

Weird & Wonderful Asian Stories

With a few creeping in from Africa

By

Adam Mann

© Copyright Adam Mann, 2018

Adam Mann asserts his rights as the author of this story.

ISBN: 9781370780181

Three wise monkeys

The three wise monkeys, sometimes called the three mystic apes, are a pictorial maxim. Together they embody the proverbial principle "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". The three monkeys are Mizaru, covering his eyes, who sees no evil;

Kikazaru, covering his ears, who hears no evil; and

Iwazaru, covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.

Table of Contents:

Adam's Books at Smashwords:

The Privy in Zaria

Cricket in Vietnam

The Saying Goes that...

Poppies

The Bike

A Night Time Swim

The Chopsticks

Twenty Four Hours

The Post Office

Flooding in Yen Bai

Passion in the Office

South Asian Adventure

The Third Stage – Karachi

The Fourth Stage – Border War, fleeing to safety

Writing Romance Books

Adam's Books at Amazon KDP

The author, Adam Mann, hopes that you enjoyed reading this book.

### Adam Mann has written other books all published and available from Smashwords.

 All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor – take a cruise in the South China Sea with a new first officer, the captain, the company who chartered the ship, and various of the ship's crew, not forgetting two bandits

 African Tales – four delicious ladies each working in West Africa in the 1960s, each with a tale to tell, and one bringing with her a copy of the Karma Sutra. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/639392

  Black High Heels – a young lady is bequeathed a hotel and a restaurant, but is being pursued by local gallivants, until she meets a visiting Aussie so she dons high heels to show off her legs

 BODY HEAT - Can Jennifer survive 21 days naked in an Asian forest with a naked man she'd just met on a Social Network?

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/

DEPRAVED! – a healthy red-bloodied man finds local ladies to his liking as he travels from job to job, until one day he is found by a beautiful girl

 Dreaming... - James is struggling to make his project effective until one day he meets Ioana with the flowing auburn hair, and then his work become even more difficult. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/619462

 Escort or Partner – Charlie hires an Escort to go with friends on a long weekend holiday. The manager of the Agency arrives instead of an escort, and finds she is falling in love with Charlie!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/931497

 Hanoi Heat – a simple love story in which a man meets a lovely lady at an Embassy reception, and which turns out to be "curtains" under certain conditions for both of them.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/461761

Heat in the Tea Gardens – here the lady is the aggressor until she meets a man who can cope with her plastic bra, a crooked financier and two tea factories.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/496978

 Helga's Red Thigh Boots – Joseph and Helga find that they both have pet names for their Pudenda, which starts a whole train of events, and a flight to Canada to buy her Red Thigh Boots. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/495034

 Kandy Heat – Makshi falls for the man she met sitting on her kitchen doorstep! But then he is attacked by a man with a hard wood baseball bat, so she has to look after him. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/481325

  Love in the Boondocks – Another simple love story. Kim is divorced by her uncaring husband who is only interested in salary, until she meets Dave working in a remote village. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/676005

  Love in the Air – A lady meets a Canadian man on a delayed flight to Taipei – layover in transit now has a new meaning

  Love in the Rain - Getting wet and cold in the rain results in two people warming one another together!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/757634

 Red High Heels – two people with similar names are booked into the same room in a hotel by accident, but they manage to tell jokes and fall in love.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/466177

  Did they really camp in a pup-tent in the Masai Mara?

It's not the lions they have to worry about - it's the Hippos!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/933010

 Singapore Heat – three men and three ladies are all working in Singapore, and they struggle to survive, until one pair falls in love; the others fall into trouble.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/481048

 West African Project – a true story where Ivan finds himself working in remote West Africa, only to find himself being cared for by a young widow, and a host of farmer families. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/492110

  William Mary & Percy – romance following a take-over bid in London, but who is Percy, and what has Samantha has to do with the love affair?

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/719820

The following novels by Adam Mann and also available from Smashwords

  The Showers – A tour guide is leading a team on the Yorkshire Dales, until a farmer's wife joins him as a takes a shower.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/919248

  Claudia and the Lords of Peterborough – the heir to the Earl of Peterborough is killed in a flying accident, which poses problems for his widow.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/919271

 His Third Wife – in the 19th Century bigamy was a touchy subject, and several bestselling books on the subject were written at that time. Adam Mann finds another interesting case.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/583627

  Naked on Holiday – two elderly men take a holiday together and both find themselves entangled with ladies

  Don't Take Your Shoes Off – a Box Set of three of Adam's eBooks where ladies show off their high heels – and their legs. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/892253

eXtasy Books have published this single novel for Adam Mann, which is also available from Smashwords:

 Tsunami – in December 2004 a huge Tsunami kills about 3,000 people around the Indian Ocean, including several hundred at Hambantota in Sri Lanka. The family has to come to terms with the tragedy. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/604817

The Privy in Zaria

I'd been invited to a party in Zaria. Now I'd better explain Zaria is a town in the north of Nigeria just a bit north of Kaduna, and in those days was the centre for tobacco cultivation. That party was the best part of 50 years ago, like 1970.

The staff of the tobacco company lived in a row of houses along one road facing the old racecourse, and some had been modernized, but one or two still had their privy at the back of the house. The custom was that when one privy was "filled" another would be excavated not so far away, and the small outbuilding "the privy" would be manhandled to the new site, so that the seat of the lavatory would be over the newly excavated hole in the ground. The earth excavated would be partially used to fill in the hole at the old site.

The house for the party actually had two privies. They'd probably borrowed one from their modernized neighbour. One was in occasional use and the other had evolved into a handy garden shed.

Well, let's go back to the party. We were all having a good time and the party giver had ensured that there was good supply of cold ones. It was nearing midnight when one partygoer decided that a trip to the privy would be a good idea. Maybe the new modern lavatory inside the house had been occupied.

It was a bit dark and there was no light so instead of standing to urinate into the privy he decided to take down his trousers and sit on the seat inside the privy.

So far so good.

Suddenly all the partygoers heard a huge shout, from the occupant of the privy. The wooden door was flung open and he staggered out with his trousers still around his ankles. He didn't get far dressed like that before he tripped up and fell flat on his face but was still hollering loudly; "I've been bitten by a snake!"

Several men rushed out of the house towards the former occupant of the privy. He was lying on his front and we all see in the half light from the house the double bite marks in his buttocks, which we all assumed to be that of a snake!

Someone told the man to lie still, whilst two of them went towards the open door of the privy. One held a stick.

The two men peered into the privy and looked towards the seat of the lavatory.

Nothing!

So they looked a bit closer constantly ready to leap away if the snake was still there.

Then they heard a sound, and small head with a bright eye looked at them from inside the lavatory.

It wasn't a snake.

A mother hen had decided that the old unused lavatory would be a good place to brood her clutch of eggs.

She looked at them a bit indignantly.

The two men who had ventured to find the snake couldn't stop laughing, but one managed to tell the others at the party between chuckles.

The man who had been bitten?

He just laughed as much as the rest of us.

Cricket in Vietnam

The game of cricket started in English villages many years ago, but is now played with varying degrees of skill, vigour and enthusiasm in many part of the world.

The author has even played cricket in Hanoi in Vietnam; please try to imagine – it's July 1998 and very hot but somehow we persuaded someone to let us play on their football field! Or rather a grazing patch used for football. A motley collection of local cattle appeared to be the only grounds men we could find, and they were a bit reluctant to move off their field.

Initially there were 18 or 20 of us, and we divided ourselves into two teams – Australia versus the Rest of the World we decided! Most of us had running shoes or trainers, and wore shorts. One young man turned up wearing a smart Bradman outfit complete with a baggy green.

The World team batted first and I cannot remember what I scored, but we were all out for 30 runs. Our numbers increased during the afternoon, and we ended up playing 14 a side. We had arranged for a supply of cool beer and pizza for a tea break. Some local boys looked at the pizza longingly, and they got their fair share, even though they probably had never tasted cheese before in those days.

Now it was the turn of the World's team to field, and we agreed that each player would bowl one over. Now I'm no spring chicken, but I found I could get some spin off the uneven surface and even managed to get two wickets in my over – the beer probably helped.

Now we had a problem as the next bowler could not be found, so I bowled a seventh ball, and got another wicket!

A few balls later Australia won with their 31st run. The loser had to pay for the beer and we all congratulated Brad, Mitch and Suneer. Suneer? The Ozzies had slunk in three ringers from the sub-continent! Now I asked the scorer to let me know whom I had bowled out, but they told me they only recorded the runs scored, not the wickets, so all traces of my three wickets from seven balls was lot to posterity!

We all retreated to a friendly hostelry in Nguyen Khac Can Street, just off Trang Tien, which unfortunately has long since closed its doors.

The saying goes that all women are beautiful and some are more beautiful than others!

Saying that as a man this can put all men in a quandary, because the first thing a man usually notices is the woman's figure. And to give all ladies credit most of them work very hard at getting that just right.

As a male writer of romance novels the male lover has to use a lot of the writer's personal experience, and I'm sure that most men have made howling mistakes.

But one thing of which I have made myself aware is the different moods and personalities of ladies; but in saying that I'm probably digging myself into even deeper trouble!

The tea towel smacked across the kitchen table!

"Was that for a mosquito, a fly, or your husband?" her friend Amy ventured with a wry smile.

Jenny had to laugh, but she's been on a mental low for several days.

"At least the fly's dead!" she said but she laughed.

"Has he finished the window?" asked Amy timidly.

"He says he'll complete the work tomorrow, just before the guests arrive," Jenny relaxed a bit now that she had a friend to talk to.

They were both silent for a minute.

"Why on earth he decided to make the bathroom window bigger, I'll never know, and just now!" her exasperation was growing by the minute.

Amy tactfully said nothing.

"The mess they made was horrendous," Jenny continued, "they did put newspaper on the floor, but on top of that new carpet!"

Just then the kitchen door opened and Charlie, Jenny's husband, came in with a small gift wrapped parcel which he gave to his wife, but did not attempt a kiss.

Amy saw Jenny physically relaxing; "I think I'll leave you two alone," and she let herself out of the house.

Jenny opened the parcel carefully, and took out a small dark green box with a snap lid. She opened it and inside was a silver eternity ring, with small gemstones set in all around it. She put it on her ring finger, and looked at Charlie, and now she smiled at him.

Charlie picked her up, and carried her up the stairs to their bedroom, and without taking off any of their clothes laid her on the bed.

"Most expensive bathroom window ever," muttered Charlie to himself.

#  Poppies

The alarm clock on the bedside table shrilled. It was 4.30 am.

Mike sat up in bed and turned on the lights, blinding him slightly for a moment. He stood up and walked across to the bathroom. He shivered as he entered the door, and he reckoned that the bathroom was just about the coldest place in the complex, and saw that the thermometer on the bathroom wall indicated -5°celcius. Brrr!

He cleaned his teeth, and ran the hot water to get some warm water for shaving. Within fifteen minutes he was dressed, pulling on a thick sweater over his thermal underwear. He grabbed his haversack, which contained an anorak, and headed for the kitchen. Hot cinnamon tea was waiting in a large brown enamel kettle, and he gratefully grabbed the mug offered to him, warming his hands. Outside he could see the three land rovers waiting with their engines running, and thin wispy exhaust fumes rising in the dark early morning air.

"Good morning," said Charles brightly, as he entered the kitchen. Charles was the engineer, and he also grabbed a hot mug of tea, cradling it in his hands. Muneer, the project officer, did not say anything as he came into the kitchen, merely rubbing his eyes as if just awakened. By 5 o'clock others had arrived, and the group went outside to the waiting land rovers.

"Salam, alekum", Bakti, the driver, greeted them. Mike and Charles and Muneer got into the first land rover and the convoy set off in the still dark Pakistani morning. This was the North West Frontier province, and this part of Swat district one of the least developed areas in Pakistan. By 5.30 a small glimpse of dawn could be seen on the left hand side of the rutted road leading to one of the poorest parts of the valley. The procession of land rovers drove south steadily for an hour, and then turned off to the east and drove another hour until they got to a river, where they stopped under a group of trees.

Everyone got out and peered across the river. It was not so deep, and series of large boulders provided makeshift stepping stones across the river. Mike and Muneer were the first to cross the river, Mike with his small haversack, and Muneer wearing only his long grey tunic, buttoned to the neck, with signs of a sweater showing from underneath. But no scarf and no hat. They followed a small track between rocks up the hill and away from the river.

"We've got about one hour to walk until we get to the ponies," said Muneer. As they came to the top of the first rise Mike could see the hills in the distance and in the early morning light were the distant range of the Himalayas in the east. Apart from the group of men, there was nothing to be seen. Apart from no bridge, there was no road that the land rovers could have taken. There was little vegetation to be seen, apart from a few stunted trees, and occasional patches of weed growing dismally between the rocks on the hillside. The rocks were a grey granite colour, but the patches of earth in between were a bright red, but dry and barren.

Muneer was right. After about an hour they crested a small hill and saw a group of men, with ponies under a few trees by a small stream in the valley. It took ten minutes to get down to them. The men they met had some pieces of cold grilled chicken and several of the local flat round unleven bread. That was breakfast. Muneer had been speaking to the men in rapid Pustoo, which was the local dialect. The men were all Pathans, mainly bearded, and all wearing the long grey or khaki kaftan buttoned to the neck, with thin wispy white scarves wrapped around their necks to protect them from the still early morning cold. They all, without exception, wore a flat round brown hat. Some carried AK47s slung over their shoulders, as was normal in this part of the Swat valley.

Whilst the group of visitors finished their food, and wandered away from the trees to relieve themselves, the men with the ponies had led them across a small area of flat land to the first hillside. This hill was much steeper than before. Mike could see the track that they had been following winding up the hillside, and reckoned it would at least an hour to get to the top of this hill.

"Jump on," laughed Muneer and big man as he was he swung a leg over the nearest pony, which looked like a big dog in comparison to his bulk. The pony staggered a bit but did not seem to mind his weight. Mike also got on a pony, and sat looking down at the scrawny neck below him. There was a rudimentary saddle, and some reins made from rope, or string. Other men in the group were debating the wisdom of riding the ponies.

Muneer set off with his pony going directly uphill disregarding the winding track. Mike's pony followed and Mike had to hold on tight to avoid slipping off backwards. The pony was used to the hills and after about twenty minutes Mike and Muneer were at the top of the first steep hill. They looked back and saw other men walking, but Charles, who had started to walk, had changed to a pony and soon joined them. The landscape rolled away in front of them, and the distant Himalayas looked no closer.

Going downhill was more difficult and there was nothing about the pony to stop the rider slipping forward, and then Mike saw that Muneer had dismounted and was walking downhill alongside his pony. He did the same and after a while Charles followed their example. Mike, holding on to the pony's reins, looked at his watch. It was nearly 10 o'clock!

