Theatre trips

I’ve been to theatre twice in the last ten days.

I went to see Chicago last week. Husband and I saw it years ago in London even though musicals aren’t really our thing. (I think he only went to see the London show because of fishnet stockings and Denise Van Outen’s legs. They were damn fine legs.) Anyway, it’s a great show, fabulous dancing and really funny with it (“He ran into my knife! He ran into my knife… ten times.”)

Then last night I went to see a production of Vagina Monologues. I’d seen this in London too, though not with Husband who simply isn’t brave enough for it. A lot of the first half is funny and the second half is harder hitting; in my opinion it requires experienced actresses (and/or directors) to draw the comedy out. Timing has to be spot on. I think it was the first night but they were plagued with technical problems, mics not working and so on. Interestingly it was part in Thai (with English subtitles) and part in English (with Thai subtitles.) Brave, I thought, but I’m not sure it worked. (Although one of the best monologues was a Thai woman doing the piece about Japanese comfort women in WWII. I was reading the subtitles and half watching her and despite only picking up odd words of Thai, she was bloody marvellous; really harrowing.)

But, the audiences in both shows, though, were shockingly behaved: talking, chatting, using mobile phones, leaving the auditorium mid act, and last night, opening a bottle of champagne!

I tell you, it brings out the ogre in me. It does, it makes me FURIOUS. I think I’m going to have to make a concerted effort to get my theatre fix when I come back to the UK in future.

Friday Photo

Beefcake:

I made the driver stop on the side of the road when I saw this gorgeous chap out of my window.

But what is he? The Thai driver said he was 'beef.' Why does he have a hump on his back like a camel?

I tried to google 'cow with hump' to find out what he was ... but it didn't produce quite the results I hoped for.

Scoff is getting complicated

The first time Daughter went vegetarian she was seven. Her resolve lasted three hours until we served lamb at Sunday lunch.

The second time she was nine. She lasted eighteen months and Chinese food was her downfall.

About eighteen months ago she told us she would be turning vegetarian again on her thirteenth birthday. That was last Tuesday.

Now the thing is, Daughter loves meat (like her father) but she thinks it’s wrong to eat it. I have absolutely no problem with this; she’s always known her own mind and I’m proud of her.

I have two concerns: one is that as a thirteen year old she has enough protein and iron in her diet to compensate for the lack of meat. That one’s okay because it’s up to us to ensure. The second is that I now need to organise meals that can accommodate two rabid meat eaters, one vegetarian and me, who’ll eat both or either happily.

I don’t believe multiple meals should be prepared – but is anyone else catering for the same problem and have you any advice?

Her birthday meal

Phad Thai which we usually eat with meat in but not this time. It usually has tofu in, which would've been good, but not this time!

Did we or didn't we?

A few months ago, The British Women’s Group gave some money to the Elephant Conservation Network for equipment. I went up to stay in Kanchanaburi last weekend with my family to present the equipment to their rangers who were in dire need of the kit.

During our correspondence, Belinda, their Director said ‘Just so you know, you probably won’t see any elephants…” Weeeell, okay, I wasn’t only going to see elephants, but really to hand over their equipment … Still, I thought it’s better to be prepared … manage your expectations, and all that. Then Belinda said ‘You will see lots of shit and footprints.”

Good, okay, then. Did you know that elephants crap every ninety minutes?

There are about 170 elephants in the Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary and each mature adult requires between 200 and 300 kg of food EVERY DAY. That’s a lot of poo.

Elephants are hugely important in Thailand. They are royal, religious and national icons but they are still threatened by growing human population. Human elephant conflict is a big problem. The forests, the elephants’ home, have been encroached upon, exploited and developed. Now this means that the quality of food available in the forest is diminished and the elephants crop raid (they eat local farmers’ crops) which cheeses the farmers off, quite understandably.

Elephant Conservation Network is an NGO working alongside local people, other NGOs, local and national government agencies to find solutions to these problems.

So did we see an elephant? We certainly saw lots of poo. Belinda told me she’d never seen an elephant in the daytime up at the ranger station, but Pi Nui, the head ranger, said that a young bull elephant had wandered into the camp just the day before!

On the way back from our tour … we did see an elephant. Can you see the elephant shaped thing behind the heads and the trees?







Click to make it larger
if you can't see it.

And the worst mother award, goes to....

First of all I’ve got to say Happy Birthday to Daughter (my youngest) who has become a teenager today!

And that, she says segueing neatly, is why I’m too geriatric to be camping … in tents … ‘luxurious’ or otherwise. (If you missed yesterday’s post, you need to scroll down to read it for this to make sense.)

It doesn’t look bad, does it? It wasn’t bad as tents go … I just prefer not to go anywhere near tents any more …unless they’re beer tents, wedding marquees or possibly, as a customer, the WI jam tent … and only then for raspberry jam with the pips left in.

