It is almost two years now, and I suppose it is time to record the actual true events before they fade or my memory decides to exclude such things that don’t fit with preconceived and taught ideas typical of someone raised in the rational and heartless late 60’s and 70’s. It also seems fitting as I sit once more, where I did that day, on the raised dot mypai with a pencil and cheap paper notebook feeling the breeze from the small green fan as the heat of the summer rises once more past body temperature.
Continue readingTag: biographical
Gerry had issues; Gerry was haunted. Neither were going to ever go away. What actually caused the issues or haunting would never ever be known by anyone except Gerry. It is the natural way of some things.
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So, there was I crawling on all fours around a damp dark smelly room, dressed in rubber boots and rubber gauntlets, looking for cock.
*****
It was a warm sunny day with clear skies except for the occasional tiny white cloud bouncing in the sea of blue. The warmth hit me and a first drip of perspiration rolled down my neck. It was a lovely day to go out and do something worthwhile on – May in England could sometimes but not often be like this. Oh there I go again. Right British. Already going on about the weather. Apologies for that. Let’s get back to the story. So where was I? Oh yes, a lovely day. What could I spend it doing? But I already knew. The local non-league football team had a game at home, and I would take the long 2 mile walk from my parent’s home, where I was visiting, to the ground and enjoy the game. The team were doing well and it should be an easy win.
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Manchester Andy, now there is someone to remember from the Cowboy days. He had an art degree, two in fact. He was also a real practicing artist producing paintings and sculptures at a prodigious rate. The styles of these were quite conservative and maybe not to everyone’s taste. Not being an artist, I am far too ignorant to know what label or labels to use to name his art, but all in all it wasn’t bad in my opinion.
Andy came to Thailand after finishing his Master’s degree and if I remember correctly a well paying job not connected with art in the United Kingdom. He arrived in Bangkok. with a fresh tourist visa in hand, an expensive backpack and a nice set of clothes. Andy had plans to do the usual “break from life” tour of Asia – Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, India and Nepal. He actually had no plans after that but intended to head back to the UK and do something with his art. He had made a lot of money from his well paying job, which had been added to buy sale of his artworks and a small inheritance from a distant relative. Andy was set.
Sometimes, though, fate has this way of interfering in the best laid plans and creating a new and different destiny for us.
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I met Jenny Lawrence, cuz, while working in homelessness in a winter night shelter for young adults in Sydenham, South London. The shelter got an extended life beyond winter under a Housing Association, and it would carry on as a homeless shelter for a few years. The building was pretty impressive for a homeless night shelter. It had been the training dormitory for a bank previously. There were single rooms for each guest and the building was divided into two parts – one for men and one for women. There was a communal TV room, a large canteen with a large kitchen, a laundry and a store for used for donated clothes.
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I knew Neil about twenty years ago. I did not know him well. I did not know him badly. He had had a long and interesting life and had seen dark times, but come out the other side a positive and kind person, which if you knew his story is quite an achievement. I was in my 40s back then and he a lot older and from a different time to me. He was now happily married and settled, doing a part-time job and was one of the people to help me with work, although now he was thinking of retirement.
I was sitting in a Pattaya bar with Neil drinking a beer, and he a coke. He had long since stopped drinking the grog as he liked to call it. He had asked me about what I had done before coming to Thailand and had talked about his life. We talked about the challenges of life living away from home. It was then that he told me this story, which had happened a few years before.
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Mundanity becomes everything
Graham Lawrence
22nd August 2021
And so, after around 18 months of this covid pandemic, things are really not getting any better sitting in a small apartment in Bangkok. Every wander to the supermarket or market to get food is just an exercise in walking past the bankrupt, boarded businesses, the increasing number of homeless and the hordes of beggars if you approach the underground stations. Of course, apart from markets and supermarkets, food stalls and stand-alone necessary shops, nothing is open. Nothing of course except for the shops breaking the rules and massive buildings that will not force closure in their tenants’ operations.
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