The Week that Was

Sunday night here in Ratchaburi, Thailand. For me it has been a reasonably productive week! Productive is actually an understatement. We are still trying to get over the shock of learning that Luna is pregnant, which wasn't quite in my mind when I typed productive! It is wonderful. Productive and reproductive!

However I got a lot of painting done and am now a master of PVC piping and Thai plumbing. I have successfully plumbed in our new LG Turbodrum washing machine. This involved extending the water supply across the downstairs toilet. Saturday was my apprenticeship, today I delivered, and when I turned on the water mains this afternoon it all worked. Probably fitted about 12 feet of piping around three walls, fitted an additional outlet for filling buckets and added an open/close lock on the piping. Not bad for a second day trainee!  The turbo drum seems to operate very well.

I must say I am indebted to the man who runs a hardware shop here in Ratchaburi. Regardless of the fact that my Thai is very basic and his English non-existent, he sold me all the right piping, the connectors, the sealant and the PVC cutter. You see Friday I went up to Nakhorn Pathom to Global House the DIY equivalent of B & Q, except it is much bigger. I got a hack saw for cutting the piping but little did I realise that I needed cutters; the saw left the ends brittle, did not cut straight and this then made connecting difficult as I discovered Saturday when I fitted it all together, turned on the water mains and there were leaks in three parts of my new pipework! My jaw dropped with disappointment.

My friend in Ratchaburi also pointed out that there are different PVC piping manufacturers and the quality of their products varies. He asserted the piping he stocked his was the best and strongest on the market.

He also sold me an extremely expensive Bosch power drill, imported from Germany. He said I could pay less for a Chinese one but he raised his hands up and smiled as if to say it was rubbish. Boy the Bosch does the job beautifully. 

So it works wonderfully and Luna is pleased.

I guess my point is that nothing beats a good independent and that the  Tescos and Global Houses have effectively killed these guys off back in the UK. Bakers, grocers, butchers, fishmongers are rarities there. Maybe not here. There do not appear to be any vacant retail outlets on Ratchaburi's main drag. Now I think of it even the high street brands that are so dominant in the west are few and far between. No Starbucks or MacDonalds in Ratch although you will encounter them and the other offenders in Bangkok and Hua Hin.  Tescos are here and appear to be flourishing. However my guy is gonna get my business....he wants the business, he knows his stuff, he knows tools and materials and his shop is from another age with the pleasant additional feature of a Chinese style spirit altar. And my man and his staff, they really assist.

Great progress with the painting too and it makes the main living room look clean and fresh. I'll make a start in the kitchen and the rest of the house this coming week.

Other than the news of Luna's pregnancy there were no other major events. We are nearing the end of the third day of the six day state funeral for Princess Galyani Vadhani. The events have been broadcast live on TV and make quite a wonderful spectacle

The continuing miracle

I shall be magnanimous about the bot and the people behind it. Suffice to say I am still under review, Boo Hoo!

Anyhow it is happening big style. Luna learned yesterday that she is pregnant. We are both thrilled and happy but also a bit blown away by the speed with which this has come about. We reckon Luna must literally have conceived on our wedding night, 18th October 2008. All I could say last night was "Unbelievabe"! It is, utterly unbelievable!

If Luna goes full term and brings forth into this world a beautiful baby the real significance of this will be this child was born as a result of a loving act and while I cannot claim to be absolutely certain when conception occured I was conscious and sober at the time. There would have been a time when my child would have been born as a result of a likely meaningless, lustful and alcohol fuelled act. Those poignant words of Hugh McDiarmud from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle murmur in my ears   "......mullions of wummen bring forth in pain, mullions o' bairns that are nae wurth haein....". This child is wanted today !

Luna is joking about wanting a girl; she  believes the baby will be beautiful so there will be more modelling opportunities for a girl! Of course there is a real sobering side to this. Luna is 36 and this puts her statistically in the frame for the baby being born with Downs Syndrome. The doctor said we should explore the possibility of amniocentesis but having checked it out this raises the question of what are we going to do if we learn that the baby will have Downs Syndrome. We discussed it last night; there are no circumstances that we know of where termination would be an option. So if beautiful baby has Downs Syndrome it will still be a beautiful baby and we'll give it our best shot. I don't know about the statistics but I am not really interested either.

