Literature
Postcard from Thailand Part II
04-05 January We had left Heathrow on 2nd January, arriving in Bangkok in the afternoon of the 3rd – our first full day in Thailand would therefore be the 4th which just so happened to [more…]
Thailand
Literature
Postcard from Thailand Part I
Planning การวางแผน Neither the wife or I have ever been to Thailand, and it was one of our ‘bucket list’ of countries we’d like to go to; a visit to which was more likely to [more…]
20th Century
The Death Railway, Part Five
David Lean’s 1957 film depicted the bridge as a significant timber structure located in the deep jungle, spanning a narrow river featuring rocks and rapids. This is of course a work of fiction and was [more…]
20th Century
The Death Railway, Part Four
Step forward to the present day; SWMBO and I have been visiting Thailand for many years and decided it was time to head out to the Death Railway as Grandad Humbug had been in Burma [more…]
20th Century
The Death Railway, Part Three
Railway Construction Initially, the railway construction schedule allowed reasonable working conditions to be imposed on the POWs who, at that time, formed the majority of the skilled workforce. This combined with the fact that the [more…]
20th Century
The Death Railway, Part Two
The preparatory work was completed by early September 1942 and construction began both in Burma and Thailand on the 16th of that month. Many of the Japanese engineers had attended British universities before heading back [more…]
20th Century
The Death Railway
Most Puffins will have watched David Lean’s 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai which is based on a novel published five years previously by French author Pierre Boulle. Whilst both book and film [more…]
Arts
Mum’s Eightieth Birthday
Some three months before Mum’s 80th my brother, Barry, and I got together to work out what we could organise for her. We came up with a number of ideas, amongst them were a party [more…]
20th Century
Postcard From Kanchanaburi
In the now forgotten days when human beings were still allowed to show their faces and set foot out of the house rather than get fat on furlough, soon to become Universal Basic Income followed [more…]