Here and there the track widened and it was possible to ride alongside each other. The vegetation improved with a few more trees and signs of cultivation in terraces on the hillside. The rocks on the hillside grew less in number, but bigger in dimension. Muneer pointed out a white building in the distance, which was a school house, and to where they were heading. Just beyond the school the outline of some houses in a village could be seen. It was 11.30 before they got there, and some of the group straggled in even later. It was warmer now in the cool March morning, and Mike could feel sweat under his thermals, but it was still not hot.

The village headman, who was called Jamil, and some others were waiting in the building. There were no signs of children in the school, but a teacher turned up just before they had lunch. The meeting with the headman and the villagers was held in Urdu, with Muneer and the school teacher translating for the benefit of Mike and Charles.

The village, it appeared, wanted help with a small gravity fed irrigation system. The water would come from a small stream that eventually would join the massive Indus River in the distant valley, and Mike then realised that they had crossed the range of hills that morning into the Indus watershed, which also explained why thy not speaking Pashto, and this village was not accessible from the East, across the Indus.

Some heavily veiled women arrived with baskets and trays for lunch. This itself was unusual as women are never normally seen in public in this remote part of Pakistan. Jamil explained, when asked, that this village did not hold their women in strict Purdah. It was agreed in the meeting that after lunch the visitors would go to the village, and see the farms and the area of land to be irrigated. The school teacher also spoke some English which helped Mike and Charles understand about family life in the village.

The village lay just below the school to the east, and it was a short walk down to the village. The houses were grouped in clusters with mud walls enclosing several houses, as was also normal in the Swat valley. The water from the stream first supplied the village, and then was carried down to the terraced fields below the village. The village was neat tidy and the houses well kept. The men in the group all walked down to the fields.

Mike was slightly ahead of the group and as they turned a corner his eyes were dazzled with a mass of bright reds, pinks, whites and crimson flowers. The large petals were not still but swayed on their tall stalks in the slight breeze in carefully tended part-terraced fields. Mike could see wheat and maize was grown in terraced fields beyond these flowers, for which the village wanted an irrigation system.

The flowers were opium poppies, and Jamil quite willingly replied to questions. Opium poppies have a distinct aroma, which could be smelled as they approached the fields. There were over 50 hectares of poppies being grown in patches in this village alone. Other villages in this area grew another 200/300 ha. in his opinion. Addicts, we asked? None, Jamil said, farmers sold all the opium they could produce. They even quoted prices per kilogram for wet opium and dried opium resin. He almost seemed quite proud of the farmers' ability.

A young girl, who had been working in the fields, was called and she showed the visitors how the poppy seed-heads were scratched in the early morning and the resin carefully collected from each seed-head before 10.30 each morning – or else it became discoloured. The whole village turned out for this exercise each morning. She actually scratched off a little remaining resin from one seed-head about the size of a golf ball that had been missed that morning, and gave it to the visitors.

Who brought the resin, they asked? Jamil explained that there were regular buyers. Men on bicycles came to the village each week during the growing season. They paid cash to each farmer, but Jamil did not know where they came from. A farmer's family could earn a whole year's income, and more, from one poppy crop alone, maybe $2,000 from one hectare?

Mike and Charles were amazed, but tried not to show it too much. Opium poppy cultivation had been official eradicated from the Swat valley several years ago (in fact in 1984). The Police? Jamil smiled and said that farmers deliberately grew fields of poppies close to main roads, which the police could destroy, and take pictures of the crops they destroyed, but the Police never came as far as this village.

It took several hours for the visitors to go back to the project campsite, the way they had come, by the ponies and then walking, and it was dark before they reached the land rovers.

Back at the camp Mike decided to take a shower before dinner, as he took off his trousers he felt something rigid in one pocket. He reached in to take it out.

It was the poppy seed head covered in raw opium!

The Bike

"Me oi, me oi," for some reason this is always shouted twice. The family was having dinner, and the only way Ngoc could make himself heard was to shout. When you're the youngest that can be difficult, and Ngoc often found himself in trouble if he interrupted a conversation.

"When is Huong going to university?" Ngoc followed up.

"Why do you want to know?" asked his mother.

"Because, then I can have her bike." Ngoc's logic, at the age of 10, was simple.

Ngoc had been pestering his mother for a bike for weeks since the new school year had started. He was in the last year of primary school, and apparently some other boys had come this term to school with gleaming new bikes. Ngoc's mother made a metal note to speak to her younger sister, and see if she could borrow a bike for Ngoc.

An old one. Life was difficult since her husband had suddenly died four years ago, and the cost of a new bike would now be an impossibility.

Two days later Ngoc was presented with an upright bicycle that had once been black. It had a basket on the front, and a small luggage rack on the back. It had been carefully cleaned with an oily rag the day before to hide the rusty parts. Ngoc could not reach the pedals if he sat on the seat, so he learned to ride the bike by pedalling in a standing position. If he was careful the seat did not bang into his back too often.

His eyes gleamed and he quickly learned that a friend, sitting close behind him on the luggage rack, could help with the pedalling from behind.

One afternoon after school in late October, Ngoc and a cousin called Quang, decided to go and look for some catfish in the river. The river was behind the market near to the house, and on the road to the military airfield. Carefully the two boys set off on the bike, with Quang pedalling from behind. The road was not used too much, except by military vehicles, but in the late afternoon there was no traffic at all.

They wanted to find a catfish, especially a big one. They had to go along the river for about two kilometres from the market, which for two small boys is a long way. They parked the bike and had some problems with the old metal stand, as the bike kept on falling over, but eventually they managed to prop it up using a stone to help. From the bridge they could see the river, and noticed at once that the river bed had been widened, although the flow of water was still very slow. The catfish were basking in the autumn sunshine, and they could see one very large one struggling and making ripples through the shallow water as it moved, so the two boys, shouting, rushed down to try to catch it.

They had not noticed that the river had been widened to allow for the construction of a small dam on the other side of the road, and a temporary embankment had been made to hold back the water until the spillway was completed. Catching the fish was no problem, but picking it up was, and as the two boys struggled, laughing, ankle deep in the water they became aware of some commotion on the river bridge immediately above them.

When they looked up there was a foreigner standing there. Later they learned that he was an engineer who was supervising the construction of the new dam, and the flood control system. Ngoc could speak quite a lot of English, and as the two boys approached the foreigner, Ngoc said;

"Hello".

The foreigner looked up from where he was kneeling at the edge of the bridge. He had a large spanner in his hand and was trying to turn a large nut, but it wouldn't budge. Below the nut was a long threaded screw, which went down to a steel gate under the bridge and below the level of the road.

"Hi," said the foreign engineer, who was cursing under his breath at the problem, "the river level's too high and will burst the embankment if we're not careful. Can you help me to open this flood gate?"

As the engineer leaned on the spanner the flood gate moved a bit, and a little of water flowed through right at the bottom, but when he let go the gate shut under it weight and the water flow stopped. It needed a bit more leverage.

The two boys tried to help but the spanner was not big enough. The engineer realised by now that Ngoc could understand him. This was unusual as most children of Ngoc's age only spoke a very few words of English, if at all.

"The man in charge of this gate was sick today, so this evening I came to check the water level. We really need the gate wheel to open this gate." explained the engineer.

"Where is it?" asked Ngoc.

"It's in the green pickup in the works yard," said the engineer.

Ngoc knew where that was and offered to go and fetch it for the engineer. Off he set on the bike, and left Quang standing watching the engineer continue to struggle with the obstinate flood gate. He reached the yard after about one kilometre and saw the green pickup parked near the gate. He clambered over the tailgate. The steel wheel was lying on the floor, and was much bigger and heavier than Ngoc had expected. He managed to get it to roll over the edge of the tailgate, and let it fall to the ground. He then managed to lift it onto the basket in the front of the bike, leaning it against the handlebars. As he tried to ride the bike it was very front wheel heavy, but he finally managed after wobbling a bit to ride back to the bridge.

He stopped the bike, and the engineer came over to help him carry the wheel to the flood gate. The bike refused to stand up again, so this time Ngoc propped it against a nearby road sign. The engineer fixed the wheel to the top of the threaded rod, and all three of them helped to turn it. Immediately, they could hear the water rushing through the steel gate under the road below their feet, and spilling into the river where they had been fishing. The water level at the edge of the road began to fall very slowly, and they stood watching and listening to the flow of the water. After a bit the engineer thanked the boys for their help.

Ngoc and Quang walked back to where they had left the bike.

"Where's the bike?" asked Ngoc. Quang looked a bit worried.

"It fell into the water," replied Quang, "Whilst you were carrying the wheel with the foreigner." Both boys peered into the water at the edge of the road, and saw that the water had become muddier and deepened. Ngoc had a sinking feeling that he had seen the last of his new bike. They found a bit of bamboo and started poking about in the water but they couldn't even reach the bottom. As they started the long walk home, the engineer waved goodbye to them and set off in the other direction with the wheel.

When they got home they managed to get into the house without being seen, Ngoc's mother was busy cooking, and called to the boys to come and eat when they had washed. Nothing was said about the bike that evening, and Ngoc decided that perhaps it was better to say nothing.

When he got home after school the next day, Ngoc was surprised to see the engineer's white Toyota pickup parked outside their house, and the engineer and another man were inside talking to his mother. There was also a group of neighbours who had all come into the kitchen to see what was happening, and were all talking excitedly together. As soon as she saw Ngoc, his mother called out:

"Ngoc, where's your bike?"

Ngoc didn't know what to say, and looked at the engineer for inspiration.

"He had a bit of an accident last night, when he was helping me," volunteered the engineer, in English and continued, "the villagers on the other side of the river were very lucky that he did help me, because had the embankment given way it would have flooded or washed away their houses," the engineer said, and the other man with him translated.

The engineer then took Ngoc's hand and walked outside with him. Ngoc walked with him not knowing what else to do. His mother followed, and then out trooped the neighbours. The engineer reached into the back of the pickup and lifted out a bicycle, which he put on the ground and then wheeled the bike to where Ngoc was standing.

"Look after it," the engineer said.

This bike wasn't the old bicycle, but a brand new gleaming mountain bike. It had a brightly coloured enamelled frame, thick stubby wheels, and gears controlled by a lever on the handles. The handlebars and the mudguards were shining chromium plate. It didn't have a basket on the front, but had a luggage rack with a hinged frame at the back. And, it was compact enough for Ngoc to ride when he was sitting in the saddle!

Ngoc looked at his mother and then at the engineer. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he gazed at the new bike again.

"Thanks very much, Ngoc," said the foreign engineer, who then got into the white pickup and drove away. The neighbours were all talking at once, and Ngoc's mother was beaming all over her face.

Ngoc realised, with relief that this time he was not in trouble.

A Night Time Swim

Bang!!

The kitchen window just in front of him shattered as Mike walked along the path in the garden. He saw two indistinct figures standing in the kitchen and one had a gun. They wore some sort of uniform.

He didn't think they had seen him in the dusk, but instinctively ducked and turned and ran back to the garden shed that he had just come from. Its amazing how much adrenaline a single shot can induce, and he realised that his heart was pumping frantically. He took a deep breath.

Who were they?

What did they want?

Did they want him?

The garden shed had a door to the road outside and he let himself out cautiously. There were two more men standing just outside the front door near a parked Toyota 4WD Estate car, and they had also heard the shot. Fortunately they were paying attention to where the shot had come from in the house and not looking in his direction. Mike turned his back and walked away from them as slowly and steadily as he could.

Mike and his wife owned another garden just down the road and about fifty or sixty metres away, and he walked towards it. He just made the gateway when he heard a shout behind him, so he fairly raced through the gate into the garden. The path dipped slightly towards a large pond, and the banana trees at the edge of the pond created a lot of shadow so he ducked behind the trees. There was a stone wall with a concrete topping around the pond.

He heard the sound of running feet, and thinking of an ancient Irish motto – 'its better to be a coward for five minutes than a dead man all your life' – Mike lowered himself gingerly into the pond trying not to make a noise.

The water was cold. His shirt and trousers had trapped air inside which came out in large bubbles and which were clearly audible to anyone nearby. He knew that the water in the middle of the pond was about three metres deep, but he made his way around the edge of the pond towards some bamboo sticks that had been placed in the water by a neighbour. It was getting dark now.

Just beyond the bamboo the neighbour had built a small bamboo lavatory standing in the water some years ago, which the neighbour accessed by a plank from the shore, and Mike gratefully held on to one of the four wooden legs on the far side from the men, to keep him under the water and as still as possible.

The men in uniform had a torch which they were shining on the surface of the water close to where he had lowered himself under the water, so it seemed that they may have seen him in the pond, and as the beam came towards him he carefully held his head under water trying hard to keep still.

The water was not clean but he could see the beam of light through the mirky water above him. His lungs were bursting before the beam of light went away and then he gingerly and slowly came to the surface behind one of the wooden legs. He tried not to make any noise, and he heard the men talking, but they went away.

Mike stayed in the pond for another few minutes until the men had gone. All the time he was thinking again,

Who were the men in uniform?

What was the matter?

Why did they want him?

And why did they have guns?

He had just come home from work about twenty minutes before the men in uniform arrived, and had been looking at the chickens that they kept in the garden shed close to the house, when the men arrived. There seemed to be four men, and they all appeared to be in uniform.

He got out of the pool, and by now he was feeling quite cold, and of course wet. He could not walk back the way he had come and then he remembered the concrete wall at the back of the garden which lead to a small lane with houses along it, which in turn came out on the main road about four hundred metres away from the house.

He also thought about going back to the house. There was a car and a motor cycle in the garage but he had to get into the house to open the garage door. He continued on his way to the main road.

At this time in the evening people in the houses were eating their dinner, and he didn't think anyone saw him as he climbed over the wall and made his way down the back road. A dog in one of the houses barked at him but no one took any notice.

At the main road he cautiously looked back towards the house, but could not see it due to a slight bend in the road. He turned the other way and started walking down the road. He was still thinking, desperately.

But who were they and why did they want him, and with guns?

At the road junction there were surprising few people about, and the few who did see him didn't take much notice in the half light, in spite of the fact that his clothes were still wet, and must have been fairly dirty. He started walking towards the centre of the town in which he lived. Still thinking.

"My wife had gone to Ha Noi for the weekend on a family visit, leaving only the maid in the house, apart from me."

Maybe that was what made him walk towards the railway station. The station was no more than about one kilometre away, going through the back streets, but the lights outside the station were like a beacon when he got there. He checked if he had any money, and found that he still had is wallet in his back pocket. With his heart thumping, but his clothes had dried a bit, and trying to appear unperturbed he walked to the counter and asked for a ticket to Ha Noi. The next train was not until ten o'clock, but he still brought a ticket for a soft seat and put it in his wallet in his pocket.

