Graham Lawrence

Writer, Publisher, Retired

Tag: Writing (Page 2 of 2)

Family - A story in the Tales from the Village series by Graham Lawrence. The licture shows old buildings in Laplae, Uttaradit

Family

December 16, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Nim was a family man. Like many poor farmers in the villages of rural Thailand he held strong beliefs. All he lived for were his wife, daughters, nephews and any other member of the extended family. Not a wealthy man and one who was blighted by every farming venture he tried turning to dust in his hands, but one who surrounded by family remained happy and upbeat.

Now a few years ago it just so happened that Nim’s latest venture into a new piece of farming machinery, or was it a new crop had gone disastrously and predictably wrong resulting in another pressing debt that needed to be paid off. It wasn’t a time of year when work was plentiful in Uttaradit, so being illiterate the only option was a trip to one of the building sites of central Thailand for months of daily toil until enough was saved to cover the lost farm investment. Leaving the family would be hard but having the family land repossessed would only leave them landless and forced to leave the village, so there was no option. Tum, Nim’s friend, recommended a site in Rayong in the industrial east of the country where they could both go.

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Cuz - A memoir piece and story by Graham Lawrence. Picture of a Butterfly just from a caterpillar

Cuz

November 28, 2023 /

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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Help - A story by Graham Lawrence. Picture of Mekong River from Laos

Help

November 2, 2023 /

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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Twins Gemini. A feeling of a twin

Twins

October 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I stand looking into the deep blue azure sky with the sun blazing and reflecting off of me and twinkling and blinding and heating, and I gaze at my not so distant twin and see the same. Both of us so proud and tall in the early morning sun that is warming us both from a long night before. And down below such an amount of movement and sound just like on so many days.

And knowing of the good and the bad that I exist for as it spins, and moves and churns all around me. At times so tired of it all. At times so in need of change. At times so much wanting not to be part of it. And always the bad remaining uppermost. Why oh why do they have to do bad?
Now busier and noisier and dirtier and with rising smells and odours and sounds that only serve to disillusion more as I wonder how long? How long must this incessant repetition go on for? Not just for me but also my own identical twin. Identical in virtually every detail. And with what some would say was perfection that my own father my own mother my creators and the creators of my replica were so very, very proud of. And for some reason that neither of us understood so many who lived near us were so proud of. Why?

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Bangsaen beach - The Eggman Lives

The Eggman Lives

October 16, 2023 /

It was around seventeen or eighteen years ago that I first noticed him, this aging man. Quite exactly how old he was, was hard to tell as he had the start of a curved back and looked constantly at the floor with his bewhiskered jowls hanging from each side of his mouth. His hair was white or silver, but not in a distinguished looking way, but more in a mop of short but unkempt hair hanging over his head and flopping down onto his forehead as he shuffled forward with his brown scuffed sandals around his brown feet and his blue fisherman pants swaying with movement and breeze. His arched back inside his plaid long-sleeved shirt was letting out a little perspiration as he lugged the wide basket containing his collection of about thirty boiled eggs. He manoeuvred from table to table along the stretch of seawall at Laem Than where the young people sat and drank and chatted trying to sell an egg or two or three at each table for the drinkers to snack on. Occasionally he was even successful in getting someone to buy three eggs in a little plastic bag with a small sachet of sauce as he maneuvered surprisingly rapidly between the jovial groups.

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the excitement of life in the time of covid

The Excitement of Life in the Time of Covid

September 4, 2021 /

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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