Prowling in the City of Cats

 

My time away in Singapore certainly began with a bang. I arrived on Friday evening, settled in over the weekend, got some groceries, unpacked 3 suit cases and a big box, then packed for a departure on Monday. This was after a morning at work meeting my students for the first time. No time to register and get access to any of the office systems,  but straight off to a workshop on Maritime Law Enforcement  that was organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Kuching, Sarawak.

The clientele were about 60 officers from 5 Southeast Asian coastguards. It sounds tedious but was actually rather fun. I especially enjoyed being part of an inspection team going aboard a suspect vessel, and finding dodgy paperwork, 4 stowaways, three ill and possibly contagious, and the fourth carrying a bag of white powder. For me it was an eye-opener in how complicated all these procedures are, and how sticking to the letter of the law (in order to secure a conviction) makes things so difficult in a boat heaving about on the sea. (Ours wasn’t). The Trump administration’s approach is certainly simpler. Although the purposes were serious, it was fun all the same.

        My lot christened themselves ‘Team Geoff’ in my honour and very solicitously made sure I didn’t fall down any hatchways, There was lots of socialising and good eating, but of course since this was official business in a Muslim country no booze. Here's me at the podium, not wandering around as I usually do.

 However the foreign elder experts ( two ex-naval captains, one Spanish and one Colombian and me ) were recommended a restaurant in the city where we could satisfy any such cravings. It was excellent and so was the food. And then it was all over.

Except for me. I had arranged to stay on a couple of days as I wanted to redo Kuching which we had visited and much liked I guess about 20 years ago. It's supposed to have an association with cats and you see cat motifs all over the place,

statues, restaurant names, pictures etc etc. Staying on was a very good decision and I really enjoyed myself goggling at temples, doing all the museums, finding all the old colonial buildings left over from the extraordinary and amazingly enlightened times of the three famous British Rajahs called Brooks (whose family home I think was near Sheepstor in southern Dartmoor, as different as different could be) who ran the place until the Second World War. Quite a riposte to the all-pervading anti-Empire tropes of today. One price of this which, incidentally comes over very clearly wandering around the memorials in the Anglican cathedral in Singapore. Hardly any of them lived beyond 50, though I suppose that's partly because they would normally have gone back to the UK on retirement. Even so the poignancy is noticeable.  Certainly to judge by many of the street names, the locals have no problem with their colonial past. How about this as the colonnade of the general post office. The only corinthian columns in Borneo.

The best of the museums was the ultramodern Borneo Cultures Museum which certainly had things to goggle at, like this carved head. Talking of heads, the remains of that of the so-called Niah Lady who had been formally buried in a cave  with some rock art of boats an incredible 35,000 years ago was a real eye-opener.  Still on the subject of heads, some of the locals were head-hunters, of course. One of the museum’s displays had 5 of them suspended from the roof of the replica  ‘head house, ’ all blackened by the smoke of countless files, but still just about  recognisable. I presume they were real !

Anyhow enough of Kuching. I have a big class for my elective, the biggest ever in fact. Here are some of them. All very keen and so far at least bright. Very varied, a senior Malaysian policeman, a Chinese naval officer, civil servants from Singapore, a contingent from India and a young lady from Honduras. Etc etc.  The fees here are not negligible, so they must really want it ! Otherwise I have been settling back into the university routine, getting my residency permit that kind of thing.

Not that much sight-seeing so far. settling means getting supplies,doing my bit for King and country with some patriotic cheese,

setting out my work area etc. All outings for a purpose, but I have patronised my favoured locales, got some more tea from the Wang San Yang Tea Merchant, bought some books inevitably, pottered around antique shops and off to meetings in the British High Commission tomorrow. I managed to get a bit more sea-time with the Navy going out on one of the tank landing craft on a day reserved for naval families. I tried to find candles to light for Cherry but nothing doing at either of the Cathedrals or even the Armenian church.

Many of these outings do enable one to get little pleasures like coming across this charming mix of interwar shop-houses with what looks like a 1937 Art Deco cinema squashed in the middle.

But being right next to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, the natural tendency is to take the soft though usually very hot option of having a poke around there. You never know what you’ll spot. It might be working out why the denizens of the ponds are called red eared terrapins. 

Last time I was looking a bit vaguely at a bunch of flowers but became aware of something big buzzing around and managed to get an excellent shot of the culprit hovering above a big flower before diving in so deep only a little bit of black bottom was visible. I am told it was a broad footed carpenter bee. He was about 4 centimetres long. Quite a sight !  