Mike went outside the station, and then it occurred to him that the men looking for him may check the station. Outside the motor cycle taxis were assembling for the arrival of the evening train from Ha Noi. They were talking together in loud voices and didn't take any notice of his dishevelled state. He walked up to one of them, who didn't have a 'Minsk'.

"How much to Cat Len ?"

"Fifty thousand dong," he said, grinning.

"Too much," Mike had to play the game. The asking price was about five dollars.

"Forty thousand" he suggested. Cat Len is a village about thirty kilometres away, on the road to Ha Noi.

The motor cycle taxi driver didn't reply but seemed to think that price was fair, and indicated that he should get on the back of his motorbike – a Thai or Chinese version of a Honda Dream.

About one hundred metres down the road Mike asked the driver to stop, where a shop was selling motor cycle helmets. He went inside the shop and was trying on a big helmet with a visor (he wanted to hide his face). Just as he did a large Toyota 4WD vehicle went past the shop towards the station. It had blue number plates indicating a government vehicle.

There was no mistaking the face of the driver in the street lights. Mike knew of him fairly well. He was the head of the forestry police and a former policeman in the province next door to where Mike lived, and where he was actually working now, and Mike knew he was a good driver and he liked driving himself.

Keeping the helmet on Mike cautiously went to the front of the shop and looked out. The car stopped at the station and two men from the car went inside. He didn't wait to see what happened.

He quickly paid for the helmet. Still keeping the helmet on he got back on the motorcycle and told the driver to get going. He did, but he was cold, and he knew it would get only colder, but he didn't want to stop.

About five kilometres out of the town there is a row of shops selling jackets and anoraks. Mike bought the biggest he could find, with a black shiny artificial leathery surface. It was cold by now, but his shirt was drying out. It took another half an hour to get to Cat Len, but an idea was forming in his mind.

"How much to take me to Ha Noi?" he asked the driver.

It took some shouting to make the driver realise that he was serious.

"Three hundred," he shouted back at Mike.

"Two hundred," he had to respond.

"No", the driver shouted, "Two hundred and fifty."

"Two hundred and twenty,"

The driver turned his head to look at him, and nearly hit a night time cyclist.

"Two hundred and fifty," Mike agreed pragmatic to the end.

He reasoned that several of the other motor cycle drivers at the station had heard him ask to go to Cat Len, where the road forks right to Ha Noi, and also on the left to Tuyen Quang, from where he thought the men in the car had come.

The driver wanted to stop for petrol, but Mike persuaded him to wait until they got to the next petrol station after Cat Len. He didn't want anyone to notice a foreigner going past Cat Len to Ha Noi, as they surely would if the driver had stopped for petrol. If they thought that he gone back to Tuyen Quang then so much the better. That night Mike and the motor cycle driver eventually got to Ha Noi but it had taken several hours. He checked into a small hotel he knew. The sleepy receptionist recognised him but did not ask for his passport or an advance payment. He had a shower and went to bed, fairly shattered by now. Ha Noi is one hundred and eighty kilometres from home.

When Mike woke up it was early in the morning, and he was lying on top of his own bed at home, still wearing his day time clothes, which were soaked in sweat, although drying a bit.

He stood up and took off his trousers, and then felt in the pockets for his keys, and then for his wallet. He put it on the bedroom table and then noticed a small piece of paper just sticking out.

It was a train ticket to Ha Noi for the ten o'clock train last night!

The Chopsticks

I was quietly enjoying myself with some of my family in one of my favourite restaurants in London. We were in a small Vietnamese restaurant in Gerrard Street, just off Shaftsbury Avenue. Let me see; there was myself, my wife who is Vietnamese, and my eldest daughter and her two children, who are my teenage grandchildren, although not really children now - rather a young man and a young lady.

We were having lunch and I had ordered one of my favourite dishes which comprises soft-shelled shrimps fried with small pieces of belly pork, and flavoured with finely chopped lemon grass. It was a bit salty but just as I liked it.

My wife had ordered some stir-fried beef with vegetables and fried tofu cooked in a simple tomato sauce, and some fried chicken which she knew the children liked. Whilst we were eating I sensed a presence at my side and looked up. A very smart young man, presumably Vietnamese, stood holding a small white card which he presented to me.

"My uncle would like to meet you, sir," he said speaking English fluently, and I followed his gaze across the restaurant to where at another table an old man was sitting, and looking in our direction. I think they had just finished their meal. He looked almost as old as me, and he smiled at me as our eyes met. I smiled back.

"Perhaps you would have some tea with us when you have finished eating?" the young man suggested.

"Please come and join us here," I volunteered. The young man gave a small bow and went back to his uncle.

"Who's that?" demanded my wife and daughter almost simultaneously.

I shrugged, "I don't know, but we'll soon find out," I said.

We finished eating a few minutes later and the waiter took away the dishes. The old man and his nephew came towards us and I stood up to meet them as they approached. The waiter dragged two additional chairs and offered one to the old man, deferentially I noticed.

The old man introduced himself, as he shook hand with me, and then my grandson, Harry. "My name is Minh, Nguyen Xuan Minh, and this is my nephew. His name is Van.'" He spoke in English which frequently missed the preposition.

"Please sit down," I offered, and started to introduce my family to him.

'"This is my wife Ty," my wife smiled at him, "and my daughter Sarah," who glared at me but smiled at the man, but in reality after years living in Africa and Asia understood that the men were introduced first, "and my granddaughter Flora and my grandson Harry" I said introducing each in turn. He did not shake hands but just nodded his head until I introduced Harry, then he lent over the table and shook hands using both of his hands.

The old man sat and indicated to his nephew to sit also.

There are not a lot of Vietnamese people living in London, and I was trying to place his accent as he spoke in English. I looked at the card I had been given, which was a business card with the old man's name in Vietnamese on one side and in English on the other. No address.

The waiter came fussing with tea, Vietnamese style. The tea is poured onto a small tray in which seven small handle-less cups had been placed. He poured the tea and handed each cup to us in order. The old man was nearest to him and he was given his cup first, I was next, then Harry and then my wife, then Sarah and then Flora. My daughter glared again, this time at the waiter. I just grinned as I knew my daughter, and she glared at me but now with a trace of a smile.

I began to study the face of the old man. He was probably in his mid-seventies, not very tall and with a weather marked faced typical of a farmer. His hair was almost white and wispy, although cut very short at the sides. He was not fat and the bones in his hands were prominent, the parchment-like skin on his hands was almost translucent as is not unusual with older people, whilst his nephew was soft skinned and even a bit pudgy.

The waited had disappeared, but reappeared again with my chopsticks which my wife had asked him to wash. He brought them on a tray with a small long white paper envelope. He gave them to my wife who was just about the put them in her handbag, when the old man interrupted her.

"Where did you get your chopsticks?" he asked and held out his hand. Not worrying at this strange request my wife handed him the chopsticks. He took some gold wire framed spectacles out of his top pocket and looked at the chopsticks, almost reverently I noticed. He actually smiled at them.

"I got them in Vietnam," I replied. I was going to say more but something instinctively told me to stop.

"Is this the only pair you have?" he asked.

"Oh yes," I replied, "we usually buy ten or twenty in a bundle at a time, but this pair was given to me".

The old man smiled, and looked almost reverently at the chopsticks again. They were lying in the palm of his hand.

"There were never many of these made," volunteered the old man, "and probably never more than twenty pairs." I nodded, waiting to hear more. This time it was Sarah who held out her hand, and without saying a word the old man placed them gently in her palm.

The chopsticks were unusual and I have no idea why I carry these with me when I know we are going out to eat, at a Vietnamese or Chinese restaurant. They are made from polished red wood and a bit longer than normal, rounded at the eating end, and squared at the other end to stop them rolling off the bowl. However, they have something like white ivory set into the wood unusually at the rounded end, the eating end. Each chopstick has three such rings, spaced out just where the chopsticks hold the food and at the end which goes into your mouth. The ivory has been smoothed to be exactly level with the wood, which is not very thick, and I have often wondered how they got these small ivory rings to fit so precisely onto the wood of the chopstick.

"It is believed that they were made for the father of the last Le Emperor," the old man explained at last, "and when he died it was assumed that they were all inherited by his son, but there was a rumour that some were missing even before the last Emperor died."

All of us were now listening attentively to the old man, even my daughter who can be a bit sceptical about most things. What can be so interesting about a pair of chopsticks?

What I did know was that a special type of tree is grown in central Vietnam, and the wood, called kim giao, had been used to made chopsticks for the imperial palace. They are still being made even today, and many tourists visiting the central region of Vietnam will almost certainly have been offered some for sale. That wood is straight grained and a dirty white colour, whilst 'peasants' like me would have had to have been content with chopsticks made from bamboo.

My wife suggested the word out loud, "Kim Giao", but the old man shook his head.

"No," he smiled and shook his head, "probably a hard wood but we don't know which, and we would have to destroy one to find out".

He turned to me and asked, "How did you get them?"

"I was in Ho Chi Minh City several years ago," I explained, "and was travelling to Ben Tre province. I had not been working in Vietnam very long at that time," I explained, "we had to go through a tunnel to get there just before you get to the ferry to cross the river."

The old man nodded, as if he knew the road well.

"There had been an accident at the end of the tunnel, and when the traffic stopped I got out of the car and walked forward to see how long we would be delayed," I continued.

For some reason all my family were looking at me, although my wife had heard the story several times.

"The accident was at the far end of the tunnel and a lorry had turned over in a ditch. The police had been there, but were sitting in their pick-up talking to someone on their radio. One small and younger uniformed policeman was directing the traffic around the wreckage. Unfortunately, there had been several fatalities with bodies lying close by in the paddy field, under bamboo mats, and all we could see were their feet."

"The lorry was off the road, and was not the cause of the traffic delay. The cause was a large black car which may have collided with the lorry and then slid off the road. There must have been about fifty people standing around looking, and talking loudly together, describing to one another what they think happened."

"The car was lying partially on its side in the ditch, and the some of the baggage from the car was scattered on the road, and some in the ditch."

"For some reason another vehicle had run over one of the bags, which had burst and the contents lay exposed. The passenger, a man, from the car was sitting on part of the back seat, and had blood on his shirt but did not spear to be badly hurt."

"The man spoke to me in English, probably because I was the person nearest to him, and asked me to hand him the broken bag, which I did collecting together the bits and pieces that had been spilled. He also asked me if I could take him to the town in my car, which I had no trouble in agreeing to, as my driver who had been working his way through the traffic, was now alongside us. The man did not want all his bags only the broken one, and I presume that he told another man, who I also presume must have been his driver, to follow him later when he could get the damaged car going."

"I put his bag in the back of my car and helped him into the front seat. I could see that one of his legs was paining him, and the front seat would have been more comfortable for him. I also noticed that he also had a bruise on his forehead and some blood on one hand."

"The next town was not much of a town, more like a big village on the edge of the river," I continued. "He directed my driver to a small hotel and I helped him out of the car and inside the hotel."

"He asked me where I was going, and I told him Ben Tre. The hotel staff were fussing around him and someone gave him a pen and paper and he wrote a name and address on the paper."

"He asked me to deliver the broken bag to the name on the paper, and told my driver in Vietnamese where the address was located, which would not be difficult to find."

"When I last saw him he was sitting in a chair in the lobby of the hotel with his eyes closed, and I went back to my car and we drove on to the ferry. We took about two hours more to get to the town of Ben Tre."

This was not a particularly exciting story but my family were all looking at me.

"The address that my driver had been given and was now looking for was outside the town of Ben Tre. There was a big yellow ochre painted brick wall, with a large black wrought iron gate. My driver hooted, and the gate was opened from the inside. We drove along a drive fringed with palm trees up to a large house and where we were met by an elderly lady at the front door, who must have been expecting a foreigner to arrive. She was very nicely dressed, in a dark Ao Dai, which looked expensive. She did tell me her name but I have long since forgotten."

"She spoke perfect English, and I started to open the back of my car, but she waived me inside the house and gave instructions to a little old man hovering nearby, who was wearing an apron, to bring the broken bag into the house. I was offered a glass of lemon water and waited for the broken bag to arrive."

"She asked my name and I gave her one of my business cards. The bag arrived and the contents were spread out on the floor. I was temporarily forgotten. I was not particularly interested but noticed there was not any clothing, but lots of bits and pieces, and some chopsticks."

"The old lady and the little old man were talking excitedly together. My driver had been left outside, but he told me later that someone had brought him some cold water, and tea. I got ready to go, but was waived back to my seat."

"The little old man in the apron, who was obviously her servant, came into the room from the back of the house carrying a very large plastic bag. The bag was full of fruit and I was persuaded to drink another glass of lemonade before leaving."

"Eventually I was allowed to leave, with the plastic bag of fruit. My driver knew the hotel where we were staying, and after the formalities of checking in and giving them my passport, I was eventually shown into my room. My own bag, and the plastic bag of fruit, was waiting for me."

"Over the next few days whilst I was working in villages in the province, I ate my way through some of the fruit, and had to leave some behind in the hotel as I could not possibly eat it all. As I was paying my bill at the reception desk the room maid came running into the reception with a small long thin brown paper bag which she said I have left behind in the bag of fruit."

"These chopsticks had been in that bag. I put them into my briefcase, and went back to Ho Chi Minh city and flew back to Ha Noi, and drove then on to Yen Bai where I was working." I took a deep breath as I stoped talking.

The old man nodded his head, as if in agreement, and started talking himself;

"You may have heard of Emperor Quang Trung," he said directing his attention to my wife Ty. She nodded, and said "my husband has also read a lot of the history of Vietnam, and probably knows more than me."

"Apologies," he said to my daughter, "but I'll have to tell you some of the background to Vietnamese history."

The old man turned back towards me, "As you know in the eighteenth century Quang Trung was the first of the emperors of the Tay Son dynasty, and a military genius, and who has generally been deemed responsible for defeating the Trinh lords in the north and the Nguyen lords in the south, at that time. His defeat of the Tsing invasion from China helped him to unite Vietnam. He suddenly died in 1792, when he was only 40, and his Queen, Le Ngoc Han, who was reputed to be very beautiful, was so distraught and it is said that she wandered off along the Song Huong, the perfume river. She may never have returned to the palace and she is presumed to have died on the river bank, but her grave has never been found."

"I'm telling you this because their son Quang Toan had been technically married to a princess of the Le dynasty called Le Thi Ngoc Binh, who was the youngest daughter of Le Chien Thong, and Le Ngoc Han's elder brother, and one of the last emperors of the Le dynasty," he paused to take a breath and looked around but we were spellbound with attention. "After Emperor Quang Trung died he was succeeded by Quang Toan, who was ten and who later was probably later executed or killed by the next Emperor Gia Dong. The Emperor then took Le Thi Ngoc Binh to become his third wife. They had four children, two boys and two girls."