This reminds me of my anger this morning when I got one of these forwarded emails warning me that dire things would befall me if I didn't forward the email and accompanying message to at least 10 people in the ensuing three hours. I deleted it. I will not knowingly be blackmailed. And it is going to be the same with beautiful baby. We'll go with what we get.

I spoke with family and friends about news; people are so happy for us. I can't believe it, 50 and about to be a dad for the first time! Thanks be to God.

We are currently in day 1 of the 6 days of the official funeral of the late HRH Princess Galyana Vadhana, sister to the beloved King who died earlier this year. The near universal reverence and love of The Royal Family is one of the truly remarkable aspects of Thailand. I have no doubt the King is  the most powerful and influential man in the kingdom and He and He alone keeps the whole show together and stops the wheels coming off altogether. Periodically He summons in the politicos and the military, knocks heads together and reminds them of their wider responsibilities to the community. Long may He continue to reign.

One remarkable feature of this funeral is that the public have been asked to dress in black for the first three days of the funeral. What is remarkable is a very sizable number of people will comply with this request. Luna and her teaching colleagues were dressed in black today, for instance. In addition bars and places of "entertainment" have been asked to close for this three day period. I must say I think it is dignified and respectful.

Meanwhile the madness goes on! This morning I saw an unhelmeted male motor bike rider with four kids on his bike, two in front, two behind. Honda Step Through as  family saloon.! As I drove down from Nakhorn Pathom  on the highway I saw another unhelmeted rider with two kids up going against the traffic and cutting out into the middle lane to overtake a car that was also going against the traffic. Insanity!

I guess though this is the joy of the place: the  way life is so unregulated and uncontrolled.  

But what a joyful 24 hours. Fatherhood looms!

Loi Kratong

This evening's full moon means it is Loi Kratong, an annual  Thai festival of light. A kratong is a floating offering, a lit candle, incense and some flowers, launched on the river with a prayer, a small coin and a good wish. It is a huge event and it was as busy as it gets here in Ratchaburi, especially by the river. The event is celebrated all over Thailand. 

My Thai hosts need little encouragement to party so the usual suspects were out in full force; yup there was the inevitable beauty contest, lots of music, fireworks, lots of food and a really fun night out. I hate beauty contests but the locals go for it big style.

From what I understand the idea of the event is an annual letting go of the bad things of the previous year: jealousies, resentments, a time to forgive and to move on. A rather lovely concept. When the drunken masses converge on Trafalgar Square, London, to bring in the New Year is forgiveness of past wrongs in their outlook!? 

I had to laugh. An enterprising little girl, in her pyjamas, perhaps aged 7, was stopping the floating kratong as they came down stream with a paddle and removing any money that she could find!!!!

I made spectacular progress earlier today with the ceiling. Hard dirty work but Luna was impressed and thanked me for my hard work! Isn't that nice?! It was a struggle but it is coming together and I am pleased with it. Hopefully will finish it tomorrow that is the downstairs room but hey there is a lot more to do, the kitchen, and the upstairs.

Still under review

Bunch of inefficient control freaks these blog people. Management of Internet blog services appears to be every bit as unreliable, inefficient and labyrinthine as any good public sector service. Let me assure you I am 100% flesh and blood and nobody has directed me to say anything in this blog other than myself..... my insanity included. Must be difficult, a UK based address, a Thai internet connection,a blog about living in Thailand for a year, must be spam! Only humans could be stupid....robots could not care less! LOL sort it out!

Domestic bliss

Well I got the roller and paint brushes going today and the result is our downstairs living space is starting to look pretty good and most importantly Luna likes it. Unfortunately the room has a suspended ceiling consisting of many tiles probably about (100) and each one of these needs to be individually removed, cleaned, painted and replaced. It's going to be a long process as I cannot use the roller. However the end results will be good. All surfaces are being painted a pastel green emulsion and I must say it makes a very pleasant change to the appearance and feel of the room.

It is domestic bliss. I woke up this morning and Luna is smiling and she brings me a nice cup of coffee and neither of us really appears to have a care in the world. Where is that old sense of fear and foreboding that once typified the start of every day? In those dark days I used to chain smoke first thing in the morning and I recall massive fear arising from the general chaos of my life. It was not like that this morning and it never really has been that way for some time in my life.

