Another Life

I think I may have mentioned that in the early 1980’s after having been ignominiously dumped, I decided that if I were to accept another short term job, it would be overseas, to help me forget, like Laurel and Hardy joining the French Foreign Legion in The Flying Deuces. Due to a happy concatenation of circumstances, I ended up getting several months’ work in Singapore in 1985, courtesy of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon.

I once heard a fascinating radio interview with the Scottish footballer and one-time manager of Manchester United, Tommy Docherty. He came out with a number of wise observations, including (and I think I remember the quote exactly), ‘Stress is not being the manager of Manchester United. Stress is being the manager of Halifax Town.’ Another one, rather more pertinent, was the admission that the first thing he had learned from his national service in the army was that he wasn’t as tough as he had previously thought.

This rang a bell, as the first thing that university taught me was that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. But to come back to Singapore, if there is one thing that makes you grow up, it is a stint working in a foreign country, and I think I came back from Singapore rather a different person from the lad who went out there.

The plan was that I spend three weeks in the Agency in Lyon being briefed before I went out there. If anything, Lyon was more of a culture shock than Singapore. At the time, I still smoked like a chimney. One of my colleagues in Northwick Park Hospital, the late and much missed Doug Altman, suggested that this major change in my life was an opportunity to kick the tobacco habit.

‘Why don’t you get on the plane at Heathrow as a smoker, and get off at Lyon as a non-smoker?’ he said.

So I thought I would try this out. Needless to say, it didn’t work. At the end of my first day at the Agency, having stayed off the fags until then, I went down to the bus stop on Avenue des Frères Lumière, to get my trolley bus back into the centre of Lyon, where my hotel was. Despite Lyon bus drivers routinely handling masses of small change, he refused my 50 franc note, claiming that he had no change.

(Ho ho, he was thinking to himself, Let us ourselves amuse to the expense of this little foreigner Scottish, with the stupid moustache.)

‘’Qu’est-ce que je ferais?’ I enquired.

‘Demandez de la monnaie aux autres passagers,’ was his helpful suggestion.

Well, les autres passagers, when I asked if they could give me change of a 50 franc note, all looked at me as if I had asked them to help me along to the lavvy and assist me out of my garments. I stormed off the bus in a towering rage, thinking I might as well walk the two or three miles to the centre of town. Immediately the heavens opened and I was soaked to the skin within seconds. I walked into a café, got an espresso and a packet of 20 Gitanes, and commenced a lengthy session of reacclimatisation to my tobacco habit.

In the following three weeks, I got used to the bourgeois town habits of Lyon, then went out to Singapore. I have tried in the past to write about my time in Singapore before, and have always found it difficult. One day, I might be able to describe how it helped me put a stookie on my broken heart. In the meantime, let me take it in slices.

Thanks to my dear colleague Lynn Alexander, I was introduced to the Colbar, a ramshackle eating and drinking house, just outside Portsdown Barracks. It had been a haunt of British squaddies in colonial days, and was now popular with the southern Indian community who form a significant minority in Singapore and Malaysia, and the European expatriates (funny how we’re called expatriates when we live abroad, but when foreign nationals come here, they are called immigrants). It was run by Mr and Mrs Lim, and was held in such fondness by its customers that, long after my tour of duty, when it was to be demolished as a result of the relentless urban development that is Singapore’s life, they paid to have it reassembled, brick by brick, a few hundred yards away.

As I recall, on alternate Saturday nights, there was a folk club in the Colbar. I sometimes gave them a few lines of poetry. I realise that this shows me up as a pretentious pillock. However, I came up with one piece of work of which I am proud. After watching a television dramatization of Rip Van Winkle, imported to Singapore from the USA, brilliantly directed by Francis Ford Coppola, I was inspired to write a bit of doggerel about a legend common in Scotland. This legend pertains to a tunnel under an estuary or a stretch of sea, which has been closed up due to the disappearance of the first person to attempt the crossing. According to John MacDougall Hay, the legend originated in the eastern Mediterranean (and indeed may relate to the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea), and was brought to England and Scotland by gypsies, leaving versions of the story all across Europe. The Rip Van Winkle drama reminded me of this Scottish (Egyptian?) legend, and I wrote the following as a result. The rhymes are not so far from McGonagall, but I think it just manages to stay on the tightrope. For once, my contribution to the Colbar folk club was a success.

The Loss of a Piper

Open your eyes and look around

And see the signs of sinking ground.

Behold the disused winding gear.

You know that there were coal mines here?

Where strong men strained and won from earth

The coal that burns upon the hearth.

But that’s not all that lies beneath,

Walk some miles south of Cowdenbeath.

 

Past Donibristle, Otterston,

Goat Quarry and look out upon

A view that’s fine, a view that’s worth

A pound or two, the River Forth.

Wee quiet towns below you lie,

The river dazzles with the sky

That meets the hills that rise in pride

Beyond the river’s southern side.

 

About those hills a city thrives,

With Wynds and Vennels, crowded lives.

It’s Edinburgh, the capital,

A market good to buy and sell.

As long as folk have lived by here,

They’ve crossed the Forth and traded there.

Hard-working people man this shore,

Though work’s less common than before.

 

And one time, when? Long, long ago

They did conceive a project slow

And laboursome, ‘tween south and north,

A tunnel underneath the Forth.

Men yet to come the plan would save

From braving current, tide and wave.

To dig this road it was agreed

And workmen toiled with strength and speed,

 

With pick and shovel, stick and lamp,

For years untold in dark and damp.

From either bank in tears and sweat

They worked until the caverns met.

Full seven miles the passage ran

When air met air and man met man.

The shovels fell, the men shook hands,

Returned to their respective lands,

 

And there decided who should be

The first to cross beneath the sea.

For luck they chose a piper fine,

Full six foot two and in his prime.

One summer evening, clear and soft,

The folk turned out to see him off.

In kilt and bunnet, plaid and shoe,

He shouldered up his pipes and blew.

 

The skirl of music thrilled the night.

The kiltie disappeared from sight,

In darkness dour, in tunnel’s mouth,

A two-hour’s march from north to south.

Two minutes more they heard him play

Before the sound did fade away.

The people on the southern shore

Waited in vain; for nevermore

 

Was piper seen, and all took fright

At what had happened that fair night.

A few brave souls went underground

A half a mile or so and found,

Mid water black and mosses green,

And squeaks of noisome beasts unseen,

A scrap of plaid, a shard of drone,

But ne’er a sign of flesh or bone.

 

The piper’s fate was never known,

They only knew that he was gone.

Eaten by beasts or taken away

By God or devil on that day.

They sealed the hole at either end

And promised never more to send

A man to cross beneath the Forth,

Whate’er the mission might be worth.

 

It still remains and still will stay

Unmarked, untravelled to this day,

And towns that sit about this coast

Have stories of a piper’s ghost,

Who’s never shown to human sight

But sometimes on a summer’s night

Will fill the air with mournful tune,

Upon the hill, beneath the moon.