November 18, 2009

Yes, that's what they want to do now. To tell us what we can and can't do - while they carry on fiddling their expenses.

Go here to find out what I'm going on about, and follow the links therein.

November 16, 2009

1

WE left Koh Samui on the last flight out to Bangkok on a Friday, something after 10pm.

It's an hour's flight.

On arrival I turned my phone on and took a frankly awful call from a friend in the UK, which would have made my blood run cold had a) I not been in a massively over-air conditioned airport and b) it'd been cold with fear for three weeks anyway.

From the Bangkok internal flight gates, we found a man to wheel the drunk, walking-stick waving fool in a chair half the way to our gate at international departures, a mere 479 miles away. Mum and I walked.

From there, we had to give up his chair and find a way to get to gate 9,468 of Terminal X, somewhere at least a quarter of the way past the horizon, and only that on a good day.

The fool was going nowhere fast. I organised a chair, somehow. He sat and waited for it while we rushed down to the gate.

As usual, our spastic passes rushed us through to the plane, where he then proceeded to make the most least effort one could possibly make to get out of a chair he was perfectly able to get out of; walk down the aisle to our seats, of which he bagged the best one, while I stored the overhead luggage; then had a row with a Dutch girl sitting behind us for having the sheer temerity to put some of her luggage in our (shared) overhead locker.

2

The return food was abysmal. Two meals in eleven hours. Fish with something reeking like grated dog's excrement, on a bed of what smelled suspiciously like solidified urea. Or beef with (perhaps) centipede's feet. Except they'd run out of beef, of course. But then we were in the spaz seats, after all.

Marvellous. Welcome back to China Airlines.

3

Same story at Amsterdam.

The drunk, who in fairness is not now actually drunk, as he's slept all the way through (unlike me, naturally), but is punch drunk from the jet lag, and exhausted by the overnight flight, and on a tremendous comedown (more of which much later), and has remembered through sudden, unexpected sobriety that he can convince himself and thus all around him that he is paraplegic again, sits grumpily waiting for his wheelchair 'caddy', the staff member who will assist us.

He discovers he has to share one of those whirly electronic six-seater chariots through to our departure gate for Manchester, again about four thousand miles away - and that's if you're a fucking crow, which my mother and I actually aren't.

So next thing, we're legging it down packed aisle after packed aisle of an extraordinarily busy Schipol airport on what is now a Sunday morning - we left Samui on Friday night - after a cart full of smug, drunken misfits that are so far gone even the airlines believe they're genuinely disabled.

It's like an episode of Benidorm in reverse. Thank christ mum wasn't wearing dreadlocks.

But then we haven't got to Manchester yet.

4

FOG into Amsterdam had forced our pilot to do that stacking thing pilots do, in huge sweeping circles in a 'tower' formation in the sky, in thick cloud, no doubt hugely safely thanks to computers and air traffic control, but also no doubt tucking onto a decent Singapore Vermicelli and a bag of fairly recent prawn crackers while yours truly here shat himself about how much fuel was left exactly after eleven hours flying into the wind and, indeed, the approaching Planet Earth itself.

Not that I fret, much, obviously.

It's only horrific death we're talking about, after all.

But the resulting factor of this, of course, is that we're late into Manchester.

Which means we now slip seamlessly into Mum's Got A Serious Panic On mode.

"Well, what about the taxi?" she asks, walking 438mph towards she knows not where, because I'm pushing the idiot and we have to take the wheelchair routes.

"It'll wait," I grate, through teeth now ground down to fine Italian marble.

"But it might not!"

[Sigh] "It will."

"But it might not."

(Please repeat the above three sentences a hundred thrice - Ed)

5

"I NEED the toilet," declares the seated idiot, not a million miles away from Andy Pipkin, but without the humour, dress sense or physical charm.

"Right!" I bark, at both of them. "You," I say, pointing at mum, "go to the carousel and look for the bags. Don't worry, I'll get them, but I'll take him first," I continue, scowling at the useless sack of equalling scowling shit in the wheelchair before me.

