Happy Henry tyre-iron's his way around Thailand

Oriental Henry

Chapter 1: Rats, Videos and Violence

An excess of steroid toned bulk suddenly leapt three, four, feet in the air. Landed with a thump on the top of a rickety table. Just had time to scream, Rats, in a high pitched voice, before his momentum racked his head into the ceiling. Luckily, this consisted of wooden floorboards rather than concrete. They cracked, split, sending sharp splinters down into the restaurant just as the table collapsed under the unlikely mass of the mentally deficient’s frame. The pace of the ascent and descent such that I would’ve missed it if I’d blinked; as it was, all I caught of the rat’s presence was a flick of its tail.

Thus did Happy Henry endure his first Bangkok meal in a back street Chinese restaurant. Admittedly, the precipitously cheap 24 hour, three-plane-change, flight from Antwerp had left both Henry and myself bewildered and bemused. Don Muang airport looked like a scene out of Dante’s inferno, not helped along by the lad having a minor altercation with a queue jumping group of German sex tourists. If his walking stick – a piece of lead pipe cunningly disguised with matt black paint – hadn’t been confiscated by the Dutch anti-terrorist squad after sending the airport’s metal-detector into a frenzy, he would’ve done for them!

A World War Two veteran, I was made of the right stuff, maintained a stiff upper lip even if it quivered a bit at Happy’s antics – you couldn’t let the lad out of your sight for a moment.

The Chinese owner, a bald, wired, midget, went berserk at the expensive sight of his restaurant imploding before his eyes. Henry’s fall from grace was further amplified - as he usually lacked any sense of natural balance or grace - by his outrageous bulk falling sideways on to a table populated by four surly looking Thai men. The table collapsed, the guys spinning outwards and sending further resonances of destruction throughout the doubtful establishment, leaving the clown Henry sitting on the floor with a rare mixture of fried rice and rat, whisky and beer, ruining his white suit.

It was only Henry’s sheer bulk that saved him. And a wad of purple notes. As the giant stood to his full height, his mass seemed to consume all the air and space in the restaurant. Even the owner, who’d come armed with a meat cleaver and primitive snarl, paused for thought. Henry’s right hand twitched in frustration, searching for some kind of heavy-duty weapon, to vent his anger at a world too cruel for words. The Thai men gulped in fear at the farang excesses.

Money worked wonders, as it usually does, and I pulled the grumbling mammoth out of the restaurant. Henry immediately started pumping his fingers down his throat, trying to throw up. Not a pretty sight; neither were the groans and oaths music to the ears. Apparently failing, he lifted his bloodshot-eyed-head upwards and suddenly convulsed, sending a stream of vomit on to a big white Merc that was passing slowly along the road. All the time making a loud keening noise, not dissimilar to a run-over dog in its death-throes.

The German cage was full of military attired chappies. I gave them a reassuring salute – probably as sharp as they had ever witnessed - which at least contrasted with Henry’s distorted face bearing down upon them. The lad’s visage made civilians wince when in a state of nonchalant repose let alone when distorted with pain and churning out a seemingly endless arc of vomit. Sensibly, the military types, despite appearing heavily armed, sped off up the road rather than trying to confront Henry. Probably gave them nightmares for months to come.

I felt a bit queasy myself, but I put that down to the sight of Henry disintegrating before my eyes, rather than the immediate consequences of consuming fried rat. Bangkok Belly could wait until the morrow!

Happy was still going on about rats bigger than most cats as we became entangled in a cunningly camouflaged wire fence on the central reservation under the skytrain on Silom. Its tendons only obvious from a foot or so away – that is, after we’d braved the probable carnage of two million speeding buses, cars, tuk-tuks, motorcycles and the odd berserk elephant. Insult added to injury by the crossing’s markings being left in place!

The lad was muttering obscenities as he lifted me over the offending obstruction, saying something about coming back later with wire-cutters. Henry’s attempt at vaulting the wire fence left him with bloodied hands and a psychopathic disposition. His landing coincided with a speeding motorcycle coming against the traffic’s flow. Occasionally, the rage burns so deep in Henry that it transcends his unlikely bulk; Ninja speed attained...

Thus did the giant sidestep probable annihilation, spun with fury and slapped the rider’s head. A dissipation of energy that echoed through the cacophony of traffic which reverberated off the overhead cantilevered train station. Luckily for the rider, he was wearing a helmet and he somehow, half-drunkenly, managed to stagger through the oncoming traffic.

Happy bounced on his feet, punched the air with furious victory and walked into the mess of vehicles with an apparent invincibility, a surreal parting of the seas! Trying to follow, my aged bones were threatened with dissipation every which way, but I made it, gasping, to what passed for a pavement.

Henry’s bulk was sufficient to block progress in the narrow conduit between stalls selling clothes and imitation goods. The giant’s face turned red, grunting, as he flicked through a stack of pornographic material on one of the stalls... before I knew what was happening some little runt of a Thai had returned with a huge stack of videos, demanding 1000 baht. Happy grabbed these out of his hands, holding them possessively, giving me little choice but to hand over the hard-earned money. It was turning out to be an expensive evening! And we didn’t even have a video machine, but try arguing with an oversexed maniac when his gander was up...

Henry marched forwards, oblivious of the feet he was stamping on, his speed about ten times that of the loitering tourists and natives. I was pulled along in his wake, tried to look innocent of any possible connection with the lunatic – not hard, as what the hell would a staid British pensioner be doing with a clown dressed up like a Russian Mafioso on holiday? Don’t ask!

Henry staggered to a halt, sexual lust suddenly abated. Before him stood a stall packed with martial arts equipment. The lad was beaming with joy. He handed me the videos, picked up a foot long pipe with a lead weight on its end, flicked it across the face of some American type who seemed to be wearing pajamas, and who leapt back as it unfurled to its full, three foot length.

The American was halfway to remonstrating with the lad when he realised just how large he was, even by the gross Yank standards that he himself exemplified, not to mention that he was lethally armed! Henry gave every appearance of not even noticing him as he lovingly fingered what appeared to me to be a medieval ball and chain!

Henry indicated to the enthusiastic Thai that he wanted something bigger than the pipe on offer. Something the size of a walking stick! Very expensive, was the limit of the little bugger’s English – what a surprise!

Whilst we waited, I was accosted by a youth waving a disgraceful leaflet under my nose. Over the bedlam noise of traffic, braying vendors and wailing musical intonations, he shouted something about little boys. At least when sober, Henry had the devotional nature of a half-starved Doberman to certain key words – such as child molester and kill. One look from Happy, the Thai dematerialized before our eyes!

The vendor returned with a walking stick that when given a good flick doubled its length with a precise click. The steel weight on the end wasn’t ideal for idle promenading but its knurled, sharpened nature effectively destroyed a nearby vendor’s awning on the first try. Henry’s overhung brow shivered in delight whilst his jowls shook in mirth; the lad was going to have himself some fun.

The embodiment of Oriental technology took care of two thousand baht, and the awning cost a purple note. The delighted vendors immediately went on to offer Henry a bewildering array of armaments and would probably have thrown in their near relatives if I hadn’t whispered to the lad that it was time for the bars.

Henry, in his disheveled, ruined tropical white suit, cradling his stack of videos in one hand and swinging his loaded cane with the other, cantered onwards. Oblivious of the broken toes, bloodied shins and outraged screams that he left in his wake, his brain – what there was of it – focused totally on the ladies of the night that lay ahead...

Chapter 2: Vile Visions

Happy Henry’s height was so excessive that he wasn’t prey to the carefully constructed array of awning posts, umbrella spikes and multifarious brackets. These could take out the eye of an average height farang, causing much mirth and hilarity amongst the natives.

With aged vision and dodgy neon lighting I was almost blinded and lacerated several times. There was hardly any space to duck and dive, strategically placed pot-holes in the pavement added to the hazard. I was soon chanting a litany of curses at odds with my mature, if not venerable, status.

Added to the obstacle course, oppressive heat and pollution – a heady mixture likely to cause congestive lung failure if not an outright heart attack! Felt like I was carrying an extra hundred pounds on my shoulders but I took a firm grip of myself and staggered forwards.

The lad did manage to ensnare one of the electrical cables around his chest, part of a makeshift and haphazard overhead array feeding the stalls. He turned around and around, trying to free himself but in actuality tightening the grip of the wire on his chest. His face full of fear, he yanked his body this way and that.

Plunging the immediate area into relative darkness, sparks leaping across the top of one stall where the remaining leads played with each other. The vendors underneath wailing, clutching their Buddhist amulets. Rather than setting the line of Silom Road stalls ablaze, there was an almighty bang as the main fuse finally went west.

Henry waved his cane about in a frenzy, screaming something about being attacked by snakes. He only had the space to go wild because he towered above mere normal mortals let alone the diminutive Thais. He had always been afraid of the dark; still sometimes woke up in the middle of night, wailing desperately and totally disorientated.

The lad made a run for it, primitive flight winning out over fight in his steroid warped brain. The expensive pornographic videos flying every which way whilst one of the vendors gave chase, probably multiplying his estimate of the damages by a factor of ten.

