floraville

Another Birthday

2009-07-31T14:03:00.004+01:00

A year with no post!........Something to do with being busy!!? Anyway tomorrow Elsi would have been 100!! And Elodie is 7; and we are back in Wales; partly avoiding the madness and violence of Chiang mai..and mostly..happy to be back in Sarn!!

2008-08-01T05:02:00.003+01:00

Elsi would have been 99 today!

That day after the night death;
that night after the day’s wailing,
I went out on the hill
and contemplated the lit windows
and the stars, those flocks
without a shepherd; and I asked:
‘Is she up there, the woman
who was the pawn that love
offered in exchange for beauty?’

Later I was alone in my room
reading and, the door closed,
she was there, speechlessly enquiring:
Was all well? It was true
what the book said in answer
to the world’s question as to where
at death does the soul go:
‘There is no need under a pillarless
heaven for it to go anywhere.’

You waited with impatience
each year for the autumn migration.
It happened and was over.

Your turn then. You departed,
not southward into the burnished
and sunlit country, but out

into the dark, where there are
no poles, no accommodating
horizons. Last night I loitered

where your small bones had their nest,
the owl blew away from your stone cross
softly as down from a thistle-head. I wondered.

2008-07-25T07:52:00.003+01:00

Chiang Mai
July 25 2008

I went to start to take some pictures of other houses where we live so you can see the relative hovel in which we dwell! The parcel of land next door is on offer at £250 per square metre. K paid £100! And I don’t think there is much of a market in sub-prime lending here. So if you have nothing better to do with £20,000 you could buy us a kitchen garden

