Waiting for Summer

In

West Mersea 

Park 

stands an oak

two mushrooms 

Full of bravado

Cling 

A gazebo 

empty

playground

devoid of children 

The sun 

Has taken a respite

Clouds of grey

Slip past

I am

Alone

Here

In my

Autumn

Waiting 

For 

Summer.

On Not Rushing

ON NOT RUSHING 

There's a great pleasure to be had by not rushing, instead, taking each and every moment that comes.

I move foward, cautiously. No hurry. Hurrying days are past. Each moment is delicious. I want to savour every morsel of my time, be in the moment, not letting the seconds slip past unnoticed.

Later, I want to remember that a solitary bird sang it's morning welcome, that the sky was unwelcoming gray and the room chilled despite this being an English Summer's day.

Soon I shall break the night's fast with very British cornflakes, despite the fact that they are American, and have a very English cup of tea, which is really not English at all.

I do not rush, but saunter, my way to the bus stop and wait. The bus takes me, unhurriedly, to its station. From which I walk at a reasonable pace to the train station, and there wait to board the train to the intermediary station, and board a second train, to the city.

There are, and will be, a thousand and one things of which I shall not be aware. My consciousness is limited. My mind starved and only permitted imagination piqued by my senses. There are things I truely cannot know like, for instance, the heart of another, save for those things existing within in my miniscule world. My personal world.

After exiting the train I sedatly saunter to the below ground rail, patiently wait for a presenting carriage, change carriages and, when appropriate, alight at my destination. On that solitary journey I quell any and all expectations. My breath not uneasy. Journeying, I settle my concerns,  breathe easily and present myself rested.

When there my heart does not flutter, nor my pulse race. I remain calm, unhurried, suited for the moment. In the moment, being authentically there, I have no concerns for past or present. 

However, the sight of her momentarily disturbs my equilibrium. I sense a brief unease, a gladdening, and then it is gone. She is a poem. I struggle with my feelings. Om Mani Padme Hum. Breathe. Remember to breathe.

The day disappears. We are together and the world continues without us. I know nothing of the sun, the breeze, blooming flowers, sky transversing avifauna. All I see is her. All I hear is her. I am enraptured. Mind taken.  A golum. Now there is no rush, for we are the moment.

Eating, walking, are in the dream that we share. Even parting, travelling, all are performed automatically. The next morning I awake and realise that I am solitary once again. But the memory sustains. At times I am preoccupied. Wishes, hopes, dreams willing me to invest in speculation. I do not rush into that folly, but relax, smile and praise whichever celestial benign being for their momentary kindness, and I do not rush.

Mersea Evening

Saturday evening
Scent of sea
Sound of gulls
Aged blue fibreglass dingy (with see me yellow Plastic runwhales)
Still tethered to the concrete Jetty
Leans into damp sand with pebbles
Bladderwort drying
Oyster shell halves half buried
A child's
Small
Plastic spade
Forgotten
In the rush for home

Fush and Chups

As a family, back in the 1950s  we were poor, I think it's called under privileged now. If we, as a family, went out for a meal, it would inevitably be Fish and Chips, the cheapest take away or eat in.

Growing I began to loathe fish and chips. I don't think that I was associating that with being poor, but just bored of the repetition. So what changed? Asia did.

Fish and Chips in Malaysia was okay, a bit weird sometimes, but bearable. In Siem Reap, Cambodia, however, the whole notion of fish and chips slipped up a notch or three. The most exceptional was Fush & Chups at Clayton Venis 's Jungle Burger.

While Cod was an unknown quantity in Cambodia, the lack of it was more than made up for by the river fish used, coated in beer batter. Okay, put simply, it was delicious, and none of those frozen chips either, or mushy peas from a tin.

It was eating Cambodian fish and chips which lead me back to eating that dish in West Mersea yesterday (£10 or $US14, RM 50). It was neither as bad as the British fish and chips that I remember, but certainly not as good as my New Zealand mate's in Siem Reap.

Colchester- A Slight Return

These last few days have been the longest that I've ever spent on Mersea Island (Colchester Borough). I've sketched here, in the days that I was trying to get into art school, walked here and admired the mud bound water vehicles, but never stayed.

Someone I know (who lives on the Island) assisted in finding me a nook to spend my quarantine time in. That was here, on Mersea Island. It was a golden opportunity. I grabbed it with both hands.