"I firmly believe that the chopsticks were owned originally by Queen Le Ngoc Han, who probably received them as a present when she married Emperor Quang Trung. After she died, when she was only twenty nine, the chopsticks must have been taken by her niece Le Thi Ngoc Binh, who continued to own them until she died herself in about 1810, at a very young age of only thirty five. The chopsticks were probably made in China."

"The superstition is that whenever these chopsticks appear, usually one pair at a time, they are associated with the acquisition of beauty and good luck for the person who possesses them."

He smiled at my beautiful Vietnamese wife.

Twenty Four Hours

"In my mind I've divided each day into sections of four hours," said the old man, "and each section contains, more or less, the same or similar activities most days."

"I tend to start each day at six in the morning," he continued, "which is just about the time I wake up."

"Don't you ever sleep later?" his granddaughter asked.

"If I do then that extra sleep is part of the next four hour section,"

"I wake up and go to the bathroom, and then I'll go into the garden still dressed in my nightclothes, although in the winter I do wear a towelling dressing gown," the old man continued.

"It might sound crazy but I like to communicate with the plants, especially in the spring and summer when they are growing strongly," he smiled as if remembering a conversation, and he added, "Don't forget all my plants are in pots as it's a roof garden, so I also have to check each pot for water."

"I probably spend an hour, of the first four hour section, doing that," he continued, "and then I probably go back into the bedroom and drink my first cup of tea which your grandmother will have brought up to me from her kitchen," and he smiled again, "and which sets me going for the day."

"Then I will press the start button on my laptop, which takes about five minutes to warm up, and often clean my teeth whilst that is happening. I like to see the overnight sports news first, and then I go back into the bathroom to shave and take a shower. Sometimes I wash my hair, but usually I get dressed before going back to my computer to see the news. I get the Reuters daily bulletin, which comes in overnight and I like as it generally unbiased," and he stopped to drink some tea, "but I might also look at the BBC website and check also on the weather channel."

"If there is a rugby match, or some cricket being played somewhere, there are special websites to see those results, but I'm afraid I find football and tennis a bit boring," he appeared to be apologising.

"I then look at my emails that have come in overnight, but I put aside those with details of any new book until later, I answer those that need an immediate answer, and might print out something of special interest," he said, and added, "I might have made some notes in the middle of the night about a book, or something, and I'll often write those into a 'note' in my computer."

"By about ten o'clock I stand up from my desk, put my laptop to 'sleep', and I begin to think about breakfast, which is the end of the first four hour section," and he smiled again.

"I go down to the kitchen for breakfast, and probably make another cup of tea whilst I'm thinking about what to eat. Your grandmother will sometimes leave out some bread on the kitchen table, but usually I will take out a loaf from the deep freeze, and put it in the oven for a few minutes still frozen."

"I like to vary my breakfast. Sometimes I will cook bacon and eggs, other times maybe I'll poach some spinach in a little butter and eat it with a poached egg, and other times I'll cook something left over from dinner last night, like some mashed potato, and eat it with a sausage and maybe a tomato," he smiled, "and the bread will be warm and crusty."

"Sometimes your grandmother will give me Bun Cha, or noodles which I enjoy, but not every day. I like especially the small pieces of grilled pork, and the unripe pawpaw in the Bun Cha."

He stopped as if his menu had been exhausted.

"Then I'll go back to my computer and check again for emails," and he explained, "I get the most interesting emails from my publishers at this time as it is early evening in the States by now, but then I go back to writing."

"What I write depends a great deal on the notes I might have made overnight, or my emails, or what 'section' of my book I've reached. Often I'll spend the whole morning writing and revising what I wrote the day before or I'll start planning a new book," and he paused again.

"I keep several spread sheets in which I keep track of my progress in each book, not just in the characters and the plot as I'm writing, but also with the progress of what the publishers are doing, or not doing in some cases," he said, "so that's fifteen spreadsheets now."

"A spreadsheet is not about money but it will let me keep track of how many days have passed since the last activity, or weeks in some cases," he explained and taking a deep breath continued, "so that if something is taking too long I can do something about it."

"I stop by about two o'clock," he said, "as by now your grandmother will have brought me another cup of tea, and often a bowl of fruit, and she often insists I rest for a bit."

"That's the end of the second four hour section," he said.

"Don't you have any lunch?" asked his granddaughter.

"Only the bowl of fruit, or a biscuit," the old man replied.

"I don't usually rest for long, but will go back to my laptop to finish what I was doing in the morning," and he paused again.

"Not all my books are published, so I sometimes think about self-publishing them myself. That means I would need a front cover, and your Uncle Adam has produced several front covers for me."

"But sometimes I will search for 'free' pictures on the internet, especially photos of animals, flowers or trees, and people," and he continued, "as all my books are based in Africa or Asia there is a lot to choose from."

"I use 'Paint' to adapt a photograph for a front cover, but I'm not an artist and Adam produces much better covers than I do, but I'm improving."

"By about six o'clock, which is the end of the third section by the way, I go for a walk around the town with your grandmother. We walk quite briskly, and vary where we go to make it more interesting, but usually limit these walks to thirty or forty minutes."

"I can tell how much your grandmother is exhausted by her rate of talking as we walk! She will talk to neighbours quite a bit as we start out, but after about twenty minutes her talking will be limited to single words, or a smile, as we meet people she knows."

"When we get back she and I will usually have a drink in the kitchen as she makes dinner. We might share a beer together, if we are hot, but depending on how many people are there for dinner, I often go upstairs by about seven thirty. I often watch a film on the TV then, but as we have only a few English channels here I am limited to AXN, Discovery Channel or Fox Sports. There are three film channels but they repeat the same films over and over again."

"I usually will have seen enough TV by about ten o'clock, so I'll go back to my laptop which has been 'sleeping'. That is also the end of the fourth four hour section," he explained.

"I may spend an hour closing down the files on my laptop, and maybe checking up in any sports news, especially those from Australia, but by about eleven or twelve I will get ready to go to bed."

"I don't know why, but most nights by about two in the morning I get up to go to the bathroom, and then I often make a few notes out my writing that I've thought about whilst in bed, but then I go back to bed and sleep, which brings me round to six o'clock in the morning, again," the old man concluded, smiling at his granddaughter.

The Post Office

The girl from the Post Office rattled the metal bars on his front gate, which was locked, so he walked down to the gate to open it for her. She handled him a big sack like parcel that had been opened for 'Inspection' by the Security office, probably in Ha Noi, but she did not ask him to sign a receipt. The parcel was really a paper sack and had been stapled at one end to close it after the inspection.

She waved goodbye as she went back to her motor cycle.

He had not been expecting a large package from anyone, and this appeared to contain something soft inside like a fabric, so he looked for the printed address label. The white label was printed by a computer and amazingly small compared to the size of the package. It was not addressed to him, but had another name in English, and an address that he could not identify.

The local Post Office frequently brought him mail that they cannot identify, particularly when the address is in English. There are not many Europeans living there, but as he's been there for a long time, they assume that he knows everybody, and in particular all the 'foreigners'. Sixteen years ago they introduced Post Office Boxes, and he got P O Box No 1, but nobody else liked the idea, and he was the sole P O Box owner for ten years until they abandoned them and another three or four years before they asked him to stop using it.

On the bottom line of the label was number, which looked like a Post Code, or zip number, but it was eleven numbers. The Post Codes have only just been issued in Vietnam and are only six numbers, and all postcodes for this province begin in '32', but this began with '84'. He put the package on the dining room table which for some reason collects all their 'miscellaneous' rubbish.

He went back to his office and got on with the manuscript he was editing. Editing can be a fairly boring occupation as the editor cannot let himself get involved in the story after the first 'reading'. He was now looking for grammatical errors, and 'typos'.

For some reason whilst he was working he began to think about the number on the address label for the parcel that had been delivered. Suddenly he remembered, '84' was the international dialling code but usually had a '+' sign before it. He got up and went down to the dining room and looked again at the label. If he discounted the '84' then the next three numbers was the local dialling code '293', but of course it needed a '0' at the beginning to work.

He took the parcel to his office and dialled the number, with an '0' but leaving off the '84'.

A lady's voice answered; "Hullo,"

"Can you speak English?" he asked.

"Yes," and a pause, "can I help you?"

"I just received a parcel from the local post office but the address is difficult to read, so they've delivered it to me, as they often do," he added.

"What was in the parcel?" the voice asked.

"I haven't opened it, but it appears to be a fabric,"

"Oh," said the voice.

"Where are you?" he asked, which is probably the phrase most widely spoken by all callers on mobile phones, all over the world.

The voice gave him an address, which he recognised, which was about two kilometres from where he lived.

"What is your name?" he asked, and the lady's voice gave him a 'Latin' sounding name, like Italian or Spanish, or..... He wrote the name on the outside of the parcel.

"Will you be there all day?" he asked.

"Yes," she said,

"OK, I'll bring it to you as I'm not far away."

He decided that he could do with some exercise after all that editing.

"I'll be about thirty minutes," he said, and switched off the phone.

He was wearing a loose fitting printed cotton shirt, and cotton brown trousers, and 'flip-flops', or sandals, or 'thongs' if you're Australian. He hunted around for some lace up shoes, and socks, as a two kilometre trek in flip-flops can result in some nasty blisters.

He looked at the sky but there was only light cloud, and no immediate sign of rain. So he picked up the parcel, tucked it under one arm, and set off.

He had walked only about half a kilometre when his mobile phone in his pocket rang, and vibrated. He pressed the green button.

"What is your name?" asked the lady's voice that he had spoken to earlier.

He told her.

"Thanks," she said, "my name's Lavinia," which was not the name that she had given him earlier.

"See you soon," he said, and pressed the red button.

It took him about twenty minutes to get to the address he had been given, which turned out to be a shop front in a four storied building. There was no glass window or a door, just a wide open space.

A European lady came to see him as he walked up the steps and into the shop, which was almost devoid of furnishings, except for a small low table and some stools scattered about. She was probably about forty, and had dark hair tied as a 'pony tail' at the back of her head.

In the room behind the shop he could see several 'machine operators' working on sewing machines.

"Good morning," he said, "I think this might be for you," and offered her the parcel. She ripped opened the staples which the Security unit had applied after their 'Inspection', and pulled out a lady's undergarment!

"Thank goodness," she exclaimed, "they posted this to me three weeks ago!" and she definitely had a Mediterranean accent. He was not an expert but that coupled with her name sounded distinctively Italian.

She held up the undergarment which to him looked like a corset. There was a lot of black lace around the edges.

She offered to pay him, which was kind of her, but he shook his head.

"We are fabricating European fashions for the local market," she explained, and then called into the back of the shop;

"Linh, come here!"

Linh was tall for a Vietnamese lady and must have been in her early twenties, she had cut off her long black hair, and curled the rest to make a 'frame' for her face. She did not smile often.

"Go and put this on," instructed Lavinia, and handed the undergarment to Linh, who took it in one hand and headed for a staircase at the back of the shop.

"Sit down," Lavinia was still instructing, "and have some coffee," but did not wait for him to sit. She walked to an 'espresso' machine in an alcove that he had not noticed before, and immediately pulled a handle, which made the machine whine and spurt steam, so that strong black coffee was extruded into a small white cup. She put the cup on a small saucer and brought it with a bowl of sugar back to where he was still standing.

"Sit down," she repeated and placed the coffee on a small table. He sat on a stool near the table.

Just then Linh reappeared that the top of the stairs, and began to walk down. She was just wearing the corset, and nothing else, and her walk was measured and professional, but effective.

The corset lifted her breasts to give her cleavage, and constricted her waist to give her an 'hour glass' figure. Her hips would have been impossibly small, but the corset framed her bottom and hips to give an attracive shape to her long thin legs. If she was wearing panties he could not see them. She was also wearing black high heeled shoes.

"Wow," he said, and for the first time Linh smiled briefly.

Lavinia made adjustments to the garment as she reached the foot of the staircase, and looked at her critically, then smiled herself.

"There you are," she announced, "you are the first person to see this 'creation' in Vietnam.

Flooding in Yen Bai

On Friday, 8th August 2008 I had intended to travel to Ha Noi. The trip meant that I would have been away for about ten days, but it was a miserably wet day and with the forthcoming opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics on television in the evening I decided to wait until Saturday morning.

The weather had been wet for several days, and I had noticed that the water in the pond in my garden had risen several centimetres during the last few days, but nothing unusual at this time of the year.

The city of Yen Bai lies on the north of a flood plain on the north bank of the Red River. The flood plain is not large in this part of the river basin only extending about one kilometre either side of the river, with steep hills on both sides. The flood plain also contains the main line railway between Ha Noi and Lao Cai, and the main road. Villages are scattered on the flood plain which consists largely of irrigated paddy fields and fish ponds. Although Yen Bai province has an ethnic minority majority, most of the flood plain is occupied by the ethnic Kinh families, the majority.

I did watch most of the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, subject to the occasional crackling on the screen due to local thunder and interruptions to the satellite signal. The heavy rain continued for most of the night, but this is not unusual for this time of the year. The electric power was cut off about midnight, but that also is not unusual in Yen Bai. I had to brew my early morning cup of tea on the gas stove, as the electric power was still off, and took the dogs to the garden. My garden is across the road from my house and outside many people were rushing around, more active than normal, and all talking about the flooding.

During the night my pond had expanded to encompass most of my garden. Fruit trees were like small islands in a sea of dirty brown mud. The fish, Tilapia of course, I had been carefully raising in my pond had been dispersed over a big area. I managed to walk though the water, up to my armpits, to see what was happening on the other side of the garden, where my wife has several low cost housing rooms she lets to students from the nearby vocational training college. The water was up to their doorsteps. The water pump from the well was under water, so I cut off the electric supply at the main, in case the electricity came back on. The septic tank for these six rooms, I noticed, was under water. I mulch plants a lot and encourage worms in my garden, and must have saved several kilos of live worms as they tried to escape the water. My compost heap happens to be above water level, so then worms had a good place in which to hide and recover.

My wife asked me to drive around the town, as she said that she heard there were many foreigners who had been stranded overnight in Yen Bai. The railway line had been flooded, and cut off, apparently just north of the city. We did not have to go far before we came across a group of foreign tourists who had been travelling on the overnight train from Ha Noi to Lao Cai, and thence to Sa Pa. Many of about one hundred tourists were trying to hire a bus to take them back to Ha Noi, but had been told the road to Ha Noi had also been cut off. I spoke to several and exchanged telephone numbers so that they could tell me if they had been successful. It was overcast all day and the temperature was between 24 and 25 Celsius.

We drove on nearer to the railway station, to find the roads flooded and police in red lifejackets, and in boats, and found out that several people living close to the river had died in the flooding. The habit in Vietnam, I have found, is to avoid asking the police anything, so we drove carefully on. We could see that the ground floor in many houses was under water, and waved cheerfully to people on the balcony on the next floor up. Several roads we tried to drive down were blocked as the water was too deep. Yen Bai steel bridge we could see was still above the flood level, and we went back to our house.

