Christmas in Cat City

For Christmas we decided to drive down from Miri to Kuching and stay at one of our favourite hotels - the Basaga.  It's an old colonial house away from the touristy riverfront with beautiful gardens which make it a green oasis amid the mouldy concrete of Kuching, which oddly means "cat" in Malay.

On Christmas day morning I went for my customary run, which took me along the riverfront as far as this culvert and then inland back in the direction of the Basaga.  On the way I passed St Thomas' Cathedral, Anglican I think.  It was packed with worshippers, including an overspill standing on the steps outside, all singing carols.  All these people devoted to a church that originated in England made me feel a little embarrassed to be an English atheist.  If they had known I guess most of them would have been terribly shocked.

Mostly in this society I keep my beliefs to myself, not because I feel scared or intimidated by people's faith, be it Christianity, Islam or whatever, but because I don't want to hurt their feelings or have them worry about my soul.  To do anything else, outside my home culture, feels like bad manners.

Shell's Ghost Town

Sue left yesterday afternoon for meetings in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, leaving me with an empty apartment and a new car to explore with.  I started my day with a run in the opposite direction to my first run two days ago.

I headed towards the bridge that links the peninsula to the centre of Miri, passing en route a large and completely deserted housing estate owned by Shell.  I ran into the estate, saying hello to several patrolling "auxiliary" policemen en route.  None of them challenged my right to be there - old white blokes seem to have a free pass.

The estate is in idyllic pine woodland next to a palm-fringed and empty beach and is perfectly maintained - roads swept and hedges trimmed, although no one lives there anymore. Shocking when I think of how many people in Sarawak live in tumbledown shacks.  But then multi-nationals like Shell have the money to do what they want and they always look after their assets.

On the return leg I ran into the Boat Club, an expat and wealthy Malaysian's watering hole within the Shell estate.  Sue has been encouraged to join, but neither of us feel very comfortable in such an overtly privileged milieu.  I didn't find any boats at the club apart from an old glass-fibre dinghy, but there is a great view of the beach.  By the time I said "hello" to the security guard at the gate to Sue's complex I had a real sweat on and the sun was starting to burn my shoulders.  It feels good to back in Borneo.

Miri Yet Again

Seventeen days after getting a dawn bus for Rome in Locorotondo I finally arrived in Miri with Sue yesterday.

This morning I pulled on my running shoes and went for an exploratory jog around the strange peninsula where Sue's apartment is located.  You can see from the map that Miri has a river which snakes inland and creates a long tongue of land between the main city centre and the sea.  This tongue is home to a bizarre combination of smart apartment complexes, like Sues, a golf course, a fishing village, an idyllic but rubbish-strewn and sandfly infested beach and the moorings for literally hundreds of oil rig service and supply vessels, some the size of largish oil tankers.

I ran around the edge of the golf course to the tip of the tongue, where I spotted a couple of paunchy expats finishing a hole while a tanker the height of a four-story building slid slowly down the river behind them.  Then I turned around and ran back up the tongue before stopping to take this photo.  En route I ran a bit of the palm-fringed beach, until I remembered the risk of sandfly bites and returned briskly inland.

On my way back to the apartment I took this photo of the first of the five or six blocks of the complex where it is situated.  It's a gated and guarded compound for wealthy Malaysians and expats.  It's a far cry from the tiny little town of Saratok where Sue and I spent our first two years in Malaysia.

Take Me to the River

When I go out running in a strange place water draws me to it like a magnet.  On our last full day in Phnom Phenh I got up at 6am and headed for the Tonle Sap, a tributary of the Mekong.  After two days in the city I'd got used to the traffic, which behaves more like a crowd of people than vehicles.  When we first arrived we took ages waiting for a clear space to cross the road, until we realised you just have to launch yourself into the flow and vehicles weave around you like water in a rocky stream.

Dawn is a good time to see the city as lots of people come out in the cooler air to stroll, run or take part in group exercises to pop music, doing a kind of cross between yoga, tai chi and line dancing in slow motion.

