Fantasising

I heard that it was a nice day over in northern England yesterday. If I had been there I might have driven down to the Linacre Reservoirs just west of Chesterfield. I used to love that little parcel of countryside sandwiched between A roads on the eastern edge of the Peak District. It's almost a forgotten land where hikers and other outside visitors rarely venture though it's treasured by local residents. And if I had been there, I imagine that I might have taken photographs like these:-

Bluebell time in Linacre Wood

Cobnar Wood from Furnace Lane, Barlow

Birley Farm under a grey cloud

Bagthorpe farmhouse

Wigley Primary School

Linacre - the lower reservoir

Old Brampton - the church lych gate

Oh to be in England in the merry month of May. I shall see if I can teach some of the redundant Burmese workers to join me in a spot of morris dancing down on the beach before I go up to Aotearoa Villa to see how Katherine's getting on.

McGill

Donald McGill (1875 - 1962) brightened many holidaymakers' lives with his famous saucy seaside postcards. There's now a blue plaque on the house where he used to live in Blackheath, London. It's amazing to think that in the fifties, his mischievous artistry was frowned upon by the authorities to such a degree that he faced censorship, legal retribution and occasionally stocks of his saucy cards were confiscated during police raids. I understand that the weather over in Great Britain has been  rather miserable the last couple of weeks so here are a few McGill cards to cheer you all up. Meanwhile, I'll be swinging from the jungle jim rope I've set up over a natural pool in the nearby tropical clearing - "Geronimo!"

Boris

Buffoon

News has just filtered through to Blogland that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has been re-elected as the Mayor of London. This merely confirms my view that most (voting) Londoners are numbskulls. I mean, how could they possibly elect a privileged oaf like Boris Johnson - whose trains of thought on just about any subject zigzag madly like random patterns on an "Etch-a-Sketch" screen? The guy is, as my old nana might have said, three sandwiches short of a picnic.

Fortunately, canny Sheffielders rejected the very idea of an elected mayor in Thursday's local government elections in which the pompous out-of-touch Tories were given a sound thrashing. I believe that mophead Johnson would also have been sent packing if it were not for the fact that his main mayoral opponent was the salamander-like and self-important Ken Livingstone. Livingstone put himself before his party and is to blame for Johnson being granted another four years of wanton buffoonery.

American born "Boris" is prone to gaffes and indiscretions. As a ham-fisted journalist he was happy to make stuff up and elaborate articles with falsified quotations. He has also ignorantly slighted entire countries, cities and races of people. Speaking of quotations - here are just a few from the mad world of Toryboy "Boris":-

This is what he once said about the proud southern naval city of Portsmouth:-
“Here we are in one of the most depressed towns in southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs.”


And this was "Boris" before the 2005 election:-
"Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."


Here he is talking about Tory leadership struggles:-
"For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing.”

And here are the stupid names of his privileged children - Lara Letiice, Cassia Peaches, Theodore Apollo and Milo Arthur. I mean, really! And yet...and yet... "Boris" is seen as a likeable eccentric in many quarters - bringing colour to the suited and dour world of politics. Be that as it may he is not welcome in Blogland. He hasn't got a cat in hell's chance of being granted an entry visa. Speaking of cats, as far as I am concerned, the only Boris that ever mattered to me was our lovely Boris, the real Boris who disappeared from our lives almost four years ago:-

The real Boris disappeared in June 2008

Katherine

Me

Oh jubilation! Oh joy! I am no longer alone in Blogland! Okay there were always the Burmese servants but to me they have sometimes seemed like aliens from another planet. Most of them don't speak English and I am sure they view me like a feudal lord. So, imagine my delight when the tiny black speck I had seen on the horizon drew closer across the turquoise sea so that after an hour I realised it was a woman in a canoe. And not only a woman in a canoe but one I had met before - Katherine de Chevalle, the well-known New Zealand artist and muffin baker.

I waited on the beach and Katherine snapped me with her i-phone. Please don't think I'm turning into a transvestite - the traditional blue sarong simply makes for practical beach wear - especially when one's lilac speedos are dripping on the washing line.