Farewell and adieu

 

The title seems appropriate, even though there are no Spanish ladies in sight. Beth would get the allusion. After an unusually long time at home I am on my travels again – in fact typing this on the plane to Singapore. Although it’s split in two by a short flit home for Christmas, this will be the last long trip away, as I have definitely reached the end of the road as far as this sort of thing is concerned. It’s not that being away in itself is bad, it’s all the opportunity costs that accumulate and await one’s return like assassins in the dark. Quite apart from missing out on precious family occasions, it’s all the domestic business disorder, the garden on the verge of going completely wild and the house on the edge of potentially uninsured collapse. It’s not that my part time gardeners an cleaning ladies have been slacking at their jobs. They have no more spare time to compensate for my absence than I do – a condition that seems to afflict  all of us these frenetic days.

The upshot is that the last three months or so, have passed not with relaxed time sitting about in a sunny garden that I had been half expecting (or at least hoping for) but instead with a blur of activity in all three domains (personal business, garden and house) interspersed with one trip to Sweden and several family occasions in which I could do none of them ! On top of that there was a super-abundant harvest to cope with. In carrots, just as the apples, greengages and potatoes mentioned earlier. My best ever production of copious numbers of carrots that looked just as they should – unearthed the day before my departure, and demanding preservation. 

And in the background of course the unending task of keeping up with the news, lest it embarrassingly invalidates the judgements arrived at in my forthcoming book, now with publishers. So far so good ! Anyhow, by teetering about on the top of ladders painting window in the top story of the house or sawing off the tops of overgrown Thorn trees, endless trans-Atlantic business phone calls (now embargoed by the US shutdown), digging extra flood defences, etc, much has been achieved.  But it was decidedly not a rest cure.

It was not, however, all unremitting hard labour. There were quite a few family occasions to remind me of what really matters. There was the opportunity to participate in the primitive fire banner processions of Sussex with the Cross-in-Hand gang and, more recently, a stay with Team Powell in Burgess Hill with a tour of the fort and port of Newhaven, on a bleak day which made the whole area look like the end of the world. I had thought it was another Martello tower built to keep Napoleon at bay. Actually, it was an extensive late Victorian coastal artillery fort which morphed into a naval base for fast boat operations in the Channel during World War II. It was certainly big enough to have room after room of miliary displays of the whole period. A great place for small boys - with long corridors to run through, spectacular views of the sea down below and any number of mysterious nooks, crannies and rusting bits of aggressive looking military kit.

I also played host to an ex-student from Newport days over here for a course. Now a Captain in the Chilean Navy he presented me with a  bottle of wine, commissioned by the submarine he commanded. It’ll take some resolution to drink something so special. In return I gave him my de luxe special Wiltshire weekend – a guided tour of the Caen locks and Devizes, Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral including the Magna Carta, the doom painting in St Thomas’ church, the watermill, lunch in the top floor of he Antique centre, Old Sarum, West Kennett long barrow, Silbury Hill, the stone circle, dovecot, old barn, manor gardens and Church at Avebury ! I had a whale of a time. Even being presented with the first picture of myself outside the front door of the Arts building of my school in the Cathedral close !

I think he enjoyed himself, too. He certainly took lots of ace pictures. I really like this picture of Stonehenge though it’s a pity about the people on the right.  At least he went away knowing a lot more about Wiltshire, than he started with. 

Very interested in the house, and that weird stuff on the roof. He seemed  pleased about all this at least since with a name like Green, he is of British/Italian extraction. Chileans keep the surnames of both parents,  but normally follow the male line). His English is impressively fluent. Altogether a high-flyer. The tour was over 2.5 days and there were more restful evenings at the Peppermill and the Kings Arms of course where  the steak supper for two was good enough to impress a Chilean which is really saying something.

There was, though, a sombre side to my time here with two particular friends bravely battling through a cancer diagnoses and my needing to attend the funeral of a close naval colleague. He was another ex-student, brilliant, and going on to become a law professor, after leaving the service. Much younger than me and a real shock. I suppose I have reached the age where one must expect that kind of thing. I was also struck by the announced death of Shirley Abacaire – an Australian zither player of all things  A bjg name in the 1950s, (how innocent that sounds !) but not thought of for decades and certainly one  that means nothing to anyone now in the family, although it does to me.  The transience of things.  Such news, though reminds me how lucky I am especially after my fun and games in May. It certainly puts an overgrown garden and administrative hassles into their proper perspective.

…and finally here is proof that I made it to Singapore ! The black case, though wasn’t mine. It was brought in from store by mistake by the very nice people running the apartment block. Even I don’t travel with four large suitcases, a big cardboard box full of kitchen paraphernalia and two carry-ons, heavy with laptops etc.