Armchair-travelling on a dull and rainy day

Listen to the audiobook here

 

The transition from the life I lived out of a suitcase to the life of an armchair traveller is not easy; in a way all that endless reminiscing about my past travels is like a talcum powder to help soothe those itchy feet that never quite stopped itching.

I am not complaining. I have a caring wife - well, some of the time! - and a comfortable home, a house and seven acres by a river in the country, and a life behind me that most men would envy. I have no wistful longings to living life out of a suitcase again, but occasionally, on a dull and rainy day, I long to be back in Rabaul, or on Bougainville Island, or in Honiara, or Rangoon, or Apia, or Penang, or Piraeus, or, on a really dull and rainy day, even in Jeddah (well, perhaps not Jeddah!)

Speaking of rain, I had the good fortune to live and work in Samoa when it still hadn't changed much from the way Somerset Maugham described it in "Rain". That was set in neighbouring Pago Pago (pronounced Pango Pango) but the rain was just as incessant in Apia. Not that it bothered the local Samoans who strode through it as though it just wasn't there.

Here then is the story of "Rain" by W. Somerset Maugham:

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.

Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs. Macphail was not a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp.

“Mrs. Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’t been for us,” said Mrs. Macphail, as she neatly brushed out her transformation.”She said we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.”

“I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could afford to put on frills.”

“It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room.”

“The founder of their religion wasn’t so exclusive,” said Dr. Macphail with a chuckle.

“I’ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,” answered his wife.”I shouldn’t like to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.”

He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep.

When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’s edge, and among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoaris; and here and there, gleaming white, a little church. Mrs. Davidson came and stood beside him. She was dressed in black, and wore round her neck a gold chain, from which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince-nez. Her face was long, like a sheep’s, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of the pneumatic drill.   [To continue reading, click here]

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The Other Side of Paradise

Episode 2    Episode 3    Episode 4

Read the book online at archive.org

 

Tom Neale, in his book "An Island To Oneself", writes in chapter "Visitors by Helicopter", "The landing of the helicopters was to have an interesting sequel. Though I knew nothing of it at the time, the U.S. Navy released a brief news item about their visit to Suvarov, and this was how Noel Barber, the author and journalist, first heard about me whilst recovering in hospital from a car crash.

Apparently he decided he wanted to see the island - and me - and arrived about five months later in the Manua Tele, which he had chartered in Pago Pago. When he landed Noel was still only able to walk with the aid of sticks for he had been badly smashed up, but he stayed two days, and brought me a liberal supply of stores which included tea, flour, corned beef, together with whisky, rum and cigarettes. He also brought with him Chuck Smouse, an American photographer, and he and Noel took many of the photographs which appear in this book. I was so touched by the stores they had brought for me that when the Manua Tele had sailed, I sat down in the office and wrote Noel Barber a long letter of thanks. It was fourteen months before that letter left the island; for it was fourteen months before the next ship called in at Suvarov."

 

Noel Barber setting foot on Suwarrov

 

Noel Barber was the author of six novels, including ""Tanamera", a novel set in Singapore, and "The Other Side of Paradise", and twenty-six non-fiction books, among them "The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948-60". His potboiler "The Other Side of Paradise" was made into a movie, as was "Tanamera".

 

To read the pages dealing with Tom Neale, click here
To read the whole book online at archive.org

 

In his memoirs "The Natives Were Friendly ... So We Stayed the Night", he recalls his first meeting with Tom Neale, and on page 200 mentions Tom's letter, "In the letter Tom told me how he had been taken ill on the island, and was preparing for a lonely death when a small American yacht anchored by chance in the lagoon, and gave him passage to Raro, where he faced months of convalescence before he could return to the island - if ever. 'What about my book?' he wrote. 'You remember you said you would help me. Have you got three months to spare?'"

Which is how it came to pass that British author Noel Barber helped Tom Neale to write his book "An Island to Oneself", which was written before he returned to Suwarrow for a third time. The book is virtually a bible for anyone who dreams of living alone on a deserted tropical island.

 

Read the book online at archive.org

 

But there was a lot of stuff about his personal life this very private man purposely omitted, including the six children he likely sired around the Pacific. It is well known he had two children, Arthur and Stella, to his wife in Rarotonga, Sarah Haua, whom he married on 15 June, 1956.

That was after his first spell on Suwarrow. But not many people know that Neale sired two more children in the Cook Islands before them, John and Jeanne, and quite possibly two more in Tahiti before that, the latter two now completely off the radar. That's a lot of alimony. No wonder he escaped to a deserted tropical island.

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In memory of Tom Neale

"I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking.." --- From Tom Neale's Book "An Island to Oneself"

You can read Tom Neale's book here by signing up for a free account and "borrowing" it.