Of course there is always just the view from The Office

People are forever asking me ‘How we live?’, as though it were likely that daily routines were somehow extraordinarily different in the Orient!
Well, boringly, this is it!
And it started off as a simple timetable…but there appeared a need for some decoration!!
06.00 Arise. You know its wakey time when the Nightwatchmen turn the street lights off
06.05 Let Dog out, or in, according to previous night’s behaviour
06.10 Make Tea. Count Water Lilies. Count Morning Glories. Planted some seeds from UK yesterday. Today 1 inch high sprouted already. K feeds the catfish, some of them checking in at 2 kilos I should say. I want the klong drained to see if they can walk.
06.20 Iron Elodie’s Clothes. Run Elodie’s Bath
06.35. Wake Elodie, carry around for 10 minutes
06.45. Put Elodie in Bath
06.55 Elodie dresses. Try and remember which Uniform for which day. This week she took her exams. Ac K this meant: have to have proper uniform not gym kit, which is Thursdays. However as no-one had said anything….Half the class in Gym Kit, Half in Uniform. Elodie changes clothes….others in tears as have no change of clothes. Ability of teachers/schools to render children hysterical never ceases to amaze me.
07.00 Elodie Breakfast..Watch CBBC. Something faintly surreal about watching Fifi and Roary here!
07.25 Elodie to School. This requires 20 minutes of nervous exhaustion on the Chiang Rai-Chiang Mai highway while negotiating demented motopedists, drag racers, those stopping for nosh, lorries whose carbon footprint exceeds in a 8 kilo journey mine for my whole life, Grannies moving across highway at snail pace. Today the San Khampaeng-Mae Rim traffic lights are broken. Policeman giving good audition for Mr Hulot’s Holiday/The Windmill from Hell has managed to jam all four directions. At this point he gets on motorbike and leaves the scene. Those of us in the know turn left, do spectacularly dangerous U turn across dual carriage way and proceed. Elodie listens to Edward Lear on the CD which seems appropriate. Once get to school have to wait in queue of 2008 model Benzes and huge Toyotas and Hondas for the privilege of parking in a mudslip. Others don’t get out of their cars and wave the kids airily off into the carpark. None dead yet as far as I know. I think I read that the yearly death to car ratio in the UK is 1:10,000. Here it is 125:10,000
08.25. Home. Breakfast. Bath
09.00 Check emails etc. Write aggressive letters. Recent spat with OUP as to target audience for Up and Away. Requires children who cannot read English to spell afternoon, radio, breakfast and other staple vocabulary from Ladybird books. For some reason E can do it. My expectations clearly too low. Rang Oxford, New York, ELT Department at TVU-no reply there, of course. Might as well been asking for the price of Fish Sauce in 1920. One charming receptionist said: “ We are trying to help” I asked what was the nature of this help. Put [phone down quickly. Company of clearly staggering incompetence. All OUP books now have this written on the Copyright page:
OUP is a Department of The University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship and education by publishing worldwide in……….then a list of cities. Not too sure about either the grammar or phraseology of that statement, never mind the accuracy.
09.30 Bit of gardening/washing/house cleaning. Not a lot of the latter thanks to minimalist living. Washing machine which is Korean has unpleasant characteristic of a ’ring tone’ on completion of cycle which always sends one looking for a phone
10.30. ie 04.30 in UK. English banks probably managed their Book keeping, Compliance etc by now..though not always. For some reason which I cannot fathom they appear never to do it at the same time everyday, nor will they tell you when they are doing it. This with HBOS regularly incurs a bewildering array of error messages and service discontinuities. RBS/Natwest better. Check balances, Pay bills, Launder money etc.
However. Thank the lord for Nationwide which sets standards of speed, cheapness and competence of which other banks only dream-well I don’t suppose they do as that would require a degree of consciousness they appear to lack. Only gripe with Nationwide is that they won’t display the exchange rate of transactions so have to do sums. However given that a. They don’t charge for ATM withdrawals and b. that their exchange rate is consistently better not too much of a hardship. Today Nationwide are converting at 66.3 Baht to a pound. RBS is converting at 63 Baht, charges £2.50 for an ATM withdrawal plus some outrageous ‘exchange fee’ which means that I got 5000 Baht from Nationwide for £75.41 which would have cost me about £84.30 from RBS/Natwest! One knows the whole thing is a rip off/charade. The onshore offshore rates have been out of kilter for months and Nationwide’s rate is still better than KasikornBank’s rate…..besides which you have to pay some nonsensical sum for an electronic funds transfer which for no discernible reason takes 5 days. Also HBOS has a friendly wheeze of blocking ATM cards unless you tell them that you will be going abroad; so you will find yourself in Bangkok airport at 06.00 am with your ATM card blocked and it takes them ‘At Least…I quote’ ..24 hours to remove the ‘Restriction’. Why I asked? Oh well we have …I jest not…to Send an Email to the relevant department…..Oh says I which Department is that I will call them sand send an email….Ooooooh no you we can’t reveal that information. Bet the person who needed to be asked was at the next desk. Obstructive twits. Glad they cannot raise any more capital. OK enough of Meldrew.
11.00. Write
12.00. Lunch..Sometimes we will go down to CNX to the Flower Market or Carrefour eat lunch by the river or lake.
13.00 Read and Sleep. I have been falling asleep reading Lizzie Collingham's Curry. I then had to0 struggle out into CNX to buy all the ingredients but I cannot find asafoetida. There's a Pickle Company that produces stunning Bulgarian Yogurt.....
15.15 Go to pick up Elodie, School out 15.45. Go to the market/ shopping/ swimming, buy supper etc.
17.00 Homework. Gruelling trilingual marathon with sums thrown in. Post arrives. Royal Mail International Redirection actually works. Not cheap but quick
18.00 Watch peculiar Japanese Cartoons, Play on the Computer. Watch CDs. At last count E has about 200!. Gardening..mainly watering
19.00 Elodie Supper. Cooking
20.00 Garden. Elodie Shower
21.00 Read Books. Have abandoned Gobbolino for The Wishing Chair. Wants to read the whole of The Faraway Tree again. Elodie to Sleep
21.30 Supper
22.00 Write
23.00/24.00 Shower. Read. Am nodding off at night with Jonathan Spence on The Great Chan. Sort of does for Chinoiserie what Said diid for Orientalism. Sleep.

We spend £30 a month on electricity. This enormous sum is the price we pay for having continuous hot water. I like hot baths and hot showers, not cold ones; so that is a luxury. £300 on cars, £100 on petrol for the Toyota and the Honda; today the price of petrol has gone down 10% or 12p a litre. That will bring the price of Gasohol down to 56p a litre. I wonder where it comes from?! Not seeing that showing up in The Guardian-rather a few more £billion on Nuclear Warheads to keep the immigrants out, or nowadays the natives in.
I went down to Carrefour and bought a Kilo of Prawns, Cream, Sage, Marjoram, Thyme, Bottle of Brandy, Potatoes, 2 Bottles of Green Tea, Fennel, Broad Beans, Roka Cheese Biscuits and Two Toothbrushes for the extravagant sum of £9.50. Cost in the UK? About £40 I should guess. And the Prawns probably unpleasant pre-frozen things from Youngs. These were huge shell on stripy blue things tasting like a prawn. I should think the average food bill is £7-£8 a day. If you were poor you could live satisfactorily on 70p a day each-eating out! A bit more to cook at home.
Elodie’s school is £100, UK Poll Tax £80. £30 on English Language TV
OK we are probably not leading the most eco of lives. I was trying to find Garotta in the market to make a compost heap. Not here!! But everything-paper, glass, cans, plastic is collected for recycling.
Couldn’t do it on a Thai salary. K’s sister has £300 a month after 10 years working as a nurse and becoming a big cheese. On the other hand the parents of the 2000 or so children at E’s school have no difficulty in finding the £1200 a year fees, nor money for new Toyota Fortuners coming in at well over £20,000+ a throw! So clearly plenty of money in Chiang Mai