The worst part of the my day was the 30 minutes I spent taking Luna to work, the school run. In comparison with how it used to be this was bliss. On returning home I had a spiritual hour or so and then cracked on with the paint job accompanied firstly by a recording of Celtic v Motherwell from Saturday and then the BBC World Service which had a strong African news emphasis: the sudden death of singer Miriam Makeba, the stand-off in Zimbabwe and the impending catastrophe in the Congo. I think I once saw Miriam Makeba in my drinking days but other than acknowledging her as a name I am afraid I couldn't tell you much more about her. I also enjoyed listening to an interview with the Australian writer Thomas Keneally and Sting on his love of Edward Elgar's Sea Songs! Ah good old Aunty Beeb, truly outstanding coverage and quality, and not a mention of Jonathan Ross or my poor old buddy Russell Brand.

So as you can see I am truly immersed in Thai culture!

I had a snooze this afternoon after finishing painting and mucked around on the internet. Luna provides some additional tuition in the early evening with the school's seminarians.... yup adolescent boys who may proceed into the priesthood! From talking with my old friend Tony McGowan I always think semenarians would be a more apt nomenclature for these poor boys! While waiting for Luna I had a brief chat with Fr Siripong, the school headmaster, parish priest and God knows what else. We were talking about Khun Thaksin and he was saying how in his opinion Thaksin was excellent in his first term but then corruption came.  I beg to differ, Father, I think he always was a rogue.  I told the good father how I was always saddened by Thaksin's apparent indifference to the dignity of human life: if someone is perceived to be a problem or gets in in the way then kill them!

I will always remember Thaksin's war on drugs when over 2000 are believed to have been killed by the police in extra-judicial killings in just a few months in 2003. In true Thaksin style he declared he would eliminate Thailand's drug problem. I heard it said that a series of confidential telephone hotlines were set up and that people could phone in their suspicions; in this process a fair few people decided this would be an excellent way of settling old scores and duly  reported their rivals/adversaries who typically would be shot resisting arrest, i.e.  shot down and fire arms left by their corpses to demonstrate their resistance. Unfortunately a couple of elderly grandmothers were killed in this process along with others considered unlikely to be caught up in any aspect of drug dealing and this brought the true nature of the scheme into sharp focus. Such was the volume of killings at the same time that Thaksin announced his war on drugs that few people had any doubt about what was going on. Drive fear right into the heart of the general population, life is cheap, baby. Amnesty International published a fairly damning report. It created a bit of heat and it stopped but over 2000 people died. Sorry to differ, Father. 

Undoubtedly Thaksin is/was the supreme populist. Drug use and drug dealing are a major concern here as in most parts of the world. And Thaksin likes to give people solutions and I guess the thinking was....well what is the problem, if these people were involved in drug dealings then they deserve to die. 

And now I am just hearing on the BBC that the home of corruption itself, the Republic of Philippines, has come out and declared that Khun Thaksin would be persona non grata . How the mighty fall....that really has a wonderful poignancy, almost chutzpah methinks!

So I brought my filipina wife to Tesco's and we ate in the food court and had a pleasant evening indoors watching TV and being in bliss! I had a beautiful bowl of chicken drumstick noodle soup.....there's Thai culture for you! When we got home Luna was pleased with my efforts today with the paintbrushes and rollers!

Monday morning procrastination

Monday morning here in the Land of the Smile, a bit gray and overcast out there but I have just completed the school run, taking Luna to work. The school run is as bad here as it is anywhere. However the police and school authorities are out there directing traffic and some of the main roads are either blocked or turned into one way streets so some effort is being made to control traffic flow. 

Another restful weekend. We had Luna's colleagues from school round for a barbecue last night which was pleasant. Watched a bit of football, Blackburn losing at home to Chelsea and Spurs winning away at Man City. After the weekend's results the top of the premiership has a very familiar look to it with the first four places being occupied by Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United. I thought Arsenal looked really impressive beating Man U on Saturday. Looks like Arsène Wenger has assembled another excellent team who are on the point of delivering. In fairness to Man U they also played well.

