To Clifford, it didn’t fit: the employees of a government board strolling along some of the corridors with toilet rolls under their arms. In Singapore though, a lot didn’t seem to fit at the time; and that was precisely its charm, its fascination.

In his hotel’s lobby, a chance meeting and subsequent get-togethers, had steered Clifford from the status of tourist to that of video consultant, at Singapore’s National Productivity Board. What luck! He was on top of the world - well, at one end of it, anyway! For the next fifteen months, he had what he could only describe as, the time of his life.
_______________________

Some eighteen years after Singapore, (and by then having lived and worked in a few other countries), Clifford met and married Charmaine. At his enthusiastic suggestion, they were to honeymoon in Singapore. He was jubilantly anticipating the prospect of showing his wife one of his most memorable earlier destinations. It would be both a nostalgic and a romantic journey, beginning, one could say, with their arrival at the ever-outstanding Changi airport.

Later, as the bus entered the centre city area, he sensed some kind of ‘aura’ he didn’t feel comfortable with: but he wasn’t going to fall into the trap of giving Charmaine a “used-to-be” guided tour. How could he possibly talk about the delights of things which seemed to no longer be there, to someone so greatly enjoying all that surrounded her now?

For much of each day, she nudged him and pointed, poked him and chortled, gasped and giggled. She was experiencing at this instant what he had relished back then: but unfortunately, everything she was absorbing and appreciating, reinforced his sense of.....was it loss?

While Charmaine was ‘seeing’, he was, well, not seeing. It became apparent to him that he would no longer find a middle-aged man giving a helpful back-massage to a friend on the pavement, a wood carver devotedly forging his objets d’art in his ‘shed in the wall’, the incessantly flowing, higgledy-piggledy interaction of waterside cafés, almost seamlessly linked to boats crammed with anything and everything humanly consumable. Now, for Clifford, it had all been “tidied up”; no doubt for the benefit of the tourist and, to be sure, the nation. Now you could, with the help of a guide, be told ‘how it was’!

Yet as a tourist, his privilege had always been to go somewhere to peep into its community’s life as it actually was; to briefly be permitted to see how they normally lived - of their own volition. This however, felt like an invitation to observe how their existences had been organised for them. (Was he supposed to be convinced that his little wood-carver’s quality of life would be improved by being allocated, say, two cement boxes to replace his wooden one? The opposite could be just as easily argued!)

He would never tell anyone, even Charmaine. He would hoard this. What he had, was a jewel far too precious to share.
____________________________


[filched from, re-hashed from or simply plagiarized from Itchy Memories and Tales Told...]

""...with a lingering aftertaste..."
Thanks Stanley.

Having an afterthought about one's creative attempts, when the whole thing is over and done with, is as daft as is the 'Hollywood personality' who summed up a film he'd seen, by saying: "Excellent movie; but you should really change the actress who played the heroine.....[name] isn't much good!)

""...The line at which betrayal is called...""
So, in [futile!] retrospect, maybe I should/could/would have said, HIS betrayal.....

""...signs of something to fill a void...""
Among the other things I've called myself - (most of which wouldn't get past Mingle2's monitors) - is HOMO PENDULI.
I.e., he who breaks out of the egg, gorges himself on Liberty, [but alas, that's the name of the whore who lives much too close by], and before the sun has barely regurgitated itself, whaderyerknow, the chap is madly trying to find a new frame to lock himself back into.

Ding-dong - eh?!

k

I don't fancy myself as a 'writer', but I do have tales to tell; so I keep a very tight rein on what I put down, to assure that it at least comes out as fairly literate.

However, if I compare myself to a Somerset Maugham, I hide behind the curtains!

Your response is very warming "Blondey111".

keith

It was fairly certain that young Muriel and Alan would be married before the end of December. They had been going out for over a year and, to quote a few of their friends, they were “just as much in love as ever”.

Neither of them would have put it exactly that way. They had moved through those familiar stages - from delighted delirium to relaxed enjoyment, true, but of their growing mutual affection, there could be no doubt at all.

For his part, Alan was sure he didn’t deserve her. He was quite taken off guard when she responded warmly to his initial rather bumbling words. In fact he thought she might have been making fun of him; but apparently not. It had been a great relief to her not to be plied with ‘the usual sales approach’; and she had welcomed what looked like the chance of a ‘normal conversation’ with one of the opposite sex.

