Memoirs of a Coup in Thailand - The Evening of Living Fatuously

News of a new military coup in Thailand, elicits memories of the last one, which took place on 23rd February 1991. The events that eventually resulted from this event were tragic with a great deal of bloodshed, much murder and the suppression of the political rights of a gentle people. On a personal note – it lead to my exile from a country I love. However, all this was to unfold, and that Saturday night was anything but tragic.

On first hearing news of the coup, David and I were propelled into resolute action. Fiercely grasping our trusty cameras in expert albeit clammy hands, we took to the mean city streets of the Asian capital – streets that seemed so strangely innocent but which at the same time exuded an atmosphere of well-neigh palpable menace and sinister political intrigue.

I hailed a taxi, brutally barked instructions and we were heading directly into the very ‘heart of darkness.’ Our destination: the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, then located on the top floor of the five-star Dusit Thani Hotel on Silom Road, Central Bangkok. The journey took a matter of minutes yet it could have been an eternity. David spent the time fiddling with his Nikon, his knuckles white with suppressed tension; seemingly more relaxed, I nursed my Minolta on my lap as though it were some dangerously deranged child and merely ground my teeth. On reaching the hotel foyer, we gave a curt nod to the resplendently clad doorman, strode across the deep-piled carpet of the lobby and were wafted to the top floor by a turbo elevator. Brusquely pushing through the padded leather doors, we entered the Club. Aside from a couple of bar staff, we had the place to ourselves; there wasn’t a journalist in sight.

Congratulating ourselves at being first on the real scene of events and sneering at the so-called professional reporters who were doubtless merely at some besieged government building or at the Army HQ, we resolutely ordered the first beers of the night and took up strategic positions in a pair of really comfortable and tastefully upholstered armchairs. From there we could command an overview of events as they unfolded. We gazed through the tinted plate-glass windows at the panoramic view of the brightly-shinning city lights some thirty or forty floors below and thoughtfully slurped our ice cold Singha beers.

It can’t have been more than a few minutes after our arrival that David broke the silence. With a decisive yet strangely cynical curl of his lips – a true mark of the ‘old Bangkok hand’ – he suggested that we ordered a book of drinks vouchers. I grunted my even more cynical assent. It was going to be a long night.

In that atmosphere of sombre menace, soft furnishings and even softer piped string quartet music, strange things can happen to a man, even to hard drinking, hard living and hard-bitten journalists. Perhaps it was the sense of bitter irony evoked by the sight of the lights shinning so peacefully yet so deceptively in the distance but I felt a change coming over me. Suddenly I was James Woods's character from Salvador while David was apparently transforming into that played by Mel Gibson in The Night of Living Dangerously. We took it in turns to snarl “god damn it” at each other through gritted teeth.

At some point in the evening we decided that it was important to get a little local colour, to obtain an authentic Thai perspective. Given that David claimed to possess an unsurpassed fluency in the language, this was ‘his baby’ (as we journalist call it). He headed or perhaps lurched in the direction of the only remaining Thai, the other bar staff having long since given up and gone to bed. Even at this distance in time, I can still hear his earnest, almost conspiratorial yet oddly slurred tones as he interviewed the somewhat perplexed-looking barman. It is hard to judge exactly how much the latter actually understood – David explained that he was from outside Bangkok and clearly had a rudimentary grasp of the local idiom – but he did come over later with a bowl of peanuts. However, both David and I felt that it would trivialize the occasion to eat them. For once in cynical agreement, we ordered potato chips instead.

On Approaching Seneca

…But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Just Possibly a Preamble

Three O’ Clock in the morning is always the deep dark panic hour, a time of bug-eyed terror, mournful sighs and palpitations. A gnashing or at least a chattering of teeth is not unknown. Sometimes I worry about whether the Jesuits were right: perhaps Hell exists in all its horror, in all of its eternally crepuscular fury; perhaps Hieronymus Bosch’s only artistic failure was a lack of imaginative fecundity; perhaps St. Ignatius Loyola was giving a highly expurgated version in his Spiritual Exercises and glossing over the particularly nasty bits. I have so far avoided the temptation to disturb the sleep of the local Roman Catholic priest, but I keep his number to hand just in case. One can imagine the conversation:

Me: It is an emergency father.
Priest: The Last Rites, my son?
Me: No, St. Ignatius’ Book of Spiritual Exercises and – if it's not too much bother – St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.

I omit the unfortunate sleep-befuddled priest’s rejoinder but I imagine that it would be delivered in a heavy Irish accent and would be to the effect that I should go forth and multiply forthwith.

