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Wilf, a chauffeur for Sheffield City Council, greeted me at Manchester Airport and I was soon whisked away from my press conference in the VIP Room - over the majestic Pennine hills towards the dreaming spires of Sheffield. I have always loved travelling in big shiny cars that smell of new leather and the wicker picnic hamper in the back was much appreciated - especially those top quality scotch eggs and the fresh pork pie from The Yorkshire Grub Company. All washed down with a chilled bottle of Maison de Tetley (2013).

Of  course, when we glided into my own street the bunting was out and excited children and pensioners were waving little Yorkshire flags, cheering my homecoming. Don't you just hate being patted on the back by hordes of strangers and feeling obliged to scribble autographs in diaries, Qu'arans and on various items of ladies' underwear? So tiresome.

Anyway, I managed to push my way through the thronging crowd, the photographers and newspaper reporters over the threshold of our exclusive suburban residence. Home! Shirley has done a great job with our "bosoms" - the little allotment area at the top of our garden and the mansion looked neat and tidy until I started emptying my nineteenth century travelling trunk - merrily tossing dirty washing, used Thai baht notes, "Villa Market" plastic bags and gifts from my oriental admirers all over the place - from the snooker hall to the ballroom and up the marble staircase to the marital boudoir.And then I had a proper cup of tea. Ahhhh!

...In actuality, I was fleeced by muggers disguised as employees of Transpennine Rail. Twenty five pounds for a single ticket to Sheffield then eight quid in a taxi from Sheffield Station. Previously £2.75  for a medium latte at Manchester Airport Railway Station. Welcome back to the real world boy! Home. Home is where the...something or other is. I can't remember how that line goes I've been away so long. Looking forward to a traditional Yorkshire curry with basmati rice and nan bread tonight. Hope Shirley's not too tired when she gets in. She's got a lot of mess to clear up now and then there's the washing to do. A woman's work is never done. The Chanel No. 5 should keep her sweet.

Morakot

The unpromising entrance to the sea cave

 In my last post I referred to a beach of dreams at Nui Bay but on my four island Andaman Sea snorkelling trip south of Koh Lanta I was taken to an even dreamier beach - so dreamlike it made me gasp with amazement. Have I been anywhere on this planet more naturally wonderful and beautiful? I very much doubt it.

The longtail boat chugged across a gentle seascape that glistened fabulously in hazy tropical sunshine. There were only six pssengers on board and we had already made two snorkelling stops at looming limestone karst islets. Ahead of us lay the larger island of Koh Mook. We could see a couple of other boats anchored near steep limestone cliffs. Perhaps this was The Emerald Cave I had noticed in the itinerary leaflet.

So I would be swimming into a sea cave. It looked rather dangerous to me and I imagined my skull cracking on the sea cave's roof as the swell lifted us up. We donned fluorescent lifejackets and dived in. One of our longtail sailors guided us into the cave with a torch held aloft. We swam into inky shadows where all you could see was the torchlight bobbing and then I realised there was daylight ahead.

We swam round the corner to see the dark frame of  the inner cave entrance opening up to reveal a most secret and gorgeous white beach. The sun was directly overhead like a theatrical spotlight and it was as if we had reached the bottom of a crater. There were hundred foot cliffs all around us swathed in tropical greenery. The only way in here was through the sea cave - a hundred metre swim.

So this was what Morakot (Emerald) Cave was all about. Not so much the cave but the little piece of Eden you met on the other side. There was a balance to the vegetation. Each tree, each shrub had earned its niche over thousands of years and they met together in a windless equilibrium, safe from storms, entertained by sweet birdsong. Here, legend says, pirates once holed up. I can believe it. Such a secret and magical place. I just wish I'd had my camera with me to record this masterpiece from Mother Nature.

The secret beach at Morakot, Koh Mook

So now I am back in Bangkok. This morning I have spent an hour or two squeezing stuff into my mammoth navy blue suitcase and hoping it doesn't break the weight limit. My flight leaves at 9.20pm - returning to the real world - England my England - where I am sure that from time to time I will recall the jaw-dropping spectacle of Morakot's inner beach. Some things you never forget.

