The Ramblings of Boots

‘Requiescat in Pace’, more commonly recognised as R.I.P. worries me.
Rest in Peace. I struggle with that. How can decaying bones do anything but? I can’t imagine them jumping out of the ground for an all night rave (though the makers of horror genre films might disagree), nor can I imagine an urn full of ashes struggling with its tax returns, dreading the impending visit of the in-laws, or rushing down to Ladbrokes to place a bet on the X Factor.

Of course they are going to rest in bloody peace and they’ve probably earned it.

From my experience of impending death very few look as though they are looking forward to it, unless they are drugged to their faltering eyeballs.

“She looked so peaceful”. So would you if your cancer ravaged body had been infused with a king’s ransom’s worth of morphine.
Prior to the legal drug overdose they had been clinging onto life with the tenacity of a furious fishing boat barnacle suddenly faced with a typhoon.

Of course if you really are a believer in the after life and all things God like (I confess I am not) I apologise and you might take heart from the following, shamelessly lifted from Wikipedia:

“The phrase, rest in peace (R.I.P.) in English was not found on tombstones before the eighth century. (It hit the hebrew tombs in the 1^st century) It became common on the tombs of Catholics in the 18th century, for whom it was a prayerful request that their soulshould find peace in the afterlife When the phrase became conventional, the absence of a reference to the soul led people to suppose that it was the physical body that was enjoined to lie peacefully in the grave. This is associated with the Catholic doctrine of the particular judgement; that is, that the soul is parted from the body upon death, but that the soul and body will be reunited on Judgement Day.”

Enlightened now?

In fairness I also struggle with ‘passed on’, ‘passing’ and ‘passing over’. Who thought those ones up?

They didn’t exactly pass the ball, overtake you on the M25 or cross the street to avoid putting their hands in their pockets for the charity tin.

They’re dead. They died. They are deceased; as dead as the Monty Python parrot. Celebrate their lives, grieve for your loss, remember them and all the good things they gave you but don’t expect them to thank you for asking them to R.I.P. – they don’t have a choice in that.

There is something magical about the first serious rains of the wet season. The days leading up to it are heavy and oppressive with anticipation.

The tide is high (I almost posted the you tube video clip on my fb wall until I realised that little, bar the one line and my obvious likeness to Debbie Harry, bore any relation to life on a beach), and boredom necessitates that suddenly everyone is a tidal expert.

“Tomorrow sea up to the bar, Mama” as last year’s video clip on not the latest mobile phone is pressed between me and my tomatoes on toast so I can see he knows what he is talking about.

“Two years ago tables and chairs go! We build new every day!”

I’m not convinced and my tomatoes are getting cold.

There are no tourists, but the beach is a hive of activity, well as hivey as it gets when it’s actually cool enough to do anything.

Among the boys there is a lot of pointing to the sea and the shoreline and a lot of chatter in far too rapid Thai for me to get a handle on and a fair bit of exchanging of money.

Ham takes the nets out for the daily catch.

Dead coconut trees are felled while there is no one about for them to fall on. One man tackles the offending monolith and six watch entranced, their eyes wide with respect and a hint of envy. One day they will have the honour of wielding the chain saw

Rooms are cleaned, verandahs varnished, the beach that no one will see is swept.

Later, it’s hot, clammy, still. The tide is high.

I wake to the sound of rain. Not soft, gentle, soaking rain but the  thunderous pounding applause of the Glastonbury headliner variety, crashing onto the roof, bouncing up from the balcony, announcing its arrival like a full orchestra reaching a crescendo.

The power goes off. I stretch lazily, then the enormity hits me.

The power is off!

SHIT! It could be off for days. I dive into the shower and turn it on full power. This might be my last shower for a week. I check that everything that will afford me pleasure has a modicum of power. Kindle? – 40 percent. Computer? 80 per cent. I won’t be able to use the internet so it should last for at least four hours. Ipad? Shit shit and shitability! Phone? Corpselike.

Think of the good things.

I am clean. My hair is clean. I only have two new bites. I will have all the time in the world to write the postcards I bought last year and never got round to sending and I will be spared the noxious Thai coffee; they can’t possibly make coffee with no power.

I head to breakfast.

“Mango yoghurt, tomatoes on toast, Mama?”  They can do all that without electricity?

The rain has stopped. I sit on my damp chair at my damp table overlooking the sea.

They were wrong. The sea is not up to the bar, the tide is not as high. I wonder how many bahts were lost and by whom in the book they were patently running.

