Day Eight. Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Today is my last day in UK. Friends say I should stay longer. But I have my own idea about this: It’s better to understay than overstay and get fed up by them. It’s the principle I’ve been sticking to even with my own family. That I believe is part of the reasons why my marriage has lasted for more than 30 years, as I’m not an easy person to live with.

As planned yesterday, we visited the Imperial War Museum to learn how the First World War began, was fought and ended. By luck, I find a DVD, a documentary adaptation of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, the retelling of the war, and buy it (or rather have it bought for me by my host whom I’m indebted).

At 17:00 we are on our way back to Heathrow which takes us two and half hours through heavy traffic. But at 20:00 I have successfully checked in. With all the books purchased and presented to me by my hosts, I had been worried that the airline would take issue with me. But lucky for me they choose to overlook the fact.

It takes another 11 hours (an hour faster than when I left) to get back to Bangkok, during which I manage to finish reading ‘The War between the Generals’ for the third time. Just when I’m going through its last page, the air hostess comes on the air urging passengers to please fasten our seat belts. So I say goodbye to generals Eisenhower, Montgomery and Patton. And I say to myself:

At least they had won the war against Germany despite the one between them. What ours in Burma should also do is, like them come what may, to win peace despite bickerings among themselves.