And off she goes, knocking past Jamaican sprinters in her wake lest God strikes her down for being a second late to pick up a sodding suitcase from a system that, last time I remembered, worked cyclically until all were retrieved or stored for safe keeping.

One down, one to go, I thought, wheeling him towards a cripple crapper in the Terminal Two arrivals lounge.

I was starting to flag. And badly. The three weeks, and especially the first and last two days of them, were really now taking their toll.

6

I GAVE up smoking last year, but personal events earlier this year led me back into it. (Funny, actually. They say relationships can't kill you: How very, very untrue. But anyway.)

But I'm by no means a heavy smoker. It doesn't bother me if I don't have a cigarette from one day, or week, to the next, provided I'm not actually prevented from it for whatever reason (which just makes me want one more).

Right then, though, stood outside the cripple crapper, I do now need a cigarette. My father has been inside there for some fifteen minutes; I can see my mother springing up and down like Zebedee on the edges of the carousel looking for her bright red cases, complete with rainbow belts and - believe me - yellow bows "so we can recognise them". She is wild-eyed with terror that The Taxi Man (who was late taking us out there) might be annoyed we're a bit delayed.

I make a tentative knock on the toilet door.

"What?"

"You okay?"

"Bloody hell. Just hang on, will you. (Indeterminate muttering)."

Then, after another couple of minutes, the door opens, and out he walks, backwards, falling into the waiting wheelchair, steered by me.

As I turn it around to head towards our carousel, which is naturally as far away as possible from the toilet, I get a full, stomach-tippling lungful of stench from the cubicle we're leaving behind.

Whatever he'd eaten, it certainly wasn't anything nearly as nice as fish in urea or centipede's feet.

7

THERE is an eclectic, international crowd of us now, stood next to the carousel. Some people have taken their suitcases. Several - many in fact - have not.

My father is sat, slumped Hawking-like in his chair, half nodding off, when he suddenly sits up with a (nother) scowl and demands: "Where's my bag?"

I see my mum's hackles rise. Mine instantly rise with her not to rise with him because then I'll rise with both of them.

We are all, in fairness, very, very tired.

"Your bag," I say, "has not come through yet. We're still waiting. We're all-" I cast my hand around the luggage area- "still waiting."

He groans. Winces down, looking at his lap. Rubs his hands together in that particularly annoying way he does.

"Not those bags," he says. "My rucksack!"

Now let's think, I think, having been one step ahead for the best part of a month.

Oh.

Yes.

He last had it in that disabled toilet.

8

HAVING had less than three hours sleep in what is now something like 36 hours, I am doing my best impression of sprinting through the concourse of the luggage area at Manchester Airport's Terminal Two.

Sweat is dripping off me and I don't mind admitting I was wheezing a bit, too. It was all of 200 yards, after all.

On arrival at the disabled toilet, I see the door is open but a "wet floor" yellow sign is placed in the doorway. Also, balanced across the doorframe, is a mop.

Beyond it, on a shelf next to a sink, itself adjacent to the cripple crapper its very self, sits my father's sodding rucksack.

Fuck it, I think. And I go in and grab it.

As I pick it up, I get another incendiary lungful of the Devil's gruel he'd expelled minutes earlier, surely the kind of excreta that has such an enduring half-life you'd imagine nuclear science would be taking an interest.

Spluttering and gagging backwards, I half-trip over the balanced mop and thank heavens I got the bloody thing back.

Then:

"Er, excuse me - that's just been reported."

I turn.

There is a cleaner accompanied by An Official Man With Lapels.

"Yeah - it's mine," I said. "Well, it's not... I wasn't in the toilet-" I'm thinking of the smell- "it was someone else. It's his bag."

"Well we've got to repor-"

I cut them off: "Look, it's my dad, right? He's the one over there in the wheelchair? He's incontinent, I had to take him, we're rushing to get our bags, we're late for the taxi, he just forgot it."