The British Women’s Group donated some money to an NGO, the Elephant Conservation Network to provide desperately needed equipment for the rangers. Nobody was available from the welfare group to attend the handing over of the equipment so the invitation was put to the rest of the committee. We had cancelled a weekend in Kanchanaburi only a few weeks before – we wanted to walk the Hellfire Pass – so we decided it would be an ideal opportunity to go and see where the BWG money had gone.

So that’s why nine people were crammed into a pick up truck and bumping over four wheel drive terrain toward the rangers’ station in a forest in Kanchanaburi, home to 170 wild elephants. The four children were in the back; the five adults in the cab. I had expressed concern at the safety of this but as you can see from this picture, as well as myriad others of men using pneumatic drills in flip flops etc, health and safety in Thailand? Pah. I was shouted down. I made them promise to hold on tightly.

Half an hour of being jiggered and jolted over rivers, up and down banks, through falls of bamboo, we arrived safely at the rangers’ station. The children beamed at their adventure and Son announced that the ride alone was worth coming to Kanchanaburi for.

(Tomorrow I will tell you about the elephants, presenting the equipment etc but as I don’t want to tease you any further, we’ll crack on to the x-ray part of the anecdote - sorry.)

Eventually it was time to leave to meet our car back at the guard station by the roadside, so we all climbed back into the pick up. Daughter asked if she could use my sunglasses as the dust was bad in the open back.

The terrain prevented us from going fast but it’s flatter at this point so we’ve picked up some speed to maybe 25 mph. I guess we’re half way through the forest and suddenly there’s a banging on the pick up roof, B hits the brakes and comes to a stop. Daughter leaps out of the back of the truck to retrieve my sunglasses. The dust trail billows, catching up with the pick-up, I squirm as Daughter wipes the grit over my lenses. Then we’re on our way.

A minute or so later someone bangs on the roof again. I think ‘oh god, why can’t she keep hold of them?’ There are more hands this time, more urgency. I turn to look into the back. ‘Oh my god, it’s a child … it’s Son.’

Daughter’s out the truck in no time, followed by Husband and I and then the rest of our party. We stand around in a circle, looking at Son who is lying, groaning, on his back among dried bamboo leaves; ochre dust wafting around him...

So dear readers, this is how I won the worst mother of the year award: nominated, accepted and declared out right winner.

Next stop Kanchanaburi Memorial Hospital. Son is declared unfractured, given some pain killers, because oddly he hurts all over and allowed to go on his way.

A tent is a tent, right?

Husband, having been a boy, loves camping. When we were students, our first holidays together were camping trips. For the first one, based in Hull, we borrowed a tiny tent and drove off to the Lake District in search of Roman artefacts. (I will never forget trying to find Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England. We stopped Marigold, my bright orange car, by a dry stone wall: ‘Do you think this is it?’)

Husband - or Boyfriend as he was at the time – wanted to ‘rough it.’ He longed to camp in the mountains, hunting and foraging for food to provide for me. There must be something deep in his psyche as this wasn’t particularly a feature of our relationship. Luckily I camped as a child and I’ve always despised campsites that have lots of facilities: a TV room, swimming pool, showers, a shop and a restaurant. That’s not proper camping! However I wasn’t willing to skin rabbits either.

We usually compromised on a farmer’s field with loo and a spidery shower by way of facilities. One campsite in the Isle of Wight was just a field and we had to walk to a local pub for anything more serious than a pee. This type of site just about fulfilled Husband’s yearning to be caveman. Back in the Lake District, another place was perfect - the farmer appeared early in the morning with fresh eggs. Oh joy. And Husband’s desire to provide meant that he got up to make breakfast (every time). No wonder I married him.

Once, we got complacent about our ability to find suitable sites and left it too late in the day. We couldn’t find a site anywhere so we had to beg a publican to let us camp in their garden. He wasn’t keen but we promised to be up and out early in the morning. Another great place was a cheese farm in Cheddar which we stayed in for several days: years later we took the children back to the same site for their first camping trip. One place, though I can’t remember where it was, one of the other idiots in the field left a gate open and our field filled with sheep during the night. We had our dog Pepper with us on that trip and she woke us by bouncing around inside the walls of the tiny two man tent at the sound of the sheep.

Anyway, memories of my camping holidays weren’t what I was going to tell you about. Ever since we came to Thailand, Husband has been espousing Thai campsites, which, he assured me, were luxurious. I’ve all but lost interest in camping. It’s true, it’s great fun but when you’re young but it’s hard work when you’re older and I need my comforts.

But that was how I found myself this last weekend in a hotel/campsite in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, and now I’ve run out of space. Tomorrow I’ll have to tell you about our tent, the wild elephants, how I won the worst mother of the year award and the trip to casualty for skull and spine x-rays.

Friday Photo

Two Men and a Baby

Phew, at least they're wearing helmets...