When I reached the river embankment in the city centre I ran along the wide promenade and headed for the pleasure boat dock.  I carried on along the river back out of the city centre, past increasingly grubby workshops and shophouses until I reached the main road bridge, where I climbed the steps and took this picture.

Looking upriver I could see that the Tonle Sap was lined with shanties as the City petered out into a flat, paddi filled plain.  Then I began my steady jog back to our hotel, where Sue was still sleeping peacefully as I crept back into our darkened room.

S - 21

On our first full day in Phnom Penh I went with Sue to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.  I'm very nervous about genocide tourism, but Sue was very sure she wanted to go and I decided to tag along. The Museum is located in the Kmer Rouge interrogation centre S - 21, which was formerly a primary school.

The photograph opposite is of a notice in the complex and sets out the "rules" of S - 21.  During the three plus years of Kmer Rouge rule fifteen to twenty thousand people went through S - 21 and were executed in the "killing fields" outside the City.  S - 21 itself was only one of 150 or more such centres throughout Cambodia.  It is estimated that between one and three million Cambodians died during the rule of the Kmer Rouge and their notorious leader Pol Pot, or "Brother Number One".  The death toll was from executions, disease and starvation driven mainly by the Kmer Rouge's forced agrarianisation of Cambodian society.

The museum itself is simply the preserved fabric of S - 21 and is filled with photos of the people that passed through the Centre plus photos, drawings and text about what happened there and in Cambodia as a whole while it was under the control of the Pol Pot regime.  There is also information about the ongoing war crimes trials of some of the surviving Kmer Rouge leaders.

One of the most disturbing things about he place is its sheer ordinaryness.  From a distance it looks like any other large asian three-storey primary school.  As you approach you can see the crude fences and barbed wire and inside there are iron beds, roughly made shackles and badly-built cells.  Stood in the courtyard and looking around at the scene and my fellow tourists I felt angry and confused.  I couldn't bring myself to take photographs.

One large party was visiting the site while we were there and I felt a surge of anger rising in my breast as I watched some of the men taking photographs of torture scenes painted by former inmates. Then I felt the anger turning inwards as I thought "who am I to judge these people and their motives?"

In the end I was glad that I went because it helped clarify my thinking and explain my nervousness at going.  The real truth about what happened under Pol Pot or Hitler or any other of the thousands of dictators that stain our history is not that evil men did these things, or the Kmer Rouge, or the Nazis or the Cambodians or the Germans, but that we did it, us humans and anything that looks too closely at the nitty gritty details of these events gives us the chance to pretend that it was those evil people that did it and not our kind and civilised selves, when actually any of us could find ourselves on either side of the concentration camp barbed wire at any time given the right combination of economic and political circumstances and if you think otherwise you are, my friend, a deluded fool.  In fact, our only hope is to hold on to this truth and base our actions on the knowledge that of the many roads we can go down there are always some that lead back to S - 21 and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Old Man Running in Cambodia

We've been over a week in Cambodia now and my morning runs have taken me to some special places.  In Siem Reap, waiting for Sue to arrive, I ran five kilometres up the Siem Reap river, which was used to transport stones to the Angkor temples, and stopped at this bridge.

En route I ran through the outskirts of town travelling against the tide of morning commuters on cars, bikes and motorcycles, many, disconcertingly, wearing face masks.  One woman sweeping the streets was concentrating so hard that she didn't see me and thrust her broom in my path, causing me to jump and at the same time let out a very audible fart.  We both laughed heartily as we went on our way.

After Siem Reap we flew down to Sihanoukville on the South Coast, where we are staying at the fashionable Otres Beach.  On my first morning there I trotted down the beach and at about four kilometres found this river which a young guy was paddling across.

Although it's the height of the season the place is very quiet, though this may partly be due to the phenomenal amount of dope that is smoked here.  After taking this shot I trotted back to the "Pat Pat", the French-run guesthouse where we are staying, for fried egg and bacon, fresh fruit and delicious Cambodian coffee.

