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