Traffic Jam Tomorrow!

Traffic, Aberdeen harbour, Hong Kong, a few years back.

It seems that nowadays anyone and everyone blogs… John does and Joe blogs too. So I think I must be one of the last to take up this new perversion and I’ve still got a lot to learn about all its log ins and outs.

Every writer wants his stuff to be read and in blogging terms that means maximizing the hits on your site and generating more ‘traffic’. Trouble is I’ve no idea how to achieve this. Can anyone tell me what I should do? What’s an RSS feed for example?

I’m fascinated though by my site meter which tells me I’m getting well in excess of a hundred hits a day. There’s even a world map decorated with pin pricks of light which tells me where all my readers are, the bulk of them being in Europe and America which is not surprising, while only a minority are in Thailand.

Most fascinating of all is that if I click on ‘referrals’, my ever helpful site meter tells me exactly how my readers found my blog. Some come from other sites that link to me, such as www.thaigirl2004.com, the site for my novel, ‘Thai Girl’, but the majority arrive via Google and Yahoo searches. What’s so magic is that I can click on any referral in the list and call up their actual search, including the key words searched and the full search result. Usually somewhere at the top of the sites displayed among the millions is my very own www.thaigirl2004.blogspot.com. That way I can see exactly how they found my blog.

Admittedly the term ‘Thai girl’ is sometimes relevant to their searches and as I’ve written ‘of beavers and butterflies’, about ‘when the earth was virgin and bountiful’, about how ‘my laptop was fingered in Pantip Plaza,’ and that ‘my Thai pussy cat is in fact a tiger,’ some of those drawn to my blog might have left a little disappointed. On the other hand, most searchers are looking for something quite serious or literary and stumble upon me by pure serendipity.

Some of the searches that found my blog have been questions, for example…
- What is in the life of the rice fields?
- What are Isuzu D-Max prices in Bangkok like?
- Should I buy a house for my teerak? And,
- How do you get the fog from a cold drink out of the inside of a Toshiba laptop screen?

I don’t think they always found the answers, though I hope the ‘exotic adventures of a literary sexagenarian’ proved to be a good read. If any of the actually read it, that is.

One such person did read my site though. He then emailed to tell me he’d Googled ‘mango trees Thailand’ as his wife wanted to plant a mango orchard and the search turned up my story, ‘There Go the Mango Trees’. He’d enjoyed reading the blogs and now wanted to find a copy of my novel, “Thai Girl”. What a nice guy he was!

Bizarrely, somebody else Googled, ‘amazing similies’, and hit on my comment, ‘Amazing Thailand! It truly is the Land of Similies!’ Google searches for ‘Delhi girls expats’ and ‘expatriate life Nigeria’ found me too, and there’ve been some even odder ones…
- Thai boxing girl blog.
- Urban allergies,
- Glossy Pantip label,
- You are my special island song,
- Street fight girl gets hit with a bottle,
- Unbearable lightness of being Thai language,
- Say rat in Thai.

If these folks are so easily distracted by my site, they must be terminally bored or else lack concentration. It seems odd that while doing some internet research, of the millions of sites that pop up on their searches, they then find time to open my modest blogspot. Why?

Are they lost souls? Should some of them, you even, thus be regarded as objects of my sympathy? Have I added a little joy to their day, to the sum of human happiness even… or did they find me thoroughly irritating? I have absolutely no idea.

A time long ago my life was kidnapped and I was chained to a desk in a law firm for several bleak years, never seeing the light of day. I remember the time sheets on which I had to account for my every six minutes so that my time could be charged out to clients at the usual outrageous rate. In those days we had a new gizmo called a ‘fax’, guarded in the basement along with Charles Dickens’ divorce papers by a she-dragon called Mrs Peed.

The internet was still far off then, but had I as a solicitor been able to Google , ‘Nigerian law of hire-purchase’, the blog, www.thaigirl2004.blogspot.com would have appeared right at the top of my search. If so I’d surely have allowed myself to drift away for several billable hours on the whimsical bloggery of a deranged, expat sexagenarian from Thailand. I might have hit lucky and been sacked for doing so, though more likely I’d have charged the wasted time to one of my files. Putting their depressive solicitor in a better mood is surely a useful objective for any commercial client.

Sadly, as I remained too long in that job, I now wonder if perhaps I should launch a mission to present my blog to the tormented souls still toiling at desks who long for a breath of fresh air, a whiff of Thai drains and durian even, during the long, arid watch of their working day. If I planted some arbitrary key words on my blog, perhaps I could entrap them when Google finds my blogspot, and perhaps enliven their day.

