Gloom

I walk past empty homes that were meant to be filled with life and laughter as we emigrees from western confusion, injustice and hypocrisy built our new society together here in the sun - under these coconut palms, beside these coral white beaches. Instead, it's going to be just me again with these damned whispering servants. You see Katherine deChevalle is homesick and she plans to leave. She's only been here five minutes. I thought something was up when I asked her to come down to see "Damsels in Distress" the other night. Her response was, "Sorry, I'm washing my hair."

I wandered into Helen and Tony's traditional villa only to find one of the gardeners making out with one of the kitchen girls - in Helen's big bamboo bed! I thrashed the gardener with a sweeping brush and the two of them ran off down the beach path, swearing in Burmese. Libby's lovely cottage has been damaged by the tropical storm we had on Thursday night and Rhymes With Plague's Balinese-designed home has become a lavatory for seabirds as they flit between the ocean and the waste treatment plant.

My heart is as heavy as my leaden feet. Katherine was someone I could talk to - urbane, sophisticated with rich life experience. Now it's going to be just me with these duplicitous Asian coolies. I don't even trust Thuza any more since I found her thumbing through my wallet. And there seem to be more of them since I first arrived - as if they're somehow reclaiming this little piece of heaven, multiplying in the dead of night.

And my dreams are filled with Yorkshire, my family back home, my Shirley, Ian and Frances and the lads from the local, Hull City and "The House of Spice", chilly walks in The Peak District. Perhaps it's jut a phase I'm going through. Tonight I shall drink myself blotto in the social club watching the "EastEnders" omnibus while munching on pork scratchings. I'm sure I'll snap out of it.