Angkor at Last

My flights to Cambodia all went smoothly, unlike my temperament, which became increasingly frazzled as the journey wore on and on.  In Bangkok there was an agonisingly slow bus transfer across town from the international airport to the budget airline station.  The city looked alien under the tropical sun and towering clouds, like a colony on Mars and I became increasingly impatient with the traffic jams, although I actually had hours in hand.

While waiting for my last plane to Siem Reap, the town that services the Angkor temple complex, I managed to log onto a free wifi service to find that Sue had overslept and missed her flight and would not arrive until Sunday. Then at Siem Reap there were delays as the bureaucrats threw in an extra form at the last minute, probably due to an Ebola scare, given that they were all wearing face masks.

Things continued to go downhill as my taxi driver took me to the wrong hotel and I had to get a tuk tuk to finally reach my destination.  But today after a decent night's sleep the world looked good again and I had a fantastic day bicycling around the temples and taking boring photographs.  I guess I can now call myself an experienced traveller and if I've learnt anything from my travels it's to keep smiling.  Smiling is infectious and people may think you're an idiot, but they can't help smiling back.  Thus when I cycled seven kilometres from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat, the first of the big temples and discovered that I needed a ticket for $40, which I didn't have on me, I kept smiling and lo and behold a local cop gave me a ride on his motorbike back into town to the nearest ATM and then on to the ticket office for a very reasonable five dollars.

Oh, the other thing I've learned from all my travels is that the quality of a photo is in inverse proportion to the importance of its subject.

Somewhere over asia

I've been sat for hours now on two different planes gunked up with airline food. Breakfast is now being delivered to wake everyone up and lifting the blind the plane is suffused with yellow-white tropical light. In know it's probably at least 30 below zero outside but it looks warm. My heart is thumping with excitement. I can't wait to get out into Bangkok in search of my last flight.

Roma

The bus came in on time and I found an airport train in short order. I'm surrounded by the lazy, slurred roman accent. The guy on the next seat is a piece of shit in any accent. He and his partner are shabby and she looks bored. He speaks on his phone - "yes a group of Japanese. I don't know what's to be done". Whatever is to be done doesn't sound honest. Welcome to Roma!

Cambodia or bust

I said goodbye to paolo at dawn in locorotondo and waited 30 minutes bus ticket in hand. It's a big comfortable double-decker beast which should get me to rome early this afteroon. Feeling tired already and impatient to get on my first flight of the day. 

Hello Goodbye

I took this picture of dad and me two days ago. It was my last evening in the UK.  I'd just bought a load of second-hand camera equipment and it came with a remote controller, which I'd pointed and clicked at the camera with my left hand a split second before.  I made several attempts and this is one of the best.

I said "goodbye" to dad yesterday morning then drove to Stansted. At Bari I was picked up by a minivan and taken to the underground carpark where I left my motorbike four weeks ago, parked next to a rather cool Chevy Corvette. The ride was dark and chilly and climbing the ridge back up to our house I hit thick cloud which left me and the bike running with condensation.

After a fitful night I awoke to a stunning autumnal dawn.  I wandered around in my onesie taking photos, my heart thumping with the excitement of being home.

Sometimes life goes too fast.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I'm sat in the my Dad's little back bedroom, with the junk that accumulates around someone old and disabled - a power chair, for the increasingly infrequent trips outside the house, a turntable for moving from chair to commode and a collection of cushions and dressings.  My time here is drawing to a close and from my point of view I've achieved a fair bit.  I've begun to establish myself as a funeral celebrant and have carried out my first funeral.  I had thought I'd want to write about this in my blog, but this now feels like a breach of confidence.  Suffice to say it strengthened my conviction that this is work I should be doing and I'm humbled by the trust that the bereaved placed in me.