She was in a pretty sorry state - emaciated and thirsty. When she climbed out of her dugout canoe, she was staggering, as if her thin kiwi-like legs couldn't support her so I acted as her crutch and guided her off the beach and along the palm path to the social club where she downed three pints of Tetley's bitter in a row as she told me of the difficulties she had faced just getting to Blogland. An incredible journey.

Katherine at Aotearoa Villa

I am sure you will agree that she deserves a medal, so before guiding her to her new home - Aotearoa Villa -  I rushed back to my place to see what I had in my jewellery chest. It's where I keep my medallions, gold sovereign rings and gold piercing rings and studs. And there I spotted a nice piece of bling I once bought in Harlem, New York City. This would surely do nicely for Katherine - to mark her unexpected but joyous arrival in Blogland.

So back at Aotearoa Villa, I presented her with the special medallion. She grinned inanely with gratitude. I think the heatstroke and  the Tetley's "fix" was getting to her by now. All she wanted to do was climb into her hammock and sleep. I promised I'd come back to see her this evening. I cannot tell you how happy I am to know that I am no longer alone in Blogland. May I say that rumours of infidelity and lust already put about by Mr Brague and Waltzing Helen are completely unfounded. Based on their own unsavoury urges, they may find it hard to believe but a man and a woman certainly can be "just good friends".

Exposed

That's our Ian on the right. The men's clothing store he works for just won the prize for "Best Men's Fashion Shop" (2012) in South Yorkshire at the "Exposed" magazine awards. 

He's worked at "Sa-kis" for seven years but I'm not sure how much longer he'll be there. His girlfriend, Ruby, is just graduating from St Andrew's University and she's keen to move down to London  to work in a media-based company. It looks as though Ian will go with her. Sometimes in life you have to stop weighing things up and just go for it.

Shirley and I  are very lucky to have two such wonderful children. They are both decent, hard-working and kind. They love life and the treasures that it has to offer.

Frances has been in Leeds for nine months now, learning what it is to be a recruitment consultant in a high pressure company with ambitious targets. She's been renting a little one bedroom flat next to the River Aire but may soon be moving into a much bigger Leeds flat with Alex - one of Ian's former school friends. It should save her a good bit of money each month.

I miss both of them terribly and hope one day they will come over to Blogland to see their old man.

Clams

Between Jenny and Keith's homely cottage and Earl John Gray's sprawling Dallas-like ranch property, there is a lovely little beach where I often lounge in the palm shadows reading novels I ought to have read years ago like "Agnes Gray", "The Mill on the Floss" and "Poor Little Bitch Girl". When getting overheated I simply cool off in the bay. Today I swam out to the rocks just offshore where I gathered dozens of lovely fresh Andaman clams. Having no bag to carry them in, I had to stuff them into my lilac speedos before swimming back to the beach.

There I made a fire in the little barbecue pit and jogged up the hill to raid Jenny and Keith's fridge and cupboards. I needed a nice bottle of  Villard Noir (2006),  butter, salt and pepper, fresh herbs, a couple of lemons and of course a plate. Just like Elvis Presley I was getting excited about a "Clambake". It didn't take me long to prepare a mouthwatering dish of barbecued clams in a fresh herb butter and citrus sauce. Two of the under-worked kitchen girls from the social club happened to arrive on the beach for their afternoon dip so I shared my delicious clams with them.

Later I taught them how to sing "On Ilkley Moor Bah' Tat". They kept giggling and they just couldn't get the Yorkshire accent right so after a while I just clammed up.

