June 21, 2009

1

IT CAN'T be much fun being ginger haired and fair skinned in the blistering heat of the tropics. And it certainly wasn't for Al, a bloke from Runcorn whose decision-making, organisation and attempts at self-preservation actually made me look good.

Like many, many others, myself included, Al had found himself out of cash and in danger in Thailand. He claimed at first that he was waiting on a mysterious insurance payout from some lost luggage, but it didn't really wash. And nor did he. He spent his days cooped up in a first floor apartment just up the road from Coco Bar, smoking cigarettes, watching TV, and begging his pregnant bar girl girlfriend for a few baht to buy Chang beer.

I arrived in Samui in November. Al had been there since April. He'd run out of money in May. But somehow, he was still getting propped up on the promise of his "insurance money". In the evenings, after sundown at 6.15, he'd skulk out of the apartment for his daily wander, in a dirty polo shit with its collars up, his pink, fluff-covered arms hanging down like an albino orang utan, long shorts, trainers with no socks.

Sao, the owner of Coco Bar, would inevitably screech something at him, which he would ruefully acknowledge with a half-smile while pointing towards the email bureau, as though indicating that once he'd logged on, found how much and where his money now was, he would come to pay his £600 bar bill.

Inevitably, and as always, he walked straight past the email bureau and down the street, back slightly stooped, hoping upon all hope that someone, somewhere, would take a little pity on him and buy him a beer.

And normally, though quite extraordinarily, for this was no raconteur or sparkling wit, someone would.

2

AROUND eleven one morning, as Keith sat drinking Heineken in the bar, sniggering to himself as he watched me tend to customers and collect fruit juice glasses, a mountain of a man diverted from his stroll down the beach and walked into the bar.

Joe was an American, built like an athlete, with a mane of hair, and glasses. The moment he opened his mouth, I knew I was going to hate him. It took a good ten minutes to prove I was completely wrong.

He'd spotted our advertising for tickets to the Full Moon Party on the neighbouring island of Koh Pha Ngan, due two days later. He bought a bottle of water and sat with Keith. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, he now earned a crust as a carpenter in Hawaii.

What made him leave the mainland? "Oh, man, it's a shithole," he said. And friendship was assured.

3

AL BEGAN to start making 'surprise' visits to the beach, where his best friend in the world turned out to be our lunatic business rival, Kum, he of the running machete games. In return for running the odd errand, or a bit of waiting on for the non-existent customers at this ice-box of a bar, Kum would give the poor sap a Chang or two. Then Al would come to me "for a chat", which would involve more woe is me, more my money is on its way, and more of me saying I wouldn't give my boss's beer away.

The owner of the apartment he was living in, a local politician - and read into that what you will - offered Al a job to help him pay his way. It was painting the outside of some bungalows that needed, literally, a fresh lick of paint. Al took this as an oracle; a sign of better things to come. But no one else did. We just knew what would happen.

4

JOE and Keith were playing pool in Coco Bar, alternatively handing each other 1,000 baht notes (about thirteen quid). They were howling drunk, and, thanks to them - and thanks to Auy, my boss, who'd given me the night off, so was I.

Joe kept slamming his powerful hand down onto the table to crush a mosquito, which he would then pick up and eat, just to appal me and the locals. He and Keith would take turns selecting whichever song they wanted on the stereo - both adored the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - and then they'd have chasers with their beers, me included.

Then Al walked in - after noting from the street that Sao was elsewhere.

Keith, as Keith would, bought him a beer. Joe challenged him to a game of pool. Al explained he had no money. Joe said: "No problem."

So they played, and Al began to talk.

5

WE'RE in Chaweng - the main tourist town, north of Lamai. It's me, Joe, and a Swiss girl regular from my bar, who had, it seemed, taken up with Joe - the only man on the island who hadn't given so much as a sidewards glance to the locals. Amusingly, I am in the role of a bar girl - Joe has "bought" me out of the bar for the night, then stuffed 2,000 baht in my pocket, and declared we were all going to have fun.

Which we most certainly did.

With each passing moment I spent in the man's company, the more I realised what an absolute arse I was to assume an American would be, well, what I assumed they would be. This man was a gem, with a heart presumably bursting at the edges of his carpenter's torso. Kind, but wise - and blunt - too.

"You're a jerk," he'd said, before walking out of Coco Bar, disgusted, after Al had told him how he'd walked from his painting job after two days because "it was too hot", but that it was okay because his pregnant girlfriend was still serving drinks somewhere down the road.

6

AL HAD stubbornly refused to speak to his family in over a year, but even he realised the game was soon to be up.

Joe by now was long gone, but he'd left a couple of legacies: Some fine memories, a salutory, if brief, lesson for Al, and in my case, a Thai mobile phone with credit already pumped in. "Hey," he'd said, when I tried - honestly - to refuse, "I'm not going to need it now, am I?" Sylvie, the Swiss girl, almost melted.

I offered the phone immediately to Al - to ring his family. (It had taken wiser owls than me to make me get in touch with mine). But he refused. I tried this for weeks, but instead he'd just carry on sloping around the resort after dark, eyes down, back arched, feeling very sorry for himself indeed.

Then came the big day. His baby was born. Alexander - coincidentally my middle name - was blessed with the looks of his mother, Taa (beautiful eyes). Something inside Al cracked. He emailed his sister. She phoned his parents. Furious at his absence, joyous that he was still alive, astounded that they were now grandparents, they sent him some money - for Alex, Taa, and for himself to get sorted out.

7

"WHAT the fuck is that?" asked Keith, quite incredulously.

Al was sat at the end of Coco Bar, drinking a bottle of Chang, his considerable slate clean now, and in apparently quite a few other places, too. He was extraordinarily drunk, and it was only around 7pm.

Alex had been born the day before.

"Come on, wet the baby's 'ed," he said, in his weird Runcorn semi-scouse twang.

"Hang on," said Keith. "We fucking did that yesterday. What's that?"

The inside of Al's pink and fluffy right arm was, like so many footballers you see today, imprinted with a long, large and elaborate tattoo. "It says Alexander," said Al, self-righteously, glugging again on the bottle.

"Oh right," said Keith, "how much?"

"Three thousand baht (around 40 quid)," said Al.

"Fucking brilliant, mate," snarled a disgusted Keith, just before he got up and left. "Bought any fucking nappies yet?"

8

AL WAS still there when I left Samui, although Taa had left with the baby to return to her parents on the mainland in Surat Thani. She'd given up on him, and who could blame her.

He got one more bail out, and used that to get as far as Bangkok from where he was meant to fly home. That was four years ago. He was last seen begging on one of the many flyovers along Sukhumvit, one of the main thoroughfares in the Thai capital.

I can't ever listen to Paul Simon's "Call Me Al" without him springing to mind.

And on Father's Day, I can't also else help angrily remembering what a useless bloody father he was, too.