One day when they were in the local library, he noticed something that he immediately put out of his mind: but later, when they were strolling, it came back to him - catching him in mid-stride. As Muriel paused to window-shop, he recalled that he had actually been ‘gawping’ at a pretty library assistant only a few moments ago. He also remembered, to his shock that at the time, he had not been in the least aware of Muriel’s presence.

How could that be? Muriel preoccupied him day and night. He was forever conjuring up cameos of her face and form, her cheeky chuckle, her lovely frocks. How could he, with her standing right next to him, have virtually excised her from his existence?!

The only answer he found when struggling to justify - (yes, that was the word) - his behaviour, was that perhaps the girl reminded him of someone from way back, when he was simply too young to know which way was up!

What was most unsettling about the incident, was that their union had seemed to contain all the ingredients of happiness in the universe. Nothing beyond it could be of any significance. No comparison was possible. Yet there he was, wondering, wishing, fixating on AN OTHER. His unassailable confidence in their marvellously self-contained universe, cracked.

For him, it was a betrayal, and made a mockery of all the sentiments that bonded them.

Muriel was unable to learn why she was never to see him again.
___________________________________

[All such snippets are adapted from Tales told by an Idiot......sometimes known as Itchy Memories]

With some foreboding, George arrived at the cemetery. This was where he was to do some pick-and-shovel work; his first job since his sixteenth birthday.

“That tent over there,” one of the crew explained, “is mighty handy. Rains a lot around here, so we get plenty of time off for cuppas and smokes. The only rule to follow is, ‘don’t work too hard or some of us will lose our jobs’.” (Some advice to give to a teenager, eh! Still, now that he thought about it, he had heard it a couple of times before.)

In the days that followed, in spite of swinging his pick with a certain restraint, he was gently reproached with, “easy mate; you’ll break something”, and “if you keep that up lad, the dead’uns might turn over!” Fortunately though there were plenty of ‘rain breaks’, when they would squat in the tent, make tea, and….well…..gab.

Reflecting on his grave-digging experience later, he wondered what on earth they could have found to talk about during the many intervals. He ‘gabbed’ just as much as anyone else but what, he asked himself, could he possibly have said?! Perhaps his contribution to the conversations was inspired more by the notion that when seated for long periods within arms’ length of someone, it would seem impossible to just say nothing at all. Come to think of it, that may well have been the main idea behind most of what he said, rather than having anything particular to talk about. (What a pile of ZEROITS, he must have come out with!)

He mused on the matter of communicating with others, and idly wondered how many words he had spouted in his life so far! He jotted down some numbers. Let’s see, at least a hundred words per minute…...no; he gave up trying to work it out because he couldn’t possibly calculate what portion of anyone’s day would actually involve speaking. However, it did mean that there were TRILLIONS of words being spoken in this our world, ALL THE TIME.

Watch yourself! You know how those zeros easily go bezerk - or is ‘viral’ the right word to use? Maybe their ancestors, (words), go the same way, he considered: enough to make the dead’uns turn in their graves, one might say.
______________________________

True.
Happily there are still marvels such as Mingle2 to cheer things up!!

It might be worth a thought (for those who haven't yet), that if PROPER air-conditioning...[expensive, true]...had been installed closer to the beginning of all the 'smoking hysteria', the closures, sackings, resentment, aggression, etc., relating to the issue, would not have reached such ridiculous levels. I don't like smoke up my nose when eating, but had CORRECT air-conditioning been given first consideration, I wouldn't even have noticed it!

Also, I invite anyone to make a list of 'things toxic to the human', in the order of "most dangerous to", (including everything the creature consumes), and see how very low down in it TOBACCO is.

The only problem was that you had to leave and re-enter Malaysia every three months if you wanted to stay for, say, a year. Mind you, it was better than India where the limit was 180 days, even if you were married to the prime minister’s daughter. One day over, and you were for it!

So in Georgetown, Penang, Harry put up with the go-and-come ritual four times a year so that he could live in a modest Malaysian middle-class style, relishing the succulent low-priced street dishes, and quite comfortable in his roomy flat. The only thing missing was, (to quote Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore), “green lungs”. Mostly it needed a long bus ride to reach any of them, and if by chance you happened, (as he did), to be a Squash player, it required an hour to get there; and when you did, it was impossibly expensive!