This is a perfect appetizer, cocktail tidbit or snack. Grilling clams is quick to do while chatting with guests. Served topped with a light, refreshing herb and citrus sauce, there is nothing more elegant or easy to do. These clams would be a wonderful way to end an afternoon’s reading of one of the books of the sea, or a delicious reward to oneself after swimming with dolphins.. 
(Extract from Traditional Recipes from Blogland  by Yorkshire Pudding)

Fifteen

Yesterday, as I trudged along the sandy track to our social club in sticky forty degree heat, I found my imagination wandering back to my beloved Peak District hills. I pictured myself rambling about the Goyt Valley to the north west of Buxton in the High Peak - a breeze buffeting me beneath a moving sky. And I imagined these scenes - snapshots from my picture library. Walk number fifteen:-

The Spanish Shrine, Errwood Estate

View from Shining Tor to the Cat & Fiddle road

Signpost at Pym Chair

Tumbledown moorland wall and view to Goyt's Moss

View of Errwood Reservoir from Goyt's Lane

Slightly homesick, what could I do? There were supposed to be wild parties in this social club with Bob Brague standing on the bar guzzling yards of ale with the rest of us clapping and cheering. Earl John Gray crooning endless Matt Cardle numbers on the microphone. Jan Blawat performing the hula hula dance she learnt in Hawaii. Jenny in her zebra print bikini doing her Paul Daniels magic tricks and Libby lapdancing in front of  the lascivious Arctic Fox and slavering Shooting Parrots as Lord Mick of Bristol regalled us all with tales of military life and pipe smoking. Helen and Katherine would be by the pool giving quilting and art lessons respectively while simultaneously topping up their tans and comparing the virtues of their antipodean homelands. Maudlin, I guzzled five pints of Tetley's bitter and watched edited highlights of the Manchester derby match - Manchester Ferraris versus Manchester Lamborghinis. Oh, it's a hard life!

Banned

Captain Brett's right arm

From time to time, you see yachts drifting about the Andaman Sea. Sometimes I go to The Headland and wave my Hull City first team shirt above my head hoping to attract attention. Perhaps it will be Katherine, Mick, Libby or some other blogger who has finally made it to our brave new world. Invariably, the sailboats just drift past and I trudge back miserably to my idyllic but lonely new lifestyle.

I caught some of  "Match of the Day" on my computer this morning and apart from the football, one thing I noticed was the growing number of players whose arms are now adorned with tattoos. What  the hell do these unthinking sheep think they're doing graffitiing their bodies indelibly like this? How will the tattoos look when their grandchildren visit them in their old people's rest homes? And what is it about these horrible, ugly markings that they like?

Co-incidentally, later in the morning, a luxury yacht anchored at our wharf. Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song" was blasting out of the boat's sound system. I went over to see what was happening. It was a bunch of arrogant, wealthy Canadians guzzling "Molson" beer. They thought they were still in Burmese waters and could pull up anchor where ever they like. The "skipper" hopped on to one of the wooden walkways and introduced himself as "Brett". I noticed that one of his arms was covered with ugly tattoos (see photo above). 

It was there and then that I made a unilateral legal decision on behalf of all absent citizens of Blogland - that henceforth it will be unlawful for any residents of Blogland or foreign visitors to step upon our shores with visible tattoos. Anyone found revealing tattoos will be subject to the full weight of the law and will risk immediate deportation. May I suggest therefore that any tattooed bloggers still intent on joining me over here should apply for laser removal as soon as possible.

The Canadian Yacht -   The Jolly Lumberjack

Mick

Who is that? Is it the "Milk Tray" man? Is it a senior member of the paparazzi or a Tory MP at a show jumping event? No. It's none of those, it's Lord Mick of Bristol, blogger extraordinaire, grandfather, Popeye impersonator and all round good egg. Even better is the fact that he's just sent me a cheque for seventy four guineas in order to secure a guest spot in this former Yorkshire blog - now transferred to Blogland. For seventy four guineas you too can have a guest blogpost published here - free to all Yorkshire bloggers but double for French bloggers and Lancastrians. 

Why was Mick so keen to appear here? Well, he wanted to tell his story about how he was thwarted in his determined efforts to get to Blogland and how he still plans to get here. You can take the man out of the army but you can't take the army out of the man...