Jubilation

Jubilant scenes in Hull on Saturday

Saturday night - sitting in an internet cafe on Koh Lanta "watching" events unfold at Vicarage Road, Watford and at the KC Stadium in Hull. It was nerve-racking but we made it over the line - just - and now The Tigers are back in the Premier League! It's amazing - almost like the birth of a new baby - well to be truthful - better than that! It will be a battle from Day One just to stay in the Premier League as Reading and QPR have shown this season - but I am sure that all the staff and the players will give it their best shot and no doubt our manager - Steve Bruce will be making a few forrays into the transfer market.

When the results were through, I went straight to a beachfront restaurant and ordered a T-bone steak to celebrate then mango and sticky rice and a couple of ice cold bottles of "Singha". Up The Tigers!

Tomorrow morning I hope to go on a "four island" snorkelling trip with lunch included but at 3pm today there was an almighty tropical downpour with booming thunder and jagged lightning bolts. It's still raining three hours later and I guess the "dry season" is gradually turning into the "wet season" down here in southern Thailand so there's a possibilty the trip might be cancelled.

Yesterday afternoon I was on an unspoilt beach of dreams - Nui Bay. Beautiful clear waters and jungle right down to the sandy shore. I sheltered from the sun in an abandoned beach bar - built from bleached driftwood and containing all manner of objects washed up by many tides. It looks as if the over-optimistic business closed a year or two back and it was apparently called "Robinson's" - no doubt after Daniel Defoe's famous castaway. When I get home I'll share a picture of it with you.Till then...

Nui Bay, Koh Lanta

Lanta

May 3rd 2013. Who knows - perhaps the very last day of my not so illustrious teaching career - that first began as far back as the summer of 1972. Never say never but if it has indeed finished today then I'm pleased to say it has ended on a pleasant high - good wishes from my delightful pupils and colleagues alike, kind words in the school assembly followed by wild applause, my mind clear and untrammeled. Thank you and good night.

On a big farewell card the entire Year 9 had written messages to me..."Thank you for everything Mr Neil. You are so NICE! - Love from Pin",  "Goodbye Mr Neil. We Love You Very Much - Ben", "Hey Mr Neil - Thanks for the past four months. You have taught me a lot. It was a short period but very good. Good luck! - Mew" etc.. And Markhughes from Y10 whined yet again - "Oh please don't go Mr Neil! We will miss you too much!" It's nice to know you have been genuinely appreciated.

And so to England where my heart lies, flying next Thursday night - all being well. Before then I'm taking an internal flight to the south west of Thailand where I shall be staying on the island of Koh Lanta for four nights. Sun, swim, nice food, carry on reading a fascinating novel - "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle" by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and sing what will probably be a last goodbye to Thailand. That's what I'm planning anyway if ill fortune doesn't chuck a spanner into the works. You never know.

If I get a chance I will blog from Koh Lanta, but just in case I don't manage that, here are two pictures of the island for your ocular titillation:-

The beach at "Lanta Miami" - my hotel

Beach on the southern tip of the island

Mortality

Ten years ago, we had a lovely family holiday in America. We flew into Boston and picked up a hire car which I drove up to New Hampshire. After tootling around New England for a few days, we headed across Massachussetts westwards to Albany and Niagara Falls. Next it was on past the shores of Lake Erie to the suburbs of Youngstown, Ohio where we stayed with my old camp counselling "buddy", Chris and his family. Then onwards to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania before driving into New York City in a Friday evening thunderstorm. How the rain gushed down! Three nights in The Big Apple then back to Merry Olde England. Smashing. The kids loved it. Shirley loved it. I loved it. I think we are all Americophiles. 

I could fill in the details of that trip - add some colour. Watching "42nd Street" - actually on 42nd Street, visiting Boston's main hospital after Ian had a worrying allergic reaction to an insect bite, singing every verse of "On Ilkley Moor Bah Tat" in a remote Ohio steakhouse and bar to the delight of the assembled customers, simply laughing with Chris and his family, drinking "Schlitz", visiting Cleveland's Rock n Roll Hall of Fame etc. but what I mainly want to say is all of this happened ten years ago just before my fiftieth birthday.

It seems like yesterday. I can remember so many details. But it was ten years ago.

