Yesterday the sun came out and it finally looks like the weather has changed for the better. It was still a bit fresh in the morning when I went to the park earlier, because there were still white frosty patches of grass that the sun had not devoured yet.

The meeting point was at Mudu, the end of the line for the metro and the gateway to Taihu and beyond. There were about 12 of us meeting here and after 4 of us arrived we jumped into a “Didi” (Chinese Uber) and made our way to Guang Fu. Our good friend “Photo Guy” has organised the day for us. As his name suggest he is a photographer and he often comes to the Album of Suzhou events which this was today. Today however he had organised a gaggle of photographers and the foreigners were the “models” or subject matter for the day. Our every gesture was being captured by high resolution cameras, whether we were picking your noses, or scratching our arses, you can be rest assured that there would be a lens focused on you. However it is a small price to pay, I mean sell out your dignity for a great day out.

No it wasn’t that bad at all, it was really great to get a guided tour through the Qing Dynasty temple which is by far one of the most interesting in the Suzhou area. The temple grounds are vast. At first glance it seems like your average temple with all the usual things in place but then you go passed the Buddha shrine and out through the back door where it leads you to another garden rising slowly to a small tea house and it’s only then that you realise just how high this temple sits over the surrounding area. Below us suburbia and the spell is broken briefly but if you quickly turn around again you will be facing up to the multi story pagoda. Just in front of us is the tortoise pond and in the middle there is a giant stone tortoise connected to the banks of the pond by a series of large stepping stones and of course we all decided to put our lives and dignity on the line by making a crossing and posing for the camera.

The pagoda does not look very old, but at least we were able to climb to the top of it using the small internal staircase. The view from the top is very good, although the view itself was a little bit disappointing.

We left the temple and headed for lunch. As we walked through the car park we came across this old lady sitting there in the sunshine watching the world go by. I asked her if I could take her picture and she said ok. I then asked her how old she was and she told me that she was 92 years old. She seemed such a happy wee soul and I think very surprised to see so many foreigners. At first I thought she may be the car park attendant, maybe she was I forgot to ask……………

We then headed to a small restaurant and we all paid 100 rmb for lunch, but I did not enjoy it very much. Guang Fu is close to the lake and so most restaurants will offer the bounty that the lake has to offer and I’m not too keen on much that comes out of the ocean or the sea or the lake for that matter. Now if it was fish’n’chups then maybe I would have been a bit happier, but seeing the poor wee fish lying on the plate, mouth open, eyes looking skywards, and its flesh exposed for all to see is not my idea of lunch. Neither are the chicken feet, shrimp, fatty pork and the several dishes of oily vegetables that were dished up. Luckily there were some dumplings on offer and so I scoffed them. Quick Fact: I happened to comment on the oily vegetables and the young lady beside me said this…….”in days of old many Chinese families would use way too much oil to show that they had wealth, that they could afford to waste oil which was such an expensive commodity and so this is where the tradition comes from” Well now that everybody is better off than before, why can’t the Chinese become more frugal and be kinder to the planet and themselves and use less oil………..I for one will be very happy.

After lunch we headed to one of the largest collections of Plum trees. At this time of the year the plum blossom is abundant and it comes in many different colours and it attracts thousands of visitors. Everywhere you look phones are being used to capture the beauty up close and personal and it’s almost impossible to take a picture of just the plum blossom without getting a human photo bombing your attempt. I tried to take one picture of the blossom up close and noticed afterwards that a wee bee had photo bombed me.