I arrived at Manchester Airport and reported to the Reception as instructed only to find they had no knowledge of me or any tickets to fly to Blogland , I asked them to check and check again only to be told by a very unhelpful receptionist no airline tickets for me or any other come to that, funny that I thought !!!!, I asked to see the Airline manager and explained to him that  YP had reserved them a few days before, the manager went off and on his return confirmed what the receptionist had said “NO  TICKET” or reservation had been made.

I toured around the other Manchester’s Airport Airline reception desks and told exactly the same, NO TICKET or reservation, eventually the Airports security staff arrived, two rather large foreign gentlemen gentle they were not and roughly manhandled me outside.

I reversed charged telephone call to daughter No 1 and explained the circumstances and she said she would come up the next day in one of her vans and collect me and I could stay with her until I made other arrangements.   No problem there.

Fast forward one week.

I contacted [e-mailed] one of my old Army mates who when he retired bought into a 40-M class A  square sail rigged ship and for the last thirty years or so has been operating a trading company in the Far East going around the various island in the Pacific  shipping small cargo items along with training crews in seamanship with some holiday tourists.    I received an e-mail reply and he told me he would be back in the UK for a refit and have ‘Her‘ in dry dock for a bottom scrape.   I met him last week and I know people say when they haven’t seen someone for years they don’t look any different - true, he’s still the dashing [although I did see some grey hair there] Bronze Atlas looking 6-foot man also I had the pleasure to met his wife as well and for me they’re like ‘peas in a pod‘ ideally suited, a fantastic couple.

I explained my circumstances about my wanting to escape to Blogland, wanting rid of all the corruption and the nauseating trappings of this so called modern way of life with all its  negative  rules and regulations  

I suggested that on his next trading commission to the Far East I could accompany him working my passage as part of the crew.  I am a certificated Sailing Ship deckhand having gained my experience in training on a three master albeit some 50-years ago - [true] but I explained because of age the days of swinging through the rigging with the freshening breeze in my hair and a shanty on my lips have long since gone perhaps it would be better me just working on the deck.    Skipper Tinsel - [Don’t ask me how he got that name I don’t know] offered a ‘Galley Cooks ‘position together with being the ships radio operator and helping the ships carpenter should the need arise, he mentioned I would have to keep the ‘Ship’s Bell’ polished, its a tradition the galley staff have to do - [I’ll bet a lot people didn’t know that?].   I immediately signed on.

Image supplied by Mick

Missing out on the Air ticket has been a blessing in disguise no longer limited by a weight limit I am now able to transport some items I would otherwise have had to leave behind, my carpentry tools, cooking utensils, camera equipment and a small library of books.

I’m making arrangements with an agent in Singapore  to collect some live stock, chickens, pigs and a collection of various tools when we dock at Singapore a for a three days lay up.

We set sail on June the first, sail out of Southampton and make passage to our first port of call to pick up a  French cargo - [I believe it to be 4-tons of metaliferous ore].   then onto Brest, a 1-day layup, take on fresh provisions for the expected route through the Bay to Santander, Porto [take on wine casks] Lisbon, Nouakchott and then around Cape Province - [Cape of Good Hope].   Hopefully I will be more informed of the future route and course later on.

My estimated time its going to take to arrive in Blogland looks to be about ten or eleven weeks so should be arriving around mid August - [ETA 22nd/08]

   

The accommodation I have been allocated ‘Driftwood Cottage’ sounds idyllic, I note from the position on the map its terraced on a hill with only one path access and isolated from other islanders, good, that just what I wanted.

Looking forward to meeting up with other Bloglanders. 

More details to come given time and internet access - Mick

Click to go to Mick's blog.

Snorkelman

"I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus's garden 'neath the waves"... Yes that's me above, snapped by Thuza before I ventured into the bay on another snorkelling expedition. I'm sure you will agree that I am an exceedingly handsome young fellow. Today I tested out my new underwater camera - kindly mailed to me by R & E Brague of 13 Acme Factory Road, Canton, Georgia, USA. May I say a public "thank you" to my rich American benefactors for this unexpected generosity.