My father died at sixty five, my brother Paul at sixty two. Even though I am approaching my sixtieth birthday, I feel as fit as a fiddle, gallivanting about South East Asia - but how much time have I got left? I have rarely contemplated my death but when I have, I have never been able to see myself dying like my mother or Nana Morris - in my mid-eighties in a residential home for the elderly. No, not that way.

Having just looked back ten years, can I realistically look forward ten further years? Another decade? Exactly the same span of time. That would bring me to 2023. But will I get there? Will I ever reach my seventieth birthday? Somehow I doubt it. Death will probably come to find me before then. But if fortune gives me ten more years, I guess I need to start thinking even more urgently about how I will use those years. I don't want to squander the time, I want to live it. These precious ten years ahead will pass all too quickly as the past ten years have proven and only then will this random blogging cease my friends. Only then will this Yorkshire pudding be totally digested. Till then I'll keep on keeping on.

Detectives

I have racked my brain but I am pretty sure that in real life I have never met a detective - neither a police detective or a private investigator. But I have met plenty of cleaners, bartenders, bus drivers, nurses, double glazing salesmen, air hostesses and of course teachers. And I have also never witnessed a murder or known anybody who was unfortunate enough to be murdered - though I have known plenty of people who have been hospitalised for various reasons.

But getting back to detectives, why is it that hundreds of TV drama series around the world have focussed on the work of detectives from Maigret to Colombo and from Sherlock Holmes to Kojak? Our screens have been awash with detective stories and the cinema is almost as bad. It is as if media moguls believe that everybody is interested in tales of cunning detective work, forensic science and the war against the world's criminal underworld. But to me all this stuff is on the periphery of real life and the more I see of these damned detectives - Inspector Morse, Barnaby Jones, Dempsey and Makepeace, Lewis, McCloud, Cagney and Lacey etc, etc, the more I dislike them. They are just not reflective of everyday life and where it is not so easy to make drama out of ordinariness, it is surely child's play to make dramas out of well, drama - if you see what I mean.

I wonder what proportion of England's working population are detectives? I would hazard a guess at 0.001%. However, television appears to suggest that about 75% of us are detectives and that every sizable town in the country has a few hundred murders each week. It's all bollix.

If perchance any media moguls have happened upon this blogpost could I urge you to cease all these tales about detectives? It has all been done now and there are no new detective stories to tell so please give us stories about roadsweepers, family life, the mundanity of work, nursing, health and safety, bloggers from darkest Georgia or Angola, working down coalmines or buggering off to France to paint sunsets over Provence, stories of love and childhood of death and cancer of marriage and making homes and getting drunk, of birthdays and curry houses and of real people coping with real life - the highs and the lows, the laughter, the tears and the boredom. Those are the dramas I want to see - not bloody detectives!

There! Rant over. I feel a lot better now.

Shadows

He was there for a week - the man from the shadows. Whenever I went past, he was just sitting there cross-legged, next to the bus shelter in the shadow of the concrete pedestrian bridge that arches over Ratchadaphisek Road. Next to him were his tattered bags - containing who knows what - but I could see the blue tops of several water bottles peering out.

In Bangkok you don't see many beggars, "down and outs" or men of the road but if you look you may notice them - lurking in the shadows as brightly coloured taxis, Mercedes Benzes and silver Toyotas flash by. Who knows what their stories are? Sometimes I'm sure it's about mental ill-health or breakdowns that have left them on their own, surviving on these hot streets.

His bare feet were literally blackened with ingrained dirt.His gnarled hands were not much better. He wore raggedy clothes and bizarrely a thin green motor cycle helmet - more like a German World War II helmet than a modern one designed to protect skulls from tarmacadam. He just sat there for seven days as plum coloured bank workers caught buses and working people like me strolled down to the Major Cineplex Centre with money in our pockets. Nobody seemed to notice him.

I wanted to give him something so one evening I poured all of my accumulated loose change into a plastic bag and placed  this in front of him as I walked by. He formed his hands into the traditional "wai" greeting - showing thanks and respect. There must have been two hundred baht in that bag - about four English pounds. It would surely help him a little on his journey through the shadows. 

The following day he was gone and I haven't seen him since. His story. My story. Lines that cross. Perhaps I should have given him more, brought him food, brought him back to my little apartment for a shower but I must admit that I was wary of him. You wouldn't know what you were letting yourself in for. Maybe best to just leave the bag of coins and slip away.