True to form, the days were sunny as I was room bound, dank and miserable as soon as I was eligible for parole. Today's like that. Trying to prove everyone right about the British Summer. Well at least I don't have to see the half naked men roaming the streets and shore line. I am forever thankful for small mercies.

Before jetting off to the Far East, I had lived around the historic town of Colchester for nearly fifty years, in different villages and locations. I was back for a couple of weeks, four years ago. That really was a culture shock.

Yesterday I took the 67 bus from High Street West Mersea to Osborne Street in Colchester. I discovered that although the bones of the town, the water tower called 'Jumbo', and the Town Hall still dominant over the High Street, were still there, much had changed. The former Colchester had a surface of country gentility, with an undercurrent of Essex rowdyism and skirmishes between town and barracks. The gentility had gone and Colchester had the air of a town barely hanging on against the barbarians at the gates.

This time around the shock is not as pronounced. There have been further changes, true, and just while I have been trying to accept those I had been aware of, but that's life. The previously free Library now charges for membership (£1.15). But Colchester is lucky to still have a Library, though it's much smaller in stock than the original Library, the one I grew up virtually living in, on West Stockwell Street.

I had a merry game of spot the shop. Seeing which shops had remained and which had changed over the passage of time. It seems that not many had remained. The worse hit were the book shops. Colchester had many antiquarian and second hand book shops. Most have vanished.

Shops have come and gone. Woolworths (Woolies) has gone again. I say again because it was there, then vanished, returned and has gone again. The departmental store Williams and Griffin (WG) has gone, which signalled the de-gentrification of the town, that and the High Street Sainsburys departing (like ravens and the Tower of London). Now Debenhams has closed and chained its doors too.

To counter these losses, Colchester has gained a multitude of smaller ethnic shops and restaurants, successfully giving this Essex/Suffolk Border town all the trappings of London's East End. Shops range from Turkish and Oriental mini-marts selling everything from frozen mutton (for goat curry), harissa for reasonably authentic Middle Eastern dishes, rice, frozen Dim Sum and dried noodles. 

Restaurants now include ethnic Indian, Italian, Greek, Turkish and Mexican (well Tex Mex) Caribbean as well as the British style Indian (Bangladeshi), British Chinese flavoured (pseudo Cantonese) and a number of burger joints including The Flag Burger (in Church Street) designing burgers from a multitude of countries including Korea.

My insight continues.

Arty Farty

In west Mersea town

Where all

Are hail and hearty

Folks aren't 

Drab and plain 

Instead are arty farty

Art galleries 

And cafes

Abound and delight

Photographers

And painters too

I think that that's right

Strolling in the sunshine 

Without the workaday hustle

We're all devouring

Crabs

Oysters and Mussels

It's a summer's 

Joy

Indeed to see

So many be-masked denizens

And all

Beside the seaside

Beside the sea.

Wraith Dreams

I watch milk clouds in my tea. Like Mann's Gustav von Aschenbach I, detatchedly, admire beauty in teacups, behind counters, seated in the British sun, strolling like continentals on coastal pavements. In my negligible rented bedroom I have come to emulate Hesse's Harry Haller and await a future Magic Theatre. 

This is my life now, Albion June sun teasing my wooden Art Cafe tabletop, familiar yet unaccustomed. I am a be-masked discordant wraith within the ring of Peter and Paul's, engulfed in drifting shorelines of memory, lingering dissonance, adrift, a refugee in my own land, a place of The Green Man, Herne and The Goddess. A place of ancient charms, sweet magics and dreams.

Q Day 10 To See the Sea

Q Day 10 - To See the Sea

It is the last day of my quarantine, and it's a Monday.

Monday's seem to get bad press. What with The Boomtown Rats (1979) 'I Don't Like Mondays' and the Mammas and Pappas (1966) entirely negative 'Monday Monday', popular music has reflected the working person's lament over the loss of freedom of the Weekend in a glass half empty manner, while Garfield (the comic cat) didn't like Monday because it was left-over lasagne day, not fresh.

If Sunday (the sun's day) is the final day of the week, hence the day of rest, then Monday ("mondandaeg" in Anglo Saxon, in Latin - dies lunae) is the Moon's day and, according to international standard ISO 8601, is the beginning of a new week. So why the bad press?