Thus if I now type Goldman Sachs or Ernst & Young, IPO or auditors’ liability, do you think some sad City man might stumble into my den and perhaps stay awhile? Could I subvert him into wasting time and reading a few paragraphs of my self-indulgent world? Should I seed my blog with verbal bait to get myself served up as innocent 'R and R' in chance Google searches?

For the doctors, I think I’d have to mention myocardial infarction, infectious mononucleosis, MRI, ICU and osteoporosis. Laparoscopy, lithotripsy, hysterectomy and hemorrhoids, if I can spell them. Barbaric, hyperbaric, BCG, CAT and CT, in-growing toenails and housemaid’s knee. Harold Shipman, Dr.Terror, BMJ and BMA should trap a few.

For the lawyer in his garret, I can offer the Companies Act 2006, Hicks and Goo, (yes, why not Google Goo!), enlightened shareholder value, Registrar of Companies, disclosure, dividends, directors, derivative claims, financial assistance, Foss v Harbottle, written resolutions, quoted company, computerized billing, collective madness. All my trials lord, soon be over!

Accountants are surely in need of roll-over relief and distraction too. Let’s try independent valuation of non-cash consideration, audit exemption, share premium account, capital allowances, discounted cash flow valuation, accounting reference periods, EEA group accounts, operating and financial review, corporate governance, Cadbury, Greenbury and Myners, and death creeping slowly up behind you, with no allowance for depreciation.

I’m sure the faddists would love ‘Thai Girl’ too, so I’ll seduce them with sustainability, organic food and orgasmic food, fast food and slow food, McDonalds and Kentucky Fried, pesticides, hormones, fertilizer and anti-biotics… yum! Global warming, carbon dioxide, shrinking ice cap, Dutch cap. Kyoto, Live Earth, AC/DC, Kevin Wall, Berlin Wall, Al Gore, algorithm, blood and gore, Gore and Bush, bore and gush. Adopt a whale, hug a tree, read ‘Thai Girl’ and die.

Ecstasy, Viagra, excrement, Niagara, beri beri and pellagra. Vitamin C. Senokots. Evening primrose oil. Sperm whale juice. Irritable bowel syndrome, colonic irrigation. Homeopath, telepathy, Home Office pathologist, pathological liar, psychopath, gender reassignment, fender bender, gay rights and wrongs. It’s the same old song. Stream of semi-consciousness, Dublin and rejoice. But now I digress too far!

Then there’s oceans of attractive initials that must often get Googled. There’s RSJ and RSI, CFS and DDT, PTSD, VD and STD. Subscriber trunk dialing or sexually transmitted disease. EU, ET, ED… European Union, extra terrestrial, erectile disfunction. I can list so many ‘e’s, from A to Z.

There’s the Environment Agency, the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, electrical engineering and exempli gratia for example. El Nino, environmental management, La Vie En Rose. Emotional quotient, Elizabeth Regina, exposure values, your ‘ex’ (the former trouble and strife). Oh to be Ernst & Young again, finally to sleep easily, perchance to dream that they’ll hit my blog and tarry awhile. Yes, I could go on ad nauseam.

But do you think I should really be doing all this? Would these key words actually find me and enliven somebody’s day or is this just a pipe dream? Will it make me a little merit in the next life? Or will the one true scorer already know about blogging and suss out that I’m just trying to get more traffic for my blog? Another red tick perhaps on the debit side of my eternal balance sheet?

I’m now going to watch the referrals on my site meter to see if my cunning plan works and I’ll let you know what happens later on. As to whether I get the thumbs down on judgment day, I hope you’re going to have to wait a little bit longer!

Music For a Monk

In the middle of the day we dedicated the new wooden house, I was feeling a bit ragged after my early start and was only wanting to hide awhile and play the ‘new’ Nick Drake album, ‘Family Tree' his sister Gabrielle had just sent me. But I was drowned out by some extremely loud music in the next soi. At first it came from the west, but I soon realized it was moving and so must be part of a procession. Giving up on Nick Drake, I got on my bicycle and went out to see what was happening.

The procession or mob more like was coming up the soi at the back of our house, so I turned left to meet it head on. I’m well past culture shock in these parts but it was more than a bit intimidating coming head to head with and confronting a noisy mob of young drunks, shouting their heads of, baying at the farang as if he were a green faced creature from Mars. In the narrow land, I was soon engulfed by them, juggling my bicycle and trying to take some photos at the same time.

