October 11, 2009
1
THE AIRPORT caddie wheeled him up onto the slightly raised platform, and me and mum followed on foot. Then we stood, in slight rain, as the lift began to raise. Us and another wheelchair-bound man, him with a genuine disability, as against recovering from the mother of all raw vodka hangovers. We were being hoisted up, forklift style, into the back of a truck in full view of the regular passengers queueing bemused at the gate. "Mortified" doesn't even come close.
Later, as the plane banked and lowered ready to land at Schiphol in Amsterdam, he woke up. He was in the aisle seat, me in the middle, mum next to the window. "Where's the bloody breakfast?" he snarled. "You were asleep," I said, through gritted, tired teeth. "Why didn't you wake me?" "We tried. Here - I kept these for you," and handed him the dry, salty Tuc crackers KLM had so generously provided. He munched down on one, the cracker splintering across his chest, grumbling about the bastards who hadn't fed him. No way, no way, was I having this seating arrangement on the ten-hour Amsterdam-Bangkok leg of the journey.
No way.
2
"NO, NO, in sterling," said mum, as she attempted to pay for three bowls of chicken noodle soup and three cans of beer at the Noodles Bar at Schiphol. It was around midday. We'd been up, two of us, for a day already. He'd of course slept in a vodka coma for a few hours before we left their home and got another hour on the plane. "Oh," said the Japanese woman at the counter, "no problem." She pressed a button on the till to convert the 53 and something Euros bill that we'd encountered. A new figure appeared.
Fifty four pounds and pence.
Mum gasped. Double checked. Gasped again. But yes, fifty four quid for three bowls of hot water, a few noodles, six slices of chicken in each, some beansprouts and herbs, and three cans of The World's Most Expensive Beer. So we piled on the chilli powder with wild abandon, seeing as at least that was free.
Then it was back to being a carer again, as my father slipped back into paraplegic mode again the moment he sat in the wheelchair. "Doesn't he manage to get up every single fucking day and walk a mile to Wetherspoons, and back again, pissed?" I asked my mother.
She rolled her eyes. We had another flight to get.
3
HOW DID this happen? How did the pre-booking of two aisle seats and one adjacent become a set of three together: window, middle, aisle? How come I'm sat wedged, aged 38, between my ageing by now bickering parents? What the fuck am I doing? Why did I agree to this? What am I letting myself in for? And why he is rubbing his hands together constantly, then clenching his face, grimacing, eyes sinking into the back of his head? Then grabbing and rubbing his crotch? And forcefully rubbing his thighs? He's become a demonic Vic Reeves without the jokes, as the fearsome grip of his vodka overload slowly starts to seep out of his pores and the cold turkey onslaught begins.
Across the aisle, one row in front, is a Thai family returning home. There are three beautiful children, a boy who seemed to sleep the whole way through, a baby girl who was impeccable, and her gorgeous sister, three years old maybe, who between naps sat up on her mum's lap staring around at the strange people around her.
The strangest was my father. Sat there ordering drink after drink, gin and tonics, lagers, red wine, brandy at one stage, between rubbing his hands, thighs and crotch, contorting his face into a clench of pain-relief; twisting his features in desperate attempts to hold off the body-wracking agony of no raw vodka. "No more," I said to him. "Fuck off you fucking cunt," he said, loudly enough for anyone within four metres to here. Thank god they mostly Dutch and Thai, I thought, before remembering how well other nationalities speak and understand our language.
"No, really, that's it," I said. "You're grimacing at that little girl over there while rubbing your genitals. It's disgraceful. Go to sleep. Get a fucking grip."
"Cunt," he replied. "You fucking cunt."
Mum intervenes: "Just stop it, will you. This is terrible."
Me: "Yeah, stop it. Now. If you must fucking drink, drink lager. Stay off the spirits. For christ's sake. You're making a holy show out of us."
"Fuck off, cunt."
Then he staggered up out of his chair to slowly stumble towards the toilet. The back of his catalogue beige trousers were soaked through, which I only noticed after leaning over his chair to get up and go to the loo myself, only find his seat drenched.
