Leaving on a Jet Plane...

I'm loving the song analogies this week... a bit... ok, it's a pretty poor link...

Last night the boys asked if we could go and live in Singapore. KC wants to see his Godfather - whom he adores, cousin Marcus is coming to stay tomorrow, whom both boys adore, and TJ wants to join the Arsenal soccer school, of which there are three in Singapore.

This of course led onto the question of why we left Singapore in the first place.

Obviously, we explained that is we hadn't have left then we wouldn't have been able to adopt the two of them and they would never have met us, but that didn't seem enough - so we went on to chat about how they were only babies when Papa and I returned to the UK and how we wanted to come back and Papa had been offered a great job and I had decided I wanted to try something new.

"You were an actor" KC said, "But you only ever wanted to be an actor." KC currently wants to be an actor - or a vet, or join the army, maybe all three. "Ah yes," I said knowingly, "But an actors life is short lived and anyway, I wanted to come back for a while". Obviously the full story was a bit more complex and we did question whether coming back would be a good idea - although at that time becoming a family wasn't particularly high on our agenda..

We eventually decided that it would be silly not to come back. My career was in the wane in Singapore, the last press articles had referred to me as being the worst thing at British Fashion Week, where I was only the host. Apparently, according to the fashion press, my clothes were so tight that you could see every roll of fat and it was just horrific – in my defense, I had turned up in a suit and the designers wanted me to wear their own stuff, fine if you are a tiny Asian chap, which I am not. I don’t believe I’m fat by any means but a white guy wearing the equivalent of European kids clothes is not going to look good. 

However, being the consummate professional (and because they said they wouldn’t pay me if I didn’t do it) I went on stage and introduced the beautiful models wearing the stunning clothes using my best Judith Chalmers type accent but wearing a tiny outfit and looking not unlike ‘Daffyd, the only gay in the village’ from ‘Little Britain’. I knew how bad I looked and had tried to hide behind the lectern, but that was just a piece of transparent plastic which probably acted as a magnifying glass.

Worse still the day after I had to attend a luncheon with the British High Commission to look at the hosting schedule for the IMF meeting that was to happen later that year. When I walked into the restaurant everyone hurriedly put away the newspapers and started talking nervously about other things. “It’s ok,” I said, “I’ve seen the article” (it was hard not to as it was a full front page colour shot of me in the offending outfit with large red arrows pointing to my rolls of fat, or ‘fats’ as they were referred to, under the headline of ‘The Lowlight of Fashion Week” I was standing next to the 'Highlight', some skinny bitch from the Ukraine I think – she wasn’t even British!) There was a sigh of relief around the table, “Thanks goodness,” the High Commissioner said, “We were worried how we could broach it.” “Don’t worry,” I replied, “ I’ll wear a suit for Gordon Brown” and everyone laughed – inside though I died a little.

So leaving Singapore wasn’t that tough a decision to make.

Going back would be just as tough.... but at least TJ could take his Arsenal kit....