Below are just three of the underwater pictures I snapped this afternoon. Down there it's another world, a quiet world of beauty and colour, of predator and victim, mysterious shadows and sparkling light filtered from above. Swimming in that other world, you feel like an invader. I ask myself , on a planet that it is two thirds ocean who should we say owns it? We imperialist human beings or the creatures of the sea? There are far more of them than us and unlike us they live in harmony with their environment... regardless of our growing threat.

Marley

A full length documentary film is currently playing in British cinemas - all about the life of the legendary Jamaican music maker - Robert Nesta Marley (1945-1981). It's simply called "Marley". Yesterday I received a pirate copy and watched it on the big screen in the social club. Two and a half hours long, it was an intense watch.

You see the little shed in the impoverished inland hill parish of St Ann where Marley grew up with his mother, Cedella. Some time in 1944 she was impregnated by an English plantation overseer - Norval Marley who was considerably older than  Cedella. He died when Bob was just ten years old. That Bob was therefore of mixed race made him uncertain of natural allegiance. Perhaps he was of the world as much as he was of Jamaica.

Largely through interviews with Marley's musical associates and family members, the documentary follows his life to Trenchtown - the vibrant shanty district of Kingston. There he develops his musical and songwriting talents as well as embracing the Rastafarian religion with its somewhat bizarre focus upon Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. This diminutive and politically dubious figure even visited Jamaica in 1966 - greeted at the airport by many thousands of Rastafari and ordinary Jamaicans who literally mobbed his plane - such was the excitement and adulation.

Smoking ganja was not purely recreational. The notion was that it allowed Rastafari a closer connection with Jah - their God. Bob Marley smoked a lot of it but he also loved to play football at every opportunity.He was also sexually active - siring eleven children by seven different mothers. One day after a football game, his big toe hurt like hell and when he got it checked out he discovered he had a melanoma. This was to be the beginning of a four year journey to death but in the meantime he created most his finest music - playing huge concerts across the world including his triumphant "Uprising" shows at Madison Square Gardens.

From such humble origins, Bob Marley came to touch the world. It wasn't just about his music. There was something special about him - perhaps something spiritual. He seemed to embody the quest and the hope that is in all of us. Whereas so many ephemeral musical artistes have been obscured and forgotten by the passing of years, Bob Marley endures. I wish I'd seen him in concert:-

"Swelled"

It was December 1965 when Paul Frederic Simon and Arthur Ira Garfunkel recorded "April Come She Will" for their "Sounds of Silence" album. Hell, that's forty seven years ago. Another song was recorded at the same time - "Homeward Bound" which recalls Paul Simon's folk performances in small British venues during the early nineteen sixties. The legend is that he was inspired to write it at Widnes station near Liverpool as he waited to "get home" both to his then girlfriend Kathy in Essex and to his native New York City. Simon once described those years as "the best time of my life".

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again

June, she´ll change her tune,
In restless walks she´ll prowl the night;
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;
September I´ll remember.
A love once new has now grown old.

Checking out the BBC Weather site, I see that it's raining in England now. An Atlantic depression has swept in to deluge the entire country with the wet stuff. So much for the drought they've been having over there! No, the streams will certainly be "ripe and swelled with rain" now. I'd have probably been hammering away at my computer keyboard in the study watching drops of rain "weave their weary paths and die" on the windowpane.

Instead I'm just off snorkelling in the bay. The social club jukebox is now playing Rupert Holmes's  "If You Like Pina Coladas"... Well I do, but I'd rather not write about that song. So I'll leave you with the simple genius of Paul Simon:-

History

As esteemed regular visitors to this humble blog are well aware, from time to time I like to post photographs I have snapped myself. And following on from yesterday's St George's Day post, as I swam twenty more lengths of the social club pool this afternoon, my mind drifted back to two little walking expeditions I undertook  in the Sheffield area before emigrating to Blogland. The two photographs I have chosen speak of England's rich history and both are of unsung buildings that you will probably have never heard of. Such is our history.

