robinlawrence’s Space

13 and counting.  13 eggs.  In five days.  Yes being on holiday offers plenty of relaxation, swimming in pleasant pools and dips in the sea as well as offering breakfasts including lots of eggs.

Currently The Lawrence Clan are staying at The Eyes Resort near to Padang Padang Beach in Bali and are enjoying fried eggs for breakfast.  After much searching for a suitable place for us lot, of which there is loads on the huge island of Bali, we settled on this place because it was not too far from the beach and included breakfast in the price.  The inclusive breakfast is a massive luxury for us mob, given that due to their being a lot of us we don't really go for expensive luxury, preferring value luxury instead.    

But how come 13 eggs so far?  Well five breakfasts to date (two fried eggs, a sausage, toast, juice and coffee), two eggs in an egg and bacon burger for Christmas Day dinner and then one hard boiled beauty with a plate of gado gado for lunch on Christmas Eve.    I am sure that somewhere or other there is a safe daily limit for eggs  and am equally certain that in excess of 2.5 per day is over that limit.  Clearly there are worse things to consume to excess and a few eggs on holiday in hardly the stuff of a celebrity hedonistic lifestyle but I may need to rein in my consumption somewhat.

The egg and bacon burger was a great Christmas Day dinner though.  All five of us ate packed burgers at Kelly's Warung on Bingin Beach, a 3km ish walk from our place.  The sea was rightly on the exciting side of choppy as well as being clear and blue and warm.  

In Christmas Eve we explored northwards from our place, not difficult considering that we are pretty much as south as we could be on Bali, and ended up at the Mount Bator volcano crater.  It was a pretty spectacular place and made all the better thanks to our lunch spot overlooking the whole area, where I ate the egg that came with my gado gado (a mixture of tofu and veg in a nutty sauce).

As with everywhere there were plenty of people around selling, or in  my case, trying to sell, t-shirts, sarongs, trinkets and taxis.  

On our way back down from the volcano we stopped in Ubud, a mountainside town which sold plenty of arts and crafts along with  t-shirts, sarongs, trinkets and taxis.  Ubud taxi folk have developed an improved way of taxi Wellings though by holding up pieces of laminated card with "Taxi Service" written on it.  Thanks to a hire car we did not need the spoken or unspoken service.

At the risk of sounding like a line from that Beatles song it was twenty years ago today … that Lexi and I got married and so I thought it would be quite fun to compare some moments from this day in 1996 to today and see how things have changed.

My day in 1996 9Lexi was getting ready elsewhere as tradition dictates) began with a leisurely cup of tea and bowl of cereal at my best man’s house at around 8.30am, following a couple of beers the night before.  All very relaxing and pleasant.  I can’t recall the exact cereal make, but I am certain that it was wholesome and nourishing.  By 8.30am today I had done loads.  Today began three hours earlier with a 5.30am alarm followed by ten minutes of denial thanks to the snooze button.  Seeing as I am full of cold today i uttered a few snot filled grunts, staggered sleepily upstairs to wake snoozing boys and a snoozing girl before shaving and showering.   

Children were dressed by the time I descended to the lounge and set about a bowl of muesli in the company of four sleepy faces and The Archers’ Podcast.  Jill rowed with Pip about flapjack while all Lawrence’s munched.  

By the time 8.30am arrived at school today I had tweaked my lesson plan for a year seven class, answered countless emails, drunk a cup of coffee, cursed that I left my water bottle at home, registered my year seven form, read out loads of notices and taught my year nine class all about the intricacies of Beatrice and Benedick, plus Claudio and Hero.  Between 8.30 and 9.05 I moved on to how Shakespeare showed hiding on stage while 20 years earlier I had drunk a second cup of tea and chattered amicably with chums.

Break time came and went in whirr of coffee and toilets (no connection) and then it was time to teach year seven that characters can be created through movement all thanks to Mr Meyerhold and Mr Laban, as an alternative to the relaxing bath and shave that I had in 1996.   I must point out that I have had multiple washes and shaves since then.

