An article from today’s Guardian newspaper.

Jason Burke in Phuket
Thursday December 30, 2004
The Guardian (abridged)

Stefan Johansson, a 41-year-old air force officer from Sweden, is hoping that tonight is the night. He is not concerned about aftershocks hitting the beach half a mile from here, or about the haphazard rescue operation finally under way in southern Thailand.

Nor is he worried by the deaths of several hundred compatriots. Mr Johansson is anxious that the bar girl he has his eye on is going to keep holding out on him. “I’m having a good holiday,” he said. “I went for a walk along the sand this morning, did a bit of swimming. Now I’m off drinking, and then we’ll see.”

Mr Johansson is not alone. Four days after the tidal wave hit, normal life has returned to much of Phuket and surrounding resorts such as Patong. The “girlie” bars are reopening, the bazaars selling rip-off Rolex watches are busy, the tourists are streaming off flights and on to the beach. Here Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s request for the country to wear black and forego New Year festivities seems likely to fall on deaf ears.

“I heard what was going on with the wave and so on, and I just thought it was a bit of an exaggeration,” said Peter Anstiss, 48, from Sydney, as he shared a beer with his brother in a bar off Patong beach’s main drag. “I didn’t think too much about it.”

At Phuket’s airport, Pornthip Sucharitcharan was preparing to welcome 200 new arrivals on behalf of the Phuket Hilton. Today another 200 guests will fly in to stay at the hotel.

The only problem, as far as Mr Sucharitcharan was concerned, were delays caused to commercial passenger flights by the unprecedented number of aircraft landing at the airport . The congestion is due to aid flights coming in and planes bearing the dead, injured and badly shaken out.

(In Southern Phuket) the luxury Royal Lighthouse Villas is booked up for the rest of the season, and has had no cancellations following the disaster. And the sprawling Diamond Cliff Resort, set on a bluff directly above Phuket’s debris-strewn Patong beach, welcomed 136 new guests yesterday.

One new arrival at the Diamond Cliff, who flew in with her family from Moscow on Tuesday, relaxed on a lounger beside the pool. “We are here on holiday, not to be sad,” she said. “I know bad things have happened, but it’s nothing to do with us.”

With many beaches still covered in debris, and corpses still being brought in by the tide, most tourists are staying in their hotels. And though many of those in Phuket when the tidal wave struck have left, others are seeing out the rest of their holiday.

Last night Sally Capuvanno, 39, from Leeds, was heading off for her first night out of her hotel since the disaster. “We have been cocooned here. You’d never know it had happened. Now it’s all getting back to normal,” she said.

Others at her resort, only 100 metres from the water’s edge, said they had heard nothing as they lay by the pool when the tidal wave struck.

Back in Patong, Elliot Reid, from Melbourne, was finishing his gin and tonic. “I heard the warning from the government not to go to Phuket and just thought, fuck ‘em,” he said.

“At the end of the day, if your number’s up, your number’s up. By the time the next one happens in a hundred years, I’ll be dead.”

It?s not that I hate Christmas entirely. I really like buying presents, even if the current ratio of gifts to me vs gifts to family and friends is 2:1. I just hate having to wrap the things I buy. What makes some people so good at wrapping? Where did they get that special knack for folding the ends of a package that makes them perfectly aligned, no matter the shape or size of object. How did they find invisible tape that’s truly invisible, unlike the stuff on a roll that falsely claims to ‘disappear on virtually all giftwrap’. Are they glueing? And how do they know just the right length of ribbon to cut to go around the package with enough left to tie the bow and then they curl those ends so beautifully. I particularly envy their final flourish – the gift bags with just the right amount of co-ordinating pristine tissue paper poking out the top and a matching gift tag.

Damn you people and your wrapping magic. Every year I try to create a fabulous Junior League style gift and every year I fail. When handing over presents I pray that the recipient will rip open the package in a frenzy, ignoring the wadges of extra tape necessary to keep the edges from popping up, the narrow pointy fold of one end versus the wide flat fold of the other, the mishapen reindeer image where the two ends of paper didn’t quite meet. Then there?s the gift bag, a perfectly good bag ruined by the tissue paper that’s stuck on top, crumpled and torn from endless attempts to plump it up into little peaks.

In my family, none of us really cared about the packaging, especially as mum would often keep last years crumpled paper to be recycled next christmas. When opening presents, we?d glance at the tag, or in mum’s case read the tag out loud ?to mum, from Margaret? and off we?d go, chucking the wrapping behind us and not stopping until everything was open. Then we?d go back, spread out our haul for everyone else to see, pull the tags off the paper and chuck the rest of the wrapping into a bin liner. This seems a very healthy approach and one I wish people here would adopt. But no, here unwrapping takes longer than christmas dinner and all the xmas tv specials combined

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Mothers and answering machine messages. Hey, what?s up with that? Folks, I’ll be here all week.

