Your musings apart, Arthur, this pc threw up a few recollections. Kick-Can in Bradford Street - Tate and Lyle - "Out of the strong came forth sweetness" - always the most durable.

Your original observations brought back to me a remembered sight that, at first, had confused me. I was coasting to the traffic lights in Doddington Road when on the corser to my right I noticed a youthful female figure (who wouldn't) out of my eye-corner. Her head and upper body were going through a series of unusual motions that could have indicated an epileptic seizure. When I stopped I was able to determine what it was she did.

Her head went back and then dropped to the left - the first to take a swig from her Starbucks carton in her left hand immediately followed by the downward twist of her head to the mobile device held in her right hand at waist height which attracted her attention for a few seconds until she remembered the coffee container in her other hand. And so the sequence of jerks recommenced.

Without a bidding she would certainly have rejected, here was a young woman voluntarily under the control of two of the mightiest forces in modern society.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1952-60

Current location (optional) Nirvana

We planned to make our regular trip to see Sione’s parents in Canlaon City but we were hearing rumours of flooded roads and downed bridges because of the ‘quake and the fact that not much repair work had even been started let alone nearing completion but hey! this is the Philippines.
As a result of the rumours and dire warnings from her parents that they were praying for our safe journey, which was worrying in itself, we planned, as an alternative route, to break from the National Highway, and the road we normally follow, and cross over the island that is the Negros, Oriental and Occidental, at Mabinay and follow a road into Canlaon, by the back door as it were. A huge diversion and larger than it sounds.
This meant a big right turn just after Bais and taking a road we had never travelled before. The adventure spirit roused, beckoned, stirred deep in the heart of Sione and I, and we Googled the road and explored the implications of a diversion from our normal route.
At the end we decided to travel our normal route but keep the diversion to Mabinay as Plan B, you know the plan that George Osborne does not have.
(As an aside let me advise that everyone, and I mean everyone, Chancellors included, should have a Plan B. I call them contingincies.)
So we left Dumaguete City, early and well laden. We had accumulated a sister of Sione and her child, a cousin and Sione’s daughter, the one who acquired a degree last month and pined for her loved one, he who had graduated ‘Cum Lauda’, he who lived and thrived, thanks to an adoring Mama, somewhere away beyond San Carlos. This was, then, the group we seemed to have acquired, aggregated, pretty much in the same way a larger rock accrues space debris- without even trying. On top of which, Sione had provisioned the journey and stacked clothes and food and water. A great provider is Sione.
So all things being more or less come together, as one, ready, we departed, before cock-shout, while all was still and dark and the streets were free and wide.
We made good time, over the first part of our journey, passing through the sleeping baranguays.
I am sure there were many there who slept, distanced from the labour and demands of their lives in deserved slumber, but still, whenever we passed through even the smallest hamlet, clutch of huts, village, whatever, there was always someone stood by the side of the road to watch our swift passage through the night that moved towards a distant day. Always a white T-shirt was displayed and shorts, lit for a brief moment by the sweep and light of our passage. We passed and parted in a moment, he, to wonder who we were and why and I, to wonder why he did not sleep.
We passed through a massive cloud burst or rather the remains of it for no rain splashed our wind screen but the roads were puddled and where the road was at a higher level than the surrounding bush there in the gathered bush were great ponds and bouncing brown rivers writhed and gushed. Folk were up and about battling the floods that threatened their homes. We also began to see collapsed leaf huts hung from their broken stilts and tucked into dry corners were the blue plastic sheets of temporary homes. Then, as we neared Jimalalud we could see the crumbled , broken mansions felled by a mighty fist, this quake was no respecter of person or wealth. It hit what it liked. Strangely, I could not see any difference in one leaf house or the other nor indeed between one large mansion or another and yet this one was felled, broken but the next door sound as a bell and occupied. This Green mansion slumped as though someone had lifted it and broken it over his knee then pulled it apart like a lego construction and next door apparently untouched.
We came at last to Jimalalud when the dawn had come and the day was light.
Smooth running so far but more, much more, to come.
We met a large collection of waiting cars and lorries. Why?
Men jabbered and waved at us to clear the road. We manoeuvred and found a place,
Why did we have to wait? It emerged over time that the brdge at Jimalalud was indeed down. There was a great swerving diversion off into the muddy bush and through a ford and up out of the river. A convoy would gather and then snake through the diversion and we would find a convoy travelling in the opposite direction gathered and waiting. Out turn came and we were warned to mind we did not bottom out on the rutted diversion road and to keep moving.
We bumped and lurched our way through the gathered palm leaf and dense foliage and eventually down a rocky bank into the ford. Fortunately, the cloud burst we had witnessed earlier had been very localised and the river here was not a torrent although it was in a hurry. We could feel the rounded rocks on the bottom shifting under our wheels. Everyone in the car had fallen silent or hissed quietly or yelped plaintively ‘Go faster, faster!’. Some boys pointed the way for us to follow and then we were through and up out of the river. Sione burst into delighted laughter.
-That was fun, she burbled –I go back and do it again, she squealed and everyone shouted their cries of horror at her to which she responded with squeals of delight. Mad woman. I think she was just as nervous as the rest of us but she does delight in other’s discomfort sometimes.
My hand was in cramp from where I had been gripping the hand bar on the side of the car.
We raced on our way and the sun was up and we were suddenly hungry and looking for a spot to eat and wee-wee. Everywhere we thought suitable for a picnic site was either under buko palms, ( never park under buko palms unless you want to be bombed ), or not level, or too wet or too close to houses or some other criteria was broken. Then we rounded a corner and there was a low wall, a view of the shining sea and plenty of room to park and we all yelled our approval and our breakfast picnic could begin.

