A Review of JUDAS PIG by Horace Silver

I don’t think I have ever read a book which contains such a constant, rising flood of expletive-laden anger. Its ‘f’ words and its ‘c’ words are embedded in almost every snatch of dialogue and in pretty well every line of gangster Billy Abrahams’ narrative. Your granny won’t like it, I’m certain of that. And it’s not just the language she’ll reject. Where, she’ll ask, is the remotest sign of decency in the people on show here?

There is scarcely a redeeming feature in any of the characters in this ultra-violent tale of London’s East End mob. There is no-one for whom you’re going to feel any warmth: scarcely anyone for whom you’ll feel the slightest grain of sympathy.

This is a grim story peopled with cruel, vicious, unfeeling men and women. They drink to excess, they sniff up ‘lines’ to excess, they kill to excess. And only Billy, brighter than the others, with sharper insight, fleetingly wonders where it’s all leading but even he can shuffle off his doubts if the money is right.

So where are the gangsters with hearts of gold? Where are the guys on the wrong side of the law with some faint memory of loyalty and friendship. Where are the loveable hard men? Don’t look for them here. Not in Judas Pig.

Is this then what they are really like, the lawbreakers?  Well, Horace Silver, the author, was for many years a senior member of a major London firm. So he ought to know. Now he’s given up the gun, the knife, the baseball bat, for the life of a writer. But his portrayal of gangsterdom is light years away from the cosy images of real criminals which we have been offered so generously in recent years. And I fear that this is what many of our gangsters really must be like. But they give to charity, don’t they?  And aren’t they loved in the East End? Yes, on both counts, Billy Abrahams tells us. And that’s because those who adore these low-life hard men are suckers just like the rest of us poor nine-to-five punters. They wouldn’t feel the same if they hadn’t been led to believe the creepy, romantic Robin Hood version of duplicitous lives steeped in squalid, venomous dealings. 

Grim reading, expressed with a crude power, at times poetic almost, yet always down among the dregs, and probably nearer the truth than most of the fact or fiction gangsters we’ve been regaled with over the years.

I loved it.

Review of The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

It must be my age. I keep coming back to books I read so long ago. This time I’ve had another go The Great Gatsby. Such a time since I looked at it that I could recall only one incident and there are in fact, as far as I can see, only two dramatic incidents in the whole book. I find that I’m still rather lukewarm about the characters. I recognise that Fitzgerald was portraying a kind of frenetic world-weariness and that so many of his players are quite deliberately portrayed as frivolous and shallow. Even so, could he not have made them live a shade more convincingly?

Gatsby himself ought to stand out as a tragic figure, a great lost romantic hero, a man of significantly mysterious background. But he’s not strongly enough etched for that kind of role. I wanted more Heathcliff in his personality, more dash. After all he’s linked to Wolfshiem, the man who fixed the World Series in 1919. You don’t think a gangster like Wolfshiem – in real life, Arnold Rothstein - was going to take on such a limp figure as one of his main men, do you? He is a major crime figure and so by implication is Gatsby.

As for the women I had feelings for only Daisy Buchanan and poor Myrtle Wilson, the latter no more than a bit player who is to have a powerful effect on how the story will ultimately turn out.

And that’s it. Or at least, that’s nearly it, for what raises the novel above the average is Fitzgerald’s wonderful capacity for summoning up atmosphere, the mood of place and the essence, the very feel of time, of bracing mornings, of heavy humid afternoons and the calm of evenings. His descriptions are really outstanding, not just Gatsby’s palace or the Buchanans’ ‘cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay’ but Nick Carraway’s ‘weatherbeaten cardboard bungalow’ in West Egg and Wilson’s down-at-heel garage. But best of all is Fitzgerald’s calling up of that desolate area of land, ‘a ‘valley of the ashes’, its ugly sense of being set in a kind of no-man’s-land between Gatsby’s Xanadu and New York where the book’s cataclysmic event will take place.

So did I enjoy it, this second reading, so many years from my first foray?

Frankly I did and that in spite of all my reservations.  That I should enjoy a book whose characters in the main failed to move me is odd.

It is odd, don’t you agree?

A BOOK TO SAVOUR

LAWLESS by Matt Bondurant

Some people have all the luck: they have fathers, grandfathers, uncles, all of whom have a back-story, something to talk about down the years, something out of which a writer can make a really good story.

Not me. I seem to have come from an endless line of people who didn’t raise the dust, didn’t make a headline. Except once, when I was about eight, and I heard my mother and father talking. My father was in trouble with the police. It was in the papers. He had been fined 5 shillings for a parking offence. That and my three speeding offences – and oh yes, a careless driving – is all we seem to have amassed as a family. Not much story in any of that.

Yet Matt Bondurant got a hint when he was into middle age that there was a story, something about his family. And though, save for newspapers, the documentary evidence was thin and the majority of those alive in the 1920s and 1930s had either passed on or forgotten the events of the time, he has managed to squeeze out a narrative from what he can find. And where there’s nothing, he’s added his own interpretation, and has made a novel out of the rags and tatters of his own family’s history. His grandfather and his two great uncles are the major figures in this violent tale.

‘Lawless’ is a story about Prohibition and its companion the Great Depression. We know all about Prohibition from all the gangster stories that have been written or filmed: we know about Capone and the Mob in all the great cities.

But at this time, over in Virginia, in a poverty stricken rural landscape where perhaps for all time past there had been a Great Depression, up in the mountain valleys with their cold running springs, the illicit manufacture of ‘moonshine’ – whisky from the grain, brandy from the fruit - which had gone on for perhaps a hundred years, perhaps even longer, now blossomed into a major industry though it continued to be manufactured in quite simple fashion.

