Seymour Cumming:

Dear Mer and Paw,

I started saving for the Benz the other day. So far I only have 1000 baht, but it’s a start. The rest of my monthly savings I spent on a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. It’s important, you see, to keep up with the other boys.

It will take some time before I get to buy the car but I’ve decided to give up on this retched journalism thing, with its lousy pay, cheap stories and mai-sabai sabai deadlines. Instead I will go into the civil service. It will take patience, but if I diligently move files around my desk for the next ten years I’ll soon be in a position of importance to accept ‘commission’ and ‘tea money’. I hear the opportunities are good. I can dress up in one of those fancy white suits, like the prime minister, and everyone in the family can be proud of me.

I’ve also decided to become a ‘merchant’. If you could lend me your fortune and contacts I’m sure I could do quite well. To prove myself I’ve bought a vending cart. We can work granny to death and pull in some good cheap child labour. Soon we can start charging a lot more than we pay, move onto market stalls, copy labels and sew them into cheap garments, make fake CDs and even start a language school. I hear there is good money in that, provided you can find a few of those odious backpacker types to stand around in the reception all day.

Once I’ve ‘established’ myself in the ‘service’ there will be lots of new opportunities. I think the ministry of tourism is a good place to be. We can use your contacts to pay some ‘tea’ money to bigger contacts to invest someone else’s money in property development which my contacts will ensure is dished out unfairly when new tourist spots are developed. Sort of like what they’re doing on Koh Chang. We can then pay some tea money to an auditor to have our tax remittance reduced. Being in the ‘service’ I should by then know a few useful policemen if we encounter any problems with unloyal auditors. I can then zip off to Australia on gambling trips (just in case anyone wants me to justify how I came to afford the Merc).

Once I’ve got the Merc I can then set my next goal, a massive garage to park all the future Mercs in and a double story house to match. This will certainly guarantee me a prime, educated bride to buy lots of gold for. She can gamble too and when we’re in Australia we can look into a ‘proper’ school for the children just to make sure they get a good solid business education like me.

I hope you are in agreement with my plans. In the meantime, can I borrow your Merc. If I’m going to show up with a bottle of black label, I need to appear genuinely well off.

Investigative-journalist-at-large, Seymour Cumming sees things a little differently in life. He has previously been a used car salesman, fruit picker, ‘shock jock’ and newsroom war correspondent. He has written for Farmer’s Weekly, Nyet!, Porn Unlimited, Chessworld and  Cross-stitching Magazine.

He’s been to more than 50 countries, some for less than a day, and is currently working on a travel novel, but he’s written the author’s biog, and not progressed much beyond that.

Seymour Cumming archive is here...