More chatting and preparation took place after this in 1996 while today I enjoyed a few minutes in my non-contact lesson reading the newspaper on line (Trump, May and Brexit, Saudi’s cutting each others heads off and millionaires kicking balls around.)  But this could not last of too long as I had to meet with a colleague to draw up a list of loads of things to do for the school show, set about preparations for a rehearsal later in the day, send yet more emails and then rush back to register my form at 1240.  At some point I managed to eat some lunch and enjoy a honey lemon tea with my colleague (she insisted that it should be a wedding anniversary present.)  

By 1240 in 1996 I had driven Lexi and I’s vehicle of choice, a 1983 campervan, to Stourbridge and then started a leisurely stroll from our then house towards the chosen church.  My best man, accompanying friends and I stopped on the way for a meat pie, a great preparation for any wedding, especially your own, and then arrived in good time for a 2.00pm kick off.  I remember that it was lovely to see so many people arrive.

2.20pm was the end of my teaching day today and it was a team taught lesson, which i led, based around Brecht’s famously untranslatable verfremdungseffekt, defamiliarisation and links to Much Ado About Nothing, I have arranged for a performance to take place in school on Friday morning, and so wanted all my students to be as knowledgeable about the play’s key issues as possible.

Right around the time when Lexi and I plighted our troths and said that we would was 20 years before I made a round of hot milos for my department colleagues and then started a two hour rehearsal for the school show, which ended at 4.30pm (followed by lots of questions from the cast).  At that time in 1996 Lexi and I, now Mr and Mrs Lawrence, were eating a great curry as a wedding breakfast and getting ready for a speech or two.  I had also asked the venue to write down the important football scores from the afternoon’s matches (games involving Bristol City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Ipswich, I seem to remember.) which I announced as part of my speech.  The wedding feast and speeches done it was on the next part of the day.

Today though, with rehearsals done it was time to meet up with Lexi, Edwin and Trixie to wait for Rupert to finish scouts.  We passed our time having a celebration drink from that purveyor of fine drinks, 7-11, putting their newly installed seats and tables to good use.  The children’s milos went down well, as did Lexi’s juice.  My green, frozen slush was horrible.  

I linked the two days together by phoning my best man up for a surprise natter to reminisce about the day and catch up on news while waiting for Rupert to come out of his scout meeting and then we made our tired way home, unlike the move from wedding breakfast venue to evening barn dance venue, 20 years earlier.  The mighty Five Bar Gait played and called for us and our guests that evening while we ate and danced and socialised for many hours.  I remember giving a speech thanking the many fine people who had laid on another feast for the evening and being dragged off to the bar by an elderly relative intent on plying me with strong brews.  So as to enjoy the festivities as much as we both could Lexi and I decided very early on to drink as little alcohol as possible on the day and I just about managed to escape after a pint and a whisky from the relative’s clutches.  And so the fine evening went on.

Tonight all five Lawrences strolled over to a nearby restaurant to eat a celebratory meal with a sunsetting view across the nearby lake.  Our various plates of good grub slipped own well, as did the slices of celebratory cake that followed, before we took the children home for showers, stories and bed by 9.00pm.  

Our wedding barn dance finished at 11.45pm and a very kind guest drove us back to Lexi and I’s pre-marital and post marital rented home.  But the night was yet young.  It was half-term from school and we had a honeymoon and romantic first night of wedded bliss to get on with, well almost.  Thanks to a very early flight the following morning from Gatwick Airport Lexi and I were destined to spend our night together fast asleep on a FlightLink Coach from Wolverhampton to Gatwick, via picking up our travel bags (kindly filled with bricks by other kind relatives) and via eating a dodgy chicken burger from Wolverhampton Bus Station.  None of us have any plans to do any overnight travel 20 years to the day.

  Sporting supremos from across the globe have been queuing up today to pay tribute to Robin Lawrence following his decision to retire from the beautiful game.  Lawrence, aged very old, announced his retirement today.  In an emotional statement he told a completely empty press conference “My legs ached like mad after a game last night and so I decided stuff this for a laugh, I am in self induced agony.”  