In the compacted space between stalls, Happy’s outrageous bulk and resultant momentum the only thing that allowed him any progress. Tourists sent flying, natives dived for cover; much verbal abuse but no-one dared attack the giant directly.

A stall selling knock-off Levi’s and another burdened with cheap imitation Rolex watches were knocked over and many were the tourist nursing bruised shins and toes from the lad’s ex-army boots but Henry finally made it into a haven of neon.

His pursuer slunk off when he saw a couple of tourist police sauntering past – the tourist dollar ruled in a bankrupt economy. The cops gave Henry a benign, almost approving, glance as the lad danced with the couple of yards of electrical cord that bound his chest; perhaps a refugee from one of the more perverse bondage clubs... no telling with foreigners.

Running around after Henry is a pretty hefty exercise regime for a geriatric pensioner. The lad still convinced that the length of cable was a snake, screaming where’s the head, where’s the head. Once I stopped gasping, I reached up, gave the hysterical giant a firm slap around the chops.

Anyone else tried that, they would be dead pretty damn quick, but Henry and I go back a long way and if he wasn’t drunk I could get away with such indulgences. I’d more or less adopted the lout when he was kid, things only went wild when he let his primeval sexual urges overwhelm what passed for good sense in his blurred mind.

He snapped out of the hysteria, looked at the innocent length of wire as if it was the first time he had ever seen it. Bemusement his prime attainment; in a child of two, the open-mouthed incredulity might’ve passed for cute but in man of Happy’s incredible stature it was just another sign of impending imbecility.

Before we could fully enter the neon oasis, a pack of mangy dogs came out from under a table, sniffed Henry and started to growl. Obviously weren’t any nearby Chinese restaurants! Ugly little runts of dogs, cancerous skin, almost foaming at the mouth. Rabid summed them up perfectly. I moved a long way back!

The nearest Henry ever came to a long term romantic relationship was with a half wolf Doberman, so the lad thought nothing about trying to pat the nearest canine on the head. The growl came from deep within the creature’s throat, looked ready to leap at Happy. Henry stopped the movement dead, lurched back a step, a look of deep shock and consternation written large on his moon face.

At the sight of such cowardice, the pack advanced on the lad. The leader went for his groin with sharpened if black teeth, a huge jaw. Henry screamed, leapt back a good yard, his manhood saved by inches. Massive jaws from the other dogs dug into his legs.

Enraged, Henry whacked the nearest with the cane. The dog leapt backwards, made an outraged whining noise, a human-like affronted look on its face. It sidled away out of range, proceeded to piss blood on the shoes of an innocent tourist.

Encouraged, the lad then rammed the cane down the throat of the leader, who was trying for a second taste of his groin. Pulled out, covered in blood and gore, the dog flopped over on its back. Henry’s face a picture of childish satisfaction at a job done well.

Henry waved his extended cane around in a blur but the sight of their leader dead was all the hint the other dogs needed to slouch off. Even with Henry screaming and cursing, waving his stick around, they ambled rather than ran, stopped to look back, as if memorizing Happy for later retribution.

Luckily, Happy Henry wore exemplary footwear. Ex-army jackboots made from the thickest leather, steel toe-capped, weighing in at a couple of pounds each. Deep teeth marks but the leather wasn’t broken, the lad wouldn’t need a hospital run even though he was practically in tears at the thought of dying from rabies.

He insisted on removing each boot. The Thais at the nearby stall sniffed the air, looked at each other suspiciously. The overwhelming odor from Henry’s month old socks dissipated the usual streets smells of fried rice, burnt petrol and cheap sex.

Even Henry looked shocked as he dangled a sock under his nose. The incredible heat of the day equivalent to sitting in a sauna, the lad’s body desperately sweating off the unlikely temperature, adding to the usual noxious odor.

Nonchalantly, he threw the offending items away – landing amid a gaggle of smartly dressed Thai youths they caused consternation; a perfect illustration of recoiling in horror. Henry, bent down, was out of their immediate view and they must’ve put it down to being in disfavor with the gods.

If nothing else, Henry was resilient. Rebooted, he bounced on his feet, shook his legs and did a little tap-dance with his cane. Not exactly Fred Astaire in his prime but nevertheless the natives gave him a round of applause.

The fracas with the dogs left a large tear in his white jacket. Imperially double-breasted, Henry thought it the business but it now looked like something the rag and bone man might reject. Unburdened, Henry undid his red shirt; an impressive sight except that an overindulgence in steroids had left him with a couple of large if flaccid breasts!

Henry had an occasional, disturbing, penchant for dressing up in women’s underwear. Just for a laugh, he assured me, but as our finances usually meant we had to share a room I always slept on my back! You never knew what the drunken giant might get up to!

As if to illustrate this thought, Henry sashayed up behind a large Thai woman outfitted in demure peasant clothing which nevertheless hinted at the texture of her curvature. Happy patted her backside in an almost reassuring manner.

When she looked back she seemed to jump out of her skin at the sight of a giant farang grinning lustily down at her! Her open mouth revealed black tombstones, aged her by twenty years. Henry recoiled in shock but not before she had a chance to harangue him in the local language. She tottered off, screaming, farang ba, farang ba.

Henry looked around the area, crestfallen in his disappointment. Plenty of small bars, a mixture of tourists and locals sitting outside, but no sign of Patpong’s infamous go-go gals. The giant poked his head in and out of the bars until someone took pity on him. Patpong was up the road awhile.

Happy moved like a scalded cat even though the stalls were even more densely packed on what passed for a pavement than before; he even ignored another stall piled with pornography. One unlikely looking alley, then the main drag. Henry had found nirvana!

Chapter 3: Neon Slaughter

Henry practically dragged me straight off my feet into the first bar on Patpong. A couple of surly looking local males thrust illustrated handbills under our noses. Chanting pussy show, dog show and other unlikely incantations. I eyed the touts, decided they wouldn’t last long in the army; definitely in need of a bit of discipline. That is, the right sort of discipline!

One was foolish enough to impede Henry’s progress; anyone who gets between the lad and his oats simply gets flattened in the rush! This one wouldn’t lie down and die, tried to kick Henry’s head off but the lad was too tall for the Thai to make the connection. Instead, Henry grabbed his foot, twisted his ankle, sent him flying. Out of nowhere, a whole pack of Thai youths closed in on Happy, only stopped by some kind cop blowing furiously on his whistle! He waved us into the bar! Probably the only country in the world where the cops are especially trained to direct tourists into the neon naughtiness.

The usual reaction of the female population to Henry’s flirtations, scream and speed dial for the police! As Henry entered the neon dive there was plenty of screaming but, for once, in adulation rather than horror. The lad totally fixated by the stage in the center of the bar, a dozen, or so, underwear clad ladies dancing and waving at him!

Could’ve placed a bottle of acid in his hand rather than beer, he was so far gone he probably wouldn’t have noticed until his stomach exploded! He glugged away at the mild stimulant whilst perched rather precariously atop a tall stool that had seen better days.

One particularly large bint, with a set of knockers barely inhibited in their fierce wobbling, made a multitude of crude gestures at Henry who couldn’t believe his luck. He had to keep stabbing at his eyes, otherwise his eyeballs would’ve popped right out... overloaded on lust.

Henry waved his walking stick in an arc that included in its trajectory the cigar of a nearby tourist, half a dozen exploding balloons and an erstwhile loudspeaker. The tourist was left clamping on the butt of his cigar but gave the lad the thumbs up, anyway. Relieved that Henry had taken out a speaker that majored in maximum bass, was close to vibrating out the teeth of the youngsters (mine had long since been pulled, no great problem).

Happy Henry noticed none of this, the movement more a reflex action, his whole body twitching away on the back of the excess of near naked ladies. Only in his most fanciful dreams had he thought that such a paradise existed.

The music stuttered, a sign for the dancers to change. More of the same. Similar kind of kick anywhere in the world, the only difference the amount of money you would be down in the immediate aftermath of the sexual carnage.

The music turned local with a wild tinge, the gals going crazy with their arms and hands, fingers tilting back until they touched their forearms, an entirely unlikely display of disjointed limbs. Henry tried to imitate their movements, blurring his stool’s legs and causing everyone, including myself, in his immediate vicinity to duck and dive when his cane twirled in rhythm to his movements, which much more resembled an epileptic fit than an artful dance. If Happy was in seventh heaven, the rest of us were contemplating an early entry to hell.

The lad was mightily distracted when the heavily if not heavenly endowed frail clamped herself on to his ample frame, screaming in passable English, Lao music. The stool looked likely to disintegrate but it held long enough for Happy Henry to nourish his mouth on a suddenly free nipple. His usually milk white complexion neon flashed into bright purple. Henry pumped his free hand in the air in excessive exultation. This was the life!

The violence of the movement, the sheer lack of inhibition, accompanied by the crack of a bullet fired. Being a war veteran I cringed and ducked at the same moment in time; in vain as the noise merely emanated from the collapse of some second-rate wood – as in Henry’s stool legs!