The Official Man With Lapels said: "Oh, all right son. As long as it's yours."

"Well, it's not mine, but it is his," I said. "Over there. In the chair."

They turned and looked and saw the idiot in his chair, next to Zebedee, who was still manically bouncing up and down looking for suitcases.

"Do you want to search it?" I asked, a little desperate now, not so much about security but because the air around the terminal seemed to be turning green from the foul waft from the cubicle.

Lapels, who seemed to have picked up on the gaseous encroachment, too, replied: "No, son. No problem. But make sure you pick your bags up in t'future."

Then he winked, and walked away.

Great.

He thought I'd shat the bowels of a thousand rotting otters into a cripple crapper.

And just to put the tin-fucking-hat on, the suitcases didn't make it from Amsterdam and we had to leave Manchester without them.

* ALL this - and I haven't even included what else happened while we were there yet. More soon.

November 7, 2009

Late last year, a press release was sent out from our local council - very late in the day as is seemingly usual for anything contentious - bigging up an idea it had for the future. It announced the "fewer but better" facilities it was going provide through the provision of new facilities costing £20 million exactly, the money for which would be found in "savings" brought by, er, closing the existing facilities.

They just didn't mention which facilities, though. Not in that press release, anyway. And of course, locally, we now know why.

Because nowhere on this press release was there any mention of the closure of what was going to be thirteen libraries - and the possible relocation of a further one - out of Wirral's existing 24.

Nowhere.

Call me cynical - many do - but in the words of that press release I instantly suspected the cold hand of someone equally cynically hoping - or assuming - we wouldn't spot the real message behind the leaden words of hope.

Because of massive local (and indeed national) opposition - around 60,000 people signed petitions in protest, which (without checking) is probably more than vote in local elections - the Government was forced to step in.

The libraries were saved, albeit temporarily, while a local inquiry, headed by a Government inspector, was held to investigate how the council had gone about its business.

The report into the results of that inquiry remain a mystery, although this correspondent is given to believe that it doesn't exactly say Wirral Council, in regards to its libraries review, is a beacon of local government administrative brilliance.

But then I haven't actually seen the report - yet.

Other people certainly have, though.

You can read my article about the latest turn of events here.

But if you can't be bothered, I'll summarise.

On Tuesday, September 29 this year, the Government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport contacted Wirral Council to say a decision on the library closures was "70 per cent likely" to be made public two days later on Thursday, October 1.

That same night, through and past midnight, senior councillors gathered in the town hall on the banks of the Mersey for a meeting. It's probably accurate to say this was not for a game of Twister.

On hand nearby, coincidentally, were senior civil servants hanging around the town hall at the witching hour, as you do. They happened to include the man who'd put his name to the library closures proposal in the first place and the spin doctor who'd not mentioned them in the "fewer but better" press release they had approved.

The following day, September 30, word got to us in the media that the council's administration was saying something about the libraries. After 5pm, of course, but that's how it works these days.

The libraries were staying open.

Nothing to do with whatever the DCMS was going to say the next day, of course (although we have only literally just now learned that the DCMS was planning to go public that day) but all to do with budgetary management.

So trebles all round. Libraries are open, the people are happy, budgets are being met, and more importantly than anything else, no one was embarrassingly forced into anything and - exceptionally so - it's no one's fault.

Like my headline says, it's just all an amazing coincidence.

November 6, 2009

Felicide, noun
Killing of a cat

"So the person we're looking for," hushed Nipper, with a stroke of his imaginary moustache, "is almost certainly called Mr Curiosity."

He was fired, immediately.

November 5, 2009

Rhigosis, noun
Sensation of cold; ability to feel cold

"Brrrrrrrrr," shivered Nipper, ruffling his feathers.

November 4, 2009

If you'd fallen out with someone, rather badly, after doing something very, very stupid, how would you try to attempt to retrieve the situation some many months later?

Would you:

1) Send a tentative text, or email?

2) Make an actual phone call, perhaps beginning with the words: "Look, I know it's been ages, but...?"

