Who was that Masked Man

As we equatorial dwellers cough our guts up and mime curses at international smoke plumes, and I say mime because our throats are far to sore to utter said curses, some are reminded of dusty blighty, fog, smog and other hazy days.

June is a long way from November. Bonfire night, in dear Albion, is 5th November with memories of gunpowder plots and although escaping a rapid change in government ala Guido Fawkes today, in KL, it would seem that every night is bonfire night, and every day this month is bonfire day.

We not only have evenings, but days, of swirling mists, fog and smog enough to expect an Asian Spring-heeled Jack to pounce. And perhaps pounce he would if he were not also coughing up his lungs somewhere in a Kuala Lumpur gutter. So maybe that's a blessing in disguise.

Horror aficionados wait anxiously for John Carpenter’s The Fog to roll down Putrajaya, some with thoughts of seeing Jamie Lee Curtis, some just waiting to groove in the sheer mayhem, but alas and alack as yet it has not happened.

While going out into the city reminds me of glitzy, or painfully real, TV series set in hospitals, with nearly everyone wearing paper masks as if going to, or returning from, operations of a medical variety, I remember someone saying that a standard surgical mask is of little use against many environmental contaminants. Perhaps people prefer the psychological assurance, like one KLite, who yesterday faithfully wore his mask right up until the point that he needed to smoke a cigarette. Curious.

It is said that a surgical mask actually offers no protection against ozone, nitrous oxides and only some limited protection against fine particulates. A mask may prevent some pollen exposure, but to be effective it must be very tightly fitted and not removed. A N95 style mask may offer some protection against is dust, but not over long periods. Smog is curious enough without people hiding behind thin sheets of paper.

Back in the land of my birth, face masks were only popular during Halloween, and then only lately because they were seeing far too many American TV shows or, more recently for cyclists in the Big Smoke (London). In cities, certain masks might be deemed to be advantageous due to diesel and other noxious car fumes, if you are a cyclist, but probably not if you are a pedestrian. Even mask protected cyclists have to change their mask pads frequently, for them to remain effective.

I hope that this mask phase, and the smog, will clear soon and that Indonesian peat fires will be better controlled next year - if we all survive this pollution that is, and if Spring-heeled Jack, perhaps wearing a cheap paper face mask, doesn’t get us first.

Lazy Hazy Crazy Days Of Summer

It was the summer solstice and, coincidentally, the first actual day of summer here in these heat blessed lands. I had been having all sorts of weird dreams and awoke with a start. I gave up, I did, didn’t I? I’m sure I did. Then why does this place still smell of smoke.

My newly awakened brain could not cope. I struggled to come to whatever senses I still had left in my severely advanced years. I gave the last fifteen years a quick run through. Yep, I did give up. I remember all the cursing and swearing and the delusion of addiction, and distinctly remember the craving and the ‘Ok just one last one, then I will quit completely”. I also remember that I quit completely so many times that I had to quit quitting completely to enable myself to quit smoking. In my awakening state I swore that I gave up smoking and have not had a cigarette in all that time. Then why did everything smell of smoke?

‘Oh, my godlet we are on fire’. I dashed the duvet off, dived out of bed and ran through our minuscule flatlet, rebounding off the piano in the hall - because the hall is small and the piano is not. The tiny kitchen was not awash with flames, nor were the storeroom, the office/studio or the second toilet. I slid into the bedroom across not so cool tiles, again, and burst into the cupboard we laughingly call an ensuite bathroom (minus the bath of course). No fire, just a cockroach which, incidentally, also was not on fire.

I distinctly remembered that old idiom - where there’s smoke there’s fire, but I couldn’t find the fire, but the smoke was everywhere. A dingy grey haze hung over Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur. Everywhere was ‘misty’, half hidden and reeked of burning, including our tiny apartment. Online news informed that the ‘haze’ as it is officially known - not ‘that reeking bloody stink’ as some would have it, came to us courtesy of Indonesia. Thank you so much Indonesia, you may have your haze back now, we have done with it, I silently groaned. Silently, because I was alone indoors and really didn’t want to open my mouth unnecessarily, and gulp in countless atoms of scorched peat.

