Cupid.

Have I mentioned Lorraine yet? She was Arthur’s girlfriend when he left school. Nice enough girl. Things just happened. His parents were off somewhere for the weekend, Lorraine came round, one thing lead to another and bingo!....bun in the oven.

So when Arthur returned from his journey to the East he had a major problem to deal with.

“What about Lorraine?” said Arthur’s mother, “The poor girl is eight  months  pregnant! We’ve all been worried sick while you’ve been gallivanting around in India.”

Gallivanting? “Well,” said Arthur, “I suppose we have to get married.”

“Oh gawd,” says Simon later, “See what one wayward sperm can do. It can change your life. So now what?”

“Look for place to live I suppose. Get a job.”

“In Crorley?”

“Yes.”

“There are alternatives you know.”

“Not in my case. What about you? London?”

“Yes. I’ve started writing for the alternative press. London is the only place to be. It’s all clothes, drugs, pop music. Things are really happening.”

“Sounds great.”

“And I have met an amazing girl. Her name is Samantha.”

“Don’t tell me you’re head over heels in love.”

“More like arse over tit.”

Simon met Samantha in Ladbroke Grove. Some hippie pad full of Indian bed-sheets incense and smoke. They’d left together for his place and talked excitedly about India. Simon mentioned an article he’d written for International Times.

“You wrote that!?!” said Samantha. “It was fab!! My dad liked it too.”

“Your dad?”

“Monty. He publishes magazines and stuff.”

This was music to Simon’s ears. Samantha produced a piece of Red Leb and it wasn’t long before their liaison was consummated.

Pussy whipped.

Arthur wanders into ‘Silly Suds’ and is delighted to find his favorite bar stool unoccupied. Before sitting down he adjusts the stool slightly so that he can see the TV and the street. Jim’s new girl is already pulling a draft. The ‘pub’ is the same as ever. Four or five of the regulars are sitting at the bar. BBC World is on the telly. Last week’s Bangkok Post is open at the crossword (Arthur has an eye for detail) and behind him a couple of blokes are playing pool. Outside on the street things are much as usual. It’s another slow, hot day in Mai Mee Nakon.

   There should be another bar in this town, thinks Arthur. He’d open one himself but who wants to sit behind a counter all day talking rubbish? Jim apparently.

   Jim says “Look mate don’t get me started on girls. Let’s find something else to talk about for a bloody change.”

   “I hear Skipper’s back in Bangkok,” says someone.

   “Skipper’s dead.” says Jim.

   “Not that Skipper. The Ozzie one.”

   “Oh him.”

   A young fellow with long blonde hair and a backpack who they haven’t seen before wanders in and orders a Sing. He sits at the bar and says, “Anybody feel like a game of Trivial Pursuit?” English by the sound of it, waiting for a bus probably, “ Nobody? OK. Just asking.”

   One of the pool players, the Yank, says, “Ask louder pal. They’re all deaf in here.”

   “Saw Max in Chiang Mai.” says the same bloke who’d tried to get the Skipper story going.

   “What’s he doing?”

   “He was eating pie and chips. In Eddie’s old place.”

   “No I mean what’s he doing?”

   “He wants to send motor bikes to England. Good business he thinks. Buy ‘em cheap in Chiang Mai. Crate the buggers up. Put ‘em in a container. Somebody at the other end flogs ‘em for him. Good demand he reckons…”

   Arthur was only half listening to it all. After a few beers it all got to be a bit of a drone anyway quite frankly. The quality of the conversation, and the caliber of the ex-pats, these days had gone right downhill if you asked him, which nobody ever did. He hardly ever heard anybody say anything interesting and he wondered why he bothered going to the place really. He even knew the answer to that one. Not much choice. It was either beer at the “Silly Suds” or sit in the bookstore.

   The Yank at the pool table was talking; to his friend Arthur supposed, but loudly enough to include everybody in the bar…and even a few on the street…

   “…it’s the falang this and falang that that gets to you in the end…falang, falang, falang…it never stops…even when they don’t mean any harm it’s always there…hello falang, here comes the falang, look at the falang everybody…yeah I get a laugh out of these guys who’ve been here twenty years and think they belong here…”

  When Arthur had first come to Thailand 20 years ago things had been different. The Thais had been more…what was the word? Not innocent exactly but certainly more likeable. He’d had a bar in Pattaya for a while with his wife at the time, Dao, the bar had been her idea come to think of it. He smiles inwardly to think how naïve he must have been in those days. Mai pen rai. All water under the bridge. Dao had cleaned him out but he had learned a lot from the experience.