So it is hardly that different from life in Wales. Both houses relatively pared down. The older I get the more I cannot stand clutter and the more I live anywhere the more of it appears. On the one hand it appears to take forever, if starting from scratch, to acquire all those little necessities-thimbles, picture wire, a magnifying glass, different size envelopes, drill bits, and then where to put them, and always missing some vital thing-could not find a pair of tweezers/pliers small enough to remove panel pins from a picture, nor a thermometer; and then you find there is an array of files, books, papers, sauce bottles, old inflatable toys that cannot be thrown away and where to put those?
All ends up like Elsi’s loft. Endless boxes labelled: Precious Venetian Jewellery, broken, to mend.

2008-06-29T22:30:00.002+01:00

An extraordinary, but in many ways typical, Pen Llyn day. The day started clear but by 8.00 it was rainingI Depressed I lit the fires, for it is unseasonably cold. But around 15.00 it cleared and the sky was cloudless.

I realised I had no photograph of the new stone laid on Elsi’s grave with the inscriptions for RS. So I went up the hill in the gloaming to take one. When I was young I used to walk in that late summer evening light from Sarn to Aberdaron through the newly cut fields of hay.
I had been sitting in the garden of Sarn when a pair of bullfinches came and sat on the big stone by the back door. Both resplendent in fit plumage. The male solicitous that the hen had food. Then a Grey Wagtail flies onto the roof. I have always wondered why there are no Pied Wagtails here..but here is an even more unusual visitor.

The swallows are still flying in the door of the Studio and out the window, but they have never nested here. And though there are Martins, there are no Swifts as there were at Egwys fach and Aberdaron..’winnowing the air’. The Wagtails nested in the porch at Manafon.
The old pheasant has lost his tail feathers, but he has, this evening, still pulled a young hen who gobbles up the seed. Surely they cannot be going to produce a brood this late? I think he is no longer capable which is why there are no hens, no nests, and no chicks in the garden!

Anyway I drove up to Llanfaelrhys. The Sparrow Hawk sitting on the wires, the Choughs overhead and the Gannets diving in Port Ysgo.
In the churchyard two hares and a partridge. It made me think of the picture MEE did of Melangell sheltering the hare. It was designed as stamps-some 32 of them-and we collected one every week to make the picture. Now where is that?
I took the photo and also one of the grave of the Keating sisters; for without who we would not be here. It is difficult to show the ‘ambience’ of the church but these two pictures may help!:

So here is letting go! We are off to Chiang Mai for some years, I think! We will no doubt make or find another magic place for such is our life.
I spoke to E on the phone( she is already there):

“I have got a letter from Father Christmas!”
Da:” How do you know who it is from?”
“The writing on the envelope is the same as on my Christmas Presents!”
“ Is there a letter?!”
“Yes and it says Love from Daddy. Miss you! So now I know who is Father Christmas!”
“Oh dear!”
6 year old graphologist

The more I live, the more I think we have been an extraordinarily privileged generation-well in ‘the west’.
Untouched in any real sense by war, disease or famine, we have constructed lives of sensational security by comparison with other times. I was reading Norman Lewis: Naples 1944. All that really remains of that book, for me, is another history of rape.
We have some knowledge of what went on in Rwanda, more perhaps of the Chinese in Tibet; but perhaps the history of man is just one of war and rape. There are those who say that, in spite of his brain and his opposable thumbs man is just an animaI; I wondered whether any other species behaves in this way: war and rape. I suspect not. I sympathise with that film maker whose name now escapes me who said: The human race is insane. I fear for my wife and children as we move, maybe, into dark times.

All is now stored. Last of all: This!!

2008-06-17T07:48:00.004+01:00

Rhodri and Alice

Who was a bridesmaid? (Told several people that: 'I am getting married'

and Floraville is complete!!

