the question, and when the fateful day arrived – oh so soon – Toby had his work cut out to stop his tears from overwhelming him when he bid her farewell at Heathrow airport. The only moments of pure joy that he had experienced in his brief life had somehow been unexpectedly snatched from him. Once she was gone, Toby’s pining knew no bounds. He longed for her, ached for her and hungered for her as though he was mourning the loss of a lover he had spent his entire life with. Mardie continued to occupy his every thought, and as a consequence, his work started to suffer. He found himself having to spend his evenings, as well as his days, in the office just to keep up. He would write to Mardie almost every day, but considered himself lucky if he received a single brief letter in reply, once a month.

After almost six months of unbearable separation, Toby took out a loan from his bank and bought an air ticket to New York to go and visit Mardie for two weeks’ holiday. Apart from a few brief forays by boat to France and Germany, this was Toby’s first real trip abroad, and his first time on an aeroplane – so he ought to have been pretty excited; but these ‘firsts’ paled into insignificance when compared to the anticipation – and then the reality – of meeting his beloved Mardie again, who was thankfully waiting for him in the JFK arrivals lounge.

But almost from the first day, things didn’t go well. Mardie shared her apartment with her friend, with whom she also shared the one and only  bedroom, and Toby was put into a small utility room next to the bathroom where he had to sleep alone – on the floor. Mardie explained to him that they couldn’t sleep together in front of her friend, as she was a strict catholic and wouldn’t approve. Toby failed to appreciate in this era of ‘free love’, that this presented an impediment to his much anticipated nightly ‘nuptials’, but Mardie was adamant, and that was that.

He should have seen the signs – especially when he was introduced to various ‘men friends’ of Mardie, and one in particular who was always making fun of him and seemed to be uncomfortably friendly with Mardie when the three of them went out together. But his deep infatuation had blinded him. Mardie felt indebted to Toby and did her best to return the hospitality that Toby had shown to her in London. She took him to a host of New York’s most famous landmarks and tourist attractions and coincidentally, or maybe it was a sign of the times, they even caught another showing of the stage musical, ‘Hair’ – this time being performed for free in New York’s Central Park.

But all was not well, and they continued their bickering on almost every day of his holiday and by the time Mardie accompanied Toby to the airport for his return flight to London, he should have realised that the affair was at an end. But he didn’t – in fact he thought the complete opposite. He concluded that the problems between them were due to the fact that they had to endure these long periods of separation; so he had come up with the perfect solution, which in one fell swoop would put their relationship back on course. After he had checked in his bags, and before he went through the departure gate, Toby sat down to have a final chat with Mardie.

‘Mardie, I’ve been thinking about us… about our future…’

‘Yes, Toby?’

‘I don’t think we’ve been very happy together these last two weeks, and I think I know what I have to do – to fix things.’

Mardie looked at Toby. She knew exactly what was required to ‘fix things’ and although she had no love for Toby, she felt a deep affection for him and she would miss him, in spite of everything. She knew for sure what Toby was about to say, so with tears forming at the corners of her eyes, she decided to say it for him.

‘You want us to break up?’

‘Break up! Good God no! Of course not! I love you Mardie I never want to break up with you.’

Mardie was crestfallen, and her face paled, but Toby didn’t notice anything.

‘Mardie, listen to me. I think we have been having so many problems because we are apart so much. I have the solution to the problem.’

‘Toby – I’m not coming back to England. You know I can’t. I have to stay in New York.’

‘Yes, yes, I know that, Mardie. I don’t want you to come to me – I’ve decided to come to you.’

‘Come to me? How? Why?’ Mardie spluttered, completely taken aback by this unwelcome piece of news.

‘I’m going quit my job and emigrate to America. Then we can be together again. There, what do you think about that?’

Mardie thought for a long time in silence, not knowing what to say; somehow unable to get through to Toby that it was all over. Suddenly Toby’s flight was being called through the tannoy system.

‘Toby! your flight!’

‘Yes, I know, but what about my plan to emigrate? What do you think?’

With a complete lack of enthusiasm, Mardie simply said: ‘It’s up to you Toby. If you want to come to America to live, then that is your decision. I can’t decide for you, it wouldn’t be right.’

‘Yes, but do you want me to come?’

‘Toby, It’s not what I want. It’s what you want. You must decide. It is up to you. But please Toby, please think very carefully before you make such a big decision. Come on, you’re going to miss your plane.’

Toby hugged Mardie and she gave him a quick peck on his cheek before he had to rush off to catch his plane. In his love-befuddled mind, he thought he had just received tacit approval for him to uproot his life and move across the world to New York.

-

***

Intermission

***

-

And move he did – three months later, almost to the day. He quit his job and was given a riotous farewell party by his bosses and work-mates at Santa Cruz who had grown to like and admire this shy, but somehow engaging, bright young man who had worked very hard, and was now following his heart to the other side of the world. He had saved enough money to pay for his one way fare, plus enough to survive for a month or two until he found a job, so he wasted no time in jumping on a plane and heading back to New York. He had dreamed day and night of the moment when he would once again be back in the arms of his beloved.

He had kept Mardie informed of his plans, and her responses had been undemonstrative and neutral, but he just assumed that it was her normal manner, as her correspondence had always been irregular, terse and very brief. But he couldn’t hide the disappointment he felt deep within him when he walked into the arrivals lounge and realised that Mardie was conspicuous by her absence. Unlike his previous visit, she hadn’t come to meet him and when he called her to home, her roommate told him that he should catch a cab into town as Mardie had to go into work that day.

There was something about that call to Mardie’s roommate that finally started to get through to Toby that things weren’t as rosy as he had thought they were. He reasoned that if Mardie really cared about him, surely she would have found a way to meet him at the airport, so he feared the worst when he arrived at her apartment later that afternoon and was obliged to wait another couple of hours before Mardie eventually returned home from work. She abruptly told him that she was prepared put him up at her place over night, but that tomorrow, she would take him down town New York to the ‘Y’ where he would have to stay until he got settled and found a place of his own. She told him that her flatmate had refused to let him stay there, and that she had to respect her wishes.

From then on, things went downhill very quickly. Toby discovered that it wasn’t that easy to become a landed immigrant in New York, and prospective employers would not even talk to him if he didn’t hold a much coveted green card. He soon realised that he should have carried out a bit more research before ‘burning his bridges’ in the UK. He wryly recalled the assurances that several of the American workers at Santa Cruz in London had given him that there would be no problems for him to stay and live in America. He had foolishly taken them at their word; but after all what did a bunch of redneck oilfield hands know about immigration rules for ‘limeys? On top of this, it became increasingly obvious that Mardie was trying to avoid him; the concerns he had felt on the day he arrived in New York were becoming ever stronger – maybe the relationship really was falling apart.

Things went from bad to worse and Mardie made excuse after excuse not to see him or let him come over to her apartment. She told him that he should concentrate on getting a job and finding somewhere to live and once he was settled they would have time to meet up. After days of non-stop calling, Mardie finally and reluctantly agreed for him to come over and see her. As soon as he arrived, he sat down with her and tried to clear the air.

‘Mardie, what have I done? You know I love you so much, but you have been avoiding me like crazy. What’s wrong? What have I done? Why don’t you want to see me? Don’t you like me anymore?’  

Mardie was silent for a while, trying to compose her thoughts. ‘Oh…Toby, so many things have happened in your life and you are so unsettled. I think you should concentrate on your future life and your career for a while. I think…I think… we need a break from each other, Toby.’

‘A break, what kind of a break? How long?’

‘I don’t know, Toby. Maybe two months or so. Let’s see how it goes; lets see how we feel after a few months…’

‘But Mardie…I know how I feel… I don’t need a break…’

‘Yes, Toby, I know that. But I do.’

He looked at her and knew that she meant it. There was nothing left to say so he quietly took his leave, feeling disconsolate and looking utterly dejected as he slowly made his way back to the ‘Queens’ subway station and thence to the downtown ‘Y’.

He tried to take stock.  Despite everything that had happened, he still wasn’t ready to accept that the relationship was completely beyond redemption. He tried to look on the bright side. Maybe Mardie was right, maybe he should concentrate on finding a job. Maybe Mardie found it too much of a strain to see her boy-friend going through all these ‘settling in’ problems. He had known for a long time that she was sensitive soul who sometimes suffered from migraines and skin outbreaks on her face – both supposedly brought on by stress. Yes, he decided; the best way to win Mardie back was to work on improving his personal situation – that was where he needed to devote all his energies.

-

*

The Greyhound bus was turning into the New York terminus after its eight hour journey from Montreal. This was Toby’s first trip back to the ‘Big Apple’ since he had made the momentous decision to try his luck in Canada after all the ‘blanks’ he had drawn in New York, more than a month ago. At first, it seemed that the whole world was against him. He had failed miserably to make any headway on the immigration front in America, yet when he decided to try his luck across the border in Canada, for a while, his situation turned out to be even worse. Not only did he initially have a similar problem with his work visa, but before he even reached his chosen destination of Montreal, he was arrested at the border on suspicion of being an American ‘draft dodger’. It was at the height of the Vietnam War and many young Americans were attempting to avoid the draft by crossing the border and getting support from Canadian sponsored anti-war movements.

Toby’s luck finally changed and with the assistance of a dedicated French Canadian publicly funded lawyer, his skirmishes with Canadian immigration were finally resolved in his favour. He secured a well-paying job as an accountant to a local firm of auditors and had signed a lease on a studio flat in downtown Montreal; a city he had quickly learned to love. The only ‘fly in the ointment’ in his improving personal situation had been his continual failure to make contact with Mardie. When he had called her in New York and told her of his decision to move to Canada, she had been very supportive and agreed that they could occasionally meet for long weekends, once he was settled. But since his arrival in Canada, he had failed to get hold of her – every time he called, she was either out or otherwise ‘unavailable’.

In desperation he had called one of his new found New York friends, who he had met on the Greyhound bus, and who had helped him when he had been arrested. Toby asked him if he could pop over to Mardie’s apartment in Queens and make sure that she was all right. He was worried that something may have happened to her. The friend had subsequently reported back that he had met with Mardie and her flat mate and that all was well and there was nothing to worry about.