It was a long day but it was great. It was good to catch up with a few friends that I hadn’t seen for a while. It was a really good day and even as we squeezed onto the bus with the other million folk it just wasn’t that bad. We were squeezed together like sardines. The driver was terrible but what’s new. I had left the house at 8.30 in the morn and I got home at 7pm and I was absolutely exhausted and also starving. After a snack and some mindless TV I headed off to bed and had no problem drifting off to the land of nod…………………

Tripadvisor Guang Fu

The winter seems to be dragging on and I’m getting fed up with the cold weather. The houses are so cold here in China and it’s only in the north of the country that the houses have central heating which is subsidised by the government. I think it’s around £150 to heat a 50 m2 flat from November to the start of April, which is quite cheap. The temperature is kept around 20C and so it is always warm in the home. I also think that many of the houses have double glazing which of course makes it better. My flat is only about 15 years old and there is no double glazing, but we do have air conditioning units but they are expensive to run all the time and so we end up putting on another layer of clothing to keep warm. Plus the fact I do not like to sit in the air conditioning for too long. The windows are so big and so I usually close the curtains to try to keep the heat in, but then you feel cut off from the outside world and so I usually put the heating on at night but rarely during the day.

Outside the window there is this tree which lost its leaves many months ago and it has these very large buds which have been dormant all this time, but this morning I noticed that there seems to be new life and they are beginning to grow which is a welcome sign indeed. This of course means that the temperature is rising and spring should not be too far away………….well this is what I am hoping for. When I arrived here last March it was still pretty cold. This year, according to a few locals, has been very wet and so it always feels a lot colder than it actually is. I think this tree will look very spectacular when it’s in full bloom.

Throughout Suzhou the plum blossom is also making its presence felt and it comes in different colours and is also a sign of the warmth and new life that is returning to Suzhou and it is very pretty to boot. For many years I have not had a winter at all. Living in Australia near Brisbane the winter, if you can really call it that, only lasts for about a month and usually the temperature still reaches 22C during the day and so it’s not really cold. It’s very green, but you don’t get those wonderful autumnal colours………..

We have had many different guests come to our Airbnb, but every so often one or two will stand out. A doctor arrived last night; mind you I wouldn’t feel very comfortable if he was treating me for any affliction. He was as you would say “a little bit creepy” He had come from Nantong, a city about 90 mins away from Suzhou. He was 36 years old and he told me that he had recently found a girlfriend but he wasn’t really sure if it was the right thing to do. I asked him why he thought that and he told me that is was an expensive exercise which I can totally understand. I mean it can get very expensive when you get into a relationship and of course it depends on who you get to join you in this venture. In China of course there are certain expectations shall we say. The guy must have his own house and if possible a car also. Two very expensive purchases in anyone’s language, but in China they are extremely expensive. Compared to the UK a car will cost you at least twice as much. A two bedroom flat in Suzhou around 100 m2 will cost about £775,000 and so it ain’t cheap. I mean that is a lot of dumplings.

He asked me many questions and I tried to answer the best I could without being totally biased which can be very difficult if the subject matter is America. I’m sure by now you will have realised I don’t have a lot of time for this part of the world. Although I still do like some of their old cars, they were rather flamboyant and so was our doctor it must be said.

So why are you coming to Suzhou and only staying for one night? Why did you arrive so late and what are your plans?

I’m coming to Suzhou to meet one of my former students and we will go for some beer and dinner and then he will come back here and stay the night. Well that does sound nice…………..

I have just started to form a new opinion about our doctor friend. I change the subject but it’s not long before we are back on the subject of tonight’s adventures. We have another guest here with her two young daughters and so I said to him that when you come back this evening we would appreciate it if you could be quiet as you are intending to go out on the randan as one would say with your young student friend. He replies that he doesn’t think that is very good to have two guys in the room when there is a young family here also. I couldn’t agree more.

Anyway before you know it he is off to meet his beau………

Shortly afterwards I go to bed and tune into the trusty BBC Radio 4, it always sends me to sleep and I have also managed to become extremely hateful of the Archers theme song. But I couldn’t believe it, I was no sooner in me bed and heading off to the land of nod that I hear the front door being opened and our lovers have returned.

In the morning I’m having a cuppa and the doctor appears in the kitchen and asks if we have any milk and I get him some from the fridge. He fills two small bowls and as he is doing this I ask him what his plans are for today. Well we will go shopping to “Guanqianjie” the main shopping street in Suzhou and then go to the best fish restaurant. Now this sounds more like a dirty weekend more and more.

