The Idle Scribbler – Songs from the Sixteenth Storey…

When the Covid pestilence reached Pattaya the Scribbler, imitating the poet Milton in the time of the plague, retreated to the country. Milton fled to the Buckinghamshire village Chalfont St Giles there, about 30 km from London, to find a peaceful and secluded safe haven to complete his epic work ‘Paradise Lost’.

In the Scribbler’s case far away bucolic Ban Somboon, a village deep in the Isaan countryside, served much the same purpose. I cannot however claim to have created anything like the monumental scale of Paradise Lost’s 85,000 versified words! Neither can I claim to have read even a tenth of that astonishing poetic word count. But I have read the Spark Notes!

Out in the remote Thai countryside our lock-downs never really became fully fledged although it was wise to…