But Mardie wouldn’t talk to him and he had to find out why – it was driving him crazy. As soon as he alighted from the bus he went to a telephone cubicle and called Mardie’s apartment. As ever, her room-mate answered, and instead of asking for Mardie, he told her room-mate that he was coming over to see her. There was a long silence before the girl agreed, saying, ‘OK Toby, I will be waiting for you.’

‘Where’s Mardie? Toby asked, as soon as he had been shown into the apartment.

‘She’s not here.’

‘Yes, I can see that…where is she? It’s Saturday so she can’t be at work.’

‘She’s gone away Toby.’

‘Gone away? Where?

‘She’s gone to Peurto Rico for a holiday.’

‘Oh! When’s she coming back?’

‘I don’t know. She’s not well Toby, she gone away to relax and get better. She’s been under a lot of stress at work… and with all the problems… with…’

‘Me?’ Toby suggested.

‘Yes, Toby, with you.’

‘But why? Why problems with me? What have I done to make her ill?’

‘Toby, Mardie is a very sensitive person. I know she seems so strong and in many ways she is, but underneath all that bonhomie, she is very vulnerable. She doesn’t want to hurt people, so sometimes she doesn’t say what she should say – to avoid conflict. And in the end, by not saying…what she should be saying, she hurts people even more. Do you…do you understand what I am saying?’

‘I…I think I do…’

‘Mardie likes you. She likes you a lot, and she thinks you are a very nice, very clever and very kind man.’

Toby remained silent, staring at the floor.

‘But she doesn’t love you, Toby. She feels so bad that you came to New York for her; the first time on holiday and then to live – and now you’ve had to move to Canada – and you had all those problems with the border police and Canadian immigration. Your friend told us all about them.

‘Mardie feels terrible. She thinks it’s all her fault. She blames herself for not telling you months ago that she didn’t love you and not to come back to America. Toby, she almost had a breakdown.’

‘Oh dear… I’m so sorry… I didn’t know.’

‘No Toby, you didn’t know. You should have realised what was going on; but you are young… and naïve… and you didn’t know.’

‘So what should I do now?’

‘Do?’

‘Yes, should I – can I – wait until she gets better and comes back home to New York… and if she is better, could I call her?…Could I?’

‘Toby – listen to me very carefully. Mardie doesn’t love you. She doesn’t want to see you again…’

‘Never?’

‘No, never. Go back to Montreal and get on with your life. You will soon get over it and find a new girlfriend. You are young, clever and ambitious. And you don’t look too bad,’ she added as afterthought with a brief smile.

‘Don’t worry, Toby, in a few months you will forget that Mardie ever existed.’

-

***

‘But I didn’t get over her, did I?’ he ruminated, as he got up from his bench at the far end of the tent and walked over to where KC had been sleeping for the past four hours. He still thought about Mardie, and it still seemed to him that it was only yesterday that they had been lovers together in London. He had been totally unable to get her out of his mind, despite all that had happened since his meeting with Mardie’s room-mate on that fateful day in New York. He had even written several letters to her, both to her New York apartment and to her parent’s address in New Mexico. But all his letters had been ‘returned to sender’. Maybe it was time he got the message.

After his meeting with Mardie’s roommate he had caught the next bus back to Montreal, feeling worse than he had ever felt in his entire life – far worse than the days when he was under the controlling influence of his despotic father. He tried to busy himself, preparing for his new, single life in Montreal and one evening, he wrote a letter to one of his friends back at Santa Cruz in London, updating him on all the unfortunate events that had befallen him since he had left England. Two days before he was to start his new job, he received a phone call from England. It was his ex-boss at Santa Cruz.

‘Toby! Is that you?’

‘Hi Chuck, how are you?’

‘Hey, Toby, your friend Bob here has been telling us about all your trials and tribulations. I wanna tell you that we’re all real sorry to hear that things haven’t been going too well. I’m sorry that it hasn’t all worked out like you hoped.’

‘Thanks Chuck, that’s good of you to call and tell me. But I’ve got a job now so I guess I’ll be OK’

‘Listen Toby, the reason I called was to ask if you might be interested in coming back to work for us? Now you’ve broken up with that liddle girl, we wondered if there was anything keeping you there – in Canuck-land?’

Toby’s heart had jumped. ‘Are you offering me my job back in London?’

‘Hell no, we’ve already replaced you there. No, there’s a vacancy out in Nigeria; Our Lagos based Chief accountant desperately needs a new assistant. You interested?’

‘Nigeria?’ Toby repeated excitedly. ‘Nigeria… yes, I’d love to…Chuck.’

‘That’s great, Toby. Now listen. Do you have enough money to buy yourself a ticket back to London?

‘Well, yes… I think so…’

‘Good, then jump on a plane, and get your ass back here, pronto. Keep the receipt and we’ll reimburse you after you arrive.

‘When do you need me there?’

‘ASAP! Call me as soon as you have your ETA in London.’

Toby had recently signed a year’s lease on his Montreal apartment so he realised that he would have to do a moonlight flit with all his worldly possessions, if he was to successfully extricate himself from his newly made year-long commitment. The apartment janitor was rarely absent from his little room next to the lifts, so Toby crept out in the middle of the night, terrified that at any moment someone would see him and prevent him from leaving.

*

-

‘All water under the bridge now’, Toby thought as he bent down to wake up KC. All that rush to get back to London, only to be told that there was a last minute hitch on his posting to Lagos and in the meantime he would be required to undertake a brief assignment in Abu Dhabi. Yes, brief though it may be, it was an assignment that nobody else wanted any part of. Santa Cruz’s staff at Base camp already had three expatriate accountants on the payroll but not one of them was apparently ‘available’ to undertake this brief assignment’.

‘Hogwash!’ Toby concluded, as he finally succeeded in waking up KC and duly handed over the completed inventory forms,

‘Come on KC, we better get the hell back to base camp in that crappy land rover before the night closes in on us.’

***

 

Mobi Babble

Noo is back from Nong Khai with her son, so we are now a happy family of three. She has found a local school, not far from where we live, that has agreed to accept him and he will start there on Monday.

This is a new development in my relationship and my life, and I now have to get used to the idea that once again I am a family man with a kid and I have to adapt to having this new responsibility. I think the change will be good for me; it is time for me to reach out a little, beyond my own selfish needs. After all, it is now over 16 months since I last had a drink and I believe that I am now ready to get a bit more involved in the world beyond the daily needs of Mobi.

Noo’s son, Dom, is a quiet, well behaved kid who clearly loves his mother dearly and for the most part he does what he is told, though like most kids these days, he has a propensity to be a bit lazy.

Eleven is a crucial age for  boys here, and the next few years will determine what sort of a person he is going to be, and whether he has any kind of intellectual bent that might eventually lead him into some form of higher education. But more than any natural scholastic aptitude, will be the question of whether he is prepared to apply himself with such skills as he possesses, as so many Thai kids seem to ‘opt out’ of education at a young age.

This is partly due to the poor standards of the teachers and the schools themselves, but is also due to the apathy of most parents in providing necessary and timely encouragement. Most parents ignore what is going on with their kids’ education until it is too late to correct years of laziness and non-application. Additionally, corruption within the school system means that many kids can appear to progress and pass their examinations with flying colours, whereas the truth of the matter is that the teachers have either been bribed or in some other way persuaded to falsify student ‘s academic achievements.  Sad but true.

Noo was away for two nights and it was ‘Sod’s Law’ that on my second night alone, just coming up to midnight, that I had a bit of a crisis. Not me personally, I hasten to add, but my beloved golden retriever, Cookie. She was lying down in the porch, just outside the open patio doors, when all of sudden she was spraying blood everywhere – all over the floor, herself and everything within spraying range. It was coming from her nose and was pouring out at alarming rate! I rushed over and did what I could to stem the flow, while at the same time tried to clean up the mess;  but as fast as I mopped up the blood, fresh blood replaced it.

It was scary stuff – I have never seen anything like it before in my life. My two little Shih Tzu’s were clearly upset with what was going on with their big brother, and I confess I wasn’t sure what to do for the best, short of rushing her to a vet. Thankfully, after five minutes or so, the flow of blood was eventually stemmed and I was able to clean up Cookie, and the floor, and try to comfort her and determine where the problem arose. But I could discern nothing.

I could only imagine that she was suffering from some form of internal bleeding, and I was very worried. She settled down in the middle of the sitting room and went to sleep against the wall, so I hoped that the worst was over and that it would be OK to wait until morning. Although I knew of a 24 hour animal hospital, I had a sneaking suspicion that no  qualified vet would be in attendance at this time of the morning and there seemed little point taking Cookie there if there was no one to examine her properly.

I went back to watching TV, intermittently snoozing, when my two little dogs started bothering the hell out of me. They wouldn’t leave me alone, which was most unusual for the time of night; one of them kept jumping up on the sofa (something he rarely does), then jumping on my lap and then back onto the floor, and the second one kept begging me to pick him up, and scrambling like crazy to get up onto the sofa, (which he was physically incapable of doing). I was half asleep, and it took a little while before the penny dropped and I finally realised that they were trying to alert me to something….Doh…

Shih tzus are well known for being eternal children who never seem to grow up, and to be hones,t I have never regarded them as possessing much intelligence. Loveable, for sure; but smart? not really. Not, that is, until Wednesday night.

They were indeed trying to tell me something – and as I turned around to have a look at Cookie, I realised what was going on.  Cookie was in a highly distressed state, as once again she was covered in blood and spraying fresh blood all over the floor and wall.

I rushed over with my anxious dogs and repeated my previous administrations. The bleeding slowly stopped, and half an hour later, after I had managed to clean up everything as much as possible, I decided that we all had better adjourn to bed.  Noo and Dom were scheduled to arrive by bus at the crack of dawn and it was now 2 a.m. I hoped that Cookie would  be OK until morning and I could take her to the vet after I had collected NOO and Dom.

Unfortunately, just as I was nodding off, the bleeding started all over and I decided that I had better take the poor thing to the vet after all. I got dressed and made preparations for my journey, but in the meantime the bleeding had stopped yet again. So I lay down on the bed, and decided to hang on for a few minutes to make sure that the bleeding wasn’t about to start again, before I summoned up the effort to try and lift 38 kilo Cookie into my pickup truck.

