Month: May 2013

I’m Only Sleeping

Posted on by Skip

I am slowly and fuzzily emerging from several days of viral infection which has, quite frankly, knocked me for six. To be honest, I imagined at one point that I actually had sleeping sickness, as I was endlessly tired, but I don’t think that the Tsetse Fly is endemic to Cambodia – or is it? Anyway, I appear to be gradually on the mend now. Still sleeping a great deal though. And dreaming. Some very unusual dreams indeed. The sleep of reason may well produce monsters, but dreams about pitching songs to Liam Gallagher??? Very strange…

Sleeping is popular in Cambodia. Well of course it is, it’s a global phenomena, innit? Cambodians are really good at it though. Motodops, for example, who stretch out, perfectly balanced, along their bike in the heat of the mid-day sun. Our inestimable Chairman Mao, tuk-tuk driver extraordinaire, is an absolute expert who can literally sleep anywhere, and in any position, at the drop of a hat. Others are quite extraordinary too, in particular staff of shops/restaurants/cinemas, and during working hours. A and I have encountered sleeping staff in many establishments we have visited over the years, often in fairly precarious positions in the remotest corners of the establishment, or in the toilets. I’ve seen men and women sleeping in supermarket aisles, on supermarket shelves, draped over exercise machines, in between giant stuffed animals, slumped over bannisters, even once in the corner of a lift. I did check the last one as I wasn’t sure if she was actually alive, and got some withering looks and dark mutterings for my trouble.

‘Please, don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me
Leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping…’

Last week Oti and I went to Iron Man at one of the local 3D cinemas and it was so goshdarned exciting that we had to visit the toilet about 30 minutes before the end. Every cubicle was occupied, with the unmistakable sound of snoring emanating from two, and the unmistakable sound of a teenage cellphone conversation emanating from the other…

Iron Man. Ah yes, always my favourite… the films are pretty good, and Charlie Chaplin makes a pretty good iron fist of wisecracking Tony Stark, but they will never match up to the comics in my opinion. My relationship with Iron Man began back in 1967, and was nurtured through a comic called ‘Fantastic’. Believe me, it was. Alongside ‘TV Century 21’, the Gerry Anderson spin-off comic, it was the next significant step up from the Beezer and Beano and Eagle. The first issue (oh how I wish I had kept them all!) featured the origin of Iron Man (and Thor) and was so exciting that I immediately cancelled all my other comics just to ensure I could get it every week – they were 3d each (Thats 3d, not 3D. Three old pence… ask an old British person for clarification – they can help with the lyric above too… seems so distant now) and ‘Fantastic’ was 9d.
UK-FANTASTIC-01
A particular Christmas highlight from a few years back was receiving an early Iron Man anthology as a present from A… wish I had that here right now and I could bore Oti to tears reading it to him… although I rather suspect he would actually enjoy it. We are pretty similar in many ways, I have to say… both fascinated by the Fantastic-al!

Hong Kong Garden

Posted on by Skip

Darling A mentioned to me last night that perhaps I might consider booking somewhere for dinner for tonight to avoid us ‘faffing around’ as usual. What exactly, I hear you mutter, does he mean by faffing around? I shall explain by virtue of this conversation, repeated practically verbatim every Saturday night we are in Phnom Penh.
A (or J – doesn’t really matter, quite interchangeable in fact) – ‘where do you want to eat?’
J – ‘dunno’
A- ‘what do you want to eat?’
J – ‘um… dunno’
A – ‘when do you want to eat?’
Can you guess the response? The soundtrack to this exchange ought to be Dylan’s ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere’ (Byrds version please, if you don’t mind), as that is normally what we are in real danger of doing, as eating habits among the expat fraternity seem to have changed considerably over the last few years. In the mid to high range eateries that we frequent on a Saturday evening (it’s our only treat, right?) there has been an alarming increase in the number of formal reservations being made. Used to be you could stroll in off the street, plonk yourself down, a quick howdy-doo-dee to the owner and voila! , dinner was served. Not any more, oh no. Now it’s ‘You have a reservation? No? Oh, I’m sorry, we are fully booked… my apologies.’ What’s he moaning about then, you may well ask, if they’re booked that’s it, end of story… well no, because we have another phenomenon in play here, namely The Great Phnom Penh Reservation Mystery!

The (presumably unwritten) law among the Phnom Penh restaurant fraternity is that reservation is sacrosanct. One example – the FCC. Foreign Correspondents Club, one of the legendary eating and drinking places of the city (although it has precious little to do with foreign correspondents, and actually never has. You’ll find most of them, particularly the ones who never made it back, downing Tequila in Cantina, just down the block…) has these balcony tables, which appear to be constantly reserved. Come in, say at 5pm for a happy hour drink, go to sit by the balcony and you’ll be given short shrift – ask politely and you’ll be told this table is reserved, so no, you can’t sit there until the reservee turns up. An hour and a half later, by which time you if you’ve stuck around to mire yourself deeper in the overpriced delights (but it is happy hour… go on, one more G ‘n’ T) of the drinks card you will have observed around a half dozen others being shooed away, the customer who reserved the table finally turns up. This scenario is repeated all over town…

Myself and A are early eaters. We normally dine just after 6 on a Saturday evening. This is because we have both got abnormally large stomachs and digestive tracts, and only eat once a week, so we spend a great deal of time swallowing and digesting large amounts of food to ensure we will not suffer any hunger pangs from Sunday to Friday. We’re a bit like those snakes you see on National Geographic Channel, crushing then slowly engulfing and devouring their prey, usually (for ultimate televisual shock value) a large and startled rat. Of course we don’t do anything like that in a restaurant. The closest would be shelling prawns I suppose.