3) Put a note through the letter box?

4) Just not bother. Sometimes, there are wrongs that can't be put right, and you have to take the blame.

5) Turn up at someone's shared house while the person they want to see is still out at work - working late, in fact, so probably just wants to put his feet up when he gets back - embarrass a housemate into allowing them to stay, smoke their cigarettes, drink their wine, then go out to replenish the devoured nicotine and booze and return with a bottle, a packet of fags, and a five course Chinese takeaway that you proceed to eat in front of your utterly bemused host?

Thank fuck the dog bit him.

Unbelieveable.

November 4, 2009

Hebephrenia, noun
Form of dementia occurring at puberty

"There's another name for it, too, isn't there?" asked Nipper.

"There is indeed," said Zeds. "Women."

November 3, 2009

Janitrix, noun
A female janitor

"Do you reckon she has a dirty tunic, odd eyes, a creepy manner, a selection of wide floor brooms and a penchant for hanging around in the boiler room, though?" wondered Nipper.

"I honestly have no idea," replied Zeds.

November 2, 2009

Hilarious blog taking the piss out of local newspapers.

Brilliant.

November 2, 2009

Garçonniere, noun
Bachelor apartment

"And what do you eat?" asked Zeds.

"Soup, of course," said Nipper.

November 1, 2009

I've been noticing a few Feedjit hits from Thailand of late - turns out it's an old friend and fellow nutcase ex-pat still living out there who'd been passed my link by yet another lunatic who has also featured on these pages.

Steve is the guy who let me sleep on his pool table when I had nothing else. Top geezer. Although I think his wife now wants to kill me. Check out his blog here.

November 1, 2009

Nesiote, verb
Living on an island

"Are you?" asked Nipper.

"Yes," said Zeds. "Pretty much always."

October 31, 2009

Abature, noun
Trail through wood beaten down by a stag

Zeds was distinctly unimpressed.

"Look," he said, as Nipper was carted off out of the bar towards the police car. "Just ask people to get out of the way in future."

October 31, 2009

1

IT'S REMARKABLY easy to define how unhappy you can be, yet seemingly almost impossible to accurately describe your joy, your contentment, that time you reach your goal. Someone recently asked what "joy" was, and I answered something about seeing someone you love fast asleep next to you with a smile on their face (which is indeed joyful, I reckon). But it was a passing, fleeting remark. Meant well, but not really considered.

Joy, to me, is really about being a glutton: Eating up and savouring every possible experience available, and then some. Forcing life down your gullet, using your stomach to digest, your bowels to eject, your throat to throw out, your pores to ooze, your hair to sweat, your nails to grow, scratch and break. Life is nothing without actually living: It's empty without challenge; stagnant without fear.

Chumbawumba had a point: You get knocked down - but you do get up again.

2

THE TEARS weren't mine, and they weren't unhappy ones, either. Maudlin, perhaps, but then Pen was allowed maudlin tears. Our deep and close connection was down to a former best friend of mine - and a former lover of hers - Keith, now passed, that makes our occasional and unexpected meetings so tinged with sadness; silver with a clouded lining.

We'd bumped into each other on Lamai Beach Road as I was heading towards my parents' bungalow hours before the horrors occurred: I'd recognised the legs from behind. But though long and lithe, and very, very pretty, Pen is anything but the bar girl. She manages one, sure; she serves drinks, too; and her latest paramour is also a farang.

But when I gasped her name - I thought she would have been hundreds of miles north of Samui with her family in Ubon - she delicately turned, said my name, ran straight at me, almost knocked me over, told me how lovely it was to see me, and promptly burst into tears.

That's the thing about Keith, you see: No one I know, or at least see, any more, knows how much I miss my friend. But Pen does. Pen, a girl on an island 6,000 miles from where I write this. It's like we've got secret tattoos of grief that only each other can see. He was the most maddening, stubborn, strong, courageous, reckless, generous motherfucker, and now he's gone, succumbed to a heart attack aged 34.