So, one day, having finally found the Botanical Gardens where he was off for a good long ramble, he was astonished to see notices at the main entrance to the area, expressly forbidding smoking. For him, one of the great pleasures while strolling in forests or by the sea, was puffing at his pipe. Was it even credible that SMOKING IN THE OPEN AIR was banned?! Had it actually come to that?

On his last day in Penang, his landlord had invited him for a ‘farewell meal', and answered his question: “Ah. It is because of the many barefoot runners who have burned their feet on unextinguished cigarette stubs.”

He had got it quite wrong then. The New World Order had not arrived at that point…...yet!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It was a country which, (although found on maps), according to the world did not exist at the time; and doesn't exist now. Well, it does, but under another name: Zimbabwe.

Michael and his wife knew it as Rhodesia. (They lived and worked in both it and South Africa). They regarded the views of politicians and the news media that Rhodesia was a despotically ruled, racialist, miniature version of South Africa, as, at best, silly, and at worst, unconscionable. There was little comparison possible between their respective ambiences.

They had found South Africa hard to take, but Rhodesia, a delight. The ones who resented the ‘White-skinned’ control of this little nation were neither, say, factory-owners nor supermarket managers nor houseboys. What they had in common, however, was what they’d heard on the B.B.C. World Service.

The couple’s children’s nanny, (aptly named ‘Beauty’ they agreed), invited them to dinner at their small house about forty minutes drive from Salisbury, the capital. During the evening, the conversation inevitably drifted towards ‘things political’. Beauty and her husband, Thomas, had nicknames for the country’s main candidates preparing for ‘changeover’. This was expected to take place some time in the 1970s under pressure from those U.N. members most terrified of their neighbours’ opinions. The potential leaders were referred to as The Fox, The Duck, The Rhino, and The Anaconda.

“And will things be better or worse when the Blacks are lording it over the Whites?” Michael asked lightly. As if on a conductor’s downbeat, their hosts intoned: “WORSE!”

There was much laughter; but it wasn’t funny: it was going to happen. Rhodesia was in for a lynching, and the world, cheerfully unified and blissfully indoctrinated, would, in a blink, kick away the stool.
_______________________________

“Sleeping on a dust floor in a friend’s shack, getting up at 4.a.m. every day and making happy sounds for the next few hours takes some doing”, Jonathan wrote to his mother.

This was hardly what he had come to Cyprus for, but it was where he wanted to be. As luck would have it, he happened to possess exactly the sort of voice that the Forces Broadcasting Corporation in Nicosia needed at that moment. They were short of a station announcer *** disc-jockey who would pump out songs, deal with weather forecasts, local news, and so on.

Not precisely his cup of employment! However, he managed to reduce any of his own musical agony by maintaining the control-room volume at an absolute minimum and keeping a tight eye on the turntable.

Once off-duty, he ambled around creeks and dales, lazed in cafés, and relished the tranquility of it all; (a great contrast to a somewhat edgy Tel-Aviv, where he had last been working.) One might say also, that he was waiting for the finalization of his divorce - from a 36-day marriage!

They had met he while he was on holiday in France and he had ‘fallen in love’ with her. (And she with him? He never found out. Perhaps she had only married him because of the earnestness of his proposal.) Her name was Pierrette. She was a nurse, and, (of course!), pretty.

Here in Cyprus, the entire event now unrolled before him with a free-wheeling clarity. He had to have lost his mind: or perhaps that’s what ‘falling in love’ is all about anyway. Pierrette’s parents were not in the country right then, and he didn’t know any of her friends. Not only could he hardly speak her language, knew nothing about her culture, and certainly didn’t share her religion, but many of her habits struck him as, well, peculiar. During their month of marriage, only at night, - when a body answers all questions without the aid of its voice - did they dwell in the same world.

Reviewing things so lucidly in this boiling little mediterranean oasis, he reckoned
that if he’d been acting ‘logically’ at the time, the two of them probably wouldn’t have managed more than a single conversation.

Nevertheless at least he could now look forward to a new challenge. It would be a type of guessing-game. For instance, which of his next perfectly rational actions, would reveal themselves later on, as having been utterly daft?!
______________________________________

Richard had joined a company in London as head of its Textile-Dyeing department, to replace someone who had not been making a very good job of it. He was delighted: he certainly hadn’t expected to be selected.

He enthusiastically got down to the business of reorganising and modernising everything from bottom to top. Better still, the staff liked him as well as approving of his innovations. As for the company director, he was pretty pleased with himself.

