by Alex Gunn
“Do you think it’s okay if you don’t come to the next parents’ afternoon, can mum do it instead?”
“Of course, no problem, you have my word,” we high fived each other and I put Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats album on the CD player and we both rocked out all the way home to Willie The Pimp.
Chapter 12
Embassy
July: Most of the garden is now like a jungle. There’s a whole colony of wild stray cats living undisturbed in the far corner.
“I look at my children, and I look at my children’s children and the older I get, and the more I see of the world, the more I understand that some very simple things, such as caring for our children, are really more important than anything else.” Asif Ahmad, British Ambassador to Thailand.
I have been invited to a reception at the British Embassy in Bangkok. This means two things:
I will need to buy something described in the invitation as a “Lounge Suit.”
I will need to act very grown up indeed.
I didn’t mean to get invited to the embassy but now I have, it would feel like a snub to the ambassador if I didn’t attend, especially as he has gone to all the trouble to get someone called Ms Poonwichapon to sign the invite for him. He’s also been kind enough to think about what I should wear. Is there no end to the thoughtfulness of this man?
In actual fact the ambassador is a wonderfully dapper and jovial chap called Asif Ahmad, although, he wasn’t at all jovial when I dropped a plateful of prawns on his rare Indian silk carpet.
When I set up our company my wife and I wanted to do some good for local charity organisations. We diligently donate a percentage of our earnings to a local children’s home and have put money into a project to raise awareness of child slavery and human trafficking in Asia, overseen by an organisation called CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection). Some of this do gooding reached the attention of the good ambassador and his chums. So, along with some other people and organisations who had helped various projects get off the ground I found myself reading and re-reading an official invitation.
With worthy causes never far from my mind I said to my wife:
“Perhaps I’ll meet somebody famous.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Perhaps I’ll meet the sort of people who go to receptions at embassies.”
“Perhaps you will.”
“Perhaps I’ll meet film stars and footballers who give money to charity.”
My wife didn’t respond to this but carried on looking at her computer.
“Perhaps I’ll meet Daniel Craig, or Pierce Brosnan. Perhaps I could become an international ambassador for the United Nations like Roger Moore did.”
My wife carried on reading her email.
“From now on I’m going to give even more money to charity....I might meet Sean Connery.”
“It’s not a James Bond convention,” my wife added helpfully. She also made it quite clear that she had no intention of accompanying me to any embassy, even if there might be film stars.
After wandering around the house and putting on a plummy voice and saying “would you like another Ferrero Rocher ambassador” for about a hundred times I decided that I would need to get organised. The reception was just a couple of weeks away.
“Why do you keep putting on a silly voice and asking if I want a chocolate,” asked my wife.
“You know....the TV advert?” I said somewhat flummoxed
“No,” she said.
So I stopped doing that and shot off down to the Airport Plaza where I wrongly assumed I could buy a cheap suit for a reasonably small sum of money, seeing as we have given most of it to the orphans.
Unfortunately there are no cheap suits in Airport Plaza, just expensive off the peg things that I could buy cheaper back home.
Somewhat downhearted I wandered around and drifted pass the quick print place on the second floor and toyed with the idea of getting some business cards made. I sat down opposite and designed my new cards in my head:
Alex Gunn
Benefactor and International Philanthropist
I walked over and asked the girl how much they would cost to get made. For a very small amount of Baht I could have gold lettering printed on blue card. I got home and explained the idea to my wife and children.
“What’s a philanthropist?” asked my youngest son.
“It’s a bit like an idiot, but a little bit more stupid,” said my eldest son without looking up from his phone.
“Oh yeah, that makes sense” said our youngest son, and they laughed.
“You...” I said addressing my collected family in my sternest teacher’s voice, which I am beginning to suspect, is not very stern at all “You...you will all see me in a very different light when I am best friends with the ambassador, and other important diplomats and Sean Connery.”
“Who’s Sean Connery?”
“A bit like a philanthropist,” said my eldest, and they all laughed again. So I went upstairs and imagined giving my new business cards out at the embassy, and offering the ambassador a Ferrero Rocher chocolate.
“I didn’t buy a suit,” I said to my wife later.
“Well done,” she said.
“Where do I get them?”
“Let’s ask Khun Sonthaya” she said. So that is what we did.
No sooner had we made the call than I was standing in a tailors shop on Thapai Road being measured for a suit by two of the oldest tailors in the world. They are in fact brothers and they are in fact the oldest tailors in the world. The eldest brother is eighty three and his younger brother is seventy nine and they, and their shop remain unchanged since the 1970s. It actually looked much older than that. I think they said 1970s as it sounded modern to them. It looked like it was straight out of Diagon Alley, and so did they.
Everything in their shop was old, wonderfully old.
Do you remember when shops had a little bell attached to the front door that would tinkle when you opened it? The magical noise would alert the attention of the “shop keeper” (note, not a “shop assistant”) who would appear from somewhere in the dark recesses of the back of the shop and say “Can I help you Sir?” no matter who you are, man, child or woman. I’m not entirely sure I do remember all this but it feels like I should. But, this is exactly the reception you get, at, what I like to now call, “my” tailors.