Magic. And only five hours to go.
4
CHINA AIRLINES. Jesus. Not only was the seating arrangement precisely not the one we wanted, the food was absolutely atrocious - and I'm one of those sad travellers who still gets a kick out of airline grub - and the in-flight entertainment consisted of one screen at the front of the cabin showing a blurred copy of Angel and Demons. Needless to say, only one side of my earphones worked and even that was muffled. It was that, then the tedious map of where you are and how fast you're travelling.
I must have drifted off at some stage, because I remember waking in the gloom. The plane was traversing across six time zones, hurtling at over 500mph towards many other nation's night and, I guess, tomorrow's daylight. Silhouetted in the dark, next to me, I saw a plastic cup being raised up towards my father's mouth, and the unmistakable smell of brandy hit my nose.
"Haven't you had enough? Yet?" I asked him.
"Oh fuck off you cunt," I got as a reply.
"Look. We've got to get off this aircraft, find our way around Bangkok airport and then get another plane. We cannot do this if you're arseholed."
"You're an arsehole."
Mum woke up. "Mike, just-"
I interrupt her: "I'd really like to see how you'll wheel yourself around when we land, because that's what's going to happen, okay?"
Him: "I'd really like it if you two never spoke to me again, you cunts."
Me: "Fine by me. You're on your own in Bangkok." Pause. "Oh, just so you know, we will have one more conversation - when I put my fist through your mouth at Bangkok and leave you for dead."
I've now been awake for about 36 hours, give or take the odd nap. His head nods, slowly, and he drifts off to sleep. I order a glass of water.
5
HIS HEAD lifts up, out of slumber, and I know already he's completely forgotten what has been said before. Well, either completely forgotten or pretending it didn't happen. The sweat on his brow is heavy; it might as well have Smirnoff logos on every bead.
Last year he was diagnosed with Korsakoff's syndrome, a form of dementia brought on by a lack of the vitamin thiamine; the syndrome is most commonly associated with malnutrition which in itself is most commonly brought on by chronic alcoholism. His brain has shrunk. He does, indeed, have issues. He has a "drop foot" because he slept all night in the toilet, got a blood clot, then refused to use the equipment the hospital provided him with because "it hurt". That's why he's on sticks. He was in hospital, dry, for six months, and on the lash within hours of eventually leaving.
But the main issue is his solid refusal to look at the main one. Ask him how many drinks he's had, when he's sat in a puddle of his own piss - in a restaurant, no less, more of which later - and he replies: "How much have you had?" Then calls you a cunt.
This from a man who once upon a time kept ocean tankers electrically sound as they carried multi-million dollar cargoes across the planet, whose garden was once his pride and joy, who would insist we all went to St Alban's church in Wallasey every Sunday morning, and once gave me a ferocious bollocking for not genuflecting properly. He has, it is fair to say, not a friend in the world.
He woke, anyway, and leant over to me, like I imagine some fathers do quite naturally with their sons in other planets, other worlds, and, as he started to take off his seat belt, said: "I'm going to go for a lie down."
"Where?" I asked.
"In bed," he said.
"Dad, we're on a plane."
His face fell, crestfallen. He let out a low moan, and then rested back into his seat, looking thoroughly pissed off with the world and everyone else who lived on it.
Bangkok was ninety minutes away, local time somewhere after 6am.
6
MY THAI TALES have frequently mentioned a man called Odd. He's a man I've admired, greatly, for six years. He was one of the two people I couldn't wait to see as I headed to Samui. The other person is problematic to write about, but is again someone of whom I'm very fond.
Because of my father's walking impairment, along with the heat, I'd suggested they stay in a set of bungalows in Lamai, not Chaweng, the larger neighbouring town where they used to stay. I chose Lamai Wanta because it was right next to the beach, 100 yards from the main road, was on the flat - and because it was three or four doors down from Odd and his family, a family that had taken care of me many years before and who I knew would take care of my parents, as would I, should any situation arise.
