The Pure Life of Dreams

December 21, 2025December 21, 2025

On My Way to Guatemala Via Dhaka

I was on my way to the capital of Guatemala via Dhaka but I couldn’t recall seeing the name of the city.

‘It ends with “tengo” I think,’ I said to the man sitting beside me in the bus. The man was blonde though he was from Bangladesh and he was irritated at the fact that I had squeezed in next to him.

I had missed the first bus, because I was delayed from leaving the first plane. Then at passport control I had had to shift through four of my passports before finding the right one.

‘You only need to bring one,’ snapped the officer as she flicked through its pages. The woman stamped my passport and handed me a small grey ticket for the bus to the other airport.

‘Church,’ she grunted.

I pushed through the entrance to a building that led to the bus terminal.

By the time I arrived at the bus the other Westerners had left. I looked up at the next bus, a shabby green double decker with a heavy solid grey staircase that led up to the top deck.

‘Is this the right one?’ I asked up at a man who stood at the entrance.

He called down to me. ‘There is no more room?’ He asked. Then he repeated his question to the driver.

‘Which bus do I take?’ I continued, and I held up my ticker. ‘Church?’

‘Yes, this is Church,’ he replied and I ascended the stairs and pushed into the bus and that was when I finally sat down next to the blonde Bangladeshi.

The bus pulled out from the terminal as I clutched my daypack. I looked around in a slight panic. My rucksack and computer bag were missing.

The bus began its long drive through the dusty city. It confirmed my expectations that Dhaka was a noisy dusty place.

Did taking the bus from one airport to another qualify as my having visited Bangladesh? I wondered.

As we drove away from the city and into the countryside we passed some villages. I pulled out my phone to take pictures. I zoomed in on two woman who sat at stools outside their hut and snapped them from behind.

Then I turned to the blonde man to confirm whether I was on the right bus.

‘Is the next stop Paris?’ I asked. ‘Before we get to Tengo?’

The man harrumphed at me and turned away as if to say ‘No, it isn’t.’ I looked at him, at his short blonde bangs and his pallid profile with his hooked nose.

He was ugly, I decided. Or was I just being racist?

Photo by Nahid Sultan via WikiMedia Commons.

November 9, 2025November 9, 2025

The Large Chinese Woman and the Lollipops

I met a large Chinese woman who was about my age, maybe in her forties, who was tall and not pretty but she was a livewire and fun to be around in an intimidating way.

She had lived in many places.

‘I was in Tokyo for three years,’ she yelled. ‘And Hong Kong and America.’

We were in a strange part of a town with non-descript beige and white buildings that surrounded us in the forecourt where we stood. It was pouring down where we were, a deluge, but it did not seem to bother the large woman

‘If I had to guess where we are,’ I replied, ‘I’d guess we are in Hong Kong.’

But it would be a pure guess because the buildings could have been anywhere, though the rain might’ve been a clue. Then, sure enough, a double decker bus pulled away from the other side of the court and revealed a sign on one of the buildings. It was written in Chinese. And underneath, in English, in black lettering, it was written ‘Hong Kong.’

‘See! I was right!’ I exclaimed. ‘And I also lived in Hong Kong for three years.’

An Asian man in a pinstripe suit and salt and pepper hair joined us as I continued. ‘But I also lived in Paris.’

‘Oh?’ The woman replied.

‘But it was only three months,’ I added.

I did not know whether that counted as ‘living there’, but she seemed impressed with that.

‘I live in Washington now,’ I said.

‘And what about London?’ She asked.

‘No, I lived there thirty years, already. I don’t need to live there anymore.’

A cab drew up alongside us and the woman slid in next to the driver while I got in the back.

The Asian man walked away but just as the cab circled the forecourt I said, ‘Don’t we want to give the Asian man a ride too?’ The cab pulled over and the woman called out to the Asian man who got in beside me and placed his briefcase squarely on his lap.

‘We need to get some candy,’ said the woman, so the driver drove us down into the market where the streets were very narrow and where washing, put out to dry, was hung above us.

The first place we found only had round kiddie sized popsicles so the woman took two. ‘Tai chi ja nien,’ she said to the storekeeper.