Behind the house on high ground is a vocational training college, which was above the flood level, and we walked around the perimeter taking pictures of the flooding on three sides. The enormity of the damage was beginning to become apparent, and people we spoke to were telling us of the burgeoning death rate. We could see the roofs of houses just above the water level, with chickens perched on the ridge of the roof with nowhere to go. The ducks were having the time of their lives. Dogs and other livestock had to fend for themselves.

Apparently there had not been a rushing torrent of water. It was just that the river rose steadily overnight to more than four metres above its normal level, and water just rose. People, and animals, living close to the river and in low lying areas must have died in their beds. Traditional Kinh houses have ground floor ventilation all around the walls, so the water just came in, whereas ethnic minority houses are often built on stilts. The markets were all closed, and only the occasional travelling vendor had vegetables for sale. Food and vegetable prices soared.

On Saturday night the water level kept on rising, by probably another half metre. The water in the six rooms in my garden was now about 30 cms higher than floor level. The students had all been evacuated to stay with friends in the college. A neighbouring pig farmer had removed 35 pigs to the entrance to my garden as their pig sties had been flooded. The waste from these pigs, and many other animals was mixing into the flood water. An all pervading stench was beginning to invade the air space in the garden and in neighbouring roads. The electric power was understandably still off. The road in which we lived was now cut off at each end by about one metre of dirty water, so we couldn't get out.

Fortunately the main water system did not fail; neither did the landline telephones unless the receiver needed an external power source. We managed to communicate with the outside world, if they were not watching the Olympics. We heard that the local authority had been distributing food, instant noodles, to families marooned in the upper floors. It had stopped raining, and in fact the sun was shining.

My wife was beginning to worry about the food we kept in our deep freeze, and the next day, Monday, she began cooking a lot of it. We could not buy food, and fortunately we usually keep a few days' supply. I found that my family had grown apace by relatives who could not get home. Our chickens were safe from the floods, and we had enough food for them, but a few found themselves feeding the growing and hungry family.

The stench in the garden was getting worse, and I realise now that this was being fuelled by septic tanks and cess pits which had all been flooded. I did not see any carcasses of dead animals but there would have been many. I did notice several dead fish, some of which were my tilapia!

By Monday morning the floods were lowering. Many of the roads were still impassable, but we did manage to get to the hotels where the foreign tourists had stayed to find that many had managed to find transport by bus to Ha Noi. I think that many offices were closed all day, except the local authority for our ward, which had been flooded on Saturday, but by Monday was drying out.

Tuesday was a clearing up day. The water was getting lower, and the neighbour's pigs had been taken back to their pigsties, but had managed to partially destroy the steel garden gate. The water in the paths in my garden was now only ankle deep, so we began to clear them. Many plants and some trees had died whilst under water. The students all came back to reclaim their belongings and dry out their rooms. The stench still prevailed and the water in the pond was a dirty mud colour.

Disease was now becoming a problem from the receding water. My wife spent two days in bed with flu, and pains from aching muscles after the clearing up. Several times I had noticed my wife working, and all her paid helpers just watching, but trying to look helpful. I also noticed neighbours were sick.

The train is now running, the foreign tourists have all gone and roads are now open, but in worse condition than before – if that's possible. I wonder if the authorities will learn any lessons, like an early warning system for flood water emanating from an upstream source. I somehow wish I had a greater confidence.

One thing I did not find about until later. We had lost a lot of plants and small trees in the garden, and realised that they did not die in the floods, they were eaten down to their roots by the Grass Carp that came in with the flood water!

Note:

Since this story was written a new Expressway has been constructed from Noi Bai airport, near Hanoi, to Lai Cao and runs past Yen Bai City. It takes thirty kilometres and a lot of travelling time off the journey.

However the Railway system has not changed much.
Passion in the Office

Mary was a redhead, and a single mother, I learned this from the HR files. I also remembered that she would now be twenty five as I had been part of the interviewing panel two years ago. In the office in which we worked she was the Cashier, and a very good one, as being the Company Accountant in that same office myself I knew I could rely on her to bring me very precise and accurate statements of the rents collected from the various properties that the company owned, and the unpaid rents.

She had cut her hair quite short and dyed it a bit, as was the fashion in those days, I suppose a victim of the times as her red hair was actually auburn and would have been gorgeous with long flowing locks, but never mind.

Earlier in the week the managing director announced that the company had been "taken over" by a bigger property company. We were all naturally concerned about whom we would be working for next week, or indeed if we would be working at all.

We, Mary and I, were asked to produce a financial report on various properties for the new company, so that involved both if us having to put in some extra hours – overtime it's called – to get the report ready.

On the second evening Mary and I were the last to leave the office, and had completed the report by about nine and it was dark outside.

"I'm hungry, can we go and eat?" I pleaded.

"Good idea," she agreed.

We decided to find some food, not really a date, but just something to eat together. I was keen on the new Italian restaurant, but Mary told me she preferred Indian food, and took me to another restaurant just a few yards along from the new gleaming Italian shop, to a dark window with gold lettering on the glass and with a door leading into room full of small tables each neatly spread with a white cloth, and polished cutlery.

The proprietor wearing a turban greeted us full of bows and smiles, and we appeared to be the only customers, but they were open all day and had many customers at other times, I learned. The Indian waiters were all dressed in smart white coats buttoned to the chin with gold colour clips.

I do like Indian food especially as I had lived and worked in India, and realized that each region had its own specialties. I have no idea why I had never been to this restaurant before as my office was only a few hundred yards away.

I cannot remember what we ordered but it was very good, and left our mouths tingling, and we each had a beer to go with it.

As we paid the bill and left the restaurant it was close to ten o'clock and Mary asked me;

"It's dark now, can you walk with me to my flat, please?"

Her flat was about a half a mile away, and was in one of those old tall Victorian buildings that had recently been converted. The planning regulations forbid developers to change the frontage of the building, but they could completely gut and rebuild behind that frontage, with the result that some floors were divided by some of the ornate stone windows in the old buildings, and so that in that way the developer could add one or two extra floors behind the old façade.

"Come and meet my Mum?" Mary invited me, and I followed her into the building. The developers had put in a small lift, and she pressed the button for the fourth floor.

The front door of her flat was close to the lift gate, but I forget the number, and she opened the door calling;

"Mum, come and meet William."

Mary's Mum was an older image of Mary, and she said hello and went to get us all tea.

"Take a chair," said Mary and switched on the television, "the bathroom's over there," she added, "if you need it."

The tea came and was good after the residual taste of the Indian food we had just eaten. We chatted for a bit, mainly about the "Take over" and speculated about our future jobs. Mary's Mum said goodnight as we finished the last of the tea and went to a room at the back of the flat.

I was a bit puzzled as there was no mention of a child, Mary's child, but I did not ask. Now we avoided talking about the takeover, as were both uncertain about how it would affect us.

"Would you like to stay here tonight?" Mary suddenly asked, "As it's getting rather late for you to go home?"

I'm not sure what I said, so she prompted me by saying; "Let me show you the room."

She took me the door I could see, probably next to her Mum's room. It was quite a long room which had resulted from the developers trying to fit as many rooms into the old floor space as they could. There were two beds, one single and one small double at the other end with a small bedside table and a lamp which she switched on.

"You can have that one," she smiled pointing to the larger of the two beds.

"That's kind of you, but I didn't bring any overnight clothes with me," was my lame excuse, which she ignored.

She went out closing the door, and I began to take off my clothes. I looked at the larger bed which had a duvet under the covering blanket, and began to get undressed. I looked outside and then nipped across to the bathroom. I came back and stripped down to my boxer shorts, and got into the bed.

I had forgotten to turn off the main lights but Mary came back into the room wearing just a nightgown, turned off the lights and got into the smaller bed.

We said goodnight, but about half an hour later I felt Mary climbing into the other side of the larger bed with me in it!

She had to touch me as the bed was too small not to, and I noticed the soft fabric of her nightgown as she snuggled up to me, and put her arms around me.

I turned to face her, and she kissed my chin. She smelt very feminine, without using any discernible perfume.

I put my arm on her waist, and then up to her back.

I was a bit startled as the back of her bra felt like canvas webbing through the soft nightie, but she snuggled up me again without saying a word.

I moved my hand to her bottom and found another canvas garment there, which was like a pair of knickers made from thick denim material.

"That's my chastity belt," she whispered, "Go to sleep," she commanded.

"The trouble is that you've woken up Percy," I complained.

"Percy?" she was startled, and I could sense her looking at me in the darkness.

I laughed.

"The one eyed monster," and she laughed, and reached down between us to feel Percy.

"Here," she said and took a condom from under the pillow.

I laughed again.

"Take your boxers off," she commanded, so I did.

"Let me help you," as she took the condom out of its foil wrapping.

Percy was wide awake by now and ready for action, even wearing a raincoat.

I felt for Mary's knickers, but in the half light I felt her shaking her head.

She wriggled under me, and made sure that Percy was touching her stomach through the soft fabric of her nightie.

She used her hands to excite Percy, who didn't want to wait probably because he's been more than a bit inactive recently, and then Mary held me tight as she felt him reaching a climax, and I groaned I must admit still holding her tight.

We both went to sleep. I wasn't really disappointed as I had never dated Mary. She was just another girl in the office. The auburn hair might have helped but she'd cut it off, although I have avoided office romances.

I felt Mary moving in the bedroom about five in the morning. She went to the bathroom, and I noticed that the used condom had been taken off Percy.

When she came back to the bed she snuggled up to me again, and I noticed that she felt softer so I turned to face her, and also now I was distinctly aware of her female aroma and perfume.

Her canvas bra was missing, and then I noticed in the half light that her nightgown was buttoned in the front, so I undid several. Her breasts were delightful, with large dark red nipples, so I kissed her breasts and then her nipples, one at a time.

My hands had not been idle and I also felt that her "chastity belt" was now missing, so I moved a hand to her bottom. She kissed me, and turned herself onto her back.

Percy was also awake again, wide awake. I undid the remaining buttons of her nightgown.

She wriggled closer so that I had to move on top of her, and she opened her legs. Percy fell into the gap, and with one hand I used Percy to stroke the opening to her vagina, and then her clitoris as it opened a bit. It was soon very wet, and Mary was breathing deeply and digging the tips of her fingers into my back.

She kissed me again, which I took as an invitation.

Percy, without the hindrance of a condom, did not hesitate.

Mary gasped as he went into her vagina, but both of her hands were holding me tight around my waist.

We moved together and Mary began to groan.

"Oh God!" she exclaimed, and moved her hands to my bottom pulling me up and closer to her. Percy kept on working.

She lifted her knees either side of me, which effectively lifted her pubis up to me, and then tightened her thighs around mine, so that Percy was completely embedded within her.

I felt my climax approaching, but Mary had me trapped with both legs holding me into her.

Mary screamed though her teeth as her own climax began, and I grunted as the enlarged Percy fired into her cervix.

We both lay still and after a few minutes I began to move sideways, but Mary held me on top of her for nearly half an hour.

This meant of course that although Percy was no longer rigid, he did not get much smaller inside this hot bath, and Mary must have known that.

In fact, Percy almost began to get excited again after some time. So I wriggled on top of her, and she let me roll to one side, but we were both facing one another, with Percy still doing his best to stay connected!

We got up at about eight o'clock, and both naked walked across to the bathroom. The old-fashioned shower was in the bath-tub, so we had to sit or lay side by side in the bath to get the shower to work, and I was now able to look at Mary in the daylight without any clothes to shield her.

She was not fat, just well covered, and her large nipples were still inflamed with passion. Her skin was lighter than mine which was probably the effect of her auburn air. She saw me looking kissed me and smiled to herself.

"That was a wonderful night," she whispered, "and I tried hard to resist you," and she paused, "last time I did that I could not stop and found myself pregnant, but you don't have to worry this time," and she kissed me again, and then added;

"I'm a bit worried that I might be falling in love with you, darling. Do you mind?"

"If you allow your hair to grow longer, I'd probably fall in love with you, sweetheart. Do you mind?"

I stood up and helped Mary out of the bathtub. Mary looked at my penis, and made the mistake to bending down to kiss Percy.

I turned her around and bent Mary forward over the bath, and Percy made a beeline for her vagina, and we both grunted and groaned as we thrust into one another. Mary told me later she bit her own tongue as she screamed when her orgasm raced though her. As Percy emerged some semen followed him!

"Yes," she said, "it probably is love, darling, but now I need another bath!"

My shirt had been washed overnight, which made it easier to get dressed, but I had to put on my used boxer shorts and socks.

In the sitting room I was given a mug of tea by Mary, but no breakfast, and then I got up to go back to the office.

Mary followed me about then minutes later, with not a single trace of passion, nor even a blush.

It was then we all learned that the "Take Over" had been brought forward!

Mary fortunately for her was retained as the Cashier. Unknowingly, my report on her had been accepted by the new employers.

I was told that the new company had their own Chief Accountant, so I was fired with immediate effect! But in compensation I was given three months pay in lieu of notice.

That afternoon I said a hurried goodbye to Mary, who said she would miss me, kissed me quickly, but smiled.

About two months later I found out that my new job was overseas again, in Pakistan, and I had earlier written to Mary as I knew her address, and told her, and I suggested she might like to come to see me there...

But you'll have to read the next book in this series to find out what happened!
South Asian Adventure

I went to the airport to meet Mary. The BOAC flight from London arrived almost on time early in the morning. She had worn a headscarf as I had advised her to put on as she came through Immigration and Customs, but she wouldn't have needed it for the flight. The officials respected her for this and she had no problems until she came to Baggage Claim.

A female Customs Officer asked her to open her suitcase, and was immediately attracted to the men's clothes she had with her. The Customs Officer did speak good English and before long they were chatting about men's clothes, husbands and boyfriends. Both ladies wore headscarves as is the custom, although the Customs Officer was covered completely by her hijab except for her face.

It took about twenty minutes, but Mary happily picked up her case and wheeled it through to me. The Arrivals Hall was bedlam, as usual, but she saw my head over the crowd, and I saw her headscarf as she pushed through the crowd. She had strapped her sealed handbag to her waist so that no light fingered gentleman could get his fingers into it!

I gave her a hug, but not a kiss.

We worked our way through to the car park, and my driver started the engine. He greeted Mary in Urdu, thanking Allah for her safe arrival, and host of other praises.

The vehicle was a 4WD project vehicle, and not a taxi, and we were soon racing along the highway towards Karachi. I had booked her into the Oriental Palace Hotel that I had first used so many years ago.

The building was standing in a garden by itself and was in the form of a large hollow square with the rooms all around the square, and a garden with fountains in the centre of the square.

She gave her passport to the woman at the Reception Desk, and I had to assure Mary that it would be safe with them.