We had a good breakfast of rice, bread, boiled eggs and coffee. Over the wall there was a clump of shrubs and then the sea and all the time we ate I could here a regular pounding, chopping sound.
I have an avid and insatiable curiosity and as I finished eating I wandered over to one side to get some sort of view past the clump of shrubbery. There were two rocks, large smooth rocks, and a man was sat on one with a stone club and he would reach into the water and pull out a long thick stalk of some large plant and pound the fibres loose from the fleshy meat of the stalk. I thought that at first that he was actually finding the plant there by the rock but then realised that the stalks had been brought here to be soaked in the sea and then to be pounded on these rocks. Two boys would gather up the bundles of fibres and carry them up to a waiting cycle and side-car and cycle it away to a nearby hamlet. Sione explained that they used the fibres to make soft sweeping brooms.
Beyond this cameo another man fished from his boat as he stood. The canoe had outriders and it rode steady on a sea free of ripples. Then, to my surprise, he stepped from the boat and stood only knee deep and towed his fishing platform to another site.
A young mother and smaller child stepped into the sea and walked towards a wooden platform, she was carrying a wee baby. I watched as she waded to the platform and stepped up onto it. Then she took off the baby’s napkin, a piece of stained cloth, and the smaller child bathed the baby’s bottom clean while her mother dangled the wee bundle over the water. Then she stepped back into the sea and waded ashore and lay the half-washed cloth on a fence to dry while she breast fed the baby and the smaller child paddled. Sione called me and I broke from this pastoral idyll to continue our journey.
-I don’t like this place, she moaned and stamping her feet,- too many ants. I looked around and everyone else was stamping and shaking their feet. So that was this idyllic site damned as well.
The journey from Jimalalud through La Libertad and Guihuingan City was the same views of cracked roads, tumbled walls and gates, cracked and broken mansions and collapsed huts and flattened shanties together with all the undamaged ones in between. We knew that the death dealing landslides took place a little further inland so we would not be able to see that tragic sight.
Guihuingan City had been hit badly by the quake and in addition had been assaulted by a series of cloudbursts that inhibited rescue work and indeed wrought further damage and the week before our journey it had been further visited by a series of aftershocks and to add insult to injury a tornado came to town, buffeting and bullying, blustering and breaking, before roistering off, out to sea.
The road up to Vallehermoso was quieter and clearer and we made good time. Eventually we rendezvoued with Sione’s daughter‘s boyfriend and she left to ride with him on his motorcycle. They followed behind us up the airy glen, the tortuous winding road to Canlaon as we climbed the skirts of the great Kan- laon volcanic cone.
There is a tale that two lovers from different warring tribes fell in love, he was Kan and she was Laon and they were denied expression of their love by chiefs of their tribes. Rather than live without their heart’s love they chose to climb the volcano and throw themselves in . They did this and the tribes filled with remorse and grief warred no longer and the volcano got its name Kanlaon. The city itself choosing a different spelling nevertheless took the name for itself. Nice story, asort of Romeo and Juliet without the balcony scene.
Our time in Canlaon was enjoyable and we were as usual greeted by delighted friends and relations.
I was still entranced by the possibility of a different route back to Dumaguete and suggested to Sione that we try the alternative. She readily agreed with a gleam in her eye. A new adventure always beckons for her.
Her brother Jito, the police sergeant asked a lift from us to Dumaguete. So having lost several passengers we acquired two new ones. We left around noon.
Our climb up to Canlaon the previous day now became a journey of swift descent as we first rounded a little of the volcano and then plunged down through small hamlets and villages, always down, down, down in descending curves a bit like the Cresta Run. Then out onto broad plantations of sugar, sugar, sugar.
I mentioned that there was an awful lot of sugar cane growing there. Jito told me the Negros grows most sugar in Philippines but it all belongsto one man. Really? Yes, he spat, the President Aquino, Noy-Noy. Incidentally I met a parrot in Canlaon who if asked ‘Who is the president?’ answered ‘Noy-Noy!’
The sugar cane plantations stretched for many miles but eventually we hit the National Highway and turned south. We had crossed the Negros Island and were now in Negros Occidental. The first thing to note was the condition of the roads which were superb. Smooth, without potholes, signposted and road markings, Ye Gods! Road markings! We made excellent time but I noted a great,nay monstrous black cloud dropping grey veils of rain in the distance - and we were heading straight for it.
Eventually we found it and boy! Did it rain? great bouncing stair-rods that my old Grandma described as raining in ‘ iggs and swuthers’. Sione laughed and drove straight on and in five minutes of rain-streaked windscreens that the wipers barely managed and the ferocious drumming on the roof and we were through into clear blur skies and sunlight.
On our right were great square fields of seawater with racks and rods, in and amongst, nets. Ah! squeals Sione, Oysters! She braked and pulled over and we entered a close little eatery with great steaming coppers of hot water. Sione bought two loaded baskets of oysters and they were plunged into the coppers for a couple of minutes and then they dove in with metal openers and spiced vinegar, slurping the small oysters which were fresh, of course, just from over the road.
I do not do oysters. I had one in my mouth once and was throwing up for a week at the memory of it in my mouth. So I sipped a small rhum. By the way with all this sugar it is not surprising that Tanduay Rhum is a cheap national drink, very nice drinking with lots of ice and I like it with an iced green tea mixer. So rhum and bread for me as the Walrus and the Carpenter entertained the oysters.
After this brief stop we turned back inland to recross the island via Mabinay and come out at Bais City.
There was something strange about this journey which I have not yet figured out and that is the inwards journey was really not steep and I got the impression that we were following a low pass through the mountains rather than going over them. There was no impression of being well up in the air and then we broached the island and there far below us the sea, red in the setting sun, and a hair-raising descent down a shining white and winding road. I still do not understand how we got so high , of course the road over had been long and we must have been going up steadily all the way and then the short, and so swift and steep, descent would make a sort of sense but still it did seem surprisingly strange.
Our judgement is that despite the longer journey, longer by about 40 kilometres, the riding was so much easier that we made it in better time than the outward journey, discounting the diversion and the breakfast, in just travelling time alone it was faster and easier. We shall go that way again I am sure.

For those of you who have followed my adventurings here at the other side of the world and my escapades, wondering at my long silence. Please be assured I am fit and well and sweating mightily under the unremittingly pittiless probings of a merciless sun. So you had snow in May. Tough. Try the pinning pierce of a noonday sun in the Philippines.It searches you physically. It probes and insists.It is alive! You cannot ignore it. The dogs give in. Melt into the shade and rest and perspire. I think to join them. But I am primate supreme. I venture forth and observe. I will communicate such observations later. Meanwhile I sweat and rest.

"If you don't like it,lad,you shouldn't've joined"

