Home Thoughts from a Man
Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Ogilvie
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means without written
permission from the author.
ISBN: 978-6-163-61359-2
Published in Thailand by DanPloy
(52/452, Moo.10, Huai Bong, Chaloem Phrakiat, Saraburi, Thailand, 18000)
Edited by Alice McVeigh
Cover design by Stephanie Tkach
For my darling wife, Ploy, without whom even less of this would
be true.
Chapters
Home Thoughts from Abroad ................................................................... xi
Preface ...................................................................................................... xiii
O, to be in England, now that April's there ................................................ 1
Canada, Oh! Bloody Canada ..................................................................... 25
Holly, Pinky and Other Animals .............................................................. 55
Little Hitlers .............................................................................................. 83
Raging against the Machine .................................................................... 110
The Land of Smiles ................................................................................. 130
Me, Myself and Ploy................................................................................ 190
Home Thoughts from Abroad
O, To be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now! And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
(Home Thoughts from Abroad, Robert Browning)
xi
Preface
On Tuesday 24th February 2004, on the same day when 564
people died in an earthquake in Morocco and despite having lived
all of my previous 46 years in England, I left Britain for
Singapore.
On Sunday 20th September 2009 (the same day that Toni
Collette won the Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a comedy
series) and having lived and worked for six years abroad in both
Singapore and Canada, I emigrated to Thailand, intending that
country to be the one in which I saw out my days.
This is a collection of some thoughts as I travelled from
country to country, always glancing back over my shoulder at my
country of birth.
xiii
Home Thoughts from a Man
O, to be in England, now that April's there
I am back in my office, looking out over our garden, after the best
night's sleep I have had in months.
It was a day flight from London so I simply watched movies
including the - rather good - Cemetery Junction, set in the UK in
1973 (the year I left school, which seemed a fittingly nostalgic
epitaph to my week in the UK). The Singapore Air beef stew was
good, the wine plentiful and the A380 quiet and a little roomier
than normal as I had managed to swipe the last available window
seat on the upper deck.
I had arrived in the UK on Sunday evening and taken the
Heathrow Express to Paddington (18 pounds for a single ticket only slightly less than my flight ticket) and located my hotel
which was walking distance from the station. It was small and
negotiating the narrow corridors with anything other my minimal
luggage would have been difficult, to say nothing of the size of the
shower which had to be sidled into with all my extremities safely
tucked in!
I had got an upgrade to a club room and the bed was
comfortable and the room well-appointed with free wireless
1
O, to be in England, now that April's there
Internet (though it did cost 129 pounds a night or roughly the
same price as the proposed Virgin flights to the moon). I woke at
4.a.m. thanks to the racket the air-conditioning had started
making. (My window in the room opened out onto panoramas of
everyone else’s air-conditioning units – also switched on - so I
couldn't open a window without having my ears bleed yet the
room was very stuffy without it). On the plus side I guess the nonupgraded rooms were either windowless or opened out of the
fetid rubbish bins of a Chinese takeaway so I had no excuse to
grumble.
As soon as the sun began to illuminate the Dickensian
landscape that was Praed Street I left my bags in the hotel and
went to the Thai embassy to apply for my visa. Apart from
collecting it on the Wednesday I had the week to myself.
I had decided to travel down to my home town, Portsmouth;
thoughts of wandering around London were thwarted by a partial
Tube train strike (possibly brought about because the drivers had
had their Filipina maid allowance reduced to just four). Only the
next day there was planned to be a total Tube strike so I decided
to get out of London fast before the inevitable chaos and ensuing
riots.
I bought my ticket and sat in a cafe at Waterloo station,
relishing a pint of London Pride and a fairly decent ciabatta. The
old 'slam-door' trains had been replaced by new rolling stock
which
(although
a
huge
improvement)
had
incredibly
uncomfortable seats. It left with Japanese precision only seconds
after the obligatory screaming child had entered the carriage…
Luckily they sat towards the front of the carriage but it would not
2
Home Thoughts from a Man
have mattered; if I had travelled the following day I would still
have heard it.
I watched the old familiar stations pass by the window:
Vauxhall, Clapham junction (‘The Busiest Station in Britain’ - it
used to be in the World) Esher, Petersfield, with the familiar rows
of faded two-up, two-down housing, people walking Labradors
(mostly dogs, only occasionally the Canadian first nation people);
the occasional row of superior Victorian houses cordoned off
from the hoi polloi with their tidy gardens and neatly parked
BMWs, the boarded up windows of public houses previously used
to house the local community spirit, large concrete office blocks
squeezing the anima out of the workers within them and large
industrial estates proclaiming empty factories for rent.
I checked into my hotel on Southsea seafront and threw
myself, exhausted, on the bed; the rain was lashing against the
window, I could see the waves sucking the shingle off the beach
before spitting it back again and the seagulls are crying; in short
it was exactly as it should be. The room was commodious, the
bathroom enormous and although the fittings were basic it was a
case of location, location, location.
I had no explicit plans, just to explore a little, wander along
the seafront to see if anything has changed and to drink some
much missed British beer. The first pub I stopped at was the
Barley Mow where I had a poor pint of mild (too long in the
pipe); an old-style pub populated by old-style gentlemen in the
early evening, busy putting the world to rights and practising for
the highlight of their week; the pub quiz. (Who did write the
Maigret books they were pondering as I left, walking out into a
light drizzle and a strengthening wind.) I was quite a long way
3