High Tide Under the House

These "Vignettes of Mango Island" were first conceived by the author as email messages to his friends and family back in the U.K. when, in 2000, he packed his bags and went, with his new wife, to live on a small island in the Western Visayas in the Philippines. They chart with considerable style and humour his delight in his new surroundings: the curious sights; the ripe odours; the beautiful landscapes; the clear, warm waters of the Sulu Sea. They also reflect his frustrations as a Westerner in Asia: he discovered, as all travellers have discovered over the ages, that cultures are different! Not all the accounts here are factual: some are stories based on real events or on tales and legends told to the author while he was sitting outside the sari-sari store when the "clicking lizards had possession of the night".