I fell asleep, fully clothed, as did my three dogs – also fully clothed! The next thing I remember was the sound of my phone ringing. It was 6.30 and Noo had called to tell me that they were about 20 kilometres from Pattaya. I jumped up and my heart missed a beat. Cookie was lying on her back, next to the bed with her 4 paws in the air, looking for all he world as though she had croaked. I peered closer, fearful of what I might find, when to my utter relief, I saw her stomach moving in and out – she was still breathing, bless her. And no signs of any further bleeding.

I rushed out to pick up my family and later that morning, Noo helped me lift up the still sick, and the sporadically bleeding Cookie into the truck and off we went to have her examined. To our immense relief, it turned out to be nothing too terrible.

The vet was very diligent and had checked her out thoroughly before pronouncing the cause and cure. The bleeding had actually originated from one of her nostrils, which contained an abscess that had burst. Two days on, she seems to be fine, and very, very happy – as she has never had so much fuss and attention in her entire life. We were so scared of losing her, that she has simply been smothered with affection since we returned home from the vet.

A Lustful Gent

Just a quick note to advise you that  I seem to have been successful in allocating more time to my novel. This week, I have already written one new chapter and a second is in a  quite an advanced stage. The new chapter will be published next week, (mid-week), together with a few well-chosen pics, just to ensure that my faithful readers do not suffer too much from Mobi-blog withdrawal symptoms…

The Wife from Hell

Those of you who have read ‘Mobi’s Story’, will know very well about the trials and tribulations I have endured over the years from my various wives, and in particular, will have read all about the endless traumas and  problems that I experienced with my  now estranged wife, Dang. Yet in spite of everything that has happened between us, I still do not hate her and do not believe that deep down she is evil or has ever wished me any harm.

I also believe that it never entered her mind to ever leave me and that she truly planned to stay with me until I got old and take care of me in my dotage. To this day we enjoy a cordial relationship and I believe she still sincerely cares about what happens to me.

After I left her, I went completely off the rails, and during the worst of my drunken exploits and disasters, it was always Dang who came to my rescue, took care of me and bailed me out as necessary. She didn’t have to do that, and she never asked for anything in return.

The problem with Dang is that she is – and always was – very weak-willed when it comes to having a good time. She was simply never cut out to be to the dutiful, ‘stay at home’, home-maker; and whenever temptation came along – as it did very frequently – she would be off and away on the town, regardless of the consequences or the hurt she may be inflicting on her loved ones. She just couldn’t help herself. On top of this she is a pretty bad ‘binge alcoholic’. Once she starts drinking, she is a changed person and woe betide anyone who crosses her or in any way tries to go against her when she is drunk, be it her husband, her family or even her closest friends.

So contrast Dang to the wife of Simon, a friend of mine.

I have known Simon ever since I have been living in Pattaya – he is one of my old ‘drinking gang’, an oilfield worker, who spends his days off in Pattaya and owns a house out by the lake, a few miles from my own home. His is middle-aged, divorced from his first, English wife, and has had a Thai lady by the name of Porn living with him, ever since I have known him.

To say that Simon has been generous to this lady would be an understatement. He has bought her a new house in Pattaya costing several million Baht for her to rent out, a 2.5 million baht car, countless acres of land for her, in both Pattaya and up country, such an enormous amount of gold that you would think she would collapse from the weight of it all. All this on top of an extremely generous monthly allowance which almost certainly exceeds 50,000 Baht a month, every imaginable ‘living expenses’ and school fees for her various kids, and quite frankly, God alone know what else. I only know of the stuff that he has mentioned in passing.

Porn has discovered a wonderful way to extract ever more money from her gullible farang husband. She soon realised that whenever she threw a tizzy and gave him a particularly hard time, whenever they made up, he would put his hand in his pocket and give her an extremely generous ‘make up’ present. So through the years, poor Simon has had anything but a peaceful life. Even when he is out working on the rigs, Porn phones him or Skypes him and starts a row over something trivial. But these are just preliminary skirmishes; as soon as he arrives back in Pattaya, the tantrums start earnest.

Like Dang, Porn likes her booze, and as soon as she starts drinking, things turn nasty very quickly. She has already had about 4 serious accidents in her car, costing a small fortune in car repair bills, and she thinks nothing of trashing the house or anything else that happens to be near her when she gets angry with the hapless Simon.

Year after year, she has been behaving like this, and year after year, Simon has put up with it and on each and every occasion, he has finally made the peace by ‘putting his hand into his deep pocket’.

I know all this to be more or less true as I have heard the gory details both directly from the ‘horse’s mouth’ and through  my drinking friends. Every time a really major row erupts, Simon’s Modus Operandi is to leave the family home and go and get drunk with his mates, giving them chapter and verse of the latest bust up, and stay holed up for several days in some cheap hotel. Eventually, the wily Porn will call him, sweet talk him and he will go running back home, shamefully admitting it was all his fault, and as already stated, smoothing the furrowed wifey brow with the sounds of newly minted wads of crisp bank notes.

If you had met Simon and Porn you would have absolutely no doubt that his version of events is true. Simon likes his booze, but not only does he carry it extremely well, he is one of those men who simply gets friendlier and more laid back and jovial when really drunk. In fact, I don’t think I have ever known Simon to raise his voice or get angry and he always maintains control. He is simply an easy going, extraordinarily generous, and – I’m sorry to say – a very gullible person.

By contrast, his wife is a real piece of work. She is not young, she is not – by any stretch of the imagination – attractive, and she is one of the most foul-mouthed Thai women I have ever met in my life. She is so rude and lacking in normal Thai graces, that even the girls in the bars hate her with a purple passion because she speaks so badly to them. Yet where did Simon first meet Porn? Why! In a bar of course – and not a very nice bar at that; one of those distinctly downmarket beer bars in Naklua.

But there is more to Porn than just a foul mouth and a propensity to extract as much money as she can from a man who she takes pleasure in fighting and making his life a misery. Oh no, when Simon is away, she has a string of young Thai men who she takes into her house and pays them to sleep with her – money  provided by the generous Simon.

How do we know this? Because she actually boasts about it to the wives of other farangs who drink around the lake – including my own estranged wife Dang! Not only does she boast about all her Thai boyfriends, but she also speaks about Simon in the most derogatory terms imaginable, and calls him a pig and a stinking, stupid ‘buffalo’. She delights in telling her so-called friends of her latest exploits with him and how she was successful in gouging yet another wad of money out of him.

You may wonder why I or some of his other friends haven’t tried to wise up Simon as to what is going on. The simple answer is that we have – many times. Being the affable Simon, he has always listened to us and never tried to contradict what we have told him, but nothing has ever changed. The next time we would see him, he would tell us that he had confronted Porn with our accusations and that she denied it all and he believed her. After a while you give up trying to tell him because you know that he is so besotted that he will never truly listen.

Yet there were times  – in the wee small hours – after Porn had pulled a particularly nasty stunt – that he would call me, almost in tears, and give me chapter and verse on what she had just done to him. He would ask me what was wrong with her and what he should do? I would tell him as best as I was able, without hurting him too much; of what I really thought of Porn and how she was taking him for a ride. I would tell him what I would do if I was him and relate my own experiences to reinforce my points. He would thank me kindly, assure me that this time he would definitely leave her and follow my advice. But of course within 24 hours he would be back in the marital fold.

The last time I spoke at length to Simon about his problems was about 2 years ago when he informed me and another good friend that he was planning to legally marry Porn . My friend and I sat down and gave him a very long talking to, listing all the compelling reasons why it might not be a good idea to marry her.

Live with her – by all means - if that’s what you really want , but please, please, please don’t marry her.

‘You’re both right,’ he had said, ‘I will cancel the wedding.’

A month later he was married, and neither my friend nor I was invited to the wedding. I suspect he had told Porn that we had advised him not to get married – hence the absence of an invitation. Not that either of us would have gone – we were pretty disgusted with the whole sorry business and wanted no further part in it.

No part, that is, until 2 days ago. A friend had told me that once again Simon had left home and was ‘sleeping rough’ and that this time he was telling everyone he had left Porn for good. I ran into him at a Lakeside bar, and he told me all about the latest row, which, as usual, was all about money. Porn wanted Simon to invest in  no less than 13 condominiums at a condo development in Chon Buri town.

He hadn’t refused, but had told her that he didn’t have sufficient free capital right now to make such an investment, so she would have to wait a few months. She told him to sell some of his other investments -like a couple apartments that he owned in the UK – to free up the money for her.

When he declined, Porn went ballistic, and promptly smashed up a brand new, 150,000 Baht, state of the art, Sony television. Simon had walked out with the clothes on his back, and had to climb the wall because Porn had locked the gate in attempt to prevent him from leaving. I mean – you couldn’t make this stuff up, and trust me, Simon definitely couldn’t.

He told me his plans, the main feature of them was was to sell the company that owned his house to a lawyer who would then, as the new owner of the house, kick Porn out, before selling the company back to Simon. The lawyer’s fee for this would be 100,000 Baht. I advised him that there were two major problems with his plans – the first was how could he trust the lawyer? I don’t believe that there is a lawyer in Pattaya who you can truly trust and who won’t seek ways to screw you, given half a chance. The second issue concerned Simon’s plans to go back home the next day in a taxi to collect some clothes and some important papers.’

‘What about your wife?

‘Oh, she told me she would go out.’

‘So she knows you are going there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really? Did you tell her what time you are going?’

‘Yes, 2 pm.’

‘So this wife, who you are now estranged from, and by common consensus is not exactly very nice lady – or, not to put too fine a point on it, a volatile, violent , money-grabbing ‘nutter’ – is going to conveniently leave the house empty so that you can go there all alone and pick up a few personal things?’

‘Good point. Well in that case I’ll go in a taxi, and see if her car is there. If it is, then I won’t go in.’

‘Simon, if Porn is planning anything at all, she would hardly be so stupid as to leave her car there, now would she?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘I suggest you take at least 3 friends with you. If she is planning any kind of reception for you, she will be much less inclined to start anything if you go mob handed.’

‘Good point’

And what about the title deeds for the house? Where are they?

‘Good question. They used to be in a drawer in my desk, but the other day I noticed that they were not there anymore.’

‘So where have they gone?’

‘I don’t know – Porn must have moved them.’

‘Simon, you are going to have a major problem transferring or selling your house if you don’t have the original title deeds. Land title deeds in Thailand are almost impossible to replace.’

‘Oh, are they?’

