Dust in the wind and down the throat
You know there’s something amiss in Bangkok when you wake up to the sounds of birds coughing. Well maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but this week our feathered friends sounded decidedly under the weather. So it came as no surprise to read the gloomy headlines about “toxic smog” returning to Bangkok.
We will leave the solution to the local experts, although one suspects fewer cars on the choked streets might be a start. Meanwhile we just hope the stormy weather will blow it away.
There was a time when the city with the biggest reputation for smog was London. It wasn’t nicknamed “The Smoke” for nothing. Hopefully we will never experience anything like the Great Smog of December 1952, a classic “peasouper” which closed down London for four days and caused thousands of deaths. It was prompted by a combination of unusual weather conditions and domestic coal fires.
The smog was so bad that a performance of the opera La Traviata at Sadler’s Wells had to be abandoned after the first act because the audience couldn’t see the stage. The constant coughing of the patrons and singers alike had already ruined the show anyway.
In some parts, the fog was so thick people could not see their feet, cows in the field were choking to death and birds were crashing into buildings they couldn’t see. Bus conductors had to walk in front of their vehicles with flaming torches to guide the drivers.
Thankfully it hasn’t quite reached that stage in Bangkok, but you never know. So, with apologies to George Gershwin: A smoggy day in Bangkok Town/ Had me low and had me down/ I viewed the morning with alarm/ Sukhumvit Road had lost its charm…
Perhaps readers can offer a more inspiring version.
The joy of fog
London’s fog did once receive some favourable comments from a most unlikely source, the French Impressionist, Claude Monet. Between 1899-1902 the artist spent considerable time in London and the Houses of Parliament was one of his favourite subjects. He particularly liked it when the fog came down over the Thames which prompted constant changes of colours and patterns of light and Monet became almost obsessed by it.
“What I love more than anything in London is the fog,” he admitted, “Without the fog London would not be beautiful.” That is a reminder of another unusual observation on the English weather by American comedian Groucho Marx. On departing England after experiencing an unusually sunny week, Groucho complained: “I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.”
Feisty ferrets
And now for something completely different — another 50th anniversary. Monty Python’s Flying Circus is celebrating five decades since it was unleashed on an unsuspecting public in 1969.
Living in Thailand at the time I missed the early days of Monty Python and felt quite left out when visitors from England raved about the show. I was already a fan of John Cleese from his radio programme I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, launched in 1964, and had a good idea what I was missing.
For a couple of years, I must have been one of the few English people who had not seen the “(Dead) Parrot” sketch or “The Ministry of Silly Walks”. The show has admittedly dated a bit but was definitely “inspired insanity” at the time and the word pythonesque has earned its place in the English language.
Wobbly table
The Python phenomenon didn’t make any inroads in Thailand until Monty Python and the Holy Grail was shown here in 1975. Writing film reviews for the Post at the time, I visited the old Sukhumvit theatre on opening day. I was curious what the Thais would make of it as the Python style of humour had a Britishness that not even all Brits appreciated. But I need not have worried.
The Thai distributors got into the spirit of things by translating the title as “Knights of the Wobbly Table”. From the opening scene of King Arthur’s horseless knights pretending to gallop to the sound of coconut shells they tapped together, the audience was in hysterics. They also made their own jokes in the subtitles, so quite often the Thai audience was laughing its head off even when nothing funny was happening.
Curse of Python
Drama was to follow in an unexpected form, however. The film had only been showing a couple of days when the Sukhumvit theatre was burnt to the ground, courtesy of a gentleman in the shop next door cleverly pouring petrol into a large container while smoking a cigarette. I happened to be playing football at the old ISB ground on Sukhumvit Soi 15 that afternoon and saw the thick smoke and heard dozens of wailing fire engines. Little did I know it was coming from the very place I had been sitting a couple of days before.
Fortunately, they rescued the film spools and the Holy Grail was moved to the Petchrama cinema on Petchaburi Road. Weirdly, not long after the film had finished its run, the Petchrama also burnt down. Understandably, Bangkok cinemas were a little nervous about showing future Python films.