    “Got any good videos then?” asks the young English lout. No manners at all obviously. Can’t he see everybody is watching the news? Smoke and flames over a city somewhere. Baghdad? Tehran? Jerusalem…can’t hear the TV properly with all the noise…

    “…met a guy once,” the Yank again, “been married 3 times here still couldn’t figure out where all his money was going. He didn’t care about it too much, had a pension from the military and a couple other pensions coming in, but boy did those women know how to skin him…”

   The bar phase had lasted about two years then Arthur had met Nong, his second wife, whose ambition was to open a guest house in Chiang Mai. So he’d got that started, one of the first to do trekking actually, and he’d even done a bit of import/export work on the side until things had become impossible with Nong and he’d moved back to Bangkok with Ning where he’d tried teaching English but that was a young man’s game and then came Tui and the move to Isaan, which was when he’d taken over the used bookshop…ah the Bangkok Years (sigh)…if he ever gets around to writing his autobiography…which he fully intends to do…he will refer to his time in Bangkok as his Panty Period…perhaps talk about the collection…or perhaps not…nobody would ever publish stuff like that anyway…(first few years….he had gone a little crazy, as many new arrivals do)

     “...money! That’s all they want from us…basically they hate us…don’t ever kid yourself otherwise…”

   The American is still talking. Arthur is tempted to comment but he keeps his mouth shut and listens. Until recently, the last few years say, he’d always found the Thai people polite and respectful. In fact it was one of the things he’d always liked about them. They could be infuriating in some ways but they understood the value of good manners. Lately though he’d noticed a change…especially among the younger people. He attributed it to exposure to Western culture. In fact he blamed Western culture for a lot of Thailand’s ills. It had been the Americans after all who started the whole Patpong/Pattaya thing for R&R. Oh the Thais had gone along with it readily enough…there were always two sides to everything…he would be the first to admit that…

    “…those girls can’t get out of the villages fast enough. Get themselves a rich stupid falang and they’ve got it made...”

   Arthur listens. How come every expat in Thailand is an expert on Thai culture?

   “ …I’ve lived in a village. Boy that was something...being the resident falang…that was a real test of mental stamina let me tell you. They treat you like a god dam ATM machine…it gets to you…sure there’s some good folks there but most of the time I’m playing with half educated chimps. The phee/nong stuff. I’m supposed to do what the older chimp says! The guy might be a smack head but he’s telling me what to do! Do it like this falang…we need this and that falang…no respect at all… and I was the one that fed ’n kept them all…and I’m supposed to keep smiling…oh yeah keep smiling whatever you do…don’t for god’s sake get angry…and don’t ever criticize anybody…cos you’re just a dumb falang anyway…”

    The fellow had a point. Arthur wouldn’t have put it quite the same way but he had written several letters to the Bangkok Post -- anonymously of course -- on exactly that subject. The difficulty foreigners had finding acceptance in Thailand. It was all part of the same paradox…the way the Thais could be welcoming and tolerant on the one hand aloof and xenophobic on the other. He could write a book about it.

      “…trouble is,” said the American, winding up his monologue, “we’re all pussy-whipped….”

the young backpacker fellow says, “Alright then…anybody fancy a game of pool?” Nobody does. Arthur continues musing then suddenly he hears… CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! What? Long time since we heard that. Good heavens…somebody is ringing the dusty old bell. Arthur missed the actual ringing but he looks up to see the young person with the backpack heading for the street.

   “Did he pay his bill?” someone asks.

   Jim picks a 50 baht note off the counter and calls out, “Here mate, see that sign, you’re supposed to buy everybody a drink when you ring that.”

   “Fuck that,” says the young yob, “I can’t read.”

Flying fish.

We picked up a nice breeze off Honduras and headed due East. The girls keep talking about Miami and all the rich husbands to be found there. If I’m not careful I could have a mutiny on my hands. Gender politics haven’t been an issue so far but you never know. Somebody might even accuse me of exploitation.

OK girls I say…..I’ll get you to Miami but first we need to make a few stops. Does anybody fancy Cuba? How about Jamaica ladies? Perhaps I can fix you up with some nice young Rastas.

Me I’m just happy when the wind fills the sails and I can get on with my meditation. There’s something magical about the Caribbean, the blue of the sky, the beaches, the flash of light on water. Excuse me if I get poetic…I know somebody will say ‘what a load of shite’. That’s OK. Say what you want. I love the reggae and the soca music, the palm trees, the friendly people, the sails snapping and the scrabbling sound of kamikaze flying fish skidding across the deck.

Hall of the Mountain Grill.