It was soon pretty apparent what the procession was all about… it was the sacred and the profane. Sitting up on top of a slow moving pickup, his head shaven and in priestly robes sat an androgynous young man on his way to the temple to be inducted as a monk. It has long been the tradition in Thailand for all young men to become monks, even for a month or two, either as a planned event or perhaps on the death of a parent, and it’s yet another excuse for a big party.

Here he now was, cool and serene amidst the loud music coming from the huge speakers and generator following him in the next pickup, ignoring the raucous mob that surrounded the procession.

Nobody could accuse this celebration of religiosity or of being boring, but as so often in Thailand the contrasts were stark. This was a religious display as serious as anywhere else and deeply imbued in the local culture, but equally it had to be sanuk, noisy and irrepressible fun. And fun it certainly was, such fun that I was almost scared… but then I was probably the only one who was stone cold sober.

I was glad to get out to see it, but equally relieved to be back to the house to listen to Nick Drake whose new album issued more than thirty years after his death couldn’t have been more different. (See www.brytermusic.com.)

My New Cleaning Weapon from Gemany

As an afficionado of the mal apropos, especially in relation to businesses such as the above, I have to share with you the follwing. As my 'Black Man' brand mop is worn out, I bought a new squeezy style mop at Big C in Surin yesterday. I was thrilled when I examined the label.

It's a Panasional brand mop this time, which claims to be a 'cleaning weapon super absorb water raw material is coming from Gemany. This Germany sponge features don't need sunburn.'

Well, that's good, I guess. It's worth the ninety baht in laughs, at least!

And Cat bought a new tee shirt, the brand name being, 'QR Updated Ladies'. Nice one, Big C!

Dedicating Our Wooden House - Part II

It’s now early morning on the day of the ritual to inaugurate our new wooden house and all is activity. There are legions of ladies preparing food on the big bamboo tables and people everywhere milling around and chatting. There’s as many children as adults, always playing happily, which adds to that special rural sense of family and regeneration.

There’s a big crisis on hand though because Q, the young lad who’s been doing some of the carpentry, block work, tiling and electrics, a typical Jack of all trades, has just switched off the power to both houses and is striding from house to house, looking tight lipped and grim. He’s just discovered something drastic along the loose white cable that runs power down the boundary fence to the new wooden house. I now belatedly remember to tell Cat about the bolt of lightning in the dead of night that must have been not God’s but our electrics shorting out. She looks at me as if I’m mad.

‘Why you not tell me this before,’ she says, but like all such little local difficulties, the problem’s soon resolved and the power is on again with no fatalities recorded.

Cat now tells me that things are about to start in earnest and there’s already a small knot of oldies milling around the bottom of the stairs of the new wooden house. There’s Cat’s Mum, an old aunt, an even older uncle and Cat’s brother, Saniam, looking rather distinguished in the spectacles I bought for him at the one pound shop in Aberayron last summer. And of course there’s Cat’s great uncle who’s as old as the hills.

I wrote about this old man earlier, under the title, ‘There Go the Mango Trees!’, about this great uncle of Cat’s and how he must have been one of the pioneers who’d first settled in this area when all was still dense forest. In conflict with tigers and elephants, they’d cut back the forests to extend the rice frontier, and moved mountains, leveling the ground to form the rice fields with nothing more than hand tools. Ploughing with buffaloes, threshing and milling by hand and perhaps too poor to afford an ox cart, everything had to be done by hard manual labour. I can hardly imagine the heroic scale of such toil, all in harsh conditions of drought and flood, without the assistance of modern medicines and accompanied by a lifetime of constant pregnancies. Despite this tough life, he and his wife have now survived well into their eighties.

Life here was inconceivably hard, though at least in those days the earth was virgin and bountiful and there were forests in which to collect roots and berries, where pigs could root and timber be felled. If you had the need and the energy, more fields could be carved from the forest to increase your yields for a growing family. Then came the gradual shift from the steady equilibrium of subsistence farming to a modern cash economy, accompanied at the same time by an ever-increasing population. Now the forests are gone and every scrap of land is exploited to raise surplus rice for sale, to grow cassava and more recently rubber and sugar cane for sale into tough international markets.

Timber is no longer free and it’s an offence to cut even your own trees, rice land is surprisingly expensive despite its low profitability, the land is generally over-used and degraded and as infant mortality falls, agriculture can no longer support the increasing rural population. With increasing costs for new needs such as education and with rising expectations, the young and strong leave the villages to look for work, leaving the babies with Mama Papa and sending home their pathetically small savings. Perhaps the prettiest daughters too end up in perilous places such as Patpong, Pattaya and Patong seeking a way out of poverty. Meawhile, Thai television stirs a craving for consumer baubles and easy credit on punitive terms allows instant gratification with new TVs, a fridge, a Honda Dream motorcycle, or even a new Nissan pickup that the poorest can drive away against a tiny deposit and Papa’s guarantee.