Jaree brings my breakfast. It’s all there. Mango, yoghurt, tomatoes on toast. How did she do it? OK the toast may be a bit soft but it is toast after a fashion.

Ali brings me a coffee. Ali brings me a coffee?

There is no electricity, I can’t get cash out of the ATM, my clothes will never dry, my kindle will run out and I will have to tackle Girl with a Dragon Tattoo in paperback German but Ali has somehow managed to conjure up a cup of the most evil brew known to man.

He beams waiting for his applause.

“Thanks Ali, that’s great.”

It is luxurious, this life of mine.

Granted not as luxurious as Brand Beckham which pulls in £100,000 a day, an almost obscene amount of money, but they seem like a nice family and put at least some of their vast wealth to good causes. I don’t begrudge them the rewards of their hard work, and it is hard work amassing such a huge fortune honourably, unlike others who make their pile out of the suffering of others or by theft, cheating and corruption.

I watched the news again this morning, Aljazera and the BBC World Service. Both biased and Aljazera pretty cheerless to boot. Wars in Syria, Myanmar, Congo, unrest in the Yemen, Kosova, Egypt, Madagascar, child labour exploitation in Asia and the southern states of the US. The list goes on, grim indictments to our ‘glorious’ past offering scant hope for anyone’s future.

Most schools don’t teach history any more, or if they do it has largely been rewritten to suit the politics of the day with past atrocities being glossed over for the good of the nation.

Last week I saw a documentary on the Congo, a country bigger than Western Europe, a country raped of its natural resources for some 300 years by men and countries alike, bent on adding to their personal pile at whatever the cost.

The cost of wars throughout history is always the same, the same people suffer the most, children, women and the elderly –  those least able to fight back.

More children are suffering from malnutrition, starvation and physical and mental abuse than at any other time in the history of the world. More women are being raped, forced into prostitution, mutilated, murdered and denied human rights, more of the elderly are faced with a dwindling future without hope or money to buy basic necessities. Why?

Much of this carnage is perpetuated in the name of religion. Muslims fights Muslims, Christians fights Muslims, Hindus fight Muslims, Jews fights Muslims, even Buddhists are now fighting Muslims.

Much of it is caused by fear of that which we don’t understand and the fuelling of that fear by those it suits to fan the flames;  those who have something to gain.

And much is simply caused by greed.

Did any of our gods call for this or, as with the past, is religion being used as a political tool to incite the masses? From what I have read in all the good books, all any god says is “Be nice”.

So I do have a luxurious life albeit a simple one.

Today we discussed how high the tide would come in, nay we positively debated it. I was convinced it was on its way out. I lost.

We watched the ferry on the horizon heading to Koh Tao.  Chai explaining that without any papers he could only catch the morning ferry (non tourist) and a friendly Thai would have to buy his ticket.
We all got quite excited when we saw the first ’round the island’ tourist boat enter the bay. It didn’t stop but that was good too.
Chai went out with the nets and we laughed when he only managed to catch one fish.
Jaree groomed Benjy the resident dog, she grooms him every morning and we all studiously examined our bodies for fresh bites.

We have food in our stomachs and no one is pointing a gun at our heads or threatening to rape us. Today we are as rich as Brand Beckham.

It wasn’t as if she felt dissatisfied, unsettled even. It was as though she didn’t know what she felt. She heard Zaw sweeping the leaves and realised it was after seven.

Today would be the same as yesterday. Not in a bad way. She loved her days. Usually when she woke up to the sound of the leaves being swept she would stretch her arms, turn over her breakfast options in her mind and feel for fresh overnight marauders on her body. One lump or two? She never even felt them bite her now but, sure enough, every morning the evidence was there. Not as triumphant as it had been in the first week, smaller mounds now, they must be getting bored with her not quite so fresh blood.

Baked beans or a cheese omelette or maybe ‘poashe’ eggs on toast as Zaw would say? Mango and yoghurt or papaya and pineapple? Her tummy (the class had loved that new word) would rumble with excited anticipation as she rose from the bed, turned on the shower and turned off the air con.

There was something wrong today. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. She let the warm shower run over her body, towel dried her hair and put on a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt. A Skype meeting at 3.45? maybe that was it?

