The Lady of the Flies

The lady in question runs a meat stall at the end of the provision market. She arrives in the morning with her meat in a chiller box and then sets it out for the day with no refrigeration.  By 4pm there is a black cloud over her stall and the flies and bluebottle are busy laying their eggs. So numerous are they that she does not bother to engage in the usual routine of a gentle waft of a plastic back on the end of a stick. And people are buying! I can only assume that they get a special deal; buy a kilo of meat and you can have the flies for free.

There will be no photos on this week’s blog as I have loaned my camera again. This time to Novice Khamphay who is paying a visit home for a week or so. This seems to have impacted on the progress of the Hmong granny to the skies. In any event it has been postponed again, I suspect caused by the absence of the camera to record this momentous event. Since writing that I have learned that in fact she did make it to the skies.  Travel through the ether was possible, but other forms of travel were not as the village was cut off after overnight storms.

We have had quite a lot of rain in the last few days; but mostly constant, rather than monsoon-like. I spent a very relaxing few hours on Saturday just watching and listening to the rain; very peaceful, if a little Freudian. The peace was eventually brought to an end by building works further up the lane. First of a pick-up truck carrying some kind of drilling equipment arrived.  There was an initial delay in unloading this as the sight of a falang watching the operation was every bit as fascinating for the delivery guys as the delivery was for me. (The watcher, watched) The drill was mounted on a kind of tractor, which was offloaded by the simple means of putting it into reverse, easing it to the top of a ramp and then running like Hell out of the way as it dropped to the ground.

That arrival was followed by something more substantial. A large rusting object with  a grille, pipes and what looked like a boiler. I think it might have been an ex Russian space launcher. When another a lorry arrived containing 4 toilets it became clear that if this was the first Lao space launch, then there would be no unnecessary queues for the toilets.  (Pause for  Lao joke; At the UN the Russian, Chinese and Lao delegates were discussing space travel. The Russian was boasting about the achievements of Russia and the old Soviet Union. The Chinese declared that next year they would have a man on the moon. Fretting at this, the Lao delegate said, “On the moon?  Pha..that is nothing; next year we shall have a man on the sun.” The others looked at him, and said, “The sun?   But it will be far too hot.”. “Ah, we have thought of that”, said the Lao delegate, “we shall go in the evening”.)

It has been instructive to literally over look a building site. I am sure that this is common across the globe and not just a local phenomenon, but it apparent that  there is one member of the team delegated  not to assist in the construction process but to remove as much of the building materials as they can decently manage without the owners noticing. In this team a lady builder is charged with that responsibility...yes, I assume that a lady is dispensable should there be any trouble. Clearly they have a ready client not far away, as whenever they are mixing cement; she wheels away  wheel barrow after barrow of the stuff to some other location. I must admit that I could use a barrow load myself to tidy up a little pipe laying job........

There are also road builders at work at the bottom of the lane, improving the made up road. I suppose as soon as it was known that the Provincial Minister of Education was building a house here road improvements were likely.

I recall that I promised vegetable lovers a treat this week. It is a shame there I have no photos, but I am sure you have all seen vegetables?  They tend to be green, or sometimes  rather dirty as though someone found them in the ground. I have just sown some dill, which I bought in the 99p shop in London. I am not holding my breath for its future. The tomatoes  (yes, yes, ok..they are not green, dirty, or even vegetables) have more or less finished, some of the last ones going into homemade tomato soup.  I am not an  unbiased witness but the soup was excellent, apart from the colour. I defer to Messrs Heinz and Campbell when it comes to the bright orange colour of their soup, but at least my own paler version contained no E numbers or colouring agents, unless a small quantity of Californian Burgundy falls into one of those categories.  Come to think of it, have you ever seen a tomato the colour of tinned tomato soup? Anyway, I guess it’s time I sowed some more.

Some chillies are now ready from cropping, but given the small number of chillies I get through in the course of a week I shall passing most of the crop on to others. The flowers on the peppers are getting rather large and spectacular, which leads me to fear that they may not be peppers at all, but cuckoos in the nest which  have forced out the original seedlings. But we shall see. Lao and Thai readers....do you have cuckoos?  They are a bird which lays its eggs in other nests, disguised to look like the eggs already in the nest. Once it lays them it then clears off, leaving foster parents to cope with the task of brining up a greedy and much larger bird.

 The lemon, also not a vegetable, continues to be a sickly  child. Maybe I should re-pot it, which  in one way or another should bring things to  a head.

In the markets now there are sweet, if rather small cantaloupe melons. I am assured that the pineapples which are making an increasing appearance are local ones, but I am unconvinced and shall not be buying for a week or two yet.

I had a slight delay in completing this letter this week because of IT problems. I will not bore you with the technical details but suffice to ask if any of you have had an infestatation of ants in your keyboard? They could not be tempted out so I am using a free standing keyboard. Somehow it feels like in cricket batting with a runner.

 OK, short and sweet this week.

Alan