Like I said, though: They weren't unhappy tears. In every drop of moisture winding down Pen's face was a liquid memory of happiness, laughter, and, yes, joy: Keith had eaten life like it was the last meal on earth. I treasure Pen's happy tears as much as the memories of where they came from.

3

A FEW hours later, I am sat in the back of her now closed bar with my trousers around my ankles. We are not alone. With us are three scantily-clad bargirls. All four women are glistening in the darkness, the wetness of their skin catching the distant moonlight peeping in from the front.

They are wet, because they are covered in ointment. Ointment they are insisting on kneading into my battered knee and thigh, up and down and seemingly into my throbbing calf. I have still not yet been in Thailand for 24 hours, and I'm being manhandled by four remotely-moist women with my trousers at my feet bearing injuries my drunkenness was dreading on giving in to.

"Dut Tin," said Pen. "Why you always make trouble for you?" She jabbed a finger into my chest. "Always you find trouble! Why?"

Good point, I thought, if a little preoccupied by the beating and the death threat I'd just received.

Still. When the ointment was all rubbed in, and the girls had pulled my trousers back up, I was steered out of the back entrance of the bar into a darkened, quiet alley. My chest was pounding, my head throbbing, my leg booming, and my knee shrieking. My nose wasn't feeling too clever, either, and I looked like shit.

Ouy (pronounced "Oi!"), as it transpired to be her name, was out there already, kickstarting a motorbike. I looked back at Pen, who said: "You must to stay safe tonight. Ouy take you."

I didn't even know this girl, though - despite our recent leg massage experience. With Pen's help, I hobbled towards the bike.

"Come," said Ouy.

Oh. I see. Well, if you're going to put it like that...

"I call you Alek," she said, with a smile. And off we whirred, into the hot night, no helmets or harnesses, the wind whipping around our ears.

I was battered and bruised, shaken and upset, but drunk enough to take the whole thing on board. The rushing air was warm, and as we peeled off towards the south end of Lamai, skipping past soup carts, wanton ladyboys, the ping-pong noise of the 7/11 door, I glanced left and right to see my various refuges of six years before.

It seems a little strange, looking back, but that was when I finally started to smile a little.

I needed some noodle soup. I was finally at home.

* More to follow.

October 30, 2009

I have just had possibly the greatest conversation with a PR person I have ever had, or ever will.

His voice was full of trembling concern.

We'd carried, on September 25, while I was getting battered on foreign shores, a preview piece about a panto this winter.

For some reason, Snow White And The Seven Dwarves are this year being accompanied by a creature that adorns boxes of wee smell-changing breakfast cereal up and down the land.

You know, that monster that likes honey...

The PR person, who sounded like he very possibly put the sugar into puffs, is massively concerned about the images here.

Because the monster of honey is "naked", you see.

And children might see it.

And get upset.

I kid you not.

They're protecting their brand. Even though passing generations across continents of nations famously refer to the nutty, wheat-like aroma that their piss takes on once they've eaten it.

Of course I don't mind changing the picture.

But not absolutely straight away, eh ?

October 30, 2009

Jesus. They're flying in today.

Dear Editor,

As Remembrance Day approaches, it is important not only to remember the human victims of wartime, but also the animals who have been used for detection, scouting and rescue, as messengers, as beasts of burden and on the frontline. Vast numbers of animals – in farms and zoos, for instance – continue to be innocent bystander victims when conflicts start. Meanwhile, in secret UK Ministry of Defence Research laboratories, thousands suffer and die each year when they are infected with biological or chemical agents, or deliberately shot or otherwise damaged. To commemorate all the animal victims, Animal Aid has issued a purple poppy, which can be worn alongside the traditional red one, as a reminder that both humans and animals have been – and continue to be – victims of war. The purple poppies cost £1 each (including postage and packing) and are available from www.animalaid.org.uk or by calling 01732 364546. A free copy of Animal Aid’s colour booklet, Animals: the hidden victims of war, accompanies each order.