And like many other farming folk, the Bondurant boys, Forrest the eldest, Howard, returned from the war, and young Jack, have stills running and they’re producing White Lightning or White Mule Moon or Stump Whisky or Mountain Dew or Squirrel Whisky – or maybe all of them at one time.

But there is great money involved in all of this - there is a suggestion that ninety per cent of families in Franklin County were in some way involved in the trade – so that now senior officers in the local county administration – the County Attorney and the Sheriff - decide to have their share of it, imposing a tax on the stills, demanding a tax for the shipment of the liquor, destroying the stills of non-payers and relentlessly pursuing those shipping their wares. Ruthless? Men are shot, beaten, emasculated, their testicles placed in a jar. Decidedly ruthless.

Some have objected that the story line is obscure at times when the author hops from one year to another. True. You have to concentrate. And some are unhappy about the intrusion of the writer Sherwood Anderson into the story’s flow. He came down to Franklin County in 1934 to find out about what was then known as The Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy. I’m sympathetic to a degree with these critics.

Yet I cannot deny that this may some day come to be regarded as a great novel. The reader has a lot of work to do. He cannot easily skim Mr Bondurant’s narrative. He needs to take time, to ponder it and enjoy its lyrical qualities which so uplift this book. Descriptions of newly distilled liquor; of the workings of a rural sawmill; of a frost-wrinkled land; of whole tobacco drills wilting in a savage summer heat; of lean men and women, poor but stoical – all of these elegantly expressed images, make for a book to return to.

I greatly admire ’Lawless.’

REVIEW OF PITTSBURG LANDING by Robert Burns Clark

Pittsburg Landing is a story of that historical tragedy, the American Civil War, and in particular it deals with the few weeks leading up to the obscene butchery at the place alternatively named Shiloh, the ‘place of peace.’

Mr Clark has done his research into the havoc of Pittsburg Landing so well though he is fortunate that the great battle which occurs at the culmination of his tale has been so richly recorded. But this in itself may be a potential danger to a novelist who must beware not simply to catalogue the material of others, must not merely catalogue the obscenities of war. He must go deeper and plunge his characters into the heart of his murderous matter and this Clark does quite splendidly and movingly.    

The author manoeuvres his main characters skilfully, some from the Union side, others from the Confederacy, to the point where, all strangers to each other, they are opposed in a horrific onslaught which will lead to 23,000 casualties. Some of these are officers, others bewildered boys; there is a man seeking his very young son who has run off to support the cause and a wife who follows her husband to the front. Some survive: others do not. But the author in the course of his narrative makes us care about each of them.

This may be a story about the war between the States though Clark takes no political stance. His view seems to be that whether a war is justifiable or not some involved at the hot steel end will demonstrate courage and nobility but that even those virtues will not save them. For others such noise, such turbulence, such sights are likely to be imprinted on their very souls for the rest of their days.

This is a very well told account of war and I found the final chapters riveting.

LIKE TO REVIEW?

Anyone like to review an early 19thC crime story, WINTER HUNT by Allen Makepeace (that's me, folks!)?  You can sample it on Amazon: if you wish to continue, contact me via http://www.johnniejohnson.co.uk/ where it's featured and I'll send you a pdf

And that's all this time.

A REALLY GOOD READ IN SPITE OF...

I’ll tell you what I was going to say when I finished this book, my first Martina Cole gangland novel. I had it in mind to muse on the fact that she is a best-selling author, that she certainly knows the world of crime and criminals and that she is without any doubt a compelling story teller. Dangerous Lady absolutely zips along and the reader is drawn into a gripping crime story, a crime saga, dealing as it does with the Ryans, an East End criminal family, over a period of thirty years. It’s a tale of protection rackets, grubby London clubs, gold bullion robberies, violent characters, brutal killings and a most determined and ruthless woman who might never have turned to crime had it not been for sad chance.

Then, having told you what a splendid tale-teller Ms Cole is, I was going to say that she’s not a great writer. Can that be so? Does it make sense? I think it does. Her prose style is clumsy, undeveloped, and her dialogue is wooden. And yet, despite these drawbacks, her story is undeniably riveting.

Well, that’s what I was going to say (yes, I know, I’ve said it) until I thought I’d just check up some background details and I discovered that this was her first book,  written when she was only twenty, that she finished it and locked it away in a cupboard for a couple of years. Then, it seems, that quite by chance she came across it and decided to send it to an agent. Seems an unconvincing tale, a bit too romantic and totally unconvincing, but that’s where she set off on her path to fame and the book was an instant best-seller. And more best sellers followed, four of them made into outstanding television serials.

So, I think I ought to hold back in my judgement and read more of Ms Cole’s work. And I have to say that I’m really looking forward to doing so.  

 In the meantime, I’m looking in the cupboard at home because I fancy I put a really great story in there several years ago.

Review of Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

I wish that I'd been able to finish this story. It's always a problem when you face a book that is acknowledged as a significant work and then find that you somehow cannot get into it. 
I couldn't identify with any of the characters but if the plot had been plausible it might have carried me along. But alas it wasn't so. At least not to me.
It's times like this when I have considered going with the flow rather than be branded a yahoo. I don't know: do other readers feel under some pressure to admire or to claim to enjoy highly praised books? Do other readers sometimes ask themselves, What's wrong with me that I cannot appreciate a work which so highly regarded? Are my literary taste buds less refined than others'? Maybe that's it.
Try as I might I really have found this book totally unappealing.

Review of In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

You might liken Tom Holland’s book to a great canvas of dark landscapes on which great swathes of lightning reveal grim images of slaughter; here, 10,000 corpses butchered in Samaria and 20,000 dead at another place and yet another time, 50,000; a bishop burns in a fire of martyrs’ bones; a Persian king humiliates a Roman emperor, using him as a mounting block before despatching him; elsewhere the newly slaughtered are covered with carpet to serve as a gruesome banqueting table. It is painted, this portrait, in blood for these are the convulsions of two nations. The Western Roman Empire, in barbarian hands, is ailing though the world still bears such wonderful cities as Alexandria and Antioch, Damascus and Constantinople.