It suits me well, having my own tailor. Do you have one? You don’t! Really... you don’t have your own tailor! However do you cope? You poor thing having to buy all your clothes from an “assistant” in a shop called Top Clothes, or Fab Fashions. You probably have to refer to yourself in public rather demeaningly as “Size 12” or “Size 18” or “Medium” as though you are just a meaningless commodity, without individuality or originality. As if you are just one of a million size 12s. Not me though, my measurements are unique, known only to me and my elderly tailors.
It is fun having your own tailor, you must admit. I expect the ambassador has his own tailor, if not several, all over the world, beavering away turning out cravats and waistcoats and spats and mufflers and all manner of respectable garments, noon, night and day.
Inside the shop there are posters on the wall of western men with collar length hair wearing very snug double breasted faded grey suits and shirts with huge collars. The men, some with moustaches, that look like they could never have been in fashion, stand in self conscious poses looking past the camera and staring into the distance, squinting slightly, as though they are trying to see something very, very far away; something way beyond our normal range of vision. Perhaps looking to a time when men didn’t have to have silly, bushy moustaches and wear tight fitting suits with shirts with massive collars, or perhaps they were just trying to look enigmatic or perhaps they were just short sighted.
One of the men on the posters is standing in a desert! Ano
ther man is standing next to a speed boat in a harbour and another man is standing on a beach next to a sports car (perhaps he didn’t have enough money for the car park). Most fantastically though, he was not only smoking but had a bikini clad woman draped around him, as though she was melting. Those were the days!
I was struck by the romance of these compositions. Men in “those days” clearly longed to be in romantic places like harbours, deserts and beaches rather than disused warehouses, tyre fitting places and scrap metal yards that seem favoured by advertisers these days. I wondered what this change was trying to tell us, why this shift from romance to industrial functionality?
I realised it was probably telling us nothing other than tastes have changed and you can sell more cheap suits and jeans and shirts if your models don’t look short sighted and as though they are on a gay package tour of Tunisia (not, I hasten to add, that I have anything against gay package tours to Tunisia, I expect they are a riot).
Back in the shop I am being measured by the two ancient tailors, which is not an entirely comfortable experience. As always I am trying hard not to look like a complete idiot, trying hard to give off an air of someone who gets measured for something every other day, a new top hat here, a new pair of mole skin gloves there... that kind of thing.
While all this is going on Sonthaya, who had brought me here, was explaining that these elderly gentlemen had been making his mothers dresses for the past 50 years. I couldn’t work out whether this was good news or bad. I guess it’s open to interpretation.
After a while the measuring was completed and fabrics selected, even the lining for the waistcoat. It would take no more than 5 days to cobble together, although they didn’t use those exact words.
On the way home Sonthaya cheerily announced that the elderly tailors only do the measuring. The actual suit making would be done in a large workshop out of town where all the different tailors in Chiang Mai go to get their work done. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it kind of took the excitement away.
The suit was made and various fittings arranged for “last minute adjustments” in case, I guess, I had ballooned uncontrollably or magically shrivelled to the size of a walnut. Luckily I hadn’t done either of these things and the suit went ahead un-adjusted. When I finally put it on it seemed extremely hot and itchy but of course I didn’t let on and said that it was very cool and comfortable. I hoped the ambassador would appreciate all this extra effort I was going to on his behalf.
The big day neared and we all flew down to Bangkok and booked into a hotel called Sofitel. It was slap bang opposite the embassy.
When I walked into the embassy grounds I looked up and could see my wife and children energetically waving out of the window. I waved back and then started doing some strong man poses like they do on Mr Universe competitions until a security guard came up behind me to ask what I was doing. He kindly escorted me all the way through the compound and to the ambassador’s residence.
I assumed that the reception would be held in some function room inside the complex, but instead, I was actually being shown to the ambassador’s private residence, and what a beautiful house it is. You can’t see it from the road which is a shame as it is a lovely, impressive, colonial style house with polished wooden floors, white terraces and large picture windows overlooking a meticulously manicured garden with ornamental palms in huge terracotta pots. It looked like something from a film set. It looked just as you would imagine a British Embassy in South East Asia to look (not like the Swiss Embassy across the road which looks like a 1970s telephone exchange).
The security guard waved me up towards the front door, which was open, leading to a large lobby where Ms Poonwichapon was waiting for me with a little badge with my name on which I attached with a little clip to my very hot and itchy suit. I was handed a glass of chilled white wine and shown into the reception room which was chocker block full of super stars and James Bond actors.
It wasn’t really. Instead there were other people like me shuffling about holding a glass of white wine making polite chit chat. Not a celebrity in sight.
I did meet the head of The British Council who gave me his business card before he even spoke to me which was a bit odd, until I realized he did it with everyone and had a stack of business cards in his hand that he gave to everyone within reach, a bit like a Primary School teacher handing back homework to children. I wished I had made my business cards in the Airport Plaza.