A king thrown from his throne, the disintegration of his visage a picture worth framing! Henry fell through three feet in an instant but that was the lad’s mere initiation into self-immolation. The babe fell atop him with such violence that the concrete floor rumbled. The displacement velocity such as to cause the line of the dancer’s knickers to jerk sideways, revealing a tiny if resolutely vertically erect cock.

After various past embarrassing incidents the lad had spent months studying hardcore pornographic magazines until he was sure he could recognize the female form at a glance. And a glance was all it took to convince Henry that he’d fallen into a fool’s paradise once again. Happy’s not to be messed with. Inured in violence, it came as no surprise to me to see the transvestite flipped off Henry’s groin, reaching a height that wouldn’t shame a steroid inspired third world athlete.

All the manliness of its nature thrust through the make-up and plastic surgery; if Henry had less mass and muscle he would’ve been pulped but the monster somehow got a grip on its rage and flounced off after giving the lad a mouthful of Thai abuse, any semblance of femininity long gone.

Henry’s beer bloated face thrust into mine, screaming something about men with big knockers never leaving him alone. He then grabbed the groin of the nearest dancer, squeezed hard and gave the babe the thumbs up when there was no evident sign of masculinity.

Barely restrained anger ran out of the girl and her mates, poor old Henry receiving several blows to his head until his inner coherence caught up with reality and he had the wit to step away from the bar.

Henry was no longer flavor of the moment and all the fun had drained out of the bar. The girls suddenly sported haggard visages and the mamasan was waving the bill under my nose. Two red notes sufficed but I had a great deal of trouble leading the muttering giant out of the oasis.

His final gesture was to unfurl his cane with a parting wave, the unleashed head neatly cutting through an overhead electrical cable. Happy’s face blurred into a bulldog in the throes of rapture, the result of 240 volts shorting out down his arm. It was only a momentarily blitz and the look in the dolt’s eyes was one of rapture rather than pain, as if he could get into such deviancy.

The bar was plunged into darkness, the girls screaming as if about to meet their maker; Henry’s face repossessed into a semblance of sanity suddenly cracked into a wicked grin. It was obviously going to be one of those days!

Chapter 4: Boom and Bust

Happy Henry wasn’t in the least reigned in by a mad transvestite and a bar full of vindictive ladies, the lad waltzed his way through the densely packed stalls. Bent half double to avoid the immoderately low awnings that kept off the worst of the torrential tropical downpour that had appeared out of nowhere.

Entreaties screamed at us from every direction. Anything and everything for sale, even if the prices were hugely inflated by Bangkok standards. Fake jeans, imitation watches and Chinese knock-off antiques, all as totally fake as the grins on the vendors’ faces.

One ignored seller poked the overhead awning with a stick, causing a tidal wave of water to fall atop poor Henry’s head. His already bedraggled shirt appeared to disintegrate before my eyes; Bangkok pollution producing serious acid rain. Henry turned in a full circle, doing a passable imitation of a hunchback, albeit it one with wobbling breasts, trying to focus on the cause of his ill luck.

The furrowed brow and quivering jowls, the hunched, haunted visage and shaking body perfectly embodied an advanced state of imbecility, though Henry merely looked profoundly perplexed at the state of his life; so rapidly and viciously thrown out of a newly found paradise.

Henry tore off the drenched shirt, immediately surrounded by vendors waving new items of clothing at him. Most of them far too small but one enterprising Thai came up with an outsize Hawaiian shirt that the lad carefully embraced. It must’ve been made for obese sex tourists as it actually hung a little loose, emphasizing his shoulder muscles whilst hiding the errant breasts... the lad was suddenly reborn at the cost of a mere two red notes.

I gave him the thumbs up then quickly grabbed his right arm to stop him from making a destructive gesture with the cane. There were enough dissolute Thai youths hanging out with nothing better to do than cause mass carnage; Henry would’ve eventually done for them but in the interim they would probably have caused this aged pensioner some serious damage.

The giant needed little encouragement, easily dragged into yet another bar. A long central stage so absolutely packed out with women that my eyes immediately began to water and poor old Henry didn’t know which way to look – goggle eyed the understatement of the century.

Henry was in a state of complete rapture, wobbling precariously on his stool. I eyed the women with a mixture of fear and loathing, worrying for the integrity of my wallet (yes, there’s a lot of Celtic blood in my heritage). The most beautiful bint in the bar gave me a smile that shattered my heart and caused the false teeth to go into terminal vibrations. She had indelibly exotic eyes, amongst even more disturbing attributes, wouldn’t have been out of place in a Bond movie.

My grandfather status didn’t seem to faze her one tiny bit. Henry looked shocked to his core, rendered open mouthed, when she bent down and kissed my bald pate. Figure about 2000 volts of pure electricity running through my body, muscles I’d long since forgotten coming back to life with switchblade violence.

Saved by Henry making a grab at her. But these gals had evidently grown up in the badlands. When it was merely routine to contort, snap, their bodies to avoid attacks from much more virulent creatures, such as bloody great cobras. Henry was left grabbing empty space and ended up head-butting the bar. The lad shook his head at this dislocation from reality, bleary-eyed, tried to find the focus of his lust.

Distraction set in when half a dozen babes flung themselves at our relatively innocent forms. Innocence in Patpong akin to a pool of petrol and a lighted match; the merest effort all it takes for things to go completely out of control. Henry was all over the babes, cursing the fact that he only had two hands and one mouth!

It took an incredible lack of effort on Happy’s part to blow an excessive amount of money on cola’s, totally ignoring me when I tried to remonstrate at his largesse. He screamed something about the gals loving him, too much, already degenerating into the vernacular destruction of the English language.

Henry, hugely decadent, precariously balanced on his stool against the weight of half a dozen Thai frails, determinedly checked out each and every one’s groin to make sure he wasn’t being short-changed again. The lad had perhaps spent the past half a decade sussing out the female form, perfecting the recognition patterns, determined that he wouldn’t once again fall for the dubious charms of the cross-dressers. They tended to see him coming... and Bangkok was world famous for the artistry of its gender-bender surgeons.

One of the gals requisitioned Henry’s cane, carelessly waved it through the air. She looked mildly amused when the blade shot out. A nearby tourist was somewhat less sanguine to find that he was a fraction of an inch off being decapitated! The Thai waiters closed in on the babe, hurling her to the floor, extracting the retracted cane from her and looking somewhat bemused to find that the dangerous weapon had reduced itself to such innocent proportions. A trick of the lighting?

A furious Henry grabbed the cane out of the air and clamped it to his chest, a mortally wounded giant who didn’t like his prime, almost only, possession to fall into the wrong hands. The girls soothed his furrowed brow, in competition for a fast exit from the bar.

As the bag man I pondered on my own quick departure, leaving Henry in the lurch, but I could still find a semblance of compassion for the lout, who at that moment grinned hugely, as if he had never had it so good. Henry’s memory long since disintegrated from a bout of meths drinking back in the UK, he lived only for the moment.

Stuttering music, the dancers changed again, leaving Henry destitute of attention as they fled for the stage! Not for long, the incensed giant unfurled to his full height, thrust his cane into my hands, and before I could comprehend his madness had leapt up on to the stage.

The mamasan, uncoiled from her normally hunched posture (a result of a couple of pounds of gold chain around her neck), and waved a huge wooden penis at the lad. Happy had embraced a chrome pole that shot out of the stage and ran all the way up to the ceiling. He mimicked the girls, with crude hip flicks, a devilish grin enlivening his face. The pole went banana shaped under the giant’s force, threatening to pop out of its brackets at any moment.

Even over the rumbling bass of what, in the modern world, passed for music, I could hear the grumbling discontent of the punters whose romantic fantasies had been interrupted by the antics of a disheveled monster. The mamasan’s face totally reptilian, the rage turning her skin a strange yellow hue, facial lines of an angry, 100 year old gargoyle.

She threw the wooden penis at Henry, but the giant was moving with such intensity that it went flying past his shoulder, torpedoing the length of the bar until curtailed in its flight by a mirror. The glass exploded, showering everyone nearby with shards; a riot in the making!

Henry finally pulled the pole out of its restraints, released he flew backwards, causing a domino effect of fallen babes until he ended up with his head in the groin of the delicious gal who’d earlier given me a scalp benediction. Despite being resolutely punched around the head, it was such a uniquely romantic situation for Henry that he made the best of it, slurping away with his tongue and panting for all he was worth.

His rare state of happiness didn’t last long. The mamasan had retrieved her wooden penis, bounded on to the stage and repeatedly battered poor old Henry, giving a new meaning to a full body massage.

In all the chaos, I tipped the cup containing the thick wedge of bills over the bar and was slowly, with the innocence of a rather aged choirboy, making a dignified exit. This was one mess I wasn’t going to get Henry out of! I needn’t have worried, the giant suddenly detached himself from the Thai babe, rolled off the bar and hit the deck running.

The Thai waiters went vicious, raining blows and kicks upon the lad, but they didn’t make much difference to his escape velocity. When Henry set his mind to something there was little that could deflect him from his chosen course.