But if the two great empires, the Persian and the Roman, had made their mark on the Ancient World they were by the 7^th century tired out by incessant warring, by famine, by plague.

And why all this war? Was it all about belief? About the worship of pagan gods? Or the Jewish god? Or that strange god who was his own father, his own son, and at the same time a joint Holy Spirit? Oh, the struggles in the various communities to work out the nature of their god. The scholars, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, arguing, cajoling, persuading and the emperors knew not what to make of it until Constantine came along.

Emperor Constantine could not make up his mind about whom to acknowledge as the true god – should it be Apollo or the god of the Christians? – until he had a vision (or did he toss a coin?) At a stroke, Rome – centred now in Constantinople - was declared a Christian state. Not that the declaration was accepted universally.  It took more years and another emperor to brutally enforce the state religion upon the diverse peoples of the declining empire.

And then along came Mohammed and his followers, quite out of the blue it seems. And within half a dozen decades the Arabs, many of whom who had learned their trade as mercenaries in the armies of Rome or Persia, had conquered vast territories. And it seems as if in no time they came out of their deserts and had shed their pagan gods in favour of a new monotheistic belief. But it does seem at times to have been borrowed in part from the old Greek myths as well as from the writings of the Jews and the Christians. Holland points out how little is known of Mohammed until almost two hundred years after his death and certainly there is little of Islam’s early years to help the historian unravel its development. Here, the author is asking the pertinent question: how much are we to believe of what we are told about that period, those crucial missing years?

What a hotch-potch. What a difficult story to tame with its roots in rumour mills and propaganda, in unsubstantiated declarations and self-serving claims. Yet Tom Holland keeps the tale going, interpreting and of course guessing as all historians must when faced with such variety of not always reliable evidence. It’s great read but one that is not easy for the detail at times is both overwhelming and vague. There are gaps, not of the author’s making, but because of history’s silence.

A BOOK REVIEW - DEVIL'S CHIMNEY

Devil’s Chimney, an e-book by Tim Larrick
A murder-mystery

Published by The Obscure Cranny Press

Available on Amazon - $2.40 or £1.53

There are some disadvantages to being a writer. For instance, it makes you excessively critical as a reader. You’re constantly raising questions about the way the author is going about his task. Isn’t that piece of dialogue a bit clunky?  Would that really happen? Why doesn’t the story flow better? So it goes on, always pick, pick, picking away, endlessly asking questions, suggesting improvements instead of just enjoying the tale. And though I can’t speak for others, at the end I often find myself asking, Could I have written that story? Would it have been better if I had? And then comes the big question, Do I wish I had written it?

And so how does Tin Larrick’s murder-mystery story, Devil’s Chimney, measure up? The story is set in Eastbourne where I live so not surprisingly I was attracted to it. It’s jam-packed with places I know, the seafront and the beach, pubs and coffee shops, the police station and the Wish Tower, Sovereign Harbour and the Belle Tout lighthouse, now a private house high up on Beachy Head. And the body of a savagely murdered woman is found in a hotel not five minutes’ walk from where I live. And another body is later found in a seafront shelter fifteen minutes away.

Caution: do not be misled. Just because it mentions locales known to you, the reader, your judgment of the story must not be distorted. I told myself that I must not be beguiled by the familiarity of such scenes, that I must judge the description of the town by the way in which they might appeal to readers who do not know it. Well, Tin Larrick has interpreted the place so vividly. His clear descriptions of the town are apt. By day, it has many charms. At night, this elegant town has another face.

They do say ‘Write about what you know.’ This is a police procedural and Larrick is a former policeman. No more to be said. He knows his stuff.

I very much liked the central character, the young, novice detective constable, Chalvington Barnes, a man clearly destined for the top. As for the back-story, he and his wife being unable to conceive, that was absolutely convincing and moving too. And I thought his ambitious young woman reporter made quite an impact. I hope that we shall meet her again.

And of course, Larrick knows his low-lifes. He has them to a tee. You can recognise them. They are believable. They aren’t just Eastbourne manifestations. You see them everywhere. Worse luck!

This is a really enjoyable story, very well structured, with some heart-thumping situations.

If I had a reservation it was that there was little humour in the account. Maybe even at the worst times, in fact especially at the worst times, I should have expected some wry police station humour. But that is a small quibble.

As to my question: Could I have written this book? No. I couldn’t. But I wish I could have done.

I ought to add perhaps that I bought the book and that I have had no contact with Tin Larrick of whom I had not heard until four days ago.

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

We are talking about going back to the Philippines this coming winter. In fact we’re already making some preparations. There is , you see, the business of the ‘pasalubong,’ the gifts that visitors are expected to take with them when they go back home.

This gift-giving is normal and is expected. These charming and kindly people have no hesitation in asking if you have a ‘pasalubong’ for them. This is not scrounging: it is an expectation. So Fay is hunting round the charity shops for good quality stuff and I’m contributing my old computer and its monitor. We’ll pack boxes which will collected from home for shipment to our house in the Philippines where they’ll be waiting for us when we arrive.

The above is to explain in part what followed one Sunday.

[Extract begins here]

When Fay came back from church, she announced that we were going out to a cousin's house for lunch. It's a fiesta (of what or of whom I cannot make out but apparently it's only in one part of the town) so I get into the car and find five ladies, Church members, who chatter away and speak to me in English. 'How old are you, Sir JJ?' one of them asks very politely and I tell her. The ladies exchange comments and then one of them announces that I look no more than seventy. I’m pleased with that assessment even though it may be flattery! Ah, ladies, I smile, wagging a finger at them.