To be continued…….

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I don’t give a Hoot!…

Here’s the thing.

For the umpteenth time my novel has ground to a halt, and I am finding it annoying and frustrating that this should be the case, yet again. There is any number of reasons why this has happened – from my hard disk crashing to my medical problems, to my daughter’s visit, and goodness knows what else.

Yet throughout all these recent distractions, with the odd exception, I have succeeded in keeping my blog going on a regular basis. Why? Because publishing a new blog post takes precedence over all my other activities. The reason for this is because if I stop writing my blog on a regular basis, I will undoubtedly lose a lot of my readers – which I have devoted so much effort to building up in the first place.

I know that if it was me following someone’s blog, and I got into the habit of reading a new post  twice a week, I would be pissed off if the publication of new posts became irregular and unreliable.

As a consequence, whenever I have had some free time, I devote it to my blog rather than my novel.

I enjoy writing both of them; the novel takes more out of me, but the feeling of having achieved something is all the greater. So I confess that of the two creative processes, my novel writing has the edge over blog writing and I do feel truly frustrated that I can’t seem to devote more time to it and cease all this ‘stop-start’ nonsense, which in itself tends to slow down the whole process; as every time I leave it for a week or more, it takes me several days to get back into the swing of things.

Digressing slightly, I was interested the read a tweet posted by Steven Leather, (the well known author of the legendary ‘Private Dancer’ and countless thriller novels ), in which he stated that he hoped that he would achieve 1,000 words of writing during that particular day of his tweet.

I found this comment interesting and not a little personally frustrating. It made me realise yet again how silly it is that my novel is well into its second year with no prospects of completing it in sight, yet Steven, with a modest target of 1,00 words a day,  rolls out the novels almost at the drop of a hat. He is clearly much more organised and single-minded than Mobi.

The silly thing is that I rarely, if ever, suffer from ‘writer’s block’, and although the first couple of sentences might take a while to get down, within a short while, I am well into the creative process and can easily write 3,000 words or more at a single sitting when I set my mind to it, although the original text will be subject to much editing over the following days.

The plain fact is, if I could just allocate more days a week to the novel, it wouldn’t take very long to get it finished, but the way I am right now, much of my ‘creative’ time is devoted to my blog. OK, this is only 2 days per week, but by the time I have done all the other things in my life on top of all my recent distractions, it seems to have been increasingly difficult to find even the odd day to devote to my novel.

There is also the ‘creative fatigue’ factor. I am aware that my blogs are by no stretch of the imagination the ‘greatest thing since sliced bread’, but I do put my heart and soul into them for a few hours, (the average blog can run from 2,000 – 4,000 words), and I sometimes find it wearisome to write a blog one day and then switch back to my novel the next, if and when I am free to do so.

So what does all this mean? What is all this leading up to?

Well folks, I have decided that for the next few months – or at least until I have completed my novel – I am going to publish a new blog post just once a week, on a weekend, usually a Sunday.  If I am successful in getting back into my novel, the completed chapters will be published, as before, during the week and will effectively make up my second weekly blog.

I will try to increase the size of my ‘weekend blog’, but I must also bear in mind the fact that I have received a number of comments though the years to the  effect that my blogs were too long, which is the reason they are now shorter than they used to be.

So that’s the thing.

*

On the medical front, I think I can now breathe a sigh of relief that all the preliminary ‘skirmishes’ are now at an end, and I can sit back and await the dreaded call to go under the knife.

Last Friday, I had to go back to Rajavithi hospital for a check-up, following my in-patient angiogram. All was well, except a dent to my good humour after having to hang around from 6.30 in the morning to midday when I finally saw the Doc. He took about five minutes to establish that my wound was healing well and that my blood tests showed no abnormal renal function – which apparently is a possible side effect of my procedure.

I still have no idea of the exact cost for the valve replacement operation, or whether they will use a metal or animal valve, or indeed when it is all going to happen. Patience is a virtue so they say, so I will try and relax, sit back and await the surgeon’s pleasure.

But I confess that it is a bit of a worry – I know it is going to be a very unpleasant and painful procedure which will require several weeks of recuperation, and there is always the risk that I may not make it.

It is a black cloud over my life. I do find it difficult to keep the operation out of my mind, so I am not a particularly happy bunny right now, and sometimes I am moodier than I have a right to be.

Life should be almost perfect in my little tropical paradise, with my lovely, caring Noo, my three adorable dogs and sufficient money to live in reasonable comfort for the rest of my life; but the harsh prospect of my pending operation has simply darkened my otherwise sunny existence and I can’t wait for it to be all done and dusted so that I can get on with my life.

But in spite of these worries, it has never occurred to me to drown my sorrows in alcohol, and although I often feel low and moody, I am a long way from that terrible depression that all but consumed me, barely a year or two back.

The evil that lurks…….

…within all of us?

Maybe, but it certainly lurks within many of the worst of our beloved Thai politicians and civil servants.

Here’s an interesting question. Can you think of a single person who would have a bad word to say about elephants?

Yes – Elephants – those magnificent, ancient, highly intelligent, massive creatures who put us humans to shame when it comes to loving and protecting their kith and kin.

Anyone who has watched any decent documentary on the subject of these wonderful animals – who are throwback from a bygone age – cannot fail to be inspired and be full of admiration for these truly glorious animals who, in their natural habitat, do not have an aggressive bone in their body, save when they are protecting their loved ones.

Thailand is a country that is blessed with so many things – from its climate, it’s beaches, its scenery, its art, its food, its temples, its beautiful women, its sensitive, gentle, Buddhist-inspired culture and so much more. On top of all this, Thailand is one of the few countries remaining in the world where these ancient pachyderms are still able to exist and live in their wild state, and where they are loved and revered as almost ‘spiritual’ beings.

Wonderful ain’t it?

One might think so, but sad to say, it is far from the truth of the matter. Like so many good things that have been spoiled in Thailand, the plight of elephants has long fallen victim to the avarice and greed of people with power.

Those of you who have either visited Thailand or reside here have almost certainly been to some kind of ‘elephant show’ at least once in your life. I have seen several such shows through the years. When you go to an elephant ‘show’ or maybe on a so-called ‘elephant trek’, you will be sold the usual line about how much the Thais love their elephants, how they are well treated, and that the devoted mahouts stay with a single elephant all their life.

You will be told that a mahout will become responsible for the care and training of an elephant when still a baby, and that there is a strong bond of love and affection between man and his elephant.

We are assured that the elephants are never subjected to cruelty when they are trained to allow people to ride on their backs or to perform tasks like logging in the jungle or to perform tricks in elephant shows.

The world believed all this for years, but we now know different. All elephants are trained deep inside the Thai jungle, far away from the prying eyes of western animal lovers, but in recent years, thanks to the determination of a few determined elephant lovers, the outside world has been made aware of the true methods used to train ALL elephants.

In short, when they are still very young, they are tied up and beaten into submission. It is the way that every elephant has been trained since time immemorial. Nothing that these elephants do for us is done voluntarily, through a process of love and gentle suggestion. They are wild animals and all they wish to do is live in the wild with their families. Everything they do for us humans is done through fear and terror; with memories seared into their brains of what may happen to them if they refuse to obey.

In recent years, western countries – such as the UK – have come to understand this unpleasant truth and it is for this reason that all wild animal acts are banned from circuses in England. It is now an established fact that no wild animal can be trained to perform tricks without some form of cruelty being used in the training process, particularly with animals such as elephants.

Ironically, a British family run circus, which had enjoyed a good reputation for generations, was caught inflicting cruelty on some of their elephants a few years back by people using under-cover cameras. So it isn’t only in Thailand that such cruelty exists.

Some years ago, during my drinking hey days,  I was staggering along a Bangkok side street at about 4 in the morning when I saw a sight in a tiny, narrow ‘sub- soi’ which has stayed with me ever since. I might have been a bit pissed, but not so much that I didn’t see and appreciate exactly what was going on.

About twenty yards into this deserted and very quiet soi, I saw a baby elephant and his mahout. I had seen them before as they used to patronise the Soi Cowboy, red-light area in search of hand-outs from the tourists.

But now, in the apparent safety of this sub soi, well away from prying eyes, I saw the baby elephant on its knees and the mahout beating it unmercifully, shouting and screaming at the animal in an attempt to train it to kneel on demand. It was something I will never forget till my dying day. I suppose I might have been imagining the next bit of my story, but I swear to God I could see tears in the eyes of that poor, demented creature.

In recent years, so much concern has arisen concerning the wellbeing of these poor creatures that dedicated elephant lovers – both Thais and foreigners – have set up wild life sanctuaries where hundreds of abused Thai elephants have been provided with safe havens.

But sad to relate, repeated, unwarranted government raids on these respected wildlife sanctuaries have now done serious damage Thailand’s image at home and abroad.

It all started when the people running these sanctuaries called into question the judgment of the National Parks chief, after revelations that killings of mature elephants in Kaeng Krachan recently were orchestrated to supply babies to elephant tourist parks – with the involvement of top officials in that park, which is located several hours south of Bangkok.

Numerous elephant camps and wildlife centres have been raided since reports emerged in January that a criminal syndicate was selling baby elephants from Burma and national parks to tourist facilities for large sums – up to 900,000 baht each.

There have been claims that up to half of the young elephants in Thailand have been smuggled in alongside ‘fake’ surrogate mothers that already have identity papers. A loophole in the law, which does not require babies to be registered till they are eight years old, has aided this trade.

There have also been accusations that the use of identity chips and papers is being manipulated and subject to abuse. Many think DNA tests, which are still fairly costly, and the possible introduction of ‘passports’ for all elephants, are the only way to eliminate this trade and guarantee the real identity of the 3,000 or so elephants in Thailand.

The government’s response to these allegations was to hit back at the two key accusers by raiding centres that they operate. Why? Because some elephant parks are run by businesspeople with money and influence. They have a lot to lose. And tourism chiefs may also fear a backlash if tourists decide they don’t want to visit elephant parks with ‘captive’ babies made docile and compliant by a violent ‘breaking of their spirit’ by mahouts.

The man who raised the alarm initially was Dutchman Edwin Wiek, who was subsequently punished by a series of raids on the wildlife rescue centre he runs in Phetchaburi. Dozens of National Parks officials and armed border police descended on his facility for more than a week, claiming Wiek had no papers for more than 100 of the 450 animals at his centre, located on temple land and backed by a local abbot.