This building is in Old Whittington which is a suburb of  Chesterfield - the north Derbyshire market town. It's called Revolution House but was once a pub called "The Cock and Pygnot". Here some time in 1688 three influential noblemen met to plot the overthrow of the Catholic king - James II. They included the Earl of Devonshire and the Earl of Danby. They are seen as the architects of England's "Glorious Revolution" in which the threat of a Catholic takeover with all that that might have entailed was resisted:-

Revolution House, Old Whittington

And here's Upper Padley Chapel, close to the village of Grindleford. This stalwart building was part of the Padley Manor complex which predated the Norman invasion. Again, echoing that ancient tension between Catholicism and Protestantism, it was in this building in 1588 that three Catholic priests were found hiding - having been given sanctuary by the lord of the manor -Sir Thomas Fitzherbert. They were duly hung, drawn and quartered. Labelled the Padley Martyrs, a Catholic pilgrimage is still made to the chapel on July 12th each year:-

Padley Chapel, Upper Padley

And that's just two unsung historical sites in the Sheffield area. It makes you think - what the hell was all that religious strife really about? Was it to do with the manner in which one should worship the Christian God or was it more about economic power and the ownership of land? That tension coloured much of English history in the middle ages and beyond and perhaps the vestiges of it still remain. I mean, why do English cities still accommodate Catholic state schools when Protestant children's schools are open to everyone - whatever their faith?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm heading for the forest with my catapult to shoot a few parrots. They're delicious when plucked and then barbecued.

England

May I wish all readers and accidental visitors to this blog a Very Happy St George's Day! Today is England's national day though bizarrely its people will pretty much be going about their normal daily lives. It's not a national holiday. Some cleverdick commentators and politically correct whingers have in the past implied that declarations of English patriotism and pride in the national flag are somehow inherently  racist and those of us who have felt inclined to sing our nation's praises have had to be more than a little wary.

I find all of that maddening. In America, patriotism is more visible and of course July 4th is a national holiday with family parties, sports events and fireworks. Throughout the year you will see the stars and stripes fluttering from flagpoles on some of the remotest properties.

Of course, I'm Yorkshire Pudding - not English Pudding - but even so I do feel a kinship with most of the fifty million people who inhabit that ancient kingdom and yes - even Lancastrians, even Londoners. We have much to celebrate and to be proud about for our beautiful little country has achieved so much and spawned so many talented people in a wide range of fields from art to science and from exploration to invention. If I began to list them all, this blogpost would be longer than an Andrex toilet roll.

Then there are all the unsung heroes - the Chartists, the coal miners, the Ban the Bomb demonstrators, the lost soldiers from anonymous streets, the suffragettes, the helpful neighbours and the animal rescuers. We should also be proud of their stories for they are the true bones of English society, the hidden foundations.

Of any nation, if you were so inclined, you could dredge up a list of negatives designed to prick the bubble of patriotism but it's always easy to knock, to deride. Harder to stand up and sing your nation's praises. Though I am far away sipping juice from a fresh young coconut by a turquoise bay, I am still proud of  my motherland, my England. Let's raise a coconut to St George, the slayer of dragons. Happy St George's Day Everyone!

Islands

In the social club there's a state-of-the-art pub jukebox with access to over quarter of a million songs. Flicking through the index, I found this 1971 song by King Crimson. It's a song that has often echoed in my mind and somehow it seems to reflect the far distant and peaceful mood of Blogland. I was still humming it as I sauntered along the coastal path, under silver moonlight and the silhouettes of palm fronds back to my new home where Henry the peafowl stirred in the shadows:-

Earth, stream and tree encircled by sea
Waves sweep the sand from my island.
My sunsets fade.
Field and glade wait only for rain
Grain after grain love erodes my
High weathered walls which fend off the tide
Cradle the wind
to my island.

Gaunt granite climbs where gulls wheel and glide
Mournfully glide o'er my island.
My dawn bride's veil, damp and pale,
Dissolves in the sun.
Love's web is spun - cats prowl, mice run
Wreathe snatch-hand briars where owls know my eyes
Violet skies
Touch my island,
Touch me.

