Party Update

I had a lovely party on Friday, but I went to bed at 11pm because Daughter and I were up at 5am and off to school at 5.30am for another swimming competition. It went a bit pear shaped some time after that.

Some of Husband’s colleagues had come early on Friday to help a little bit; there weren’t many jobs to do apart from shuffle some furniture around and then the ‘helpers,’ Husband, Son and Daughter got embroiled in Playstation Dance Mat (I want to say that name in an American advertising accent: PLAYstation Daance Maat, cos it sounds good cheesy). I’m told Thais like to have something to do at parties. They love their food but they also want some kind of entertainment, so we’d got the aforementioned PLAYstation Daance Maat in one room and a karaoke machine in the main room. In a third room we’d got a bar. The free flow bar was our downfall – Thais don’t appear to hold their drink so well – I think my sofa may dry out at some point.

Please, trust me on this, the less said the better.

On an altogether cheerier note, I finally managed to get a cool picture of daughter swimming, and not a series of splashes ... OK, I got lots of those too, but here she is doing butterfly:

Party party party

Yesterday we had the BWG Christmas party. Despite promising myself to get off early after the lunch, and leave the revellers to it, I became a reveller. Somehow I misplaced my self control and found myself dancing on the stage; I’ve no idea how it happened.

I’ll confess to having had a few drinks, but I have no alcoholic amnesia and didn’t show anyone my knickers! I’m not posting the pictures that were so shamefully circulated this morning because I’m fairly sure it will result in injunctions or suings, but I was in bed before Son last night. I went back to bed after I got them off to school this morning.

Tonight is Husband’s Christmas party in our apartment and all the arrangements have been done by husband and a few members of his staff. He has left me to write my articles, and gave me only one job: to tidy all my crap away.

The piles of papers, that ‘might one day be needed for research’. The forty-eight books next to my side of the bed, mixed with essential bits of paper on which are written golden nuggets of inspiration or instructions for finding secret shops in Bangkok.

Anyway, I’ve now finished hiding it all sorting through and clearing it into numerically ordered files and it’s time to get ready to party.

Make Santa's Grotto sign: Tick

"All aboard for Panic Stations"

On Monday night, too late and too tired, I filled in all the BA Skyflyer Solo unaccompanied minors’ paperwork for the children’s upcoming trip to the UK.

Have I admitted here on my blog that I will not be with my children this Christmas? Have I declared it or just hinted at it? At book group yesterday, one of the women gasped when I said it. She gasped and clapped her hand to her chest, and said: ‘Oh. Christmas? I couldn’t do that.’ Will I earn a ‘Bad Mother’ award?

My children want, with all their hearts, to be in England this Christmas. They are desperate to see their grandparents, their aunties and uncles, their cousins and their chosen family – the godless parents and ‘godsisters’, although strictly speaking, I think that should also be godlesssisters. I am desperate to do the writing course in Koh Chang. My article writing is going fine but my novel writing … is not. My doing - my actually doing as opposed to talking about doing – the article writing has made me a much happier human. This has to be good for my children, right? (Thank you kind K for your words after book club! Interestingly, I have noticed that it’s only other people for which this seems to be a problem and it’s not them doing it – it’s us.)

Anyway, so there I was filling in the forms and it was complicated because there was another flight thrown in – I won’t bore you with the details except to say the people taking and picking up from airports have to be named and addressed so BA only handover to the correct people. And then I copied it to the four marvellous women who are going to be surrogate Mummies to my children, and asked them to check their bit and come back and confirm everything is okay. Because I had done the form filling at the last minute, I had to send the forms back to Husband’s secretary before I had all the feedback.

This morning I got an email saying that nowhere on the form did it say that Godlessparents were ‘meeting’ the extra flight. My sister puts them on a flight and Mr Nobody meets them. Will BA notice? I wondered. Can I play Russian roulette with my children? No. This is a small thing: Husband and secretary can sort this out tomorrow in the office (today is a bank holiday).

BUT.

What it has demonstrated to me is that I am trying to do too much. It can’t all be done. So I am streamlining: I am ferociously knocking things off my list …

AND.

What I have noticed is that I am intending to stick to the things I’ve agreed to do for other people, and knock off most of the things I wanted to do. I can easily let myself down but not other people.

I know someone that would challenge me on this: I know he would say that I should be thinking about me. Explain to other people and they will understand. And, this is what my Skyros course is about: I AM thinking about me because my being happy benefits everyone. But this goes against everything in my nature: ‘Don’t let other people down’ was somehow a mantra of my upbringing and I can see it in my Mum and my sister. They think about others before they think about themselves to (I think) the detriment of their wellbeing. I know I do.

Hmmmm, is this a ‘mummy disease’?

Trip to Chinatown

After I got the children up this morning I wrote an article. I’d been preparing it in my head for some days. I was doing the research and my subconscious, bless it, sorted most of it out in my head while I got on with other things.

Then, I went to Sampeng Lane, Chinatown. I LOVE Sampeng Lane even though it’s migraine inducing. On the way, walking through Chinatown, are the weirdest shops: shops full of engines, shops full of metal rods; shops full of basketware; shops full of string and rope.

Sampeng Lane is a narrow ‘walking street’. No-one appears to have told the locals who insist on riding motorbikes down it and pulling carts full of bales of material and the like.

There are certain rulesI have invented to cope with Chinatown:

1. Really, really want what you’re going for.
2. If possible, go on your own. If you must go with other people, try NOT to care what you buy.
3. Start at one end. DO NOT start in the middle – which way will you go?
4. Start at the end you can walk to from Hua Lampong otherwise a taxi driver will think you’ve just got off the train from the beach and are stupid. Then he will drive you on a tour of Bangkok before taking you to Chinatown.
5. When I see a shop I want to go into I have to remember if I turn left or right going into it, otherwise I won’t remember which way to turn coming out of the shop. Sampeng Lane is designed so that shoppers are perpetually confused so they stay there all day because they can’t find a way out.

6. Buy a drink every time you see a vendor: juice, water and coke. 7. Buy dim sum in Sampeng – it tastes better there than anywhere else in the world.

I had to buy stuff for a grotto and lots of decorations for Husband’s work Christmas party which we are hosting on Friday.

Sexy silk

I went off at the crack of dawn yesterday morning to the Dusit Thani Hotel in Silom to meet with a group of unknowns going to join the The Thai Textiles Society/National Museum of Volunteers joint excursion to Khorat which is a hub of silk production.

We went to a Royal Project for natural silk dyeing; a commercial silk yarn factory; a batik and tye-dye group and then shopping for silk at the Silk Culture Centre.

It took us into Central Thailand (drive 3-4 hours) and was wonderful apart from a crippling migraine on the way home. (Straight to bed: 12 hours sleep and I STILL woke with a headache.)
Here are some almost edible pictures of silk in various states of production:

Christmas is coming and I'm in a panic

Oh lordy, it's December and while mostly I love the start of a new month on my blog (getting to start a new folder called 'December' really seems to 'do it for me' - note to self: really must get out more) I'm not quite ready for this.

My arrangements - presents to be purchased; kids' trip to UK and all preparations that that entails; articles I've promised, to be written; Grotto to be made (please don't ask); website to be updated and surely some more I can't remember right now - have all got to be done by 13 December, before kids fly and I go off to my Skyros course.

So instead of panicking I'm going to pretend to be all serene and show you some lovely pictures of Christmas I've spotted in Bangkok over the last two weeks. Aren't they gorgeous? Don't they work hard to sell us Christians stuff, I mean, to make a lovely Christmas atmosphere?