JG Farrell in His Own Words : Selected Letters and Diaries

The Singapore Grip: Singapore and London 1975–76

The Singapore Grip Singapore and London 1975–76 To his parents [Postcard of Raffles Hotel, Singapore] 2 January 1975 Dear Mum and Dad, I started my stay in the East in style at the Raffles but have now moved to a more modest establishment. The flight via Moscow was long but not too taxing: 1 I ate some borscht and shashlik in a restaurant of rather funereal 19th century décor at Moscow airport. Lots of Russians have gold teeth, I noticed! Singapore is almost unrecognizable from the place I’ve been reading about. More like Los Angeles! 2 Love Jim Diary Singapore, 4 January 1975 While lounging at Clifford Pier and eating an orange, a young male busybody approached to make sure that I was putting the skin in a litter basket. Evidently some of Lee’s 3 citizens share his views. This business of tidyness ... is perhaps psychologically useful as a reassurance to potential investors of capital in S. Watching the Europeans bowling in the nets beside the Cricket Club, and later watching a rugby match on the padang,4 I was seized by a powerful sensation of ‘privilege’ surviving from earlier days. How pleasant to stand there in the mild tropical evening! Of the other races watching, mainly Indians, two-thirds were clustered behind the goal-mouth. The Europeans were in the process of being overcome by a team of heavy-set, dark-skinned men. How awkward, 291 gross, ill-formed and clumsy Europeans seem beside the Chinese. The city seems to be full of beautiful young people, slim and supple: it comes as a positive shock to come across the odd European plodding along (like me) ... The Cathedral: inside a service was going on: the congregation kneeling beneath a couple of dozen silently revolving fans that hung from wall brackets along the aisle; the shuttered sides of the building were open, as were another row beneath the timbered wooden roof; flags of brown stone on the floor; solid wooden pews with, however, rush seats and backs as a concession to the tropics. Like being underwater. At the GW5 the Wing Choon Yuen restaurant: the most palatial of all with an entrance yawning like a cinema; fenced in by a solid brick and pillar wall and rows of palms in brown earthenware pots decked with dragons. The name stands out in 3 red ideographs. Corrugated iron roofs with flimsy fronts to attract passersby. In the arcade run by the Wah Lian Amusement Co., a money changer, ancient and wizened, sat in a circular bamboo cage handing out change. Near the entrance (and the GW billiards saloon) a growth of bamboo fenced off in which Matthew 6 vaulting the iron fence might take refuge. The smell of the nearby river is powerful. At the car park I eat fish balls with a taoist couple: the young man an electronics engineer. We exchanged the usual well-meant but simple-minded civilities. A large rat, out of its mind with fright, scurries by as I leave ... 6 January 1975 In the ‘Honeyland Café’ by Raffles Place a small European girl, not very attractive, blonde with short hair, is sobbing to herself at one of the tables. An aloof little Chinese waiter, who has always seemed to me before full of indifference and boredom, notices the girl and an expression of profound sympathy comes over his face: it is very touching. He keeps looking at her, wants to comfort her but feels unable to invade her privacy – while I was there, anyway ... As dusk was falling I stood on Cavanagh Br. and watched tiny powerful tugs, the shape of paper darts dragging enormously rotund lighters loaded with rubber (?) up the river: these lighters have enormous high straight sterns with meat-cleaver shaped rudders of J.G. Farrell in his Own Words 292 vast size. A demi-hoop of canvas covers their midriffs. The tugs have flimsy rattan sun screens erected over them. As you walk along you get one powerfully evocative smell after another: this morning walking along Market Street some bales were being unloaded from a van and I was enveloped in a smell of allspice . For a blind man Singapore wd be a strong experience. To his parents South Asia Hotel 12 Bencoolen St Singapore 6 January 1975 Dear Mum and Dad, ... Well, I’ve been finding Singapore tremendously interesting, mainly, of course, because...