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 55-60

As I open my latest blog, which will include tales of a wedding, a tropical storm called Butchoy, some green hens and a smelly witch, I watch from my window as the fading evening sky, cloudless and palely-fading blue, acts as the backdrop to a waltz and twitch of bats as they swoop and gyre, feasting on a cloud of dancing flying insects, a hatching.
When I realise, now and again, how massive is the weight of insects as part, a percentage, which, incidentally, far exceeds humanity’s contribution, of the bio-mass of our planet, I am grateful to all the spiders, birds, bats, my tin of Baygon and my cheap, but accurately effective, yellow, plastic swatter. which allows us to keep the creeping, humming, biting, winged, swarming hordes in check.
But to my blog.
We were first heading up to Canlaon to sleep there overnight then, the following day, together with the rest of Sione’s extended family; we were off to Calatrava, which is further north of Canlaon, for the wedding of Sione’s daughter Realyn to Andre.
It was for this journey and this reason, that Sione, like any good mother, had been packing, unpacking, re-arranging and repacking for the ten days previous to our departure.
What was going to make this particular journey more interesting than most was the arrival of tropical storm Butchoy. This early season low pressure area would not arrive here in the Visayas but even though passing well north of us it would trail its skirts of wind and rain across our path.
So we began our journey and rode with squeaky windscreen wipers through a rain-filled day, along the journey I have described in detail many times before and when we arrived in Canlaon, after a surprisingly quick journey, the car, previously polished and shining for the wedding, was camouflaged with mud.
It was on this first part of our journey that I saw the green hens, which have nothing to do with the malodorous witch. There they were about ten, maybe more, green hens I spotted as we sped past a small farmstead clutching the edge of the highway. Now green is not the natural colour of hens. I have been many places and seen many hens and none of them have been green. But, as I say, there they were. Green as bobs of lettuce. And then we were past them.
If Sione had seen them she never mentioned them so I broached the subject.
-I just saw some green hens.
-Yes.
-No, really. I did see some green hens.
-I know. I saw them.
-O.
I was quiet for a moment then,
-Why were they green?
- I don’t know. You want we go back and ask.
She is an expert in sarcasm. I chuckled.
-No. I just thought you might know. It is your part of the planet. I have seen no green hens in the UK.
-He dyed them.
-The owner?
-Yes. I think it is stop people stealing them.
-Aah. That makes sense.
Given that she was driving through some rather dreadful conditions her short remarks have to be understood as quite sufficient and polite.
And it did make a sort of sense. More sense than my first thoughts which were that the owner was a big fan of Dr Seuss and had been reading ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ and hoped to get the green eggs from his newly-coloured hens. Green ham is easy. Just leave a piece on the table for a couple of days. But Sione’s explanation was better. If the owner had been losing hens then dying them green would be a sort of deterrent for if they stole them now, in that colourful condition, and killed them to eat there would be green feathers around the thief’s house I imagine.
We sped on our wet way leaving Sam-I-Am behind us.
So that’s the green hens out of the way. The smelly witch comes later.
We slept at her parent’s house which has places in the walls for windows but no windows in the spaces. The wind was up and Butchoy was intrusively gusting with vigour, shaking loose tin roofs, chasing rain along the roofs and sweeping the sugarcane with a hissing sigh.
Nevertheless, we slept, although I awoke a couple of times to watch the curtains billow and lift and fall slowly back, bellying in the wind that shook the house. The house was newly built in a meadow, a pasture, inhabited by copiously shiteing cariboa, who littered the ragged pasture with wet plaps of cowflap.
Early in the wet morning, just before a grey dawn arrived, there was an explosion of heavy rain upon the roof, no slow increase in the rate but an eruption of slashing rain lashing the world, including our home, and that was it for the day. Rain, rain, rain- and more rain and a sweeping wind.
We got dressed for the wedding and made for an early start.
Sione’s Poppa had worn flip-flops all his life and possessed no real shoes. Jito found a pair for him and although they seemed at least four sizes too big for him, he wore them proudly. To give you some idea of the disparity between the size of his feet and the size of his shoes, I confidentally conject you could have put a live hamster into the toe of each shoe and if he had worn them all day the hamsters would have survived. They may have hibernated but they would have survived. You could here the clap-clap-clap of the shoes hitting the tiles as he moved about the house.
The journey to Calatrava was one of rain and mud and broken roads through fields of lashed sugarcane that bent and swayed as Butchoy toyed with them. We arrived more bedecked with mud than we had been when we arrived at Canlaon. Shamed we parked the car under a tree away from prying eyes.
For myself, I saw the splatters of mud more as a badge of honour betokening the effort we had made to be at the wedding.
We had come a long muddy way through rain, winds and green hens. Be proud.
There was a short stop at a sort of boarding house where everyone prepared themselves for the wedding which was to take place a further journey away.
I changed my shirt and waited and watched.
Sione was called by the photographer for a picture with her daughter ,who looked quite radiant, and a small man, who I guessed to be Sione’s ex, and I was proven right later. Sione stood for her picture but ignored him as studiously as he ignored her.
10am came nearer and the wedding was programmed to begin at EXACTLY 10. Sione’s sisters, unused to sophisticated cosmetics, smeared their eyes with eye shadow from Sione’s kit. They emerged looking quite ghastly and off we went.
Another swift journey over broken roads and we arrived at the church.
Sione was asked to sit next to her ex at the front and I was left alone and further back happily under a cooling fan as the service began.
The service was conducted entirely in the local language which was not Tagalog nor Cebuana but some other. I never understood a word of it. It went on and on and every now and then someone would come forward and give a bible to the pair, or a chalice, or cover them with a veil. There was a clap-clap-clap of over-sized shoes as Poppa and Momma came forward and bound the couple with the Cord of Undying Love ( a piece of white rope).
And so it went on with strange language and different comings and goings which were accompanied by keyboard and drum belting out music and a rich baritone singing parts of what I imagined were the mass, ringing and booming around the echoing church.
Happily for me it reached an end and we all departed for the reception which was rocky kilometres away. It was still raining. We stopped at the motel and changed back into travelling clothes and arrived at the civic hall just as the wedding breakfast was about to begin but first the speeches. Boy, do they enjoy speechifying here. The men were brief and succinct, thank goodness but the women would go on and on and all in the local language.
Sione had to sit at a special table where the bride and groom and their parents were to be seated raised above the hoi-polloi by the conventions of the day. Sione left a gap between herself and her ex. Later I noticed they exchanged a few words and Sione explained later she had told him that she had a new life now and that he should get a job and find a new wife. She left the table and joined me when she felt it reasonable and polite to do so.
Her ex left the top table also and came and sat with family but still well away from Sione. Someone came and told Sione that he was crying. Someone always cries at a wedding, I told her, its part of the day after all. Sione did not move she said quietly to me.”He has much to cry about.”
But enough about that part of the day.
We had a long hard journey back to Canlaon and fortunately the rain had stopped as we returned over the broken muddy ways and found a smooth road once again and two hours driving brought us safe home to Poppa’s house.
Later that night I opened my eyes and the curtains still billowed and rose and floated in the light from a small battery lamp. Like a scene from ‘Rebecca’.
We planned an early breakfast at Poppa’s stall and then our journey home could begin. I was drinking my coffee when I was enveloped by a stench of quite noisome intensity. I looked about me trying to locate the source and there,stood close behind me, was a hideous lank dirty creature. Straight out of ‘Snow White’( and I can still recall the terror of that moment in the film where the wicked queen turned into that hideous witch) Yuk! The Niffery! It was appalling. Sione mouthed ‘Witch.’ at me and I cowered. She was begging, of course. Now I have to say that to reach that level of stink one has to assiduously dedicate decades of unwashedness both to one’s body and the clothes one wears. She was scaled and her clothes were besmirched with unnameable stains. How she endured her condition is beyond understanding and if it had not been for the stench I could have pitied her. Jito bid here leave and she shuffled away on her stick thin legs but her smell lingered, a concoction of ill-kept hamster’s cage, old urine, stale sweat and other malodorous ingredients.
I took my coffee deeper into the stall and waited to leave.
The weather eased and we had a safe journey home but Sione insisted on taking the car to a car wash before finishing our journey.
So there you have it; a wedding, a tropical storm, green hens and a smelly witch - all as promised.

So I have a tale to tell that does not involve the rain that lashes and floods Manilla, which lies well north of us here in Dumguete. I have explained in other blogs that tropical storms and typhoons follow a well established path that sweeps over the northern edge of the islands and gives Luzon a bashing although occasionally and not often they break from their normality and hit us here in Dumaguete. In the main we get a brief brushing from the skirts of the storms which invoves grey, turbulent skies, a lot of rain and some winds.
Sione greets such skies with a wise. ‘ Low pressure come.’
So we had some rain and winds that blew a tree down but nothing really, the tree being inherently weak . It was soon macheted into bundles of firewood by the little old lady with the bad legs, the broad gleaming smile and the flashing machete. “Good afternooooooon’ she sings at me when ever I go to watch her. By the way that elongated noooooon is common here not just the old lady but she does it with such a big smile that it provokes my smiles in return.
No. no. its not about storms that I write this blog. My tale is a rat’s tale. No, not a rat’s tail. A rat’s tale. Do pay attention.
It all began as Sione tidied her well-beloved car and discovered rat turds, she calls them rat pooh but sucks boo to the niceties these were turds. Diminutive, I accept, but turds nevertheless. Sod the niceties.
Sione insisted she could smell the rats and indeed they seem to have eaten some of my mail that I had kept in my glove box. She has a remarkably sensitive nose and if she smelt a rat you could be sure that there was one. I have no idea what a rat is supposed to smell like so I would not have thought ’rat’ even had I detected the odour.
We purchased some rat poison and laid out some poisoned sardines for them and a few days later we found the corpse of one stiff on the patio being ignored by the dogs who sort of slept around it.
Later there was another and the turds stopped so we thought the problem solved.
I got up early one morning a little later that week and discovered one of our armchairs out on the patio, tipped on end and the cloth on the bottom pulled away.
‘There is a rat in there.’ Sione explained when I queried the armchair. Her sensitive nose again proved accurate when a further rat corpse appeared on the patio.
Anyway we seemed at last to be well deratted and were driving home one evening when as she turned on the headlights one of the hazard lights appeared on permanently and only disappeared when she turned the headlights off. ‘ The rats cause that.’ she opined with authority. I qasked why she thought so. ‘They eat the wires.’ I thought that would cause all the lights to go out but did not argue.
We have found a friendly and efficient little mechanic and drove over to see him next morning.
He ducked inside the car and started tugging at cables and dismantling the lights.
Sione said, ’ It will be the rats, I think.’
The man started pulling bits of plastic out from behind the dashboard and chewed paper.This was followed by some eye shadow and bluetack.
‘I have been looking for that ‘ squeaked Sione grabbing itall and adding ,’ The rats are thieves.’
The man pulled some wires clear and poimted at them.The rats had chewed through the rubber /plastic on the wir and the bare wires had touched and welded together so that when we turned on the lights for night driving the hazard lightrecived a permanent flow of electricity .
‘I tell you it was rats.’ She looked at me proudly. I had to agree she was right.The technician also told us the rats cause many problems with airconditioning, blocking the vents and tubes feeding air around the dashboard.
So as I close this brief blog and watch the bats twitch and flicker across the pale cloudless evening sky and the radio mutters that heavy rain still assails a flooded Manilla I realise that when Sione tells me that she smells a rat she is being totally literal and intends no figurative implication.
I am enjoying the Olympics and although I applaud all our gold medals I am particularly proud of Yorkshire’s contribution and I hope all the old boys feel that swell of pride also.