Yours faithfully

Kelly Slade
Campaigns Officer

Tel: 01732 364546
Web: www.animalaid.org.uk
Animal Aid, The Old Chapel, Bradford Street, Tonbridge, Kent, TN9 1AW

Woof!

October 30, 2009

"North West marketers poorly paid," reads the headline on a press release that is presumably meant to make me weep for the lowly, but in fact makes me want to bite trees.

"The Chartered Institute of Marketing’s latest marketing salary survey, conducted by Croner Reward, reveals that pay for marketers in the North West is well below the national average. The survey found that the average basic pay for all marketers in the North West is £30,000 per annum – 5.1% below the national average.

"Basic pay for marketing managers stands at £42,000 on average, 2.3% below the national average, and less than those performing the same role in London, who can expect to earn £44,000.

"However, at the most senior levels pay remains competitive. A head of marketing in the North West earns a basic salary of £58,334, whilst a marketing director earns £76,750 – both slightly above the national average for these roles.

"Across the UK as a whole, the survey revealed that average pay for marketers increased by 3.3% over the past year, and is forecast to rise by 3% in the year ahead.

"The survey also highlighted the importance of professional qualifications and membership. Both senior and junior marketing managers who are members of The Chartered Institute of Marketing are paid more than non-members at these levels – between 2% and 12% more.

"David Thorp, director of research and professional development at The Chartered Institute of Marketing, said: 'Marketers in the North West had better ensure they reach senior positions quickly if they want to achieve the pay levels seen elsewhere in the UK. One way of doing so is to become professionally qualified, which as the survey indicates, results in higher salaries. In what promises to be a continuing challenging business environment over the next few years, employing qualified marketing professionals, who will undoubtedly help their organisations thrive and survive, will prove to be money very well invested.'"

Pass the mallet, vicar. I have to go out for a while.

October 30, 2009

Facetiae, adj
Term for books of inappropriate or lewd nature

Nipper looked gloomily down at the black and white mess that he'd unexpectedly made of his stained blue velvet pantaloons.

"How's it going?" asked Zeds.

"Shit," said the buzzard.

October 30, 2009

With the absolute and thankful creativity afforded by Landers - and I assume the equally lovely Brad takes a part in this, through patience if nothing else - I'm back.

Paddy? You do realise my mum's in with love you now, right?

More Words of the Day, loads more Thai Tales; loads more funnies - all true.

But thanks to Landers and Scoobs - and readers waiting - for being so very kind, and so very patient, and so very caring, frankly..

Let's kick arse tomorrow, eh? And get that sodding book finished.

You've all been so supportive. I hope I can I maintain that good feeling.

Thanks for your encouragement so far.

Justin x

October 17, 2009

1

BARBECUES are a man thing, at least to the men who gather around the burgeoning flames. We really can't help it. See flames? Must gather more wood. Find more meat. Burn more flesh. Build the bonfire as high and as hot as we can. The end result is never the point, of course - it's the getting there that counts. The hunt. The chase. The fire. The flames. The burn, the fight, the pure machismo of hunter-gathering, flames and food. And smashing things to bits in the process.

And we take these prehistoric genes ever onwards. Like any man, I like holding a hammer. Not because I have the faintest idea what to do with one; I just like the solid, heavy, damaging feel in my hands. It makes me want to break things. Axes, too. They're the same. Let's hit, damage, bruise, break, chop, crack, wither, defeat.

Man always takes this action to the things, animal or mineral, that can't, or most probably can't, win.

But unlike the average animal, man is far more fallible to his own kind, because that testy little thing called emotion comes into it, too.

What follows is how I got kicked in by someone I have admired to a ridiculous degree for a good six years, and how it has, largely, ruined everything I ever felt about a place I genuinely thought of as a balm for a troubled soul.

2

I LEFT Odd and his family to wander along the beach, Lamai Beach, to meet up with another friend, an English teacher, who was out with her friends, colleagues, from the frankly marvellous school she has created, with assistance, out there.

