Chapter One

The Dhow 

Fourty-eight hours ago the sky caught fire. Even in the daylight it still seems to burn with heat which can’t be felt yet still dominates the minds of everyone aboard the boat.

Of the fifty or so passengers who set out, at least three have killed themselves according to rumour. I know of one for sure. I saw him walk to the port side then drop over the side as easy as a man would step off a cub. He just slipped beneath an ocean as red as the sky above it.  

I knew for certain he wouldn’t be the last to die on the Kolkata-Yangon Dhow.

We’d been becalmed for almost twenty-four hours. It’s probably, I suspect, no coincidence that the engine died the moment the sky changed. The crew immediately hoisted the dhow’s crude sail that hung from a beam nailed across a crude mast. It took six men over two hours to get the right position and tension to catch the wind.

Except there wasn’t as much as a breeze in the air.

As is the local custom, a dozen voices offered conflicting advice at increasingly greater volume until the beleaguered crewman finally gave in as the sun drifted down below the horizon.

Night comes quickly in the Bay of Bengal. This was the fourth day out of Kolkata, with another five ahead of us. The first thing I had learned was the routine. As darkness falls people immediately making themselves at home on the fat sacks of rice that make up the dhow’s cargo, this was probably worth more than the passengers.

Even for tourists ‘rice class’ was the only accommodation. Under the stars, cool, open ocean air, the chance to be trodden by the calloused feet of other passengers heading to the side of the boat to relieve themselves.

Tonight was different. Even without the sun the sky held a faint orange luminescence. The passenger’s chatter was a muted, oppressed murmur. The opposite of the excited gabble it was before. Clanking and cursing ranged up from the engine room as the crew, feeling forsaken by the wind, turned their attention back to the failed engine.

I tried to get to sleep. I was certainly tired enough but lying there on what was rapidly coming to resemble the Raft of Medusa I could do no more than stare at the ruddy sky.

There was a definite edge to the atmosphere. A few feet away from me an old man cast his eyes up and muttered darkly.

I'm now into my fourth day of not-smoking. According to a table of things that happen to a person when they quit smoking my blood pressure should be returning to normal, my sense of taste and smell should have improved and I may feel slightly irritable. I'm not quite sure if wanting to strangle my fellow commuters with the straps of their Targus laptop bag qualifies as 'irritable'. I suggest that, in the interests of accuracy, this symptom is renamed ‘fighty’ to give potential not-smokers and the friends/partners/people-on-the-same-train a sufficient heads-up.

Managed a staggering word count of zero yesterday. This was due, in part, to taking time out to read David Moody’s latest book, Hater. It follows his usual format of highlighting career drudgery, salary shackles and the horrors of everyday life, quickly followed by a major disaster, gnashing of teeth, dead-walking-the-Earth etc. I didn’t enjoy this as much as his excellent Autumn series – possibly because it was too similar and I’m starting to find the career-grind motif a little tiresome. But it’s always good to see British horror writers succeed and I’m looking forward the next book in the series.

I’m still aiming to get at least 4,000 words out of the way this week and come up with a title for the new book. So far I’ve managed to introduce one of my major characters in an intro chapter that even I’m thinking of toning down. It must be the onset of fighty that’s making me lean towards the gruesome at the moment.

That’s it for the day. I’m off for a fag coffee.

I have a deep and profound respect for anyone who can organise any kind of even that requires over a hundred children in costume (ranging from 3 ½ to 16) to sing, strut, dance and caper to a schedule wound tight by nerves.

This is exactly what I witnessed last night and the night before as I did the dutiful father bit and sat through several hours of Josie’s ballet/dance school show. I have to say, it was actually good fun – although I was a little gob-smacked at times. The theme this year was ‘Around the world” – kind of a highly energised version of Disney’s Small World Ride (if you’ve ever been on that, you’ll really understand what I’m about to say).

The performances were great with no sign of stage fright, the occasional slip-up and Miss Walker, the school’s principle, making sure she was getting value for money from the bubble machines, CO2 blowers and flame-effect lights she hired. I did, however, find some of the, er, interpretations interesting. China was represented by every child under the age of seven dressed in a yellow robes, traditional Chinese hats and fingers pointed into the air. I almost expected them to start singing ‘Ying-ton ying-ton”. It was like being back in the 30s. All I needed was George Formby crooning about Mr Woo and I’d have been there.

For Scotland there was Brigadoon, the Ozone was represented by Classical Gas (geddit?) and Texas by 5-6-7-8 (Steps – RIP). I kept holding out for a pork-chop-in-Tehran kind of moment – but without any luck.

Great work all round though. Enjoyed it immensely and it’s always good to see a the flame of culture beginning to flicker in Redhill.

Backstage, the highlight came when Josie’s friend Hannah took out one of the Siamese Children who’d been running amok. Caught her a right crack on the nose by all accounts – payback for the kids of Siam terrorising the Reindeers during the first Act. Get in there girl J

Finally, I’ve started writing (at last) and will definitely be posting an extract from the new book this week.

Apologies for spelling errors, bad humour or anything else wrong in this post. I am, unbelievably, still ill. Now it’s some kind of chest infection that has coincided with me giving up smoking (now into my third day – and going strong).