I miss your postcards Arthur. Hope you and Sione are well. And hope Dumaguete is safe from Bopha.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 54-59

Hello Gareth. Thank you for your kind interest in Arthur and, like myself and other close relatives in the UK, you might have been more than a little concerned about the typhoon which threatened the Philippines some 10 days ago. We received an Email from him dated 2nd Dec, informing us of typhoon 'Pablo' which was due to make landfall 'within 24 hours', and they were preparing survival kits in anticipation. Apart from details gleaned from brief reports here on TV and the internet we heard nothing from Arthur until Monday 10th, when we received an Email, sent from one of the few internet cafes 'up and running', advising us that they are fit and well. The Super Typhoon caused widespread damage in the area felling ancient trees and power lines leaving them without power for 6 days, and counting. So, no fridge, no fans, no PC, etc. They had been given a Storm Warning of Level 3. The house next door to them was blown down(ie 'flattened') They themselves, had minor roof damage which was repaired the following day. The Ferry Building at Siquior was uprooted, brought to Demuguete and deposited, gently, alongside the Ferry Terminal there. That's about all the information I can pass on to you at this stage apart from the news that, at the last count, some 900 plus people are known to have died during this storm. No doubt Arthur will post something more detailed on this site when conditions there return to somewhere near normal.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

Thanks for that David. Everything is up and running now which speaks highly for the preparations for the Typhoon and warnings which were made well in advance. It arrived here at our place at 4pm Tuesdau 4t and stayed until 1 am the following morning. We experienced very little damage apart from lack of power and some damage to the roof. We ventured forth the next morning but could get nowhere as all roads were blocked by felled trees and downed power lines.maniny the ples holding up the wires damaged. They would have turned off the power as the typhoon hit I imagine for safety.
The 900 dead David mentions consists mainly of Fisehermen from Mindanao who working for a Fishing fleet were ordered out to sea despite warnings. Questions now asked why authorities, who have the power, did not ban any sailings. I will blog more later. Arthur Thanks for any concerns .

Thanks for the update Arthur. As you know util my retirement last Easter I was UK agent and distributor for a chemical plant in Mindanao ( an hours drive north of Cagayan, and somewhere opposite you I think. I hope the plant is still standing !

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Not much news from Cagayan Brian. I did hear they evacuated 2 baranguays Carmen and one other Much damage again.1/5th of banana plants destroyed on Mindanao The rebel army even felt compelled to declare a ceasefire. My blog will follow later.

It has been a while since my last blog and much has happened not only at the personal level but on a national level also.
First then let me explain that we have moved home from the compound where we had settled nearly three years ago into a house in Sibulan, or rather closer to Sibulan than to Dumaguete. However, although they are distinct townships I still see places like Sibulan and Valencia as suburbs of Dumaguete in that if I need to buy anything for the house, visit a hospital or find an ATM I have to go into Dumaguete.
Our move occurred because Sione’s brother. Jito, he of the appetite for dog and charred squid, had a property in Sibulan from his days at the Police College, which is just over the paddy fields from here. He had rented it to someone who had now vacated the property and he offered it to us rent free if we would look after the property and pay the electric and water bills.
The house had been left in a poor condition but a little work and all was righted and tidied. We needed to make the place secure in the first place because as Jito took us to see the house for the first time he discovered he had left the keys somewhere else but he went round the back and climbed into the house to open the doors. Security became priority number one!
It was around this time that I woke in the early hours shivering and trembling as I was invaded by some illness that laid me on my mattress for 8 days and robbed me of strength, appetite and interest. I cannot be sure what it was that made me so ill but it was not the dreaded dengue and, to be sure, it felt more like a very bad cold or a weaker form of flu. It was not malaria. Whatever, I was unable to be involved in any of the activities normally associated with house moving and the burden fell upon Sione entirely. To her lasting credit she never wavered but did it all, decorating, collecting and ordering then moving bits and pieces, supervising security measures at our new home as a fence was built, walls raised by a couple of hollow blocks higher, sealing gaps in the house walls and any niche which she thought might allow invasion and all the time nursing me. She is a titan. On the due date she bundled me into the car along with the dogs that seemed aware that something different was afoot and did not struggle overmuch. Indeed Bobby was happy to watch the passing scene through the side window.
As a matter of interest Bobby was ill, off-colour really, no appetite, for about two weeks back in October but then recovered to appear as leaner more muscular dog now taller than Snowie and before we raised the walls at the new house capable of clearing them in a bound.
When we arrived at our new home and all ties with our other home had been severed and nothing left behind, Sione dumped me onto my new bed and left me to recover.
I did so, but as I say I was greatly weakened and I had lost some weight. I did some research and found my new weight and BMI were now ideal for my height. At the time I write now I am well recovered and fit and well. We are nearer the sea now and Sione insisted on taking me there every day because bathing there would give me strength. I did not refuse. The sea was warm and laved me gently but I doubt its strength-giving properties.
Christmas begins early here and we have regular visits by kids singing “We wish you a merry Xmas” and “Jingle bells”. The shops are teeming and brightly lit with plastic Christmas Trees glistening with plastic snow and decorations and strings of lights decking and festooning everything. This is a deeply religious country as I have observed before from thanking God for the relief of a fart to regular, every 30 minutes, fervent pleas being made, by radio, to God, Master and Creator of the Universe, that Typhoon Pablo takes as little life as possible. More of Pablo later.
What I find incongruous is how this devout, intense religiosity has allowed the West to define their Christmas from the singing of Jingle Bells when not one child could describe a ‘one horse sleigh’ or even explain snow, that they allow fir trees to stand in their homes when the first real fir is a thousand miles north of them, that the decorating even of trees is of pagan origin coming from the tree worshippers of ancient Germanic races.
At the very end of November we began to receive warnings of a tropical storm developing to the south of the Philippines. The authorities had learned much from the chaotic response to Sindong last December and identified ‘unpreparedness’ as being a major factor in the number of deaths. Evacuation of threatened areas began and here in Dumaguete over the few days available before typhoon Pablo arrived, there was a problem of where to house evacuees since there were ten thousand athletes in the city from all over the Negros so all the schools were filled with the athletes. Baranguay halls churches and Universities were called into help. The mayor authorized the purchase of rain wear, radios, tools, emergency lighting and all the paraphernalia one would expect. Government officers were instructed to deposit their spouses and children in safe places and report for duty. There was a continuous stream of exhortations, information and advice both of the progress of the typhoon and the level of preparations and readiness for its arrival.
The tracking and timing of Pablo was impressive and when we were told that the typhoon would hit Dumaguete at 4pm, Tuesday, 4th December we were already well prepared having battened down everything that we felt might be moved.
Sindong, last December, caused most damage by torrential rainfall and flash flooding but Pablo was more wind than rain. Rain there was but not of the measure of Sindong.
As we paid one last visit to town to corner some candles and tins of food, although we already had plenty, a few drops of fine rain spotted the windscreen of our car and that is how typhoons signal their arrival with tiny messengers and then breezes pick up speed and there are buffeting gusts and trees sway and shake. Loose metal sheets clatter and tug to be free. One piece tore itself loose and flew through the air to decapitate a man struggling home in Siquiore.
Then the lights went out.
I am not sure but I do think that the off switch was thrown before any landlines were down as a safety measure and to avoid storm damage using the power to start fires.
Incidentally as I watched repairs of the downed power lines in the days after Pablo parted with Dumaguete I realized that the slender power lines were not to blame for being downed it was the swags of thick cable that carry broadband and telephones from the various providers that decked the cable routes and swung thickly tangled and the gusts would use these thicker cables to rip down the posts carrying the power.
At one point Sione began to fear for the house as the full might of Pablo hit us and she got into the car and drove into the dark. We got about 200 metres from the house when she spotted downed cables and posts blocking our normal way. A motor bike came out of the dark and she enquired which way she could go. The rider said there were trees down all over the area and no way out that he knew. We turned back home as Sione decided it was safer to be in the house than out there with the world being torn apart.
As we returned I noticed many men out under awnings seemingly watching the storm which for a moment seemed a bit silly. Then we watched as the house next to ours shook as Pablo huffed and puffed. The house acquired a slight tilt from the upright. Pablo huffed and puffed with gusto and the house leaned at an angle. Pablo huffed fiercely and puffed mightily and blew the house down. It was literally a heap of tangled leaf, wood and plastic sheet. In no way did it resemble a blown down house. Then I realized the watching men were outside because they feared the typhoon might blow their house down. It was significant that there was no one in the destroyed house since the occupants had been evacuated to the safety of the baranguay hall.
Our house has a leaf roof and this is put together by tying dried leaf to a bamboo strip and this strip is then tied in place to stronger timber slats and hinged there and overlapped as we overlap out tiles and slates. When the wind blows directly at such roofing the individual pieces fly up on the hinge and the weather comes in. As Pablo got rougher and rougher with us these hinged pieces would rear up with a clatter and as the gust weakened slam back with a wet slap. It was quite frightening and although all our possessions were under plastic sheeting we got some of the rain that did fall and we had momentary glimpses of the noisy turbulent dark. We did not lose our roof although we had some slight damage that was easily mended. I think the roofing is designed in the way it is to let the wind through in this way much as the coconut palms survive typhoons by having the slatted leaves that close and swing down-wind with strong fibrous trunks that allow sway and avoid breakage. Sometimes the heavy rains soften the ground around the palm and the wind can uproot and blow them over, rarely do they break.
Sione was worried for the canopy that covered the car and was paddling round the yard adding wire and tightening rope. She wore a hooded rain-jacket and the hood was tied so tightly around her face that it was pinched together. She worked furiously in the dark with a small torch and then called me out as she prepared to move the car into a better and, to her safer, place. I think she wanted to believe she was doing something to mitigate the effects of Pablo but I could see no advantage in moving. A typhoon in full throat is no place for a debate so I went to help just then there was the crack of breaking wood and the crackling hiss of tearing sheet as Pablo took the canopy and draped it over our fence. I moved the broken pole to a safe place and Sione gave Pablo best and left the sheet hanging over the fence.
We went to bed and I slept fitfully as steadily the winds, the howling the clattering of the roof declined and then I noticed that the opposite slope of our roof was now responding to the gusts in the manner I described earlier which meant that the wind had shifted and that Pablo was moving off elsewhere.
What I report now is the absolute truth and the coincidence I see purely as that - a coincidence.
Pablo was indeed moving away but still gusted peevishly. I slept and was startled awake by a gust that clattered our hinged leafage. In the pale light of a guttering candle I spoke into the gloom, “For f---‘s sake, pack it in now.”
And that was the last we heard of Pablo.
It was 1 am on Wednesday, 5th December. Pablo had been with us for 9 hours.
During the waiting for the arrival of Pablo we were told via the radio that Dumaguete had been given a storm warning 3.
IMPACT OF THE WINDS:
• Many coconut trees may be broken or destroyed.
• Almost all banana plants may be downed and a large number of trees may be uprooted.
• Rice and corn crops may suffer heavy losses.
• Majority of all nipa and cogon houses may be unroofed or destroyed and there may be considerable damage to structures of light to medium construction.
• There may be widespread disruption of electrical power and communication services.
• In general, moderate to heavy damage may be experienced, particularly in the agricultural and industrial sectors.