When I first saw this school in 2003, there were about 40 pupils. Now there are well over 100, and a new building has just been completed to accommodate the pioneering autism project she'd pushed and pushed and pushed to have. Her accomplishment makes me enormously proud for two reasons: My best friends have a son who is within the autistic spectrum, and I know what tremendous challenges that brings and continues to bring (the lad is marvellous, by the way); and that she'd battled through language, and endeavour, and sheer bloody-mindedness, to achieve the nigh-on impossible in a place where money and money-led opportunity was overthrown by her persuasion and, ultimately, genuine heart-felt care.

So, now after about 40 hours of almost no sleep, but with a desire to see the people I cared about most in Samui, I wander along the beach, admittedly quite pissed, to see my friend, who eventually returned my call after she'd returned from a trip out out to another close-lying island for a colleague's birthday.

I was probably fun for about an hour. I know I made people laugh with tales of derring-do. I know that I then slipped into outrageous "I once interviewed a man who shagged a goat" stories, which probably weren't appropriate for some of the mothers of the young teachers whose mothers were out visiting, and sitting with us, and sipping the cocktails I'd bought.

Still: This is me, eh?

But then: "Hello, Dut-Tin."

It is the ex-(Thai)-boyfriend, who I will call X, of my friend, Y, who has appeared on the edge of the beach. He's also an old friend, a friend who used to take care of me once upon a time.

"Hi," I say, a little awkwardly, because I am sat with his old girlfriend - who is merely just my mate.

I hear nothing more from him. Must have gone home.

3

THE GIRLS - and boys - from the school, were finished. They'd been on the lash for a birthday party all day and night. They had a new school term to prepare for in three days' time. I'd sunk them into the floor with cocktails. And I was leathered.

Time to go home, then.

Or maybe, just wander back down to the beach to see Odd for a nightcap. It was around 1.30am. Officially been up for 48 hours, bar the odd nap. I was smashed. But I was happy. I was back in Samui. I was back on the beach where I felt safe. I was amongst friends.

I'd been feeling so unhappy for so long after my last girlfriend, I was genuinely elated to feel the heat, smell the Samui smells, feel the breeze from the sea that was so familiar, follow the same undulating path along the sands, I really felt like I was at home again, walking up to Odd's.

He ran down to the bar towards me, and I opened my arms for the embrace that only Odd can give.

Then he punched me, really punched me, square on the chin, reeling me backwards, knocking me out.

4

I WAS out for seconds.

Odd was standing over me.

He didn't speak, at first.

Bewildered, I sat there. What the fuck?

Then he kicked me. Hard.

And I mean hard. This is no small nor agile man.

He kicked at my thigh with a flat, arched, foot, muay thai (kick boxing) style.

I cried out. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

But he carried on. Spittle flecking from his mouth. Kick, crunch, slap, smack, punch.

"X say you write shit about me on internet!" he screams, as his agonisingly powerful feet first go into my face, knocking off my glasses and bleeding my nose, my shades - in my short pocket - following suit into the sand. "You write shit!"

I'm rolling, groaning. Trying to speak. Why would he think this? I have only ever adored and admired this man? Why is he hitting-

"I kill you, Dut-Tin. I KILL YOU. Now fuck OFF.!"

Then he stamps and stomps upon my left left knee and thigh, pummelling it into what is now a very hard, concrete-like sand.

"FUCK OFF, Dut-tin," he screams, as I run away, crying, along the sand. "X say I kill you. You lucky I not kill you now,. Fuck! Fuck you! Bastard.! Pah," and then he spat, towards me, as I gathered my shoes, left my glasses, and ran away, into a past I thought I'd left well behind.

This wasn't turning out to be the first day back in Samui I expected.

Anything fucking but.

And the thing is, I have never written anything but absolute praise and admiration about Odd, as all Thai Tales readers know.

No. I was simply caught in the crossfire, a crossfire of which is someone else's story, and not mine to tell. Not at all.

* More follows.