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I am leaving the grey skies and the cold behind me. I am off to Thailand at the age of fifty-one to start a new life and enjoy the benefits an early retirement. From a young age I had promised myself that I would retire when I reached fifty. I am only sixteen months out in respect of this particular goal and I consider that to be quite an achievement.

Jin, my wife, who is from Udon Thani in north east Thailand, together with my two sons, Sam now aged eight and James who is three, moved here in February, 2003. I have spent the best part of two years travelling to and from Thailand every other month and to be embarking on my final voyage is a great relief. I love traveling and cannot spend enough time in airport departure lounges. However, these past two years have made the whole experience more of a commute than a holiday and the travelling experience no longer holds the same allure.

I have missed my wife and have hated seeing my sons grow up without me being there every day. The tears young James sheds every time I have waved farewell have been like a dagger to my heart. Now I can get back to being a proper dad and a full time husband to Jin.

We opened a small hotel in Pattaya in October and the business seems to be going well, although I know Jin is looking forward to having me relieve some of the pressure. She has worked hard overseeing the contractors and having the hotel completed internally to our specifications. She also had to deal with licensing and business registration issues. Once these were completed Jin has been fully responsible for attracting customers to the hotel, recruiting staff and dealing with the day to day problems that arise. All of this has had to be combined with her duties as a mother of three.

I felt good standing in the airport check-in queue. I really felt very, very good. I cannot recall having ever felt so relaxed and at peace with the world. I was going to be with my family now forever, I was going to live in paradise and I was free from the pressures of work. My suitcases were laden with Christmas presents for the family, the vast majority of which had come from Hamley’s toy store in London’s Regent Street. Although I cannot abide shopping, I could quite easily pitch a tent and live in Hamley’s. They say some people never grow up and I am afraid that this is completely true of me.

On the way out of London and heading towards the airport the taxi driver asked the fairly standard question “Where you going, mate, anywhere nice?” I detest that inane remark always wanting to reply “Well, no actually this year I have decided to go somewhere particularly horrid”. However, I contented myself with the reply I had been practicing for the past six months: “I am going home”. Obviously this response caused an element of confusion and the taxi driver was now, I presumed, imaging that I lived in Heathrow Terminal Four. Eventually he did manage a “Where is HOME then, mate?”, “Pattaya in Thailand. mate” I replied and closed my eyes as a signal that this conversation was now at an end.

“WHAT?” I roared as my last minutes in “Blighty” were just about to be blighted? I had been jolted from my reverie by the airlines check-in clerk informing me my luggage was twenty five kilograms over the limit and the surcharge would be five hundred pounds. I stuttered and stammered. I had not even thought about this possibility and I had been in relaxed mode. You just do not ask relaxed people for five hundred pounds that they were not expecting to have to pay. It really is not the done thing! My credit cards had all been cancelled weeks ago. I no longer had any U.K bank accounts therefore offering payment by cheque was also out of the question. Whilst I had several thousands of pounds secreted on my person stripping to my underwear, or beyond, to get to it was not something I had any intention of doing.

A long, very long series of discussions with airline representatives was commenced. This involved having the same conversation with ever more senior persons. It had quickly become clear that the more senior the representative the larger the allowance they could authorise. I simply secured a small increase in the allowance and then requested to speak with a person of more seniority. The check-in clerk had reduced the deficit to twenty kilos and after four further conversations I was down to twelve kilos over the limit. This, though, was still around two hundred and fifty pounds in surcharges and more than I was prepared to pay. I had eventually reached the most senior person I was ever likely to be granted an audience with. He had more stripes on his smart blazer than adorn the average Zebra! I knew now was my last chance to do a deal. All alternative suggestions of carriage had been rejected as I needed the suitcases to travel with me to ensure the Christmas presents were there for the opening on Christmas Day. I played the sympathy card, I wilted under the pressure, I was heart broken by the thought of disappointing the kids—had I known how to cry I would have tried even that. Common sense eventually prevailed. I always see things that go my way as being common sense! A payment of one hundred pounds was agreed and paid from my wallet thus avoiding exposing myself to the assembled masses of Terminal Four. I gleefully clutched my ticket and headed off to the departure lounge.

I wandered around the airport collecting my Duty Free and other last minute purchases. I had a bite to eat and sat relaxing with a large mug of coffee contemplating my new life. I never drink alcohol at airports or on planes. One episode of riding around a luggage carousel mooning my fellow travellers at Tenerife Airport some twenty years ago had put an end to my “drinking and flying” days! Anyway, I mentally practiced a golf swing, a good drive off the tee. I wandered along fairways and I holed thirty foot putts. I sat by the sea and read books. I imagined myself turning up to the hotel watching numerous staff running around doing every chore and simply chatting away to customers being “mine host”. I would be taking regular vacations with my wife and I thought about the places we could go with relative ease. Myanmar, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam were all up there on my list of soon to visit destinations.

Wow, this was going to be the life. I was relaxed again and once more I was in the land of dreams and off to live in the place they call the “Land of Smiles”. Even a trip to the airport bathroom where my rather portly, or to be accurate, grossly overweight body stared back at me. Fifteen and a half stone, how did I get so big? I was four stone overweight and only my sense of smell assured me I still had feet. Of course I knew the answer. Two years of eating takeaway meals late at night, then collapsing on the sofa in front of the television or going straight to bed had been my undoing. I worked, or rather I used to work, twelve hours or more a day and six days a week. I had that schedule for the last four years and for the seven years prior it was twelve hours a day and seven days a week.

The last few months in the U.K had been the most stressful as I negotiated the sale of my business and found myself being messed about at every turn. Eventually I lost it and told the buyers to go screw themselves. I gave my sixty per cent shareholding away to my fellow director at a fraction of its value and I lost over quarter of a million pounds by so doing. The fact is that the end had come and I just had to get out. If you could have seen me only a few weeks ago you would have understood better. I was, quite literally, stressed to the point of breaking; I was ill, seriously so, and much more of the same would have seen me doing the last tango with the Grim Reaper!

As we flew away from England, I glanced out of the window once. I looked down and I silently bade the place farewell. There was no sadness, no remorse, no recriminating. I did not wonder whether or not I was making the right choice. I was off and although I knew that I had to return in a few months to complete some final loose ends, my return would be as a visitor, and I would be an altogether different person.

(End of Chapter 1.)

Kevin Paul Meacher

© Kevin Paul Meacher. All rights reserved by the author.
ISBN: 978-974-8478-050
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If you enjoyed this first chapter of Kevin Paul Meacher's 'Riff Raffles' you can easily purchase the book online here at Bangkok Books.com: http://www.bangkokbooks.com/php/product/product.php?product_id=000053&sub_cate_name=&sub_cate_id=

Most books published by Bangkok Book House are available at Asia Books, Bookazine, B2S, Kinokuniya, Suriwong Chiang Mai, DK Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Lampang; all airports, many hotel outlets, supermarkets (Villa, Friendship Pattaya), The Books (Phuket, Krabi), Singapore including airport, Hong Kong airport and many smaller independent outlets throughout Thailand.

All rights for this book preview are reserved by the author. Reprint permission came from the publishing house Bangkok Book House (www.bangkokbooks.com).