Robin began his career kicking a ball around in the park behind his childhood home and skillfully managed to avoid ever playing for any of his school teams, opting for cricket instead, where he scored a mighty one run for the under 14B side in 1984.  He still contests to the day umpire should not have given him out LBW and that had Hawkeye not just been a character in MASH at the time the non-existent third umpire would have over-ruled his school’s biology teacher who was wearing a white coat and trying to look like he knew what he was doing (what did he know anyway?).  

Robin went on to combine the creative bent with the crunching tackle while at the prestigious University of Huddersfield taking time out of his Drama based degree to play in goal for a friend’s course team.  Shortly after knocking an old lady over in the street, “She should have been looking where she was going,” he famously declared afterwards, he managed to hospitalise an opposition striker when clearing a wayward back pass.  The luckless striker felt the full force of Lawrence’s right boot after it connected with both ball and head.  The ball made a full recovery from the incident.  

After becoming a teacher in 1994 Lawrence donned the padded coat of coaching and applied his limited footballing skills to his school’s under 15 boys team.  Gaining vital knowledge from Match of The Day pundits Robin instigated a rigorous training routine of giving his team rousing half-time talks, writing elaborate match reports and insisting on Shakespeare quotes being chanted before kick-off.  As a surprise to himself and the players the team won most of their games, despite Lawrence sending off one of his best players in a crucial cup game and regularly playing players in positions they had little experience in.    

While living in Wolverhampton Robin moved into the warmer world of indoor five aside football playing regularly on weekend mornings and occasionally after work.  Unlike any other footballer he managed to play in the position of striker and goalkeeper, although not simultaneously, preferring playing up front as there was, in his words, “Less chance of a cock-up up front.”  In the twilight of his career he played with the staff lads at his current international school, where he still works.  

Footballing greats have been queuing up to pay tribute to Lawrence’s mediocre career.  Bathroom fitter and former Ipswich Town right back Mick Stockwell thanked Robin for lying about his age and paying child rates to cheer him on in the mid 80s.  “It was clear that he was destined for lower league stardom at some point,” Stockwell said.  He added “No-one was quite sure what that league would be in, but it certainly would not be football.”    

Bristol City legend Chris Garland said “If only Robin had worked harder trying to get my Panini sticker in 1979 then it could have made all the difference to both of our careers.”  

The Huddersfield striker did not wish to comment beyond expressing his relief that Robin had hung up his football trainers for good.  

Robin is looking forward to spending more time with his family, not waking up with aches in muscles he never knew he had and trying to drop his cricket match grudge.

Hot on the heels of the Rio Olympics came this week's big sporting event: The Year Five And Six Cross Country Race at school.  An annual event this is taken with all due seriousness by the lead athlete in The  Lawrence Clan: Trixie.  Keen to do well, The Girl Lawrence had trained hard for the event and over the five weeks since we returned from our sojourn to Britain.  Her pace has got faster and faster each time she has run, to the point where I was struggling to keep up with her.

However before we get to the race report it is important to  walk the course in word form.  The year sixes and year fives raced in gender and year groupings all departed from the school field, bidding a farewell to the swimming pool area swiftly as they ran off in the direction of the sixth form common room.  Next they turned a sharp right and set off up the hill behind the science labs.  That is where the sort of cross-country part of this urban race came in, in the form of speed bumps.  There are six positioned to stop staff motoring too swiftly up to their parking spaces but these were also an added challenge for the runners.  

At the top of the hill the course turned right again, passing the staff lounge and the reserved-for-important-people parking spaces before heading down the road (over more speed bumps) behind the languages rooms and the canteen.  At the bottom of this hill the runners completed a 180 degree turn and retraced their steps as far as the sixth form block turn.  

And then there was more.  The course went along the bus lane in the car park and back again before a turn on to the sports field.  But that was not the end.  The runners were required to complete several marked out lengths of the field turning round carefully positioned cones and teachers before entering a home straight at the end of which was the head and deputy of the primary school.

The stadium seats overlooking the field were fortunately packed with parents so that meant that I had to make do with watching Trixie's race from outside the arts block, which was a really good vantage point.  It is both a brilliant and terrible position to be in as a watching Dad.  I wanted her to do her best and enjoy it but also feared things going wrong.  I often say to my Drama students that the watching group of parents are more nervous than them and have now had that proved to me in sporting terms.