Some might say that after the relative freedom of the Weekend, Monday is a reminder that we are all shackled to the weekly drudge and, having little choice, must endure five days of graft before being free again. But is it?

While many might adopt a negative attitude towards working for a living, there are those who simply don't. A great many people actually look forward to going back to work on Monday, away from the tedium of Saturday and Sunday and look forward to being with work colleagues, tackling problems and the stimulus of being productive.

One of the things that shocked me in Malaysia, when I first went, was that people were expected to work half day on Saturdays. Saturday half-day working, for most British, began because of low wages in the 1870s, but was gradually phased out from the 1930s onward. Malaysia is changing, just as Britain did.

For me, today, Monday, I rejoice. My freedom awaits on the morrow. Ten days of imprisonment in a bedroom is enough. I long to eat real food again, not microwaved diahorreah inducing pseudo cuisine. 

As Queen (1984) sang 'God knows, God knows I want to break free', like Anthony Hope's 'The Prisoner of Zenda' (1894), or Alexandra Dumas 'The Count of Monte Cristo' (1895). After four years I want to finally experience Mersea Island again, see the sea and walk the cockle and mussel beaches, smell the brine and finally feel the sea breeze upon my face.

Q Day 9 - Sunday

Oh blessed (Sun) day, oh magnificent morning, oh glorious morning with the sun so right in a glorious season.

Dies solis (Latin), Sunnandæg (Old English) the day of the goddess Sunna.

About which The Velvet Underground (1967) sang ....

"Sunday morning, brings the dawn in

It's just a restless feeling by my side

Early dawning, Sunday morning

It's just the wasted years so close behind."

For me it's only in England or Ireland that I get the true feeling of Sunday. Asia doesn't really understand Sunday, except for poets like Rabindranath Tagore (maybe because Sunday, in India, is the day of the Hindu deity ‘Khandoba'). Tagore wrote…

"But when I awake at the end

Of Saturday night

I see the Sunday greet me

With a smile so bright."

In Siem Reap, Cambodia, various foreign owned eateries would close on Sundays, but everything else remained open. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, it would be very difficult to determine Sunday, except to say that it's two days away from Friday (prayer day). 

But oh what a privilege it is to be on an island off the Eastern British coast, in Summer, on a Sunday and feeling that remarkable Sunday feeling, now if only I wasn't in quarantine and allowed to savour the sun on its day..

It was Constantine I, (Rome's first Christian Emperor) who, in 321 AD, decreed that Sunday would be observed as the Roman day of rest. And, in answer to John Cleese's question in 'The Life of Brian' (1979) "What have the Romans ever done for us" you could say, well, Sunday.

Louis Macneice (1907 - 1963) gave us his Sunday Morning….

Down the road someone is practising scales,

The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,

Man's heart expands to tinker with his car

For this is Sunday morning, Fate's great bazaar;

Regard these means as ends, concentrate on this Now,

On my Sunday morning, birds Twitter in the trees of various greens as the morning Summer sun illuminates a statuette,  partially hidden beneath a garden bush. Yes, it's all about the garden and its denizens, the beautiful blue of the sky and the peaceful still quiet of an English countryside day.

Q Day 8 - Mask

Mask

"Who was that masked man?"

(Lone Ranger (Radio program--1960-1970).

I lay, unmasked, unclothed on the Queen-sized bed in the room in West Mersea writing this. It's 6am.

On leaving this harbouring room I mask-up, done a paper mask, blue on the outside, white inner. There is thin elastic attached to the mask which bites into flesh where the auricle is attached to my head. If, like on the flight between Singapore and London, I wear a mask for a lengthy period that ear/head space becomes sore.

Because of the Covid 19 pandemic and its inherent dangers we are all learning to cope with small discomforts. Mask included. However, some people wear a mask of a different type, theirs is internal, and rendered external only by their learned control of facial features and control of speech.

Those are the narcissistic types who become very adept at showing the world their mask, while hiding their true self where few can see. You see them on social media living in their perfect worlds, where all is happiness and sunshine. They produce endless vanity and false smiles for the world to see, turning this way and that, as If paid to model their features for a world they believe is waiting and watching.

In their homes are numerous images of themselves, retouched photographs obscuring blemishes, in frames large and small, on pianos, tables, walls. Painted self portraits and those produced by others to celebrate their beauty. They are beyond the eccentricities of egoism, beyond natural pride and self esteem and have fallen into belief systems in which they deny others through incessant self promotion.