I generally dislike hearing comics do material about how their crazy mother leaves them crazy answer machine messages. Not so much hilarious as hack. Maria Bamford is an exception. Her piece about her mother’s non-sequitur messages is so wonderfully absurd and accurate, it can?t be topped.

But lord knows my mum keeps trying. She?s never been particularly keen on the phone, especially since they replaced her old rotary dial with a touch tone version. Outwitted by its cunning design, she often replaces the handset back to front after making a call, making it impossible for anyone else to reach her. On the last occasion, I spent two hours trying to track down a neighbor to check in on her and finally resorted to calling out Neighborhood Watch. She rang me 10 minutes later to ask if I’d been trying to reach her because her ‘phone had stopped working’.

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Why do people never recognize you when you look fabulous?

I’m serious. Last Sunday I was tired from working the late weekend shows at CapCity and I was wearing a nasty old pair of tracksuit bottoms and a baggy grey fleece that once belonged to Erik. I hadn’t washed my hair so it was still full of product but all the spikiness had been flattened out. And my glasses were all filmy and smudged.

I was in PetSmart, perusing the toy aisle with Storm who was happily chewing on a stuffed pheasant when a PetSmart employee came over:

“Weren’t you emceeing the show at CapCity last night …”

I was caught entirely off guard because I thought he was coming to complain about me letting my dog chew a toy that we didn’t intend to purchase. So I made some feeble joke about Storm buying her own Christmas ‘pheasant’ that obviously destroyed any illusions he had about me being funny and headed for the checkout. But I remembered to say thank you, to which he said:

“sure, you were pretty funny”

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I couldn?t face contributing one of those angst-ridden blogs about my personal devastation over Tuesday?s result; about the opportunities Kerry’s campaign squandered and about the horrors that await us over next four years. So instead…

Yes, the election was disastrous. Yes, I wonder what on earth has possessed half the people of this country. Yes, I think the power that the President wields is frightening. But my real concern is:

Wouldn?t this all feel a little bit better if it wasn?t November?

I am being flippant, but only mildly. This collective sense gloom both here and at home seems to have been exacerbated by the fact that winter’s approaching. The clocks went back last weekend so it?s now darker, earlier. Having grown up in England, I know the effect this has on your mood. No, we’re not grumpy bastards, we’re all suffering Seasonal Affective Disorder. Plus the weather?s miserable in most of the country and will be for a while. Even Austin turned cold and rainy this week. Thirdly, or (c), there?s Christmas stuff in the stores. What?s more depressing than that? So what do we have to look forward to? Hey Bush is back, happy Thanksgiving.

In England, the election is held in the Spring. Generally around April or May. This makes a great deal of sense. For a start, people are willing to go out and vote. Of course it does help that in England your vote actually counts. One man, one vote, now there?s a novelty. It?s also getting lighter; you can step outside without a duffel coat, hat and thermal gloves; book your summer holiday; go to weddings; watch the FA Cup and kid yourself that it?s warm enough to sit outside the pub and drink, even though you know it?s still just a touch too chilly. No matter what the election result, you still have all that to comfort you. And lord knows we?ve needed it. We lived through 11 years of rule by Margaret Thatcher and another six in the fog of John Major, until the glorious election of 1997. May 1, a notably warm and sunny day, which was surely a comfort to Michael Portillo when he was so severely thrashed.

So put your angst aside. If you really want to make a difference in the next election, then start campaigning now. Scrap the electoral college system. Americans are about as clear on this as most Brits are about the off-side rule in soccer/football. And change the bloody date. Maybe if we?re all springing forward rather than falling backward then the destruction of the world won?t seem so bad.

I have a bit in my comedy about the term ‘fuck me pumps’ and how I wonder what these are. Generally, it means the high heeled, strappy, tarty kind of shoes, hence the name, but my fuck-me-pumps are made by Puma. Phonetically, that?s Pyuma and not Pooma as seems to be the American way of buggering up a name. I?m not sure how many pairs would count as an addiction but I?m sure it?s more than my current four –these being my latest purchase. It?s just the other six pairs that I?m currently eyeing up that may push me over the edge. As addictions or obsessions go, this isn?t so bad and money-wise they?re a whole lot cheaper than at home. But damn they?re just so cool, not so much fuck me, as screw you. What I generally don?t also mention is that they?re incredibly comfortable. I would say that they?re slipper-like in their fit, except that would suggest that I?ve worn slippers at some point in my life, which is of course totally ridiculous.

