'Ours is to reason why, to tell the truth and open eyes'
Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for April 2009
For my current Blog click here!
British expat amputee in Thailand
Legless Blog -I first decided to create this blog page after seeing all of the bad publicity given to and constant hounding of my fellow legless celebrity, Heather Mills on many other websites and in the media in general. This page I created as a place where I can state my personal opinions, thoughts and musings openly, and just share my views and feelings with the Internet World.
This is my legless website, I pay for it and I am the manager, owner/boss/ruler of it, so 'legless or not', as 'freedom of speech' is still a basic human right in true democratic countries where you can view this blog, then I feel that this is somewhere that I can speak my mind without recourse. This is not a commercial page, it is just my own social media page. Nobody has forced any of you to come here and nobody is holding you here, so if you don't agree or like what you are reading here, then please feel free to leave at anytime!
As someone who has exactly the same physical injuries that I have, I find that the hounding of Heather Mills by the media is disgusting. I now see how celebrities, legless or not, can never have a normal life, because they never have time to themselves without someone from the media trying to drag up any kind of dirt from what would just be a normal everyday incident to anyone else, but in Heather's case any normal incident gets sensationalised by the media. Heather's physical disability seems to incite them more, and being honest, if I personally was hounded the way that Heather is, then some of these media personnel would consider being only 'legless' a bonus after the physical injuries that I would personally inflict upon them. I am thoroughly disgusted at the treatment of Heather, I suppose you could call it a feeling of 'Legless unity', so if any of the media responsible are reading this blog, then in Paul McCartney's own words "Let it be".
'The Legless Blog April 2009 by The Legless Fool'
When I went to Ekamai BTS station a few days ago, I looked around there for the first time in many years, I was looking for somewhere that I could sit down and watch the people leaving the station hoping that I could spot my daughters. As luck would have it, on the corner of Sukhumvit road and Ekamai road there is a large beer garden now, so I found a table in there where I could view the station exit easily, sat down at it and ordered some draft beer. Over the following three and a half hours I must have seen thousands of people come and go at the station, but none that even vaguely resembled my daughters. I did the same thing over the following three days and was quite disappointed that I did not see my daughters.
I now think that if it really was my daughters that my friend spotted before, then they must have just been visiting a friend in the area and do not live there themselves. The times that I sat in the beer garden coincided with the times that children would be coming home from school, so I would not have missed them if they did live around that area and used the BTS. I shall now have to make other plans to somehow try and find them before I eventually leave Thailand. 
Cheers for now 
The Legless Fool FBE - Still in search of the past 
Because I should be moving to Penang soon, I have decided to try and find my youngest twin daughters to see them once again before I leave the country. It is their twentieth birthday at the end of this week and I haven't seen them for ten years.
I know that they are in Bangkok nearby the area where I live somewhere and a friend of mine that lives in the same apartment block as me, said that he spotted two mixed race twin girls about the same age as mine, leaving the skytrain at the Ekamai station a couple of weeks ago. I am fairly sure that the twin girls that my friend saw must be mine, because surely there cannot be that many mixed race twin girls of that age in this area. So this afternoon I have decided to hang around the Ekamai BTS station for a couple of hours and hope that I can spot them coming home from school and then we can have a reunion before I leave. 
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE - In search of the past
I am still working on my new e-book and I am finding it quite a difficult task to work on it at the moment. I am presently adding more events and background that I did not include in the original draft of my Legless in Thailand book/story. I am finding that to write about this properly because it is an autobiography, I have to put myself back into the situations that I want to write about and virtually relive them again today by inducing the same emotions into myself that I was feeling at that particular point in time and only then can I write with feeling and hopefully my readers will get a more realistic impression of my thoughts and emotions at that time. But by doing this to myself I am bringing back emotions that are very painful and upsetting for me now and I find that I have to take breaks very often to control myself and the emotions that start to flow through me, so it is a very slow process.
Changing the subject a little now, I was informed on Friday of last week that the RAFBF has reviewed my case now and they have awarded me a grant to enable me to relocate to Penang as I requested. This is very good news for me, but I now have to plan my relocation and the movement of all of my personal belongings from Bangkok to Penang whilst staying within the budget of this grant and this is not an easy task. The grant is not a large amount of money, but if planned properly then I should be able to relocate within the budget, but it will be tight. I do not have any fixed schedule for this move and I just have to make sure that I have the funds available to cover the move at each stage. I shall obviously have to start with a trip to Penang probably within the next ten days, so that I can find suitable accommodation there, probably in Georgetown. I know that some of my Malay friends at the Blue Diamond Hotel in Georgetown will be only to pleased to help me with this task when I arrive there. As I have already stated on here, I have no fixed timetable for this move and I can spend as much time as I need when I get to Georgetown to arrange things properly there, but whilst I am in Penang I shall not be able to post on this blog for a while.
I decided yesterday to go and see my travel agent friend Peter in Bangkok, I thought that he may have some ideas about how I could move my belongings to Penang within the budget that I have available. So yesterday evening I went to Peter's travel agency and as I arrived there his wife was just locking up the office, she told me that Peter had finished work for the day and had gone to the Pickled Liver for a drink and said that I could meet him in there. Due to my lack of funds now, it has been more than three weeks since I last went to the pub, but I reckoned that I had enough money on me to have a couple of drinks last night. When I entered the pub I spotted Peter sitting at the bar and joined him there, I told him the news about my grant to move to Penang and he was pleased for me, I then asked him about his ideas as to how I could move my belongings to Penang and Peter suggested that the train to Butterworth was probably the cheapest and easiest way to do this, so that is one option that I shall now have to look into. If I send my belongings by train then I shall also have to arrange for one of my friends in Penang to pick up my things from the train station at Butterworth and take them to my new accommodation in Georgetown, so that is something else that I shall have to arrange whilst I am in Penang.