Society now is be-masked, but able to remove their masks in their homes. Narcissists cling to their masks, for that is their self-deluded reality with their excessive need for admiration. That which appears in selfies as confidence and being self assured is the opposite, it is insecurity and inner emptiness.   

Being narcissistic affects how the individual copes with life, how they manage relationships, how they behave, and how they feel towards themselves and others. Narcissists are good at creating flattering self-images, attractive confidence and lofty dreams as masks, like 'The Phantom of the Opera' (written by Gaston Leroux) hiding his born disfigurement yet, at its extreme, Narcissism is a delusional Personality Disorder.

Today is serious, sorry.

Q Day 7 - Two Writers

I've been in West Mersea for a week, hidden in my garret opposite the Fire Station (1935) which, coincidently, is also Mersea Island Scouts location. And, I have just realised, it's easier to type on this small Samsung phone if I wear my glasses. A distinct consequence of ageing.

Orson Wells once said…

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

Over half a century ago (55 years to be exact), at Endsleigh Annex of Colchester Institute, I met a mild mannered young gentleman, one who wore old fashioned glasses. 

Through the turmoil of life, with its knocks and bruises, ups and downs we have somehow preserved a friendship. We haven't lived in each other's pockets, in fact years slip past with scant contact, but friendship exists, and maybe because of this.

In 'Shouting in a Bucket Blues' Kevin Ayers (ex Soft Machine) sings….

"Lovers come and lovers go but friends are hard to find.."

And it's true. With the exit of my last love, here I am in Blighty and back in contact with my friend of those many years.

In many respects J and I had chased each other through Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), from pseudo Beatnik days, to hippy days and the wearing of military jackets (Sgt Pepper style). 

Individually we left college, uninformed and scarcely educated, to follow various pipers, his to Mexico mine to a 'commune in Yorkshire. 

When the fires of youth dampened slightly I went to Art School, he to nursing school. I studied Philosophy, he studied Scottish Literature. I gained my two Masters in Art related subjects, he gained his Doctorates in Literature and Language. It wasn't a race. Most of the time we were quite unaware each of what the other was doing. 

Nevertheless we remained friends and lived life on parallel tracks, meeting occasionally between his sojourns in Poland, Malaysia and Japan, and mine in India, Malaysia and Cambodia, to compare notes . As well as being a writer he became an academic, I a graphic designer and a writer. We are similar but different.

As Pink Floyd sang…

"We're just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl

Year after year."

We, independently, were attracted to Asia. He because his father was killed in the Malayan 'Emergency' (1951), me because my father survived India (1930s), but left his heart there. It has turned full circle as I return from Cambodia to West Mersea, as we, temporarily at least, live across the river Colne from each other as he longer lives in Japan.

Q Day 6 Getting There Being Here

Getting there, and Being Here, slowly.

As the British sun enlightens my room, it's difficult to not think back, see what I had and compare it to where I am now. There is the realisation that I am now nomadic, anchorless, or to put it another way, free (as a bird, perhaps a Jonathan Livingston Seagull). But, on the other hand, Janis Joplin sang "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

The message is, of course, treasure what you currently have for it all can be taken away, love, home, belongings all can go overnight. You can become shipwrecked on the sea of life, adrift.

Okay that all seems a little morose. The bright side is that you learn not to need, or even want, those things that you once had. You cut your coat to suit your cloth, pair down your wants and attend only to your needs.

Ram Dass, formerly psychologist, psychedelic guru turned spiritual adviser mentioned….

"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed."

Henry David Thoreau had his Walden and I my Clacton, (on sea). For me, Clacton is fictionalized in the pages of my various short stories, as Blicton on Sea. 

 On the final page of Walden, Thoreau wrote...

"...such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

The Cosmos continues as The Beatles sang in  "Within You and Without You" (June 1967).

"Try to realise it's all within yourself

No one else can make you change

And to see you're really only very small

And life flows on within you and without you."

And there you have it. 

Back to Ram Dass

“I think the question is, how do we live with change? Change in our friends, change in our lovers? Change in me and change in my body, from the stroke. Things have changed this plane of consciousness. We've tried to keep things the same. It causes suffering. This suffering is another step in your spiritual life, in your spiritual journey.”