So the head teacher blew his whistle and 80 year five girls of various sizes and athletic abilities tore away from the starting line at an alarming speed.  Trixie had positioned herself on the starting line but as she left the sports field she stood about a head shorter than the rest and lay in around twentieth place.  The tension was unbearable so I dashed from my vantage point across the canteen to the 180 degree turn at the bottom of the hill.  I soon made out the first athletes dashing down, with the two tiniest year fives leading the field, Trixie and the girl who had won in year four.  Determination was etched across their various faces as it was also across the face of the third, taller and sportier looking girl.  Clapping encouragement at all three of them I watched them turn round and attack the return hill with all the gusto that nine year olds can manage.

I dashed back to my arts block position and waited.  Waiting only until I heard the head of primary PE announce "And the first runners are entering the car park."  I had to see.  Dashing along at the front was a pink-faced, blond-haired, determination on legs Trixie Lawrence.  Now five metres ahead of the other two in the leading pack surely all she had to do was keep going?

Moments later the runners entered the sports field now with Trixie fifteen metres ahead.  From then on it was mind over matter: the girl had to just simply keep putting one fast leg in front of another speeding round each switchback turn, while ignoring the battle for second going on behind her.

I was so proud of her when she crossed the line first to the cheers of the crowd.  She had a mixture of shock, pride and tears on her face all held together with a enormous grin.  I was just as proud when it was announced "And the winner of the year five girls cross country is Trixie from 5K." 

Later Trixie told me "I had to ask Bella to pinch me to check that it was all real."  I am still checking that it is real several days on.  We have a sporty Lawrence.  It's official.

I haven’t been moved to write many blogs recently, mostly because of a nagging and, at times all encompassing, feeling of “how could this happen” following the result of the UK EU referendum.  The fact that so many people voted for isolationism flies in the face of good sense left me feeling quite despondent.  I fear that as time goes by this vote may only be the calm before the storm, but dearly hope that the people who enthusiastically voted for Brexit believing in the plucky British spirit that will triumph over all obstacles and become the victorious underdog are proved right, however unlikely that that sounds.  Surely nobody in their right mind votes enthusiastically in favoor of limiting people’s freedom of movement?

And so it is over to the new UK Prime Minister, who no elector voted for, to open up the exit doors and begin the process of de-coupling.  This week Mrs May spoke warmly of new and developing partnerships with China and it is that ridiculousness that has inspired me to put fingers to keyboard again.  The relationships that she is trying to nurture are with the world’s manufacturing base, I agree, but China is also the country where freedom of expression is not encouraged, where freedom of movement not easy and where capital punishment is a much used punishment.  It is also a country where selective birthing is practised resulting in a growing gender imbalance while corruption is common.  What a noble, autocratic country to form further partnerships with…

… seemingly at the expense of our current, yes we are still part of the EU, partners.  And these are partners who we trade with following agreed rules on imports and exports, work-place legislation, safety and safe-guarding at work, social justice, environmental laws and equality legislation.  It would appear that we Britons have missed the opportunity to work more closely with our current European partners not just to continue the peace that has led to years of calm plenty but also to act as a progressive union to help change the social injustices in countries such as China.

Mrs May, the unelected Prime Minister, does not have my backing to leave the EU because it does not make sense to do so.

Fortunately now faced with one ridiculous situation it has meant that I have started noticing, this week, as I try to rationalize what Brexit might mean for Britain, other ridiculous, and at times silly happenings in this colourful world around us.

Malaysia has a number of strange customs to do with food, especially the thorny matter of pork.  Shunned by devout Muslims there are very strict rules about how pork products can be handled in supermarkets, signage outside restaurants that sell pork and even tax breaks for Halal food stalls.  None of these stops the desire for roast pork in Chateau Lawrence.  In fact such rules make pork even more desired.  On Sunday I got up early and drove to Kepong Baru market, about 5km from our house, with the simple aim to buy a lump of pork.  Priced at RM17 per kilo pork is a good value meat and it is sold in the hygienic way that only an outside market in the tropics can do.  Get there early for all the obvious reasons.  The slow roasted pork that I cooked on Sunday was delicious, but that is not the ridiculous part of the tale.  No.  