‘That’s “Thank you” in Chinese,’ she said to me and I replied. ‘Tai chi ja nien, that’s easy to remember, you know why?’ I giggled. ‘Because “tai chi”.’

We stopped at another stall in a small square that had a fountain in the middle, but no water, and a shopkeeper there handed each of us a set of longer popsicles.

We sat down on the edge of the fountain. ‘But the best ones are chocolate, and I don’t see any chocolate ones here,’ complained the woman.

I looked at my popsicles and noticed that one of them was chocolate. I took a bite and underneath the surface was the yellow honeycomb of a Crunchie. It was good!

‘I got one,’ I announced, and I showed it to the large woman. She snatched it from me and stood it upright on the concrete edge of the fountain, then she licked her fingers before swiping the surface of my popsicle. The chocolate coating came off quite easily, it being already soft, but it annoyed me that she was classless enough to wipe off all my chocolate.

Photo of Maneki-neko figurines by Theodore Nguyen via Pexels.

October 27, 2025October 28, 2025

The Stone Woman Whose Head was Covered in Pearl Necklaces

It’s January 1, 2025 and it’s supposed to be a good year in Japan, Hatsuyume, if you dream about Mount Fuji, an eggplant and a hawk.

Instead, I dreamt about being rich and the dream started out in a house where I had to submit an entry for a sculpture.

September 22, 2025October 19, 2025

A Party for High School Girls and Boys, a Bath and a Boat

The party for high school girls and boys was up some stairs in a hall on the island but when we arrived there we were already late; somebody had hung a wooden sign from the lintel ‘No Boys’ with an ‘X’ underneath. Presumably girls were still allowed and they were trying to stick to a quota.

August 29, 2025August 29, 2025

Driftwood People on Vacation in Indonesia

Elaine and I are on vacation in Indonesia and we are looking for a place on the beach but it is quite crowded. We find a place amongst some rocks where we can put our beach towels. The rocks are a pink hue and have been smoothed down by the ages so that they are fine for lying on. Their curves conform, closely enough with our bodies.

Elaine and I step out towards the waters edge. I walk on into the ocean. The sky is bright with the sun, and I find a low tide area where I can sit. In front of me are some black volcanic rocks, boulders piled up, that jut out of the water.

‘Are you ok swimming near the rocks,’ says a boy from the beach.

But I am okay. I know that the boulders may surround me where I am sitting but the biggest pile is further out to sea, maybe twenty meters away. They are not threatening despite their dark craggy look. I feel the rocks against my thighs where I sit.

Then I go back to shore.

‘It’s too crowded where we are,’ I say to Elaine. ‘Let’s go over there,’ and I point to another less rocky area where the beach does not have sunbathers.

I walk on ahead while Elaine goes to get us coffee. When I get to the area I realize that the old cove is under a huge barn which has wooden beams that are rotten with age. The sun projects through the holes of the barn onto the sand.

Then the sun disappears behind some clouds so the sand is no longer brightly lit. I step through the rocky path up into the main area of the barn further along the cove.

The barn I has an extremely high ceiling, perhaps three storeys high. Wooden trestle tables are scattered on the sand, along the cove. I find a table to sit at.

The sun comes through the holes of the ceiling’s rickety old beams. The beams remind me of driftwood. It is an ideal spot I think. And just I just beginning to wonder whether Elaine will find me when she arrives, balancing two coffees in shallow glass bowls. Each bowl has two or three coffee beans floating in it.

I take one of the coffees and as we sit a local man comes up with a large glass bowl of coffee ice cream.

‘Oh, I forgot I ordered that.’ Elaine nods at the man. Elaine and Dad settle next to the old wooden table in reclining chairs and face each other while we eat our ice cream and drink our coffee.

The sun shifts through the beams at us and I look up to make sure it will not go away.

I feel something clawing, or pawing my left shin. It’s Elaine’s ex-husband, Aaron. He sits next to Elaine but he’s playing footsy with me under the table.

‘Stop it you twat,’ I tell him.

Main photo of driftwood on an Indonesian beach via PickPik.
Photo of boys larking about on another beach in Indonesia also via PickPik.