“There’s a kind of spurious good fellowship between the English and this country. It’s a tradition to booze together and swap meals and pretend to be friends, though we hate each other like poison. Hanging together we call it. It’s a political necessity. Of course, drink is what keeps the machine going. We should all go mad and kill one another in a week if it weren’t for that. There’s a subject for one of your uplift essayists. Booze as the cement of the Empire.”
“Gordon shoved open the door of the public bar, Ravelston following. Ravelston persuaded himself that he was fond of pubs, especially low-class pubs. Pubs are genuinely proletarian. In a pub you can meet the working class on equal terms-or that’s the theory anyway. But in practice Ravelston never went into a pub unless he was with somebody like Gordon, and he always felt like a fish out of water when he got there. A foul yet coldish air enveloped them. It was a filthy smoky room, low ceilinged, with a sawdusted floor and plain deal tables ringed by generations of beer-pots. In one corner four monstrous women with breasts the size of melons were sitting drinking porter and talking with bitter intensity about someone called Mrs Croop. The landlady, a tall grim woman with a black fringe, looking like the madame of a brothel, stood behind the bar, her powerful forearms folded, watching a game of darts which was going on between four labourers and a postman.”
George Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, 1936.
“But in some ways Ravelston was not even like a moneyed person. The fatty degeneration of the spirit which goes with wealth had missed him, or he had escaped it by conscious effort. Indeed his whole life was a struggle to escape it. It was for this reason that he gave up his time and a large part of his income to editing an unpopular Socialist monthly. For himself he lived upon eight hundred a year or thereabouts. Even of this income he was acutely ashamed. It was not, he realised, exactly a proletarian income; but he had learned to get along on less. Eight hundred a year was a minimum living wage to him as two pounds a week was to Gordon.”
George Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, 1936.
The Singapore Times Exclusive: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: THAT NORTH KOREAN DIPLOMAT TO MY RESCUE!
The intense heat and humidity experienced in George Town flared my earlier morning headache and adding to my misery a queasy stomach. Just get me my bed and a litre of Evian ASAP!
But my dreams of a delightful flake out were being impeded by the global press. CBC, NBC, BBC. Al Jazzit Up Zeera, The New Voice of America and the Singaporean Truth Network were blocking my way! Bobby Jr., two security guards from the train and those two mysterious men onboard, Budweiser, Ketchup and burger lovers, formed a wedge to drive me into the safety of the Eastern & Oriental Express.
Ready to collapse in our State Cabin shiver my timber it was Jambon Proscuitto from CNN sitting calmy with a cameraman likes peas in a pod in our State Cabin. Before he could open his yapper Mr. North Korea jabbed him on his neck, dragged him off the train to tumble on the platform. My God a massive international event magnified!
Being so bloody fagged out I crashed into my kip and cavorted in the heavens.
The first thing Bobby Jr. told me upon my wakeup was at the evening festivities Madame Fong had slapped Nicomshire and kicked him in the nuts. Poor Reginald but stupid me for not hamming it up before the press and securing my ticket to freedom. Hot weather dumbifies West Highland Terriers!
The Singapore Times Exclusive: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: OFF TO GEORGE TOWN ON PENANG ISLAND IN MALAYSIA
Those sedatives from the stitch up on my head imparted an extra long sleep although feeling refreshed, I had a splitting headache which was addressed by Bobby Jr. giving me some canine aspirin given to him at the Taman Negara National Park veterinarian station.
By the time our butler Keith had brough breakfast to our State Cabin I was feeling chipper despite an itchiness caused by the cone on my head which had to remain in place for another day.
Sir Reginald Nicomshire stopped by after breakfast to check in on my health and ask Bobby Jr. if I was able to join him on a Vespa tour of George Town. My happy bark was my answer. “Let’s go!”
Around 11:00 the train pulled into the Seberang Perai train station and we had a brief underground walk to the ferry dock which would transport us across the Strait of Malacca and take us to George Town. When heading down the gangplank to our waiting Vespas in George Town a wall of heat and humidity just about bowled over all of us heading to our Vespa’s. Thirty-eight degrees with 95% humidity.