I digress too far, though seeing this old man, so innocent in his simplicity, again reminds me just how much has moved on in Thailand during the eight or more decades of his life.

He now sits on the matting with the others at the bottom of the stairs of the new house, always silent, gazing around with innocent eyes that hardly comprehend all the change around him and smile out of his wizened, pixie face. In the middle of the group a severed pig’s head stares upwards with yellow candles lit and burning in its nostrils, next to it an offering of yellow flowers, candles, joss sticks and paper money placed on some bolts of local hand-woven fabric.

There then begins a low-key ritual in which the offering is symbolically passed between the men, accompanied by utterances that I cannot even begin to understand. As in all these ceremonies, such as for births, marriages and community events, there then follows the tying of saffron strings around the posts of the stairs and, to low chantings, the tying of strings round each others’ wrists. I always value this ‘baisri sukwan’ ceremony of the threads as it so evocatively suggests welcome, unity, closeness and community, and as I type they are still around my wrists as a reminder.

The pigs head is always there at these events too, though if I asked its exact significance, I’m sure the folk around me would be hard put to explain. That’s just how it is, they’d say; it’s what we’ve always done; it’s what you have to do. I can only assume that it represents an offering to the spirits of worldly fullness and wealth.

The local belief is that by building the house, we have intruded upon and disturbed the spirits of the place, the phi thii, and we must propitiate them with offerings so that our stay in the house is not an unhappy one. Cat too has made a small spirit house and this will be set up nearby for the spirits to reside in and where offerings will be made to them, lest they’re enticed into our new house and cause us trouble. It strikes me that today’s rituals are quite elaborate but not so different to house warmings and blessings of new homes in other cultures, and in the Christian church we even have formal exorcisms when a house is thought to be inhabited by unhappy spirits.

Meanwhile, back at the new wooden house it’s now the turn of the mortals, so we all gather on the big verandah where mats have been spread and a feast awaits. All the close relations are there to enjoy apparently unlimited quantities of food, soft drinks and of course alcohol. It’s a very special atmosphere, of aunties and elders and excited children, bright eyed and energetic, but so well behaved. The only shadow I can think of is the near total absence of the middle generation. They’re away in the cities, far from their rural roots so that parents and babies can survive.

Eventually, in a mellow alcoholic haze, the party begins to break up, though it’s still not yet ten in the morning. They all drift off home carrying ‘doggie bags’ of rich curries and foods that Cat has filled for them and that’ll keep them full for the next day or so, a tradition of giving that again seems universal at such events.

Yes, it’s still only morning and though the main even is finished, it’s never over until the slim lady sings. Tonight we’ll have more food and of course, karaoke, another well-established Thai tradition. All day long people come and go, and by evening the verandah is again full of people. The show and yet more serious eating has to go on, as always, the alcohol flowing freely.

The karaoke they like is the usual Thai popular music, though Cat allows me a guest appearance singing some bootleg Beatles numbers on our only karaoke CD that still seems to work. I particularly enjoyed the quirky track, “Come Together” whose lyrical double entendres really hit you between the eyes when you see them up in lights on the screen.

“Jojo was a man who thought she was a woman but she was another man!” It’s a raunchy story about an American transsexual and I’m happy that nobody could understand it.

Yes, karaoke is established as if an old Thai tradition. A few months back, Cat and I were summoned to an event at the village school to receive their thanks for a television that I didn’t know we’d given them recently. A local lady politician had also presented them with five new computers in strategic advance of a forthcoming election, and she was there too as the star attraction.

Anyway, after various speeches in front of all the kids in the school and perhaps a hundred adults and, after all donors had been hauled up onto the stage to be photographed and presented with nicely-printed certificates of thanks, the principal donors like me then had to sing karaoke. And no, I couldn’t refuse because karaoke is a compulsory part of social bonding, especially as I am a prime exhibit, namely the village’s resident farang. So I had to do it and join in graciously. To be mai sanuk, to be ‘un-fun’ is social death, a definite no-no. I, and particularly Cat, would never live it down.

The charming lady politician could hardly wait to get hold of the microphone and she took to the stage, a hard act to follow, but I was now suffering an attack of reticence and amnesia and couldn’t for the life of me remember what song I could sing.

