Goodness, it is hot here! My thermometer, which was never very reliable, simply cannot cope. My mornings over coffee and books on the balcony have been somewhat curtailed; the other morning, by 7.30 it was too hot to sit out. And today it is simply too hot and sticky to be able to contemplate doing anything other than sit around. Maybe this evening after the afternoon rains, which come about 4pm I might raise the energy to go into town, or at least totter out to a local stall to buy some fruit. We are getting plenty of rain…about 8 to 10 hours in total most days…..or most nights, to be more correct, since that is when the majority of it falls. The insects are enjoying the weather, as are, I imagine, the manufacturers of insect spray.
When getting into bed at night it is a wise precaution to see what might already be there and to brush the sheets down. Failure to do the latter can leave you with the sense that you are a sleeping in a bed where someone has been eating toast….lots of little hard, crunchy bits. The ants are busy, busy, busy, womble-like clearing up the remains of larger insects. I am assured that the very annoying and stupid creatures that are part moth, part fly, which are attracted by the light, and at dusk arrive in vast numbers are very tasty, but I am content to leave them to the ants. I was also advised earlier today that the large beetle which I was pushing out of the door, was very good food when fried.
On the subject of food, I have had my first pineapple of the season. It was small but very sweet. Despite assurances I am not sure that they are local. However, in a few days time business will take me through the ‘pineapple village’ which might answer the question one way or the other. I am afraid that for vegetable fans, I do not have a lot to report this week. I have had a big coffin-like seed tray made, but don’t have any soil for it yet. The lemon is hanging on, and the newly planted tomato seeds have not, after all, been washed away. The dill is about to take over the world and I need to replant them soon. I will save a photo of the chillies for another day as I have rather a lot of photos this week.
The other week I mentioned how beautiful the blossom on the trees was. As I feared, the rains treated them unkindly and these photos do not show the trees at their best.
As you can see from the following, the rains provide a very welcome distraction for the kids.
The potholes should attract at least as many fans as the vegetables. I think there must be some plan to join up all the potholes to make some new leisure facility. The egg box continues to earn its keep and more so, as the holes down the main road from me become both deeper and more numerous. Walking down the road is a bit scary as when the tuk-tuks reach the low ground which has attracted the majority of the holes, they engage in a wild zig zag manoeuvre, looking as if they are totally out of control as they endeavour to avoid the holes. . I think that Blackburn, Lancashire will soon lose its reputation as the pothole capital of the world.
The other morning a huge group of villagers formed a working party to clear the ground and dig holes for posts for a new fence for the school. I would have joined in but the group was so numerous that the task only took 5 or 6 minutes and it was completed before I had really thought about what I might do. Sadly, there was a flaw; a very Lao flaw in the project. There was no money to buy the cement for the postholes. AHA ! A cunning plan emerges, ‘Let’s ask the rich falang’. Oh…but when he declined to part with $100 there was, of course no Plan B.
I declined for many reasons…the lack of $100 being the most obvious. Had I been given some notice I might have been able to help out a bit…but why? I am far from convinced that the most pressing need in the village is a fence for the school, although oddly I shall be the only beneficiary, since it will stop the ball coming into my sitting room when someone scores a goal. But isn’t $100 a rather large and a rather round sum anyway just for some cement? Surely they could have had it stolen from a building site for much less than that? I wonder if they asked the Director of Education, whose new house is also being built adjacent to the school, for a donation?
So we may have to have a Lao solution to a Lao problem, and that is that nothing will be done, and the rains, as almost a year ago when they last dug the holes, will fill them in again. Now, why does not the rain fill in the potholes….except with water?
I am still unsure of the purpose of the fence; is it to keep people in or to keep people out? Or maybe someone with some influence has come by some fencing material and needs to offload it? Oh that reminds me. I very ungallantly suggested last week that the votes in the election had been counted before they had been cast. Whoops. Sorry, I got that wrong. They have still not been counted. Well, not to the authority’s satisfaction anyway. I assume that counting will go on until the correct result is achieved. This may mean counting some votes many times, which of course, may take a while.
But, oh …. Yet again I stand to be corrected. Minutes after writing the above, a group of novice monks wearing baseball hats and wielding wheelbarrows and other appliances have arrived and adopted fence building mode. Now I am never on sure ground when it comes to Buddhist theory, but the making of paths, rather than the erection of walls and fences seems to fit more easily with the Dharma. One, in fact has a sun hat that would not look out of place on a Caribbean cricket ground.
Extraordinarily, it is exactly a year since I first published my blog. The blog was preceded for several weeks by a regular email with a similar title, but this is edition number 49 of the blog itself. This means that from now on I do not need to write any new material, but shall just recycle last year’s old news and assume that nobody will notice. Looking back I see that the first edition featured insects, the lack of tourists, builders, novice monks, road traffic accidents. It all sounds terribly familiar somehow, but it does not feel like a year ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment