Crusoe

It was dreamlike. Poda I mean. I can't tell you how lovely it was though I guess for some people it would have been like hell on earth.

When I arrived, I discovered that I was the only guest booked into the "resort". So there was me and at least fifteen members of staff. Some day visitors came to snorkel, lounge on the beach or have a meal in the island's only restaurant but they were gone by late afternoon. So effectively I was the King of Poda for the three days I was there.

They call it a "resort" but it's basically thirty "bungalows" and the restaurant. Here are some things the island doesn't have - cars, motorbikes, dogs, roads, a swimming pool, souvenirs for sale, internet, television and electricity (between midnight and 6pm). Here are some things the island does have - coconut palms, monkeys, a curving white coral sand beach, two cats, a few secretive monitor lizards, electricity between 6pm and midnight, blue birds that squawk and a huge lump of limestone "karst" skirted by impenetrable jungle growth.

I walked a path through tropical greenery that led to the southern shore and laid my towel under the shade of an overhanging tree. There I continued to read "Bangkok - A Cultural History" by Maryvelma O'Neil in two long afternoons that were punctuated with swimming and snorkelling sessions in crystal clear waters that were so warm I was never driven out by chilliness. I collected a piece of old rope from the shore and gathered choice bits of white coral in a plastic bag I found in my knapsack. I was planning to make a wind charm. When pieces of coral clunk together they can make musical sounds.

Sadly, even on Poda the detritus of modern day life is visible on the beach from bits of broken fishing net to Coca Cola cans, food cartons and Old "Singha" beer bottles. I scoured my section of the beach and filled a large sack with flotsam and jetsam that I later returned to the dump near the restaurant. On the first afternoon, in six peaceful hours, I only saw two other people on my bit of beach - a couple of American girls in bikinis who congratulated me on my good citizenship.

Back at Bungalow C one of the resort workers - a young man called Bouw - assisted me with my coral knotting as the windcharm took shape. In return he gave me a chunk of his dried squid. He had caught it himself and dried it slowly over a grill. If you find the soles of plimsolls tasty, you'd probably enjoy dried squid. No doubt the British TV chef, Rick Stein would have been in raptures about the stuff. In spite of it, I finished the wind charm and was rather proud of the end result. I tied it to the lamp bracket outside my door and left it to posterity.

On Poda I took various photographs, including some pictures of Sunday's sunrise. I left in the early afternoon on a motorised longtail boat that whizzed me back to Ao Nang on the mainland and I looked back through the salt spray to gorgeous Poda, a tiny place in a turquoise sea that I will never forget - unless of course Alzheimer's creeps up on me! For your curiosity and visual titillation, here are a few of my best snaps:-

Sunrise

Southern shore

Resort bungalows

Andaman Sunset

Poda

Oh dear. This is getting tiresome. Another four day weekend so another little trip to plan as my time in Thailand ebbs away. AirAsia from Bangkok to Krabi in the south of the country. I leave tomorrow morning at ten.

There is a tiny island that floats in an azure bay - an arm of the Andaman Sea. Its sands are bleached white and the water that surrounds it is crystal clear. I'm going to stay there for two nights, hoping that the weather and the sea itself are kind to me. Otherwise I'll be sitting in my little hut under the palm trees as rain teems down and waves crash, wondering how I could have been so crazy as to pick a place like that. Getting on and off the island will be difficult enough but when I heard about it I just had to go. An adventure.

It's called Poda Island and here it is. It's the larger one with the rocky outcrop. Full report when/if I return:-

Exposure

Just managed to get back from the school before Bangkok's leaden skies opened. I had stayed late working on the children's poetry collection I am compiling. It is going to be called "Where East Meets West" which is also the school's motto. In one way I want it to be like a parting gift though of course its main aim is to encourage and celebrate good writing. Writing poetry isn't easy at the best of times so I feel heartened that a lot of children - nearly all Thais - have given it a go. Perhaps in some future post I will share a couple of their poems.

At four twenty, after the computer network had automatically and irritatingly shut down as usual and as I was waiting to log straight back on, I found myself writing a poem of my own. Lord knows where the idea came from. I am imagining this poem right in the middle of a hefty collection and it's as if the poem itself is speaking to the onlooker who has arrived at that particular page. (By the way, water is now coming down in gallons as I write and the electricity just went off for a moment. Thunder. Lightning. Buddha's not happy!)