I've shared a lot of the celebrancy stuff with dad and this has had a positive impact on our relationship as well.  He has been very supportive really and I've also recorded a series of his wishes for what happens when he dies, including what music will be played and that I will lead the service, probably in a local pub.  Dad in my eyes has regained a lot of dignity in the last few months, most of the time he's politely grateful for the care that he gets and patient with his carers.  To me, it's not much of a life, built around the daily highlights of "Bargain Hunt" and "the Chase", but I can see that for him it's still definitely worth living.  It's helped that I'm staying in digs, so I can kiss him on the head and make my escape when his carers come to put him to bed at about 9.00pm.

On Friday I will leave him for new adventures and will not return, all being well, until March next year.  And yet I will be sad to leave him, knowing that he'll be wondering if he'll see me again.

Out of the Way Places

Sometimes when I'm travelling I get up early, put my running shoes on and just jog for fifteen minutes or half and hour, stop, look around at where my legs have taken me, then run back the way I came.  This habit has taken me to some interesting places.  If you start in a town you'll often end up in some quiet, out of the way spot in the country.  Some of them have really stuck in my mind - a rice padi on the island of Langkawi, a misty rural canal in Northern France.  Now I take an iphone around with me I can even take a photo and spot my exact location on a map.

I'm staying in digs in Lincoln for the next three weeks and this morning, before dawn, I put on my running shoes and headed out of the city down the Nettleham Road.  Even at 6.30am there were lots of commuters driving into town.  It was colder than I'm used to in Italy and so I ran a bit faster than usual, trotting through the outskirts of town past cut-price gyms and Pizza Huts in modern industrial buildings and out into the country.

I ran through the pretty little village of Nettleham, complete with country church, graveyard and sparkling stream and out into flat, open fields and a big sky.  Then after thirty minutes I stopped and took this photo.  As I listened to the silence and watched the sky begin to lighten I thought about what I'm doing here in this cold northern city.  I find it hard to explain, to myself and others, especially my Dad - "I'm trying to set up a funeral celebrancy practise, it will never make much money, but it's what I want to do to give shape and purpose to the last years of my working life.  It's a noble cause and I have a peculiar mix of skills that means I know I will be good at it."  Then I panic and wonder whether my own ability to create narrative has meant I've talked myself into this peculiar spot and that like my outing this morning I will have no choice but to turn around and run back again.

Bari airport

Waiting for the Ryanair flight to Stansted. It's dark a baby is crying.  I got to Bari on my motorbike riding through olive groves and vineyards in unseasonably warm weather. I did a deal with a car park in Bari to keep my bike there for a month at 3 euros a day. I was treated like royalty and guided to an underground parking space next to a Chevy Corvette. On the way to the airport the courtesy minibus driver talked enthusiastically of his time in Brixton.

I'm off to the UK to attend the Humanist Celebrants' conference and to start putting myself about for celebrancy work.  Also to see Dad before I disappear to asia for three months and to catch up with old friends. I feel a bit scared a bit excited and a bit tired.

Climbing Out of the Pit

With Sue away in Borneo and me not working, the time can weigh heavy.  Especially on a grey, wet day like today.  Like so often in my life I feel in a kind of limbo.  In ten days I'm heading for the UK for a month to try to get my career as a humanist funeral celebrant up and running.  In two months I'm leaving for Asia to spend several weeks with Sue.  And, in less than a year we will have our occupational pensions and financially our lives will be transformed. 

Normally I would go for a run or a bike ride to get my daily fix of exercise, but pressing my nose against the window and looking at our damp and chilly terrace I decided to go for a walk instead.  I took the car and parked on the steep escarpment that leads down to the Adriatic and then walked a circuit I often did with our little dog Milly.

The walk takes you up a steep fire-break and along the top of the pine-fringed ridge to the hotel Lo Smeraldo ("the Emerald" in English).  The fire-break is muddy and it's hard work trudging up the wet and slippery slope.  Milly always used to trot ahead and look down impatiently at me, unaware of how much more difficult the incline is without the benefit of four legs.  More than six years ago now I used to do this climb two or three times a week as part of my struggle to lose weight, improve my fitness and overcome depression.  It was like I was dragging myself out of a pit.