Eventually the young boy shows his face and comes to drink one of the bowls of milk. He looks very young indeed, maybe 20 if he is a day. The doctor turns to me and says “see, he is just a very young boy” Again he had this very creepy looking look on his face. Now I know that this might not be what I’m beginning to think it is but it’s kinda hard not to. The young boy does not make any eye contact; he just drinks his milk and then buries his head in his phone. A few minutes later they both head for the front door and they are away and I’m very glad about that.

I went and checked the room and everything seems ok, only one towel was used and the room was left tidy. The key was on the table and all looks ok. Maybe this is just looking at life through the jaded and cynical eyes of an old guy that’s seen many things in his time and knows what a dirty old man looks like and I don’t mean when I look in the mirror. Maybe it’s also that things get lost in translation. Chinese is a very direct language and when someone uses English and it’s not the best then some things come out a bit misconstrued and maybe that’s all this was and I hope that’s all it was. I also have to remember that many Chinese, like our Doctor friend, are really very naive and not very worldy and maybe it would never cross his mind to go down the path of my thinking. Maybe it was just two friends catching up for a night and then going shopping and having lunch. If of course it was two girls there would be nothing strange about it at all, but when it comes to two guys doing this there still seems to be an air of suspicion.

15 years ago I was living on the Gold Coast in Australia. A year before that, I had bought a house near Movieworld, this was my first house and I was very lucky to have been able to buy it. I should have bought a house in Sydney years before when I had the opportunity, but love and generally being stupid at the time made me make some wrong decisions, but shit happens. And so it was 2003 before I got my first house and even then it was a series of events that led to that purchase.

I could not get a deposit together to buy a place. Property was quite cheap on the coast at this time, although most of the houses were just thrown into existence with no care and attention and would have a possible lifespan of only a few years. Most of the houses on the Gold Coast are project homes and have been built as cheaply as possible. They may have looked shiny and new, but the build quality is shit. Even so this was still enough to start to push the prices up on the coast and so by the time I had a deposit, even these houses were out of my price range and so I had to settle for a unit in a complex with strata titles, which is something I just didn’t want.

Every day I would check the real estate adverts for a potential property that I could buy, but more often than not it had already been sold by the time I enquired about it. Prices were rising by about $5000 a week. It was moving at an alarming rate. A few months before, I could have bought a two bedroom unit for about $60,000 and then before you know it the asking price was $100,000. The house that I bought on the coast was in this small complex and it was the last house or villa as they called it, in a line of four. It was neat and tidy and had a bit of a garden, but I did not want to buy it because of the body corporate fees that you had to pay each month, which in many of the Gold Coast housing complexes are just a way of printing money. But I really had no choice; if I missed this opportunity then I would be cast adrift forever, well so it seemed and so I made an offer and bought my first home.

It never really felt like a home to me, it was just a stepping stone to the next place. But not all was bad, this is where I met Ivor and Shirley and they became very good friends. Ivor has since left us but I managed to catch up with Shirley this year when I went back to Australia for a quick trip and she has aged on the outside like most of us do, but inside she still has a young vibrant spirit. More of us need to follow her example and not get bogged down with this age thing; I mean stop acting your age and just live life.

I worked at Austar in Robina as an Internet Guru on the help desk. This was by far the worst job I have done in my life. In a call centre you are tied to a phone, tied to a desk and every moment of your day is monitored and if you happen to take a bit too long to do anything then they come and ask you twenty questions why. I hated this job, I loathed this job and I loathed many of the people that worked there. In my “TEAM” I met James and Remy. I still keep in touch with them today, and thankfully we all managed to escape the confines of that hellish place. One thing about this call centre, and I’m sure it’s the same the world over, is the role of the team leader. They are there to look after their team and enforce the management rules, check the stats and make sure you are not spending too much time having idle chit chat with customers, I mean god forbid that you actually help them, and they are also hypocritical and gutless, well the ones in Austar were. On a technical helpdesk the fix is not straight forward and so sometimes you might be stuck on a call for 10 mins or more and when you eventually hang-up from that customer you are not even allowed to catch your breath before you have to deal with the next problem. If you take a breather the “Team Leader” will ask you why? even although they know the answer , but they have to do this for the benefit of the management to justify their positions in the company, which for the most part is just a waste of resources.