After a while though, Richard seemed to be feeling a mite touchy about the stock manager, Phil, who ran the offices on the floor below his. Phil was a large, amiable and energetic fellow, who would bound up the steps all day with swatches, charts, and textile rolls: he always had a friendly word for members of staff.

Richard was really puzzled by his reaction to Phil who, true, had been there for a lot longer than he of course, but his job wasn’t more important or significant. They were neither rivals nor competitors - nor even after the same girl! No; altogether Phil was the epitome of bonhomie and workplace cooperation. So he must have a dark side; something that only Richard had managed to spot. Richard set about trying to entice it out into the open by subtly bringing into play every social trick of the trade.

After weeks of concentrating on the task, he had come up with nothing! Then, out of the blue as they say - although it has a more thunderous sound than that - Richard was fired; in fact told by the boss to leave the building immediately, “without further embarrassment”.

Humiliatingly mulling it all over, he discovered that he was now purged of his hitherto lofty disapproval of, (or even revulsion at), the tactics, antics, power-positioning and so on, that he had witnessed often before. (But he wondered why had he picked on Phil……..was it the man’s sheer ‘likeability’ that irked him?)

Anyway; he couldn’t avoid that he had freely engaged in what he had most despised in others. This gruesome ‘flash-in-the-mirror’ had divested him of his eyebrow-lifting “surprise at the world and its behaviour”. He had seen himself in action!

________________________________________

The author, correcting a blundering word. The last line should now read;

"I’ll know once more that Reason’s merely the joker."

Blissfully lolling in a vapoury warm womb
awash with imaged pulsations
I take refuge in my reasonless sanctuary of night

Dawn flips its card and deals me into day
where in cognisant command
and playing all my schemes and deeds
I’ll know once more that Reason’s but the joker.

The first man said, “No”. The second man said, “Yes.” Unfortunately, the first was a corporal, and the second, Tim, was a private who had been asked by one of his billet-mates, to pick up a letter for him from the office.

“But he asked me to get it for him on the way back.”
“Well he may have asked you, but it’s against the rules.”
“To collect a friend’s belongings?!”
“When they’re not yours, yes.”
Tim felt that there was something more to this. Although hardly likeable, the corporal had no reason to pick on him, he was sure. Piqued now, he took the leap, plucking the letter from Arthur’s cubby hole. “This is Arthur’s,” he announced.

Corporal Hannings stood. He was smiling. “You’re on a charge,” he said. As an afterthought, he added: “Disobeying orders.”
______________

The adjutant delivered the verdict. Fatigues? Cook-house duty? Jankers? A ten-mile run? No.

28 days’ DETENTION !!!

Flabbergasted, he was whisked away to an otherwise anonymous little burgh somewhere in the north. By the time he got there, he was resigned to the idea of being classified as a criminal. What most bothered him was how the devil he was going to last out for a whole month.

However, later, the detention camp didn’t really seem any different to his own except that what he would be doing there was even more senseless than his normal daily activities at his own base. For instance, painting coal white, and then re-painting it black was one of the chores: cutting grass with a fork and knife was another. There wasn't much difference food-wise except that the ‘cobs’, (white square loaves), flung daily onto the canteen’s tables, clanked as they landed. The kitchens smelt of fairly new corpses.

He wrote a full account on toilet paper - which he managed to smuggle out of the camp at the end of it all. (He was really writing it to his girl, Julie, although he wasn’t quite sure he’d show it to her). Yet it did help him to forget how four weeks could seem like five years.

When asked what he was ‘in for’, his “28 days for saying ‘no’ to a corporal” mostly evoked laughter. Tim was the first they’d ever heard of, to get such a disproportionate sentence. “Somebody’s got it in for you mate” one said: it was chorused by a few hefty nods and grunts.
______________

And there she was, waiting near the ticket barrier. “My little hero!” she beamed, arms outstretched. She was in one of her prettiest frocks; (“no uniform for me, unless absolutely necessary”).

She had been, (was still!), the most sought after enlisted woman in the whole of his camp - if not beyond it, perhaps. She had been stalked, courted, and sometimes even harassed by the enlisted men but mostly, (it was said), by officers. As for Tim, he’d seen her from time to time during meals, but had avoided, (being spotted), looking at her.

A few months after he had first caught sight of her, he was just leaving the canteen when he heard a voice behind him: “Tell me, why do you mash your peas?”