We arrive unannounced at the cousin's house - a very pleasant bungalow - where there is a fine spread of food - meats, fish, salads and fruit salad and soft drinks. I've already loaded my plate and am preparing to take the first mouthful when Fay nudges me. My party has been hovering around the table for ages and are now preparing to break into a sung grace. I'm saved at the last minute from committing an unpardonable social error.

There is more talk about me as we chew away and get up from our seats for second and third platefuls. Is he an actor? Fay is asked. Apparently my English is so clear that they can easily understand what I am saying.

The ladies speak so highly of Fay and say how she is much missed at the church where earlier in the morning she has dispensed generous 'pasalubongs'. I make the usual comments, expressing my appreciation of her but they like it when I tell them that I am less than enthusiastic about her driving. At first they laugh and exchange quiet comment but then female self-interest comes into play and they spring to her defence because she used always to drive them to Cabanatuan or Gapan or whatever other local hotspot. And who knows, she may do so again. They look at me presumably assessing how I look in health terms and no doubt wondering how long it will be until the widowed Ate Fay returns with her driving licence. They mustn't jeopardise the future.

[After lunch we returned home.]

At home the six ladies stayed only twenty minutes, enough time to work their way through more handbags, dresses, shoes, holding them up to the light, inspecting, comparing and rejecting, until finally most were satisfied though one never did get a nice big handbag to take on a forthcoming visit to her daughter in Manila. Another took a pink dress of Fay's for her daughter who had some or other function to attend.

These ladies selecting their 'pasalubongs' do not have the appearance of poor women. They are smart, in decent print dresses, and you might imagine them as Women's Institute or Mothers Union members on an outing but boy, did they show some energy in finding a good present for themselves and they were not afraid to turn up their noses at anything which did not meet their requirements.

After they went, Fay was a little miffed. It was all very well but only two of the ladies were relatives and the other four should have taken their pick at the earlier distribution in church!

And if you haven't run out of patience, do have a look at my reviews on Amazon. And no, they not all from fromfriends an relatives!!

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

Just as if it was yesterday, it’s all ice-clear in my mind. A dark, dank, drizzling winter’s afternoon in the town and there was this great procession coming along the road and my Uncle Bob was at the head of it. Right at the front he was, looking so important in his top hat, his frock coat and his striped trousers and carrying a silver-topped cane. The way he walked you’d think he was the most important person there, more important than the chauffeur of the fine car with the wooden box inside, more important than any of the straggle of people shuffling along behind in their damp clothes, not one of them looking as grand as my Uncle Bob who looked to be the only person there on whom the rain wasn’t falling.

You’ve no idea how proud I felt. He was leading this great crowd of people. It was so wonderful. ‘Uncle Bob! Hello, Uncle Bob,’ I shouted but he never looked over in my direction, just kept up the proud peacock strut, his head high, his shoulders straight.

I thought I might go over to him, to ask what he was doing because I’d never seen him in such a fancy outfit before and I was just about to step off the pavement and into the road when my mother snatched my hand. ‘Behave yourself,’ she whispered, her other hand shaking my shoulder.

‘It’s Uncle Bob,’ I told her. Perhaps she hadn’t realised that he was the one leading the procession. Perhaps she didn’t know he was so important.

‘Come along,’ she said, putting on her angry mother’s face. ‘Fancy shouting in the street like that.’ She dragged me away along the road. ‘Such behaviour,’ she said.

And that’s the first memory I have of seeing a funeral. It’s about 80 years ago now but it’s still sharp in my mind. Of course the mourners in those days didn’t have cars to take them to the cemetery so most walked behind the hearse, often a hundred or more of them, all of them proclaiming their grief with a black band or a diamond of cloth sewn on the sleeves of their coats. Many close relatives of the dead would continue wearing sober clothing with the black bands for perhaps a year.

In the Philippines I’ve been reminded so much of those old funerals that people like my Uncle Bob directed. There is still the sense of occasion in that country that our funerals used to project, still the solemn procession but of course with certain differences.

In my book, A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES, I describe some of the funerals which passed our house.  

‘What a lot of funerals I've seen here. What a send-off the dead get. We've had two today and I have such a fine view from upstairs. I dash up to the terrace every time I hear the music of the brass band.

Today the procession was headed by about thirty slow-moving tricycles. Then came half a dozen men in baseball caps and green T-shirts. Next we had the usual leggy drum majorettes, short skirts, high boots and all looking as if they were on loan from a Fourth of July parade so many thousands of miles away.

Today's brass band - one of the fifteen which the town boasts - wore glossy purple jackets and white trousers. In the last two months I must have seen pretty well every band, each with its own garish outfit, tootling their clarinets, puffing down or up their Sousaphones, blowing at their trombones and beating hell out of their drums.

After this came the hearse, a big white affair topped as ever with white balloons and a photograph of the dear departed and bearing a coffin, this time oak or what looked like oak. As ever, the mourners walked behind, the women with their brightly coloured umbrellas showing up like some extravagant mobile flower bed.’

Some similarities and some differences to what I saw all those long years ago.

And by the way, the family undertaking business started by my grandfather in the late-1800s still exists in South Shields but it has undergone quite enormous changes, just as our lives have done.

The book, A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES, is on Amazon and Smashwords now - 40,000 words by WH Johnson for peanuts (77p)! And it’s worth every peanut for Leonardo Malgapo’s cover and illustrations alone.

Find the book on Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/author/whjohnson
or on Smashwords on
http://smashwords.com/books/view/152237
Website: http://johnniejohnson.co.uk

There’s a FREE copy to anyone willing to forward the details of the book to at least 40 of their email/Facebook friends. Just let me know via the email address on my website. Tell me if you want it to your computer screen or your ereader and I’ll send you a copy.

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

I don’t know what to make of this weather. It’s absolutely appalling. It’s unseasonable: it’s unreasonable.

