Melanesia, Melancholia and Limericks

Fletcher David

Description

Despite Brian's longstanding aversion to cruises, there was no way he could pass up the opportunity to join an 'expedition cruise' to Melanesia. After all, this little known corner of the Pacific Ocean included any number of delectable destinations, not least the myriad islands that made up New Caledonia, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. So Brian and Sandra signed up - for two weeks at sea in the MS Caledonian Sky, and what would turn out to be two weeks of discovery as this pocket cruise ship made its way north from New Zealand up through Melanesia to Papua New Guinea. Along the way would be encountered isolated communities, novel cultures, lush tropical vegetation, volcanoes - and, if one was Brian, a series of self-induced melancholic episodes that threatened to ruin the whole trip. Whether it was a contemplation of the failing of friendships, the malignant nature of political correctness or just the trials of old age, Brian just couldn't help immersing himself in gloom - despite his far from gloomy situation.Indeed, so relentless were these attacks of melancholia that Brian was obliged to resort to a remedy once used by Captain Cook's crew when they were in this same part of the Pacific. Because to relieve the tedium of their long voyages, they would set about the composition of any number of crude limericksSo, Melanesia, Melancholia and Limericks provides not just an insight into the fascinating islands of Melanesia (and the not-so-fascinating depths of Brian's melancholia) but also fifty brand new and not in the least bit melancholic limericks. Most of which Sandra found profoundly crude. Inevitably.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789010756
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

M elanesia, M elancholia and L imericks





David Fletcher
Copyright © 2018 David Fletcher

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781789010756

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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Anne and Jens
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By the same author
2017