My Vespa!
Each of myself, Bobby Jr. and Nicomshire had a Vespa driver. They had set a basket for me on the rear of the seat while Bobby Jr. and Nicomshire grabbed on to their Vespa driver.
I must have been some sight sitting on the back of a Vespa in a basket with a cone over my head. Pedestrians clapped and some whistled when they saw me whizz by.
George Town was in my mind simply that; a town but what can you see in a few hours if you want to avoid the heavily travelled tourist path.
Our first official stop was at some “cultural centre” for a puppet show and to look at some artisanal goods i.e. cheap souvenirs. Yes, and there were Viking Cruise people galore in tight fitting polo shirts with huge guts spilling out, fanny packs and Tilley hats causing Bobby to say, “Let’s get the hell out of here and see some of the real George Town.”
The first stop was a local marketplace with cheap Chinese goods and clothing on the outside but an impressive fish and meat section and plenty of fruits and vegetables. Whole carcasses of beef and lamb hanging on hooks and chickens and ducks too. More interesting than some sterile supermarket. Not a gringo in sight!
Visit to marketplace!
You wouldn’t think a visit to a cemetery would be on a tourist’s agenda but then again we are not Viking Cruise people so we visited the English Catholic and Protestant cemetery a marker of British colonialism. Bobby Jr. read the inscriptions on the gravestones and so many young children died. The inscriptions told a story of British colonialism and there was a mausoleum with absolutely no markings of who might have been interred there.
All of us enjoyed the shade of the graveyard but even with it being so close to the water there was no breeze.
Somewhat lambasted by the heat and humidity we stopped at a 7-11 nearby for a cold drink. The air conditioning was so ferocious I more or less dragged Bobby Jr. out of the igloo to enjoy a Japanese carbonated drink called Vida sweetened with stevia. Bobby Jr. poured some of his Lychee flavoured Vida in a bowl he had brought along for me and I lapped up half a can. I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a cold drink so much!
We then tooted over to City Hall and an administrative building, perfect examples of British colonial architecture. Then a marker for those soldiers who died during World War II in a death march building a railroad for the Japanese.
After three hours all of us were, as you humans say, toast! We sat on benches overlooking the Strait of Malacca and the high-rises of Seberang Perai.
At 15:30 we were back on the ferry.
As we walked to the train I saw a huge contingent of trucks, antennas and a milling crowd. The general manager of the Eastern & Oriental Express operations in Malaysia, who had been travelling on the train with us, ran out to warn us the international press was waiting for Cuddlecakes, the legendary, courageous and most stunningly handsome West Highland Terrier who defended British royalty from a savage tiger attack.
This was it I thought. Madame Fong has outplayed herself and she’ll go down in flames kamikaze style!!!!
“No natives in this Club! It’s by constantly giving way over small things like that we’ve ruined the Empire. This country’s only rotten with sedition because we’ve been too soft with them. The only possible policy is to treat em like the dirt they are. This is a critical moment, and we want every bit of prestige we can get. We’ve got to hang together and say, “We are the masters, and you are the beggars.” ‘Ellis pressed his small thumb down as though flattening a grub’ “you beggars keep your place!”
“Ellis really did hate Orientals-hated them with a bitter, restless loathing as of something evil or unclean. Living and working, as the assistant of a timber firm must, in perpetual contact with the Burmese, he had never grown used to the sight of a black face. Any hint of friendly feeling towards an Oriental seemed to him a horrible perversity. He was an intelligent man and an able servant of his firm, but he was one of those Englishmen-common, unfortunately-who should never be allowed to set foot in the East.”
“The interesting thing about the New Albion was that it was so completely modern in spirit. There was hardly a soul in the firm who was not perfectly aware that publicity-advertising- is the dirtiest ramp capitalism has yet produced. In the red lead firm there had still lingered certain notions of commercial honour and usefulness. But such things would have been laughed at in the New Albion. Most employees were the hard-boiled, Americanised, go-getting types, the type to whom nothing in the world is sacred, except money. They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”
George Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, 1936.
