Introducing Leo

Regular readers might remember the demise of poor old Flicka, my parents’ dog back in November 08.

Several dogless weeks passed and then my sister spotted a notice about a litter of local puppies that would soon be ready for homes. She and our Dad set out to have a look. And that’s how they found him. Both parents are working dogs: Dad is a gun dog and Mum, a sheep dog. Leo is a love but I think he might be crossed with a kangaroo as well.

He has had a colourful few months at my Mum and Dad’s. At Easter he broke through the Fort Knox type gate across the bottom of the stairs and stole a chocolate egg. For anyone who doesn’t know, chocolate contains theobromine which is dangerous for dogs. Poor Leo was horribly unwell for three days. I’ll spare you the details, just in case any of you are eating, but the kitchen tiles had to be removed and destroyed … as you can see from the pic the floor has returned to some tiles I remember from my childhood.

There are four cats here. Two, HP and Ketchup, are my parents’ and the other two, Peanut and Custard, are my sister’s. Custard is sweet but aptly named: cowardy, cowardy Custard. He lives upstairs and accesses the garden through a series of catflaps that never require him to come face to face with a canine. HP and Ketch are elderly and pretty stoical about the bouncing dog; they’re buggered if they’re going to run from him.

A couple of days ago Peanut came over the stair gate and Leo appeared from nowhere, 0-80mph from prostrate. Peanut, claws attempting purchase on the lino, reacted with a run toward the kitchen, where Dad was making supper. On hearing the commotion of scrabbling paws, Dad turned in time to see Peanut take flight from nearly two metres away. He glided through the air, landing out of the dog’s reach, on the kitchen table, with one paw in the shepherd’s pie.

Last night Leo started obedience training.

Hello again

I’ve had a lovely break but I think I’m back now.

I’ve been in the UK for a bit over a week and I have a bit under a week remaining. The weather – as you can see from yesterday’s post – has been beautiful though often chilly after the 40° heat I left in Bangkok. (Never have I been so grateful to get away…) The days are disappearing fast and I fear I won’t catch up with everyone I had hoped to see. Still, the kids and I are back at the end of June…

I’ve been doing some of the dutiful daughter tasks that are impossible to do from Bangkok. I took Dad to the hospital, the dog to the vet, then the dog back to the vet, picked up and dropped off nieces, shopped for my Mum… In between those duties I’ve managed two days in London.

One day I met friends at the London Book Fair (oh I can but dream…) and waylaid Becky Swift and Jess of The Literary Consultancy with whom I am doing my mentoring. It was so nice to meet them. I also met up with Leigh, who I already knew and SueG, HelenMH and DJ, none of whom I had met in the flesh before. We had a lovely, relaxed time among all things bookish. The following day I met another friend. We had gorgeous food which made up for the decidedly dodgy sandwich at LBF.

My sister and I made a 24 hour dash to Wiltshire to see our brother. We squeezed it in between dropping nieces with their Dad and getting back to the village for my sister’s band practice. The trip involved gorgeous food (more than I could imagine possible in only twenty four hours) and a hike up a hill, which I doubt offset the quantity of food.

Tomorrow I'll check in with news of my parents' gorgeous new puppy, Leo. Finally, a picture: I’ve had my hair cut (hurrah), I’ve bought a few bits of clothing and *cough* one or two books. One pile is new books and the other is secondhand.

Colours of Kent

Interruption to blog break

I'm just interrupting my blog break to say thank you for the comments and emails checking that we're safe. We are all safe, thank you, though it feels more volatile than before.

None of this has really gone away since the previous trouble with the yellow shirts last Autumn but it's been confined to the areas around Government House. This time it's the red shirts' turn. I don't tend to cover politics here and I don't want to start now, but if you're interested you can find out here what's going on.

On Saturday we were home in the apartment but could hear lots of racket from the street. Loudspeakers letting us know the fruit sellers are coming up the soi are quite normal so at first I didn't think much of it. Eventually I got up to look out the window. We're 25 floors up and could hear the hollering and honking clearly. It wasn't fruit sellers, it was the red shirts:

This is the first time the politics has been so close to our home. We don't live far from the PM's house, either, and yesterday on the way back from Sunday lunch at the pub, the streets around his home were full of police and soldiers.

It's currently Songkran here - Thai New Year. This is probably the most important festival of the year here. It doesn't feel so cheerful with these riots going on in the city and may even contribute to the temperamental atmosphere.

(I fly to the UK on Saturday night but confess to feeling nervous about separating myself from the family.)