All of these happened although the buko palm in our yard remained intact
We spent the next morning tidying the house and yard. Since we came to San Miguel we have found a handy man that can climb buko palms, scramble on roofs, heighten walls, build fences etc.
His name is Bobby. Sometimes my beautiful dog Bobby comes into the house or barks at passing strangers. I will shout “Bobby, get out.” or “Behave yourself, Bobby. “ in a harsh commanding voice. This startles the man Bobby who once stood up to go and I had to tell him I meant the dog.
We ventured out on the Friday and found the road by the airport which had a magnificent avenue of mighty boled and stalwart, thickly sinewed branched giants. I had opined that these trees were very old and watched with interest as people would come and remove the layers of thin dry bark; I reckon they used it as kindling.
Five of these giants had been felled. So sad. In the two days since the typhoon the trunks had been sawed through and dragged to one side to allow traffic to pass through. Already the inevitable scavengers were hacking at branches and carting it off for use or sale, who knows. The thick trunks remained though -too heavy to move. What interested me was they all had a blood red circular core and this was surrounded by a snow white outer part of the trunk.. I am not sure but I think a tree increases itself from the centre pushing out with each year’s new growth so the blood red core would be new growth or rather, more recent growth.
As we have passed them each day since these huge Yule logs are slowly being removed and those that remain have been skinned of their bark and their smooth white insides are revealed.
We followed the national highway into the city and noted Cang’s new store which days before celebrated its first anniversary had had its entrance canopy bent and the spark of electro cutters were removing it where a scaffold protected those that entered the store.
It was the same all the way into town. Long ways free of damage then a fallen tree wedged against a wall or being chopped into kindling be flashing machetes, a fence toppled a house toppled. Pablo left his mark everywhere.
I have mentioned the avenue of trees by the airport and there is a similar avenue along the front of the Boulevard.
Seven of these great shady giants had been toppled and were being sawn up even as we were passing displaying their ruddy cores. I have reported elsewhere the terminal building purported to have been blown there from Sicquior. Urban Myth! A lie, for which I apologise. It was blown across about 100 metres of water from the wharf at Dumaguete harbor. Still a considerable piece of damage but I had found it hard to believe it being deposited so appropriately, as it had been after a long sea voyage.
We were 8 days without power during which time the city ran out of candles and we learned from Bobby how to make a lamp using a container, oil, salt and twisted cotton wool as a wick. They said the salt was to prevent the oil catching alight in the container and restricting the flame to the wick. I a not sure if that is so but I did find the salt thickened the oil and allowed the wick to stand up and not fall sideways. They worked splendidly and Sione made eight of them so we even had light in the toilet or what they politely call the Comfort Room or CR.
So no light, no TV, no broadband, no computer, no fans, no fridge, no ice.
We made occasional trips out to find Ice to keep the freezer cold and protect the contents. There was little available but we always managed to find some.
During the day if we had not been into town I would lay on my bed sweating and staring at the wall. I would walk out now and again with the dogs to note any progress in restoring power and first the road blocking posts were sawn and removed then slowly new posts were fit and on one return journey as dusk descended on the 8th day we noticed a man working on a terminal box and conjected that power would soon return to our darkling plain. We were right. We rode into a village aglow with the restored light and the return of the carol singers.

Just a rider to the main blog I have posted.
I have over the few years I have been posting here referred to earthquakes, floods, high winds, gales and typhoons and to hazardous journeys over difficult roads. The Philippines are in a hazardous part of our earth. Part of the ring of fire and in the natural path of typhoons so these things are par for the country, remarkable only when they do not occur.
I am not heroic. There are times when I have been really frightened of the possibilities in a set of circumstances. I am grateful for having had the companionship of a resourceful, intelligent and brave partner in my adventures. I am also grateful that despite all the hazards I have remained remarkably unharmed.
In truth, despite all, I would not exchange one second of my time here.
Have a good Christmas, everyone and look forward with hope into the New Year, Arthur Seeley

And best Christmas and New Year wishes to you and Sione also Arthur.
As you know I have visited the Philippines many times on business,alas now at an end. I greatly miss the friendly spirit of the Philippine people. Their resolve in difficult times is tremendous.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Happy 80th Birthday, Arthur!! Lang may yer lung reek!!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

Hi Arthur, I am advised that the quotation should read " Lang may yer lum reek". I wrote it down as I heard(misheard)it. One never stops learning, does one? Thanks Terry; and Arthur, 'look after that reeking lum'. David

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

Happy birthday from me too, as a Philippinophile ( I wish I could have done one more trip) and one who always enjoys your 'postcards'

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

thank you everyone for your kind wishes on my birthday. Life continues and I keep fit and well and can still out walk younger Filipinos. I am at the moment collecting my blogs, editing and tidying and moving in illustrations to make it a readable whole without losing the informality of the of the blog form. Then also collecting my poetry and looking to Kindle to publish the same. I will blog later but all rather mundane just now, no storms, no flash floods, no typhoons, no earthquakes, in fact, nothing to laugh at all.