Beneath the wind turned wave
Infinite peace
Islands join hands
'Neath heaven's sea.

Dark harbour quays like fingers of stone
Hungrily reach from my island.
Clutch sailor's words - pearls and gourds
Are strewn on my shore.
Equal in love, bound in circles.
Earth, stream and tree return to the sea
Waves sweep sand from my island,
from me.


YouTube video clip by Vesmar who is the maintenance engineer at our wind farm and a thoroughly nice chap. The young lady who agreed to star in the filming is Chit who had been specially selected to be Arctic Fox's housekeeper...

Mistake

After all of that effort, risking our lives on the open sea, it turns out that the woman living alone on Pulau Bada Island is not in fact the elusive Katherine de Chevalle at all. She's in fact a marine biologist from the University of California gathering data for her PhD thesis on the sex life of leatherback turtles. She's called Carrie Liebowicz from Dayton, Ohio. 

Carrie's living in  a large tent in the coconut plantation back from the beach. She kindly made a nice meal of rice and fried turtle eggs for me, Thuza and Maung before we set off back for Blogland. I feel so stupid. I could have sworn I'd located Katherine's island but the old Burmese fisherman clearly needs his stupid eyes testing.

Thank God the old lifeboat got us safely back to Blogland. It was almost dark when we tied up at the wharf. Back in the social club I ordered a large brandy and checked to see if there were any comments after my last blogpost - "Found". There was this puzzling comment from Earl Gray of Trelawnyd:- "YP please do me a favour   - WRITE A BOOK ON A SIMILAR SUBJECT". 

What the...?

Instead I retired to my new home where I am gathering quite a collection of animal friends. Well, no other bloggers made it here! I have acquired several Burmese chickens - mostly avian flu rescue hens from an egg farm on the outskirts of Rangoon. And there's a bantam cockerel called Clegg who crows like the devil every morning then spends the rest of the day following Dave, the other cockerel, as he struts around the compound. Doris the bean goose has become friendly with Henry the peafowl and Hilda the scaly-breasted partridge spends most of her time squawking under my wooden verandah with a long-billed partridge called Stan. But at the end of the day there's nothing I appreciate more than a slithery hug on my bamboo rocking chair from Brenda the Burmese python. She's so affectionate. And as I rocked, I wondered where Katherine could be...

Dinnertime for Brenda the Burmese Python

Found

I have no idea the name of this island, but if you have found it, I am delighted! I will wait in excited anticipation on the beach all day today, although my nose has already peeled once despite my palm-frond hat. By the way, I have discovered I am not alone! A turtle came to my beach yesterday! He was good company for a couple of hours. I have noticed I've started talking to myself, but that's understandable I guess.

I've been drinking a bit of seawater, not too much, and found a bit of plastic flotsam that makes a little water underneath that I can lick off, if I put it over a hole with fresh vegetation in it. 

Looking forward to being rescued!  -  Katherine de Chevalle (Thursday Aprl 19th)

So we set off at dawn. The sea was like a millpond. The outboard motor puttered like a little motorbike as we sliced through the water. Maung and Thuza were with me and we'd brought plenty of water, a couple of jerry cans of extra fuel, fruit and a first aid kit. 

Heat hung heavy over the Andaman Sea causing sky and water to merge in a haze. We saw tiny rocky islets and I smiled to see one particular tiny island because it was just like those desert islands you see in cartoons - a miniscule beach and one lonesome palm tree. Thuza and Maung sang an old Burmese fishing song and a flying fish flashed like a silver bullet over the old inflatable.

Finally, the island of Pulau Bada emerged from the heat haze. We slowed the outboard motor and drifted in to the first sandy bay we saw then we dragged the ancient RNLI craft up towards the palm trees. Katherine was nowhere to be seen but we saw footprints in the sand - just like "Robinson Crusoe" and we followed them round past the rocky headland to a second beach. And there she was just floating in those crystal clear waters:-

Located

Have you heard? On her way to Blogland, New Zealand blogger Dame Katherine de Chevalle was the only survivor of a tragic plane crash. She is on an island somewhere west of the Thaiiland/Burma border. This aftenoon I showed her i-phone pictures to a couple of Burmese fishermen who had tied up at the Robert Brague Memorial Wharf. 