The lift was an old one with a steel gate that you had to slam shut to establish an electrical contact, and get the lift to work.

In the lift, holding on to her suitcase, she took off her headscarf, to reveal a mass of auburn hair that she knew I liked, but which she had previously cut very short, and dyed red.

Now I could give her a kiss as the lift rattled up four floors, and she smiled to me.

She looked around the room.

"Where are your clothes?" she asked.

"I live in a project flat some way outside the city, and I didn't want to force you to go there, as we haven't met for so long," I tried to explain. She walked across the room to kiss me, and smiled up at me, and looked at the bed! She obviously still liked me after six months apart and did not want to waste any time.

"Bath first," I suggested, "change of clothes, and we'll go and explore the town. It's Friday today, which is a holiday, so I have plenty of time."

"OK, sex holiday later," she agreed.

She took off some clothes and put them on the bed, and then took my hand to lead me to the bathroom. There was a shower cubical, and surprisingly a good supply of water, and she unashamedly took off all her clothes to stand in the shower. Her auburn hair did look good.

"Aren't you coming in too?" she smiled at me, the sort of smile that has lots of hidden meanings.

I very quickly got undressed myself, leaving the clothes where they fell, but then I wasn't wearing much in this climate, and joined her in the shower. She looked down at Percy, and smiled;

"I'm glad that he's pleased to see me as well," and she reached up to kiss me.

Now I could feel her breasts, and nipples, and she deliberately pushed her hips and pelvis towards me. Percy was now trapped between the skin on our stomachs, and loving every moment of it.

I held her tight and kissed her, but then I'd wanted to do that ever since she got off the flight.

She looked around for the soap, but I had to open the cubical door to get the miniscule bar of hotel soap from the hand basin stand.

"We'll buy a larger bar later," I explained.

"Do you want me to stay here all the time?" she asked.

"Well now we have a chance we can talk about it..." and my voice tailed off.

"Have you got a harem of ladies in your flat, then?" and she joked, and added, "Can I have every Saturday, please," and she smiled at me again. She was just the same as I remembered, with large red nipples, but might have lost a pound or two so she was discernibly slimmer.

She washed herself carefully, and told me to go away and leave her to get dressed.

I grabbed one of the two very small towels, and went out to the bedroom, naked as the day I was born, with a very excited Percy. I didn't get dressed, but sat on the bed to dry off in the warm morning air.

Mary came out of the bathroom, also naked, except for the cloud of perfume that surrounded her, and a big smile.

She came to kiss me, and rub her body against mine.

We did not say a word as I pulled back the cover on the bed, and we lay down together. We held one another very tight for a few moments, and then she rolled backwards so that I was on top of her. Percy didn't want to wait.

Mary didn't say a word, as I wriggled down the bed and kissed her breasts and then licked her nipples, except for a groan of delight. I moved to her stomach, and kissed that, rubbing my mid-morning stubble on her skin.

"Oh," she giggled, "that tickles."

I moved down to her pubis and kissed the pubic hair. She opened her legs, with the palms of her hands on my head.

I kissed the opening to her vagina, and then used my tongue to kiss her clitoris. She groaned with delight.

I knelt between her legs and used the tip of my penis, Percy, to stroke her vagina, and introduce it to her clitoris, again.

"Don't wait!" she gasped, "you've teased me enough, darling."

As Percy went into her she opened her legs very wide, and my penis went all the way into her, and we just waited holding one another very tight.

She began to close her legs to try to tighten the opening to her vagina, as I thrust into her.

She began to moan, and dug her nails into my skin on my back, and lifted her pubis to make sure I had maximum penetration. As her thighs came together the pressure was intense, but I kept on thrusting.

"Oh darling," she cried, and I could only imagine the electricity of her orgasm, which made me begin my own ejaculation. It seemed to last forever, but in fact was just a few seconds.

Mary kissed me as I grunted with exertion.

We just lay still letting the sweat pour off both of us, and onto the bed. I kissed her repeatedly.

Mary laughed; "I think that just solved the problem about where I'm going to stay," she whispered.

I rolled to one side taking her with me, and close together we faced one another.

"We have another problem," I began to explain; "if you come there as a single girl they won't agree for you to stay in my room! Even as a foreigner."

"Are you proposing to me, darling?" and she kissed me, and giggled to herself.

"You are a lovely lady, and your long hair appeals to me, but although we've worked together we don't know anything about one another, do we?"

She sat up and used the small hand towel to wipe off some perspiration from her neck.

"Can I be your fiancée for the meantime?" she asked, and kissed my neck.

I frowned, "I don't know as I've never tried that before, sweetheart."

"Well that's a good start, I'll call you darling and you can call me sweetheart," and she giggled again.

"Oh," she said as she remembered, "I know what! I've got my mother's wedding ring so we might as well go the whole hog!"

I pulled her down to me, so that her breasts were lying on my chest, and kissed her.

She lifted her head to look at me; "Mr. Robinson, please meet Mrs. Robinson," and she giggled with delight again.

"Yes, darling," she smiled, "and I'll love you forever and ever."

Now it was my turn; "and what about Percy?"

"Oh, yes," she agreed, "I haven't forgotten him, Percy especially."

She lay back but kept both hands on me.

"Well Mary, my girl," she said aloud as if to herself, "that's a good morning's work – one husband and countless relations that I know nothing about!"

I had to laugh myself, and I kissed the part of her nearest to me, her right breast.

She looked at me with a smile on her face; "I might have to ration you, darling."

Percy by now was wide awake again, and Mary knew it.

"I love the missionary position, but let's try something else, darling," and she lifted herself of the bed.

"Lie down on your back," she commanded.

She moved to sit on my legs, facing me, and then moved forward a bit until her pubis got to Percy. She held Percy gently and then lifted her body, moving Percy to the opening to her vagina, and then she came down on my thighs!

I thrust up to her, and she squealed and lent forward to kiss me, moving her legs backwards and making sure that my penis was well inside her vagina.

She moved her body around Percy, as I thrust up to her, and she smiled at me. She lay back so that Percy had to bend with her, but we didn't stop, and then as she came forward to lie on my chest she brought her thighs together.

"Oh my darling," she almost shouted, "that's better than ever." Her orgasm stimulated me, and I thrust up as I ejaculated into her. We could not stop kissing one another.

"Twins on the first day!" she cried aloud to herself again, "and we're not even married, yet!"

We both slept for about an hour, and it was the midday call to prayers from the nearby minaret which woke me. I carefully moved from under her, and covered her with a sheet, as she still was lying exhausted on her face.

The room valet knocked on the door.

"Room service," he called.

"One moment," I said trying not to wake Mary.

I found my clothes scattered where I had left them earlier, and put them on, going to the door to talk to the room valet.

"Lunch is ready, sir," he said, looking at the sleeping lady in the bed, "or shall I bring you something here?"

"We'll come down in few minutes," I told him, "but we'd appreciate a larger bath towel, and a bigger piece of soap."

He produced two bath towels from the trolley behind him, which he passed to me; "sorry about the soap, sir, perhaps you could buy some outside."

"Thanks," said and added, "What's your name?"

"Mohamed, sir!" I might have guessed, but that would have been considered rude in this part of the world.

Mary stirred, so I shut the door as the valet turned away.

I explained about lunch to her.

She looked at her small wristwatch, "but it's only breakfast time," she complained.

"Come on, sweetheart, we've a lot to talk about over lunch."

She started to get out of bed.

"I'll look the other way," I joked, "as I might get distracted."

She went to the bathroom first with one of the new bath towels, and emerged later a new woman, brushed hair, new makeup, and a lovely cool smile, but she wasn't dressed!

You'll need to put on something more than that bath towel," I joked.

She opened her suitcase and took out several light dresses, and some thin shawls. Under the towel she had on white panties and a white bra, so she quickly donned the dress, and put the shawl around her shoulders. I was pleased to note that the dress did not have short sleeves, so she had read my letters before she flew here.

"Come on, darling," she smiled, and took my arm. I could not help but notice that she now had a narrow gold ring on a finger on her left hand.

We went down in the old and ancient lift, and had to slam the door several times to get a contact. The dining room was one side of the central square, in the shade.

The head waiter came to greet us, and showed us to a table.

There were two menus; the menu of the day, a single typed page, and a huge leather bound menu.

They always have soup, probably mulligatawny, and then we tried some roast chicken with rice and some steamed vegetables. Mary was hungry, I noticed, so I also began to eat.

Over tea, not coffee, at the end of lunch, I asked;

"Can we talk now?"

"Here?" she asked,

"Well in our room I might get distracted, sweetheart."

We walked to some easy chairs overlooked the gardens and sat down. I took two pieces of paper with me, and two pens, and gave Mary one of each.

"Sweetheart, we're both accountants, so let's start writing together?" She nodded.

"I know your name, age and address, so we can miss that."

"Have we ever been married?"

I wrote widowed, and Mary wrote "No."

Have you got any children?

I wrote no, and Mary wrote "One".

I look at her and asked; "Where?"

"At home with Mum", she wrote, and looked at me; name age and gender she wrote, and then Samantha, three, girl.

She looked at my paper.

"Why no children?" she asked.

"My wife died too soon," I explained, and added, "Motor car accident." But I did not add any more information.

Mary wrote: "do you want any more children?"

I wrote; "Yes, if they are as lovely as you!"

"Now you are distracting me," she smiled at me.

"How long is your project here?" she wrote.

"Two years, so twenty months still remain," I scribbled.

"Do you want me to stay here with you, and resign from my job in London?" I just nodded, but did not write anything.

"Do you want to marry me eventually?" she wrote.

"Provided you stay as lovely as are today, and don't nag me, and look after me and the children, then yes," I wrote clearly.

She laughed aloud, and other people turned to look at her.

"This looks like a done deal, darling," she said, and reached for my hand.

"And now I also have a problem, darling," she started, "so much sex in one morning is making me sore, so what can I do?"

"As you're going to stay here with me, then I suggest we find a local doctor, who can tell us what to do."

She nodded, and whispered, "I can't wait to write that letter; the new Chief Accountant is a lecher and a groper, with his hands on my shoulder or my back whenever he gets a chance, even though he's got a wife and children."

I was also thinking ahead; "We'll stay here tonight, and then go to the project early tomorrow, so that you can see where I live," and I added, "I'd better tell my driver, who's called Hameed by the way, so he can find somewhere to stay tonight."

"Can we have a look round here, darling?"

"Yes, sweetheart, but later this evening, most of the shops will be closed now, and we'll also go to the market."

"What have you got where you live now?" she asked.

"I have one bedroom with a huge double queen sized bed, and a sitting room with a kitchen and bathroom, so our children will just have to wait a bit!"

"What about Samantha?" we both asked together.

"Can she stay with your mother for a bit longer?" I suggested.

"Well my ticket was for two weeks, so yes," she smiled.

"And after that?"

"We'll just have to see, but I'll probably have to go back to bring her here, won't I?"

"Remind me, how old is she?"

"Three," she said, "Oh yes you didn't meet her did you?"

"What about her father?" I said quietly, "Would he agree to her coming to live with us?"

"I've no idea, darling, I've never seen him since that night she was conceived, so maybe he doesn't even know he has a daughter!"

"What about your Mum, then?"

"She'll probably want to come here too!"

I stood up and helped Mary to stand, and we went up to our room. The air-conditioning was struggling in the afternoon heat, so we just lay together on the bed, holding hands, and kissing one another occasionally.

Mary had taken off her dress, and I my trousers, before we lay down but we did nothing more than kiss and hold hands.

I found a doctor later in the early evening, a woman doctor, who gave Mary some salve to apply.

Later in the evening we went to the market, which was a blaze of colours, and a cacophony of noises and smells which can only be South Asian.

We took a shower together before going to bed, and Percy decided that he couldn't wait for bed, so Mary wrapped her legs around my waist. I managed to get Percy to go into her vagina slowly, but he didn't and Mary didn't complain.

After a bit I carried Mary from the shower to the bed with my penis still inside her, and laid her on her back still wet, whilst I knelt on the floor and Mary lifted her legs onto my shoulders.

We both moved very slowly wanted the moment to be delayed as long as possible, but then the final moment was a burst of energy, a scream of delight from Mary, and a long grunt from me.

We moved to the project, about one hundred miles towards and south of Hyderabad, in the morning, and Mary settled into the flat. She was pleased that I had shared the costs of a cleaner with some other flats who also did my laundry, so apart from cooking she enjoyed herself, and also being called Mrs. Robinson!

I never did ask Mary then what she did to avoid getting pregnant just yet. We had a lot of sex, and we tried lots of positions. One position she found on a postcard she found in the market from the Karma Sutra, where the woman stands on one leg and holds the other vertically and straight up to her head, and then the man penetrates the woman's vagina whilst she still stands there! You have to be fit to do that, both of you, but it turned out that Mary and I were just the right height to complement one another.

We usually collapsed together on the bed, and amazingly enough Mary managed to reach a climax most times, provided we did enough stimulation first.

She used her return flight ticket to collect Samantha, and again I went to the airport to collect them a few weeks later. Samantha was a bit apprehensive at first, but soon settled down.

So now you know about the second half of my adventure with the lovely auburn haired Mary.

Watch this space for details of the next story, No 3 in the series.

The Third Stage - Karachi

Mary found that provided she wore a shawl, and a long dress, she felt safe in the market and the shopping centre. She actually bought some local woven shawls, which she enjoyed to keep off the sun and the dust. In a short space of time she also learned a smattering of Urdu, the local language in this part of Pakistan.

Her auburn hair peeping out from under her headscarf was also useful, as many people mistook her for a woman from an area in the north of the country near Peshawar, where many ladies have natural auburn hair, and have paler skins and are taller, and often have green eyes, but Mary had dark brown eyes.

Samantha however was in her element. Nearly four she quickly found other little girls her age, and she persuaded Mary to buy her a local dress for young girls, a bit like a shift down to her ankles, and she was soon chatting to other children of her own age in a mixture of English and Urdu.

She had long curly hair, brown not auburn like her mother, which she persuaded Mary to let her wear long, and partially unkept, so she was almost indistinguishable from other children. Her exposed skin quickly tanned.

She enjoyed going with Mary to the market, and she learned to hold onto the skirt of Mary's dress for protection as they walked among the stalls.

My own work contract was for two years, with a month's leave after one year, and a return air ticket every year. I had to buy tickets for Mary and Samantha to come to join me. My salary was quite good but I had to be careful, with rent and the cleaner to pay, and of course our food.

Mary was a joy to live with, and I often wondered why we had never dated when we worked together. Perhaps it was her short red-dyed hair, or the fact that she was a single mother. It's funny.

Most of the stall holders were men, with their families providing support. Mary began to negotiate prices for commodities, which all the locals enjoyed watching and she also learned the local custom of breathing in sharply and opening her eyes wide when an asking price was mentioned by the stall holder. They always laughed.

