London Days...

My London days were full of experience-galleries, libraries, people.  There were many people I knew whom I do not describe here for I have been trying to restrict myself to my own story and the characters who have been playing their life around me....

My Diaries

I started keeping my own sketchbook like diaries at the age of 16.  When I first arrived in the U.K. in 1993, I began to be serious about keeping my own biography and started to transcribe my diaries into proper scripts.  There has been a subtle shifting of my life into a world of fiction where I recorded before me everything I saw and heard, people I met in streets, railway stations, charities.  I have carefully chosen from the displayed treasure fragments and moments that combined to make my novel "My Diary in U.K." the masterpiece in my life.

Lost Diaries

On 30 July 2001, I arranged my boxes to be sent back to Malaysia by shipment with Meadows International. The boxes were picked up from my flat St. John’s Wood by a lorry on the same day I left London.

It was promised that the boxes would arrive within three weeks after the consignment.  After two months I still had not heard from them. From September onwards, I had been tracing it very tightly with a man called ‘Steve Bowling’. I sent him a fax saying that he did not give me any satisfactory answer e.g. could not even produce me a statement saying which ship name were my boxes in. After a month, he sent me a fax saying that the shipment had arrived in Port Kelang, Malaysia. Feeling relief, I contacted the port and had been communicating with them for three weeks. It was confirmed that my name was not in the list and was a complete wild goose chase. Why did he lie to me?

Anna Tims
Wednesday April 3, 2002
The Guardian

Shipping disaster

There are more sinister goings on at Meadows International, the overseas removal firm I've been tracking for the past year. Elastic memories will recollect that this Essex-based business has had no fewer than six previous incarnations, three of which received compulsory liquidation orders. An idiosyncrasy of all of them is the disappearance, permanent or otherwise, of many customers' goods and the common link is owner Steve Banks. This indefatigable entrepreneur has now set up as a sole trader because his last company is being investigated by insolvency practitioners.

All seemed to be going well when we last spoke in January. Banks assured me that he was concentrating on consultancy rather than shipping, and Essex trading standards reported only a single complaint. Sadly, though, Banks seems to have returned to his old ways, according to Ron Arthurs, Chris Morley, Fleur Leishman, Michael Way, Frederick Longini and Winnie Toh, all of whom have lost valuable goods.

Arthurs' entire home contents made it to Australia as planned but the handling agents claimed to have heard nothing from Meadows and refused to release the container. Morley dispatched a chest of drawers to Australia last July and it hasn't been seen since. Leishman sent all her possessions from New Zealand to Glasgow in October and has yet to discover their fate. Way, over in Sydney, is without a shipment that was sent in January. Longini has been waiting since September for his container to reach Tanzania and Toh fears she has seen the last of six boxes dispatched to Malaysia last July.

Other news report from The Guardian

2 January 2002

21 February 2002

17 July 2002

On 20 September 2002, the boxes were found, arrived in Port
Kelang safe and sound.

"My Diary in U.K." would remain an unpublished work of Winnie. L.B.Toh until such a day when she is successful in her career as a professional accountant.  

Visit www.angelfire.com/co4/spokenenglish.com for my other book.