Since the age of ten Paul had lived his life as if he were in Dallas. Or rather – On Dallas! And he ‘d still never even been anywhere near the darn place. Except on BBC 1. in the early 80s. His childhood ‘dream’ was wishing ‘Jim’ would fix it for him to be on the Southfork patio, munching on eggs as over easy as america felt to a British kid back then. Grazing with the Ewings like entitled livestock. Brunching pool-side on the seemingly ever-breezy set – blown away […]
Was it egotistical to write of one’s own experiences? What else was there to write about? Even if an author took on the feelings of others or wrote fictionally about characters they’d invented it was still through the prism of their own imagination. A biography was still seen through the writer’s lense. What to include. Which details to omit. One’s perception of the world and the description of a universe which others inhabited always emanated from one’s own mind. We cannot, it seems, escape the bars of our own mental […]
Java had been a blast. A visceral assault on the senses that had inspired Paul to erupt with a molten flow of verbose lava most of which he deemed unpublishable. It was far too volcanic. He’d reached into his core and discovered more than enough explosive material to fuel a tectonic trilogy. But he wasn’t ready to vent quite yet and was keeping dormant. For now. He knew there would be a few quaking souls out there who would be unable to escape the fierce heat of his literary flow […]
Paul and Andrew had eventually found each other in a tatty room, in an old wooden house, in an equally tumbledown town deep in the south of Thailand. Their re-connection had been as ordinary as the abode they were renting, but Paul knew that was often the case with couples who’d been together as long as they had. Nearly thirty-two twelve month periods. Which was equivalent to four hundred and sixty eight in gay years! And now absence only seemed to make his hair grow blonder! (But that was another […]
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 […]
Lamphu House lay secreted down a hot, concrete, flip-flop clad alley. If one didn’t have a map it might never be found. It was what might be termed as old school. A hippy hideaway in the centre of Bangkok without the hip prices. The place was certainly authentic. The cackling of the girls and boys and others at reception. The banging and drilling in the early hours rattling the religious-esque courtyard, itself cooly sheltered by some venerable leafy giants quite oblivious to the life kicking beneath them, their […]
They didn’t quite know how but once The Boys had hit the high life and were living it up on the nineteenth floor of their condominium, they were laid quite low! Two horribly ill homos in an undersized condo! T’was not a pretty sight. Paul and Andrew found it sickening. It could have been the mystery ribs at the night market or the seafood salad which had been served with equal opaqueness. Paul knew he should never order dishes he didn’t recognise. Especially when that involved the species! He had never […]
Paul had played the end of the pier before but had never stayed on one – so he and Andrew’s sojourn on a dilapidated jetty in the rather gaudy Thai Gulf town of Hua Hin was to be a premiere occasion. Andrew had obviously worked a pier or two too. Professionally as well! He’d had a high time at sea whilst dressing a couple of superannuated drag queens and a young Letitia Dean. (Pre the inflationary period we are all now suffering.) Paul had also spent many a year admiring Brighton’s […]
The early morning British Airways flight from London to Brussels shook the victorian sash window and Paul sprouted from his reverie feeling quite green. He wondered what the house’s original occupants would have made of the giant metal bird in the sky disturbing their sleep path. They surely would have bolted from their bed, bloomers adrift, battling with the bedpan in the process, and berated the noisy blighter for blighting their reverie. Perhaps not. They were, after all, rather practical folk in old Blighty during that most industrious of […]
Paul sat in the shade of a wafting Tamarisk spared from the hot pale sand of the Greek beach and watched the ferries come and leave in the distance. He found it mesmerising to spectate as travellers came and went as he sat still. Not yet having to move. Having the audacity to stay for longer than an island hopper – or the good sense. Or perhaps the good fortune. Whatever – he felt lucky that his odyssey in the Cyclades Islands did not have to be as fleet as […]
THE LOLA BOYS ABROAD ! 