Our sex life together was glorious. Mary used to joke about feeding me lots of beef to make me stronger and more virile! I used to joke that every time she reached an orgasm, her female hormones made her more beautiful, and I might have been right, she was.

One week I was asked to fly to Islamabad, the capital city, and I took Mary and Samantha with me. We shared a hotel room not too far from the central market. Islamabad is a modern city of straight roads, concrete buildings, and red dust.

Here many of the foreign ladies, mainly from the diplomatic corps, went to the market without a shawl covering their hair, which the locals accepted, but they did object to skimpy clothing!

We also took the opportunity to visit the British Consulate, where I had registered a year earlier by post. But now I added Mary and Samantha to my details.

In the hotel we used to wait for Samantha to go to sleep, and then we would kiss one another under the covers, as a prelude.

I found that kissing Mary's neck was a good start, and she would rub her breasts against my chest. Her nipples always fascinated me, and I just loved kissing them, which Mary told me made her gasp.

As a man I had grown a mustache as most local men wore, but I kept my face clean shaven, although at night I had stubble enough to tickle the skin on her stomach.

One day Mary offered to shave her pubis, but her fair pubic hair was always soft, and smelled of her perfume.

I began to kiss Mary's vagina and clitoris more often, and Mary used to gasp and hold my head with the fingers, to bring my tongue and lips closer to her, and also to put more pressure on her.

One time she used to wrap her legs around by back as I kissed her, and then pull me up the bed to kiss me, and to get Percy to go to work inside her vagina. Once or twice we became more and more frantic in our efforts and made more noise, which we had to stop so as not the wake Samantha.

Mary did not use any birth control system now as we had decided to start another child, although she did tell me she used a diaphragm when she first came to meet me in Karachi.

Most of the time we calculated that Percy would reach her cervix so that most of my semen would go into her uterus, but she still did not conceive. We weren't worried, joking that we had to try harder, and more often, which might have been difficult!

One of the positions that Mary liked was "doggy style", so that I could reach under her and stroke her clitoris whilst Percy was thrusting hard inside her vagina. We also had several variations of the missionary style, and I liked Mary to lift her legs to my shoulders, giving me the absolute deepest penetration.

I'm not sure but I began to believe that Percy had grown longer! Mary used to kiss me if I mentioned it, and tell me that she'd measure him! Not with a ruler, but with her vagina.

I don't know what it is about penetration. Most of the time the penis would fill the vagina, and was so shaped that on ejaculation the semen would be spurted through the cervix into the uterus, where hopefully an ova would be waiting to be fertilized!

After the first year of my contract, we three decided not to go back to London, but take a holiday in the Maldives. Mary bought a bikini so small that it was almost not worth wearing, and of course Samantha wanted one too! On comparison I'm sure that Samantha's bikini was bigger and certainly had more material.

I traded in my flight coupon to London for two and a half tickets across the Arabian Sea to Male. We had three weeks to find our way around, and decided not to book into just one hotel, but to move from island to island as the mood took us.

The three weeks was Sex, Sun and Sea, and more Sex. We just could not stop. Normally we did not drink a lot of alcohol, but on holiday we did, and that might be why Mary suddenly became pregnant!

She got her pregnancy confirmed several days after we went back to Karachi, by the same lady doctor who had prescribed a salve for her.

Mary cried with happiness!

Samantha understood, and used to stroke her mother's stomach when she got a chance, but of course there was nothing tangible there for the first few months.

Mary was advised that we should try to slow down on the physical aspects of sex for the first few weeks, but that always puzzled me as we definitely hadn't slowed down physically for the first four or five weeks until her pregnancy was confirmed.

Then we had to think about where Mary would actually have the baby, and we initially decided that she and Samantha would go back to London about one month before the birth, and I would fly to join them at the end of my contract, which would be about two months after the birth.

Mary wasn't happy about that. She naturally wanted me to be there, so by negotiating my contract I had to pay for an extra flight ticket, and that was our plan.

But things don't always go to plan!

Mary was fit and healthy, and the obstetrician told her that she would have no trouble giving birth.

That is until Mary was told she was having twins!

The obstetrician also told Mary that she need not go back to London, as there was a major hospital – a part of the Aga Khan Foundation – in Karachi, and promptly made an appointment to Mary to go and see, and meet some of the doctors and staff.

Mary was worried, she told me later, about the cost but we did some math – don't forget we're both accountants – and found the cost was only slightly more that the combined airfares to and from London for Mary and Samantha.

I also spoke on the phone to the Embassy in Islamabad, who told me that we should register the birth of the babies as soon as possible with them, and we could do that through the Consulate in Islamabad, which we could even do via post, provided we paid their fees!

We were a bit worried about passports. Samantha as a child had been attached to Mary's passport. Someone suggested that we might consider getting Samantha her own passport, and attaching the new arrivals to either Mary's or even my passport.

Whilst this was being considered I asked Mary;

"Do you want to get married before the twins are born?"

"I've been thinking about that too," she smiled, "and I've decided not yet, darling."

"If we got married I don't have to change my name to Robinson, do I?" she continued, "Although that has been the custom," and she paused, "and when the twins are born their last name will be Robinson, as that's what everybody calls me!"

"I've been reading and nowadays many people don't even change the name in their passports," she added, and then grinned wickedly, "and if we don't get married you've got to go on making mad passionate love to me forever, to keep me by your side!"

It was evening, and Samantha had already gone to bed. Mary had a smile on her face which betrayed her emotions, so I picked her up and took her and the twins to our bedroom, and laid them on the bed.

Mary was wearing just a loose fitting dress, which I lifted over her head and pulled down her panties, but I noticed earlier that she was not wearing a bra. Her high heels just fell on the floor.

"Help" she squealed from under her dress, "I'm just about to be ravaged by a beast of a man!" but she laughed.

My trousers were also on the floor, and my underpants joined them, as I tore off my shirt. Percy was ready, and looked huge to me.

I knelt on the floor and kissed Mary's vagina as she had conveniently opened her legs. I held Percy in my right hand, and stroked the opening to Mary's vagina, which was already wet.

Percy was eager get to into Mary, and I did not stop him but lay on Mary, still under her dress, who gasped. She pulled the fabric of her dress down so that she could see me, and held me tight with her arms.

Mary lifted her pelvis up to me, and I thrust my penis hard into her, and she groaned, quickly followed by a scream as her orgasm started. I kept on thrusting hard and Mary kissed me and bit her lip as her orgasm raced through her, and again as my penis thrust into her cervix as I ejaculated into her uterus.

We held one another tight for a long time, and then Mary lifted her dress off and over her head.

"Now you see why I don't want to marry you, my darling!"

We had a marvelous time together. Sometimes we made love slowly and Mary screamed and I grunted as our orgasms coincided. Other times we behaved as if we couldn't wait, and the sex we had together was loud and hectic.

"Darling," said Mary one day, "I was reading that some women don't have orgasms."

I smiled at her as every time we talked about sex, we usually ended up doing just that.

"Perhaps we're just lucky," I said to keep the conversation going in that direction.

"The article I read talked about a G spot," she continued, "do you think I've got one?"

"Shall I try to find it for you, sweetheart?" was my contribution.

She put her fingers into her vagina, "I think it's just here," and as she wiggled her fingers she gasped, "Yes darling, just there!"

I just had to ask; "Where?" and offered her my hand to feel, but she had to laugh, and I did. Actually there's nothing to feel, it just appears to be a collection of sensitive nerve endings.

As we lay side by side exhausted and holding hands I casually asked if I was the only one who had found her G spot!

She sat up to look at me.

"You're only the second man who had sex with me!" she admonished.

I was silent as I didn't know what to say.

"Ginger was the first, and that resulted in Samantha," she continued, but lay back alongside me.

"Ginger who?" I had to ask and turned to face her.

She turned her face away to hide her eyes.

"I never did find out, so as he played the drums in a Pop Group I called him Ginger Baker, and that's what I put in Samantha's birth certificate!"

"That was my first and only summer at Cheltenham and I was a bit dumb and stupid," she continued, "I only had eyes for that drummer, and I knew that he lived in a caravan, a mobile home, so I just hung around until he turned up."

"I hung around there for two days, but had to go to the bathrooms that the festival organizers had built nearby, but one day he just disappeared so I went home, and a few weeks later found out that I was pregnant!"

"But Ginger Baker is a drummer who plays with Cream! Were they at that gig?"

"Yes, I know," she kissed me, "but what else could I do? That was the only person I knew in the music business who was called Ginger, and I'm sure they weren't at that festival."

I kissed her, and she pulled me to her, and I thought for a moment she wanted to pull me on top of her again.

I began to laugh, and Mary began to laugh with me, thank goodness.

"So Samantha is Samantha Baker, I suppose," and I kissed her.

"I wonder if Ginger Baker knows." I observed aloud.

"If we get a separate passport for Samantha, do you think that I can put Samantha Robinson?" she asked on a completely different tack.

"You might have to put Samantha Baker Robinson, sweetheart!"

"Do you think they'll want to see my marriage certificate, darling?"

"I don't think so. There must be a limit to number of certificates they want to see," but in fact I didn't know, "Just write – as my partner is William Robinson we refer to my daughter Samantha Robinson – that might work."

"You could also say – I don't really know the name of Samantha's father, he didn't stay long enough to tell me!" and I laughed, and then apologized profusely.

"You're very lucky I love you so much, that I'll let you off that innuendo, provided to can find my G spot!"

So I did.

So that's the end of this adventure, but life goes on, so look out for the next adventure, which will be No 4 in the series.

The Fourth Stage – Border War, fleeing to safety.

I had the driver on standby for several days. I don't know why it is that babies like being born at odd hours of the morning or evening. If anyone was enjoying it, Mary was certainly enjoying her pregnancy, and it did not stop her enjoying life, and me!

With twins she developed a large baby bump, and Samantha also loved every moment of it. I'm not sure if she really understood what two new babies would mean, but she just loved sitting near Mary and stroking the baby bump. When one of the twins kicked Samantha crowed with delight.

"Dad, if Mum's having two babies, why has she only got one bump?" She asked me one day. Mary had been persuading her to call me Dad, but I didn't really mind if she called me William, or even Bill.

Mary woke me early one morning; "Darling, I think we'd better be going." She said, as simple as that.

There was no panic, so I woke Samantha, and phoned the driver, and the four of us got into the project vehicle, with Mary in the front. We also had a large bag of baby clothes, which had already been in the car for several days.

We couldn't leave Samantha behind.

The hospital insisted on taking Mary in a wheelchair, but Samantha had to stay with me, and I told the driver to go and get some breakfast.

Samantha and I found a small café-cum-restaurant at the back of the hospital, where we did find something to eat, but it was mainly rice and curry on offer. I also settled for a large mug of milky cinnamon tea, and Samantha for an orange drink.

And we waited, and waited, and waited.

Several times we walked to the Maternity wing, but were told to wait; that Mary was well; and that we'd just have to wait.

About lunchtime they hospital staff told me go and get some lunch, and feed Samantha. The driver took us to a small restaurant where we had chicken curry and rice, but it was good, and they gave Samantha a piece of chicken with much less curry.

The twins were born about three o'clock, and I was allowed to go in and see Mary, but Samantha had to look through a window.

Mary looked wonderful.

Two nurses brought the two boys literally wrapped in swaddling clothes to Mary, and she just beamed with delight, and wanted to kiss me, and the boys.

After some haggling they allowed Samantha in to see Mary and the twins. Samantha was delirious; "two brothers all at once," she said. Samantha was getting on for five now, and like many young girls was very knowledgeable about the world.

The senior nurse, she might have been the matron or the ward sister, told me that they would keep Mary overnight, but that maybe she could go home with me tomorrow evening. I was quite surprised.

I took Samantha to a nearby hotel, whilst Mary went to sleep.

The project were very good to us, and most of the project staff came to see Mary the next day, many with gifts for her and the boys. I did not know that twin boys were most unusual in that part of the world.

There was only three months left in my contract, and I had been looking for a new project. The political situation was critical in some countries just then, but Sri Lanka was looking good.

We would also have to worry about school for Samantha, but Mary found several home school courses, which she could use wherever I went to work.

I did not know that Mary had also been talking to the doctors and medical staff about birth control, and that also included how long after the delivery could she and I "resume intimacy", and she told me later that they were all very understanding. They told her that her old diaphragm would not be useful now, and she would have changed the shape of her vagina and cervix after the birth of the twins, but that after about one month she could go the Family Planning clinic and get refitted for a diaphragm. But one nurse also mentioned to her an Inter Uterine Device, and IUD, which would last for a long time after it was fitted.

Mary thought about it, and then asked me what I preferred.

"I don't want to stop, darling," she said, "and not just because I want to keep you close to me but also I enjoy loving you and the sex we have together."

The twins had been born about ten days earlier, and she was feeling well. She was breastfeeding both, and there was an old wives' tale that whilst she did that she could not conceive.

That evening she wore a sexy nightie, and a lot of perfume, and wriggled up to me in bed. I knew what she wanted, but was unsure of myself.

She lay on her back, and pulled the nightie up to her waist, and put her fingers in the opening to her vagina; "there you are, darling, no pain at all!"

She looked at me; "Try putting Percy into me slowly, darling," she whispered. I picked one of the condoms we had purchased, but she shook her head.

"Leave that condom alone," she said, "I want to feel you close to my cervix, my darling."

I pulled her around so that he legs were off the bed, and I knelt on the ground. She opened her legs. I was on my knees with a very erect Percy, so very gently I used my right hand so that Percy stoked her vagina, very gently.

"That's OK darling," she whispered, "try a bit more..."

I had to move closer to her still on my knees. I was worried that if I lay on top of her I might disturb her stomach, and her breasts full of milk.

Mary actually wriggled off the bed so that more of Percy was inside her vagina, and her eyes were fixed on my face.

"Now move him, and try to start my orgasm, darling," she almost pleaded.

I put both hand on her hips and began to thrust very gently, and Mary gasped;

"Go on, darling," she said, so I tried to thrust harder, and she smiled at me.

So I thrust harder, and she began to groan; "It's starting, my love, thrust harder!" The last words were almost a command.

I felt the muscles in my thighs beginning to flex, heralding my own climax so I leaned forward a bit, and Mary reached to touch my chest with her fingers.

"Don't wait for me," she said softly, and I couldn't. She could tell from my groans, and she bit her lip trying to start her own orgasm, thrusting up to me at the same time.

"Oh darling," she said aloud, "stay there," and she began to grasp, with Percy still inside her vagina, but losing rigidity.

She almost twisted her body as her climax started, and she screamed through her closed teeth, and pulled me towards her.

I managed to reach her lips and kissed her, and she pulled me to her with her arms around her neck.

"Thank God for the take-over," she said, "or I would never have been able to seduce you darling," and we both laughed.