In which case Arthur, you might as well visit the zoo

We havent heard from you for a while Arthur ! I enjoy your postcards (partly because I have visited the Philippines several times). Hope you are OK and can drop us line soon !

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Thank you Brian. I am well and will post a blog quite soon now. Thaks for your concern and interest.

I have not written for some time but I am fit and well and content with my lot.
So summer is ending here and the elections are over, the posters are all taken down and the children are returning to school.
During the election the fence by the airfield was festooned with a billowing, fluttering pageant of posters all asking for your vote. Processions of vehicles supporting different candidates jammed the flow of traffic while t-shirts, balloons, combs and other gifts were showered upon the crowds. Sione’s parents had their bus fare from Canlaon paid by one candidate. They have no difficulties with buying votes here.
Summer here has meant a seemingly endless sucession of clear blue skies where the sun climbs to its zenith and people have no shadows. Cars cast only rectangular shadows under their frames.
It has been searingly hot and folk look always for such shade as can be found beneath trees or duck into air-conditioned stores.
It is too hot to go swimming except at about half past five as the sun dips down towards the high volcanic ridge.
We found a good place to swim or lay in the shallow warm waters. The sea is a mill pond and along the long stretch of beach there are a few working the waters for shell fish, some gathering sea-grass for salads, some, like us, bathing lazily, some just messing about in boats.
The smoke of evening fires rises lazily in blue-grey columns until, clearing the trees, a gentle movement of air, not quite a breeze, drifts it slowly, threading it through the buko palms and dispersing inland to add to the faint blue haze.
In front of us the island of Siquior looms like a great blue-backed whale, and , where the beach turns out of sight, a glimpse of Apo.
The sea is a glory of dazzling, dancing light and the blue sky slowly dims as the night approaches and a moon, a shaving away from being full , sails slowly up the sky, chasing the sun away.
We return to the car and as we drive back to our home we look away from the sea up into the Cuernos de Negros mountain ridge behind which the sun sets. The view of the Cuernos from our new home is different from my old viewing arbor in the wilderness of the lost garden. We have a wider view and can see way back up the ridge towards Bais City, although many kilometers away. I may have mentioned n earlier blogs that the coast road we follow to Canlaon allows a magnificent view of Kan-laon Volcano as we leave Bais City even though the volcano is still perhaps 100 kilometres away.
The sunsets are beautiful. The gradual fading of the sky through the spectrum is entrancing. I find them so although Sione seems singularly unimpressed. I keep saying ‘Look at that sky’ and she grunts at me.
We always seem to leave at the same time for the short journey home. The sun sets until it is just a brilliant white sliver above the ridge, brilliant white in a burning orange sky which slowly fades into a rich wine red and then fades again into night. Behind the moon sails over the dark blue sky and stars come one by one. Strange night skies here where Orion is upside down and the rest of the stars are strangers to me, brilliant and unpolluted by city lights, but strangers. If there are any old friends up there I cannot recognize them.
So summer is ending, has ended, it is still stiflingly hot but now we have rain, mostly at night or early morning. The rattle on the roof and the cool breeze that shakes the buko palms heralds the arrival. We will have the occasional storm now before the arrival of the typhoon season later in the year.
We have been looking after Sione’s Poppa for a few weeks. He has had a trapped nerve in his hip and been unable to walk properly. There are no decent doctors in Canlaon and Sione insists that the locals only go to the hospital there to die. On our journeys to Canlaon we always pass the Canlaon ambulance dashing to Dumaguete Provicial hospital. We took Poppa to the Provincial Hospital but it was terribly depressing. They are renovating the interior ans there was an appalling mess of rubble around and all the wards were closedand people were lying in the corridors, head to foot. Now it is the cutom in the Philipines for the family to come into the hospital with the patient and stay with them so the place was like a war zone. It was insufferably hot and close and the smell of sweat and stale urine was disgusting.
So we brought him to home after one night when his tests and x-rays were finished. He is quite well now but still a little unsteady even though he is without pain. He weeps occasionally in gratitude because Sione looks after him with loving attention and since he has spent much time laid on his back I told her to beware of bed sores so she massages his back and buttocks with alcohol a few times a day. Lucky sod! He has not been eating in Canlaon just chewing tobacco leaf all day. Now he has no leaf and eats bread in between meals. Bread and bananas. He does not seem to get any fatter but he is certainly happier. He was grumpy and ill tempered before now he smiles and sings and talks to the dogs. We are taking him home to Canlaon this weekend to see his family and friends but Sione will not let him stay there until she is sure he is safe to be left alone. Of course, Momma is there but she will be running the stall.
So basically that is my news for now. Life goes on and I am happy here. If my blogs are sparse and infrequent now it is because I would be repeating myself if kept up the flow.

Thanks for that Arthur, no we don't expect too regular 'postcards' but its good to hear all is well with you.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

I had not intended to blog again so soon but I have a strange tale to share with you.
I explained in my last blog that we were taking Sione’s father back to Canlaon for him to see his family and friends. He also asked if we could stop at a cemetery for him to visit his parent’s grave in his home town which is about 60 kilometres from Canlaon but not out of our way.
We wended our way through some back streets and found the local Necropolis. A long winding stairway led up from where we parked the car. I chose to stay with the car not wishing to intrude nor tackle the stairway.
I had been sat quietly in the car for about 10 minutes when a man and woman came down the steps. The woman had a small bundle of dead weeds and grass in her hand. She hurried down the last few steps and placed the grass against the catafalque immediately in front of the car. He gave her his lighter and she tried, without effect, to light the grass. She left it where she had placed it and they left. I was puzzling about this when two young girls accompanying a lady who walked with a stick very doddering came down a smaller set of steps off to my right. They passed in front of my car and one of the , looking about her, suddenly darted off and grabbed the bundle of grass. She said something to the old lady who shook her head and the girl passed behind the car and placed the bundle against a gate.
I was then left alone with the mystery of the grass when I noticed the crucifix which Sione had hung from her rear view window was spinning and swinging. I was sat quite still, there was no breeze and no outside vibrations except for a young man bouncing a basket ball about 25 metres away. I held my hands up to stop any breeze that might have been there but it still swung and span.
I sat there puzzling over this for about five minutes until Sione and father returned.
I asked Sione to listen to me carefully for I needed to understand things. I told her about the man and woman and the grass and she laughed then the girls and the old lady eventually picking up the grass to show her. She laughed and grabbed it with glee. She took it off to one side gathered a few dead leaves and soon had a small smoky fire going. She wafted the smoke about and returned to the car.
She then explained that if you visited the grave of a dead relative and did not light a small smoky fire the spirits would follow you home.
Ah, I said, that might explain the crucifix. Half joking.
She looked at me with wide eyes.
What about the crucifix?
I told her it had been swinging and spinning until she had lit the fire. She looked at the crucifix now quite still.
She told her father about what I had said. He too had wide eyes.
Now I have told the tale exactly as it happened. I did not think then and do not think now that the crucifix and the grass are in any way connected. Pure coincidence as far as I a concerned but still…