At breakfast she opted for mango and yoghurt and baked beans. Two cups of coffee later and her first lesson of the day was only minutes away. She hadn’t even done a lesson plan but that was OK, Zaw needed to go through the menu again and Gelda, of the crooked teeth, would be more than happy to show off everything she’d learnt the day before. She knew every colour now and at least ten verbs. She wanted to start the Kurt Vonnegut book that Jess Walter’s had recommended at the end of his haunting book, ‘Beautiful Ruins’ but knew there wasn’t time.

Zaw came towards her clutching his exercise book, closely followed by Gelda. It looked like a double lesson. Then Ali spoke up, out of the blue, as if someone had waved a magic wand. “No, not today, no lesson today. Mama have holiday today.”

How did he know, when she didn’t? How did he know that all she wanted to do today was nothing? She just wanted to listen to the pulse of the sea, feel the warmth of the sun and lose herself in someone else’s fantasy. How could they be so in tune with everything around them?

They are giving me permission to do exactly what I want to do today, she thought, and today that is exactly nothing.

Is it better to experience or to read stories? Paulo Coehlo poses this question in The Alchemist (I might have added the ‘stories’ bit) and concludes that experience provides the greatest rewards.

Perhaps, but words can help to vocalise experience and stories make you realise we are all the same.

I’m back on my island, a place where very little changes. Very little changes in Molesey actually, it really is ‘same same but different’.

Today I took myself into Thongsala the main, nay, the only, town on the island. A buzzing metropolis that makes Tolworth look like Tokyo. I haggled a reasonable fare for one passenger, 500 Baht (£10) there and back, a good 20 minutes each way and my driver (a woman called Micki) promised to wait for an hour while I optimistically went in search of a birthday present for a family friend whose birthday is tomorrow, and picture books for my students.

I have students ‘plural’ now. Zow, the new member of staff who has virtually no English but is a quick learner, and who has now had 5 lessons, was this morning joined by a young girl from Laos, the pronunciation of whose name I am struggling with, whose English is non existent. I should perhaps add that this teaching game is not for payment but rather for payback of the hospitality I am afforded by the lovely people who take care of me. I’m not sure Zow was thrilled to have a cuckoo in the nest but when I asked him to converse with me – pretty basic stuff like ordering breakfast, she was impressed and his street cred rocketed ( I think she may have a crush on him). It was decided that tomorrow Zow would have a half hour lesson first then the girl from Laos with unpronounceable name and slightly crooked teeth, could join us for the next half hour.

Chai, an old friend and another member of staff who is the chubby, cheerful non malicious gossip in the crew, (I had barely reached reception on arrival when he told me his girlfriend was pregnant), looked put out until I promised him a more advanced lesson next week. So now three students, how cool is that?

Back to the journey into Thongsala. On the way Micki told me that her youngest son had been shot in the shoulder, God knows how, he’s eleven, how do eleven year old boys get hold of guns? She has to take him to the mainland so the bullet can be removed. Only then can the police track down the perpetrators. Of course they can. If the local hospital can’t take out a bullet, I don’t hold out much hopes for ballistics. She has no money. She is the mother of 4, two still at school and 2 working, no husband “He was Mai Dee” (no good) and ageing parents. There is barely enough income coming in for food, let alone medical expenses.

My outer self saw the scam. My inner self was entranced.

Once in Thongsala, I savoured the smells from the food stalls (not all pleasant), browsed the familiar shops, came across a new delicatessen called ‘Delicat and Sens’ (love it), a bookshop with alas no picture books for my students and, remarkably, I found two shirts that weren’t covered in Full Moon Party slogans and when Micki called to see if I was ready to go home, I agreed to meet her at the seven eleven.

I jumped into the taxi (not as we know it) and, as a ferry was due in, suggested we wait at the port so she could pick up a few more fares…pimping is second nature here. Well I wasn’t in a hurry and medical care is expensive.

On the drive back – with six more customers (the front seat is now mine) she told me about a beach on the other side of the island that is “Number One Beach. No waves, no wind, white white sand” It sounded idyllic. I told her how much I hated Haad Rin and all things Full Moon, we laughed, she hates it too. “Full Moon Farangs (foreigners) Mai Dee!”

We arrive back at my beach, which is pretty beautiful, and I pressed far too much money into her hand. She cried and promised to take me to Number One beach “No charge!”

Yes…I know, I’m sure there is little truth in the bullet story but I am still a tourist and tourists are supposed to be ripped off. It would be lovely if she does, take me to Number One Beach that is, it would mean a new friend, but you know, it doesn’t matter, it was a good story even if it isn’t true. it was a good experience too and that’s what I love about life.