I first met Odd when was I working in Auy Bar, on Lamai Beach, after a brainstorm saw me refuse to return home to the UK and end up living there for eleven months. I'd been asked to hand out flyers to farang - foreigners - for a party we were apparently going to host that night. Not at our bar, but on a beach on the south of the island.
Myself, documentary maker Mikkel, and Odd drove down to the venue at around 3pm. The party was starting at 8pm. When we arrived, after juddering through a coconut plantation in a pick-up, at least fifteen minutes away from any kind of human life, we found a section of beach smothered in coastal debris. The place was a mess. And there was no electricity.
"No problem," grinned Odd, whose battered teeth had up to that point, unfortunately, made me think he was far less bright than the remarkably intelligent and versatile man he is.
Off he went. Mikkel and I stood feeling, and being, helpless. What on earth were we going to do? We half-heartedly plucked a few empty water bottles from the sand, chucking them to one side. But this was useless. We'd taken money from tourists for a party that could not happen.
Then, after thirty minutes, Odd arrived back. In a Bobcat. He cleared the beach in minutes, laughing in the cab as he smoked his beloved, powerful Khrong Thep cigarettes (Khrong Thep is the original name for Bangkok, although it has many, many other names).
He disappeared again, to return once more in the pick-up with some local lads in tow. He fixed some sheeting around his feet, then shimmied up a coconut tree, nails in his mouth, hammer and small rectangular wooden planks tucked into his fisherman's pants, quite literally forging a ladder as he climbed.
Then he went backup again, with the boys clinging onto his ladder beside him, as he heaved a huge speaker up on his back to the brace he'd prepared for it. Then the whole thing all over again, on another tree. He finished off by stringing black lights - the ones that make white clothes appear all illuminous - and then, after lighting up another cigarette, declared: "Okay."
"Erm, Odd," I said. "What about power?"
"Ah, no problem," he said, with a wave of his powerful hand.
And then disappeared off into the jungle with a cable reel in his hand, heading I absolutely know not where.
But ten minutes later, the lights came on. We were ready to host a party.
The man was, is, a fucking genius. I genuinely have never been more impressed with a single human being than I have been by Odd. He's the consummate family man; a workaholic; amazing fisherman; brilliant water skier; unfortunate paraglider; chicken farmer; bar and restaurant owner; tour guide; friend. Apart from being terrible at weather forecasting, Mikkel will attest that we both hold the view that there seems little the man cannot do.
He's amazing, and puts so many of his contemptuously lazy contemporaries in the shade.
Some might say, to coin a phrase, that he kicks ass.
7
THE PARENTS loved their bungalow. It was new, and clean, and safe, and all the things I promised it would be, thank god. Right on the beach, with easy access to town, a few doors away from Odd, incredibly quiet - apart from the 6.15pm bird encroachment, more of which later - yet blissfully calm and inhabited by their kind of tourists.
I finally departed their company after what seemed like a week of waking hell (I won't bore you with the rest of the flight details - suffice to say, it was a nightmare, but all nerves were fraying) and went to see my friend, who I hadn't laid eyes on for two years. He was, as usual, working, sat cross-legged at the front of his bar fixing something or other. He saw me wandering up the sand, and immediately burst into laughter. "You chance your hair!" he laughed, that broad, toothy grin all over the place. It's true. I have. Last time I saw him I'd not long performed a parachute jump for charity, and shaved my head as part of the bargain. Now my locks are long and frankly in need of a haircut (and perhaps some dye).
He embraced me, warmly. As did his eldest son, now a young man, His beautiful wife, Daeng, who used too cook and look out for me, hugged me, too, and kissed me on both cheeks. I rushed to the toilet. I was so tired, so worn out from the travelling and everything that went with that, I knew I was about to burst into tears. Which is precisely what I did. Then I washed my face, hoped hopelessly that my eyes didn't look too red, then went back to my old friends.
Later that same night, though, everything would change forever.
* More later. This is so very, very difficult to write.
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