I don’t care for the unexpected. I like life to be as it should be. And that goes for the weather. But all this sun and blue sky and the temptation to sit outside or to stroll along the sea front old-gentleman style is just too much. Let’s have some weather that keeps us indoors.

Those of you who know me will be aware that I take a walk every morning. Nothing excessive. A couple of miles and that’s enough but I do like to fit it in. In fact I feel guilty when I can't do so. I’ve been for my walk today and feel all the better for it.

When I was in the Philippines I walked every morning and it was always enjoyable though sometimes, even early in the day, it could get a shade uncomfortable. But at least there were no pressures on my time. It was different there. Take for example one Sunday morning walk…

My walk today was in a new direction but still accompanied by the usual smiles and calls of ‘Where are you going?' I stop to tell them and they recognise 'walk' and 'exercise' but our conversations usually reach little further than that. When I call out 'Good morning' they always respond and it sounds, their 'Good mahning, po,' so musical. 'Po', by the way, is a word frequently used in formal situations as a sign of respect.

It became extremely warm as I went along. Though it was relatively early, many people were in their backyards, playing very loud music on their wirelesses (yes, I know, I’m supposed to call them radios) or standing outside in the shade, looking at me with a kindly detached amusement - at least that is how I interpreted it. Perhaps they were saying something like, 'Why is that silly old fool walking when he can afford to hire a tricycle?'

But I was out to show that I was doing this for pleasure. It's what Englishmen do. We go for walks and put up with rain and wind and by Jove, we aren't beaten by excessively hot mornings like this, either. I was in my Alec Guinness/River Kwai mood, and despite the heat I was determined to keep up appearances for the sake of Queen and Country and so I raised my head, pulled my shoulders back, did my best with my stomach and raised my bamboo-cane walking stick in greeting as I strode on humming 'Colonel Bogey' and hoping that I shouldn't be forced to sit down to rest. But at last, running with sweat, I reached home where Josie, our ‘helper’, made me a cup of tea. I really needed it. I'd put on a show and I hadn't let the Old Country down.

I’ve always enjoyed my morning strolls at home but less so at the moment because there are pressing things on my mind. I’m fretting about the waste of time as I walk and I know that when I reach home I’ll be sitting at this blasted machine within minutes. Yes, there’s work to be done but the sun is so tempting today and I want to be out there. Now if it was really lousy weather I could settle down to my tasks – blogging, commenting on literary booksites, writing to reviewers asking if they’ll review A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES, my ebook, which has now made its appearance on Amazon Kindle. What would suit me at the moment is grey skies, howling gales, torrential downpours.

But as things are I’m distracted, longing to sit and watch the sea and the strollers and the fishermen on the pier and I want to chat to other old codgers, settling the world's problems, telling them about my gammy hip, things like that.

But no, I can’t. I’m stuck in here.

Damn this weather.

Or maybe it should be damn this book.

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES by W H Johnson and illustrated by Leonardo Malgapo is available on Amazon at the peanuts price of 99 cents or 77pence. It will shortly appear on Smashwords.

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

I don’t know what to make of this weather. It’s absolutely appalling. It’s unseasonable: it’s unreasonable. I don’t care for the unexpected. I like life to be as it should be. And that goes for the weather. But all this sun and blue sky and the temptation to sit outside or to stroll along the sea front old-gentleman style is just too much.

Those of you who know me will be aware that I take a walk every morning. Nothing excessive. A couple of miles and that’s enough but I do like to fit it in. In fact I feel guilty when I can't do so. I’ve been for my walk today and feel all the better for it.

When I was in the Philippines I walked every morning and it was always enjoyable though sometimes, even early in the day, it could get a shade uncomfortable. But at least there were no pressures on my time. It was different there. Take for example one Sunday morning walk…

… My walk today was in a new direction but still accompanied by the usual smiles and calls of ‘Where are you going?' I stop to tell them and they recognise 'walk' and 'exercise' but our conversations usually reach little further than that. When I call out 'Good morning' they always respond and it sounds, their 'Good mahning, po,' so musical. 'Po', by the way, is a word frequently used in formal situations as a sign of respect.

It became extremely warm as I went along. Though it was relatively early, many people were in their backyards, playing very loud music on their wirelesses (yes, I know, I’m supposed to call them radios) or standing outside in the shade, looking at me with a kindly detached amusement - at least that is how I interpreted it. Perhaps they were saying something like, 'Why is that silly old fool walking when he can afford to hire a tricycle?'

But I was out to show that I was doing this for pleasure. It's what Englishmen do. We go for walks and put up with rain and wind and by Jove, we aren't beaten by excessively hot mornings like this, either. I was in my Alec Guinness/River Kwai mood, and despite the heat I was determined to keep up appearances for the sake of Queen and Country and so I raised my head, pulled my shoulders back, did my best with my stomach and raised my bamboo-cane walking stick in greeting as I strode on humming 'Colonel Bogey' and hoping that I shouldn't be forced to sit down to rest. But at last, running with sweat, I reached home where Josie made me a cup of tea. I really needed it. I'd put on a show and I hadn't let the Old Country down.

I’ve always enjoyed my morning strolls at home but less so at the moment because there are pressing things on my mind. I’m fretting about the waste of time as I walk and I know that when I reach home I’ll be sitting at this blasted machine within minutes. Yes, there’s work to be done but the sun is so tempting and I want to be out there. Now if it was really lousy weather I could settle down to my tasks – blogging, commenting on literary booksites, writing to reviewers asking if they’ll review A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES which has now made its appearance on Amazon Kindle. What would suit me at the moment is grey skies, howling gales, torrential downpours.

But as things are I’m distracted, longing to sit and watch the sea and the strollers and the fishermen on the pier and I want to chat to other old codgers, settling the world's problems, telling them about my gammy hip. But no, I can’t. I’m stuck in here.