I also bought some fresh chicken too.  I know that it was fresh because it was still warm, which had little to do with the air temperature.  Keeping Baru market is not a place for the faint hearted and as I got back in to my car, three kilos of pork and three of chicken in my cool bag, I noticed that on the opposite side of the road to me was the market chicken slaughterer.  He was slaughtering his fowl in the approved Halal style, with a swift slit to the throat, one bird at a time, but there was one important factor that might have brought into question whether the process was fully accurate.  Just after adjusting his baseball cap and fake football shirt he shoved a lit cigarette into his mouth and set about processing one bird at a time.  I don’t know whether he was actually good at his job in religious terms, it must be hard to mumble spiritual words over a squawking chicken and not drop your fag out of your mouth, but somehow he managed it.  He also managed to slaughter a dozen chickens without the need to adjust the fag at all.  

In further ridiculous news and as a further excuse for not writing many blogs recently the children and I and Lexi enjoyed watching as much of the Olympic Games as we could.  We cheered for various swimmers, athletes and other sports people and were even glued to the screen watching Lee Chong Wei, Malaysia’s badminton supremo, come close to gold.  We did, though, decide that Olympic competitions would benefit from an addition to its extensive programme in the form of the Ridiculous Pentathlon.  There appears to be very little that is modern about the Modern Pentathlon so various small Lawrenes and big ones alike have decided that the following five events should come together to really stretch the sporting and ridiculousness abilities of all  people…

…The first event should be the pole vault.  Charging along a runway clutching a long stick in one’s hand before shoving it in a hole and then attempting to ping yourself over a bar while upside down and many metres off the ground is pure ridiculousness and should only be attempted by people who have taken leave of their senses and replaced them with a long bendy cane..  The second event in The Ridiculous Pentathlon, coming as quickly as possible after the pole vault is of course dressage. No one seems to know what it actually is, but wearing the right hat and trousers while attempting to get a horse to do things that it doesn’t appear to be able to do naturally is just silly.

Next it is on to event three, and here the order is very important.  Fresh from pole vaulting and walking a horse our sports-person should next swim the 400m backstroke.  Why is this ridiculous?  Well the event requires swimmers to charge up and down a swimming as fast as they can, backwards.  No other events seem to glory in people being able to do things the wrong way round so the backstroke must be in, especially doing it for so long a distance, which is in itself ridiculous.

Two events to go and by now our competitors will be tiring.  To help them event four will help them get in touch with their creative and artistic sides as they compete in the ribbon / string waving gymnastics event.  I am not sure of its exact title, but while waving a stick with a tail in the air might look pretty it is certainly well suited be part of The Ridiculous Pentathlon.

The final event has to be a running event, as tradition dictates in all —thlons, and nothing could be more daft than the 3000m steeple chase.  I don’t know what the exact definition of an athletic steeple is but it does seem daft to place hefty barriers and a ford in the way of people running long distances.  

The gold medalist in The Ridiculous Pentathlon would be a true, if a little daft, champion, and I commend this combination of activities to the Olympic organisers.

In other sporting news Trixie is really enjoying her preparations for the year five cross-country race and has been putting the miles in around Desa Park City.  She is tackling it with the seriousness that only a year five girl can.  Rupert has survived his first two days in year seven and has a new uniform with plenty of growing room.  His shorts are anything but

It’s the 2016 Olympics so it was certainly time for there to be mixed athletic event here in Chateau Lawrence, Malaysia Branch, this evening.  It was the first triathlon, Lawrence style-ee.  

Trixie and Edwin joined me for a 2.2km running lap of Desa Park City’s much used pathway around the centre, where Trixie manage a sub 14 minute lap.   People who know about these things will tell anyone who wants to know that the key to a successful triathlon is a good transition between parts of the race.  A successful transition requires planning and so after the lap I sent Trixie and Edwin off back to Chateau Lawrence to get the bikes out and the drinks in while I did a few more kilometres.  