Suffering as in the Hindu/Buddhist Duḥkha.

Q Day five

Day five

Half way into my sequestration and I am awake at 3.45am. No, I do not mean to be awake at 3.45am but, nevertheless, I am. An urgent call of nature had me sliding out from under the substantial duvet, and sidling to the (literal) bathroom ( i.e. an Edwardian room which contains a bath). 

There is a slight roseate colouring pastel drawn atop of the eggshell blue sky here in oysterland. It is cool at the fresh  start of another Summer's day. 

Living here, so close to the sea and hearing diurnal seagulls, has me recalling songs by Donovan, the mystical minstrel of the 60s and 70s. Most especially his 1967 double vinyl album 'A Gift from a Flower' to a Garden, and songs like 'Starfish-On-The-Toast', only Mersea has mud rather than rocks.

My Negative Test Result Certificate for my Day 2 test came through last evening. Which is, quite obviously, good, and helps me along to my release.

I am itching to discover if the ferry is still operating between Mersea Island and Brightlingsea, or the other to Wivenhoe, and what the crossings are like. It has been so long that I had a lengthy walk, and a day's coastal adventuring with fish and chips for lunch would be fascinating. So, there, that's for another day.

This poem has been in my head this early morning.

Leisure

by

William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

My mantra Be Here Now 

Q Day 4

Day four

6am and the Summer sun has brought a blue sky with it. It would be so nice to go out walking at this time, but that is a luxury I shall have to delay.

Cuckoo Song

W. de Wycombe 13th century

Sumer is icumen in,

Loude sing cuckou!

Groweth seed and bloweth meed,

And springth the wode now.

Sing cuckou!

Ewe bleteth after lamb,

Loweth after calve cow,

Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth,

Merye sing cuckou!

Cuckou, cuckou,

Wel singest thou cuckou:

Ne swik thou never now!

I confess to having a great deal of negativity yesterday. Re-entry into the land of my birth has not been easy, and shall continue to be that way while I run down the list of actions necessary, and their obstacles.

Last year this time I was still writing my Covid diary. Now it's a Quarantine diary. I hope that soon I can write a 'What a Wonderful Life' diary. And yes I do realise that happiness cannot be found externally but only internally.

Research is not as easy without a computer and, of course, I'm not able to work on the next issue of The Blue Lotus magazine. I hope to get a second hand computer soonish, but am having to make do with this small Samsung phone and my damaged iPad Air. Ah, if only love were as easily replaced. Sigh.

Love for sale, appetizing young love for sale

Love that's fresh and still unspoiled

Love that's only slightly soiled, love for sale.

(Love for Sale, Cole Porter  1930)

I have not been a fan of ordering things. However, as current food stocks dwindle I shall have to soon bite the bullet. After the last take away, which brought me a lukewarm cheese burger (and I had no microwave) , I am loath to do that a second time, though to be honest that was the fault of the terrible road upheaval in Siem Reap (Cambodia) and not the sender.

While incarcerated I am trying to feel the Buddhist Metta (loving kindness) Prayer. I say feel, because it is oh so easy to recite, but doing so from the heart is another matter entirely.

One year ago today I wrote…

"I presently sit at Common Grounds having breakfasted on Eggs Benedict, croissant and a large Flat White."

How life has changed. Now I don't take breakfast and have only Luwak White Koffie (original) 3 in 1 coffee from Indonesia, bought in Phnom Penh  Cambodia, instead.

Quarantine

"Quarantine (from the Italian “quaranta,” meaning 40) was adopted as an obligatory means of separating persons, animals, and goods that may have been exposed to a contagious disease." Therefore 10 days in Covid 19 isolation is not quarantine, he says all knowledgeable (with thanks to Google and the Internet.)

Day Zero

 I had arrived on Mersea Island, known for its oysters, Roman encampment and freshly caught fish, and was concerned with settling into my new space, getting in supplies and preparing for the next few days.

Day One

Was all about learning how to cope.

Day two

I am now on Day Two, completed the Covid testing for today and have it sent off to those lucky people whose job it is to test it (Boots).

Being confined to one room is not so unusual for me. Effectively it is a repeat of my first few months in Cambodia as the borders closed and Covid 19 demonstrated that it was here to stay. I then stayed voluntarily (in the guest room of the Cambodian children's charity I volunteer for).