I guess there are many poems in many dusty anthologies that get overlooked simply because they happen to be located somewhere in the middle of the book. Also, I like the idea of playing with poetry so that this poem has its own voice, its own way of looking at things as it tries to jump off the paper to communicate with the detached reader who happens to have flicked to that page. Here it is:-

Page 53

Sandwiched in the middle

Of this collection

I'm shadowed by the weighty poems around me

Idle readers who flick through poetry books

Or peruse the shelves

Hardly ever reach the centre

Where I've been hiding

Safe in the certainty

That no one would ever find me

Or recognise

My unusually stark style

That is

Dear reader

Till you came along

And spoilt it all...

So now

Speaking as a recently unearthed poem

Now that my secret is out

I feel I ought to say

Something of note

Like the middle is half way

So that's what I just wrote.

Travellers

Some blogposts are easy to write. Others are hard. My last post was hard. It was touching on something I had kept buried from others for years. Thank you to Jenny, the author of "Demob Happy Teacher", for letting me know that my post reminded her of a famous poem by Robert Frost written in 1916. I can see how and why she made that connection and I give you Frost's poem now in its entirety. To me it is clearly not about someone at a road junction in "a yellow wood", it is all about the repercussions of our decisions and the paths we choose to take through life. I wonder what you think dear reader...

Robert Frost 1874 -1963

* * *

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Pat

Life. It can be so strange. Accidental moments may colour your entire life. I don't know why but I have thought about Pat in the last few days.

Who was Pat? She was a Scottish woman I had a steady relationship with in my last months at university. Thirty five years ago. She cooked meals for me and loved me. We were good together. She quietened some of my wildness. Showed me how to relax with people and be less combative. We danced. We visited Glasgow and Edinburgh and she sat by my side when I drove the students' union minibus all the way down to London for a political demonstration. She so much wanted to please me. She would ask my opinions about her clothes and make-up - stuff I never really cared two hoots about. I met her parents and her sister. Stayed in her family home. Got drunk with her. We talked and talked and woke together in many silver-grey dawns. That was Pat.

At Christmastime of 1977, I moved back to England to embark on my momentous teaching "career" (ha!). I was in a vast, tough comprehensive school in a godforsaken South Yorkshire mining village. Those first weeks were the hardest apprenticeship ever. I could sink to the bottom of the sea or I could swim. I chose to swim. And one of the things that kept me afloat was my growing love and affection for Pat. I couldn't wait to see her at February half-term.

Back in Scotland I returned to her. Less than two months had passed. I wanted her love and friendship to soothe my battered soul. I reached for her but she shut me out. The door was closed literally and metaphorically. I tried to get in but she was having none of it. There was no explanation just exclusion. She was lost to me as if those golden months before had never really happened. I never saw her again. It was a puzzle.

At Christmastime 1979, I met my Shirley. Before the winter of 1981 we were married. We had a mortgage and bills to pay. We were in love. We pedalled the treadmill of work before our babies came. A son and a daughter. Perfect. And then there were the other two we never met - the ectopic might-have-been children who got away like fish we failed to land. I think of them too. So I almost forgot Pat.

Some time in 2001 Pat got in touch with me again through the machinations of the Internet and I asked her - why. Why did you shut me out all those years back? And she told me a mutual "friend" called Andy, who by the way had always had a "thing" for Pat, reported that I had said to him I would never spend my life with her because she was too flat-chested! I emailed back that I had absolutely no memory of saying such a horribly shallow thing but if I did say it then I apologised wholeheartedly - even if it was over twenty years too late.

Pat became a lecturer in a further education college in Scotland. She never married or bore any children and now she lives in her own little apartment in the suburbs of Glasgow having retired from her college just last summer.

After ten years I realise that I never did say such a thing about her. I liked Pat fine the way she was. She was pretty and I respected her. I realise that it was just Andy mischief-making. Spoiling something good that he didn't have. Perhaps he was drunk. Perhaps he was making a play for Pat in my absence. Anyway. It meant that the course of my life and Pat's life changed for good. I believe we'd have been together. We'd have made a home and a family. But it wasn't to be. I went my way and she went hers. I think that it's called the randomness of being.