Videos of animals being taken from Wat Khao Luk Chang – with some being seriously harmed in the process – incensed his supporters. Wiek lodged court appeals to fight claims that he kept undocumented animals at the site, and has temporarily stepped down as head of the Wildlife Friends Foundation in Thailand (WFFT).

Wiek is no stranger to Thailand. He has lived here for 20 years and speaks fluent Thai. He runs one of the best wildlife facilities in Southeast Asia but has created enemies because he has been prepared to speak out. By repeating his allegations at a recent speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club – he became a farang marked for revenge.

Other foreigners working in the wildlife sector believe Wiek was rash to speak publicly, saying a backlash against a ‘noisy outsider’ was inevitable. He has paid a heavy price – receiving death threats and seeing his Thai wife charged at the local police station after the initial raid last month. TV Channel 3 was also co-opted to air a report detailing the charges against him on the night he spoke at the FCCT.

Wiek has fought intimidation before, in a long-running battle with a large tourist facility in Bangkok, found with dozens of smuggled orang-utans, over 50 of which were eventually flown back to Borneo.

He was publicly backed by another shining light in the local wildlife community – Sangduan “Lek” Chailert, who runs the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) in Mae Taeng, 50km north of Chiang Mai. Lek is a short but similarly feisty individual, the winner of a host of international awards for her care for elephants.

Her sanctuary, which has 35 elephants, most of them old and infirm, was also raided. But on March 1, local reporters and TV crews were on hand to challenge parks officials. Why were they harassing one of the country’s most admired wildlife activists, who operates an acclaimed facility which is just a sanctuary – a retirement home where elephants roam free?

All facilities with elephants are being checked and ‘Lek’ had no papers for eight of her beasts, officials said. Privately they were told: “She stepped on someone’s toes.” Unlike Wiek, Lek opposes the use of elephants at tourist facilities. The Mae Taeng Valley has several hundred elephants and most of her neighbours operate tourist parks. Very few would  care for these glorious animals to the level that she does.

DNP officials were filmed in discussions with her lawyer, who requested 30 days to get the documents. They got 15 days. Lek said she feared that any old elephants confiscated might die at government facilities. She vowed to strongly oppose any confiscation.

Meanwhile, the owners of camps along the Burma border and others in Surin – some of them thought to be deeply involved in elephant smuggling – have talked about blocking highways and a petition to the Administrative Court to try to get the National Parks chief, removed.

This comes on top of a protest outside the Thai embassy in London and a petition signed by tens of thousands supporting Wiek and Lek Chailert. The government is now under attack from both the ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’. It has a PR nightmare on its hands – more than 100,000 people have viewed videos of recent raids.

And little appears to have been done to rid the problem that started this whole mess: a park chief accused of murder and possible involvement in the slaying of elephants under his oversight. Surely, he must be the first to go.

And maybe it’s time for the government and elephant camp operators to put their houses in order: Pay for a DNA identity system and eliminate the doubts surrounding their operations.

But I wouldn’t hold out too much hope on all this. There is far too much money at stake and the evil which lurks in government circles will undoubtedly ensure that the few dedicated and brave protestors are eventually silenced, one way or another.

As for the poor, wretched victims – those survivors of a long-forgotten age? Unfortunately they have no voice… and no choice…

Shame on you Thailand!

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I don’t give a Hoot!…

Mobi-Babble

I’m back home from my medical adventures in Bangkok, and today I devote my entire blog to a not too serious, hopefully slighty humorous account of my sojourn at Rajavithi.

Enjoy…

Mobi’s Medical Mayhem

It seems that every time I go to Rajavithi hospital in Bangkok, the car park is always fuller than on the previous occasion; this despite the fact that each time we go, we arrive earlier and earlier.

Last Wednesday we left home on the dot of five a.m., and as the traffic was relatively light, we arrived the hospital multi storey car park at around 6.30 –which was at least 45 minutes earlier than on our previous visit. Yet the sections of the car park reserved for us erks and patients was already chock-a- block. The car park has ten floors, but around 7 of these floors are cordoned off for the use of ‘VIP’s’ – presumably doctors and…..???

Of course, you see very few vehicles parked in the cordoned off areas, but each floor has at least two guards who quickly wave you on if you so much as slow down to glance at the empty parking bays. They ‘shoo’ you right up to floors 9 and 10, where hopefully you may find a parking spot, but on the last two occasions, these floors have all been full, despite the early hour.

So I have then been directed back down to the 3^rd floor whereupon on I am told to return to the higher floors, whereupon I am directed downwards yet again, and so on and so forth until eventually, all and sundry are dizzy and sick from all their endless  journey spirals.

When the guards are satisfied that if you weren’t ill when you arrived at the car park, you certainly are now, they will guide your vehicle to some previously marked ‘off limits’ area where you are told to double park in the main driving lane, but leave enough space to allow the privileged few to still drive into their reserved parking bays, when they arrive – if ever!

Noo asked the guard if we could leave the car there for 3 days, but he informed us that this was not allowed. However, for small consideration, he would be happy to find us a parking space in the main hospital grounds later that day, so she left him her phone number and off we went for the start of my three day adventure.

Again, I don’t know if it is my imagination, but there seemed to be at least twice as many people crowding around the hospital than  on my last visit. There were literally thousands of them: walking limping and sitting in every nook and cranny of the massive hospital.

There wasn’t a vacant seat anywhere, and there were so many people thronging the walkways that our progress through the hospital was painfully slow, especially when you suddenly had to jump out of the way to avoid being run down by a wayward bed containing skeletal patients who looked more like corpses than patients, being pushed along by family members who clearly had not passed their gurney driving tests. 

I was sporting my hospital instruction sheet attached to a load of forms, which listed, (in Thai), all the tests I had to undergo that day. Although I didn’t know it at the time, as my written Thai  is pretty abysmal, the tests were: Blood tests, chest x-ray and an EKG, plus the usual blood pressure, body temperature and weight checks.

On each form (one for each test) it was noted that I would pay cash. So our first stop was at the cashier’s window to pay in advance. Fortunately there was only a short queue and I was soon handing over a thousand odd Baht. The nice cashier lady printed off a sheet and handed it over. It contained a list of all the blood tests –in English – that I was to have.

The tests fees were all 60 Baht each except for the last one which was 250 Baht. Why was that one so expensive? I took a closer look. I might have guessed – it was an HIV AIDS test. Now, even Bumrungrad would never carry out an HIV test on a patient without  permission, but here, it was a matter of course. I didn’t mind, as if I did have HIV, I’d rather know than not, and frankly, I could hardly blame them for not asking permission. Can you imagine the chaos if they had to ask every one of these thousands of patients for permission before doing the test? It would all end in uproar.

There was quite a long wait for the blood tests, although they did have a ticket queue system, so at least you could follow your progress on a led screen, unlike in most hospitals I have been in – including all the private ones. They had a wonderful system; once your number came to the top of the screen, us vampire victims had to exchange our queue tickets for little plastic pots which contained our medical papers.

So Mobi joined a group of pot-toting, quivering Thais, (most Thais are terrified of needles), and was led into a room with about 6 nursing stations, where we waited for one to become free. We all jostled with each other to try and persuade the ones behind us to go first – we were all so polite. But I finally realised there was no way out of it, so I sat down in front of the prettiest nurse I could find who proceeded to fill a coterie of test tubes containing copious amounts of disease- ridden, Mobi-blood.

Drained of blood, I enquired where to go next.

‘Back to the cashier’, I was informed.

‘Why? I’ve already paid.’

‘Only for the blood tests. Now you must go back and pay for the x-ray.’

‘Why couldn’t I pay for everything at once?’

‘That’s not the way they do things here.’

So back to another queue to see another cashier and pay for my x-ray, before heading off, through the ever increasing masses of the sick, to the x-ray room.

The last time I had an x-ray at this hospital, I had to follow a long line of men into the x-ray room itself where we were x-rayed one at a time. The line then moved along and back out again. I recall that I was told to remove my shirt as I shuffled along inside the x-ray room, and I idly wondered if this was how it felt when the Nazis gently encouraged the holocaust victims to line up and enter the gas chambers.

However, this time, for some unfathomable reason, it was a bit different. (Maybe some hospital administrator had read my blog and discovered that we were all in danger of undue exposure to radiation?).

We sat in a packed waiting room for about an hour, during which time, a lady with a microphone kept yelling out at the top of her voice to the assembled multitude about the procedures they must follow to avoid having to pay for their x-rays. By the time my name was called, it was clear that I was the only person in the entire room who had been obliged to pay. But there again, I was the only farang!

Whether this had any bearing on my x-ray, I have no idea, but this time I was all alone in the room, and they even took my pic twice, as the first time I messed up when I thought they told me to breathe out, but they had actually wanted me to breathe in and hold my breath!

Next – yes, you’ve guessed it – back to yet another long cashier queue to pay for my EKG.

Remarkably, the EKG room was air-conditioned – I suppose on the principal that it is difficult to attach electrodes to a slimy, sweat-stained chest. While queuing for my EKG I was  I was asked my age, which was duly noted, although I did wonder why she had asked me for this information as it was clearly written in all my records, right next to my hospital number.

Upon conclusion, I was given my heart graph to take with me, and on my way back to the heart unit, noticed that I seemed to have suddenly experienced a dramatic loss in weight! Right there at the top of the graph sheet it stated, Age: 65, Weight: 65 kilos.  I had just lost 25 kilos…or had I?

Back at the heart unit, I handed over a large file of papers to the nurse in charge, and was told to sit down and wait. Wait for what, nobody told me. Noo was sent on errands to various points throughout the hospital but what she was doing or where she was going remains a total mystery.

After an hour or so, I discerned that I was waiting for an available bed so that I could be admitted, and I told Noo to enquire if there were any private rooms available. Poor thing was almost laughed out of court as it was explained to her that all the other people in the room were also waiting for beds and that private rooms were not on the agenda.

Oh well, that was that and I resigned myself to sharing a ward with dozens of other men. It might be a laugh, I grimly speculated.

Eventually, I was told that there would be no beds available in the heart centre but somebody had just died and they had found me a bed in the main part of the hospital and off we went to the third floor to seek out my bed, lately occupied by a fresh corpse.