My mood may have changed since that dark and difficult time, but the country hasn't.  Even in this cold and dank atmosphere it is still magnificent - a product of thousands of years of building and cultivation.  As I stood on a carpet of lichen and wild flowers at the top of the fire-break and looked out over the coastal plain with its ranks of ancient olive trees,  I realised that this country too played its part in helping me climb out of that pit.

It's a Beautiful Day

I'm sat in our land basking in the Autumn sun in what Sue calls our "mediteranean garden" - a corner set aside for her to try different plants, now sadly bare.  I'm going to be on my travels soon, so I'm experimenting with using my iPhone to make a post.

Sometimes the country here is so beautiful I want to stretch out my arms and hug it.

Autumn Fruit

We're on the cusp between summer and autumn here in Puglia.  I love this time of year - it's still warm, but the storms that mark the end of summer have made the country green and lush and the leaves are turning gold.  The air is full of rich smells - bonfires and fermenting fruit.  The market is overflowing with ripe produce such as melons, peaches and prickly pears and the vendemmia or grape harvest is just round the corner.

This photo is of stuff I picked from our land during ten minutes of wandering around.  The colours reflect the season so well.  There's a lot to do on the land at the moment.  Right now I'm pruning the fig trees, which haven't been touched for four or five years and are tangled and overgrown. 

Whenever I prune trees I have Erminia's dead husband Paolo invisibly at my shoulder whispering advice - "you prune olive trees to look like a wine glass, but figs like an umbrella".  At the time he told me this I had no idea why, indeed I was suspicious that it was just irrelevant folk lore.  Now, after ten years looking after our acre of land I understand what he was getting at:  figs are a fragile soft fruit which you can't easily pick from a ladder, so you prune them like a parasol whose canopy is within reach of the ground, making the fruit low-hanging and easy to get at. 

Like so much of the old bugger's advice it's obvious when you think about it. 

Parting

I had an afternoon flight back to Puglia yesterday and so was able to spend a few hours with dad in the morning before driving from Lincoln to Stansted airport.

Dad spends a lot of time waiting for things these days - his carers coming and going four times a day, me bouncing to and fro from Italy and one much bigger thing.  To alleviate the boredom he reads, watches TV and snoozes.  The snoozing is taking up increasingly more time and occasionally he even nods off mid-sentence, sometimes waking with a start and looking round in bewilderment.

For me the time with him passes slowly and I catch myself checking my watch every few minutes.  Conversation is difficult because dad is slurring his words quite badly these days and so I invariably have to ask him to repeat what he says, which is frustrating for both of us.  The slurring is worse when he's tired, which is most of the time now.

When the time finally comes round for me to go I lean down and give him a hug and a kiss and reassure him I will be back before he knows it.  But there is now a strong sub-text created by the mutual acceptance that every parting between us could possibly be the last.

The Medals on the Wall

I'm writing this on the sly while dad watches 'the Third Man" on the TV at a volume which is making my ears bleed.  He resents my tapping away at the computer, but if I don't do something I start to go stir crazy.

I'm here with dad in his little suburban bungalow in Lincoln for four days before heading back to Italy.  I keep my sanity by going out in my hire car to the malls of Lincoln and aimlessly window shopping or by running errands and doing "odd jobs" that dad decides he needs doing.

Yesterday I noticed that the glass in the display case where dad keeps his medals was cracked and I bought a picture frame with the intention of remounting them and hanging them on the wall.  He seemed pleased with the result as I took a step back to admire my handiwork.  The one on the right with the blue and white stripes was issued by the UN for his service in the Korean "peacekeeping operation" in 1953.  Some things don't change.

I thought putting his decorations on the wall would be a way of drawing attention to them, which might spark a new line of conversation with his carers and visitors and that it might help his morale to reflect on his life in the Royal Marines.  As I looked I had a sudden vision of them laying on top of his coffin, then I quickly shook the thought away.

Tired Brain

As we enter the last week in August I can feel the summer slip away like sand through the fingers.  Feragosto has come and gone and on Sunday our neighbours returned to their apartment in Bari after three weeks in the country.  Erminia refers to them dismissively as "u barese", the people from Bari, foreigners.

