[Here they are again, late one night. Ricki's feed on, the turn of the page in a book comes over the feed.

Audience be warned, the sleepy, dreamy monologue for the night contains content from some of the rather darker periods of history.]

Changi- well, it's an area, but it's most well known for being a POW camp during the second world war. It held Allied soldiers, but also the contingent of Malayan civilians who had been rounded up during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.

[Prisoner of war stories are never good ones.]

Reportedly, the early days of the camp were convivial, to a degree. There were quizzes, concerts, games and sports, and the prisoners governed themselves, cooked for themselves, and lived within the walls of the old prison- the building was actually a real prison, a section of which had been converted to hold the new influx of POWs. Unfortunately, as the war wore on, the usefulness of the prisoners as a labour force meant their lot changed. Any able bodied soul was sent to work on the damaged docks, to labour in the nearby Selerang military base, or clearing out damaged sewers. If you worked, you were fed. If you didn't, you weren't. Attempt an escape while you were on these details, and you dug your own grave on the beaches before they shot you down into it.

By 1943, there were just over seven thousand bodies in the Changi prison, which had been built to sustain just one thousand. Five or six men to a cell. The disease was overwhelming, by any standard, and medicine was running short, while prisoners died often from malnutrition. A number of the army boys, the medics, made mortar tablets and let themselves be caught distributing them- they convinced the Japanese soldiers that they'd cure the clap, and let themselves be pressured it into selling them at considerable cost. Those returns were used to buy the medicine.

When it was all over, the camp had to be emptied. It was a process that took months. Everybody had to be sent to Australia or Sri Lanka to convalesce under medical supervision.

Any other history buffs on board?

Anyone else can't sleep, this lovely evening- or is it morning, by now?

Spam

Ricki spends the evening- or morning, by now, wasting time in the library, in and around the shelves, in and around the study rooms.

Left to his own devices, he pulls a little bit of everything, and towards the end of the night is careful to shake any tail he might have and pad off towards one of the back study rooms, where Omar is said to be sleeping.]