‘Sticky, Jones, very sticky’ answered “Malc” Skinner, third form geography master, with a wry grin. One of the younger teachers, he impressed us schoolboys with his racing green Triumph Spitfire, and ‘real bird’ of a wife, blonde, shapely, every schoolboy’s fantasy. Jones’ family would soon move to Singapore; we had been invited to ask questions about his destination. The laconic description of equatorial climate seeded a first imagining of the far-flung, peculiarly named dot on the classroom’s Map of the World.
A further vivid image was conjured a few years later, in sixth form: Once, it appealed to our puerile humour to sneak into the tiny geology lab room ahead of a lesson to set smouldering about a half pack of joss-sticks. (Boys were required to queue outside rooms until the master arrived.). Duly he, cruelly monikered ‘Leftie’ due to his severely withered arm, arrived and led us briskly into a choking fog of incense, promptly pronouncing: ‘It smells like a Singaporean brothel in here!’ We sniggered as we wondered how old Leftie was acquainted with the fragrances of such a fantastical venue. Later, I learnt he’d taught a while in New Zealand, returning to England by the slow, exotic route. His career advice to me was to not ‘join the army to see the world’ (a recruiting slogan of the time), instead to be a teacher. In the event, I became a geologist. Two years later I first stepped out of Changi airport into the steamy night of the Island City. It seemed fated when the helpful taxi driver offered to deliver me directly to a Singaporean brothel.
The fleeting few days stop-over crammed colour into those schoolboy’s mind’s eye sketches, and since then enhanced largely by National Geographic articles. And, most recently, by the enticing anecdotes of my well-travelled rig-worker friends. A year or so later, I leapt at the firm’s offer of secondment to its Orchard Road office.
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