Newsflash!

I’m taking a blog break.

I’m tired and a bit bored with myself.

I’m struggling with my book and need to concentrate on that for a bit. I shall continue to read blogs but I'm not sure about commenting. I will update my wordmeter and reading material.

Blogging has become more of a pressure than fun, which is no good at all.

I don’t know if it’ll be three days or three weeks that I am away for. I will be in the UK for the last two weeks in April. I suspect that it will be so exciting to be there again that I’ll have lots to say.

I hope to see you back here soon.

The truth is...

Big thanks to Jane Smith at How Publishing Really Works for her Pitch Party yesterday. It was a tremendous idea and discovering some new blogs cheered up my otherwise dreary (and somewhat bad-tempered) Sunday.

Thank you to everyone who came by to Tea Stains. My apologies for not acknowledging your comments instantly but I was straight off to the hospital this morning with no time for niceties! I will get on with it soon.

It’s not my favourite appointment of the year. No, no it’s nothing really nasty *whispers: not gruesome or anything yucky* but a fasting blood test. That’s all it is. It’s not the needle that bothers me or the lack of eating (fast for 8-10 hours) or even the waiting around in the hospital for the results so I can see the doc with up to date information. No, what I hate about the fasting blood test is the fact that I can’t have a cup of tea until the blood has been taken.

So today I’ve spent from 9am until 2pm at the hospital. (From 9.10 – 1.50 I was pretty much non-stop consuming tea.) In between being drained of blood (do they really need so much? Is it any wonder that I’m chronically anaemic?) and seeing the doc, I tried to write.

All the while, I was worrying. Worrying, not just about the results of my sugar test but also about promising Doc faithfully three months ago, that I would try to lose weight. And I haven’t. Well, I’ve thought about it… you know, for three months…)

And when a Thai wants to tell you that you need to lose weight, they just tell you: “you’re fat.” It’s a fact so they tell you and that’s okay here. In Thailand, there are all sorts of subjects that we westerners are coy about (commenting on weight is just one.) It’s absolutely fine to ask people (strangers!) how much they earn; how much do they pay for the apartment; why they haven’t got children; how old they are? I could go on and on.

Here’s the catch, if someone in the UK called another person fat, they would be offended. It’s rude; we just don’t do it. In Thailand there’s no intent to hurt and while I flinch inwardly, I can't take away my own cultural responses. HOW can it not be offensive? I know it’s simply one of those cultural differences that I can’t get my head around. I don't like it, but there's no point in showing my displeasure.

The thing I quoted to my children when we came here was about the Asian habit of spitting. We think that’s disgusting and yet they think our blowing the contents of our noses into a tissue/hankie that we return to our pocket to use again later, absolutely repulsive. And you can see why, can’t you?

The King and I

I was out of sorts yesterday so I went out to the cinema. I went to Siam Paragon, one of the big flashy malls here.

I got in the lift at the basement level.

Two ‘bomb squad’ men got out on the ground floor.

On the mezzanine floor, two firemen got in. It was only then that I started to wonder if I should abort my plans to go to the cinema. (Though you might not see it on the news, we are still having political demos here – this time, it’s the other side, the red shirts.) The firemen travelled up to the 5th floor with me.

The cinema lobby didn’t look immediately different from normal, though looking back it was busy for a weekday. It took me some time to realise that most of the people were in an assortment of uniforms.

I queued for my ticket. I’m used to living my life in a certain ignorance or maybe it's oblivion; remember this is a foreign country. The subliminal messages don’t always get through because my spoken Thai is pitiful (my reading Thai is non existent) and I can’t perceive the subtle differences that we take for granted in our home country.

There were securities everywhere: security staff, naval uniforms with gold epaulets, army soldiers, (mostly) men in dark suits, police, Paragon security staff and more cinema staff than normal.

I asked the boy on the ticket office 'is someone special here?' He leant forward conspiratorially, motioned with his hand and says ‘the King is over there.’

OMG! Only a few feet away. Only a white sheet and several hundred security staff separated us.

There's an excellent article here from Jonathan Head, the BBC correspondent for this region, who explains why the Thai King is so revered here.








My deduction (the man dressed as an elephant gave it away) was that The King was attending a function to do with a Thai animation film, Khan Kluay 2. The blurb at Movieseer says: ‘Khan Kluay 2 is set after the victory of Ayudhya against the invasion of the powerful Burmese Empire when Khan Kluay is appointed as King Naresuan's royal elephant and services the king in many battles.’