Tuesday 5th September, 2017                             2210


I must confess to succumbing to over-thinking yet again today.

Last night Brenda told me she would call me today with arrangements as to when she would collect Jacob and I to go to the police station. I responded with an email requesting she didn’t try to phone too early, as after listening to Mum’s phone calls , what should have happened 7 months ago finally started to manifest. As a result, bedtime was now daybreak and getting up was lunchtime.

She wouldn’t have woken me, the phone goes off when I hit the sack but I didn’t want her to think I was avoiding her. “Not too early” in my book constitutes a call anywhere from noon onwards. By 1600 and still with no contact the imagination was running unfettered into all kinds of fields. Most of them had the ending that in three days I had to decamp from China with hardly any money and no clue as to what to do.

I sent several texts and received no reply. The big story running amok in my grey matter was that my work permit had been refused and Brenda simply couldn’t bring herself to tell me.

Eventually I had to call. No answer on her personal mobile. She answered her works one. My fears were unfounded, she had simply been run off her feet all day. No, everything is fine, she has the ID and everything required, just needed to call me back later to let me know the time. Phew.

So I am being collected at 0850. God, I haven’t been up that early for weeks!

I just had an email from her saying that as my photograph will be taken by the police (as it has been every year for the past seven), please would I wear a shirt with a collar! I am stunned. The only time I have gone sans collar in China is in private at home or once in public and that was because on the recent school trip they made us all wear a “group” t-shirt. I hate t-shirts. Images of me wearing a see-through string vest to the police station are now flashing through my mind.

I have of course emailed back, the opening two words to the email were “Bloody cheek!”

I have now asked if she would like me to wear my Merchant Naval medal, which I may well do seeing as I never wore it two days ago when  I was supposed to. I forgot.

On Thursday Siobhan (who only 10 days after I requested help finally responded) has told me to get to my campus on the school bus (even worse as that will mean an 0530 wake up) as she has arranged for me to meet a “very famous” orthopaedic doctor regarding my hip problem. Very famous to me translates as very expensive but she swears not as apparently he is a very good friend of hers. Mate’s rates? The only problem is, she told me to take my passport. Well, I won’t have it, the police will take it away to send it off to Beijing tomorrow to get the new permit affixed. I rather hope it doesn’t mean having to delay the consultation.

I was thinking earlier about the breast-beating and biggest penis competition taking place between Jim Jong Fatty III and Donald Fart.

Given that only a month ago I was mere feet away from a country that, given no choice, I would choose to visit second to Iraq and Afghanistan, it got me thinking. What if the madman did actually nuke Seoul? Quite apart from any retaliation, there would be fallout. How would it affect me? Should I start digging my lead-lined bunker immediately?

Maybe not just yet. Where Fatty currently tests the extension to his genitals is in fact about the same distance from me as I was way back when Chernobyl had a bit of bother. I never glowed in the dark then so hopefully my chances of turning into pork crackling are still long enough away to wait until I am ready for the crematorium.