We had been discussing what names to give the boys for several months, but had still not made any decision. I suddenly thought of my relations, and asked her; "What was your father's name, sweetheart?"

"Joseph," she replied, "why do you ask?"

"Let's call one of the twins Joseph then?" I suggested. She thought about it for the moment, and then asked;

"What was your father's name, darling?"

"James, but all his friends called him Jim."

She reached across the bed to kiss me; "Let's call them Joseph and James, darling?" she suggested, and that's what happened.

Life was rapidly returning to normal, except that we now had three children. I wasn't being very successful in looking for a new position, but then the project itself came to our rescue, and asked if would mind extending my contract by another six months, and they even offered to cover the cost of the air tickets for Mary, Samantha and the boys.

Perhaps I should mention a bit about the work I was doing. After being laid off by the property company in London I saw a job in Pakistan being advertised, and applied. Within a few days I was telephoned and asked to come for an interview.

The company was owned by a wealthy Parsee family from India, I thought. It appeared that I and another man had been shortlisted based on our CVs, and the Managing Director, a man called Maneck interviewed me and gave me the job. He accepted my requested salary and agreed to give me two business class flight tickets each year, after six month inputs.

I was a bit surprised that they wanted an English Accountant, and then learned that there were three Parsee families owning the land, so I was employed like a referee to see fair play.

On our first return to London Mary's mother came to meet us at the airport, with a large vehicle to get us all in. Mary and I had just a few clothes, Samantha was reasonable and all in one case, but the two young boys had about a large suitcase each. The airline was also very good and gave us three bulkhead seats, with tables fitted to hold the two Carry Cots.

After three weeks it was a bit more difficult, as for the return flight the plane was crowded. I had previously arranged for the bulkhead seats, but in the end we had two seats one side and one seat on the other, and near to the window. Samantha was lovely and agreed to take the single seat, so we armed her with a bag of comics to read, and she slept most of the way. The two boys were now sitting up on occasions, but the long flight and motion of the aircraft made them sleep.

We had stayed with Mary's Mum for the holiday. Mary and I slept in the small double, Samantha in the single bed, and the twins in the Carry Cots on the floor where Mary or her Mum could get at them. They were now four months old and taking a much greater interest in life and still being breast fed by Mary.

One thing Mary did in London was to go to the Family Planning Clinic, and they fitted an UDI for her, which is actually in her uterus as the name implies, but we really had no plans for more children. It was a wise decision as with all of us in one room with not too much space, Mary and I had to wait a long time at night before we could enjoy one another, and I'm sure once or twice one or the other of us fell asleep waiting. For the last week Mary's Mum volunteered to take Samantha to sleep in her room, which helped a great deal.

Mary's Mum also mentioned Christening. It appeared that Samantha had never been christened and the two boys might well benefit from it, she said. Mary took me to old church not far from where her Mum lived, and we met a very young and progressive priest. These old buildings had very high roofs and were usually very cold, which was not a great incentive for church goers.

What he had done was to open and decorate the crypt, and introduce central fumeless heating! Services for him were no longer the long dirge which nobody listened to, but interesting music and discussions about life. As a result his congregation was distinctly younger and happier, and on Sunday mornings were not thinking about Sunday lunch!

He was delighted to perform the Christening Service for Samantha, and the boys James and Joseph. Mary's Mum was pleased and he managed to fit in the service on the Saturday before we flew back to Karachi. What also pleased Mary were the baptism certificates that he gave to Mary, for Samantha Baker Robinson, James Robinson and Joseph Robinson. We'd never thought much about giving the boys a middle name.

The driver and car were there to meet us in Karachi, with the news that the Oriental Palace Hotel had recently closed its doors, so he drove right through the city to the Beach Luxury Hotel. There were given a family room, with a large double bed, and single bed for Samantha, and plenty of space for the Carry Cots for the boys.

Samantha loved the swimming pool, and we had to take her out forcibly on one occasion. We could not stay more than one night as I had work to do in the project, but we returned to this new hotel several times whenever we visited Karachi.

We also managed to get a local carpenter to make for us two wooden cots for the young boys, with a drop down side. He did not understand a metal spring base, so he made the base out of woven string like a charpoy, but it worked.

Samantha was tired after the flight, and the boys went to sleep after they had been fed by Mary, and a food supplement made from rice and oats, which the boys ate without a fuss to supplement Mary's milk.

We too were tired, so we decided to take a shower together. That pleased Percy no end, and Mary smiled too, especially when I carried her to bed, with Percy still inside her, and we grunted and groaned together.

Mary was now as slim as when she first came to Karachi, her breasts had sagged a bit probably due to the weight of her milk, but her nipples were still wonderful with large red halos. She had been using a local oil to reduce the stretch marks on her stomach, and by now they had almost disappeared. She was just lovely, and I loved her even more as she tried so hard to make herself attractive for me.

During the last few months, indeed years, there had been a lot of news about the "politics" between India and Pakistan, but mainly referring to the crazy situation in Kashmir which was a long way north from where I worked. There had been some "exercises" on either side of the border between the two countries, and the occasional shot fired, but no actual conflict.

About a week or two before we were due to fly back to London the conflict bubbled over. From the office we could see Army vehicles and even a tank on a transporter on the streets, and rumours of an invasion were rampant. Mary looked worried but said nothing.

Back in the office I spoke to Maneck, who had been working with me from the beginning.

"I think you might consider driving to the Indian border, rather than risk a road trip to Karachi airport," he advised, the Sindhis might see this as an opportunity to cause trouble themselves.

We looked at the map on the wall behind his desk, with each of the family properties outlined. The road east went to Mirpur Khas, and then became a track towards the border.

"Don't take the project vehicle, but I'll arrange for a family Land Rover which is in good running condition," he decided.

"Do you think India will invade?" I asked.

"Yes, candidly," he said, "but I think they will cross the border further north, nearer to Lahore, and closer to Islamabad."

We stood considering the situation for some moments.

"You've got your passports, haven't you?" he asked.

"Yes, the two boys are now on Mary's passport, and Samantha has her own," I said, "it took some time and many phone calls to the High Commission in Islamabad."

"What I suggest you do is to leave tomorrow, and stay at this hotel in Mirpur Khas, who know me, and I'll try to tell them you're arriving, and then an early morning start across the border," and he smiled at me, and gave me a business card in the local script.

"Take plenty of food and water with you, and please let me know when you get there safely." This time I nodded.

"And you might find this useful," he added as he handed me two large envelopes with Pakistani money in one and Indian Rupees in the other, "We can settle up later."

When I got back to the flat the long wheel base Land Rover was waiting for me and the driver gave me the keys, and an envelope with the vehicle's documents, and then promptly disappeared.

The project driver went to say good bye and good luck to Mary and Samantha, who both looked at him a bit strangely, as they didn't yet know about the proposed trip. They had not seen as much of the military vehicles as we had seen from the project office.

Mary did not say anything at first but looked at me with a big question mark on her face.

"We're going on a picnic tomorrow," I told Samantha gaily, who smiled with delight.

She smiled at me but looked at Mary for confirmation.

I took Mary into our bedroom, and explained to her.

"Leave most of your things here, sweetheart," I told her after explaining Maneck's fears, "and maybe they'll be packed later and sent on to us."

"Water might be our biggest problem, so take those two twenty litre plastic drums with us," I added.

We spent the whole evening packing, only stopping to eat, and then loading the water drums in the back of the vehicle. We slept fitfully, but managed to instill a party atmosphere in Samantha's mind.

As advised we left about midday, and found most of the military vehicles had long since gone, but the road was our biggest headache which had been churned up by the heavy traffic, and it was late afternoon before we reached Mirpur Khas, which by now was almost deserted, and found the hotel

The desk clerk gave us an enormous room with two double beds and Mary fed the boys, now nearing one year old.

The hotel kitchen was closed but I found a restaurant-cum-café who gave me two metal pans of mutton curry and Naan bread, after some haggling about the price.

Mary put half the bread in one suitcase for the trip, and we ate the rest. The mutton curry was a bit hot for Samantha, but Mary gave Samantha some milk to lessen the taste. The local electricity supply was a bit erratic, and the air conditioning did not work.

Overnight things changed.

Maneck managed to call me, via the local police station. One of the police officers was also a Parsee, it appeared.

We agreed that we would stay in the hotel for a day or two, and just wait and see. The feared conflict had not happened.

We actually stayed two days, and drove back to our flat in Hyderabad. Nothing had changed, apart from less people on the street, and we managed to get some fresh vegetables from a local vendor, on a bicycle, which Mary cooked.

I drove myself to the office in the morning, and found half the staff missing and then Maneck arrived just after me looking a bit disheveled but then he had slept in a hut in an orchard, he told me grinning with relief.

I gave him back the two envelops of money, which I had not touched as it happened, using my own money for food and diesel oil on the way. He smiled and thanked me.

It appeared that the threatened invasion had been stopped by some international body, like the UN, and the two armies were just facing one another across their border. I think the press calls it "Sabre Rattling".

I worked another week, several days longer than my contract, until all the staff returned. One had got as far as Peshawar, he said, before turning back.

The project driver, Hameed, was one of the last to arrive, as he had tried to get to Gujrat where his family lived, and then got stuck there.

He drove us straight to Karachi airport in time to catch our flight home, and then in London made our way with loads of luggage, a daughter and two infant twin boys to the flat that Mary had taken me to so long ago.

Writing Romance Books

I started writing Romance books when I first retired. I looked back on my own life and loves. My first wife died in Bristol from a brain tumour nearly fifty years ago. It was all very sad but I took my three children back to where I was working at that time in Nigeria. I really was cheating as we had plenty of staff – a cook, a steward and a nanny who did a lot of the washing and cleaning.

I met my second wife at a party and we both liked one another, and it possible that my fourth child was conceived that night! The marriage didn't last partly because I didn't want to stop working in Africa and she didn't want to live there. I met my third wife in Kenya, whose family emanated from Gujarat, and again we found one another sexually attractive. We couldn't get legally married as she had previously been in an arranged marriage, from which divorce is difficult, if not impossible.

I went to work in Asia – first of all in Pakistan, followed by Sri Lanka and then Vietnam. Wow! What a huge bevy of pretty ladies. I was now almost sixty, but I met a beautiful widow who had three children of her own, and twenty years later we are still happily married. Between us we have seven children and now five grandchildren.

At the same time I was writing historical novels, based on recorded history. History is sadly quiet on the relationship between rulers and their wives, and even concubines. They must have exchanged a few chromosomes sometime or they wouldn't have had any children

My first romance novel was based in East Asia, but I was now in a dilemma. I couldn't write "they kissed and lived happily ever!" There's a whole host of activities in between the first kiss and the rest of their lives.

In my writing I felt that I had to describe what was happening, and what the participants were emotionally thinking, feeling and doing.

The author, Adam Mann, hopes that you enjoyed reading this book.

### Adam Mann has written other books all published and available from Smashwords.

 All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor – take a cruise in the South China Sea with a new first officer, the captain, the company who chartered the ship, and various of the ship's crew, not forgetting two bandits

 African Tales – four delicious ladies each working in West Africa in the 1960s, each with a tale to tell, and one bringing with her a copy of the Karma Sutra. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/639392

  Black High Heels – a young lady is bequeathed a hotel and a restaurant, but is being pursued by local gallivants, until she meets a visiting Aussie so she dons high heels to show off her legs

 BODY HEAT - Can Jennifer survive 21 days naked in an Asian forest with a naked man she'd just met on a Social Network?

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/

DEPRAVED! – a healthy red-bloodied man finds local ladies to his liking as he travels from job to job, until one day he is found by a beautiful girl

 Dreaming... - James is struggling to make his project effective until one day he meets Ioana with the flowing auburn hair, and then his work become even more difficult. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/619462

 Escort or Partner – Charlie hires an Escort to go with friends on a long weekend holiday. The manager of the Agency arrives instead of an escort, and finds she is falling in love with Charlie!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/931497

 Hanoi Heat – a simple love story in which a man meets a lovely lady at an Embassy reception, and which turns out to be "curtains" under certain conditions for both of them.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/461761

Heat in the Tea Gardens – here the lady is the aggressor until she meets a man who can cope with her plastic bra, a crooked financier and two tea factories.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/496978

 Helga's Red Thigh Boots – Joseph and Helga find that they both have pet names for their Pudenda, which starts a whole train of events, and a flight to Canada to buy her Red Thigh Boots. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/495034

 Kandy Heat – Makshi falls for the man she met sitting on her kitchen doorstep! But then he is attacked by a man with a hard wood baseball bat, so she has to look after him. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/481325

  Love in the Boondocks – Another simple love story. Kim is divorced by her uncaring husband who is only interested in salary, until she meets Dave working in a remote village. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/676005

  Love in the Air – A lady meets a Canadian man on a delayed flight to Taipei – layover in transit now has a new meaning

  Love in the Rain - Getting wet and cold in the rain results in two people warming one another together!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/757634

 Red High Heels – two people with similar names are booked into the same room in a hotel by accident, but they manage to tell jokes and fall in love.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/466177

  Did they really camp in a pup-tent in the Masai Mara?

It's not the lions they have to worry about - it's the Hippos!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/933010

 Singapore Heat – three men and three ladies are all working in Singapore, and they struggle to survive, until one pair falls in love; the others fall into trouble.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/481048

 West African Project – a true story where Ivan finds himself working in remote West Africa, only to find himself being cared for by a young widow, and a host of farmer families. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/492110

  William Mary & Percy – romance following a take-over bid in London, but who is Percy, and what has Samantha has to do with the love affair?

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/719820

The following novels by Adam Mann and also available from Smashwords

  The Showers – A tour guide is leading a team on the Yorkshire Dales, until a farmer's wife joins him as a takes a shower.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/919248

  Claudia and the Lords of Peterborough – the heir to the Earl of Peterborough is killed in a flying accident, which poses problems for his widow.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/919271

 His Third Wife – in the 19th Century bigamy was a touchy subject, and several bestselling books on the subject were written at that time. Adam Mann finds another interesting case.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/583627

  Naked on Holiday – two elderly men take a holiday together and both find themselves entangled with single ladies

  Don't Take Your Shoes Off – a Box Set of three of Adam's eBooks where ladies show off their high heels – and their legs. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/892253

eXtasy Books have published this single novel for Adam Mann, which is also available from Smashwords:

 Tsunami – in December 2004 a huge Tsunami kills about 3,000 people around the Indian Ocean, including several hundred at Hambantota in Sri Lanka. The family has to come to terms with the tragedy. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/604817

Several of the eBooks above have been published as 3 or 4 book Box Sets and are frequently offered at discount prices.

Contact by Twitter:

https://twitter.com/AdamMannAuthor

https://twitter.com/ButterflyBooks9

Author Links:

https://www.facebook.com/AdamtheMann

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AdamtheMann

Or you can contact Adam directly by email:

adammannauthor@gmail.com