Damn this weather.

Or maybe it should be damn this book.

A VIRGIN BACK FROM THE PHILIPPINES

Back home again. In fact we've been back for ten days but I haven't had much desire to get down to blogging when there has been four months' post waiting to be opened. What a grim sight. You stagger into the house after more than 24 hours' travelling and it's just sitting there on the sitting room table and you feel like burning the lot. It looks just so impossible. And you know there is likely to be a couple of time-bombs in there, unexpected demands or queries that you just haven't the will to tackle, the sort of matters that you ought to have dealt with before going away all those months ago.

Since we came back, there has been a plumbing problem, a car problem, several problems with this blasted computer...there's no end to it. And only this morning, when I was really beginning to feel that all outstanding tasks had been dealt with, the damned window in the bedroom goes phut. By which I mean that one of the springs in the side - no, I don't know what it's called nor what its real function is - made a sudden screeching sound and the window came racing down, nearly slicing off my finger. It's as if it was waiting until I began to feel that all was right with the world once more, so that its impact would be felt. So that's how life is when you climb one mountain. There's always another one waiting.

Equally frustrating - my e-book is now available on Amazon Kindle but I need to make it available in other versions but that side of things is held up. Don't ask me why. I don't do technical but I'm only hoping that by next week all will be well. Then I'll start advertising.

You may be interested in my pricing strategy. I've put it out at the lowest possible price on the pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap theory. When I told a friend about that he suggested that I was mistaken - well actually, he said I was bloody stupid but we'll see.

But back to this business of the post-holiday blues. There's only one solution. Stay at home.

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

Some evenings you just want to sit down and relax, just put your feet up, read the newspaper, watch TV. Nothing more till bedtime. But then some damn thing gets in the way. You just have to fit in.

Take the night several weeks ago when I was just getting comfortable, the angles of my old body just settling into the contours of my rocking chair (yes, I have one here in the Philippines and I love it.) and reading the first few pages of one of Max Allan Collins' great crime novels. Bliss!

But then comes an interruption. Cousin Perli has texted Fay with big news. Cousin Lilia and her husband have arrived in town from America.

'You would like to meet them?' Fay asks and I tell her it's up to her. She is not keen, she says. She doesn't like sudden invitations (because it doesn’t allow her enough time to put on her face is my conclusion). It seems we are not to go.

Ten minutes later I am surprised to hear Fay asking if I am not ready. Now we seem to be going.

I wash but my face is greasy, Fay says, and she makes me sit on the bed so that she can remedy the defect.

'You have to be presentable,' she says. She looks at me dubiously. 'You cannot go looking like a man from the mountains.' Many years ago she was a visiting nurse in such a region and seems not to have been impressed by the menfolk.

I'm not exactly Britain's best groomed man but to be compared to a man from the mountains is unduly harsh.

Later, when she finally has me looking unmountainmanlike, she says, 'We shall have a grand meal and we shan’t be home till late.'

Then we’re off, picking up cousins Perli and Noring and Perli's eight-year-old granddaughter on the way.

Lilia from America is a sprightly old girl. She is a doctor and confident that what she utters is direct from her Maker. At least that’s how she seems to me. Shortly after our arrival at her home and apropos of nothing, she is announcing to us that children should stand up for themselves and says you cannot go on helping them for ever, for how will they learn? 'I taught my children to fish,' she pronounces. 'I did not give them fish.' I recognise the lines from 'The Book of Worn-Out Aphorisms and Cliches of Our Time' and am tempted to ask how they are getting on in the fishing industry but I look grave and mutter, 'H'm, yes indeed, how true, how true,' as I do when I’m trying to prove to medicals and people of that type that I am just as wise and profound as they think they are.

After this Lilia dispenses packet after packet of medicines which she has brought with her for Perli and Noring. Apparently she does this whenever she comes here. It's so generous and considerate. She visits every year with her husband, Celestino, an immediately likeable man, and they stay for three months, escaping the Michigan winters.

Then there is an interruption and two ladies, local women, are admitted. They have a basket and reveal under a cloth thin strips of dried meat, about twelve inches by six.

There is some chatter and Fay tells me it is wild pig.

'Wild boar,' I tell her, the schoolmaster within me unable to shut his trap.

Fay does not respond. I sidle up to the basket and say approvingly to Lilia, 'Wild boar' as if it’s a dish I’m served regularly at my gentleman's club.

'Venison,' she tells me with an authority I cannot match.

Humbled I go to the back and nod at Celestino.

'Venison,' I tell him, again with the air of a connoisseur.

'Wild pig,' he corrects me.

Anyway, the evening ends abruptly. There is no expected grand meal. Lilia and Celestino arrived from Manila only this afternoon and have not yet unpacked. We feel obliged to make a decent exit. And to think that I had washed and had my post-wash face specially attended to.

Another damp squib of an evening, I think, but I don't say anything to Fay. It's best not to sound off in this world. Let sleeping dogs lie. Keep your trap shut. Do as you're told.

'A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES' by WH Johnson is to be published as an e-book in the next few days. It will be available on Amazon and from the author in Kindle (MOBI), EPUB and pdf. See www.johnniejohnson.co.uk

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

I wouldn't have you think I'm an ill-ntempered sort of chap. From time to time, it has been suggested that I am but it's just the fall of my face and what Nature and Time have done to its contours. No, I am normally really tolerant...to a fault I might say.

But I must get my sleep and some nights here it's difficult..

Take last night...an errant mosquito penetrated the defences of the netted doors and windows and bit me on the arm. It’s not the first bite I’ve suffered here and I have to say they are not as bad as some I’ve occasionally had in Europe. Even so, my legs at times have the dramatic effect of a Turner sunset and they itch like hell. I have been regularly using a spray on my legs and arms. It makes great claims, this stuff, to keeping mosquitoes at bay but apparently the mosquitoes cannot read. Certainly last night's couldn't.