Phangan

Haad Salad Sunset

Phangan is famous for its "full moon parties" - Bacchanalian beach raves in the far south eastern corner of the island. These events attract backpackers and latter day hippies by the score. So naturally, I booked accommodation at the opposite end of the island in Haad Salat - Salad Bay. And how lovely it was there. I had a spacious wooden bungalow to myself with a view from my wide wooden verandah that took in both the little hotel complex's pristine oval-shaped pool and a beautiful palm-fringed beach with the bay beyond. There little fishing boats bobbed colourfully.

On Sunday I went on a snorkelling trip which allowed me two hours on beautiful Bottle Beach. Yesterday I hired a bicycle and cycled till heat exhaustion, dehydration and excessive sweating threatened to do me in for good. It's true what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen. I recovered in the main town - Thong Sala, downing three bottles of soda water in a row before cycling up the west coast to an enclosed fresh water lagoon. On the way I passed a bizarre English pub - "The Masons' Arms". It looked as if it had been transported directly from the Home Counties.

This morning I had an hour long foot massage from a young lady called Non whose service involved both pain and relaxation. It made me think that to really benefit from Thai massage one would need to make it a regular feature of one's life. A one-off massage is okay but its benefits are probably not going to be long-lasting.

At Nakhon Si Thammarat Airport, a chubby Thai gentleman with cloudy eyes and a can of Heineken joined me at my lunch table and attempted most unsuccessfully to strike up meaningful conversation as we ate our chosen dishes. But one should never judge a book by its cover for when I attempted to pay my bill, the man insisted that he would settle it. I thanked him and then headed for the departure gate. Acts of human kindness in a world that often appears self-seeking and heartless are like jewels that glisten and ask to be treasured. In Buddhism such acts are often thought to "make merit", counteracting the wrong we all do.

West coast of Phangan

Bottle Beach

Bizzaro

Before I head off to the island of Koh Phangan - way down south - for three nights, let me tell you about a couple of this week’s most bizarre moments.

Monday morning. After waiting fifty minutes for a reserved taxi while dozens of free taxis flashed by the school gates, I arrived at a vast new government building on the outskirts of Bangkok along with an agitated lady from the school office. It was to be the next chapter in my visa saga – you know - the one that resulted in me being exiled to Malaysia for a weekend.

So there’s hundreds of people clutching papers and tickets in the Immigration section of this huge building, erected far from any public transport network. A robotic voice with an American accent announces appointment numbers while a different American-sounding voice announces other appointments on the opposite side of the room. The voices intermingle unintelligibly as red lights flash digital numbers above dozens of interview booths.

Finally I find myself in a cubicle with the twitchy school secretary and a uniformed female immigration official. I have to sign photocopies of my fifteen page work contract, two copies of my degree certificate and a handful of copies of my passport. The lady from the school chuckles as a conversation in Thai occurs with the severe young official. Then I get a translation.

“She say you look like Colonel Sanders!”

Then the young lady adds, “When I see you. Make me wanna eat!”

My instinct is to return the compliment but I fear my meaning might be misconstrued so instead I just laugh. When I am dismissed from the cubicle to wait a further hour for my re-stamped passport, I promise to get her some fried chicken.

Friday morning. I am working at the computer in my classroom. I shift the keyboard and notice something beneath it. It’s a polythene bag with a piece of card in it. There’s some writing on the back. I flip it over. It’s a photograph of a Thai woman in a rather untidy room. I recognise her immediately.

It’s the new cleaner who has been visiting my room after school for the last week or so. As an inverted snob, I have always gone out of my way to be friendly towards those who have menial roles to perform in the workplace. So it has been with the new cleaner. Every time she has entered my room I have greeted her – Sawasdee krap and smiled. She doesn’t seem to speak any English.

I flip the photo over. I realise that what is written is a mobile phone number with her name scrawled next to it. It’s a flaming invitation to get in touch – possibly literally!

Perhaps she needs me to tidy up her room. Maybe she wants to come back to Sheffield to be our cleaner - possibly performing other domestic duties? I must ask Shirley for her considered opinion. She can also weigh up whether or not I look anything like that finger lickin’ Kentucky fellow - Colonel Bloody Sanders!