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This is the final extract from Losing the Plot (See Losing the Plot by Chuckwoww) and also the longest. In my view, though, it's also the best.

Am I going to die here? Arthur wonders... in Thailand? People did die here... by 'people' he means foreigners of course... they die all the time... in accidents, from natural causes, poisoned by jealous wives. What happened to all the bodies? Did anybody really want them? Would Tui have his body burned or have the bloody thing shipped back to England? Whichever was most economical probably... Her Majesty's Government were unlikely to want it anymore... no I do not want a bloody cigarette lighter thank you... not even that phallic one. Very irritating these vendors. They had grown much more rude and persistent lately... in fact the worse business got the ruder and more persistent they became. How much could they make selling that stuff anyway... a hundred baht a day? Two? The woman with the cigarette lighters... she probably walks miles every day and if she's lucky she might sell one...

Yes it's true Arthur likes to complain about how Thailand isn't what it used to be but in a way he doesn't really care. He has enjoyed the best years... long before the Internet and the tattooed midriff-raff... before the bargirls started calling him Papa. Could be worse Arthur old chap... at least you're not under a bridge somewhere sniffing glue.

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Arthur starts to think about England. But not for long. Somebody is waving something under his nose... a grilled chicken foot it looks like... er... no thank you... but I will have ... let me see... a boiled egg and a slice of pineapple...

From his deckchair Arthur has a panoramic view of the beach. Straight ahead is a charming vignette, a vestige of the Thailand he loves, a Thai family gathering toxic shellfish... 3 generations of Thais, seeing the ocean for the first time in their lives probably.

Further down the beach an Indian film crew are setting up some equipment. The film stars themselves are in the water miming something or other. Cameras are being pushed around on tracks through the sand.

And here comes an unlikely trio dipping their feet in the water... a couple of hairy back-packer types, one black, well brown, and one white, also brown, talking to a bulky, tattooed Hells Angel with a skimpy pony-tail... drug dealers probably thinks Arthur. Pattaya was a magnet for people like that... yes sure enough... now they are passing a joint around, and none too discretely... too stoned to notice that they've just become unpaid extras in a Bollywood movie...

Would Arthur care to be young again? Yes and no. Certainly it would be nice to have a young healthy body instead of the pear-shaped bundle of twigs, with it's various run down components, he currently calls home... it would be nice to have perfect hearing again too, real teeth, good eyesight, a bladder that he had some control over. Nice too not to have to listen to worrying murmurs from the prostate region. But to be young in today's world? No thank you. Not with things the way they are, polluted, over-crowded and teetering on the brink of some unimaginable disaster. He pities young people in a way... their heads buzzing with all kinds of useless rubbish, the minefield of ideas and misinformation they have to navigate... the dubious quality of their role models... the pressures to conform at odds with all the pressures to be different. Things hadn't been like that in Arthur's youth... or had they?

Even young people, he's noticed, seemed to have a tired cynical edge to them nowadays as if they had already seen too much... they enjoy themselves Arthur supposes... with a sort of fin du monde abandon. What? Oh you again... no I still don't want the cigarette lighter... mai ao kap... no bloody want, OK? And as for casual sex these days... forget it... gone were the days when you could get a reasonably safe quickie for 50 baht. Many's the time Arthur picked his way through puddles and across wooden planks to a tin shack full of giggling peasant girls... their attention now suddenly divided between a black and white TV and the alien creature that just stumbled in...

Nobody worried about AIDS in those days. Looking back over his years in Thailand he cannot believe some of the places where he has dipped his wick. He had been darn lucky not to catch anything worse than chlamydia. Well those days were gone, along with Listen with Mother, bluebell woods, Bertrand Russell and casual fornication. Anybody fool enough to dabble in that kind of thing nowadays deserved to get cockrot. Didn't seem to stop them though...

Arthur must have dozed off... when he wakes the sky is still there but the gods have scattered... replaced by Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men and Muffin the Mule, ... (early BBC icons if you're wondering)... Arthur had watched the new black and white miracle along with thousands of other middle-class English children but it's hard to say what he felt. He had watched the images mainly because they moved, not because he was particularly engrossed in the activities of a few primitive puppets or because he wanted to see what they did next. It was the potential of the medium that intrigued him... the feeling that if he watched enough of it something important might occur... with luck someone might even pop up and explain what life was supposed to be about... but no... Bill, Ben, Andy, Muffin et al. were simply eased out, gently, by Tiswas and the Teletubbies.

It was a curious time... the tail end of Empire... a class hierarchy nobody questioned...a rigid school system... national service, Brylcreem. The war years had changed everything... the bombed cities... the primrose banks, the steam engines, the solid continuity of rural England before the Empire came home to roost... and oh my goodness... quite a tussle going on up there now... bearded Assyrians girding their loins, being chased by teenaged Mexican rappers in HUMVs... four star generals fighting it out with Phantom Flan Flingers...

What dear? Oh yes, thank you ... Tui has just dismembered a crab and she is offering him a prime morsel... "I very angry," said Tui... she meant hungry of course, it was a long-standing joke they had... one of many based on language misunderstandings... she was enjoying herself though... she'd had a tough life and she'd been looking forward to this trip... good to see her making the most of it.

Coming to Thailand... all those years ago had been the best thing he'd ever done. Of course the Thais were just as daft and materialistic as everybody else, even worse in some ways, but they were friendly for the most part and nonjudgmental. He'd found a new life of sorts among them. Not that there can ever be any real escape from the past, Arthur knows that. And perhaps that's why he envies the Thais their ability to live in the present. Say what you like about the buggers but they did seem to have a knack for taking one day at a time. Had some of it rubbed off on him Arthur wonders? Had he, almost by default, finally achieved some kind of Oriental oneness? Certainly there are times, like now, beaten to submission by the tropical sun, when he imagines himself having no tangible existence outside of his own imagination.

He looks across at Tui. He'd been lucky to meet her when he did. Bless her heart she had kept him off the bottle. Not that she'd ever really understood him... or perhaps she had... never beautiful... downright ugly in a way... with her nostrils and her mouthful of crooked teeth... this strange rather Simian little creature from Isaan who had so readily agreed to share his last lonely years... and she still had a smile that could melt his heart. Look at her now... got the bloody cell phone in her ear again. Could be talking to any one of dozens of sisters, cousins and friends back in Isaan. They all had cell phones now. What did they find to natter about? Anything at all apparently... the weather, the price of fish oil, who'd been to the wat and who hadn't... nothing much more substantial than that... none of them had ever heard of Armageddon.

What a strange life it had been. So many twists and turns and people and events... so many choices... good ones and bad ones... that had brought him to this time and place. And then as he watches... something very strange happens... the clouds roll back as if to demonstrate a new advance in special effects... the sky is filled with a vast blinding brilliant light... a revelatory flash as it were... and he catches a glimpse of Tui... off to his right... Our Lady of Pattaya... ordering another plate of prawns... it is the last thing he ever sees.

[Posted to Fiction by David]

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