 

After he’d got back to England Simon had spent a few days at his parent’s house. Just long enough to get cleaned up. But he’d still felt restless. As if he was still on the road. His old bed felt too soft or something. Also there were some obvious changes going on in England, music, clothes, something was happening and he wanted to be part of it.

He moved to London, crashed at somebody’s pad for a while, feeling out the scene before renting a bed-sit in Ladbroke Grove from somebody called Rachman. He began to frequent the pubs. That was where he met Mick Farren. Mick took him to Indica which turned out to be an art gallery with connections to a bookshop on Southampton Row run by a fellow called Barry Miles …a friend of Paul McCartney apparently. Simon asked him if he could help. Miles said sure and gave him a bundle of magazines to sell. ‘You can keep half.’ He said. Simon told him it wasn’t quite what he had in mind. Would Miles be interested in something he’d written about hitchhiking to India? He’d just come back. Indeed we would said Miles.

The article wrote itself more or less. Getting the part about Istanbul into International Times had been surprisingly easy. Miles had been very encouraging. Write some more he said. Tips for where to stay, where to buy hash that kind of thing. How about something about India? The overland route? But Simon is in two minds. His first effort had been well received, according to Miles, but Istanbul’s low-end tourist facilities had been overwhelmed. Such is the power of the press that apparently the toilet at the Gulhane Hotel had been blocked solid a mere month after publication. Simon felt partially responsible.

About halfway along Portobello Road is, or was, a café called the Mountain grill. It’s a working class café very popular with musicians and roadies (I was one of those, DH) who like to exchange gossip and drugs. Pills mostly, blues and dexies, but grass isn’t hard to find. The Bangers and Mash isn’t bad either. Good hash is still something of a rarity. Finding Red Leb for instance involves a mini-safari into darkest Westbourne Park where you have to take your chances with the surly looking rude-boys at the Rio.

So the Mountain Grill occupies a strategic, some might say symbolic, location where two worlds meet. Down beyond the Westway Flyover is Hawkwind country, Lemmy Kilmister’s end where things get seedy…down among the wheelers and the dealers and the basic riffs and rhythms. Up towards Notting Hill Gate you will be more likely to find students and weekend dropouts, trendsetters, entrepreneurs, assorted Jerry Cornelii, Lord Kitchener’s valets. Even some Old Etonians.

Syd Barrett wanders into the Mountain Grill.
“You look a bit rough this morning Syd,” says Lemmy, “A bacon sandwich will soon fix you up.”
“Really greasy. Wash it down with a nice cuppa.” Suggests a wit.
Syd looks confused. He feels more comfortable in Holland Park to be honest. He finds it more attuned to his delicate Cambridge sensibilities. But here he is in the Grill so might as well sit down.
“Has anybody seen my dog?” He asks, “She's a collie.”
“Today’s Special.” Says another wag. “Shepherds Pie.”

Through the steamy windows it is possible to see VW vans recently arrived from the exotic East. They are disgorging bundles of Afghan jackets, scarves, incense, natural oils, colourful bed-sheets Kandahar shirts, Moroccan leather bags, Tibetan prints, psychedelic posters, and tabla drums which recently contained mind altering substances. The fuzz are active but not yet equipped with sniffer dogs. Stalls are being set up in amongst the fruit and veg, the fake antiques and the cut-price crockery.

All this is happening right outside the Mountain Grill. Simon is inside transcribing the scene into a notebook. Discretely. He’s still not totally confident of his literary abilities but making notes has become a habit. If anybody asks him what he’s writing he mumbles something about the underground press. He’s noticed how the bands round here like to talk about being revolutionary but nobody turns down an offer to appear on Top of the Pops. Look at Mark Bolan. Hopping around on TV like some kind of psychedelic elf. Hawkwind haven’t been on Top of the Pops yet. Maybe they haven’t been asked.

Syd meanwhile, after much reflection, has decided against a hearty breakfast. Poor Syd. It’s all rather sad. One acid trip too many is the general consensus. Fried his brains. They watch him wander out onto the street in pursuit of who knows what strange hobby. Not even beans on toast can tempt him back from the outer reaches of the galaxy.

Simon writes…“The Hippy Trail is really just a state of mind…”

Malibu, boogie nights.

This reminiscing is all very well Dick, says one reader, but can you tell us what’s happening now, in real time? Where exactly are you? What are Arthur and Simon doing?

Fair enough. I know it gets confusing. I’m confused myself. So if you’re still with me here’s a brief recap Arthur and Simon are two old school-friends. They hitch-hiked to India together back in the Sixties. Since then Simon has become a successful TV personality. Arthur lives in Northern Thailand where he runs a half-arsed bookstore. I’m on a boat in the British Virgin Islands with a laptop and some rum bottles and not much else. I’m supposed to be narrating but my mind wanders. I mostly wear Speedos.