Now I don’t wish to be overly critical, and during my many years in Thailand I have seen far worse hospital wards up-country, but the ward I was sent to was a bit of a nightmare. It was teeming with men of all ages and in various degrees of medical distress, along with their relatives and friends.

Amazingly, the very large room had air conditioning, (well it was over 40 degrees outside), but it was still pretty sticky, and for some reason, the whole scene reminded me of a grotesque cartoon depicting a Victorian scene in ‘bedlam’ – an institution for the insane. 

‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘this is going to be fun…’

We looked around and were greeted by a very nice ward sister who welcomed me to her little kingdom and led me to the only empty bed in the entire room, sandwiched tightly between a bed containing an extremely aged gentleman, being fed through a straw by his equally aged wife, and a middle aged man covered from head to foot in bandages and who looked more dead than alive.

I was given my hospital pyjamas and was told to get changed. ‘Where?’ I wondered; surely not in the middle of all these people? Noo told me to go to the bathroom, which  was when I first started to wonder if I could get through all this without going crazy. With all due the respect, the toilet block was terrible – in a very dilapidated and in bad state of repair, with just a single ‘wash’ cubicle containing a large bucket and a cracked water scoop.

The WC’s were, frankly, disgusting, and it was in one of these that I gingerly changed into my hospital garb. I don’t know if any of you have had the pleasure of trying to tie up hospital pyjamas in this part of the world, and if so, did you ever succeed in getting the trousers tight enough so that they don’t slip down to your ankles as soon as you stand up?

The problem is that the pyjamas are held up by a single, unbroken, cord and the idea is to try and tie a tight knot from a chord loop – in the front, a task which for this hapless farang, has always proved totally beyond my understanding and capability.

So I hobbled back to my bed, grasping my pyjama bottoms for all I was worth, terrified that I would let them slip and inadvertently become the comical high point of the day for the assembled masses.

Sitting on my bed, feeling a bit down about it all, Noo valiantly offered to check again if there were any private rooms available. I really don’t know what I would do without her. She had already been knocked back once, but was willing to try again. A minute later she was in deep conversation with the nice ward sister, and my hopes started to rise.

The sister had said something to Noo in Thai which has no direct translation into English, but means something along the lines of ‘ So this is all completely beyond the limits of his toleration is it?’ although in Thai it is but a single word. The sister said she would check to see if there were any rooms available, and I thanked her and politely told her that if not, I would just try to grin and bear it. After all, I didn’t want to make an enemy of her, in case I was obliged to stay there.

To cut a long story short, there was one room available on the next floor up, which just happened to be the VIP floor, but when I was shown the room for approval, I was advised that the window curtain was broken and couldn’t be closed, so when I slept, I would be exposed to the night sky. The stars and angels would be watching over me, whether I liked it or not.

Choosing between having to put up with a non-closing curtain in a cool, fully equipped private room with all mod cons and being stuck in a steamy bedlam, with filthy toilets and dozens of disease ridden patients, was a bit of a hard choice to make; but in the end, I gritted my teeth and resolved to suffer the terrors of the dysfunctional curtain. In other words I couldn’t wait to get signed in.

The room was everything the other room wasn’t. TV, fridge, electric power shower and all the usual equipment and personal supplies you would expect in an Asian private hospital. I must say, it was a bit of a sad indictment of the culture, as I became aware of  the respect and how charming everyone is when they discover that you have money; but it as something I was reluctantly prepared to tolerate. Money still means everything – particularly when you are surrounded by people with far less, and the treatment I received in the hospital from then on in was almost as though Noo and I were minor royalty.

I was treated far better than in all the other private hospitals I have ever been in. In private hospitals, the patients are all the same; you all have money – and you are one of many, and do not merit special treatment.

But in a government hospital where most of the patients don’t have two ha’pennies to rub together, anyone with money is on a different planet, and they let you know it. I was fussed with and tended by dozens of beautifully groomed nurses; from the moment I entered the room to the moment I departed, 2 days later.

The main event of the afternoon was the ritual shaving of Mobi’s pubic hair by the most delectable nurse I had ever had the pleasure of setting my eyes on. Believe me, it was an effort to stop myself from becoming embarrassed. She was so pretty that I even kept smiling when her blade went astray and drew blood.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, with a look of concern. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘No…no…’ I replied, still smiling but inwardly smarting from the pain.

In spite of all the privacy and comfort, I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep and only succeeded in getting about 3 hours sleep before I was woken at some ungodly hour and two hours later I was back in the heart centre to await my angiogram.

I was separated from my beloved Noo and parked on a gurney in a corridor  near the O.R., so she took off to Chatuchak market to spend the family jewels and I was left to wait, and wait and wait…

Two hours later I was still waiting, feeling thoroughly bored and unable to move due to being connected to an intravenous drip. Another hour and Noo returned but I was still lying there. It was just my luck; there had been an emergency with the patient ahead of me who had needed a stent to be inserted in his artery, and so everything was delayed.

At long last I was wheeled in to the enormous O.R. and manhandled onto the operating table. Although I had experienced a ‘conscious’ angiogram many years ago in the UK, I could not recall anything approaching the events that followed.

Except for the fact that I was required to have my legs flat on the table, for all the world, I could have been a woman being placed in the delivery position. I had to put my hands up behind my head and grip onto a metal bar, and my legs were spread wide apart and my manhood was revealed for all to admire – well at least to the attendees in the OR, of which there seemed to be dozens.

The procedure then commenced and the doc opened up the artery in my groin and injected some dye, and then he followed up with a micro camera which travelled up my artery and around my heart. Above me, all manner of large pieces of equipment on hydraulic dolly’s were whizzing round and lowered within millimetres of my heart – sometimes even touching my body -  and there was much commentary and chattering in the background.

The whole thing lasted about an hour, and finally I was lifted back onto a waiting gurney and wheeled back to the corridor. The doc followed me out and proceeded to close up the wound in my groin. This proved difficult as the bleeding stubbornly refused to stop, and he had to continually apply pressure to the wound for almost another hour before – in his own words – ‘coagulation was achieved’. I guess being a thirty year plus diabetic and taking a daily aspirin to thin my blood, (although I had stopped it for 4 days), hadn’t helped the ‘coagulation process’ too much.

I was given the good news that no bi-pass would be necessary and that now I had to await a call from the hospital to advise the operation date to replace my aortic valve. I was told it might be in anything from 1 – 3 months’ time.

Despite the doctor’s best efforts to have me transferred to his heart ward, it turned out the ward was still full up and it was with much relief that I was returned to my ‘home from home’ in the VIP wing.

I was not allowed to move my leg for a total of 8 hours, so, for the first time in my long and chequered medical career, I was obliged to use a bed urinal to relieve myself. I actually had doubts whether I would be able to go, but with young Noo holding the accoutrement in place – it was a like pissing in the wind…well almost!

(In case you may be wondering, in all previous occasions when I have been bed bound in hospital , I have had a catheter attached to the offending piece of Mobi-anatomy which obviated the need to use the dreaded bed urinal.)

I had two further visits from the doc, one that evening, and another the following morning – to check on the wound and give me the all clear to go home. This was supplemented by continuous visits by sisters and nurses who checked my vital signs and the condition of the wound. Or maybe they just wanted to have a look at a farang’s manhood….

One particularly diligent young  lady decided to clean up the wound and re-dress it, but somehow succeeded in getting her cleaning alcohol swab  onto my right testicle! I almost jumped out of my skin – to the the vast amusement of about 4 nurses who had gathered around in fascination.

The overall treatment, the attention to detail and the follow up for possible side effects was far and away above anything I have experienced during my 3 previous angiogram procedures, and although I concede that some of these benefits may have been due to me having a private room, by and away the majority of the care would have been given regardless of where my bed was located.

All this wonderful treatment and care has given me considerable reassurance about what to expect when I go back for the major operation and it has taught me that whatever the extra cost, I must make ensure that a private room is available for my post op recuperation.

The cost of the room is around 3,300 Baht a day, including 3 meals and as far as I’m concerned, it was well worth every Baht. If I had been in a general ward, it would have cost me at least 1,000 Baht to pay for a room outside for Noo to stay overnight, whereas having the private room meant that she was able to sleep on the sofa and provide me with 24 hour care.

Sure, the unbelievable bureaucracy and constant waiting around can be annoying and frustrating, but I do not believe it detracted from the overall patient care, and is probably not much different to the bureaucracy and delays that are experienced in most if not all  state healthcare hospitals in the west.

So here endeth my marathon report on my 3 day stay in hospital. Hope it wasn’t tooooo boring.

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I don’t give a hoot!…

Mobi-Babble

Noo arrived back from her trip home last night, looking extremely attractive in her figure hugging little jeans with strategic holes in all the right places and a cute white top. I had forgotten how pretty she is, and you know what they say about ‘absence and the heart’….

She must have been talking nonstop to her family from the moment she arrived in Nong Khai to the moment she left, as her voice has taken on a husky tone to it which is oh…so…sexy!

(And no. she never drinks)

While the ‘cat was away’, I confess to having a minor relapse in my whore-mongering activities, and for the past three days I have been making a few visits to my old haunts, and even the odd new one.

On a couple of the days it was actually difficult to find places to go to as the girls were either playing Songkran right outside their places of employment, (which would have meant me getting a soaking if I wanted to stop by), or, the bars were closed completely and the staff were all off having the time of their drunken lives in Pattaya city.

Of course it is always an exciting boost to the ego when some scantily clad, 20- something year old lets me paw her most delectable body parts and for her to place her own delicate fingers onto my nether regions; even more so when, as is my want, I have two of them, one either side of a grinning Mobi.

As I made myself at home in these disperputable dens of inequity, I couldn’t help contemplating that there are not many places left on this planet of ours where a man of my age can sit with beautiful, sexy young ladies a fraction of my age and have my wicked ways with them, all for the price of a lady’s drink or two, plus a small tip.

But like any kids in a perpetual sweet shop, the novelty and appetite for constant sexual stimulation eventually begins to wane. It has been a very long time since I had the desire to take any of these ladies into a backroom and indulge in hard-core sex, or even a BJ, and for the most part, I just enjoy the sexual titillation. Having two girls only adds to the fun, as we can all laugh and joke with each other and  apart from earning a few Baht, they too get a kick out of it all. There’s not too many farangs around who can indulge in banter with them in their own language, (Thai as well as a smattering of Issan), and it always proves a winner for me.

