A Meeting in Rangoon

The car that met us at Rangoon airport on the last day of January 1981 was a 1946 Humber in an advanced state of decay. I had been travelling in India with David and my friends Elizabeth and Tobias, and reached Burma from Calcutta. Of the few cars we saw, and the buildings, none could have dated from later than 1948. I noticed that a large 1940s clock on a British clock tower had stopped and wondered if the hands had been in the same position since January 1948, when British rule ended and Burma became independent.