The smog, for that is what is really is, reminded me of those winter school days in the UK, when we would all be sent home early because of rolling, smothering smog. We prayed, or rather the more religious children prayed, the rest of us just hoped that their prayers would be answered and we wouldn’t have to commit to any religious dictatorship, that smog would come. It wasn’t that we hated school, but that we were children and preferred anything apart from school - even smog! With the later affluence of central heating the smogs died away and I escaped the motherland to bask in the equatorial sun of Kuala Lumpur. Only today there was no sun, just smog.

So that was it. My morning burning smell came with thanks to a smog caused by bloody peat forests in Sumatra. Sumatra, no less! Singapore was suffering its worse pollution levels - ever, and asthma sufferers in Malaysia have become homebound, even though without double-glazing it was rather pointless to sit indoors as the stench was insidious, and crept through doorways and window frames etc. And there was not a bloody thing I could do about it except for to blog - hence this diatribe.

Hats Off

I usually have little trouble with children. They know their place and I know mine. In rapscallion moments I have been called a ‘dinosaur’, a ‘mountain’ and things in Chinese I have not the wit to translate. Over time I have acquired a twelve year old stepson, whom I think the world of and, in my folly, I attempt to teach creative writing to a group of 11+ years olds, once a week. I also volunteer in Cambodia, frequently in schools with young children, and visit homes of impoverished Cambodian children. However, those children, no matter how monkeyish, ebullient and gibbering they appear to be at times, are not the issue here.

Some days past I was on a working holiday, in Cambodia. I was giving Art talks and reading poetry to students in Siem Reap, as well as visiting the aforementioned impoverished children who, incidentally, were all tucked away down barely beaten paths in the most rural of rural places in the Cambodian countryside. They smiled their dirty faced and most glorious of innocent smiles to me and I reciprocated, while simultaneously trying to dash coconut water from out my drowned beard - with thanks to one village parent who had organized fresh coconut juice - straight from the coconut. 

No, it was not the charming children in the rural villages, nor the insistent but nevertheless endearing children in the towns with their baby milk scams, that had me all wound up and virtually fuming at the ears, but one singular urban child. He was a Malaysian tyke whom we had brought with us. He was a jackanapes of a male child, who had, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, accompanied his mother on our saunter into heaty and dusty Cambodia.

The fun had began on the plane. The boy’s voice could be heard above all others on the silver cigar tube slicing through sufficiently fluffy clouds of South East Asia. It was heard right up to the moment of disembarking and through into customs and into the baggage hall. That unmistakable demanding and simultaneously whinny voice was no less silent while we waited for our transport to whirl us away to our hotel. Joy upon joy upon joy - we were to be staying in the same hotel, which rapidly became hot hell.

Other guests complained. The boy was given a warning to be silent at night while other guests wanted to enjoy the peace of Siem Reap and soak up the Angkor atmosphere. To no avail. I kept my distance, not wanting to be drawn into remarking upon that individual’s behaviour, unfortunately, fate decided otherwise.

Our small group went shopping in the local day market. We trundled the lanes, browsed the stalls and lit upon a stall selling material goods - T-shirts, shirts, blouses etc etc ect. Being somewhat tired due to my size in a hot country, I sought to rest on a chair opposite. My good friend was on one side of me and my wife was occupied buying goods for us both. The chair on the other side of me was empty save for my wife’s hat - exactly like mine but a tad smaller and brown. I had bought both in John Lewis before departing to live in Malaysia, eight years since at a cost of￡35 each.

The child, who was rapidly becoming someone out of a Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tale, was continuing his obnoxious behaviour with no respite. Nerves were on the point of fraying, teeth were grinding and all thoughts of Buddhist philosophy had flown back to Angkor Wat and Bayon. The child then did something quite unimaginable. The frowning, grumpy child, awash with his own thoughts, and giving little thought for others, grabbed my wife’s hat from where it rested on the chair and threw it onto the dusty, dirty floor. Without a moment’s consideration, my right hand clipped the back of the boy’s head as my wife’s hat touched the filth of the ground.

My friend leaned across and whispered “Good, I have been wanting to do that all day”. The boy stood stock still. His lips trembled, but no sound was emitted. He stood, inwardly sobbing, for some seconds, then moved to the comfort of his mother. From behind her, he screamed at me “I’ll, I’ll, bash you”. He had not learned a lesson, but I had - not to allow myself to be in such situations with obnoxious small boys ever again. Now I have to practice Right Thought and Right Action even harder than before. My life journey continues.