As I used to write in my more turbulent  days, many of these short-time bar girls are highly sexed and it doesn’t take much to get them going. In one bar, I had a very pretty and very sexy, slightly chubby young lady from Surin on my right, and a more demure, slim and even younger lady from Roi Et on my left.

The chubby one was one of those girls who just oozed ‘raunch’ and it took her only few seconds to get her hands on my most prized possessions and insert her tongue so far down my throat, I thought it would never see the light of day again. I actually contemplated the notion that I might choke and die there and then in a paroxysm of ecstasy.

By contrast, the cute 20 year old on my left had only recently quit her job at a factory in Samut Prakan, and was wearing what I can only describe as a ‘rice pickers’ frock. Although very pretty, she was clearly out of her depth with a farang of my level of depravity.

Yet, incredibly, within a few minutes, once she had taken the lead from her more experienced partner in crime on my right, she was giggling and begging me to put my hand back to areas where only moments before she had pushed me away in shock.  Once she had lost her inhibitions, it transpired that she was even hornier than the raunchy one and when we finished readjusting her frumpy frock, we discovered that she had the most incredibly beautiful body.

In yet another bar I had another two gorgeous cuties in their early twenties to entertain me. As my regular readers will know, although I am a connoisseur of the entire Asian female anatomy, I do have a particular soft spot for ladies’ butts; and one of the ladies who sat down beside me had one of the most gorgeous butts I believe I have ever come across in my entire, dissipated life.

She was 24 years old, had quite a pretty face and she had a body – which was minimally covered by an extremely short, body- hugging purple, mini-dress – that most western women would die for. She had small, but pert, firm breasts, tight smooth skin with a slim waist, and a pair of gorgeous, perfectly proportioned legs, with thighs that any hot blooded male would be totally unable to resist keeping his hands off.

But her ‘piece de resistance’ by far was her perfectly formed, incredibly gorgeous derrière. It was large, but not too large, shaped like a half football, and she delighted in lifting her dress just high enough to display her most prized possession in all its glory and invite yours truly to have a little fondle. It was truly the ‘Butt of the Century‘; so tight and so faultless that if I had owned a surgical knife, I would have cut it off and taken it home with me.

Of course, I told her that I worshipped her incredible accoutrement, and after enquiring where I was from, she merely observed that it was always the Englishmen who raved about her butt. All I can say to that is that us ‘limeys or ‘poms’ must have very good taste…

So over the first two days of  Noo’s absence I had a few more close encounters of a similar kind, but on day three I decided that enough was enough and contented myself with joining a few friends at a bar on the lake for a chat and a catch up on gossip.

As on pevious occasions, I won’t now promise that I will never again indulge in such unsavoury activities; after all why should I? – It’s all pretty harmless, relatively innocent fun as far as I’m concerned, but I do feel that it is becoming more and more unlikely that I will slip again in the future.

Thai girls are always paranoid that their farang husbands/boyfriends who regularly patronise such places will one day find a girl who is better than the model that have at home and decide to trade her in. This is especially so when relations between them are not that good and particularly when the girl has turned into the ‘wife from hell’.

In my case, this will never happen. I have had so many Thai women through the years – have been married no less than 5 times – that at long last I know the right one when I find her. 

But I have no desire to hurt Noo or cause her to fret about my unsavoury activities.

In Noo, I have someone so wonderful, that no matter how much I may be tempted by some gorgeous, provocative siren at a local bar, I know with absolute certainty, that no one will ever match up to Noo in terms of having a loving, unselfish and non-confrontational personality, a caring disposition, and frankly, a great work ethic. She is the most energetic, hardworking lady I have ever met, and she always treats me with total respect and loving care. She is also very pretty, very sexy and great in bed. And I love her.

I ask you, what more could a recovering, degenerate alcoholic ask for in his dotage?

***

The deep shame of South Asia

What is it about the sub-continent that turns so many Indian and Pakistani men into utter monsters?

I am not talking about terrorists, or religious intolerance which may have spiralled out of control; no, I am talking purely and simply about man’s total inhumanity to their own, legally wedded wives, for no reason other than they had a ‘tiff’ or the ‘wife cherished her beauty too much’ or some other equally unacceptable excuse – like she had the temerity to ask for a divorce, or her family couldn’t meet her husbands dowry demands,or in many cases, for no apparent reason at all.

I am talking about horrific acid attacks on women which leave them with dreadful disfigurements and in unbelievable suffering from excruciating pain and psychological trauma for the rest of their lives.

One such woman was Fakhra Younas who went under the surgeon’s knife 38 times, hoping to repair the gruesome damage inflicted by a vengeful Pakistani man who had doused her face in acid a decade earlier, virtually melting her mouth, nose and ears. The painful medical marathon took place in Rome, a distant city that offered Fakhra refuge, the generosity of strangers and a modicum of healing.

Fakhra’s marriage to a prominent Pakistani had collapsed after three years, amid allegations of domestic violence, and she fled to her mother’s home. She was sleeping there in May 2000 when two men burst into the apartment; one cast a bottle of liquid over her face and chest. She struggled and screamed, but it was too late: the acid fused her lips, melted her breasts and destroyed one eye. During a three-month stay in a hospital, she came close to death.

She had two little holes for her nostrils, and her mouth was so melted that only a straw could fit in.

Pakistanis showed little interest in the case. Newspapers, even liberal ones, gave the story scant coverage. The government dragged its heels over issuing a passport to Fakhra, concerned that the case would hurt Pakistan’s image.

Fakhra went on the run, and was declared a fugitive in early 2002. But when the trial started a year later, after her husband had been caught and arrested, the case quickly crumbled. Although four witnesses testified to seeing him Fakhra’s home the night of the attack, all later retracted their statements. Earlier, they had complained of intimidation by her husband, but the judge paid little notice, and in December 2003 he dismissed the case.

Fakhra left for Rome with her son.There, over a decade, she slowly rebuilt her life. The Italian government granted her political asylum; the city authorities offered her an apartment; and a Milan cosmetics company paid for her surgery.

A plastic surgeon who led the work, said it was difficult at first “because her lower lip was attached to her torso, she had no neck, and her eyes were permanently open.” Complicating matters, she ignored postoperative advice. “She was so headstrong, so independent,” he said.

Still, things improved: by the 38th operation, in early 2011, Fakhra could move her mouth and one eye. Her once strikingly beautiful face, although still charred, had regained some of its shape. She had learned Italian, befriended local traders and co-written a memoir, “Il Volto Cancellato,” or “The Erased Face,” which brought in some income.

But the gruelling operations extracted a heavy physical and psychological toll and she always wanted to go home.” But a return to Pakistan was out of the question for Fakhra, partly for security reasons: friends worried that her life would be in danger.

But while Italian doctors worked on her facial scars, some wounds refused to close and on March 17, after a decade of pining for Pakistan, a country she loved even though its justice system had failed her terribly, Fakhra climbed to the sixth-floor balcony of her apartment building in the southern suburbs of Rome and jumped. She was reported to be 33 years old.

The man long accused of the attack on Fakhra  her ex-husband, Bilal Khar, who was acquitted at trial nine years ago, comes from a wealthy, powerful background. His family owns vast swaths of rich farmland in Punjab Province; his father is a former provincial governor and his first cousin is Pakistan’s foreign minister. In recent weeks, Mr. Khar appeared on television several times to defend his reputation. “My hands are clean,” he said during one broadcast.

The late Fakhra Younas

Acid is the preferred weapon of vindictive men against women accused of disloyalty or disobedience. Common in several South Asian countries, acid attacks in Pakistan grew sharply in number in 2011, to 150 from 65 in 2010, although some advocacy workers said the increase stemmed largely from better reporting.

Another victim, Shama, has been the subject of a recent Oscar-winning Pakistani documentary, ‘Saving Face’, which has put the crime under the spotlight.

Shama, a young mother of four, has just joined the ranks of Pakistani women doused in acid. She is scarred for life, with burns on 15% of her body. Her crime was her beauty.

“My husband and I often had arguments in the house,” she said, in her hospital bed. “On that day before going to sleep he said ‘you take too much pride in your beauty’. Then in the middle of the night he threw acid on me, and ran away.”

When her husband fled, he took her mobile phone with him, so she could not call for help.

Shama now lies in a ward of the burns unit in a hospital in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The hospital is a monument to neglect. The plaster is peeling off the walls and there is a leaking pipe hanging from the ceiling. When patients need transfusions, their relatives are despatched to buy pints of blood.

But the doctors here are expert at treating women disfigured by acid – they see one or two new victims every week. At morning rounds they gather at Shama’s bed, asking if she is eating, and is keeping her burns covered with cream. They try to relieve her pain, but cannot ease her despair.

“I feel pain at what I was, and what I have become,” she says, with tears coursing down her scorched cheeks. “All the colours have gone from my life. I feel like I’m a living corpse, even worse than a living corpse. I think I have no right to live.

“I can’t say anything about the future, maybe I won’t be alive. I will try – for my kids – to get back to how I was. I have to work to build a future for them. If I can’t I’ll do what one or two other girls have done.

“They killed themselves.”

Shama and her son, before...

Shama & son, after...

Shama alone, in pain and despair

***

In India, women belonging to any class, caste or creed and religion can be victims of this cruel form of violence and disfigurement; a premeditated crime intended to kill or maim her permanently and act as a lesson to put her in her place. Acid attacks on women who dare to refuse a man’s proposal of marriage or ask for a divorce are a common form of revenge. Acid is cheap and easily available and is the quickest way to destroy a woman’s life. Acid throwing is also used to enforce the caste system in modern India, where upper caste individuals often attack lower castes for supposedly violating the order.

The number of acid attacks has been rising in India and there have been 68 reported acid attacks in the state of Karnataka alone since 1999. Most of the female victims suffer more because of police apathy in dealing with cases of harassment as that of a safety issue as they refused to register a recent  case despite the victim being attacked thrice before meriting police aid after an acid attack.

It is estimated that over 50% of the women who suffer acid attacks on the sub-continent are under18 years of age, many as young as 12 years old.

I don’t know about you, but every time I look at the pictures of Shama and her son, it brings tears to my eyes.