All In June

 by William Henry Davies

A week ago I had a fire

To warm my feet, my hands and face;

Cold winds, that never make a friend,

Crept in and out of every place.

Today the fields are rich in grass,

And buttercups in thousands grow;

I'll show the world where I have been--

With gold-dust seen on either shoe.

Till to my garden back I come,

Where bumble-bees for hours and hours

Sit on their soft, fat, velvet bums,

To wriggle out of hollow flowers.

Day three

It's nice that those people at the NHS (National Health Service) Track and Trace can find the time to keep me company on my hand phone, daily. True, each individual says the same thing to me, as if they are reading from a script, but I do welcome the human contact. 

However, the sheer Kafkaesque nature of British bureaucracy astounds me. Entering the UK was bad enough, that and the rigmarole surrounding it, but trying to change a telephone number on the Passenger Location Form (PLF) is hellish.

Coming into the country I had to put my landlady's telephone number on said PLF  as I had no UK telephone number. I had, afterall, been living in Cambodia and before that Malaysia with no need of a British telephone number. I had no idea that NHS Track & Trace would inconvenience her by phoning her daily.

This had to change. On the second day I mentioned this to the Track & Trace operative. He noted it down. Today it happened again, and I was told that I would have to fill in the Passenger Location Form for the third time,  just to change a telephone number.

I now sincerely regret my decision to return to the land of my birth, despite the fact that I really had no choice.

Minding Mersea

The name 'Mersea' comes from the Old English word 'meresig', meaning an island in the pool.

It's 3.39 am in West Mersea, England. Birds are singing outside. One fact of intercontinental air travel is that phenomenon known as jet lag, or having a brain which only slowly accepts the current time over that of the country you have exited. Hence I am awake and wondering how to turn the volume down on my feathered neighbours.

To remain hydrated, I drink copious amounts of water. Getting older also means weakening of the bladder, not in any serious incontinence way, but nevertheless uncomfortable at the small hours of the morning. So, as I am renting a room which has no attached bathroom, having a call of nature at this hour means surreptitiously creeping about, so as not to disturb others.

Being awake, my brain wants to fixate on something. It has chosen the continuance of my journey to West Mersea as a focal point. 

I stood in a very long, extremely slow moving line inching towards 'Border Control' (what we used to call Immigration). I was tired, but perhaps a little too complacent in the knowledge that all was in fact well, and that I would soon breeze back into the country of my birth.

It was not to be.

The problem was that I had somehow closed the online Passenger Locator Form, unsaved. I was to discover just how essential that form is to ingress said country.

Finally it became my turn to step up to the very well fortified Border Control cublical. All was going well until I looked online for my completed Passenger Locator Form. It was not to be found, and I had had no printing facilities available to me in Cambodia to produce a physical copy.

Now that was a problem. A returning British person who cannot prove that he has completed that, now apparently essential, form cannot enter the Isle of his birth, apparently.

What should have taken a minute or so, a quick flash of ny passport and proof of a negative Covid 19 test, took nearly half an hour to explain, then rewrite said form while standing to one side of the Border Control fortification, with much mumbling (soto voce, as there are noticies everywhere about not offending Border Control personnel).

The task was finally completed to the officer's satisfaction and, instead of being whisked off to imprisonment, I was allowed to go seek my bags which were no longer trundling around the baggage reclaim carousel, but tucked away elsewhere, or so I discovered.

The additional time taken to re-enter Blighty also meant that my booked taxi had returned to base. I contacted the company to insist that the taxi reappear. While I was waiting I changed US Dollars into Pounds Sterling and sought a local SIM card. I also attacked the ATM, which would only allow me a measly £200. Ho Hum.

The taxi arrived. To take a taxi to West Mersea from Heathrow Airport may seem a trifle extravagant, except when you consider a) the barely portable nature of my luggage and b) the risk of exposure to a vicious pandemic.

The driver was revealed to be both Sri Lankan and a frequent traveller to Malaysia. During the two hour journey conversation drifted from the many and varied delights of Kuala Lumpur, to my trip to Sri Lanka and my having lived with one of the Indian music maestro A.R.Rahman's music directors, in Chennai, and pretty soon we were arriving in West Mersea.

I had been travelling for four days, give or take. Next, 10 days quarantine.

Processing Phnom Penh

I sat in that long distance taxi, be-masked at my journey' s beginning, alternatively a little anxious and a little excited.

