Me, four old sweats and the blonde

Have you noticed that many wise adages have opposing and equally sagacious proverbs. "Strike while the iron's hot" can be tempered with "look before you leap" or "act in haste repent at leisure" and "self praise is no recommendation" can be countered with "false modesty is the worst form of conceit" In siding with the latter I would like to state that I have no complaints about the way God or nature formed me. I may not be Hollywood nor am I a circus freak. I was given enough to be reasonably successful with opposite sex. The fact that I haven't has nothing to do with hand I was dealt. Out of the biblical five talents in this department I probably used about one and a half. Part of the explanation is a combination of Catholic guilt, a boys only school and being incarcerated in factories dominated by men in my youth. My social life again was a male dominated culture of the most extreme kind, rugby. When I first started playing for St. Peters RFC women weren't even allowed in the club

After a game on a Saturday the post match set routine would be to spend an inordinate time preening myself to suited and booted coiffured perfection in front of the bathroom mirror humming "Luck be a lady tonight" while Robert Redford stared back at me, moustache and all. About a half dozen of us would meet in the New Market Tavern at eight where we started consuming copious amounts of Dutch courage as we ranged from being awkward and self conscious with the female of the species to down right terrified. By the time we engaged the opposite sex at about 1.00am in Tito's Club we had consumed about twelve pints of whatever, several Bacardi and cokes, and being heavy smokers at the time, about 30 fags each. I was oblivious to the fact that as we moved in on groups of typists and comptometer operators dancing around their handbags in that five hour period I had morphed from Robert Redford into W.C. Fields.

Meeting beautiful women in weird and exotic places thrown together by chance rather that the weekly Tito's routine was the stuff of movies. Not now. In the last few years I've witnessed young people having a ball by travelling and teaching in exotics places, having dalliances and sometimes deeper relationships having been thrown together by fate against weird and wonderful backdrops. I'm pissed off because I'm at least twenty five years too late..............or am I?

At Wattay airport amongst the sparse, and most part Lao, passengers, entered an attractive statuesque blonde woman under 30. We sat close together in the small cafe waiting for our flight to Phonsovan without even making eye-contact. I passed her in the street in this one horse town while she was browsing a market stall. Later that night I was having a drink in bar al fresco style sat near four blokes about my age who were getting noisily rat-arsed. Their banter was typical of many of that ilk in Asia, that is foul mouthed an boorish. As I pretended to read my book the blonde happened by and despite there being several other similar bars close by she smiled at me came in and sat at the next table. Well she had made the first move and although she opened a book which was impossible to read in the failing light especially as it had 8 point typesize, I struck up a conversation. She was Swedish working for a few months in their embassy in Vientiane. Despite her presence the loud foursome continued without deleting the expletives. While I was waiting for her to respond to my opening gambit two of the gang of four legged it, and the other two asked her to join them at their table; she predictably declined. They offered the invite to me saying we're all mates here; I told them I was happy where I was to which they were affronted. I don't think they realise what arse-holes they are and just see themselves as friends well met. They looked genuinely insulted so I reluctantly joined them. They had a beer in front of me before I sat down. One of them, Mike, a Kiwi who looked like Eric Clapton during his mullet period told me he had married a young beautiful Lao girl from a local village, they have a baby daughter and had been divorced twice. Having met so many like him I felt I already knew. His mate Pete was a 61 year old pot-bellied, bumptious (is there any other kind?) Australian. I must have said something to which they enthusiastically concurred because they stood up to give me the high five expecting me to respond likewise. Looking like refugees from a Nuremberg rally at felt I compelled to meet him half way. How did I get into this? The blonde was still unconvincingly buried in her book. I got my round in and when I came back there she was........gone. I followed shortly afterwards.

I went to the Pak Ou caves which is home for retired Buddha statues of various descriptions about two hours up the Mekong. On our rather battered small boat was a rugby mad retired US diplomat with his Lao diplomat wife. His name was Liam and he was actually born in Ireland so you can imagine the combination of Irish and American created and expansive, welcoming, and engaging character who knew his rugby and has even coached. He's so well connected he has tickets for the World Cup semi-finals and final. He was also a George McGovern aide and worked in the Watergate building during the Nixon scandal. But even more impressive was the other passenger, Rebecca from Tasmania who was travelling alone to the UK via former Indo-China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Mongolia and Siberia. Apart from being adventurous she was young and attractive both in looks and personality. We got on famously. At one stage we sort of got lost in a riverbank village after running for cover on the edge of the jungle from another deluge. If only I had invested in an ageing portrait in the attic because as the raindrops were falling on our heads I was Robert Redford again and she was Katherine Ross. Unfortunately I had to come to terms with fact that from her perspective it wasn't the Sundance Kid she was looking at, it was W.C. Fields.

When we returned we discovered that fate had us staying at the same guesthouse (of all the bars and all the gin joints) however fate also ensured that despite this being a relatively small guesthouse our paths never crossed again, which was probably just as well. To coin another proverb there no fool like an old fool.