LETTERS
British Embassy,
Bangkok.
January 5th, 1958.Dear Everybody,
" . . . . . . The part of the old man was played by Geoffrey Hinton. Your narrator was Doreen Jarvis. And now, as we have a few minutes to spare we will play you a gramophone record of Eric Coates, an English composer who died recently." Eben Evans waves his hands at his wife who is sitting beside a record player behind a glass partition, the music begins, everybody in the studio relaxes and smiles, people gather their property together and tip-toe out of the room.
The scene, as you probably have gathered, is in a radio studio at the Ministry of Education, where the British Council puts on a 50 minute programme in English once a month. It's Eben Evans (assistant representative of the Council)'s job to arrange the programme, and he was bemoaning the fact one day last week that some of his staunchest supporters had left the country. He couldn't find an old man, he said. Did I know anyone suitable? Well, I said, Geoffrey in my opinion would make an excellent old man, but I didn't know if he would agree to be one, and at first he said, no, he couldn't possibly, but then he thought perhaps he might, and then, just to oblige a friend, he said he would. So on Monday the cast of 8 gathered together in Eben's house and read the play through (it was a BBC play written specially for broadcasting) and had a bite of supper, and on Thursday at 6.50 p.m. they went along to the studio, and I went with them because I had been told that I might do the 'effects' which consisted solely of tinkling china as the housekeeper laid the table for breakfast at the very beginning of the play. I must confess I was rather disillusioned in the matter because I had somehow expected a table and a few cups and saucers instead of which I was handed a cup and teaspoon and told to get on with it.
We went first of all into a large waiting room where we could see the current programme going on through a glass partition stretching across the whole room, and hear it from a loud speaker which stood in the corner. In the studio there was nothing but a microphone suspended from on high, a man wearing earphones controlling its height and position, and the three or four people who were either reading their scripts or waiting to read them. Beyond them was the other partition with two rooms behind it, one the control room with its three record players and a volume control machine, the other a small room with a second microphone on a table. We waited about for a bit, and then at 7.5 we went out of the waiting room, in through a padded door into a sort of sound-lock and through another padded door into the studio, which had thick linoleum on the floor and walls either of wood or covered with hanging folds of material. Eben Evans went on to the control room and took up his station by the record player, the narrator and first two players stood around the microphone, the rest of us sat on chairs by the wall, the Thai announcer made a Thai announcement which included the English words 'British Council', it was 7.10 and we were on the air.
Everything went all right, of course, and Geoffrey made an excellent old man with a rich west country accent. He approached the mike from the wrong angle at first and sounded a little far away, but Eben, who had swapped places with his wife by then, took him gently by the arm and led him to the right place, while the mike controller lost his head a little and swung the mike round in a somewhat alarming fashion. Geoffrey, blissfully unaware of these dramatic goings-on, went on reading his part, and listening in one was quite unaware that anything exciting was happening though of course you could see it. It was all good fun and I dare say Geoffrey will be another old man before many months go by.
This week's other important event was last night's Embassy Ball. This is usually a staff ball for everybody from the Ambassador down to the lowliest Thai messenger, but this time it was the U.K.-based Embassy people and Thai members of the O.E.S.A. (Old English Students' Association), so there were prime ministers and ex-prime ministers, politicians, princes and princesses (Prince Chula was there with his wife) and all the usual people one usually meets on the diplomatic round. The Embassy people were rather resentful of this because it meant that instead of just enjoying ourselves we had to be sure to engage the Thais in animated conversation, and the men did duty dance after duty dance, and there were far more women than men so a lot of women just sat about and talked (note the bitterness here!). It was held out in the Residence garden, with a specially erected dance floor, and good dance-band supplied by the Public Relations Department, lots of tables and chairs set out on the lawn, candles in empty wine bottles on the tables and coloured lights hanging from the trees, plenty of drinks brought round by the servants, plenty of food (Thai and European) served later on, in fact, everything that you could desire, except for the hard work of being sociable. As time went by it grew quite chilly so those of us who had stoles were glad to use them. A lot of Thai ladies looked really miserable and their hands were icy to touch. One of them not only wore a stole but a black silk scarf over her head. She sniffed and sneezed unhappily, even when the Ambassador was beside her. Air temperature? Quite a bit over 70 degrees F.
Now the Christmas Season is nearly over and there only remains the Embassy children's party on January 13th. I told Mrs. Whittington I'd be delighted to help with this, picturing myself holding little hands and strolling about the lawns with a motherly air, instead of which I got a business-like note from her asking me to find out the names and ages of all the Embassy children, the names and ages of those hoping to attend the party, the number of adults expecting to attend, and would I please order the requisite number of ice-creams, plus five extra. 45 children were involved, so it was quite a job!