Exiting the bar into Patpong was like being projected from the pot into the frying pan, but yet again the day was saved by a couple of handily placed, highly laconic, tourist police who more or less gave us the thumbs up and stopped the mass egress of enraged Thais from the bar.

Chapter 5: Three Wheel Roulette

Henry shouted at the tuk-tuk driver, Lao music, displaying a disturbing clarity of memory; perhaps the first Thai babe he’d met had deeply scarred his mind despite the fact that she was, er, a he! Henry contorted his wrists and arms in a parody of the dancer’s finesse, towering over the poor Thai guy who was clutching his Buddhist amulet with one hand and scratching his head with the other. Obviously unsure if he should triple his normal rates or get out of the area as rapidly as possible.

Henry had consumed numerous beers in our trek through Patpong, threatening at any moment to flip sideways. After a certain amount of alcohol the lad became impossible, an international incident in the making. My usual reaction, when he would no longer listen to any kind of sanity, to leave him to his own devices. He’d turn up later, sometimes weeks later, sporting a wicked grin and empty pockets.

Suddenly, for the merest passing moment in time, the giant’s grappling with a foreign dance routine coalesced into a form that the native could comprehend. The driver grinned wildly then started singing at the top of his voice whilst doing an artful contortion of his limbs. He wasn’t young yet was supremely supple and had an obvious confidence in his body that brought to mind nothing less than thousands of years of good genetics and a perfect diet.

Henry’s attempt at imitation failed dismally. Neither did the screaming noise that passed for song in his mind impress either myself or any of the nearby natives or tourists. The clown somehow managed to cross his legs up and fall over sideways. Fortunately, I’d already confiscated his walking stick! He’d already nearly wrecked three bars and our dosh was seriously depleted. Henry’s fall from grace was accompanied by a shocked visage that was well worth framing.

One moment a Thai vendor was happily thrusting fake Rolex watches under foreigners’ eyes; the next the stall from which he was operating was flattened by Henry’s outrageous bulk. Rage was an understatement, the poor guy totally besides himself despite the cheapness of his wares, as evidenced by the fake gold finish falling off when they hit the deck.

Henry wore a look of total affront at the sudden loss of dignity. The poor sap had perfected the rare art of bouncing from fake highs to dismal lows an excessive number of times in a day. The inevitable wreckage that he left in his wake was mine to clean up if we failed to perfect our escape routine.

The Thai was used to grappling with obese sex tourists, lost his bearings when Henry rose enraged, in his mind the fall the fault of the vendor for his ill-thought-out placement of the table. The lad artfully, or perhaps craftily, getting his full, excessive, mass behind his elbow which hit the tout full in the chops. Cracked teeth and spurting blood the result.

Hurriedly, whilst the Thai was screaming over spilt blood and broken teeth, not an ounce of the inscrutable in him, not yet able to pick himself up off the floor, we threw ourselves into the tuk-tuk. The taxi was a curious three-wheel device, a cross between a dodgem car and golf trolley, with one wheel missing. More motorcycle than car at the front end.

Henry had a great deal of trouble fitting his excessive bulk into the dubious contraption; sensibly I’d taken the precaution of levering myself in first. Henry’s head bulged through the canopy and he spread his legs either side of the driver who sat in a central seat in the front of the device.

The engine screamed under the unlikely mass, some kind of damnable two-stroke by the sound of it. Bounced out into the heavy traffic without the slightest hesitation, the cages and motorcycles parting as if part of a preordained plan. The driver, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, lifted a bottle from under his seat, took a slug, and handed it over to Henry, telling the lad, whisky Lao!

Henry’s eye’s lit up as he grabbed at the bottle, but not before he had stuck his head out of the side of the tuk-tuk, screamed at the top of his voice at a couple of young ladies. Something about getting them off, luv, though as they were wearing very short skirts little was left to the imagination. Except in Henry’s case, where there wasn’t enough brain-power for any kind of imagery!

The driver nearly skidded off the road as he grappled with Henry. Even the most fierce native concoction wouldn’t faze the lad, having trained himself to subsist on a diet of meths in his tramp days! Henry had drained half the bottle by the time the driver had finally confiscated it. Even from the relatively safe position of my semi-prone, if high speed, rendition of a lounge lizard, the fumes had more than a hint of paint stripper about them.

Any exponent of the art of driving a three-wheeler will observe that the safest and most stable place to fit the single wheel is at the back of the vehicle rather, as in this case, the front. Thus the first bend gave us a taste of what was to come. The drunken driver, perhaps driven on by Henry bawling out a dirty ballad at the top of his voice, twirled the vehicle through the traffic, skidded into a sharp left despite the red lights and presence of at least three traffic cops.

The whole device shuddered as it lost traction on one wheel, not helped along by the effects of Happy Henry’s unlikely bulk on one side of the vehicle. The driver twisted the tiller-like bars the other way and it bounced back on to three wheels. Henry beamed with joy whilst I fervently hoped that my dislocated limbs would settle back into their joints. Henry screamed something about buying one tomorrow, totally ignoring my mumbled discontent.

The driver finished off his bottle of whisky, a matter of face to match Henry’s consumption, chucked the bottle and whacked the tuk-tuk into a right-hand turn, totally ignoring the three lanes of opposing traffic, somehow wobbling through the chaos. The vehicle rushed at an unlikely speed down darkened alleys, foot deep pot-holes threatening to break both the chassis and my back.

The curves tightened, the speed increased. Henry regressed to our sidecar days, flinging his unlikely bulk out of the side of the tuk-tuk, to counter the way it spun around the corners on two wheels. Something like glee was written deep into his countenance as he tried to guess which way the vehicle was going to turn.

One particularly memorable moment was when the giant was hanging right off the side of the vehicle, which was still threatening to flip right off the road. The lad’s head sped over the top of seated Thai’s who were gobbling down their food at a street restaurant. In a rare moment of poetic coherence, he screamed at the top of his voice, Happy Henry rules! The diners looked ready to regurgitate their meal but by the time they gathered their wits we were safely out of range.

The driver throttled right back, screamed a tirade of Thai at Henry. The lad looked as shocked as he was abashed, so, before he burst into tears, I handed him his walking stick which he fingered lovingly. Progress was much more stately; intimations of a ride into the heart of darkness.

Henry enlivened things a little by flicking his walking stick under the nose of a portly, mustached Thai who was lounging on a street corner with a totally misplaced air of being a master of the universe. He almost dropped a load when the knurled knob flicked out towards his face, threatening to remove his tatty moustache. The driver was suddenly a gibbering wreck, muttering something about the Mafia whilst Henry was pissing himself with laughter.

The lad suddenly tried to jerk upwards, an intensity to the movement that often presaged an epileptic fit, which Happy was occasionally prone to! Henry completely forgot the confines of the mount, his head rearing with such violence that it shot through the plastic canopy. The sight of a tuk-tuk with a giant’s head seemingly decapitated atop it was too much for one Thai motorcyclist who, open-mouthed, assumed he was already in hell and rode off the road. The echo of his machine’s destruction strayed above the wail of the stroker’s engine and Henry’s mad cackle!

Finally, we pulled up outside what looked like an abandoned factory with a single red neon tube flickering in a darkness that hid all kinds of vague shapes. Henry had pulled his head back into the tuk-tuk, leaving a ragged hole in the canopy that flapped in the breeze. The driver was so troubled by the giant’s antics that rather than demanding compensation he happily accepted a red note, sped off out of our sight as if the hounds of hell were after him!

Chapter 6: Whisky Lao Blues

Before we could enter the building, Henry screamed in a high pitched falsetto. His fingers in his mouth, he was reduced to a gibbering wreck. Looking around for the cause of his distress, I could find little except for darkened shapes. Henry, now clutching his walking stick to his chest, with a desperate air, managed to stutter something about giant, flying lizards trying to eat him alive.

The lad rolled this way and that, finally getting his act together by going into Ninja moves with his walking stick. Rage and fear overcoming his extreme state of drunkenness; mixing beer and the local whisky apparently not recommended even for someone inured to meths.

Extended, the cane flashed through the air in a blur. I backed out of range, through the door into the neon dive. Henry had enough sanity left in his mind – just – to decide that being left in a dark alleyway in a foreign city on his own wasn’t to his liking. With one final, crazed, salutation, he dived in after me, slamming the door shut as if his life depended upon it.

The lad was panting as if in the throes of oxygen starvation, his whole body shaking. Dribble dripped from his wrecked visage and even his incredible bulk appeared diminished to mere mortal status. I tried to sooth him with sweet words, as if reassuring a six month old baby, although the only lullaby that Henry understood was one which contained the words women and sex.

Henry flicked his head every which way. Finding no giant lizards about to attack him, and spying a dance floor packed with young women in native costume, he perked up almost immediately. Lucky, indeed, he who can immediately forget the root of his terror.

Apart from the dance floor, the bar was in semi-darkness. Only with the swiftest of movements and immediate verbal bashing did I dissuade the giant from walking straight through a group of Thai men settled at their table. They were so far gone on the combination of neat whisky and heady atmosphere that not even the sudden sight of Henry intruding on their happiness put them off their drink.