I had high hopes for bicycles being at the ready when I got back, but it was not a particularly smooth first transition, sadly.  Trixie’s bike was at the ready, as was Ned’s but that was it.  Apparently there had been much debate about who should or should not get Daddy’s bike out, with iPad timing winning.  Still I had time to have a drink, pick up my wallet and then click on my helmet before locking up.

Yes this was a new form of triathlon in which completion was far more important than time or even order of events.  The Girl Lawrence, Elder Boy Lawrence and I then set off for phase two of the triathlon dodging the pokemon go collectors who were packing Desa Park City with eyes only on their smart phones and not on the look out for cyclists on a mission.  Our mission was to complete the 3.5km stage from home to Restaurant Double Seven, a sort of Chinese food hawker centre.  On arrival this stage of the event involved Trixie tackling a plate of chicken rice, while Edwin competed in the fried rice category.  Unfortunately the lad made a mistake in forgetting to ask for his dish without the addition of chili.  He initially thought the sauce from my dish that he had tried was the culprit but little chopped up red offenders soon showed their spicy cards on his plate.  Both Edwin and Trixie did well in the chocolate ice-cream subsection before completing the return 3.5km cycling section of the triathlon.

Swimming four lengths of the swimming pool was the final part of the triathlon, but not before another hassling transition, in which all three bikes had to be parked inside Chateau Lawrence’s store room, swimming kits put on sweaty bodies and the front door locked.

I look forward to comparing our event to the real Olympic event, mainly to see whether the international athletes stop for Chinese food and to note how they cope with screen obsessed passers-by.  Edwin and Trixie are now snoozing well.

Lexi and Rupert are taking advantage of having an extra two weeks of holiday by flying off to Lao for twelve days early this morning.  I distantly remember grunting “have a good time’ at 4.30 am as she and Rupert caught their taxi to the airport.  I spoke to them both via the medium of FaceTime and they have had a great time so far and are enjoying their time in Luang Prabang.

On our final morning in Kanchanaburi the children and I had breakfast and then walked to the famous railway bridge to find it bustling with people.  Admittedly this weekend is an official Thai holiday so that would increase the number of tourists but even given that life was out and about in force.  Stalls were packed with souvenir hats, t-shirts and patterned trousers, there were plenty of portions of barbecued chicken and sticky rice to be had along with fruit smoothie sellers aplenty.  Tourists, mostly Thai, swarmed around the bridge enjoying walking back and forth as well as taking copious photos on the tracks, in front of a waiting train and of, whenever possible, three little Lawrences.

Simply because it was fun to do so the children dashed over the bridge again running after the slow moving train, but not before, this time Rupert, had sat on my shoulders and given out as many high-fives to passengers on the train as possible.  Thank goodness Edwin didn't want to sit on my shoulders.

On the walk back across the bridge we stopped and listened to a violin busker whose enthusiasm was probably greater than his talent, but he greeted us like long lost friends and took time to cheerfully point out shrapnel, bullet and small armaments damage to the mighty bridge.

Before heading back to our hotel and booked minivan to Bangkok we sat under the bridge and ate barbecued chicken and sticky rice for lunch, a favourite.  And on leaving the bridge I was struck by this thought: there are clearly still many relationships between Thai people and the Japanese  that need to be healed and rebuilt and this may take another generation but despite the thousands of deaths that took place in its construction there is a very real sense of life, and dare I say, renewal, around The Bridge that can only bode well for the future.  

I really wanted to see what became known as Hellfire Pass and today the kids and I went exploring.  We hired the services of Mr Satnam, a taxi driver (orange Izusu pick up with covered bench seats in the back) and off we were driven the 80km plus to the Australian funded museum.

I am not totally sure if there was one particular reason why I so wanted to go but I think it was a mixture of all sorts of reasons: geological fascination about how so much rock was shifted, a opportunity to look at man's attempts to tame jungle, the resilience of the human spirit, tseeing the results of the fall of Singapore, the chance to reflect on a broken political system, and many more reasons too.  