June 7th 2008

2008-03-12T13:07:00.002Z

A quiet dry Saturday- I mean dry as in no alcohol-another election- provides respite from daily life; and anyway E has ‘gone shopping’ though not always enthusiastic in the absence of Woolworths. This particular trip a little enlivened by the fact that she has taken her pet rat with her ensconced in a Hello Kitty purse. Its escape in Robinson Airport Plaza might send a few folk scampering..
We had the third day of rain in 5 months. But I see no evidence of drought-yet. I gather James Lovelock believes the planet will have been relieved of 80% of its population by 2100 and that Europe will be the Sahara. Must buy an Acre of Land in Wales..or Co. Cork to supplement the Olive Groves of Sarn and a fish farm.
I wonder where he thinks the remaining 20% will live? Canada, Russia and Ireland I suppose. Though Chiang Mai watered rather than flooded by the mountains of Yunnan probably not a total disaster
Anyway we continue to grow the house-relatively faster than things fall off.
And E has declared that she will ‘go back to my Seaside School for the summer’. So off, indeed we will go at the end of March. Half a term at Ysgol Abersoch being worth considerably more than Summer Camps. Ecamps and Summer Schools in Chiang Mai-particularly as I scent God in some of it.

I write very slowly, now. Lack of practice, I guess. And even though E goes to school at 07.30, returns 15.30 the days seem very short! But also what is there to say?! Little goes on on the literary front. The Gregynog book appears stalled, so I suppose we will have to do something else to mark the 100th anniversary of Elsi’s birth.The radio play of Byron’s book, also quiet. The mural has not arrived in Bangor…
So we make scallop shell mobiles and orange cardboard octopus installations. She never stops drawing and wanders round saying H’m What shall I do..I know some sums/writing….We have long finished The Faraway Tree and many Worst Witches and Naughty Little Sisters. I look forward, again, to The Dewdrop Inn and The House at One End Street!
I have finished Orhan Pamuk. Preferred Other Colours and Istanbul to the novels-with the exception of My Name Is Red. Now onto Justin’s book about Aung San Su Kyi.

Anyway school is out. Look I have graduated.

Any excuse for a uniform. The school could not organise a tea party but we got a new passport in 35 minutes and my re-entry stamp in 8 minutes..so always some surprising plus in the Thai corner.
Oh and since I started Gregynog now tell us that they won’t be doing the book at all-stunned by the idea that they could not do it for free I suppose. Anyway the books are horrible:: RS and MEE hated Hutchins’s Laboratories. I should think they will go bust again unless they have unlimited access to some Welsh Assembly trough. There are others who might do it..better to do ourselves I should think

2008-01-24T02:58:00.001Z

These two will cheer you up:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA19Dj02.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA24Ak04.html

2008-01-22T05:04:00.000Z

Elodie had a camera for Christmas with a painting program!!

2008-01-22T04:57:00.000Z

Ah, the taste and smell of tears!
I cried when I heard of the death of Peter Jolliffe. He managed so bravely with his illness for so many years. And the last few times we met he was almost trim! So kind and so erudite. He was, of course, the person referred to in Byron’s book as ‘The Collector’! His love of RS’s work as well as that of Elizabeth Bishop, Derek Mahon, W.S. Graham and others led him to acquire some wonderful works. The loss of Ulysses will be a jolt to many. When S and I first went to a Book fair in Bath in the early days of Lapis Lazuli it was Peter who bought so many of the books and became our friend..when was that ?? 30 years ago!
Julian Nangle has written a moving obituary of him:

Peter Benedict Jolliffe, antiquarian bookseller and poet:
born Trowbridge, Wiltshire 26 October 1947; died London 27
December 2007
The Independent
11 January 2008
Julian Nangle
Peter Jolliffe, poet and bookseller, who co-founded and
later became sole proprietor of Ulysses Bookshop in the
heart of Bloomsbury, London, developed a successful business
dealing in modern first editions. His bookselling career,
which began in the early 1970s, developed into an
international business, having particularly strong ties with
the United States. He was an early and lifelong supporter of
the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association, in addition to
being a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association.
Jolliffe began his career working for Blackwell's in Oxford,
following education at Stonyhurst and at Merton College,
Oxford, where he read Classics. At the age of 21, he
suffered a profound and comprehensive breakdown in health
which was to affect him for the rest of his life; indeed, on
one occasion he was told he would not live beyond the age of
30. He endured his incapacities with remarkable stoicism.
After the death of his father, his mother and siblings
having died when he was a boy in Kenya, he branched out on
his own, specialising in modern first editions. He became a
familiar figure in the auction rooms of Hodgson's in
Chancery Lane in the late 1970s, where he would hoover up
any collection of fine first editions of contemporary
literature that took his fancy. He was one of the first in
his field to inspire customers to pay serious money for the
books they wanted, justified by the extraordinarily good
condition of the books he offered them.
Almost single-handedly in the 1980s, during the heyday of
the modern first edition boom, he raised the profile of
writers such as Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon, by pricing
their books in such a way as to make one reflect that he
valued the writers' works seriously. It was this passion for
poetry, particularly Irish poetry, which lay at the core of
Jolliffe's passion for books in general. It was clear on the
rare occasions when he shared his own poetry with the world
that Jolliffe himself was no slouch at this craft and sullen
art. Poets he loved included Heaney and Mahon, but also
those of an earlier generation; Edward Thomas and R.S.
Thomas, and he amassed serious collections of their work
over the years.
Between 1983 and 1986 Peter Jolliffe and I shared offices in
Fulham Road. This was a happy time for Jolliffe as he
developed his business and his name as one of the leading
players in the world of modern first editions both in
Britain and in America.
In the 1990s, he joined forces with three other booksellers,
Peter Ellis, Joanna Herald and Gabriel Beaumont, to form
Ulysses Bookshop in Museum Street, London. This partnership
created two bookshops across the road from each other in the
heart of Bloomsbury. After several years of very successful
trading, during which time Ulysses also undertook some
publishing, issuing various limited editions by William
Boyd, Adam Thorpe and Jeanette Winterson, among others, the
partners decided to go their separate ways and Jolliffe
stayed on with the name and the premises at 40 Museum
Street, living, sleeping and eating Ulysses Bookshop.
Due to his infirmities he would never actually go to bed,
but would curl up in his favourite chair in the shop,
discreetly enough not to be spotted by any passer-by, and
would literally sleep on the job. Night after night, day
after day, year upon year, this was his routine. He rarely
returned to his house near Oxford.
Jolliffe's attention to detail when describing the condition
of a book was extraordinary. In his last catalogue, his
102nd, issued shortly before his death, there is a volume he
describes thus: "Covers slightly marked, creased, rubbed and
dusty. Very good." To anyone outside the bookselling trade
this would appear to be a book destined for the dustbin, but
his final description, "Very good", is actually the correct
description of the book for anyone seriously contemplating
buying it. He wanted, above all, to be fair to his
customers, and would go to extraordinary lengths to be sure
they were not disappointed.
A private man, Jolliffe none the less had a thirst for
intelligent, and sometimes glamorous, company. Among the
regular visitors to the shop were Heaney and Jeanette
Winterson, the latter having once written that Ulysses was
her favourite bookshop. Often, friends and colleagues who
dropped in to the shop for a chat would leave reeling at
Jolliffe's encyclopaedic knowledge, or his rather famous
inability to let go of the memory of a missed opportunity to
buy something particularly special or cheap. As they stepped
out of the door, he would return to listening to his
favourite music; some opera, perhaps, or an album by Nina
Simone or Bob Dylan. And, once the shop was relatively
empty, he would release his grip on the bowls of soft fruit
which lay around the shop when in season. As former
employees at the shop can recall, woe betide you if you
started nibbling at his strawberries or grapes uninvited.
This said, one feature of Peter Jolliffe was his astonishing
generosity, both with his time and also in business. He
might offer discounts or extended time to pay off the bill;
he first encountered this behaviour in Peter Howard, of
Serendipity Books in Berkeley, California, and was quick to
adopt it. At the same time, Jolliffe would lament that the
new entrants to the world of modern first editions were
pushing up the prices (something he had done himself in the
early 1980s, a subject upon which he did not linger in
discussion).
Jolliffe was a recognisable figure within the world of rare
books. He was often seen trudging the streets of London from
sale to sale, or exiting from a taxi, heavily laden with his
latest acquisitions in a giant carrier bag from Bonhams,
Phillips, Christie's, Sotheby's or Bloomsbury Book Auctions,
always ready to stop and talk about how he'd missed what he
really wanted at the auction.
It is hoped that the Ulysses Bookshop will remain open, so
that Jolliffe's considerable legacy can be built upon.
Julian Nangle

Meanwhile we argue with builders and tillers and plumbers to try and correct the defects of this lovely house! We spend $5 a day on food, $10 on phonecards and $30 on flowers and the garden!!

