Too late, apparently he’s already been… and not only was he sitting in a cyclo, but he also changed colour, shape, race and size over the course of a morning. J assures me this was absolutely the case, and that neither he nor Santa had been ingesting any hallucinogenic drugs last Sunday morning. Mind you, he also claims to have seen a giant bear walking through the lobby of the Intercon, so I probably am right to have my doubts about his mental state.

More of that later, let us first rewind to Saturday last.

I realise now that spending my days lying around my apartment watching DVD’s and listening to music whilst planning my next artistic assault on the world out there is not quite as exciting as it sounds. J and family have a much more exciting life and seem to get themselves embroiled in amusingly surreal scenarios with an astonishing regularity. He enthusiastically recounted the events of last weekend to me as I was attempting to watch ‘The Best of the Johnny Cash Show’ on DVD. Eventually I gave up marveling at the stellar selection of guests that the Man in Black had managed to get on his show (Dylan! Creedence! Joni Mitchell! Ray Charles!)and the often astonishing performances therein and gave the ranting J-ster my full attention.

So, he told me that on Saturday morning they had decamped en masse via Chairman Mao’s black tuk-tuk to Street 240. To ‘Images’, to be exact. It’s a gallery of sorts, which masquerades as a hairdresser. Or maybe it’s the other way round. It sounds to me to be a bit like The Man from U.N.C.L.E – is it a laundry fronting an international law enforcement agency, or an international law enforcement agency fronting a laundry? I’m still not sure, but Robert Vaughan and David McCallum as Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin were one of the great 1960’s televisual double acts… I so wanted to be Ilya Kuryakin when I grew up, and spent most of my life before the onset of severe follicle challenging perfecting a hairdo somewhere between that of the enigmatic Russian and Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. Oh to be pale and interesting again!

Back to J’s tale. ‘Images’ was pretty busy, so the family sat awaiting their appointments with shampoo and scissors in the company of Brenda, the Thai owner.

In the UK, Brenda is a name that for persons of my (and J’s) generation mostly conjures up images (!) of grainy 1960’s social realist movies starring Dora Bryan as a put upon housewife in apron and curlers with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from chapped lips gossiping over a brick wall to her inquisitive neighbours as she hangs out the washing in the back yard of one of a row of identical houses with outdoor toilets in some unidentified but grimy northern town.

Of course this is an absolutely stereotypical picture. I’ve known many Brenda’s (hello Brenda!) who have proudly reclaimed the name from the grip of dour British northernity and are nothing like that. ‘Images’ Brenda enjoys gossiping, but there, J assures me, the resemblance ends. If we continue to use the analogy of 60’s movies, she would be a leading actress in an Asian version of ‘Valley of the Dolls’, immaculately glamorous and more than slightly enigmatic, kooky yet sweet and teetering on the edge of more than her high heels … however, there are more connections than at first appears between glamorous Brenda and her dowdy 60’s British archetypal namesakes…

As a child growing up in Northern Scotland, I remember that it appeared that one of the most prized attributes that a woman in those remote communities could have was a practical working knowledge of the supernatural arts. I recall that J’s beloved nana could foretell the future from playing cards, tea leaves, shapes in the fire and would also converse readily with those who had ‘passed over’. His next-door neighbour also possessed those gifts, but apparently with a leaning toward the Dark Side… he told me how he and his sisters were terrified that when she died, only a slight brick wall separated their bedroom from the room where her corpulent corpse lay awaiting internment, and how their fevered imaginings surmised that she was about to become a zombie for her dark master, one who would punch her way through the wall to ensnare them all and drag them screaming down into the depths of hell…
Kids, eh…

Sorry, I’ve meandered a bit. No, glamorous Brenda is no zombie (although one staff member is scarily quiet, unnaturally pale and her hands are icily cold…), but she is, in addition to being admirably direct in her professional capacity, calling a bald patch, well, bald … a fortune teller! Yes, none of that idle British hairdresser chit-chat (Where you going for your holidays then? What you doing Friday then? Going out tonight? See Corrie last night? You thought about a Chestnut Rinse? Did he/she? Really? Oooh, I like that George Clooney, he’s a bit of alright… etc) around these parts, no sir. In J’s words, ‘…not only a hair-cutting, blow-drying, permanent-rinsing fortune teller, but a psychologist to boot!’ as she not only identified the Chinese horoscope predilections of each of the family J’s birth signs (J - Monkey, A - Dragon, O – Dog) but gave an exhaustingly comprehensive analysis of the psychological interactions that each could expect with the other… they’re pretty much doomed by the sound of it… quite a visit, by all accounts, trumping even the foot and hand massage that the adoring staff dole out to young Master O on a pretty regular basis when he visits… believe me, I’ve seen the cell phone video evidence of the Little Prince getting his treatment… what’s he going to be like when he grows up??

J had gone off track a bit by now as none other than Derek and the Dominos were blasting it out on Johnny Cash and he was becoming more than enthusiastically effusive, so I pulled him back by asking about their Sunday trip to the Xmas Fayre at the Intercontinental Hotel. They had invited myself and our mutual friend D along, but I declined, having very little enthusiasm for Christmas and all that goes with it at the best of times. J used to be like that also, but I see increasing disturbing evidence that age is wearing him down and he is starting to enjoy the festive season. Jebus to the Power of Ten. That’s all I have to say on that. D, however, agreed to go (I bet he regrets that now) , so all piled into the Chairman’s vehicle and puttered off down Mao Tse Tung Boulevard toward the sweeping majesty of the Intercontinental Hotel. I’m going to let the voice of J take over now, as my fingers are starting to hurt from playing air guitar and I need a beer…

‘Do you remember Fellini’s ‘Satyricon’? That’s what it was like. With howling children. Everywhere. And these bloody parents dawdling about from stall to stall getting in my way. It was impossible to push the stroller without bumping into someone gawking at something they’ve ignored at the Russian Market for the last three years as if it was the Holy Grail or something similar. The WIG (Women’s International Group) staff who were running the event all looked as if they had been prodded by Satan’s own trident all the way up from the seventh circle of hell to attend to the needy masses. Och, I’m being overly sarcastic here, it wasn’t like that at all, it was really good fun, with crafts and gifts and Santa (I do have to admit to being a wee bit disconcerted at the way he metamorphosed over the course of the morning… black, white, portly, skinny, western, asian… would never have put Santa down as a shapeshifter, but there you go…) and scary big bears and falling Christmas trees.

Lovely.

O made a beautiful Christmas tree for mummy and daddy, he didn’t much care for Santa (it is an anagram of Satan, after all), did some groovy Khmer dancing, was severely frightened by the big bear, but on the whole seemed to enjoy the whole thing. A and D also appeared to be having fun, so we put the cap on a memorable day by zooming (puttering) across town and having an extended Sunday roast lunch at the Green Vespa, where the ever convivial Alan hypnotised us with his Golden Syrup Pudding into staying much longer than we should have, to the point where I was perfectly happy to spend the afternoon wearing a giant foam Guinness hat and D was equally happy (?) to sport a giant shamrock…’

Do you see what I mean about surreal? Some of the stuff they get up to would have made William Burroughs think twice before committing it to paper, but it’s all true. Tune in next time for further adventures in Sean Penn, city of cyclo Santa’s, big bears and fortune telling hairdressers…