I believe I was telling you about my mate Oscar. After my problems with the law suit he offered to put me up in his house on Malibu Beach. Course there was a catch. There always is with Oscar. He will be appearing again in the narrative so I might as well say right now he is one of the most horrible people I’ve ever met. No scruples. And he doesn’t care. He wanted me around so he could bounce ideas off me. Nasty ideas.

This was '77-'78. People were starting to talk about personal computers. “Mark my words Dick,” said Oscar, “the internet will be the next big thing. And I mean big. Come and have a look at this.” He’s got this Macintosh thing set up and he shows me how it works. “These are floppy discs. You’ve got your keyboard here….and this is what we call a mouse. Here have a go.”

I sit down and he shows me how to move the cursor around. “Now click on that.” He says.
“Click?”
“Press the top of the mouse.”
Bloody hell. Up pops a picture of Johnny Wadd on the job.
“See the potential Dick? The porn business is always evolving. Just a matter of time before we can do videos.”
He starts telling me how it works but it all sounds a bit daft to me. The way Oscar explains it blokes would pay money to look at grainy, dirty pictures on computers! You’re kidding, I said. Trust me Dick, says Oscar. There’s a fortune to be made online.

Naturally I was asking myself ‘Where do I fit in?’ Oscar showed me the basics of it and we soon had about 50 subscription sites going. Html was in its early days so to keep things simple the sites were all selling pretty much the same stuff. Pictures took about 10 minutes to download but who’s going to complain? And who are they going to complain to? Course this was before spammers and all the clever little pop-ups came along. Basically all we had to do was keep the punters happy. We’d scan a few pics out of magazines and upload a new bunch every few weeks. The worst thing we worried about was people flogging their passwords, which they did of course, but the money rolled in anyway.

The nicest thing about it was you could do it from anywhere. All you needed was a decent modem. The phone connections were slow in the beginning but that soon changed. Then along came cable and wireless and bugger me I could be on the beach or in a hotel or even on an airplane pumping out porn to the sex-starved millions. It was better than a license to print money.

Navigation.

Just a few thoughts about navigation.

People often ask me if I have a destination. Do you know where you’re going Dick, they often ask? Well of course I give them the old smile, like I know what’s going on, but tell the truth I don’t have a clue.

To be honest I don’t know bugger all about navigation neither. Or should that be ’nor do I not know bugger all about navigation either.’? Always have trouble with those double negatives. I can read a chart and a compass of course but the finer points elude me. Sextant? GPS? No thanks. All that fiddly stuff with plotters and logs. I left all that to Nyum. I trusted her completely. She gave me a compass heading and I steered it. She seemed to have an instinct for it. Funny that.

Some people just always seem to know where they are. The Carib Indians got around OK in their canoes. Island hopping probably. Never out of sight of land for long. Bloody amazing how those early Polynesians found their way around the Pacific with just a few shells and a couple of twigs. Took their wives and kids and pigs along too. Me, I don’t know where I am half the time. Hah…I can read the wind and the water but dates, tide-tables, windspeeds, headings…it’s all bloody mixed up. Get to my age and you don’t give a toss. Take each day as a bonus. When I left Tahiti I had a vague plan to go to Barbados (where I have a house) via Aruba. Didn’t work out. Ran into some very strong westerlies after we left Colon and decided to do the islands clockwise. That meant heading for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Then what? Drop in on Oscar? Maybe give him a hand with his treasure hunt. Say hello to Richard Branson' I do plan to end up in Barbados for the Mountgay Distillery Pilgrimage but not sure when. After that who knows. Back to Pattaya probably, always plenty of odd-jobs at the Headley Hostel for Rehabilitated Sex Trade Workers. Basket weaving seems popular.

Sometimes I get on a nice long tack with a steady wind and I feel like I could go on sailing forever. Let the wind take me wherever it wants to go. Just lounge back, watch the girls in their matching Team Headley thong things, and think about the keel slicing through the water.

Way up in the sky I see the vapour trail from a Lear Jet. What’s that about I wonder? World Bank officials winging their way to Washington to catch up on the latest tax fiddles? Colombians moving a bit of dope? Beyonce off for a photo shoot? Who knows? And I see Brian Clough died at 69. Good number. He was a nice fella, let's hope he’s alright.