Yes, the above is indeed a complete and utter lie. We eat early because we are too old to stay out late (anytime after 8pm is ‘late’ for us). But we too stand in completely empty restaurants at 6pm to be told ‘sorry, fully booked’ and marvel at how completely crazy they are to turn us away when we’d be in and out in under an hour, long before their other customers would turn up…
Tonight will be different though. Tonight I am going to block book every upmarket restaurant in Phnom Penh under a multiplicity of assumed names from a plethora of phone booths across the city… we shall have drinks in one, starter in another, main course elsewhere, dessert somewhere else, coffee… who knows? …and in each we will call the maitre d’ over and puzzle together with them over where the hell exactly everybody is tonight…???

Or maybe not. But where to go indeed? In truth, we are spoiled for choice… ‘Armands’, to watch ever so slightly tetchy owner Armand theatrically flambe steaks and desserts? No, went there last week… ‘Yumi’, for Japanese cuisine cooked marvellously by a chef from that well known Japanese prefecture, London? Maybe, but one place you definitely need to book… ‘Deco’, the latest hot dining spot? Ditto as per ‘Yumi’. ‘La Marmite’, hearty French food located next door to a pole dancing club (mmm… wonder why our Tuk-Tuk driver the good Chairman Mao always waits for us outside? Everywhere else he heads off home to await a call…). Perhaps. What about ‘Zino’s’, new kid on the block, a wine bar plus restaurant with an Orcadian chef? Yes, you did hear me right – Phnom Penh is nothing if not cosmoplitan now… ‘Dolce Italia’, Giorgio (Pop Cafe’s) delightful (and truly delicious) pizza restaurant, staffed by the cast of Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’ video? Come to think of it, that video seems to have had a profound influence on the uniforms sported by staff in the upmarket wining and dining spots of the Penh. They must all be owned or run by men of a certain age, I surmise…

ArmandInAction
Choices, choices…

Perhaps we’ll just get on the blower and order a number 23, chicken chow mein and chop suey from the Hong Kong Garden takeaway…

Oh hang on a minute, we’re not in Chiselhurst anymore… are we?

Back in the New York Groove!

Posted on by Skip

Hello!
Remember them?
They were a fresh faced gaggle of British glam-rockers from the 1970’s who were on the cusp of Sweet-y campness and Status Quo denim laddishness, completely forgettable apart from one thing, their only major hit single. That was ‘New York Groove’, a Bo Diddley-ish vamp crossed with some vicious powerchords in the chorus that was goshdarn infectious, so infectious that it was even picked up across the broad Atlantic by those purveyors of comic book rock outrageousness, Kiss, and turned into a hit for them.
Ah, Kiss… during my tenure with Scottish band Close Action, who mutated (or should that be evolved? No, I’ll stick with mutated…) into Z-Rox and thence into The Cuban Heels, we had a roadie, Willie (The Worm) who loved Kiss. In fact, he was completely and utterly obsessed by them. Probably still is, for all I know. We even covered one of their tunes, ‘Do You Love Me’, in our live set. It was a dumb rock’n’roll song, but I actually kind of enjoyed performing it. There is nothing wrong with being dumb occasionally, especially in rock’n’roll. I also had a soft spot for the tune that went on about wanting to rock’n’roll all night and party every day, as of course that was a particular ambition of all of us cramped into our yellow Transit as we criss-crossed the country, and hang on, what about that other seminal classic ‘Crazy, Crazy Nights’.
What about it?
It sounded a little like a lobotomized Slade, that’s what. 
Back in the 70’s, I had a problem with Slade. That problem was that to the followers of the former Ambrose Slade I was one of ‘them’. You know, one of ‘those’ guys. The love that dare not speak its name… yes, a T.Rex fan! I envied someone like Steven Beaton who appeared able to like both Slade and T.Rex and get away with it, but then again he was built like a brick sh*thouse, so who was going to argue with him? As I matured (hah!) realization gradually dawned that actually yes, Slade were pretty good, and away from the hothouse of factional teenage angst that was Thurso High School you could actually celebrate diversity and individuality in equal measures – dammit yes, I’ll have a lager tops with a shot of blackcurrant and a dash of lime if you don’t mind please Sybil. Yes Billy, I will assist you in cleaning up my own vomit later… (those last two references will carry deep meaning for those frequenters of the legendary Sheiling Bar, Thurso, in the 70’s and 80’s…). Don’t get me started on vomit, or I may start dredging up memories of famous technicolour yawns of my Thurso past, such as the Marine Inn (‘no worries, it was only a mouthful.’ the classic comment from owner Roddy), the Central Bar (all over the bar… but it was a smaller bar in those days) and Jimmy Riddell’s Triumph TR7 (performed at approximately 100mph on Castlegreen Road both inside and outside the vehicle…sorry again Jimmy)…
Now that was a bit of a digression, wasn’t it? I guess what I really meant to say was ‘Hello’.
Again.
After a two year break (and a sideways step into another blog that didn’t last very long), I’ve come back to ‘Lost In Space’, and I will try to post more regularly about life here in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia, and about the many things past and present, home and away, including (surprise!) a hefty dash of music, that make me smile, frown, get up and get down etc etc…
It’s nice to be back, and If I do wander off the subject from time to time, you will forgive me, won’t you…?
Won’t you?

(This post is dedicated to Mr. Ray Harryhausen, 1920-2013, a genius of his craft.)