THE LOLA BOYS ABROAD !

Paul stood in the middle of the rice paddy in Ubud, an overly touristic, yet beautiful town in Bali. Her pavements were as cracked and decrepit as the numerous temples which studded the craggy urbanisation. Ancient jewels gleaming amongst the tacky souvenir shops.

Gigantic poles of palm and bamboo, known as Panjur, decorated with fruits and flowers lined the streets and every lichen-clad statue had been draped in luscious cloth. Thousands of stone gods wrapped in gold and pink and red silk beckoned one to enter the courtyard beyond with a promise of something other worldly on the other side.

Small groups of excited boys blowing on wooden flutes and banging tribal drums far too enthusiastically roamed the streets and alleys. All accompanied by a strange creature Paul thought to be a lion but later discovered signified a leopard dancing at the head of each troupe. Bowing to all fours when at the entrance to a temple.

These kids were usually presented with small donations for their artistic efforts, much like the old British tradition of ‘Penny For The Guy’ which Paul had taken part in as a child.

Sometimes as the part of the guy!

Only in Bali there was no stuffed Catholic traitor to parade around town to elicit a a few notes of Rupiah, instead it was a big cat puppet with two of the taller lads stuffed inside. But the premise was the same as the Guy Fawkes tradition if not a touch more spiritual.

This festival was known as Galungan, a period when the souls of Bali’s ancestors descended from above to spend some quality time amongst the mortals. Paul and Andrew always seemed to arrive to a foreign clime in time for an auspicious occasion.

Well, either that or a crisis!

The Covid lockdown in the Philippines sprung to mind!

And the financial meltdown in Sri Lanka!

Then there was the coup in Thailand!

Paul could go on, but it was always either right time, right place. Or wrong time, wrong place. There seemed to be no middle ground.

Not on one of The Lola Boys’ intineraries.

Paul exhaled amid the sea of emerald green to which he’d escaped and felt his own soul come back to join the mortals too. A rush of life force currently flooded through him like a Balinese waterfall.

Or an overflowing Indonesian drain!

His senses were so alive he felt he could almost hear the rice growing.

It was an enchanting place Bali.

Certainly somewhere to re-discover oneself. That was if one could discover some peace and bypass the unending ever wending traffic.

The fumes were intoxicating but what left him fuming were the westerners on mopeds who rode at one with uneasy abandon. Their sheer recklessness and amateur motoring skills forcing the unsuspecting pedestrian to have to jump wildly from the narrow path, usually bounded by a stream and a vertiginous bank on either side, and cling to a palm tree for dear life.

And hardly any one of them ever said thank you.

Not even a curt nod or a ‘speciba’! For the majority of them appeared to be Russian, which was hardly surprising as it seemed rather an opportune moment for them to take a vacation.

And Crimea was certainly off the bucket and spade list for the moment.

They seemed to have very little regard for others personal space and invaded whenever and wherever they chose. They were ruthless in their pursuit of the best view or the nicest table.

Paul charitably put it down to shyness!

Quite unlike the Balinese bikers who always gave a toothy smile and a cheerful thank you as they passed. Without exception.

Paul was not racist in the slightest. He’d spent time with some very agreeable Russians over the years so he knew they were not all tarred red with the same broad brush. He and Andrew had shared some great nights with an effusive Siberian they’d met in Thailand one year, sharing stories none of them really understood over much cheap beer and many a dodgy ‘nasdrovia’!

And there was the charming tearful Irina from St Petersburg, with whom they’d endured a heartbreaking night as her not so dear leader invaded Ukraine. She cried into Paul’s arms despairing at Putin’s wickedness whilst they were lodging in the same Sri Lankan guest house.

And many other engaging Muscovites too.

But they didn’t seem to be that way in Bali. Well, not en masse. They were abrasive, entitled and rather common. Much like the Wagner Group on a coach trip Paul imagined.

But he’d be thrilled to be proved wrong.

The rice terrace on which he found himself was extraordinarily beguiling and just two minutes from the hurly-Bali of the city centre. Here one could stand in paradisical silence, between the sound of the red army on their scooters, and deal with one’s growing pains.

He wondered for how long this semi-tranquility would last. There was bamboo scaffolding sprouting between the grass all over the place. Soon there would be nowhere to grow the rice and therefore nothing to see.