I went to Canlaon this weekend. It was for the most part an uneventful journey but as always there were singular incidents that bear the mention.
Most of my readers will know of the road up the volcano, a long and furiously winding way and even when breasted, the body of the volcano still looms and soars , hiding this time in a veil of grey cloud. In between the massive cone, the highest point in the Central Visayas, there are hundreds of lesser cones which I cannot explain, but they barely seem to be small volcanoes, or the remnants thereof. Nevertheless the road winds and bends and curves its way up to the fertile plateau. Along the edges of the road where the land pushes back at alevel before rising again in steep banks beside the road there is sugar cane growing . One wonders how it is harvested –but it is.
Beside the road this journey there were many lorries. Huge cane carrying monster with some 16 wheels. These are generally stacked very high with the cane in Canlaon before the steep dive down to Vallehermosa where it is processed. They storm down the hill and many times we have passed those that failed to take a corner or were tipped by their over-burdened load.
But back to my tale. On the return journey down the hill we approached a corner where there was a warning traffic triangle in the road.
“ Accident.” Sione breathed quietly.
We rounded the bend and there lurched over on its side leaning against the metal shield that there are at each precipice edge and bend was a huge cane lorry. There was , of course, the normal crowd of children and rubber-neckers , as well as the men moving the toppled cane back to a parked lorry which was collecting the salvaged load.
There is something pathetic, sad and vulnerable about seeing one of these giants thus humbled. Like, I imagine seeing a dead elephant or a beached blue whale. They do drive dangerously and I can imagine that if one has made the journey safely many times one can become blasé and careless.
We passed o our way and I wodered about the driver was he OK?Alive but scred? Or what?
Further on down the road I saw a man dragging a dead dog behind him at the end of a thin rope. I assumed it was dead because it did not repond to the treatment.
“ Another accident? “ I suggested.
“ No he kill it and will eat it.” Sione said.
“ How do you know. Perhaps he take it for a walk and it died and he has not noticed yet.”
My attempts at humour are never understood. Apart from the fact that he was dragging the corpse by its tail.
“ I don’t understand.”
“Never mind. How do you know he killed it?”
“ I see wound in its neck. They lasso dog and then push knife into its neck.”
“ Not nice.”
“ It was nice fat dog. His family will eat well. And his neighbours.”
“Ok, Ok. Concentrate on the road.”
Silence prevailed for a while as we negotiated the bends and rode out into the flat coastal plains.
“ They will eat the skin as well.” She offered.
I did not reply but wound the window down and let the cool sea breeze in.
That was it really except for the other dead dog that no one wanted laid motionless in the road.
“ That is accident.” She ruled.
Oh, and then the hen.
We were entering the home straight when from someone’s yard this
Kama- kazi hen dashed out with a wild fluster of wings and stretching legs under our racing car. It emerged with a vehement torrent of indignant clucks, unscathed, shaken but not stirred.
As a passing note of interest , some of you will know that there is trouble in Mindanao, to the south of us, where some muslim rebels have taken hostages and tried to march to Zamboanga Town Hall and fly their flag of independence. !00 were killed and captured yesterday and the army, navy and police force is there in some numbers.
Jito, Sione’s police sergeant brother, texted Sione that they have intelligence it might spill over into Dumaguete so we must be careful and not go out too much.

As always Arthur I enjoyed your post I continue to take an inteerst in your adoptive country even though I am now retired and unlikely to visit again.
There has always seemed to be some sort of trouble in Mindanao/Zamboanga.
I hope it doesn't spread to Dumaguete, and wish you the best of luck. People like that can be so unpredictable.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Arthur, is there a taboo in the Philippines against the number 3 similar to our superstition about 13? If so do you know why?

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 54-59

Current location (optional) Denholme

Gareth , I have asked around and there does not seem to be any taboo on the number three but I will keep my eyes and ears open. You will understand that before modern forms of transport came here the various islands developed separate cultures and languages and customs so there may well be such a taboo elsewhere in the islands but not here in the Visayas

During the super typhoon Pablo, the house next door blew down. I was stood outside watching Sione struggle with a furious tarpaulin that struggled violently to be free of its ropes when in three slow lurches the house crumpled and piled in a disorderly mess of planks and sheets and bits of tin.
The next morning the family who had left to shelter in the baranguay hall returned. The lady launched into a screaming fit not at the crumpled house but someone had stolen her pots and pans.
Over the days I watched as the pile was untangled and bits and bobs were salvaged and slowly a smaller house grew where the old one had been. The man left for Manila, to earn some money. The lady cooked in the open and began a garden, growing vegetables.
Then the lady disappeared. Enquiries revealed she was in hospital with epilepsy.
She returned later but no longer seemed to be cooking but had shouting ‘do’s” with no one. Last week she began throwing stones at our dogs and ranting. Sione took steps to protect the car. Then I saw her attack a man with a stick in her garden. Later as we were going out towards the main road in the car we saw her dressed in what appeared to be her best clothes walking through puddles.
Sione said she thought she had lost her mind.
When we returned there was a crowd near her home.
She was dead.
A short, sad tale.
We had only witnessed snap shots of what must have been a chaotic last journey.
Now as I write if I go to our front door I can see her white coffin, lit by candles and small fairy lights.
For the last three days there has been a continuous vigil , night and day, as people from the village come and sit in her garden, chat or sit quietly. Sione took some coffee and bread around earlier. She came back, “ I did not look at the body. It would scare me and I would dream.”
The vigil will last till Wednesday morning when they will walk the coffin to church and to cemetary.
They have some strange customs here, apart from this marathon ‘wake’. They will not sweep the floor otherwise her spirit will tangle with the broom. When viewing they will take care no tears fall on the coffin as it would disturb her spirit. They put a white curtain with white flowers in the window to indicate they are in mourning. Much like we drew the curtains in our street. The lights and candles remain on during the day. Durnig the night if I ‘surface’ from my slumbers I can hear the continuous hum of conversation.
I will not go to the funeral although Sione says she might.

Lovely, but sad story Arthur.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Arthur. I am sorry to hear a new and rather violent typhoon is reaching Central Philippines. I am sure all of us here hope you , Sione and your friends are able to keep safe, and we wish you the best of luck.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Hi Brian (and any other interested ex-students) Just to let you know that Arthur contacted family and friends on (their) Thursday evening to inform us that he and Sione, had battened down everything worth battening down and moved into a hotel 'for the duration'. Everything of value had been loaded up in the car and off they went. Ample warning of Typhoon 'Yolande' had been given and as Arthur said," you can replace furniture etc., but you cannot replace life" The hotel has Wi-Fi so we expect and hope, to have some positive news over the weekend, when the typhoon is projected to have moved on to Vietnam. David

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

David, thanks for letting us know that. As you are aware I have had a long standing interest in the Philippines having visited many times and done business acting as agent for a chemical company in Mindanao.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Just to let you know that, on checking my Emails this morning(7.30am), Arthur has left a short message, posted 8 hours ago, that they have survived the storm and will send more details later. Should be an interesting blog to look forward to!!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

I cannot think that David, who is quite a bright lad, could have missed that, Brian. Good to know that Arthur and Sion are safe, so thanks, David.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1951-58

The worst hit town seems to be Tacloban, about 170 miles North east of where Arthur and Sione are. They are estimating in excess of 1000 dead there.
But there is also a lot of flooding on Cebu Island which is nearer to them.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

We had ample warning of the Super typhoon and made plans to survive. This involved gathering furniture into piles and plastic sheeting it against the possibility of a lost roof We put our movable valuables in the car, fed the dogs and found a stocky little hotel. The room had a comfortable bed, air-conditioning, hot shower that worked, television and a view. We sealed off in our cocoon and waited for Friday when Yolanda was due to make landfall on Leyte Sione liked the room so much she wished we could have a super-typhoon every week.
I kept track of Yolanda through my internet and noted it would landfall at Samar or Leyte and then track West-northwest across central Visayas. This track would carry the eye away from us but Yolanda had a 600 mile diameter so we could expect high winds and rain. Yolanda came and went and left us safely intact
Yolanda swirled her petticoats and felled two trees, blew up a transformer but little real damage here. The devastation in her path is coming together now and 10000( ten thousand) are feared dead in Leyte Province alone, Tacloban has been 80% destroyed, bodies in the streets, widespread looting as people scavenge for food, which is understandable, but which escalates into televisions and radios. Complete lack of power, cars piled on top of each other by 10 metre storm surges.
So our little adventure proved a bit of a pussy cat really although the devastation further afield is catastrophic and as yet only vaguely understood.
As it appeared to quieten Friday afternoon Sione went out on the motorbike to check the house, five minutes away. She returned very quickly her journey unfinished. The trees were being bullied by the wind, she was the only one on the road, She was frightened. She went again later and reported that there was no damage to anything in our home so our plan had been happily a success/ Of course not everyone has a Sione to care for them,She did all the hard work preparing and continues to enjoy my admiration and gratitude. I am stranfely proud to have been in the presence of the world's most powerful typhoon ever recorded, albeit peripherally, and survived. More later. Thanks for your concerns.