One of them pointed at a half empty bottle of whisky Lao, which the lad immediately grabbed and downed in one. Open-mouthed astonishment was replaced by much angry waving of fists as I led Henry away. In retrospect, I think they were suggesting that we stump up for another bottle rather than finishing off theirs. The kind of international misunderstanding that could happen to anyone but when I glanced back I saw four of the guys grappling with the fifth who was trying to draw a gun!

Consumed by the darkness of the bar, we hid on the far side of the room. Henry’s perfect rendering of the phrase, whisky Lao, had the waitress gabbling away in Thai like a monkey on speed. She showed no signs of annoyance when Henry did his usual gender check, giving me the thumbs-up sign and a very drunken leer that would’ve had any half sane woman running for cover. It took Henry an incredible amount of effort to reassemble his face into a mere semblance of sanity.

One sip of the whisky had me reeling, jumping with ruined nerve endings and wondering how long what remained of my brain had left to last. Judging by Henry’s rolling eyeballs and twitching body not long. The giant’s grunts had also procured a large fish that was roasted before our eyes, a couple of bowls of rice and three pubescent girls who wore skimpy dresses cut out of the local cloth.

Two of the women had settled comfortably on various parts of Henry’s body, feeding him spoonfuls of rice. The third had decided I was in need of immediate resuscitation, giving my much battered back a massage. She had muscles like steel, a grip that tried to shatter my aged bones and enough body heat to power a furnace. When she put a knee in the small of my back and tried to whiplash my spine into proper alignment, I only just stopped my false teeth from popping out.

The momentary fear that I was going to be crippled for life was replaced by a marvelous buzz that ran from the bottom of my spine deep into my brain. I was highly tempted to propose marriage on the spot; total incompatibility had never stopped me in my erstwhile youth. I was so suddenly elated that I hadn’t even noticed Henry’s disappearance...

A sudden lull in the music, which had majored in flute and rhythm, as well as a sultry singer’s voice, brought my attention to the dance floor. I can’t say I was surprised to find that Henry was yet again the centre of attention. The giant was flopping about, caught between trying to imitate the artistry of the Laotian dancers and doing a Fred Astair.

The result wasn’t a pretty picture. Or perhaps it was something an inebriated Picasso might’ve done rather well. Henry appeared in the throes of a neon flashed epileptic fit, jerking every which way, his extended cane threatening to decapitate everyone within a couple of yards. The lower half of his face was buried in garlands. A stark contrast between the flowers and Henry’s idiot visage.

In any civilized country the result would’ve been immediate arrest but the Thais reacted by sending an A-team of gals; such was the force of their beauty and sexuality that they immediately placated the giant into a simpering simpleton, and guided him back to our table. A world first, Henry so far gone on alcohol much more likely to indulge in self-immolation than compliance.

The various depredations of the night coalesced in the need for a sudden emptying of the bladder. Third world toilets were not exactly an edifying experience but when the needs must... This one required me to bend almost double below a ceiling designed for dwarfs (poor old Henry would’ve been on all fours) before an elongated chromed trough. I had just attained an impressive flow when I felt hands clamped on my neck.

Not exactly ones life’s ambition to be strangled to death in a Bangkok urinal but it turned out that the dissolute Thai youth was merely offering me a massage. I couldn’t decide if he was an AIDS victim or just a strung out heroin addict but he didn’t react well to my string of invective, slouching off and muttering away in the local dialect.

By the time I made it back to the table, the toilet attendant was already there, screaming abuse at the Thai women. After a few minutes of mutual verbal heckling, the guy slouched off, looking like he’d been castrated! In the time it’d taken me to avail myself of the public convenience, Henry had firmly planted a stunningly beautiful frail on his lap and seemed to all external appearances to have attained nirvana.

To my somewhat blurred vision, the perfect contrast between the beast and the beauty. Henry’s drunken air of benevolence was sorely tried when the frail leapt off the lad’s lap and ran into the arms of a thoroughly obese Thai, who appeared nothing more to my mind than a rather large gorilla dressed up in an expensive suit. He flashed a large wad of 1000 baht notes, the babe almost swooning in his arms.

Meanwhile, the giant was fingering his walking stick with alarming intensity. His eyes disappearing under overhung and furiously twitching brows. Before he could act half a dozen young things seemingly reared up out of the ground and threw themselves at the giant. Henry was instantly thrown back into paradise.

It didn’t last very long. A fairly innocuous if large and very ugly cockroach flew across the table. Its flight ponderous and unstable, slowly flapping wings. Henry’s whisky burnt mind immediately scaled it up to monstrous proportions. Flinging the startled women off his body, the lad reared back out of its flight path and tried to cut it in half with his extended cane. Stuttering at the top of his voice that the reptiles had wings and razor teeth.

The lad retreated to the nearby corner, twitching his head and stick in a zany kind of rhythm, sweeping the cane through the air as if defending himself from hordes of demons. The Thais didn’t seem to mind as he was far enough away to avoid scalping anyone and the building was already so dilapidated that there wasn’t much extra damage the giant could do.

After five minutes, or so, Henry ran out steam, twitched once mightily then let out a stream of vomit tinged with blood. Emerging from his nightmare, Happy was hunched and haunted, moaning that we should return to England at once.

Somehow the bill had been racked up to 3000 baht but we were both too done in to argue the toss, just wanted a fast exit. A metered taxi was a gift from the gods and the driver even seemed sober; a rarity in Bangkok.

Chapter 7: Hotel Banglampu

The hotel was at the upper end of Banglampu residences. That is to say that the room was cheap, had concrete instead of paper walls and a tiny shower/toilet. No lift, we toiled up five flights of stairs but it was worth it to avoid the hordes of mosquitoes that inhabited the lower levels. Less than thirty seconds in one first floor room had sent Henry into a wild flapping motion as he tried to fend off the bloodthirsty desperados. The receptionist looked panicked out of her mind, muttering, Farang Ba, Farang Ba...

Henry’s usual resilience had deserted him, the effects of the local whisky causing him to slouch with his hands dragging along the ground. He kept looking behind, darting his head every which way in the short walk from the taxi to the hotel. Stuttering about snakes overhead and giant rats in the alleyway; wailed once about oversized, flying cockroaches that wanted to feast on his skin. The slightest night noise had the lad leaping out of his skin. I could see I would have to give him a serious talking to in the morning; no mettle, these youths!

On the stairway he leapt a good yard at the sight of a small lizard that ran up the wall. His scream was high pitched, on the verge of turning hysterical. He muttered something about wanting to go home right away. I slapped him about his legs with his cane, had him leaping up the stairs until I finally pushed the drunken lout into the room before he got us thrown out of the hotel.

Henry didn’t even seem to notice the grunts and hollering of passion from the next room. The girl was practically screaming the building down and the bed was jumping, rattling, away like it was about to explode. There was enough grunting to indicate half a rugby squad was at it.

Happy looked around the room as if he had never seen it before. The lad appeared to have absolutely no idea where or who he was or what he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t even seem to recognize me.

After turning his ample body through many angles, and bending low, he managed to insert himself into the toilet but was unable to close the door. It was a Thai style of torture that you were supposed to crouch over but Henry, with a look of total bemusement, tried to sit down on the floor level pan.

He managed the descent from grace, let out a huge detonation and then instantly deposited the contents of his bowels into the pan. The stink was incredible, the muck overflowing from the toilet and threatening to engulf the room. Henry’s eyes were suddenly full of panic and his brows twitched with bewilderment. He thumped his fists against the wall until his knuckles spurted blood.

Henry appeared stuck in position. I was in the far corner of the room trying to hold my breath whilst opening the window. Henry started bawling, rather like a one year-old who’d been given a good cuff around the ear for some minor misdemeanor. His face dissolved into an awful mess whilst tears ran down his cheeks. If I’d been armed with my old Wembley revolver I would’ve been highly tempted to put him out of his misery.

The toilet space also held the shower, I sidled over, almost dying from a lack of oxygen and twirled the knob. A surprisingly powerful jet of water instantly soaked the giant. The mixture of excrement and water threatened to overflow into the room. Henry was so shocked by the blast of water that he stopped bawling!

After five minutes, or so, most of the muck had disappeared and I was able to breathe without feeling like I needed to throw up. We all have our standards, coming into contact with a stinking, drenched Henry stuck in a third world toilet bowl wasn’t one I really wanted to contemplate but not even the most hardened cynic could abandon the lad to such a soiled fate. Using Henry’s cane, as one would a barge-pole, the lad grabbing hold of the other end - after a serious tussle, in which Happy was entirely unsure of what exactly was going down, we were in business.

I was able to jerk Henry out of the pan and he managed to scramble out of the bathroom but not before dislodging the washbasin, which was left held in place by its waste-pipe, and smashing the mirror with his elbow. The door was left hanging on one hinge at an odd angle.

Henry emerged from the toilet drenched, bedraggled, with a look of total idiocy, as if he was the victim of some outside force rather than his own excessive clumsiness. Suddenly naked, he pranced around the room, his breasts flopping and his mass chomping on the concrete floor. He seemed to consume all the space and air.