I can’t concentrate today and I certainly don’t feel funny. All I keep thinking about is the hostage, Ken Bigley being held in Iraq. It’s less than a week since he was snatched with his two American colleagues. Now Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong are both dead, beheaded by these bastards, their long last minutes captured on video.

And now this 62 year old man is left alone, pleading to Tony Blair as the “only person now on God’s earth who can help me”. Meanwhile the US, British and Iraqi Governments stumble around in chaos, issuing conflicting statements and adding unimaginable stress to his family.

The Jihad murderers are demanding the release of all female prisoners held in US custody. Yesterday, an Iraqi judge ordered the conditional release of Rihab Taba, but the US Government denied that she would be released and it took until yesterday evening for a joint statement from the US and the Iraqi prime minister to confirm this.

Keith’s brother Paul Bigley said that yesterday there had been “a shadow of light in a big, long, dark, damp, filthy, cold tunnel. Now this has been sabotaged.”

I wish I knew what to do. It sounds selfish to even say that, but I want an outlet. I want to be able to talk to people about this – not rationally, but with the same overpowering emotion that I feel. Where was the outrage here when the two Americans were killed — the disgust not only at Jihad but at how little the US Government appeared to respond to the crisis, regardless of what may have happened behind the scenes. At least the British media is keeping up the pressure.

I understand all the logical arguments, that we can’t negotiate with terrorists, that any negotiations would likely increase hostage-takings. But I don’t care right now, because this man still sits there blindfolded, in an orange boiler suit, knowing that his two friends have been killed in the most filthy, brutal, disgusting way imaginable. And his family sits and prays, watching the desperate video plea by their husband, father, son, brother and soon to be grandfather.

Ken Bigley isn’t even anyone special. He’s an engineer coming to the end of his career. He chose to stay in Baghdad to keep his commitment to the Iraqi’s he was helping. He had plans to retire in a few weeks. I hope he still does.

I torture myself by trying to imagine how his family must feel or how he must be feeling. I know I shouldn’t. My therapist told me that if a man falls into a deep hole then a sympathiser would feel sorry and jump in the hole to comfort him. But an empathiser would feel sorry and then get help. If there’s a God, I hope he can do both for Ken Bigley.

Maybe at some point our two countries, the UK and the US will finally understand how our actions in the Middle East are seen and felt by the Arab world. But it will just be too little, too late.

Dear Maggie, when you’re feeling blue, just pull on those woolly tights and the flowery dress and become the girl in the photo. The one with her sense of wonder still intact. The one who laughed with her mouth wide open. Who didn’t care what people thought of her, or her ‘fake plastic glasses-and-moustache’ wearing brother.

December 1970, Dad’s company christmas party

Remember when drinking used to be fun? I mean really happy fun. Not the nasty pre-legal teenage experimental years when you’d dread the next conversation that started ?you were crazy last night margaret?. But before the sensible drinking years where conversations included the words ?leathery edge, vanilla hints and buttery finish?, without any sense of irony.

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As a stand-up comic it’s always great when someone from the audience comes up afterwards to compliment you. Except when the compliment is:

“hey, nice legs”

Is that really the best you can say to me when I’ve been busting my balls all night trying to make you laugh. And not even great legs, just ‘nice’ legs. What really bugs me is that I know my legs aren’t even that nice. They’re pale, they’re bruised and they flare out at the thigh. Good god, my boobs are better than my legs, but they don’t even get a mention?

Same show, second set, new guy:

“hey nice sandals”

Ok, first of all they’re not sandals. Sandals are something I used to wear when I was six. Sandals are something ugly guys wear with black socks. I wear shoes. You could have really made my day and told me they looked comfortable. They’re not, they make my feet ache, they give me blisters and they make me walk like I’ve got a stick up my bum. But I will never trade style for comfort. The day I wear anything on my feet with orthapedic support or a cushioned heeel is my last day on earth. And anyway what is a guy doing commenting on my shoes. If he’d said ‘great pants’, I’d think he wanted to get inside them. But what kind of perv wants to get inside my shoes?

And topping off a splendid evening:

“I really love your accent”

I know you probably mean this as a compliment, and god knows I hear this enough times, but it’s a real bummer. I work on my stand-up material, I invest time and energy on it, I strive to get better. The accent? Guess what, I was born with it. I don’t stand in front of the mirror practising the English way to pronounce tomato and wondering if I’ve sufficiently emphasized the ‘r’ sound at the end of my words. When you comment on my accent, you make me wonder if I’d get the same crowd reaction from standing up there with my legs and my sandals, reading this week’s HEB specials.

To be honest, you really don’t need to say anything to me after my set. All you need to do is clap loudly when I finish. I don’t care what you clap for, hell the back of my head is pretty decent, just help me keep my illusions of a comedy career alive for another night.

Thank you