The museum itself, founded following the rediscovery in 1984, of the infamous Konyu Cutting by a former Australian soldier, J G 'Tom' Morris, who was forced to work on it is a place that appeared to be very successful in aiming to give factual information and avoid blame.  Its collection of photographs, artefacts, tools and video presentation succeeded in telling the story of what happened in the pass and the whole 415km railway by focussing on the resilience of the human spirit and the facts.  We all took advantage of the audio guide and listened to recordings of POWs who laboured there as well as descriptions of the engineering feats that they accomplished with little more than hammers, metre long metal stakes, explosive charges and human labour.  There is no doubt that completing such a length of railway in just 20 months was an achievement but it came at a massive cost with up to 90000 local labourers and 13000 POWs dying in the process.  Sadly little was told of the fates of labourers from as far away as Laos who arrived hoping for good, well-paid work.

The main thought that I have been left with after this visit was that the broken system of the time was to blame.  Conscripted guards beat and forced workers who had agreed to work on the line in exchange for wages and conditions that never materialised.  These men then exacted the same treatment over the Allied POWs.  But these guards, mostly Koreans conscripted into the Japanese army were dealt with in a similar way by their Japanese army bosses, who were in turn kept in line through the seemingly accepted use of institutional violence.

And why was the railway built in the first place?  Seemingly to keep an invading army in Burma supplied in a more efficient and less hazardous manner than having to use the Straits of Melacca, which were being fought over and mined.  

The line itself was only operational for a very short period of time before the end of the war and, from the evidence we saw today, very soon after the war was soon stripped of its metals and allowed to be recaptured by the jungle from the present end of the line in Nam Tok.

Thanks to funding from the Australian Government there is a 4km stretch of track bed through Hellfire Pass and beyond that has been kept in a walkable condition and today the kids and I, armed with plenty of water and sun cream walked the first 2.5km of it.  The museum told us that as well as having to blast through huge amounts of rock the engineers and labourers had to build countless embankments and bridges, the latter  mostly being built out of bamboo and wood cut from the jungle.  In our 2.5km stroll we did walk across flat sections of track bed and preserved sleepers but we also had to clamber down maintained but steeply stepped slopes where bamboo bridges and embankments were once and had now long since gone.  Standing at the lowest point of the walk where 'Three Tier Bridge' was we could only marvel at how a ten metre plus deep gulley had been filled with enough bamboo to take the weight of supply trains while also trying to picture the sheer physical effort and suffering that took place there around 70 years earlier.

The last stop on our tour was at the bridge over the River Kwai.  The bridge, one of only eight steel bridges along the whole original line, still stands today and is now a massive tourist attraction.  It it used by the State Railway Company of Thailand for three trains per day in each direction between Nam Tok and Bangkok.  Visitors are encouraged to walk across and marvel not just at its construction but also the natural beauty of the area.  We made sure we did all of this and crossed pretty much all the way across before we heard the distant sound of a diesel locomotive and aged carriages rumbling.  A quick look up showed us that the last train of the day was wanting to lumber it's way across to the Kanchanaburi side of the river.  The train came to a well rehearsed complete standstill and then gave an almighty honk giving us and the many other visitors time to move to the side areas of the bridge before it made its way very slowly across.  As the train passed by I sat Trixie on my shoulders and she dished out high-fives and smiles to people leaning out of the train windows.  Immediately after the fourth and final carriage passed us the kids dashed off behind the train following it all the way across to the other side with big grins and excited dashes.

I hope that those men who survived the building of the railway, and maybe even those who did not, might take a little piece of comfort from the squeals of delight of three Lawrences who have learned a great deal in one day and had the fun of chasing after a slow moving train.

There is a formula that clearly has to be applied when making year four plays.  The first part is that one has to make sure that it has academic merit in that there are clear links to the topic that has been studied recently (people who discovered America).  Next there has to be lots of narration so that the parents can see that their off-spring have learned something.  This is then followed by triads of year fours standing a straight line reciting carefully selected words to try to give the impression of dialogue (that's the Drama ticked off).  Finally there has to be lots of songs, sung to backing tracks, shoehorned into the gaps between all of these segments to try to create a bit of razzmatazz.  Sometimes, although not always, there is a star who does a bit of acting.  