I had left behind the keys to my former house, in Kuala Lumpur, in that small room at the children's charity, in Siem Reap. I also left behind my young Khmer friends and the beautiful hugs from twin sisters Sorphany and Sorphanin. I had clambered into that Toyota Highlander feeling sad, knowing that I couldn't stay any longer and that I had to start a new life, somewhere.

In the mild heat of the Cambodian morning I was driven by a driver whose name I never knew, through Siem Reap city,  past early morning markets, sellers of bottled petroleum, Khmer women in pyjamas, on bicycles, and men, their sarongs wrapped and tied around them, performing their ablutions on the pavement.

As we travelled, in roadside pools gracious pink lotus flowers blossomed, while advertising signs sprouted up and towered over us displaying Gansberg German Premium beer, Boostrong energy drink, Anchor and other beers, as the driver and I passed and the sun glowed shocking orange and brightening. 

We slowed through market laden small towns, greeted by stacks of locally woven baskets, piles of green coconuts and swathes of the fresh green leaves Khmer people love to eat. 

Outside those small towns, on that crazy ride to get a Covid-19 Pre-Departure Test (PDT) at the National Institute of Public Health Government building, thin white cows with short horns grazed; strange straw mushroom shaped haystacks with wooden centre posts seemed to grow as we passed. Then, all of a sudden, the driver pulled the car over to the side of the road, and onto the red earth verge. He exited the car and proceeded to urinate in the ditch. A call of nature, nurtured. 

We moved on by small brick kilns fronted by piles of orderly red bricks, saffron clad monks with yellow sun-masking umbrellas and white Covid face masks, emaciated horses with hair tied in small plumes pulling carts of long wooden planks, and curious tractor-lorries pulling their loads of coal black charcoal.

After five hours of alternate green fields and small towns we were suddenly there, driving across a bridge of the Tonle Sap river, Phnom Penh, caught up in a traffic jam. The first that we'd encountered all morning. My driver pulled the car up, onto the curb, outside the Government health building. He spoke with a young man who beckoned me to follow. Follow I did, through gaps between parked cars towards a side street. He then pointed, and I went where he pointed. There were signs, in English,TESTING THIS WAY, followed by red arrows painted on a pathway leading into the Government space, and around and in between buildings.

Eventually, after emulating Dorothy and following the yellow brick road there was a door. I went inside. There were rows upon rows of empty plastic chairs. I mooched towards the counter and was immediately shooed away. I had inadvertantly gone in through the out door. A man motioned for me to go out the way I had come in, and go around the building. Yes, yet another building.

I went round. There were no more arrows but, instead, men draped in personal protection gear at an outside desk. I proffered my papers. One of the Quatermass men pointed to a rope system, like those you see at the airport while waiting to check in. The path twisted hither and thither and was empty, nada, no human traffic, zero. Being the dutiful alien I traverse the path keeping my distance from the nonexistent fellow travellers. Around and around I went in that imaginary queue.

Worthy of Brian Rix, I eventually walked back into the building I had just exited, but by a different door. Then the fun began. Online, and in my haste, (and on my hand phone which tends to be too small for both my eyesight and my plump fingers), I had put my name as it is on my debit card, and not as it is in my passport (ie in full and not initials). This oversight caused a small amount of consternation as I attempted to explain to three different Cambodian Government health officials, why I had done so. Stupidity and blatant disregard for officialdom being the answers which sprang immediately to my mind. The scene before me was like watching chickens when a fox enters their coop.

Finally, and after much explaining, I was asked to pay US$130 and had another piece of paper added to my growing stack. I was requested to go back three stages and wait. By then there had developed a massive crowd of two (other victims). I waited in my Kafka dystopian nightmare until I was practically dragged into the presence of two women who were dressed in full surgical attire, replete with plastic shielded faces. I felt a little underdressed with my pathetic, flimsy, blue paper mask.

A swab was taken in my mouth, then I was told, in good but obviously accented English, to shut my mouth. No offense was given and none taken. A thinner swab (thank God for small mercies) was however rammed into my right nostril. It hurt, and I was surprised that there was no blood. I waited. Then I waited, and after waiting was eventually told to go. I asked if I had to return the next day. I’d done my reading, you see, and understood the procedure. In a round about fashion this date was confirmed. I was to return for my Covid 19 test results the next day, at 5pm.