However the bottom of the table is staggering; eleven clubs, the bottom eleven clubs, are separated by three points. Could be a classic season. Hope so! Make my weekends more exciting.

I need to get the paint brush out and get cracking with the decorating. I really am struggling to motivate myself!

Controversy is kool

This is fantastic. My blog has already been blocked pending review. Please hurry there is a tidal wave of followers desperate to share my musings and views!  Who knows what some of them might do if they cannot get their daily fix! I however feel a deep sense of achievement and acknowledgement!

Well maybe a bit more or a bit less.....

Greetings or should I say sawasdeekrap! A good few years ago an English guy, Peter Mayle, I think, wrote a best seller, A Year in Provence, that spawned a TV series and God knows what else. I think Mr Mayle triggered a huge boom in the sale of rural French real estate to Brit couples with too much money and a massive take up of French language evening classes. So with this in mind I launch this blog. Except I am in Thailand, in Ratchaburi province about 100 km to the west of Bangkok. 

I would certainly welcome the revenue streams Mr Mayle generated from his foray but I know already that is extremely unlikely. I note from www.amazon.com that there are currently 900 copies of Mr Mayle's book for stale starting at $0.01. Oh dear!

What can I tell you about the distinct charm of my local hosts in the city of Ratchaburi?  Well the truth is they are charming, and polite, respectful and decent. I have been here for about 6 weeks but prior to moving here I had visited on a good many occasions as I courted my wife, Luna, who works in one of the local secondary schools. Ratchaburi is a very typical Thai provincial city and it has the considerable advantage of being off the tourist trail. My type, faraing, are to be seen but nowhere to the same extent as on the main tourist beat. Head down to Hua Hin, about 100 kms due south on the Gulf of Thailand and you will see what I mean. Come the Christmas holidays the beaches there will be crammed with large lumps of mainly Scandinavian flesh understandably seeking respite from the bleak north European mid-winter. I feel a sense of resentment when I see other faraing here in Ratchaburi and I completely understand if they have similar feelings when they see me. 

My friend Lars-Olav, from Sweden, a Hua Hin resident, a retiree, tells me about gangs of burglars who head to Hua Hin from Petchaburi in search of the rich pickings in faraing second homes. Petchaburi is the half way point between Ratchaburi and Hua Hin and when Lars talks about this I am kind of grateful these gangs don't yet have Ratchaburi in their sights.

Ratchaburi is pretty laid back and easy going. I get a sense the people here are too busy taking it easy to bother about burgling each others homes or robbing each other. I leave the car parked out on the street and I never lock it. I just realised this morning that I had left my passport in the dashboard storage space these last few days, unlocked. Yet I can barely put rubbish in the shared bins on the streets than some motorbike pulls up and its rider rakes through it in search of recyclables and anything else. But they leave my car and its contents alone and as far as I know nobody has shown any interest in our house and its contents. Now I like this not that I have any major assets or personal effects of value.

So today is Saturday three weeks since our wedding day. That was a very happy and lovely day for us both. I am very happy with my new wife, she is a treasure. I am so lucky. We didn't do much today. Luna was scheduled to do some additional lessons for students today but in true Thai style they hadn't shown by 0930h for a 0900h start so we went home instead. We were without water for most of the day as one of the taps managed to break away from its connection so we had to switch the water off at the mains. I finally was able to suss it out later in the day and was able to buy a replacement pipe in Tesco's (yup that mob are here and very big!) which I successfully fitted. Finished this just in time to enjoy Arsenal versus Man United live on TV, a real classic encounter and top quality football which ended in a 2-1 Arsenal win.

So these two last bits of information will give you an idea of how immersed I am in Thai culture! In fact the truth is this:  Thais are fanatical about the English Premier League and in particular they love teams like Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Thanks to the time difference it is possible most Saturdays and Sundays to watch live matches continuously starting from about 2000h local time right through to the wee small hours. Occasionally they even broadcast Scottish matches! This truly is the land of the armchair sports enthusiast.

So not a bad day. And on this day the former Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, currently a fugitive from Thai justice, had his British visa revoked. So Thaksin will need to find himself a new home and I must say I am glad that things are beginning to get a little bit uncomfortable for him. No doubt I will have more to say about Khun Thaksin in future episodes. But for now, good night.