But it’s the dogs who are the real menace with their incessant barking all night. They are all yard dogs. I don’t think they ever get into their owners' houses. They’re mostly lean and pale or gingery and they're content to walk along the roadside or along the middle of the road where they stop from time to time to scratch their fleas and lick their behinds in a world-weary sort of way. They manage to avoid cars with the slightest insouciant twitch of the hips and they’re away, escaping wheels and bumpers by a hair’s breadth. But it’s at night when they’re skulking round the home territory that they begin their constant yelps and screeches and barks. Then, just before dawn their shift ends and the cockerels start up.

These blasted birds continue for what seems an eternity. There’s only one which seems to merit an audition to introduce Pathe News (as was, but ask your Granny if you don't get the reference), only one out of what seems like hundreds who sounds at all in his right avian mind. So many of the others sound quite deranged, many as if they are suffering from a form of Tourette’s disease which obliges them to shriek at very short intervals the words 'Dirty bastards.' On and on it goes, the loonies echoing each other way down the road and God knows how far beyond but the sound comes doubling back so that I feel like shouting at them, 'Shut up, you silly buggers.' But I know what they’d say in reply.

I wonder if some of them aren’t punch-drunk veterans of the local cockpit. We saw some the other day being caged, jaunty enough looking chaps with fine handsomely coloured feathers and proud upstanding tails, but each one I suspect with a mad gleam in his eye and looking forward to the next championship bout. It wouldn't be surprising if they were unhinged. Their owners or trainers, for these birds are professional ring-craftsmen, cosset them like babies, stroking them, smoothing their feathers and generally pampering them. But they must - the birds, that is – be quite astonished when clouds of tobacco smoke are blown in their faces. This is said to made them mean-tempered, just what is thought to be necessary in a ring-ready bird. The ones that lose the fights - fought with razor blades tied to the legs - return home oven-ready.

All of this nocturnal hubbub of dogs and cockerels, in this rural hideaway, is played out against a ceaseless background of traffic noise, particularly from motorcycles and tricycles tuned to sound sometimes like farting wasps. At other times huge lorries race down the road, sounding like Jumbo jets preparing to land just outside the front door.

This is in rural Luzon. If it were sprawling MetroManila I'd understand it but here we're in a land of beautiful trees, farms and rice fields of the most delicate shades of green. It would be heaven if it weren't for the night noise. And don't start me on when the women in the family get together talking, you'd think, through loud hailers...

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES by WH Johnson will be published as an e-book in the next few weeks.

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

Well, as I told you, I'm a married man and long past the first, second and third flushes of youth. In fact I'm past the first couple of flushes of old age.

That said, what strikes me in the Philippines is how beautiful so many of the women and young girls are and how they don't seem to age as Western women do.

Now hold on, ladies of the West, I'm not being critical of you. I'm not disparaging you. But I think if you're fair about these matters, if you look at them objectively, you must admit, even if you don't wish to, that Filipinas look good and wear well.

Take the day I was persuaded to go to the dentist in Manila – well, my dentist in Eastbourne had recently quoted me £90 for a filling – and in minutes I was ready to trade my immortal soul for an evening wirh Miss Asia who apparently was doubling up as receptionist. By the time we'd finished the preliminaries she could have had every remaining ivory in my head and then to cap it all in came the nurse to lead me to the surgery and she could have been Miss World. I followed her to the throne of blood with a light step. (And for the record the filling in a beautifully appointed surgery cost me £10.)

But away from shoddy commerce and back to beauty.. In fact back to the supermarket this time where even in their uniforms, with their hair tied back into a tight bun and their faces exquisitely made up, the cash-out girls look like a line-up of glamourous chorus girls in a Hollywood spectacular. I never thought I'd say this but paying at the till in supermarkets in Cabanatuan - and Gapan and Manila for that matter – is an absolute pleasure.

When we went to the rice farm owned by Lito, my 68 year old  nephew-by-marriage, I was introduced to his daughter, a healthy looking girl called Michelle. In my interested schoolmasterly voice - and I have a kindly understanding smile to accompany this voice – I asked her how she was getting on at school but was told that had already left. And then, as if she anticipated what I was going to say next, she said 'I am the mother of three.'

Such a child to have such a brood already and I wondered if one or more of the village lads had been taking advantage of her innocence. I then learnt that she was thirty-four! Incredible. These women here, they look so young.

Have I ended up at the fountain of eternal youth and beauty? It certainly seems so.

'A Virgin in the Philippines' is due out as an e-book in the next week or two

A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

Okay, you've got so far but you're not sure. The title...not the sort of reading you'd normally go for. I understand that. Somebody wrote to tell me that it was 'no-no' title, that it was going to encourage pervs, white slavers and all sorts of other undesirables. Only thing I can reply to that is I don't much mind, provided they all buy a copy of the e-book when it comes out.

But to set your mind at rest it's a perfectly respectable book. Suggestions that it is 'not a book you would wish your wife or your servants to read' are far off the mark.

Look, it's about a well-worn old boy, a widower, WH Johnson, whose life takes a sudden change and he's as surprised as anyone. This is what he says right at the beginning of the book:

'Three years ago I'd never given a thought to visiting the Philippines. It wouldn't have appeared in even my top hundred places to visit. Come to that, I'd never thought of remarrying.'

But that's exactly what he did do. He did visit the Philippines and he did remarry though not in that order.

And by the way, he didn't go through a dating agency and he didn't sign up his beautiful bride through ebay.

And in a couple of visits lasting six months the author has put down his thoughts and impressions in an e-book, A VIRGIN IN THE PHILIPPINES which is to be published soon with illustrations by Leonardo Malgapo. He makes no claim to being an expert: this is not a guide book but he does reveal much about his experiences in this beautiful land.