Lunch beckoned. It was my first time at the New Season Indian Restaurant, with its commanding river vista.  I had no expectations, good or bad. I asked and was told that yes they do have Dosa, Masala Dosa. When it came the Dosa was folded neatly into a triangle, and really did look appetizing, as did the chutneys too. But looks can be deceiving, howsomever this wasn't. The Dosa (and it's chutneys) were all that I could have hoped for, bringing back happy memories of my travels in India. And the lassi was good, so good that I drank 3 glasses. That's something I've never done before. I just have to go back…

Like various Asian cities, Phnom Penh was quite the enigma. There were main roads with copious high value cars sharing space with low rent tuk tuks which vie with the Indian made Bajaj and Honda made motor scooters. Adverts for the rich, or the wannabe rich, peered down, while in back streets Khmer life continued as it has done for millennia. Women scooped rice from sacks to sell, others had set out their vegetable or fruit stalls selling dragon fruit, or durian. Still others sold fresh pork and the Khmer version of Chinese Lap Cheong sausages, by the side of the road.

While waiting to fly back to another life I was finally on holiday and enjoying Dosa, Dim Sum and Udon noodles in that conflicted city.

4pm came and went. No driver was evident.

In Cambodia you frequently have to add an extra half, or even a whole, hour to your expected time frame. However, trying to be positive, no amount of waiting is actually wasted. As I sat waiting for my perennially late driver, three hornbills few past the hotel. I had no idea that hornbills even existed in Cambodia, let alone in a city like Phnom Penh. I'm British and male, I noticed many other kinds of 'birds' here, but never expected hornbills.

The driver eventually arrived and I returned to that mildly chaotic testing centre. I followed the arrows again, but this time there was a multitude of humanity not obeying the two metre rule of pandemic safety.

There was jostling and pushing with no evident queue or system. I was pushed so that I inadvertently arrived at the front and, simultaneously, with hopeful others thrust my receipt forward. A fully covered individual looking like someone out of the Quatermass Experiment took my piece of paper, folded it and marked it with the number 2. It is only then that I saw the writing on the wall, literally. Numbers 1 to 3 were scrawled on the wall. I had number 2 on my receipt, and stood before it, or as much as I was able to. 

Again my outstretched arm gained attention and I received an official looking A4 paper proclaiming me to be Covid 19 free (for now anyway). Whoopee, I was free to fly back to Blighty and spend ten days sequestered in one room. Ah what fun.

Of course, I really didn't need to worry about my results, for reason alone dictates that had I been proved positive in the test, there would have been a squad of police and medical professionals at my door long before I had even thought of going out that day.

Before my stress levels were allowed to drop, there was Immigration to endure. It is at that point when things could have gone terribly, terribly, wrong. Would I be dragged off to an overstayers prision ready for eventual deportation, or simply allowed to pass, as I was leaving anyway. Bear in mind that I had overstayed for thirteen months after all.  Phew! It was the latter.

But, before that, there were five hours at the airport to consider.

Phnom Penh airport is not Siem Reap airport where all kinds of facilities await the eager traveller, inside. No, Phnom Penh airport has facilities, though less, outside too, although only one was open selling filled croissants. In these Covid days Phnom Penh airport 'Departures' was closed until 3pm. Five hours of aicon-less air was already too much only 1 hour in. It was business as abnormal in Phnom Penh airport, and I could actually count the number of people there.

On reflection, that morning was interesting. I had taken an early breakfast at 'The Rising Sun English Restaurant", and ordered a 'Half English Breakfast', though I'm not terribly sure if hash browns count as being English. The owner was half Chinese and half Khmer (she said when I asked). 

The food was good, and after its consumption and a small chat with the establishment's owner, I wandered along the river side watching earnest looking men release cages full of small birds back into the wild, which is a custom of gaining Buddhist merit called Fang Sheng. Those actions were accompanied by a small Khmer orchestra near a Buddhist shrine. I need to research why.

There was a lot of admin to do before the flight, specifically arranging Covid tests after my arrival and signing in to the UK Government Passenger Locator Form. My poor eyesight and pudgy fingers found those tasks Herculean. Ho hum. I persisted, with a lot of venting, words I've not used for a long time, it must be the effect of returning to the UK. But I got through it, well sort of. We'll see.