By some quirk of the hotel’s design, the noise from next door suddenly appeared piped in and amplified, the girl going into a high pitched wail whilst the men grunted like pigs in seventh heaven. Henry finally noticed the noise, looked completely bewildered before complaining that the TV was very loud.

I told him that it was a religious program, not wanting to set him off on some sexual odyssey, and the lad looked suitably relieved. After a lot more desperate grunting and wailing, the noise abated and it looked probable that we might be able to actually get to sleep.

Happy, standing naked before the mirror, had taken to playing Ninja moves against himself, using his extended cane in various doubtful poses. Given the smallness of the room, I ended up crouched in one corner, possessively and hopefully rubbing my rosary beads.

Henry suddenly leapt from one side of the room to the other, total panic written on his face. His illusions of being a martial arts warrior or a Mad Max clone dissipated in an instant. Someone hammering on our door, Happy decanting that the police were after us. Banglampoo cops notorious for planting drugs then demanding massive bribes.

He ran around in circles, the retracted cane held close to his chest, until I gave him a good clip around the ear. For a moment he looked at me as if he’d never seen me before, then appeared likely to burst into tears and finally gave me an idiot’s grin.

I decided that Henry opening the door would frighten off even the most hardened and corrupt cop. Reluctantly, the giant did the deed. Standing to his full height, still as naked as the day he exploded out of his mother’s womb, but wearing an expression that mixed alarm, fear and imbecility in equal measure.

However, his visage cleared when rather than a squad of corrupt police officers revealed before him was an aging hippie babe, anywhere between forty and fifty. She was wearing a sarong draped open. Henry’s eyes clamped on her naked groin. After a few minutes examination, the lad had reassured himself that the gender was correct and had responded accordingly.

The next thing I knew, I was turfed out of the room and left to my own devices! Bloody women! As the cost of another room was nothing compared to the monetary inconvenience of the past eight hours, and I was desperate for some kip, I did the obvious.

Despite being three in the morning, there were still hookers loitering in the lobby who looked most affronted when I refused their services. The most eloquent of the bitches remonstrated that if I was an old gay pervert she could find me a young boy. If I’d been armed with Henry’s cane I would’ve given her a slap but the evil eye seemed to do the trick, left her cowering in the corner.

The moment my head gently made contact with the pillow I slept the sleep of the dead. Not just keeping up with Henry, which would’ve tried the most energetic youth let alone a pensioner, but jetlag and the impossibility of sleep on the 24 hour flight...

Gradually, the hollering noise crept into my consciousness. By the time my eyes had adjusted to the brightness of the morning light, the definitive aural blast of Oriental (nee Happy) Henry in full tilt panic mode had overwhelmed even Bangkok’s notorious melody of traffic, Buddhist chants and vendors’ imprecations. Good old George to the rescue yet again.

When you attain venerable pensioner status you don’t rush into things. Showered and shaved, I was finally ready to rescue the lad, whose screaming fit had windows rattling and had set off the fire alarm.

After pushing through a crowd of laconic locals and degenerate hippies, I finally found Henry standing in a good two feet of water, holding his groin and in-between screaming fits shouting that he had caught AIDS!

Chapter 8: Slow Exit to Hell

The lad’s member, bloated and hanging down almost to his knees, certainly looked in a bad way. Even the most cursory examination, which was rather more intimate than I would’ve liked, revealed blisters and bloodied clumps of diseased looking skin. Henry, bent almost double, trying to assay the damage, looked completely wretched; whatever pleasure he’d had from the sexual encounter long since buried in the murky depths of what remained of his mind.

The Thais seemed to swoon at the massiveness of the organ whilst the foreigners merely looked shocked at its sorry state. An incredible number of people had forced their heads around the doorway, encouraged by the desperate bellowing. Nothing like a bit of mass carnage to draw the general populace.

One of the hippies offered the useful suggestion that Henry had better have the damn thing cut off before the disease spread to his whole body. The poor old lad was instantly reduced to his knees, blubbering about what he’d done, offering a thoroughly delinquent mixture of Buddhist and Christian chants. God knows where he’d picked up the former; we’d been in the country for less than 24 hours. You never knew exactly what his brain would tune in to; a wild randomness to the rhythms he’d pick up.

In between these imprecations to whatever gods were in residence, he stuttered something about the hippie chick taking on all comers on the floor, if not in the hotel. She’d apparently ensnared Henry for a good couple of hours as the centerpiece of the orgy. The poor chump clamped to the bed by the sheer number of participants. Typical! Couldn’t let the lad out of your sight for five minutes.

I pieced all this together after forcing him into some wet clothes and guiding him out of the hotel. The owner was all heart once he saw the state of the lad, letting us off with a mere 10,000 baht fine for wrecking the room. Luckily, the water hadn’t penetrated through the floor, or he probably would’ve had us for a new hotel. He was grinning so broadly that his teeth threatened to pop out of his mouth.

Word of Henry’s fall from grace had spread so rapidly that a large crowd of locals had gathered to view the strange farang spectacle. Big smiles and mad chatter as we left the hotel. The lad looked somewhere between startled and petrified to find himself the centre of attention. I just hoped we were ahead of the TV cameras!

Henry couldn’t walk in a straight line, hunched and crippled at the same time. He scattered a large proportion of the crowd when he threatened to fall sideways into them. No sooner had he corrected that trajectory than he swayed wildly in the other direction. A couple of outsize Thais refused to budge, looking totally affronted that they were supposed to share airspace with Henry. Though tall for Thais it was only when Henry turned slightly, hunched down, that he came into eyeball contact with one of them.

The giant shrugged his head, shuddered his body and then moved so wildly and unpredictably that the Thai suddenly found Henry’s forehead cracking into his face. The sound of breaking bone and the sight of cascading blood had the Thai’s mate backing off rapidly, making conciliatory gestures with his hands. Henry focused on the bloodied Thai, the lad looking totally shocked and befuddled by the sight, as if it had absolutely nothing to do with him.

Both time and place had become warped in his mind, sighting a rather strange looking sidecar and motorcycle he staggered into the former, thinking he was back in the UK and it was our splendidly ruined Russian outfit, affectionately known as the Urinal.

The motorcycle, some small Kawasaki stroker that looked about thirty years old, more rust than metal. The sidecar could only loosely be recognized as such, wooden floor and minimal tubular steel structure both warped by the intense heat and threatening to fall apart under Henry’s unlikely mass. The large bicycle sized wheel looked fit to buckle.

The absentee owner had left the key in the ignition, Henry showed no signs of budging, looking like he was stuck in the contraption as firmly as he’d been in the Thai toilet. And the injured Thai had gathered a large posse of irate Thai youths to his cause... the lad brightened visibly when I handed him his walking stick and shoved myself in the saddle.

I was well used to the ways of ancient machinery, had no trouble starting the old heap. No doubt, the excessive heat of the day helped. It had already evaporated most of the water out of Henry’s clothes. The outfit was both slow and ponderous, causing the locals to rage on their horns and swerve out of our splendiferous path.

They were encouraged by Henry waving the extended walking stick around in a frenzy. His face blurring into a bulldog visage, fired by pain, rage and hopelessness. The lad finally managed to free himself from his wedged position, standing upright in the chariot and twirling the cane around above his head. A cheerleader for the newly dead.

Sighting an enraged farang giant floating along the road, twirling a cane whose extended end glinted in the burnt out sun in a particularly fearsome manner, most of the natives, including those whose hands were supposed to be controlling a diverse range of meandering machinery, clutched their Buddhist amulets and prayed for a quick deliverance from the demon. The fact that most of them were no longer in control of their vehicles appeared to make not one ounce of difference to the madness of the traffic.

It took approximately five minutes for the sidecar to part company from the motorcycle. I was concentrating on our forward path through the absolute chaos and insanity of Bangkok traffic, only alerted to a change in our status by the bike leaping forward as if it’d been suddenly fed a dose of nitrous oxide and the absence of Henry screaming at the top of his voice. I managed a fast glance leftwards, have to admit to being left open-mouthed at the absence of Happy and his chariot. Some new catastrophe every day!

The brakes gave a new dimension to the concept of fade but I just managed to swerve the machine up a ramp on to the pavement. Or what, in the Orient, passed for a pavement – between an excess of stalls, mad dogs and various lumps of concrete there wasn’t much room for the actual pedestrians, let alone a rapidly self-destructing motorcycle.

I leapt off the Kawasaki as quickly as my ancient bones allowed. Knew it was pushing my luck to have any further association with the heap. Age brings wisdom; of sorts. If it was total, I would’ve vacated the area immediately. It took a little while to find Oriental Henry.

Tracing the route backwards, keeping an ear open for the giant’s hollering, I finally found a large congregation of locals. Took an excessive amount of effort to force my way through their ranks but a few well placed taps with my boots – ex-army and polished daily to a mirror shine, naturally; highly effective against the disgracefully slipshod natives’ flip-flops - and the judicious use of my elbows finally allowed me to view the scene.