I met the King of Afghanistan once. At the Hudson’s Bay Company fur auction in London. He was flogging still-born lamb skins and I was there to buy a string of wild mink pelts. Skinny little bugger he was with a big nose. We got chatting and he tells me he likes big girls and do I know any? So I took him and his bodyguard up West. We had a nice meal at Wheelers then it was back to the Savoy where I made a couple of phone calls and ordered up some tarts. “This is Christine and Mandy your Majesty.” I said, “They will be happy to sit on your face” They settled on 100 quid each which I thought was steep but the King was happy. “Thank you Mr. Dick. You very good man” says the King, “Why you no come stay in my palace in Afghanistan?”

I never took him up on it, which was probably just as well. Christine and Mandy went on to become famous after Jack Profumo got arrested. I don’t know what happened to the King. Probably got beheaded by the Taliban. You can google all this stuff.

Ning and Nong are still bugging me about Miami. And I think I spotted the black pirate boat again. Could be a plot twist.

A slow day in Mai Mee Nakhon.

 

What about Arthur? We left him in Thailand in present time. He was riding his Honda Dream into town to get his bookshop open. Here he comes now…

It’s another slow, hot day in Mai Mee Nakhon. Arthur parks his Honda Dream outside the Last Gasp Bookshop. The shop across the road is still selling plastic buckets. Some dogs are sleeping in the sharp shadows cast by the Krung Thai Bank. An ice-truck makes a delivery at the 711. A few motorbikes and a tuktuk or two putter around aimlessly.

Arthur has  been very preoccupied lately. More so than usual. Simon is coming to Bangkok with a BBC crew and Arthur has agreed to show them around. Thinking about Simon brings back all kinds of memories. Schooldays, jazz clubs, Paris, Turkey, Afghanistan, India. It interferes with his other daydreaming. Did it all really happen? Where does the time go?


Ten years in Thailand now and not a lot to show for it. Still he doesn’t see it as entirely wasted, not at all, and as for the bookstore, well it isn’t a bad life. Or hadn’t been until recently, he should say. Lately it had got a little depressing. Hardly any customers and now the Thais are starting that thing again about falang not being able to work in their own bloody businesses. Enforcing some petty law. Ha. They are good at doing that when it suits them. So now technically he can’t move the books around or handle money…typical Thai bureaucratic nonsense really but it means every now and again he has to hide in the storeroom upstairs and hire a Thai student to run the shop. Two students really because it needs one to sort the books and stack the shelves…in alphabetical order ha ha, and another to sit behind the till staring into space. The other problem is his own literary aspirations. It’s very frustrating, suffering from a severe case of writer’s block and being surrounded all day long by other people’s outpourings. Not ideal conditions for writing that’s for sure. Or maybe it’s too easy to blame the shop. Perhaps he just isn’t cut out for writing. There are so many possibilities to think about, so many ways of looking at things. Maybe that’s why writers use a group of different characters…get them arguing and discussing amongst themselves, showing different points of view. James Joyce for instance. He was just writing about himself really.

Arthur's mind wanders back to that fateful day in Madras. Yes he had been lost and confused but he had made a decision. He chose to go back to England and confront his  mother and his pregnant girlfriend. He deserves some credit for that surely...

La Ceiba.

We're having a beer in a palm thatched beach hut on Roatan. That’s one of the Bay Islands of the coast of Honduras. A few days ago we stopped in Trujillo. Interesting place if you’re interested in William Walker. Who was William Walker you ask. Well he was from Tennessee. In the 1850s he got this great idea to take Baja California from Mexico. It didn’t work out but a few years later he raised an army of desperados and managed to take over Nicaragua. Even had himself declared president. Things went so well he set his sights on a few other Central American countries but his army was defeated and he left in a hurry. He made one last try but the Hondurans caught him in Trujillo (with a bit of help from a British warship) and put him in front of a firing squad. Un, dos, tres and that was it. Hasta la vista Senor Walker but just to make sure he was really dead they tied his body to the mouth of a cannon and blew him apart. The various pieces are buried in different spots. We visited the cemetery where Walker’s torso ended up then went for lunch at the Villa Brinkley. Red Snapper with a tartar sauce.

I've been told I must write something about Arthur in present time (He's in Thailand). Then I have to get the younger Arthur back from India to Swinging London. Who said narrating was easy? I’m just an old drunk you know.

La Ceiba is named for a huge old ceiba tree that used to grow here. It was a popular landmark for mariners but it's long gone. Which I find disheartening. The girls are disappointed too. There is nowhere to shop. They had been expecting Miami. We take stock of the locals….a few balding gringos, a couple of local gangster types, a group of whores, some sleeping borachos…..and we are on our way.