Because you cannot smoke in the bars in Thailand now, the Pickled Liver pub has placed some tables and chairs outside of the pub at the front where smokers can sit and have a cigarette, so after my brief chat with Peter I took my beer outside and sat at one of the tables there to have a cigarette. There were many other people sat outside doing the same thing and I soon got into conversation with some of the new people that I met there. There were quite a few interesting people there that I met last night and one in particular, Nazer, that I ended up chatting with all evening, he kept buying me beer and I felt guilty about this, because I have a very limited budget at the moment and I only have enough money on me for my own personal needs. I did have a very good evening at the pub though, a pleasant change for this recluse.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE - On the move soon!
I purchased my new e-book compiler program at the weekend and now I have a lot of work to do. The e-book compiler works on HTML e-books and even though my book is already written, I only have it in .pdf and .doc format, so I am busy at the moment creating the .htm pages and getting all of my 'Legless book' text in this format. During this process I am reading my book again for the first time since it was published two years ago and being my own worst critic I am finding minor faults with it, so I am also re-editing it as I go along and it is turning into quite a long process now. 
The good thing about the e-book being in .htm format is that related media can be used in it and being quite experienced with .htm files I am in complete control of my own book now for the first time in the last three years, which is a very good feeling. Now that I have finally got all of the text into the correct format on my computer, I have to switch on 'design mode' in my head now and try to make this new e-book both a good visual and audio experience for anyone who purchases/reads it and once again I am my own worst critic, so I think that it is going to be at least another two weeks before this new e-book will be available for purchase from my website and I shall let the readers of this blog know immediately when it is available. P.S. I have created an update page for the progress of my new e-book here
Apparently there is a 'state of emergency' in Bangkok at the moment, but being the recluse that I am now, I only know about this by glancing at a few news snippets when I am doing my search engine work on the internet. Where I live in Bangkok it is very quiet here, it is Songkran festival time here now and most people have gone home to their own provinces and families for the holiday, I am just working on my computer as usual and drinking lots of beer of course! 
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE - In design mode
After more than two years of waiting to get any return on my legless book from sales of the book by my publisher, I have finally decided that the best way to handle my book now is to take care of everything myself. The way things stand at the moment, my publisher just sends me a sales report once every six months and every report that I have received so far has always stated the same thing 'zero sales'. This may be true, but with the long hours of internet marketing that I put into my book everyday, I find it very difficult to believe.
So I have finally decided to invest in an e-book computer program and then I can just produce and sell the e-book myself through my internet websites and cut out the publisher completely. At least this way I get records of any purchase of my book direct to me from my active Paypal account and then the only person involved right through from production to sales is me and I shall be accountable only to myself. So right now I am just waiting for the next payment of my monthly pension to go into my bank account, which is due this Friday, then I shall purchase my new e-book program and start a whole new internet marketing campaign.
This will involve quite a lot of hard work from me, because I shall have to change all of the internet links for the purchase of my book from my publisher's website and redirect them to my own personal shopping cart with Paypal. I do hope that this works, then finally after seven years I may get some return from my hard work and I really hope that I can accumulate enough funds this year to get me to my ultimate destination of Penang.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE - Writer and publisher soon
In my small room now, I cook for myself but it is quite difficult, I only have a couple of electric pans and very little space available, I have to cook on the floor. I am a very good chef and I like to cook new things, so I have lots of different spices stuck in various places around the room, but it is very disorganised.
It is almost five years now since I last had access to a real kitchen with a gas cooker and lots of cooking utensils and I do miss it. You don't have the same instant control over electric that you do with gas and it does take a lot of getting used to to get things right. I still make some very good meals in here but it takes a lot of planning and preparation which takes up a lot of my time that I could be using for my writing, but I have to eat and it has to taste good.
The good thing is that I do make some excellent meals and I am even thinking about writing my own recipe book now, probably called something like 'Legless fusion cuisine' .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- The legless gourmet
Although today is April fool's day, I think that this legless fool has made enough of a fool of himself over the last few years, to last him for several lifetime's worth of April fool's days, so don't expect anything super foolish from me today.
My resolution for life now is not to be a fool ever again, so April fool's day or not, I shall try to be serious and very objective in anything that I do from now onwards. Please don't let me spoil your fun for today and enjoy yourself, but just be sure that when you are being a fool today, it only lasts for the day and doesn't create big problems for you in the future .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- The original fool
To my blog Archive for March 2009
For my Current Blog click here!
To my Legless Fool Headquarters site
P.S. "I don't remember reading the small print when I signed on for this life, in fact, I don't remember signing on at all, I was probably legless then too! So seeing as you wont let me resign, can we renegotiate the contract please?"
My first published book - Legless in Thailand
My other blog at the St Helens Star newpaper, UK
My home town St Helens, UK and their famous rugby team
Some of my short stories HERE
Biography of author John McMiken
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