More usually than not, the sweat inducing panic is over things I have omitted to do and that I might never have time to do now. Sins of Omission were always more terrifying than Sins of Commission because there were just so many things you could omit. At 48 and somewhat on the stout side, the SAS is out of the question and I don’t suppose the Americans would be particularly keen to have me in the Special Forces. In fact, given my propensity for improbable accidents, they would probably prefer that I joined the opposition. I grow old, I grow old … will I have time to become a famous novelist, read Dostoyevsky in Russian, walk the entire length of Patagonia or visit Bognor Regis before the Grim Reaper pats me on the shoulder or rather more likely before I inadvertently kick him in the groin?

Am I, as my ever cheery friend Mike suggests, an obsessive compulsive? This is another thought that constantly runs through my mind like a toy train spinning manically round a track to the rhythm of W.H. Auden's "Night Mail". Obsessive compulsive … Obsessive compulsive …. The thought plagues me on a nightly basis and it might well be true; on the other hand, the possibly Iago-like Mike is always applying some label to me. At another time he described me as neurotic. Another train joins the track: obsessive compulsive … obsessive compulsive … neurotic.

This time anxieties centred around post-Socratic Greek philosophy. Do I know enough to justify my existence when I meet my Maker? Might Charon not demand a drachma, sesterces or Euro but instead insist on a deconstuctive analysis of, say, Epicureanism before allowing me onto the ferry? I could face extinction at any moment. Deciding to start at once – that is, at 3.22 AM – with the Stoics, I hurled myself out of bed, picked myself up off the floor & made for the computer, pausing only briefly to apply some Savlon to the carpet burns. A few minutes later, Amazon was in receipt of a fair amount of my cash, and my salvation was on its way in the form of a number of standard texts. But still, there was at least a day to wait and anything might happen.

Quivering wimpishly before my keyboard and rubbing more ointment into my sore knees, it occurred to me that that a good dose of Stoicism might be just what I need.

To be continued (maybe) ...

Grief Done Badly - The Fifth Anniversary of 9/11

Yesterday being the fifth anniversary of the dreadful attack on the Twin Towers, I turned on my television and caught a little of the memorial service from the site of ‘Ground Zero.’ One is forced to say that this secular requiem was handled rather badly.

Against what sounded like an extended version of Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony a pair of bereaved women recited the names of victims – I gather all 2,749 names were read out. In theory this should have been deeply moving; in fact, dreadful as this might sound, it touched on bathos.

This is mainly down to the somewhat crass choice of music. Substitute, say, John Williams’s theme from Schindler’s List for Górecki’s symphony and you will see what I mean. In simple terms of scale, the terrible events of 9/11 pale in comparison with the Holocaust. Both admittedly were examples of what Hannah Arendt's famously described as “the banality of evil”, but the Nazi wickedness reached much deeper, killed millions rather than thousands and lasted far longer than this instant of Islamic-Fascist onanistic puerility.

Not only is the issue one of scale; it is also one of dissonance. Heart rending music like Górecki’s Third Symphony or, say, Gustav Mahler’s unfinished Tenth cannot form a ‘backdrop’ to something less harmonious than itself. A list of names – especially a list of culturally and ethnically diverse ones – is of and itself inharmonious and cannot possibly work as a foreground.

We are, of course, not talking simply about the aesthetics of the presentation, but rather of the way in which humans can relate their personal loss to a major tragedy. For the individual, it matters not whether their loved one was the sole victim of a lunatic or part of a huge event. Perhaps it is a matter of focus – making the personal stand out from the whole. Briefly hearing the name of one’s loved one in a torrent of other names does not, I suggest, provide this focal point. Being aware of the number of other families involved does little to assuage the individual pain of losing a child, mother or father.

For an example of ‘grief done well’, if such an expression is permissible, one could visit the Hollandse Schouwburg in Amsterdam. Here you have the devastating background music; here you have the list of names (those of some of the 60,000 Nazi victims are inscribed in dark marble on the wall); but the focus is on one thing: a single flickering candle.

Pious Pirates and Swinging Thuribles

Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man

For some, the heady scent of frankincense is richly redolent of Christmas, evoking nostalgic memories of holy and ivy, of the Journey of the Magi and of carols sung before the Crib at midnight mass in richly bedecked churches. For others – well, OK, just me – the smell elicits quivers of embarrassment and of guilt, fears of hellfire and horrific memories of heavy black boots and of the terrible swinging thurible.

No parents in their right minds and certainly no sensible Catholic parents would ever dream of sending their male offspring to a convent school. Mine did. The result was that by the age of eight I had become a child of absolutely revolting piety with two main ambitions. One of these was to become a pirate. We are not talking here of the conventional blood and guts type, but rather of the ‘shiver my timbers’ type who doesn’t steal or curse, maraud or plunder, drink or kill but who still manages to have a rollicking good old time by regularly reciting the ‘Hail Mary’, saying his rosary and dedicating the lives of himself and of his swarthy swashbuckling crew to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. You may not have encountered this particular sort of pirate but the Junior Catholic Truth Society Adventure Comic for Boys assured me the Caribbean was absolutely infested with them.