And Bangkok is shrouded in fog....so Not The Man in The Mist! while her it is nearly freezing under a full moon night

2007-12-23T13:02:00.000Z

I keep forgetting to post this:
Our Address is
11/22 Moo 1 Floraville
T. Sanpuloei
A. Doi Saket
J. Chiang Mai
50220 Thailand

though all mail sent to Sarn is redirected!!

2007-12-23T11:05:00.000Z

Christmas 2007

December 23 Almost the first day there has been any time to sit down and think-let alone write since this was started!!
It is election day in Thailand; so we are in Sawanhkalok for 24 hours. No-one wants to leave Chiang Mai-though Elodie’s school is closed for a week ‘due to the large numbers of foreign students and teachers’! Good excuse. Indeed the school is so full of ‘half children’ as to cause everyone to exclaim. 3 or 4 in every class of 20. K wonders why I don’t want to talk to the Dads! I said for the same reason you are not talking to their Mums. E is planning her 6th birthday party…K says no one will come..Thais are so terrified of anyone they don’t know….remember the stories about people coming to the house and standing 30 yards away and shouting in case you thought they had come to rob you! So we may have to have it in school……or maybe in Wales again!
However she loves her school and has simply bounded into it without any problems-which is fairly remarkable! She is full of confidence and fun and sits surrounded by little boys who do errands for her and marvel at her name….there will no doubt be trouble in 7 years or so!
And so, yes, here we are 8 or 9 years on and Elodie’s 6th Christmas! Even managed to write a letter to Santa Claus this year: Please can I have some pretty shoes! Is that all? Well on Father’s Day earlier in the month she made me a sweet card. Then she got grumpy and told K she was not going to give it to me. She did. Half an hour later she says I think on Daddy Day you should give me a present. What do you want? A computer of my own!! Ahem!!

So our wonky eyes are pretty much sorted thanks to Gillian Adams but we have some clear problems, still, with other parts of anatomy! And somehow in spite of riots, fights, tears, departures we have survived it all.

We had good months in Wales while E had her friends and the school that she loves there too; Eventually we decided that Gwynedd Council were incapable of running a school, so we left the prawns, lobsters, and our beautiful garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetables for the Orient!!
So now we are in Chiang Mai at last in the house of amazing space and beauty that K has designed and built.

Of course having built it we have scarcely a bean to furnish it….but bit by bit! I rather revel in the light bright rooms with no furniture. I think we are living in a 1960s Godard movie! But then so is M.Sarkozy-though sadly not Mr.Brown!
Anyway we have a house full of flowers as the Chiang Mai flower market produces huge bunches of Roses and Gladioli, Lilies and Chrysanthemums at 50p a bunch and we have ‘The Pot Noodle Garden’ all grassed, hedged and flowered in 3 days-just add hot water! K has had all the bathrooms retiled-at builders expense and all doors and windows refurbished-half the flooring replaced and it is now nearly inhabitable. Next month we will have a bed and a kitchen!
I crashed the car spectacularly—not many countries place unlighted, unsigned, concrete tank defences in the middle of the town’s main 4 lane drag!—so we have another of those, too. As E said..Oh Dear..Car has broken its nose! Yes, and quite a lot of its innards, also, I have often wondered , given the senseless way in which Thais drive, why I saw so few accidents. Went to the Body Shop—so many wrecks it will take them 3 months to mend the Toyota—of course they clear them up at top speed as the are an eyesore.. I crashed the car at 23.00-by 23.10 it was on the recovery truck! It appears that only when you have grieving relatives hugging corpses in the highway it takes longer. And here comes New Year with its usual complement of 2000 deaths! Unfortunately this one has a CD player so we have to listen to Mr Daddy LongLegs and Mr FloppyFly all the way to school.

It has been a year of such difficulty with E’s eyes, schools and decisions about where it is best to be…that I am glad it is over. Anyway decisions made…..and we just need to go back for the wonderful event of Alice and Rhodri’s marriage in June!

2007-10-17T11:56:00.000+01:00

2007-10-17T07:41:00.000+01:00

Before we left the seaside we were eating rather well!! Now we are on a diet of Chinese Vegetarian food, which is not so good! They are still trying to make bean curd look like duck.

At The Beginning

2007-10-16T09:57:00.000+01:00

So here we have another new life!
The voice of the village poet is silenced and we have moved to Lanna, another old kingdom. The Rose of the North, as the town is also known, does not look that blooming-too many cars, too much smoke. But we have built a house and E has a new school. So we will see what happens. I was always impatient. Now, as I get older, more so! I suppose it is a desire to see her grown up and happy before I am no longer here.