Thanks Arthur, Pleased that you werent affected too much. I always realised it was going to pass some miles north of you but expected you would get a substantial fall out from it . But I am saddened that so many Filipinos have perished and my thoughts are with their families, and particularly those who are homeless.
A massive clearing job for the Government now.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Thanks for your concerns. The clean up has begun but the logistics are severely clogged by enormous swathes of debris and fallen trees. Dead bodies everywhere in Tacloban but that is a city there are many remote communities which have not yet been heard from. Estancia on Iloilo was 100% destroyed, completly and utterly swept from the earth.There are probably many more like that particularly coastal villages.
Food cannot get through to many places and where it would be local government that responded to this they themselves are hampered by lack of transport and communications. They are a resilient breed the Filipinos and come earthquake and typhoon they will survive.
Yolanda chilled the seas sucking cooler water up from the depths so a Tropical Depression formed off Mindanao is likely to remain such and not develop before making landfall. We will see.

Some images and stories coming out of the storm- wrecked islands

This little boy
a graze under his right eye,
a soiled red t-shirt,
dazed and puzzled beyond reasoning,
eyes glazed with dismay
wanders through his crippled broken world,
looks for his lost parents.

This weeping father carries
with loving gentleness
the body of his small drowned daughter,
his tiny broken doll
the swung arms
he loved, dangle.

This old lady
her mouth and nose hidden
under a scalf
to mask the stench
of the bloated bodies she passes,
looks for water.

A soldier contemplates
the monstrous sculpture
of a bus upon a car
and a ship upon
the bus.
How?
What dreadful power
has placed them so?

A citizen seeks
to understand
how his burgeoning green paradise
Is stripped of every leaf
and become a desert of debris
where buko palms
stand like broken umbrellas.

A food warehouse collapses
eight looters killed-
all for a bowl of rice.

A miracle at the airport.
A young pregnant woman
watches Yolanda wash
her grandmother , mother,
and her children
out to sea
she swims
holds on to a pole for two hours
drags herself ashore
walks several kilometers in bare feet
hitchhikes to the airport
and in a ramshackle make-do clinic
after five hours labour
gives birth to a baby girl, Bea Joy
named after her grandmother Beatrice
lost in the storm.

It is a terrible thing we watch
- the people here are resilient
and indomitable
but they do need help.
With courage and patience and skill
they will begin again
they will rebuild their lives
their homes
their cities and villages
and ravaged municipalities
but they need the wherewithal
for Yolanda left them nothing.

Lovely writing Arthur, even though it paints a harrowing picture, we here cannot really imagine what its like for the Filippino people

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Arthur, you've gone silent on us...

Hope all is well,

Doug

Silent? An unusal state for me. Thanks fpr your concern but truly I am fit and well and content. Sione's father died late last year and so somethings have become becalmed. A Low Pressue Area has been skulkimg off the coast of Leyte giving us unseasonal cold weather and grey skies. It turned into a Tropical depression and we all watched it with some trepidation but it degraded back to LPA and yet lingers in the same place, give or take 50 kilometers. We remain wary with Typhoon Yolanda still clear in our memories as Tacloban seeks to create normality from the wreckage.

Hi Arthur, By the time you read this it will probably be your 81st birthday, in which case 'Many Happy Returns of the Day'. Enjoy! David

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley(Still)

thank you David. In fact it is the 3rd here tomorrow is my birthday but to be honest I have stopped counting. Regards Arthur

So like us you look forward to Christmas except we have to survive something first. The Super Typhoon Hagupit ( What an ugly name) has entered our area of responsibility and become Super Typhoon " Ruby".
She follows pretty much the same track as " Yolanda" that flattened Tacloban last year and caused 3000 deaths.
We will have rain here and some strong winds but it will generally pass north of us. It is expected to make landfall Saturday night/Sunday morning.
Sione has bought batteries. for torch and radio, lighters, water , extra food, topped up with petrol, packed two emergency packs in case we have to move.President Aquino has said in any one is not prepared for Ruby they have only their selves to blame.As a matter of interest stores in Tacloban have closed because they have sold everything.
If you do not hear from me for a few days do not fear the worse. There will be inevitable power losses and broadband down.
See you all later.

Good to hear from you Arthur. Hope all works our well and you and Sione keep safe.
If its not too early , have a Great Christmas and Happy New Year.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Thank you Brian and the same to you. I think we have taken all the sensible precautions available to us.Sione is worried about storm surges but I try to explain the storm is coming from the wrong direction to threaten us with that feature.

I guess the worst has passed now, and the storm weakened. Please do let us know how it was for you

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Well she came and rioted and razed and lashed her way across the Central Visayas before gathering herself to bid farewell to Manila. How do I know? I watched it on television because she never came near us here. Not one drop of rain. Not enough wind to turn a leaf. No brown out. Ruby was a pussy cat. Of course I am not disappointed. Ruby was a right bitch but not here. Only 27 deaths nationwide but that's because one million were evacuated to centers of safety and food and shelter. It took over two days but they emptied Tacloban of families. 11000 families and that's a lot of people. They gave plenty of warning in terms of preparation time. They had rolling stocks of food and material distributed over the track of the typhoon. . They had learned from 'Yolanda " Regular radio reports and television updates.The Philippines could teach the world after her example during this typhoon. As Aquino said , if anyone was unprepared this time they had only themselves to blame.

Thats good news Arthur, thanks for letting us know.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Sad to report that brother Arthur is spending his 82nd birthday in hospital in Dumaguete having been taken ill on January 25th. We are told he has pneumonia and one or two additional health problems which they are dealing with at the moment. I have been in touch by Skype at his bedside, with his partner Sione who tries to answer my questions as well as she can. He is taking medication on a regular basis and at this stage we are not sure just how long he will be there. More news later. In the meantime, Happy Birthday, Arthur! David

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1945-50

Current location (optional) Keighley

Dear Arthur

Sorry to hear you are in hospital and not on top form. Here's wishing you a speedy recovery and a resumption of your much-read 'postcards'; and in the meantime, as Happy a Birthday as your present condition and location permit you.

Doug

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1951-58

Current location (optional) Keswick, Cumbria

Just to echo Dougs sentiments. Get well soon, and make the best of your birthday. Asyou know I have happy memories of many visits to the Philippines.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Hi Arth,

Don't know where this news came from - but here's wishing you a Bfd St recovery from all the lads and lasses that knew you back then - and are still awaiting your next posting.
Terry

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1952-60

Current location (optional) Nirvana

Get well soon Arthur. Miss postcards. Gareth

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1954-59

Current location (optional) Denholme

Anyone had any recent news of Arthur ? Many of us here miss his posts.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral

Better check 'Family Notices' Brian.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959 - 66

Current location (optional) Shoreham by Sea

Ah thanks dave, had missed the post from David.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-64

Current location (optional) Wirral