 

Islands have long held a deep, abiding fascination. Everyone who has grappled with getting along with their fellow human being understands the phrase ‘can’t live with them, can’t live without them’. Everyone has at some time mused on what life would be like on a remote deserted island, alone with only the sound of the gentle wash against the sunbleached sands.

Perhaps it’s because so few have dared make this daydream a reality that such men as Tom Neale and his book An Island to Oneself take on an almost mythical role in our collective consciousness, as though they carry upon their shoulders all our yearnings for a simple, solitary life in tune with the tides of nature.

Tom Neale's book still fires the imaginations of all those who have dreamt of a simple life of solitude on a remote deserted island. It may be true that no man is an island, but it is also true that many a man has desperately wished it were so.

 

 

Tom left his beloved island in December 1963. As he writes in the postscript to his book:

"I realised I was getting on, and the prospect of a lonely death did not particularly appeal to me. I wasn't being sentimental about it, but the time had come to wake up from an exquisite dream before it turned into a nightmare. I might have lingered on the island for a few more years, but soon after the Vesseys left, a party of eleven pearl divers descended on Suvarov - and, frankly, turned my heaven into hell. They were happy-go-lucky Manihiki natives, and I didn't dislike them, but their untidiness, noise, and close proximity were enough to dispel any wavering doubts I might have had. Then, when I heard that more natives might be coming to dive for a couple of months each year in the lagoon, I resolved to leave with the divers. I did so - and I have not regretted the decision. I am back in Raro now, and you know, having proved my point - that I could make a go of it on a desert island and be happy alone - store-keeping doesn't after all seem such a monotonous job as it did in the years before 1952. I have a wealth of memories that no man can take away from me and which I have enjoyed recalling in these pages. I hope you have enjoyed them too".

That's where the book ends but not Tom's fascination with his island to which he returned a third time, in June 1967, to remain there for ten more years until a visiting yacht, the "Feisty Lady", informed Rarotonga that Tom is seriously ill. The schooner "Manuvai" evacuated him from the island in March 1977.

He died on this day 46 years ago, aged 75, in Rarotonga where he lies buried at the RSL Cemetery. A life well lived!

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What's Literature?

 

Okay, so the reader is no Leonard Teale whose resonant baritone voice was known to my generation from the long-running police drama "Homicide", but this video clip about literature is a huge intellectual effort. [Buy the transcript]

By the end of this video, you will know all the great works of literature, literary movements, as well as some of the most literary minds from around the world. The video has 3 major parts and 11 sections.

Part 1 gives the answer the most fundamental question. Why are humans the only species who tells stories? What functions do stories have in our evolution? It also highlight some important events in history that shaped the way we tell stories, and the literary movements of the last 4,000 years.

Part 2 deals with the origin of storytelling and how it is rooted in nature. The most fundamental event in a human life is death or the awareness of it. So this part discusses storytelling in four segments each on the topic of death, wars, sex and laughter. In other words, humans woke up to the realisation of death, so the first stories are stories of mortality and immortality. Then we humans moved to wars and wrote epics that lamented the demise of an empire or celebrated their triumphs. Since the victors got the spoils and we moved to tell stories of sex and mating, romance became an important topic of storytelling. In other words, how boys meet girls. With sex came laughter, so storytelling entertained us through comedy.

Part 3 moves away from nature-inflicted tales towards human-centred stories, as in when storytelling meets rationality and humanism. So instead of gods and nature, we humans became in charge of our own destiny. The age of reason also resulted in a counter-enlightenment movement of romanticism which took us back to nature. Then came realism, in which ordinary people became the heroes of stories, not some king or general. Then we moved to naturalism in which evolutionary biology became the window through which stories are told. This was followed by modernism in which we told stories through psychology. And finally magical realism which took us back to the early humans when gods and demons interfered with our stories.

Part 4 again moves away from humanism into what's termed as post-humanism. Here the whole idea of truth telling is questioned. If humanism tried to clarify and solidify things that humans are the only gods on earth, posthumanism, and postmodernism partly fuelled by quantum physics, muddied the water so we no longer know what's going on, despite our scientific and technological advancement, or in some cases because of that.

In this course, the real hero is literature or storytelling itself. Human mortality gave birth to storytelling. Conflicts gave it its fuel and energy. Sex added flavour. Laughter made it reflective. Then came reason to dominate storytelling, through physical reality, biological truths, psychological depth, and finally quantum magical thinking. And today literature seems a bit muddled as it has questioned truth-telling. You could say literature is suffering from old-age Alzheimer. So the question is can literature and storytelling survive robots?

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God is not great

 

God Is Not Great is the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without 'him'.

 

Read a preview here

 

God is Not Great is easily the most impressive of the present crop of atheistic and anti-theistic books: clever, broad, witty and brilliantly argued. As he so cleverly writes, "From a plurality of prime movers, the monotheists have bargained it down to a single one. They are getting ever nearer to the true, round figure."

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