He seemed a very nice chap who had been all over the world working for The British Council. He reeled off an enormous list of countries that he had worked in “...and then I was stationed in Egypt, then Chad but had to leave because of the troubles, ( I nodded along as though I was very familiar with both Chad and its troubles) then to the Philippines, and onto India but had to go back to Venezuela.” He droned on like this for about five minutes.
Rather foolishly I interjected and told him that when I was a child I used to think it was rather adventurous when we went to Danbury Park for a camping weekend with the Cub Scouts. He looked at me blankly. It transpired that he hadn’t even heard of Danbury Park, but interestingly, as I pointed out to him, I had heard of all the places that he had been to. Who’s the most worldly wise now Mr British Council Man?
I met a woman who may have been called Jenny, who was in charge of something called Logistics which I didn’t really understand. Then I met a large man called Mike, or Jeff, or Gary who did something. I think that it was to do with the British Chamber of Commerce which he spoke about a lot, which was good as I couldn’t think of anything to say about the British Chamber of Commerce other than it sounded incredibly, incredibly boring. By this time I was wondering where the ambassador was and how I would recognize him when he did appear, and what he would do when he eventually materialised.
I didn’t have to wonder for long as an incredibly well groomed and dapper man swept into the room with several people at his side and immediately started to shake hands with everyone, making astute observations about people’s involvement in various Child Protection Projects (“that must have been incredibly difficult for you”) as well as making everyone feel at home (“please, make yourself at home”). He came over to me and Mike (or Jeff or Gary) and shook my hand warmly. I was slightly taken aback that his hands were every bit as dry and warm as Dr Chan’s.
I was shaking hands with the ambassador! It was all happening too quickly. I found myself centre stage but didn’t know what to say. I thought buying and wearing the suit would be enough, I hadn’t actually planned to say anything. That bit wasn’t in the invitation.
“Hello Ambassador,” I said...and then couldn’t think of anything to say. His gold cuff links shone in the sunshine that flooded through the crystal clear colonial picture windows.
All that was rattling around in my head was how funny it would be if I said “would you like a Fererro Rocher chocolate ambassador,” just like they did on the TV advert, but of course I didn’t. Instead I said “it’s nice here isn’t it.” I looked around the room as if to emphasise that I was taking in how very nice his ambassadorial residence was.
As I said it though I realized I sounded like the actress Lorraine Chase who was famous in Britain in the 1980s for the unusual combination of looking beautiful but sounding vacant and common and unimpressed all at the same time. In response to my stunning observation about the room the ambassador simply replied “yes” and failed to join me looking around the room in a theatrical way.
I felt a little embarrassed at my crass observation so stopped looking around the room, as this clearly wasn’t working. I then made the big fat mistake of sharing my thoughts with the ambassador.
“I’m sorry, I sound like Lorraine Chase don’t I”
“Sorry....what....who?” said the ambassador.
“You know... Lorraine Chase...” I was momentarily genuinely shocked that the British Ambassador seemed to be puzzled by the na
me Lorraine Chase. It would be like an American Ambassador who hadn’t heard of Scooby Doo or couldn’t hum the theme tune to The Flintstones, or an Australian who had never heard of Paul Hogan...well similar.
To ease the situation I knew I had to go further. I had no choice other than to plough on into uncharted territory.
I then did that thing where you say a quote which to you is very well known and self explanatory and designed to demystify the situation, but to the listener is totally baffling.
“You know,” I said. “Luton Airport” and when I said Luton Airport, I said it in an exaggerated high pitched woman’s voice, just to make sure that he got it.
I smiled and chuckled slightly trying to indicate that this was all good humorous banter. The ambassador looked a little worried. Mike (or Jeff or Gary) looked like he was going to punch me.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you are talking about,” said the ambassador coldly.
I stopped chuckling and began to feel a little irritated. Surely he had heard of Lorraine Chase. I’d even done the voice. He was the bloody British Ambassador! He must have heard of Lorraine Chase. I felt betrayed; a British Ambassador who had never heard of Lorriane Chase! Had he never heard her utter those immortal words in the 1980s Campari advert? Imagine a beautiful cliff top bar at sunset somewhere in the Mediterranean, a ruggedly handsome man in an evening suit says to a beautiful young woman “were you truly wafted here from paradise?” and she (Lorraine Chase) famously responds “Nahh...Luton Airport” (the smallest and least popular of London’s many satellite airports). Had he never heard her sing that very same phrase again on the popular TV show, Top Of The Pops in a follow up one hit wonder called “Luton Airport.”
I then began to explain who Lorraine Chase was, which I now realize was my second big fat mistake. Similarly, to when you have to explain a joke it’s never funny and always ends up with you (me) sounding very unfunny.
“Erm, Lorrain Chase was an actress I think. She was in a song and an advert advertising Campari and soda and her famous catch line was “Nahh....Luton Airport.”