Oriental Henry had found the only piece of open water in Banglampoo. A slice of abandoned canal full of stagnant, murky green slime. Henry’s head seemingly floated on the surface, his expression dazed and confused. Suddenly, he shot upwards, fueled only by the excessive energy of rage, he carried the mass of the battered sidecar on his back, having somehow become intimately entangled with its structure.

The lad was madly threshing the water with his feet, screaming that monstrous rats were after him, though from where I was standing he seemed to be in the middle of a swarm of flesh eating mosquitoes who had probably never had it so good. Henry was all muscle, no artifice; no great surprise when he fell flat on his face, the full mass of the sidecar on his back.

The crowd found his antics hilarious, gave him a round of applause, no-one showing any intention of rushing in to save the maniac. After a few seconds of swaying from side to side, Henry managed to get up on his knees, dripping slime like a monster from a horror movie. Shook his head, managed to free an arm from the sidecar and somehow shrug the structure off his back.

It obviously wasn’t one of the lad’s better days. The chariot hit the water with unsuspected force, throwing a tidal wave of slime over Henry. Happy tried to roll away from the deluge whilst standing upright at the same time. An act of coordination way beyond his abilities. Yet another drenching resulted. Finally, he managed a half crawl, half stagger out of the water.

Most of the crowd bent double in hysterical laughter at his plight. Only one shop-house owner showed any compassion, turning a hose on Henry. The lad rose to his full height after this watery benediction, hunched forwards in a parody of a Thai wai and then went into contortions and near hysteria when he realised that some creature was threshing about in his trousers. A particularly sullen looking frog dropped out of his pants, Henry practically jumping out of his skin with fright whilst the crowd roared with hilarity. Prime time Henry!

Chapter 9: Doctors and Nurses

Banglampoo was as awash with stalls as Henry was with water. The merest hint of money could buy any permutation of clothing, a false identity, a fake watch, hardcore videos, pirated computer programs or just about anything anyone could possibly conceive. The density of the stalls such that poor old Henry had to go into various body permutations just to wend his way through them.

The depredations of the day had left his clothes impregnated with slime, shredded in places so badly that the only person likely to be elated would be a post-punk degenerate. A couple of large towels and a fresh set of clothes were purchased for loose change, but only after the kind of strenuous round of bargaining equivalent to settling the Northern Ireland crisis.

Oriental Henry done out in an extra large kaftan and psychedelic pants a curious sight to behold; though so common in Banglampoo he fitted right in. All he retained of his former self, a set of extremely large ex-army boots. The lad insisted, as was his wont, that I tog up in similar gear. Given my great age I suspected that the effect tried the tolerance of both the locals and hippies, but one of the blessings of old age is that you really don’t give a damn any more! Something, dear reader, to look forward to!

Henry nearly caused mass panic when he started clumping down on the huge cockroaches which seemed to be scurrying over nearly every Bangkok surface, as if they could no longer await a nuclear holocaust to clear out the human populace. Every time he successfully stomped one of the vermin, his whole body shook with repressed terror. His face a picture of petulant distaste.

The lad was so irritated by the creatures that his aim was often well off, resulting in the odd broken foot of tourists and locals who weren’t quick enough to avoid the giant’s manic gyrations. One look at Henry’s enraged face dissuaded them from arguing the toss, although one local went as far as shaking his fist under Henry’s nose.

An assault that perplexed the lad until his sight fixed on a practically naked local frail. His head bent at an angle, his ears almost flapping in excitement, he watched her waltz out of the back door of a hotel, canter along its side and then meander into the front entrance. All so surreal that I thought I might’ve dreamt it, save that he was growling with lust!

The lad was less than enamored by the sight of some kind of flying insects that hovered in the air. The same size as the monster cockroaches but they took a particular delight in dive-bombing Henry’s head. He tried to ward them off with his hands but the heavier his actions went the more frenzied and accurate became their attack. Henry was to Zen Buddhism as Bangkok’s background noise was to divine silence... as out of place and time as could be! Somewhere between crying his heart out and total rage; he was the only person in the immediate vicinity in whom the creatures showed any interest!

In the chaos of the motorcycle and sidecar slaughter, the lad had lost his walking stick, had to make do with what appeared to be a stuffed snake, its head forming the handle. Happy had nearly emptied his bowels when the vendor thrust it into his hands, totally panicked, stepping backwards and only just avoiding demolishing yet another stall. He’d spent a good five minutes grappling with it, convinced that it was still alive! As it was the only available object of a suitable size the lad accepted it with ill-grace and not a little fear.

He perked up considerably when he saw the effect of thrusting the head under the noses of a couple of elderly tourists, dressed so extravagantly in bumper suits that they had to be Americans. They went from twitching due to the excessive heat and noise, to clutching their chests whilst their faces took on a curious purple tint as they gasped for breath. The man was left on his knees, jerking spasmodically, much to the amusement of the locals.

The lad seemed to forget all his worries, practically falling out of his clothes in what passed, to his delinquent and restricted mind, for mirth. Only the confines of the stalls on the pavement stopped him going into a dervish dance, though he managed to lacerate one awning and half cripple a Thai man who got in the way of his manic permutations.

Henry in fine spirits until a sharp groin pain had him bent double, adding new and unexpected swear words to his vocabulary. I assumed that Bapt Narook was some form of Thai insult! Cascades of water flowed off Oriental Henry, leaving him crouched in a minor lake as if he’d added pissing himself in public to his deranged delinquencies. The grinding teeth added a new cast to his idiot’s face that had most of the nearby populace taking the long route around the giant!

I firmly grasped his free arm, directed the lad to a gaudily advertised clinic that promised cures for the clap, obesity and hair loss, amongst other maladies. Rather like taking a child to the dentist, Henry sulky and temperamental as he sat in reception, taking over two chairs and letting loose the odd bout of flatulence just to emphasize his plight. He wasn’t overjoyed when I confiscated his snake-head cane but you couldn’t let the him loose in a confined space with such a potentially lethal device, could you?

The Thais’ distaste at the sight of two farangs emphasized when they smelt the result of Henry’s back-door emissions. At least it convinced the receptionist to give the lad priority treatment but he refused to go in alone, fingers in his mouth to emphasize his distress. I ended up holding his hand, just like one would for a five year-old kid.

The doctor, a middle-aged Thai woman well off her prime, looked shocked to her core at the unlikely duo who took up all the available space in her office. She started off badly by asking if we were gay, which left poor old Henry, who was in a rare state of panic and pain, totally confused. You could almost see his brain whirling away, asking why anyone would think his predicament could be associated with happiness.

I dropped Henry’s hand as if it was red hot, straightened my aged body as if on parade and gave her a sharp salute. She visibly wilted at this unexpected assault, muttering something under her breath. I gave her my rank and service number, telling her that I could say no more. You’d think that with the Thai’s obsession with face they’d watch their language.

Before I could stop the lad, he had unfurled his still bloated member and demanded to know if he was about to die. Even after immersion in the slime it’d already improved considerably in appearance. Despite his obvious paranoid concern, the lad’s realization that he was in the presence of a woman, however far from physical perfection and youth she happened to be, resulted in the kind of erection that would’ve been the envy of a porn star.

Stepping back into the far corner of the room, as if the lad was about to rape her, she wailed that the lacerations were only mosquito bites! She frantically tried to wave Henry away, giving me a beseeching look. I gave the member a sharp tap with the snake-head cane, dropping the lad to his knees for a moment and rapidly deflating the erection. The look from the doctor was one of profound gratitude! I momentarily considered marriage but soon scotched that madness when I saw she had a couple of teeth sharpened to vampire intensity.

Shrugging off the incredible pain as just one of life’s hazards, Henry took a few moments to grasp the significance of this outpouring, looked doubtfully at his member and then did a little leap of joy in the air. Given the confines of the room and the size of Oriental Henry, any kind of movement was going to result in a certain amount of destruction.

The giant ended up falling sideways through a flimsy partition wall that exploded under his excessive mass. The Thais in the reception weren’t exactly overwhelmed with joy to find a monster farang gargoyle with a wildly swinging member suddenly descending upon them; fleeing the scene with unseemly speed.

The doctor exited the room on her knees, hands clasped in prayer. She looked extremely relieved when I whipped Henry with the cane into departing the premises in maximum haste; a profoundly wacky way to obtain a free consultation. But you have to get ahead of the game by any available means.

Chapter 10: Hole-in-One

Henry’s elation at an apparently easy escape from death consummated by excessive consumption of the local whisky for most of the day. Bangkok liberally littered with outdoor bars, we ended up in Siam Square after a hurried exit from Banglampoo. The owner of the outfit seen pushing what remained of his Kawasaki motorcycle, looking every which way for the culprits, not to mention the missing sidecar. The way things were in Bangkok – desperate – we had probably destroyed his only means of livelihood.

Our means of escape was one of the public buses. These were designed with only one thing in mind, punishment for misdeeds in past lives. A flood of people flowed off and an even greater number of locals rushed on. If Henry had been less large he would’ve been stomped in the stampede; the concept of queuing obviously unheard of. Some of the blighters went between the lad’s legs, making him leapt with fright, Henry hypersensitive about a certain part of his anatomy... I only just stopped him lashing out with the cane.

