Suddenly the emotional string that connects me to my Dad got pulled too tight and I had to step on a plane, well several actually, to see him.  After six months in hospital following a pointless knee operation, which he wheedled out of the NHS with great skill and determination, he was discharged home with an "intensive home care package" and from our 'phone conversations it sounded like he was struggling to cope. In fact, by the time I got to Lincoln, tired and jet-lagged following a thirty-odd hour journey, the initial crisis had passed and he was beginning to adapt to his new wheelchair bound existence.  Far from being a sick man awaiting my succour, he greeted me as if my arrival was a pleasant surprise motivated by my desire to see him rather than by his desperate circumstances.  I felt conned and manipulated like I have been so many times before.  Then I felt guilty for feeling exasperated that he didn't seem more sick than he was. I've given myself ...

Sue's and my cup is running over.  She took part in a blowpipe competition at one of her schools yesterday and was given one as a present by a teacher who had been given it by his grandfather when he was a boy.  An honour indeed.  Following a period of indolence I am now working flat out.  After some tweaking of my prices for English lessons to encourage groups of four and five to get together, I've had a rush of clients and now find myself with thirty odd students in seven classes and our downstairs bedroom has been transformed into a classroom complete with tables, chairs and a whiteboard. Although I trained hard for my teaching English to speakers of other languages course in November last year, I am still a novice and having to work up lessons for seven separate groups has been very hard work, even though I have only about ten contact hours per week.  So for the last three weeks I've been hoovering up like a maniac illegal copies of English course books ...

I went out for a bike ride this afternoon with one of Sue's Mentor colleagues, Catherine.  We cycled up and down a tarmac jungle road until it petered out into a track.  The track seemed to know where it was going, so we left our bikes and followed it across a small wooden bridge over a muddy stream.  It took us into the jungle, past rubber trees with telltale grooves cut in their trunks through which the latex flows. After a few hundred metres we came to a clearing in which there was an Iban Graveyard.  We spoke to each other in hushed voices, although we could see or hear no one.  I instinctively took my cycling cap off as a mark of respect.  Most Ibans are Christians today, and the majority of the plots were marked with a cross.  But their Christian beliefs are blended with much older animist traditions in which the spirits of the jungle and their ancestors loom large. One grave had only a traditional urn buried in the ground and next to it ...

What on earth am I doing running long distances in this heat and humidity?  I'm an old man for God's sake!  After fifteen minutes of jogging you are bathed in sweat to the extent that your socks start squelching inside your running shoes and everything is ringing wet.  In these conditions the body behaves  like the engine of a car when the air conditioning is going full belt.  Because the air is so humid the sweat doesn't evaporate, but drips uselessly out of your pores making your heart work hard just pumping blood to your extremities to keep your temperature down and diverting more and more effort away from actually running, so you get slower and slower and wetter and wetter. Anyway defying old age and common sense I ran the Sibu half marathon on Sunday in two hours and nine minutes.  It's an interesting place Sibu, our nearest largish town with maybe a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants and shopping centres and supermarkets that wouldn't look too...

It's been a while since I wrote about my Dad in this blog.  Partly because I became aware that a few people that know both me and him are reading it. Well, Dad had a knee replacement in early December and has been in various hospitals and rehabilitation centres ever since.  He had hoped that a new knee would effectively "cure" his increasing immobility, but this always seemed like a long shot and the actual outcome has been fairly predictable - the new knee was successfully fitted, but the long period of recovery has meant that his mobility is worse not better and he has had problems with the various infections one tends to pick up in hospital. So Dad is now in that grey area in which so many older people find themselves - on the cusp of being able to survive at home and being cared for in an institution, at the boundary between the NHS and local government social services, unclear whether he is sick enough to be looked after for free or is suffering from the ordina...

We spent last weekend at Batang Ai where there is a tribal longhouse "resort" run by Hilton Hotels of all people.  Lots of Sue's fellow mentors were there and we had a very chilled time walking, swimming, eating and generally hanging out.  The resort is in a remote spot on the edge of a large reservoir near the Indonesian border and can only be reached by a twenty minute ferry trip from the nearest road, adding to the sense of peace and isolation.  On our first morning we got up to see and hear the dawn and in the jungle above the resort found the grave of a Headman of a longhouse.  In the early morning light surrounded by the jungle, a rope bridge and the deafening dawn chorus of birds and insects, the spot had a mysterious and melancholy air and I felt sad that the grave was now a tourist sideshow rather than a place of veneration. When we got back from our weekend I did some research and found out that the reservoir is part of a hydro-electric project constru...

There is a saying in Malaysia that "the sea unites and the land divides" and this is certainly true of Sarawak.  The place is really a collection of inhabited islands surrounded by rivers, marsh and jungle, traditionally linked by boat.  Tarmac roads are a new development and there is only one single lane highway which connects the main towns and cities.  Kabong, the town where Sue is based only got a connecting road a few years ago and the village of Perpat, where one of her schools is located, still does not have one.  To get there Sue has to wait by the riverbank for a ferryman to show up.  This can involve balancing on rickety jetties and clambering up slimy ladders, depending on the state of the tide. Normally when we want to go to Kuching, the provincial capital, we drive - a trip of about 300 kilometres which takes about five hours.  But last weekend we took the ferry.  By sea it is 150 kilometres to Kuching, which takes about three and ha...