One of the rules that they gave us was that we could not have a mobile phone with us, and of course I ignored this. These people did not have my respect and so I was going to do what I wanted. I got pulled up one day for taking a call on my mobile. I got quizzed and lectured and was told that if I have my phone at my desk again then I would be getting a written warning. I told them to do what they wanted because I didn’t care. I then told them that I keep my phone switched on because I might get a call relating to my Mother and that I need to be able to be contacted and so they could basically fuck off and do what they wanted. Mum was in Australia for a time because she had taken a stroke. She was wheelchair bound most of the time, but she could walk a little and had fallen once or twice and so if she was unable to contact my sisters then I was the next point of contact. I then got shouted at for not telling them this piece of information, none of their fuckin’ business as far as I was concerned, I hated that place.

I got a phone call just after my 6am shift started and I can’t even tell you at this stage who called me, I can’t remember. All I remember is that Mum has had a stroke and is in hospital. I left my desk and went to the canteen and just stood there staring out of the window.

Before I knew it I was on a plane to the UK, to Heathrow. I flew from Brisbane and Catherine flew from Sydney and we met in Singapore and carried onto London together. We flew Qantas, I don’t like Qantas.

We hired a car in London and I can remember getting into this Blue Nissan Micra which had keyless entry and being unable to start the car. I had to go back inside and ask them how to start it.I’m sure they must have thought, “What a dickhead” I think I had to depress the clutch before it would start or something like that.

The drive north took about 6 hours or more and as we drove north the temperature outside was dropping. I had travelled wearing shorts and so I remember that we pulled into a service halt for breakfast and then I had to change into some warmer clothes whilst standing at the back of the car.

We got to the RAH hospital where Mum was, and we recognised some of the staff from out previous visits. We were shown into Mum’s room, but nothing can prepare you for a time like this. This stroke had been very bad and had left Mum pretty well incapacitated. I have never felt so sad in all my life. I had dreaded this day and I had always wondered how I would feel but nothing can really prepare you. Catherine and I spoke to Mum and for the most part there was no response, but then we got a hint of a smile and then we both knew that Mum knew that we were there, and she could finally go and rest. She couldn’t speak but that smile spoke to me more than any amount of words could. Mum had managed to hang on for us, to say good bye to us, to allow us to say good bye to her. This memory is as vivid today as it was 15 years ago. Catherine and I spent time alone with Mum and we shared our own thoughts with her and told her stories. One of the last things I said to Mum was this, I said “go and find Candy”, our first dog that had died a few years earlier, “and find her and take her for a walk. It’s time to move on to the next world and leave this one behind”

We left the hospital that night feeling calm and in a way happy, relieved that we had been able to see Mum and also to know that she knew we had come to see her, but at the same time knowing that her life was coming to an end. We spoke to the nurses before we left and told them that Mum would not want to stay here in this condition and if they could help her to move on, then Mum would be happy and so would we.

Mum passed away in the early hours of the next morning……………….

The last time I had been home I had wanted to kill my father because he treated my Mother like shit and so I always carried a level of hatred for him and would have happily stuck a knife in his heart, if I could have found it, to free my Mother. But my Mother did not want this of course, instead she suffered in silence in the same way that many people do in the world. My Mother was gone, but the good news was that I did not have to deal with him anymore. He could no longer hurt my Mother and so I could forget about him once and for all. I never spoke to him again after this trip to the UK.

The day of the funeral arrived and I had managed to download “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. Mum had always wanted this to be played at her funeral and when it was playing I had a smirk on me face. It took me back to the time we were driving around Manly and Wynnum near Brisbane. It came on the radio and we were talking about it. We had fish and chips before heading home. Of course I never thought that the day would come around so quick for us to actually play it.

