Dr Earnshaw's Complete Diary Extracts

During my time as a teacher of biology in Cadaverly Community College, England, I received frequent communications from an ex-colleague of mine, Roger Cummings, who had taken up a position as a teacher of physical sciences in a well know International School in Bangkok. During the week in which our school was undergoing a rigorous examination by Her Majesties Inspectorate, Cummings had written to tell me about a vacation he was having in Phuket (please note: it is pronounced poo-ket not fuck-it). Cummings’ communiqués, coupled with the unpleasant classroom incident described below, was probably the main catalyst which led me to eventually abandon my career in England and join him in his new adventure.

I am not a golf person. Nevertheless, Foreskin tempted me into a golf tournament by the means of a small wager. The winning team is to be exempt from all expenses incurred during their stay in Pattaya. I was partnered with Cummings; rather embarrassingly, still the spitting image of Gary Glitter with his rock and roll quiff, padded shoulders and platform soles. Our competitors were a seedy looking crew; Foreskin and Bluey, representing our Australian colonies, and the team from our North American dependencies was Dana, and a rather strange looking specimen who Dana introduced to everyone as The Galt, an example of the type who I believe is known to the natives as a ‘redneck.’

The emotional cost to the villagers of Thabo of my pyrexic misadventures during my marriage ceremony was very great indeed. However, the material cost was relatively small; a few huts containing the villager’s meager possessions, a couple of hens, pigs and buffaloes, did not add up to a great deal. In contrast, the value of the equipment lost by the news teams when their vehicles and outside broadcasting equipment were destroyed in the fire was many times greater.

I had entered the world again but felt that something was distinctly different about it. The people and the houses seemed so primitive – it was as though I had indeed returned, but not to the modern Thailand as I knew it - of skyscrapers, sky trains and sky television - instead to a long forgotten ancient past. That was it! True to form, God really had moved in a mysterious way. For some reason known only to Him, I had been transplanted back into the past – it explained everything!

I was gone from the world. Figures belching fire were spinning menacingly around me. Dressed in black with evil eyes glaring from slits in their balaclavas, they carried me downwards, abseiling down the mountainside; ever downwards into the bowels of the Earth (not unlike a chocolate box advertisement that used to be on TV). ‘Oh no, I thought; ‘I am damned - I am going to hell.’

The Bangkok Hilton was overbooked. Unaccountably, the management had decided that the problem was best solved by shooting their excess customers! Since I had only recently checked in, I had been sent to face the firing squad. Nevertheless, I was an Englishman and ready to maintain a stiff upper-lip as an example of fortitude to the other condemned men. My last words were taken from Charles Swift (A Tale of Two Tubs): ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known

The bell boy took me in to the foyer of the prestigious Bangkok Hilton - presumably as my room was prepared for me. Inside the foyer I noticed a rather scruffy and emaciated Englishmen. I walked over and asked him how he was enjoying his stay at the hotel.

The police have kindly brought me to my new accommodation in a more up market hotel than the one I had heretofore resided. Actually, I wasn't meant to be here at all - but a kind gentleman I met in the police cell pulled a few strings for me. I can take the leisure that these surroundings afford me to think over the past day and set out how it all came about.

I couldn't see. I had been kidnapped by some kind of crazy religious cult. I'd lost my trousers for the second day in a row. I was surrounded by hundreds of men all in bed. Not connected to this last fact, I had a huge erection. Yet things weren't that bad really - At least I'd managed to get my Friar Tuck outfit for this evening's Fancy Dress Ball.

By nature I am quiet man - all my adventures have been lived out by the fireside. Any loneliness I might have experienced was tempered by the companionship of my wonderful sister Grissel, who bestowed upon me a great tenderness, and prided herself on being an excellent contriver in house keeping; and as for cooking a shepherds pie, she could not be excelled

This morning I awoke with a shocking headache. It felt as if my abdomen had become heavily charged with molten larva. I discovered some confusing scribble on the back of an envelope that I must have written before I turned in. I cannot make hide nor tail of it myself, but will include it at the end of this entry for the sake of completeness.

The nursing staff who accompanied me back to my hotel after my surgery late on Sunday night, were most kind, and I believe would have come with me all the way to my room if I had not insisted that I could manage the last leg on my own. I think it is a measure of their professionalism, that their concern for my welfare was so great, they had to be assertively ushered from the premises by a number of the hotel security staff.

The little travelling alarm clock, that I had purchased from Mr Ahmed's haberdashery store, is normally most reliable, but for the life of me I just could not make out why it told me the time was 8 o'clock, and yet outside it was still as dark as pitch.

I am writing this in my hotel after a very long sleep. Unfortunately, I arrived here not without discomforting incident which I will now recount.

Extracts From The Diary of Dr JA Earnshawe (Part 1) I think it is appropriate to provide some personal information about myself at this stage. My name is John Arthur Earnshawe, I am 57, married and by profession an Assistant Teacher of Biological Sciences at a well-known International School in Bangkok.