My other ambition was to become an altar boy. Lest this admission raise homophobic eyebrows, it should be added that was not for the chance of getting into a frilly surplice but rather for the opportunity of wielding one of the long brass candle extinguishers and above all for the chance of getting my clammy hands onto the mysterious smoking thurible. Would that my aspirations had reached no higher than to become a pious pirate! However, since the convent had no sloop, schooner, barque or even brigantine conveniently to hand, but did boast its own little church, becoming an altar boy was the more easily realisable ambition.

Of course, no sane or half-way sensible Catholic priest would so much as consider arming an inexperienced altar boy of tender years with such a potentially devastating item as thurible. And the truth was that our local priest didn’t. As I vaguely recall, a deal was struck with an older, much taller and seemingly much more responsible boy who acted as the official Thurifer, the bearer of the gleaming thurible. Doubtless the deal would have involved the exchange of a number of back copies of the Junior Catholic Truth Society Adventure Comic for Boys, the Fun Catechism for Young People or some minor division devotional cards (we are talking of such relatively little known figures as St. David of Wandsworth, also known as the Blessed Procrastinator; Michael of Shaftesbury, Patron Saint of Catfish; or the Blessed Rebecca of Pevkos) .

For those readers fortunate enough not to have been sent to a Roman Catholic convent at an impressionable age, I should perhaps describe a thurible, or censor as it is sometimes known. Bearing a somewhat sinister resemblance to an old fashioned hand grenade, the device is a brass sphere with a pattern of ventilation holes cut into its upper surface so as to facilitate the burning of the red-hot incensed charcoal within. Suspended by a chain which also serves to retain the lid, it is intended to be gently swung to & fro thus resulting in small clouds of fragrant incense wafting through the church.

The day of my initiation dawned – a normal week day and not even a famous saint’s day. At the time, I rather regretted the lack of a large audience for my debut and – as it turned out – final performance. In hindsight, given the total loss of faith suffered by some of the observers and by at least one of the main protagonists, this was fortunate. Receiving minimal instruction in the use of the thurible, I emerged into the church at the end of the procession, swinging the brass orb for all I was worth. Murillo’s Virgin gazed sadly but benignly down, soft Autumnal light filtered through the stained glass window above the altar, the priest advanced towards the congregation.

All went well until about half way into the mass. However, by the time we reached the end of the homily my arm had begun to tire. Being a good deal shorter than the official Thurifer, I had not only to swing the heavy brass orb but also to keep my arm raised uncomfortably high in order to allow it to safely clear the rich crimson carpet. By the close of the Nicene Creed, my arms were aching horribly, my eyes were streaming from the smoke and I had all but given up, concluding that possibly being a Thurifer wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and that the life of a buccaneer might be the easier option. It was at that point the priest noticed my diminishing efforts and gestured rather imperiously for me to resume.

Under the circumstances, I think I might possibly be forgiven for forgetting one small but significant procedural detail: the absolutely crucial importance of raising my arm. In one last manful effort, I gave the thurible a hefty swing, the smoking metal orb flew rather than swung up, rotated through a full 360 degrees before hitting the carpet with a loud clang, and bounced up again with open lid showering everything and everybody in the immediate vicinity with sparks and fragments of burning charcoal.

From here on all was utter pandemonium and my memory of events consists of no more than a few excessively lurid snapshots. One is of the elderly Mother Superior hitching up her habit and athletically vaulting the altar rail to extinguish the smouldering charcoal on the carpet. Another is of the priest’s heavy black boots as he jumps up and down savagely batting the sparks from his cassock (this particular image has haunted me ever since). A third is of the priest’s face, contorted with such rage as to resemble a pirate of the first, very much non-devotional variety; indeed, in my imagination, it could have belonged to Blackbeard's evil twin brother . Yet a fourth is of the other altar boys being doused with water. Finally, there is a shot of the nuns looking aghast as the priest mouths some blood-curdling, vaguely piratical imprecation at me. I don’t remember much else as at that point I fled the scene, singed surplice wafting in my wake.

As I recall, there were few consequences as far as I was concerned. Indeed, the nuns were very sweet and I don’t think I was so much as reprimanded. What I do recall is much use of phrases involving millstones being cast round necks and something about suffering children. I am not sure what happened to the unfortunate priest, but I believe he left the church. As for thuribles, I gave up on the wretched things. What I really wanted to get my hands on was a monstrance. Come to think of it, despite the lapse of time and of my faith, I still do.