Lady Van de Meer's Win Two red taxis sped along the Tolo highway and two taxi drivers who knew that all westerners were crazy asked two ladies each to remove their somewhat exaggerated headgear which blocked completely their rear windows. ‘What did he say?’ ‘He asked the girls to remove their titfers.’ It was Bunny Badgewick who had interpreted for he, alone of all the ex-pats on the Dragon's Back, had successfully completed the Cantonese course that ...
More to come from the Dragon's Back, I promise ... if anyone wants more, that is. Bit busy at the moment proof reading/re-writing a hundred or so pages and completing an 8 page cartoon strip insert (proof reading has to be the worst job ever invented. Had I access to a time machine I would be tempted to travel back a couple of hundred years so that I could volunteer to pick okum!) Don't know why I said yes. Maybe its simply a desire to be loved! .... or was it the ...
A Rose by Any Name Algernon Twygge had an unusual charm but little else to commend him. Born Alan Twig in a small Dorset village he had been a studious boy and had excelled in matters academic. His father had been an underwriter in the family firm of Twig, Alsop and Murchison, and it had been an accepted fact that Alan would follow in his father's safe and steady footsteps and the family had high expectations. So it came as something of a surprise when he announced that he had secured ...
Christmas Our first house in Hong Kong was a little more than halfway up an very narrow, very steep hill with precipitous drops to the jungle on one side and the main road into Kowloon on the other. We christened it The Dragon's Back. Christmas was coming, our first. In a vain effort at English normality I took my young office manager with me, into the teeming streets of Mong Kok, to purchase presents for the staff. She did not understand my motives and said 'Why you ...
It was Mrs Gwendoline (pronounced with a long ‘i’ to suggest the lady was of American heritage) Featherstonehaugh (pronounced Fanshaw to prove a marriage to one of the more ancient and respectable English families) who first introduced me to Proust (pronounced Prowst to distinguish the young gentleman from the French novelist). Proust was a social climber of the least acceptable sort, if indeed there are gradations in such a group, and would be seen in and around the various recreation ...
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