Straight away, the older fellow - gnarled and salty - became very excited. He'd recognised the island. "Pulau Bada! Pulau Bada!" he kept yelling. We showed him an old map of the Burmese islands - there are hundreds of them - but within thirty seconds his ET-like finger indicated Pulau Bada due south of Blogland. I reckon it is probably about twenty five miles off the most southerly point of our wonderful island world and not to be confused with the Indonesian island of Pulau Banda.

We waved goodbye to the two fishermen and headed back to the social club to plan Katherine's rescue. I wondered if our new nation's naval vessel would be up to the job. It's just a large inflatable with an outboard motor. It came secondhand from a lifeboat station in the picturesque Welsh coastal village of Rhyl Regis. The Development Committee thought it would suffice for a while but there was never any expectation that it would ever voyage big distances on the open ocean.

Nevertheless, we're going to risk it. The idea of such a talented artist and expert muffin baker wasting away on an uninhabited island is too much to bear. It's getting dark now but when dawn comes and if the sea is calm enough, we'll be off to rescue Katherine.... 

The old Rhyl Regis lifeboat

Promotion

In my absence from what we laughingly call "civilisation", my first and possibly last Kindle e-book has been launched via Amazon. I don't know much about the world of e-books but I am well aware that getting a first novel published via traditional means can be as difficult as breaking into Fort Knox so I thought I would simply dive in the Kindle deep-end and see what happens.

As a former secondary school English teacher, I guess I wrote this 55,000 word novel with adolescents in mind but hope that it will also have a degree of  "crossover" appeal so that some adult readers also find pleasure in its electronically presented  pages.

If you use a Kindle yourself or know any mid-teenage Kindle readers, why not give my original book a whirl or recommend it to someone? Priced at only US$3.15 or UK£2.05, it is surely one of the literary bargains of this decade! I understand that Kindle e-books can be accessed via some other electronic devices.

To find out more, and get a taste of the novel via Amazon's "Look Inside" facility please click on:-  "The Headland"

April

Oh to be in England in the green of April time

To walk old paths of mystery

'Neath beech and birch and lime...

Shirley has just sent me these two pictures she snapped while walking round Eyam Moor in Derbyshire. It brings a lump to my throat here in my tropical isolation to think of my dear wife so far away and of my beautiful motherland, my fair England, far beyond these turquoise shores and these feathery coconut palms...

Millstone outcrop and view to Abneylow

At an abandoned hill farm above Stoke Ford

Meanwhile, my heart has been lifted by the discovery that Kiwi blogger Dame Katherine de Chevalle may not be far away - stranded on another island in The Andaman Sea. I am doing my best to work out her exact whereabouts. This was her plea for help....

Thank goodness I've managed to find this old computer so I can send this message. My plane crashed into the sea. I have made it to an island and I think I'm not far from Blogland. I don't think anyone else made it. I've been eating shellfish but today found a kind of underground living accommodation*** and there is loads of food here, and also - bliss - a bed and fresh water! 

Please please can anyone find me and rescue me? YP, Brian, John, Helsie, Jennyta, Fox, Robert, Jan, Daphne? I don't know if you have a boat of light plane, but as soon as it's convenient...please? I have not been able to post words on my TLVD blog, but have sent some photos I took with my iphone as the plane was descending over this island. And one of my view from the beach, but that could be anywhere! I hope you can identify the island from the shape.

I am now going to go back to the beach and lay out all but one of my brightly-coloured lavalavas on the sand above the high-tide mark as a sort of beacon. I hope you can come soon! I miss you all!

***= I think she means a cave!

If you're reading this Dame Katherine, please do not despair. I'm working on it. Rescue may be imminent. Please remain calm!