“There are two ways to live. You can be rich, or you can deliberately refuse to be rich. You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it. He took it for granted that he himself would never be able to make money. It hardly even occurred to him that he might have talents which could be turned to account. This was what his schoolmasters had done for him; they had rubbed it into him that he was a seditious little nuisance and not likely to ‘succeed’ in life. He accepted this. Very well, then, he would refuse the whole business of ‘succeeding’; he would make it his especial purpose not to succeed.”
George Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, 1936.
THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: DEFENDING SIR REGINALD NICOMSHIRE AGAINST MALAY TIGER
The Singapore Times Exclusive: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: DEFENDING SIR REGINALD NICOMSHIRE AGAINST MALAY TIGER
Bobby Jr. and I fared poorly in the sleep department before our expedition to Taman Negara Park. The train was lurching and jerking most of the early morning hours.
Bobby Jr. had his shower and I could hear him cursing as he was bouncing off the shower stall walls due to the choppy ride we experienced. And as he is an obese fellow moving around in that tiny bathroom causes him grief.
We had our breakfast in our State Cabin. Chicken congee and watermelon slices for me with a small bowl of excellent jasmine tea; Bobby Jr. 6 pain au chocolate, and a large bowl of lychee yogurt and of course his 12 Monkeys Cambodian tea. Just prior to lunch we arrived at Maripoh Station almost directly in front of the entrance to the Taman Negara National Park.
We are in the heart of rain forest country and this particular rain forest is one of the oldest in Malaysia with dense jungle, wide rivers and lush mountains. Save the Wild Tigers has a keen interest in this park and it is a sanctuary for the nearly extinct Malay Tiger, the national animal of Malaysia. Only 120 or so remain. And they do occasionally kill humans. Logging and mining is driving these tigers from their habitat.
As we exited the train to waiting jeeps which were to take us on a tour of the Park I saw those strange gunpowder, Budweiser beer drinkers and ketchup on hamburger folks who were holed up in a State Cabin with numerous laptops and communication equipment. And why was the North Korean diplomat with them. Again, I queried what they were up to.
Instead of watching the Malaysian jungle from our train windows we were smack dab in the middle of it. The air was heavy and thick and relentlessly humid. Vegetation was fighting with vegetation to reach the sun. A veritable life and death competition.
We were all terribly excited we would encounter a tiger. Our guide said you were more likely to see elephants during the day as Malay tigers are nocturnal hunters. We saw piles of elephant droppings but no elephants.
I was siting next to Sir Reginald Nicomshire who missed breakfast so was munching away on a huge Wagyu beef sandwich topped with gravy prepared by the kitchen staff and he was spilling the beef juice and gravy all over his shirt. He was virtually soaked in a juicy mess. You could smell him a mile away!
Our guide gave us a three-minute pee break advising us not to stray too far into the jungle. Sir Nicomshire’s stomach gave a huge burble gurgle and he trotted into the bush to experience the trots. Too much alcohol last night mixed with rich late morning beef got him running. Yes, the runs can get you running.
Our guide blew the return whistle but Nicomshire still had his pants down groaning with a heave ho. Then a snarl very close to Nicomshire and the hot steaming mess he had deposited on the ground.
The tiger charged bare bottomed Reginald and instinctually I leapt out looking that beast straight in the eyes barking up a storm. He lunged at me grazing my scalp with his huge clawed paw causing blood to stream down my face obfuscating my vision. I leapt under his head and went for the neck and shook it vigorously and its blood started to flow. I heard a gun fire and that spooked the tiger who retreated back into the jungle. As I lay bleeding on the ground I saw behind a bush that strange couple again one putting his gun back in a shoulder holster.
I recall hands picking me up and rushing me back to the Park’s veterinarian station where the gash on my noggin was sown up after receiving a sedatives and local anesthetic. I recall waking up in Nicomshire’s Presidential Cabin on a bed with Amira stroking my head saying repeatedly, “Cuddlecakes sweetheart you will be ok.” Feeling safe and loved and drowsy I fell into a deep sleep.
Nicomshire was furious with himself for having attracted the tiger because of all the beef juice and gravy he had spilt all over himself. What beast or human could resist Wagyu beef residue!
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