Even I had to bend double, poor old Henry was practically on all fours, taking up about ten times the space of the lithe locals; more standing room than seats. The driver had an extremely powerful stereo system set up in the front of the bus, the bass and volume both turned up as high as they would go. Along with my head being bashed into the ceiling, thanks to the pot-holes and bumps in the road, after about an hour of sweltering heat I felt like I’d done twenty rounds with a particularly angry Mike Tyson.

Things weren’t exactly helped along by Henry trying to head-butt likely looking ladies between their legs, nor with the way the windows were designed to cut off the vision of foreigners. We exited the bus when a great mass of the passengers rushed off, figuring that we must’ve arrived somewhere interesting.

Henry, dripping water and smelling like he’d been rolling in fertilizer, took a good ten minutes to creak himself back to his full height once we were on what passed for solid ground. The whole city slowly sinking into the sea. The lad limbered up by going into Ninja moves with his snake-head cane. Only the natural quickness of reaction of the locals saved them from decapitation and a pack of tourists sped as fast as their legs allowed up on to the skytrain, out of harm’s way! Henry’s fame was spreading far and wide.

Despite the tribulations of the past 24 hours, the lad was soon in extremely high spirits. All it took was a large bottle of whisky Lao and a perch amid a mass flow of young Thai ladies. The nearby university disgorged a seemingly endless stream of extremely attractive young things, though most of the men verged on the thuggish, often grown wildly tall on an excess of Western food.

Henry alternatively caused consternation and giggling fits. The giant would lean off his stool, thrusting his idiot’s face into the path of some divine creature... in any sane and civilized country the cops would’ve been called and that would’ve been that. But half the time, the effect was a fit of the giggles and a wild flash of the eyes. The other half of the time, the babe looked like she was about to piss herself and ran off like the proverbial scalded cat.

The sweetness of this scene, the sheer abundance of young women, brought all kinds of strange creatures out of the woodwork. Henry’s view was ruined by a pack of elderly, obese Germans who attempted to take over the cafe. Ordering a realignment of the tables and demanding that the lad and I move inside out of their way. Henry rose to his full, awe-inspiring, height, and gave them a Nazi salute. Only the hand that did the deed still held his cane, suddenly looked like he was flinging a snake into the air.

Had me jumping out of my skin, let alone the Krauts who were caught between replying in kind and ducking out of the wrathful path of the snake. The waitresses seemed amused by his antics, especially when he bellowed out, with a gleeful smile, that we had won the war! He then did a passable rendition of a funny walk, ignoring the fact that the pack of Germans were in his immediate path. After a few saunters up and down the restaurant they did a rapid retreat, muttering dark threats.

No sooner had we settled back on our stools than Henry was besieged by an elderly Thai woman. She wore an exaggerated amount of make-up that did absolutely nothing for the texture of her skin. Didn’t matter to the lad, who was too busy drooling, looking down the front of her dress, inspired by a ready lust. She wanted to take us on a tour of jewelry stores but seeing our total lack of interest, suggested a visit to a nearby tailor, eyeing our hippie gear with obvious contempt.

Only when she glanced at the lad’s groin did she comprehend that he was more interested in getting into her clothes than buying new ones. After taking a second look at his erection she waved him away with a look as disgruntled as it was disgusted. The lad was practically grinding his teeth away in frustration and looked ready to burst into tears.

Luckily, he was distracted by the sight of one of the German tourists being harangued by a group of students. They had a commendable handle on the usage of English swear words. I learnt a few new ones, anyway. The Kraut looked befuddled by their rejection of his lust, as if the concept that money couldn’t buy everything in the Orient had never entered his mind. He slouched away, his face burnt beetroot red by their taunts.

He suddenly turned, shook his fist at Henry, as if it was all the giant’s fault. The lad gave him another Nazi salute and the German tried to do a muscle builder’s flex, merely emphasizing his massive beer belly. Henry clumped off the stool, marched towards the Kraut only to find that in his haste he had missed the fact that a manhole cover was no longer in place. The German bounced on his feet in joy then flounced off.

The lad dropped a good five feet, immediately undergoing a psychic disintegration, screaming that giant rats were eating his legs. I looked down into the hole in the ground, Henry up to his thighs in a dreadful looking slime. Anything that could live in that had to be pretty nasty.

A huge group of Thais gathered around for the free entertainment, no one offering a helping hand. It was no surprise to me that I almost pulled my back out and nearly broke my leg again when the inelegant lump suddenly bounded out of the hole with unseemly speed. Not one of the great ambitions of my life, to have a slime coated giant collapse on top of me!

A turbaned Indian pushed his way through the crowd, cooed Goodness gracious many times and insisted on pulling us into his tailor’s shop, which was only a few seconds away. In retrospect, I suspect that he had deliberately removed the manhole cover in order to gain easy custom. A couple of Thais in the backroom worked absolute wonders with a few bits of white linen cloth; in no time at all we were clothed in matching cream suits, proper tropical Charlies! Forty dollars each, even I couldn’t call that a rip-off! Not until a little later anyway!

Henry sauntered along the road as if he owned the whole world. Swinging the cane in rhythm with his goosestep; artfully cut trousers doing much to hide the dangerous nature of his ex-army boots. Apart from two million locals on their way home from work, only mad dogs and Englishmen braved the early evening heat and extreme pollution but none of the rabid canines attacked either of us; the strange scent of madly perspiring farang too much for them.

After a lengthy march, in which Henry cleared a path through the natives with the simple violence of his size and momentum, we stopped outside the British Embassy. Gave the statue of old Queen Victoria a military salute. Henry had never been in the army, preferred to use his cane, which clanged against the wrought iron gate, causing an alarm to go off and a couple of Gurkas to rush out of the gatehouse.

They shook their fists at Henry and waved us away. The lad took that moment to let out a huge fart and then regurgitated at least three bottles of whisky out of his gaping mouth. The Gurka’s reared back in alarm but by the time they had figured out what rules we’d broken, after leaving their once pristine gates covered in noxious muck, we were halfway up the road to another infamous den of vice, Nana Plaza.

Chapter 11: Nana Nirvana

Henry’s face a picture when the chicken burger he’d ordered turned out to be tiny and accompanied by only half a dozen chips. He eyed my huge steak and surfeit of chips with blatant envy. I could hear Happy’s stomach rumbling in protest. He took this rebuff to his massive appetite as an excuse to grab a passing waitress.

So tiny she could’ve passed for about twelve in the UK. Her muscle, though, was as steely as her spirit. Evidently having an excess of experience of drunken, sex-starved foreigners, before Henry could even give her a manic fondle, the lad took a high velocity elbow in the groin. Lucky for the Nana restaurant that he had already emptied the contents of his stomach over the gates of the British embassy.

His mouth gaped in a massive “O,” the wind knocked out of him he collapsed on to his knees and rhythmically proceeded to head-butt the tiled floor, emitting a strange keening noise. It seemed that every time he got his gander up his sexual ambitions were instantly destroyed.

I left him to it, enjoyed my first square meal for what felt like weeks. By the time I’d finished, the lad was in an upright position, wiping tears out of his eyes; the keening transformed into a disturbingly loud grunting noise. As Henry had evidently lost his appetite, I finished off his chicken burger and meager offering of chips. The bill came to a commendably reasonable 190 baht, the waitresses finally coming out of their prolonged giggling fit. It would’ve been a profoundly mean old bugger who begrudged them the 10 baht tip out of the two red notes.

A firm hand required on Henry’s cane arm to prevent him from giving a highly destructive farewell salute. Henry stumbled out of the restaurant, looking around Soi Nana with a totally baffled and mystified air. Evidently wondering how we’d gotten from our Northern England retreat to somewhere so sublimely exotic. He eyed a stall selling fried chicken with envy but was nonplussed when he clocked the next vendor, doing a roaring business with the natives... selling what looked awfully like fried cockroaches.

Henry pointed his snake-head cane at the stall to emphasize his disquiet, a gormless look of incredulity on his face. He peered closely as a sublimely beautiful local wench consumed the insects with a desperate intensity. Simultaneously, the poisoned air resultant from frying cockroaches hit our nostrils, more than a hint of a leaking septic tank! My stomach suddenly felt like it wanted to erupt out of both ends but I got a grip on myself; an escape I put down to years of training in the ethos of the stiff upper lip.

Henry waved his cane, as if to ward off the smell, which, of course, hit the awning, collapsing on to the frying cockroaches. Flames bloomed, the lad grinned at his perfect wrecking act as I hastily pulled him into the relative safety of Nana Plaza. The only problem was that there was only one way in and out. But a bit of alcoholic inspiration would surely solve that.

Henry poked his head into the first bar we came to. Shook his monstrous cranium, took a second look. He seemed to dematerialize, the next sight of him was perched atop a stool staring at about fifty totally naked women dancing on a central stage inches away from his out-on-storks eyeballs.

The lad was well on the pace, giving the nearest girls the thumbs up as even he was able to suss that they were all extremely feminine. None o