)

It has felt like one of those marvellous excursion to the big smoke days of years gone by today.  The sight of five Lawrences trogging  round a capital city wearing waterproofs and rucksacks full of water bottles in Singapore could easily have been set in any capital and, at times, it felt a bit like we were from a little old country town visiting the big smoke.

But just when I started to get all nostalgic Singapore came up and tapped me on my soggy shoulder (it has rained a lot today) and reminded me that it is not the 1980s and we did not have to catch a coach or train back to Norwich at 5.30pm.

A few weeks ago myself and two colleagues took a school trip to Singapore to watch R&J at Fort Canning Park and, based on the very long journey time to and from , we decided to fly instead of driving.  The departure time of 6.20pm meant that we did not have hurtle to the airport at the speed of light, preferring a more sedate sound-speed motoring.  And thanks to the efficiency of Singapore's Changi Airport and connecting transport it didn't take too long to get to our cheap and cheerful hostel.  

Singapore accommodation prices are nutty compared to other countries in the region (our five beds in one room for two nights was the same price as four nights in the Cameron Highlands.  Never mind though it is clean and tidy and there were loads of loaves of bread available for children to eat as much toast as possible this morning.  

After toasting we collected our stuff and walked and trained off to find the WW2 bunkers in Fort Canning Park so as to make the visit here into a historical and cultural expedition.  Slightly frustratingly we missed the 11.00am tour by minutes (everything runs on time here) and so had to book onto the 1.30pm instead.  And so we began our tour of the park and then on towards Clarke Key.  

After enjoying iced coffees in a hawker centre, much better and way cheaper than Starbucks et al we completed the economy family on British style holiday / day out look by donning our waterproofs necessitated thanks to the heavens opening.  As experienced Britons we were not going to let a mere tropical downpour and five sets of wet feet interfere with our day and so after getting completely soaked we arrived  back for our bunker tour, drenched, carrying with us more water than we set out with and accompanying smell.

The bunker tour was really impressive.  The guide gave a detailed account of the last days of British rule in Singapore before the surrender to the Japanese army on 15th February 1942.  Apparently this has become known as Black Sunday.  I am sure that my Mum has a thing or two to say about that given that as the various British military men were relinquishing control of the City she was taking her first breaths.

Hungry after our tour and with our feet starting to get warmer but not dryer we took a train to Little India for an excellent, but good value lunch of various curries, rice dishes and drinks.  And this is where the London day out comparison came into its own.  You are fine in Singapore just as long as you don't convert the Sing Dollar back into Ringgit.  Our lunch was $55 and if we focused on the 55 part and allowed our brains to think that it was really in Ringgit then that was fine.  RM55 is pretty much want we pay for a decent meal out in KL.  We tried not to think that there are almost three ringgit to the Sing Dollar.   When In London as a tourist / day tripped you are often able to ignore inflated prices writing them off with the refrain of 'Well it is London after all.'

However there are some advantages to the high prices mainly in the appearance and cleanliness of the City State.  The fronts of most places in KL look pretty good although they are always in an inverse state of cleanliness to the rear.  Service streets are often really dirty.  In Singapore dirt appears to be illegal and rubbish is cleared away.  Side streets are really quite pleasant.

Now full of food and still with wet feet we carefully managed to go to the wrong station to view the Marina Bay Area (that bizarre set of three blocks with a garden on top) and then had to head back to Fort Canning to be in time for Romeo and Juliet.

I wrote at length about the play a while ago but the experience this time was different watching it as a family.  We somehow managed to plonk our slightly soggy beach mat onto the front row, just to the right of the premier seating (slightly posher ground sheets) area.  And it was so close that we almost managed to collect what would have been a great Drama Teacher's souvenir: Romeo's poison bottle, which he drank heartily from and then hurled towards the audience.  After the show a polite security bloke politely gave  me a polite "No chance mate" look when I made moves to collect the discarded plastic bottle in question.  Shame.  It would have made a great item for a display at school.

Back at our hostel after the show it was bliss to remove my damp socks and trainers and shower away the city day out.  I don't think our room will smell that blissful she we check out and go back to KL tomorrow.