Yesterday evening she stumped round, plastic bucket in hand, intent on collecting figs from the Bari people's neglected trees.  There's this one tree that has fruit that's especially good for drying she tells me.  I remark that I can see she has lost weight.  Actually she looks fitter and seems more mobile.  "Yes" she says with a frown, "I don't feel like eating anything.  I don't like this heat, it's bad and my brain is tired.  Know what I had to eat last night?  Bread and figs!"  Then she said "when I feel like this I used to go round to see Yanni."  Another frown as she shrugs petulantly.

Suddenly, I feel very sad for her - Yanni was our neighbour up the road who died a few months ago.  She was a beautiful white-haired old lady who was Erminia's best friend and contemporary.  Seeing them together was like looking at two near ninety year olds going on sixteen.  I kept meaning to take a picture of them together, but I never got round to it, another reminder to take your opportunities when you can.

A few minutes later Erminia stumps back from our neighbours overgrown and tinder-dry field with a bucket full of figs.  They look a bit manky to me, some beginning to open and reveal the red scabby flesh beneath, like wounds.  "Can I give you a hand with those?" I say.  "If I can't carry these home I might as well be dead already!"  She says defiantly, banging her walking stick down with a crack and heading for our front gate.

The stones of Matera

Our friend Rosemary came to visit last week so I've been doing the tourist rounds, finishing yesterday with a trip to Matera, the ancient town in Basilicata often used as a set for biblical epics because of its resemblance to old Jerusalem we are told.  It is quite a sight, a vast collection of medieval stone houses carved into a bowl of rock and criss-crossed with alleys and stairs.  It does look like my idea of the Holy Land, especially in August, as the surrounding country is empty, dry and dusty, the houses are made of sandstone and the Sun is pitylessly hot.


Actually I was reluctant to go, I think because the last time I visited, several years back, I was feeling very depressed and so the place is associated for me with bad thoughts.  In the end I was glad we went, it is very beautiful, Rosemary loved it and I amused myself taking pictures of old doors.

I waved Rosemary goodbye at Bari Airport earlier today, so now I'm back on my own in our little corner of paradise.  She and I were married for a long time and separated twenty five years ago.  I'm pleased we are good friends now, comfortable in the knowledge that our marriage was doomed from the start and ended about as well as it could have.

But as well as good companionship there is a sadness involved in spending time with her, I guess because our marriage began with optimism and ended with dashed hopes and disillusion and now we are old.  Unlike my black thoughts tramping round Matera a few years ago I think this can be called "ordinary sadness" and not "neurotic despair" as the therapists might say.

Yes Matera is definitely a better place now.

Early Man Discovers the Smartphone

I've been meaning to buy a smartphone for years and finally got myself a second hand iphone on e-bay when I was in the UK a few weeks ago.  Apart from anything else I was curious to see why so many owners seem to find them more interesting than real life.  I'm proud of the fact that it's second hand, it makes me feel less of a victim of consumerism knowing I picked it up at about a third of the price of a new one and without having to enter into a hire purchase agreement thinly disguised as a mobile 'phone contract.

Four weeks later I'm attached to it like a baby to its mother's teet.  I use it for my shopping lists and I'm downloading an app a day to regulate my diet, provide me with a fitness programme and all manner of other useful things that I had no idea I couldn't do without.  I even take it running so it can tell me where I've been and how many calories I burned.  At night I go to bed with it playing me to sleep with BBC Radio 4.

Now I own one I suppose I finally understand the draw of the smartphone - it's the best handtool since man discovered the flint.  Endless diversion, analysis and connectedness in a slim package which sits easily in your hand and slides into your pocket.  I've no doubt that someone will soon market an app which will allow you to light a fire with the fucking thing.

Trouble is, now I've joined the billions of two-legged mammals who've voluntarily submitted to being tagged with one of these devices spewing out data on our location, speed, direction and consumer choices, I'm not at all sure whether I am using it or it is using me.