1.
Brian had certainly heard of Indonesia and Micronesia, and of Polynesia, Milk of Magnesia and amnesia (although he sometimes forgot this last one), but he was a little bit hazy about ‘Melanesia’. So, when he saw the two-page ad for a cruise ‘Across the Tropic of Capricorn’ – ‘taking in a mix of islands from the northernmost reaches of New Zealand to Melanesia’, he had to get his atlas out.
Well, he soon had it sorted. It seems that the Pacific Ocean is split into three cultural areas: Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. Polynesia, as he sort of knew, is made up of all those exotic islands scattered across the central and southern Pacific Ocean. Micronesia consists of a load of other small islands in the western part of the Pacific Ocean. And Melanesia sits to the south of Micronesia and essentially it consists of New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji. In other words, it’s all those bits and pieces of land that lie to the north-east of Australia and stretch down in a loose chain towards New Zealand.
This, Brian found intriguing. Because, whilst he had been fortunate enough to have visited both Papua New Guinea and Fiji in the past, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia were all places he had never been – but were the exact places that this advertised cruise would be visiting. So, would this opportunity to explore unknown destinations – and the modest size of the ship being used for the cruise – overcome his and Sandra’s long-standing reluctance to participate in any sort of cruise at all?
Well, clearly the answer was ‘yes’. Otherwise he wouldn’t now be sitting on this bus as it made its way from Hong Kong’s mega-airport into downtown Hong Kong and wondering why he and Sandra hadn’t thought of a simpler way to embark on their Melanesian odyssey.
Yes. Because Melanesia is not ‘just down the road’ so to speak – it was always going to take some time to get there. Accordingly, the organisers of the tour, presumably aware of the average age of their punters, had sought to soften the blow of an airborne marathon by breaking the outward journey at Hong Kong for a full two nights. This would no doubt allow a mix of mature and venerable body clocks to compensate for their shift across the globe before they then had to compensate for the further shift to Auckland – where the clocks’ owners would then embark on their cruise. Well, that was all very thoughtful of the organisers, but it did fail to take account of Brian’s aversion to large cities and particularly to ‘vibrant’ large cities such as Hong Kong. He had never been here before, but only five minutes into the bus ride and he already knew he should have made other arrangements and thereby got himself and Sandra directly to Auckland. That way he wouldn’t now be having to cope with the incessant commentary from the local guide at the front of the bus. That is to say, a full-volume commentary on disparate aspects of Hong Kong, delivered by a Chinese gentleman called Peter, which had commenced as soon as the bus had left the airport and which would not end until the bus had arrived at the chosen (Kowloon) hotel a full forty minutes later.
So, to start with there was a presentation on what could be seen out of the left-hand side of the bus, which was essentially an off-shore construction site of enormous proportions. And it apparently needed to be of enormous proportions because, when finished, this huge construction site would become a thirty-one-mile link between Hong Kong and Macau, the city situated on the other side of what was the Pearl River Delta. It was a stupendous undertaking, involving a series of tunnels and bridges (one as long as eighteen miles), which would ultimately tie these two conurbations together and, according to Peter, would allow all the citizens of Hong Kong to visit Macau with ease and thereby lose even more money pursuing their favourite pastime of gambling. He then made a more serious observation, that Hong Kong and Macau, together with seven other cities on the Pearl River Delta, now had a combined population of 60 million souls. And with the help of that cross-delta link, this ‘PRD’, already one of the most densely urbanised regions in the world, would soon become a true megacity and an even more daunting prospect for Brian than a visit to this modest settlement down the road called Hong Kong.
Brian shuddered. Hong Kong, he knew, had ‘just’ 7.3 million inhabitants, and all these people were squeezed into a mere 25% of this autonomous territory’s land area of 427 square miles. That meant that in urban Hong Kong, the population per square mile was nearly 70,000 (compared to crowded London’s 11,000). It also meant that this city might not just be ‘vibrant’ but also intolerably crowded. And it was.
As the really built-up parts of Hong Kong came into view, Brian could not fail to notice that it was actually built up and up and up – and up. Horizontal simply didn’t feature in this cityscape. Instead there was just the vertical and then more vertical and then more vertical still. Peter seemed even quite proud of this fact, pointing out to his jet-lagged charges that with around 8,000 of the city’s buildings having more than fourteen floors, Hong Kong was the ‘most vertical’ city in the world. Whether it was also the city with the thinnest tall buildings in the world wasn’t covered, but by golly, some of those apartment blocks out there were more like slivers than blocks, and they didn’t look particularly attractive places to live. In fact they looked awful places to live.
Full credit to Peter then that he confirmed this fact without being asked. Possibly because he himself was one of the majority in Hong Kong who has to attempt to bring up a family in a shoe box in the sky, where the shoe size is rarely over five or maybe not even an adult’s fitting. Yes, as he went to great pains to point out, a Hong Kong family of four commonly lives in a flat of less than fifty square metres, and it can be as low as thirty square metres or, in the very worst cases, either an apartment divided into cubicles or even ‘cages’ that can accommodate just a mattress.
Brian could simply not contemplate such an existence. Neither could he understand how urban living of this sort could be a reflection of ‘progress’ for mankind, and how achieving that Pearl River Delta megacity in the no doubt near future could be regarded as another leap forward in human existence. As far as he was concerned, it would just be a case of even more people crammed tightly together and inevitably more people living in people-sized rabbit hutches with just views of other rabbit hutches out of their windows. It was why he had such a distaste for cities, a distaste that grew into a horror when the city in question was so crowded and so jam-packed that it was obliged to grow ever upwards, and its citizens were obliged to accept ever more intolerable accommodation as the norm.
It’s probably worth pointing out at this stage that Brian sometimes saw things from a different perspective to other people. So although he himself knew that most of his fellow bus passengers, even though exhausted from their long flight from Britain, would be relishing their transit into downtown Hong Kong, he could not keep at bay what he saw as the reality of this place. And this was its status as a human settlement, sustained by what were almost unbearable impositions on its inhabitants’ existence, and probably ultimately unsustainable no matter how small the apartments are made and how many more bridges and tunnels are built to allow the inhabitants to move around.
That said, Brian did like a good joke, he felt he had a good sense of humour, he tried not to be miserable all the time, and at this very moment he felt almost jubilant. And this was because his bus was pulling into the forecourt of a rather splendid-looking hotel and on one side of the forecourt was what had to be the hotel’s ‘pub’. And it was open.
Brian’s body was still a little unsure of what time it was, but with Sandra’s help and immediately after checking in, it coped with a drink and then with an evening meal and then with a short walk to observe Hong Kong’s world-famous ‘Symphony of Lights’ – ‘the biggest laser and light show in the world’. This is staged by more than forty buildings on either side of the city’s bay and involves their flashing their lights in time to music while lasers are shone from their roofs. However, at the appointed time, nothing happened. Or more likely it