Want to know more intimate details about the author? Want to know about the trauma which led to his shorts anxiety? Or why sometimes he goes into Alec Guinness/River Kwai mode? How he responds to the exotic driving that he encounters? Want to hear about Gina, the woman in the background? About
what he has introduced to the community in which he finds himself? Or which of his physical features is so highly regarded? Why is he so attracted to funerals and the once-despised karaoke? And on what particular occasion did his wife enjoy a Tina Turner moment?

Well that's taster. Do come back for more. There'll be an extract or two next time. Sign up as a follower. It'll be great to have you.

And Senior Citizens, remember I'm a really long-serving member of your group. My only advice: don't just sit in the corner for the rest of your days.

SNIPPETS FROM THE PAST is for the moment suspended and will resume in a few weeks time.

SNIPPETS FROM THE PAST

THE BRIDES IN THE BATH CASE

In 1915, the nation was temporarily transfixed by the 'Brides in the Bath' murders. At a time of such horror on the Western Front, George Joseph Smith's three murders were a talking point.

A man named as Henry Williams was arrested in London and charged with bigamy. After a whirlwind courtship, he had ‘married’ the genteel, Bessie Mundy, in August 1910, taking off within weeks with her savings. Over the next two years, using a variety of aliases, Williams pursued the same course with several women.

Then, in March 1912, perhaps by chance, he met Bessie again and she forgave him unhesitatingly. Off the couple went to Herne Bay where they set up house at 80 The High Street. This time they made wills in each other’s favour. On 10 July 1912, Williams took his wife to the doctor, concerned that she was having epileptic fits. She had not known that she was suffering fits until her husband told her but her husband explained to her that several nights, in bed, she had had a fit.. Three days later, Bessie was found drowned in a small zinc bath in front of the fire. The doctor had no doubt that she had had a fit. The widower arranged the funeral, asking for it to be ‘moderately carried out’ at the cost of seven guineas. The zinc bath, for which he had paid 37 shillings and 6 pence on approval, he returned later to the hardware store. Now affluent with the money from Bessie’s will, he purchased several houses in Bath and opened accounts in several names in various banks.

Two other women suffered a similar fate. First, Alice Burnham married him on 3 November 1913 and, heavily insured, died in a bath in Blackpool eight days later. She had the cheapest possible funeral. Moving on and calling himself John Lloyd, the constant widower met Margaret Lofty, a clergyman’s daughter with little cash but a good insurance prospect. They married on 17 December 1914 and the following evening, in Holloway, shortly after neighbours heard him singing ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ with harmonium accompaniment, she too was found in the bath. It was a too good a story for newspapermen to ignore. The headline ‘Bride’s Tragic Fate’ in the News of the World led Alice Burnham’s suddenly suspicious father to contact the police.

At the Old Bailey, George Joseph Smith, the ‘Brides in the Bath’ murderer, was tried for the murder of Bessie Mundy who had always believed herself to be Mrs Williams. It was demonstrated in court how, by pulling Bessie's heels, he had submerged her in the bath. Found guilty, Smith was executed at Maidstone Gaol on 13 August 1915.

But what has always stuck in my mind is the image of Smith going back to the hardware shop with the bath which he had on approval. How on earth can you buy a bath on approval? How on earth could he bring himself to return it One thing is sure, this second-hand salesman, was avaricious beyond measure. For his victim's coffins, nothing but the cheapest would satisfy him..

And then the business of singing 'Nearer my God to Thee.' This was to suggest that at that moment all was well in the house. Shortly after this Smith went out to buy something at the local shops and then, on his return, he went almost immediately to a neighbour to tell her that his wife had drowned in the bath. Actually, she was dead earlier than this, lying there while he sang the hymn. And was there a grim humour behind his choice of hymn? Or was he just so insensitive that he did not connect the words with the deed?

And just a last question? Were there only three women who suffered in ths way? Smith toured the country, buying goods for his second-hand business. But from 1910 till 1915 did he meet only three gullible women? Does it not seem likely that this undoubted charmer - unprepossessing to look at though he was - attracted more such vulnerable ladies?

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU WEEP?

At the Sussex Assizes held in Chichester in March 1805, there were 29 prisoners for trial of whom 15 were sentenced to death. Their offences ranged from sheep stealing and the theft of bridles and saddles to the theft of £3 in notes by a 14 year old boy. None involved murder or manslaughter. Fifteen of those charged were sentenced to death but as was common, at the end of the Assizes, before the judges left town, they reprieved seven people.

But one decision on this occasion reveals something of our forefathers' attitudes. Certainly they were not thirsting for revenge. But this example shows that there was a concern that a condemned girl should have time to reflect on her offence and to make her peace with God before her execution. It is her state of mind, the hope that she will accept her punishment and ask for God's mercy, and not the ultimate price she will pay which most concerns the writer of the following passage in the Sussex Advertiser.

'The unhappy young woman, for the murder of her bastard child, was to have suffered on Thursday last, but being represented to the Judge that her mind was in a state of distraction from the effects of her sentence, he humanely granted her a respite...'

Note that. '...he humanely granted her a respite.' Not a reprieve.

The paragraph continues: '… until her mind should become more quiet, and she was better reconciled to her melancholy fate...'

As if the more time she had to ponder over what was going to happen to her so much the better for her!

'...but of this she betrays no symptoms, as her excessive perturbation continues, and shuts out all hope of consolation, and her death is, we hear, in consequence, daily expected.'

This account is not devoid of sympathy for the young woman but it clearly accepts, with some regret, that the law must run its course.

Enough to make you weep? Well, in reaching guilty verdicts and in handing down the ultimate punishment, both jurors and judges were known to weep. Small wonder.