Just what kind of world are we living in?

Anyone know?

 ***

*

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT… I wish I didn’t give a hoot – but I do….

Mobi –Babble

Today, me, my dogs  and my new laptop are out here on the Lake- all alone against the wicked world .

I dropped my daughter and her husband at the airport on Monday evening, after a wonderful 15 days stay with us, and today, at the crack of dawn, little Noo, her son and her older sister (who arrived in Pattaya yesterday from her home in Sumut Songkran), set off on the long and winding  road to their family home in Nong Kai, for three nights.

On the computer front, the Gods must be have been with me, as not only did I have a recent backup for all my files, but I had even backed up my latest documents, including, crucially, the very latest drafts of my novel, which I had saved on a thumb stick the evening before my disc crashed.

I did sweat for a few days over the possible loss of all my ‘business emails’ which were stored in ‘local folders’ in my Thunderbird email set up, but I managed to successfully recover them from my file back-up, so the only data I lost were a few TV videos that I had recently downloaded and hadn’t yet transferred over onto external hard disks.

My previous Laptop was an Acer 4736 with a 14 inch screen and pretty decent processor, ram and peripherals, and it has served me valiantly for over 3 years, with almost constant daily use. It was starting to get a little cranky, with increasingly frequent ‘hangs’  so when the disk crashed, I took it into the shop, who offered to put in a new hard disc disc for 3,000 Baht.

But after due consideration for the computer’s age, I decided it was time to put the dear old thing out to pasture and shop around for new young Acer buck. So after checking the internet for the latest lap top models in my price range, and following a careful assessment of exactly what would suit my requirements, I decided to look  for another Acer which had a larger screen and keyboard with more powerful processing power and ram. It seemed that I could get something pretty decent within my price range, which was around 20K++ Baht. (around 400 quid)

In the event, I stumbled across a 15.6 inch model with specs that  exceeded what I was looking for, at a specially reduced price of 25K. It is an Acer 5755G which has received excellent reviews and is sold in the UK for around 900 pounds, so I reckon I got a bargain. It has an Intel core15-2450M 2.5 GHZ microprocessor, 8 Gb of Ram, 1 terabyte HD, a usb3 port (and 2 usb 2 ports), HDMI/VGA/SD card reader ports and nvidia geoforce GT540 M graphics card, amongst many other features.  

Unlike the UK , There seems to be little demand in Thailand for larger laptops, and I have noticed that there very few larger ones for sale in the stores. Nearly all of the models I have seen here, have 14 inch screens. This might account for the price reduction on my 15.6 inch,5755 – due to lack of demand.

So I am well pleased with my purchase, which I reckon is used about 95% of the time at home, and with a larger screen and keyboard, it is robust enough to do all the jobs I need it to do, but still light enough to take out for the occasional road or plane trip and to move around the house.

Of course it will take me a week or more to get everything set up the way I want it, but I have set up enough already to enable me to produce today’s (Wednesday’s) blog.☺

Is America becoming a bastion for double standards on religion?

One of America’s most respected and trusted newspapers, The New York Times, known colloquially as ‘The Old Gray Lady’, recently refused to publish an advertisement submitted by an organisation entitled ‘Stop Islamization of America’ which asked:

 “Why put up with an institution that dehumanizes women and non-Muslims … [do] you keep identifying with the ideology that threatens liberty for women and menaces freedom by slaughtering, oppressing and subjugating non-Muslims… Join those of us who put humanity above the vengeful, hateful and violent teachings of Islam’s ‘prophet.’”

Fair enough to refuse this ad you might think; maybe at this time of increasingly bitter relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim world, it is wise not to provoke sensitive religious issues too much.

But the same paper,  2 weeks earlier, had agreed to run the following ad, submitted by the ‘Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation’ which asked Catholics:

“Why send your children to parochial schools to be indoctrinated into the next generation of obedient donors and voters?” The ad went on to call loyalty to the faith misplaced “after two decades of sex scandals involving preying priests, church complicity, collusion and cover-up going all the way to the top.”

A spokeswoman from ‘Stop Islamization’ said: “This shows the hypocrisy of The New York Times, the “gold standard” in journalism, and its willingness to kowtow to violent Islamic supremacist intimidation,”

So what did the ‘Old Gray Lady’ have to say about all this?

“We have not made a decision not to publish the ad you refer to…We made a decision to postpone publishing it in light of recent events in Afghanistan, including the Koran burning and the alleged killings of Afghani civilians by a member of the U.S. military.  It is our belief that fallout from running this ad now could put US troops and civilians in the region in danger and we would like to avoid that.”

A catholic spokesman retorted by saying:

 “It shows the disparate treatment and the duplicity of The New York Times, you can trash some religions, like Roman Catholicism, with impunity, but you cannot trash Islam?”

In this blogger’s opinion, this is by no means the first instance when the West, particularly the USA, has treated anything to do with our Islamic ‘friends’ with the utmost of ‘kid gloves’. They have bent over backwards to avoid offence of any kind, and in the process, they have trampled on our long held beliefs and traditions of freedom of expression and religion. But it is ‘open season’ on all other religions which can be trashed and insulted with impunity.   

I am an avowed atheist, but I steadfastly defend basic human rights and democratic freedoms which allow both  the propogation and the criticism of all religious beliefs.

Maybe the New York Times was right and is doing the ‘sensible, non-confrontational thing’, but I can’t help feeling that it is the thin end of the wedge. Once such a revered and respected institution like the New York Times embark on this kind of misguided course of censorship, God knows where it will all end.

Surely, in one of the biggest battle for the hearts and minds that  the population of this world has ever experienced, it is time for someone, somewhere, to make a stand for the greater good, regardless of any short term consequences ?

The Bahrain Grand Prix – yes again…

A couple of days ago, that billionaire poison midget, Bernie Ecclestone, sneered at a BBC reporter when she asked him politely about the status of the Bahrain Grand Prix. ‘What do you know about Bahrain,’ he snapped at her.

The question is, Mr God almighty Ecclestone, is what do you know about Bahrain, that hasn’t been passed onto you by spokesmen of the authoritarian, fascist and rabidly undemocratic government of King Hamad?

With respect, Mister Ecclestone, I think it is reasonable to assume that the wonderful investigative work carried out by the brave reporters of Al Jazeera – for which they have  received international awards and  accolades – and which has since been followed up by the remainder of the world’s press, (including BBC and the major print press titles) – provides a far more in depth view of what is actually going on in Bahrain, than the distorted rubbish spouted by a few trumped up millionaires, and ‘has- been’ racing drivers (one Jackie Stewart immediately springs to mind), all of whom, have a vested interest in going ahead with the Bahrain Grand prix next weekend.

Yesterday, at a protest march in Al Dair, a small Shi’ite village north east of Manama, near the airport, thousands of protesters: men of all ages, chattering children, women dressed head to toe in black, many of them holding placards, all of them chanting slogans “Down with King Hamad” and: “No Formula One in Bahrain.” Every so often, a protester would peel off from the crowd and shake the hands of visiting journalists, thanking them for being there in person and imploring them to help them get their message out.  It was the largest of several such protests.

Rubber bullets, remnants from previous clashes, lay scattered about. A 13-year-old girl, whose father was killed in police custody last year –beaten to death – was with her uncle, a politician in Bahrain’s main opposition party, Al Wefaq, which has called for seven days of protest to capitalise on the presence of F1.

An activist, who met with F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone in London earlier this year in an effort to have the race cancelled, pointed out some of the other faces in yesterday’s crowd; a nurse who was beaten by police last spring after helping to treat injured protesters; a doctor, whose husband is a prominent local lawyer representing hundreds of protesters in jail.

With the grand prix coming up this weekend, many activists have been rounded up in the past few days. A 19-year-old student, said he had slept in three different houses over the past three nights after the police had come looking for him.

One man, who was wearing a red Ferrari polo shirt, said: “I love F1, “But not over our blood. They are forcing it on us.”

A taxi driver gave his thoughts on Sunday’s race. “I have two emotions,” he said. “One is that I am proud to have such a big event in Bahrain. But the other part of me feels shame. You will be welcome here because you are guests in my country, but you will be racing over blood this weekend.”

Asked if the race was not vital to the economy, he insisted that the average Bahraini would see little of the $400-500 million which the Bahrain GP organisers estimate it generates. “The government and their supporters own all these buildings,” he said, sweeping his hand in a wide arc to indicate the smart hotels of the diplomatic quarter.

Last night, as darkness fell, explosions lit up the night sky in Al Dair, and reports surfaced of larger-scale clashes in Sitra, and a car bomb in Manama itself.

Bahrain’s authorities have been at pains to reassure Bernie the Bastard that safety will not be an issue this week. Given the enormous security presence at the circuit, it is unlikely to be. But that has not entirely dispelled misgivings within F1’s 1,500-strong travelling army, who are expected to attend a highly politicised event.

The FIA and Ecclestone insist the race has ‘nothing to do with politics’ . Oh yeah???Countless posters about town bearing the slogan ‘UniF1ed: One Nation in Celebration’ suggest otherwise.

Human rights groups say reforms promised by Bahrain’s rulers in the wake of last autumn’s damning independent report amount to window dressing. Most informed people are of a similar opinion, having seen hard evidence that there is still torture, still discrimination, and little has changed since the mass protests which started on Feb 14 last year.

But until the US administration’s response to the horrendous human rights abuses in Bahrain become more vocal, (as it has now belatedly done on Syria), the world will largely ignore the bloody fight for democracy in this little corner of the Middle East, which just so happens to provide a safe harbour for the US Fifth Fleet….

I hope I am wrong, but have a nasty feeling that if they do not decide to pull out of this Grand Prix at the last moment, there may well be serious trouble a-brewing for the coming weekend.

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I don’t give a hoot!…

Sorry folks, the hard disc on my PC has crashed irrevocably after three years of valiant service.

Yesterday I went downtown and bought a new laptop, but I am having problems setting it up as I keep getting error messages, and it refuses to boot. So it’s back to the store today to see if I can get it fixed.

So this, plus the fact that I now have my daughter and husband back with me for the last two days of their stay in Thailand mean that there will be no blog today.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as humanly possible, and in the meantime, may I wish my Thai readers  a Happy Songkran , and please don’t get too drunk and too wet…..