No noiselessness to experience.

Perhaps a field or two left for the instagrammers to get their one shot before heading back to their organic farms to slurp on their paleo, keto, vegan shakes.

The thought gave Paul the shakes.

He doubted anybody could stem the avalanche of avocado smoothies that was gushing green across the land. There was certainly an irony to the purportedly nature-loving tourists crowding out nature herself. Perhaps it was progress and admittedly the poorer inhabitants needed an income, but it appeared the health industry was choking its very source.

Wringing Mother Nature by the neck under the guise of being holistic.

Chicken-free burgers joints all over the clucking place.

It was matricide most fowl!

Paul shuddered.

He wondered if the noisy folk visiting from the bustling beaches felt the same. If they heard the desperate calls of the jungle Gods to leave well alone. If they listened to the gentle weeping of the grasses as they were ripped from their sodden womb and replaced with concrete. Paul thought not. For they were too busy undergoing sound-therapy in the trendy ‘Pyramid Of Chi’ to hear Earth’s cry.

Too intent on venturing within to notice the capital venturing without.

But Paul did care, and as he stood amongst the grains he wept. He felt rather pretentious and supercilious, much like a geriatric Greta Thunberg. He was lost yet entirely connected. He didn’t care. He’d been called worse than magniloquent – especially by those who didn’t know what the word meant. And he genuinely felt it. Quite passionately. So fuck those who didn’t – they’d get the wake up call sooner or later. The ecological Gods and Goddesses of nature would see to that.

It had been a long road to Bali. Nothing like the old film with Bob Hope and Dorothy L’amour. It seemed Paul had been lacking both of those virtues before he’d arrived. Certainly very little of the first and even less of the latter. It had taken standing on the edge of a rim of an awesome active volcano in Java to blast away his blockages. Erupting in him a pyroclastic flow of emotion and pent up nonesense that would surely have flattened Pompeii again – were it anywhere near!

He had cried a lot in Indonesia.

His lachrymose state had been good for his soul if not for his soulmate.

Or his complexion!

He seemed to look red-eyed most of the time, as though he’d toked on the strongest of joints for the longest of times. He was quite sure those around him thought he was a junkie. The truth couldn’t be more different. He hadn’t partaken of any narcotic substance, other than the odd cup of Indonesian sludge which passed for coffee, since being in the country.

He’d also stopped the booze along with Andrew!

However, unlike his fresh faced partner, who Paul knew for certain had more than a picture or two decaying in the attic, he was not blooming.

Just looking blooming awful

And feeling bloody worse!

He knew it to be a symptom of abstinence and perhaps, addiction, as he was aware he’d attended far too many committee meetings with comrade Smirnoff of late. Not to mention the many high teas he’d shared with Ms Gordon. And then there were the fiestas hosted by Senor Barcardi when he was invariably the last to bid adios.

A cocktail of colourful characters who’d led him astray.

It had got so bad that he’d resorted to a couple of beers to take the proverbial edge off so we wouldn’t fall over it, but he knew that wasn’t the answer. So he was now back on the wagon, whipping the horses to a frenzy so that he didn’t have time to get off!

But he promised himself he wasn’t going to speak of his gladiatorial battles with el vino. He found those folk who preached to others regarding both their abstinence and the methods which they employed to achieve it both condescending and preachy. He knew their advice could be incredibly helpful for some but he just found their lecturing sanctimonious and irritating. It made him want to reach for the gin bottle.

To drown their sorrows!

Suffice to say his creative lava was flowing again.

For many reasons.

Not least of which was geological instead of oenological for once!

He had many strange tales to recount of he and Andrew’s long overland journey south from Thailand, through marvellous Malaysia and onto Java’s time-worn cities and magnificent magma.

Life was a blast again.

Practically volcanic thanks to that very landscape.

But for now he just stood.

Exhaled.

Basking Balinese-style in the lush hush of the rice paddy.

He felt a gentle rumble.

He waited nervously for a couple of seconds.

The rumbling came again only this time more urgent.

To his relief it was his stomach and not the earth which was moving.

The gastric gods had spoken.

Time for an avocado smoothie.

Paul knew he was on shaky ground!

But he’d not felt so steady in a long, long time!