“Mash my -?! “. He turned. Seeing that it was (impossibly!) her, he unclenched his teeth, and responded with a quivering nonchalance. “They keep falling off my fork.”

She laughed. He too. Here SHE was; the station’s ‘top target’, consorting with a short, skinny private with big ears and no prospects whatsoever, who had ended up as her hero!

He later reflected that he might have been her ‘hero’ because she liked how he hadn’t even considered the possibility of having any enemies.

Well; it looked as though he was going to have plenty of opportunity to ask her about that.
___________________________________________

Itchy memories
(SNAPPED!)

Milan. Springtime. Twilight. I’m looking down from my window on four men gesticulating at each other. However, I can’t hear any actual sounds. It is as if they are mouthing the words rather then enunciating them. Could they be four mutes having an argument?! My camera’s at the ready.

They are formally suited, each attired with a trilby; two of them are wearing ties. Their gestures appear to be intensifying. Now, a fist is raised, a finger is prodding at a shoulder; one foot has advanced.

This is it. One man menacingly leans forward with three fingers held high as though readying a starting-pistol. I “CLICK”.

Everyone in the street turns towards them as their song fills the early evening.
__________________________________

Itchy memories (HOISTED!)

Tehran. I was hoping to do some English teaching there. So, a modest hotel in a passable area, to keep the costs down.

A very amiable receptionist responded to my request for a room, with a “follow me please sir,” as he jangled off along a corridor. I trotted after the echo of his shuffling slippers until he selected a key from the bunch and unlocked a door, passing in before me. Yes. It would do me.

I asked him how much. I didn’t hear the actual amount of rials quoted, except as a warning bell. Far too much! I took care to avoid going down in his estimation by asking him if he had a smaller, (rather than a cheaper), one. “Smaller?” he smiled. “Certainly sir. Follow me please.” And off we went. We turned into another corridor, then up one flight of steps, along a further corridor, and another flight of steps. (Ah, the cheaper rooms would be more remote, of course.)

We arrived; he unlocked: we went in. It was indeed smaller. “Very nice,” I said; “how much is this one?” With an amicable smile, he reassured me: “oh, same price as the other one sir.”

I had to take it, naturally.

I think I’d learned something; but I’m too embarrassed to try to remember what it was.

__________________________________

In spite of a few hours of the two interrogators’ rigorous questioning, the suspect
remains at his ease. He rarely changes position in his chair. He doesn’t fidget or fiddle with his cigarette pack or lighter. He only very rarely glances at the cctv - but not more often than at the door, the light, or for that matter at either of his questioners. However, apparently, he can neither be tricked nor trapped.

Eventually, they have to let him go. He’s one of the very few who’ve beaten them at their game.

They review the cctv recording. During the entire session, he has smoked three cigarettes, often gazed at the ceiling, smiled pleasantly at occasional light-hearted exchanges, (but not actually laughed out loud). They agree that either this man’s conscience must be completely at ease - highly unlikely given his deplorable activities - or he is the best actor they’ve ever had the bad luck to encounter.

Towards the end of the playback, they ‘freeze-frame’. He has left his water bottle behind. It is still full. They replay. He had swigged from it quite a few times; but now they’ve seen that every time he has replaced it on the table, the bottle has remained full, with the top still on!

So far, neither of them is believed to have mentioned it.
__________________________________

Excellent.
You're obviously in perfect health!

I can personally testify to that !

Quoting Mark Twain: "The way to die of natural causes, is not to see a doctor."

SO.......

1. Get hold of a nutrition manual.
2. Make a spreadsheet.
3. Your Friend lists ALL consumable items used during any AVERAGE FORTNIGHT.
4. Against that list, check ALL RELATIVE NUTRITIONAL FACTS , to assess the specific
'consequences' of OVERLOAD OR INADEQUACY OF vitamins, calories, minerals, etc.
5. Integrate these findings into Friend's symptoms' list.
6. Friend will then ADJUST PERSONAL DIET ITEMS where obviously appropriate.
7. Insist on the following permanent-without-exception changes - IN ANY CASE:
a) Daily - not less than 30 consecutive minutes of TIRING outdoor motion.
b) No sitting or reposing in one position/posture for more than 1 hour
without a MINIMUM of 10 minutes of motion.
8. If the above doesn't cure Friend, NOTHING WILL.

p.s. Warning: do not EVER, repeat EVER - not even for ONE DAY - omit item 7.

The one absolutely guaranteed to arrive too late.