She was to be cremated and as we arrived at the crematorium I noticed a British Gas van sitting there and thought, “it will just be like the thing that they have run oot of gas” I’m sure Mum could see the funny side of it even if no one else did. She always said that she would go to hell for what she had said and that she had drunk so much Martini over the years that she would go up in a blue light anyway.

A few weeks before, I had put my house on the market. A year had passed and the prices on the coast had nearly doubled and so I took the opportunity to sell up and move out to Ipswich to buy a house. I was still working at Austar and so this was also part of the plan to make it more difficult for myself and to force myself to find a new job. I was moving another 70km away from my work and so now I had to travel 200 km each day. A bit fucking stupid you may say, but for me I needed to change my situation and I needed a change of scenery, I needed an incentive to make me look for a new job and I hated the coast and still do.

After Frank had finished singing and the service came to an end, we moved outside the small chapel. My phone rang and my girlfriend Linda told me that I had just received an offer for the house; did I want to take it? The price was a few thousand less than I had asked for, but enough and so I said yes. I believe to this day that my Mother played a part in this deal. I am not a religious person but I believe there are things in life that we just can’t explain.

I also remember sitting in a cafe near the square in Johnstone after consuming copious amounts of whisky and my sister Margaret didn’t agree with one of my comments about the old man and the next thing you know it was world three, I lost the plot and got very vocal. Catherine had to intervene. Margaret thought that I will go to hell and I will eat myself up because I hated the old man. I often told her that you can’t choose your family and if he had been some old bugger that I stumbled upon in life I would have dismissed him in a heartbeat. But she would never believe me when I said this, mind you she doesn’t believe much of anything I say.

A few days later we headed to Campbeltown, a small fishing village on the west coast of Scotland. We have family there and it was also where we used to go to as kids. We had many great holidays in Campbeltown. The extended family used to go there at the Glasgow Fair fortnight which is the 2^nd fortnight in July. It’s about 4 hours drive from Glasgow at the end of one of the prettiest roads in Scotland. It’s only about 140 miles from Glasgow but it will take you around 4 hours to get there. I went last year when I was home to say hello to Mum. Mind you I couldn’t actually get to where we let her fly into the ether all those years ago. We scattered her ashes on Davaar Island which sits in the middle of Campbeltown Loch. At low tide you are able to walk out to the island on the Dorland, a sand bar that becomes visible at low tide. I had gone there in 2016 and crossed over to the very spot where we had last seen me Mum.

Last year it was absolutely bitter and the wind would have carried you across the Atlantic to America if you weren’t careful, however on the day we went there with Mum’s ashes the loch was like a mill pond and there was not a breath of wind. The sky was blue and it was a perfect winter’s day. Instead of walking across to the island we hired a boat. The four of us headed out and crossed the treacle like waters of the loch and slowly made our way across to the island. Mum was looking resplendent in her Chivas regal lookalike bag that contained her ashes. Very apt I thought.

We disembarked safely from our wee boat and made our way up towards the lighthouse and looked for a spot and a good view for Mother to enjoy. The time came for her ashes to be set free and we waited till the wind was blowing the right way, but when she was finally released into the ether the wind about faced and she gave us all a hug before she left us all standing there laughing. It was a very cathartic moment standing there with my thoughts, as is now as I write this. I had always worried about my Mum when she was back in Scotland; she always put on a brave face and would never give me any cause for concern, although I’m sure there is a lot she just would not tell me. I worried about her all the time and also felt very guilty because I thought I should be doing more for her but I didn’t know what I could do. Now she was free, she could go where she wanted and if you believe in some sort of afterlife, then you could meet up with family and old friends and go and walk the dog, this is what was going through my mind at least. To me she had been set free from this trapped life that she had endured for many years, where she had to listen to some old prick telling her that she was stupid and who made her feel useless at times, when in fact the useless one was the old bastard that was giving her a hard time, and now he could not do it anymore and that made me feel good too. She had finally left him, but sadly she had left us as well.