‘Bee Gees, Bee Gees,’ hisses Cat at me, looking distinctly anxious… which is what she always calls the Beatles. Yes, Beatles is a good idea, but there are so many tracks! We scan the digital list of songs together and the first we hit upon is, “Get Back”. But do I know it and can I sing it? I’ll soon find out when I’m up there facing the music! My mouth is dry as I look down at a sea of upturned, angelic faces, white knuckles clutching at the microphone. I know they won’t boo me off but if I blow it, there’ll be a nasty silence followed by embarrassed laughter which’ll be even worse.

The music erupts and I’m trying to read the words. ‘Jojo was a man who thought he was a woman…’

I’d never sung this before, but thank goodness I do half know it and I belt it out happily. I then grasp that what I’m now singing to these little souls in front of me is all about a homosexual from Tucson, Arizona who heads for the bright lights and sells himself as a rent boy. ‘Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged! Get back Jojo!’

How can this be happening! Experiences such as this that Thailand throws at me are often bizarre, transcending the surreal! When I later sang it at our house warming party, I smiled as I’d memorably sung it before.

Four years ago we built a beautiful reinforced concrete house on land I’d bought for Cat in her village and now while I’ve been away in the UK for a few weeks, she’s built this sort of wooden summer house and ‘museum’ down the garden. At last the picture’s becoming clearer and I think that really it’s a place for her Mama and Nan to live in, so that we’re not living on top of each other in our concrete house. It’s a great idea really and it’ll just emerge like the rest of my life, coming out in the wash with everything else from day to day. You’ve just got to go with the flow, I remind myself and don’t ask too many questions.

The main complaint from Thai wives is usually that their farang talk too much, so I always try to keep my questions to Cat well below the necessary minimum. Does it matter very much if, like the old man, I don’t really understand everything that’s going on around me?

Today there’s still more work to be done on the shower room, but as the spirits have now been taken care of, Mama and Nan moved into one of the three small bedrooms in the new house as soon as they could. Most importantly brother Saniam has set up a shelf in the corner of the room for the TV, so they’re well and truly installed. There’s plenty of work on hand, unraveling the chaos of plates and pans and plastic that are scattered everywhere after the party and there’s absolutely no risk of getting bored.

Cat’s dead tired after two months of planning and building so now perhaps we can get our lives back to normal… which is what I always say as we put the final touches to her latest project. And I never dare ask about the next one!

Dedicating Our Wooden House - Part I

It’s dead of night and down in the new wooden house at the bottom of the garden, the lights are blazing, the tile cutter’s screaming, the hammers are resounding and for some reason I just can’t sleep.

‘For heavens sake, why are they working overnight?’ I ask Cat who’s lying prone next to me.

‘Have to finish by Saturday,’ she says, a bit annoyed at being disturbed. ‘Saturday last day. If not have party Saturday, then cannot use house for three months.’

Once again I’m mystified, though increasingly resigned, the strange truth becoming clearer in the morning. In essence, you can’t sleep in a house until it’s been blessed in an animist ceremony that’s practiced across a vast swathe Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and further afield, and the ritual’s to no avail unless it’s conducted on an auspicious day. The coming Saturday is an auspicious day but as there won’t be another one for at least three months, completing the house is now urgent so we can go ahead with the celebration and move in.

So they’re working flat out and at about eight or nine on Saturday morning, the elders will gather and we’ll have the ceremony or bust. This'll be followed as always by the feeding of the five thousand.

Last night we sat and barbecued outside the house amongst all the builders’ mess and wreckage. Meanwhile Cat was madly building a wall of cement blocks that I’d been dispatched in the jeep to buy that day. All was cooking and other activity around us. A fire was burning piles of rubbish and vegetation from our work on the garden and for some reason that I couldn’t understand, Cat’s uncle was grubbing around in the embers. Cat told me what he was doing... he had four cows’ feet and a tail and he was cooking them in the middle of the fire. As he extricated them, all black and singed it gave me the illusion that he’d cooked a whole cow, left it on too long and that all he had left was the feet and tail.

We sat amidst the mess, the wreaths of smoke engulfing us but hopefully deterring the mosquitoes and ate the most succulent pork, roasted on the charcoal. I scoffed greedily, pestered by our dogs, Pepsi and Soda and even more by the cat, while legions of babies and toddlers raised hell around me. Their mums were helping Cat set up a big bamboo table with all the bowls and cooking things for a feast the following day.

With the table now laid out in the open and with night falling, there were a few upward glances.

‘No problem,’ says Cat. ‘No cloud, so no rain tonight.’

In the middle of the night I’m woken by the roar of the wind and the heavens open with horizontal rain. I go onto our upstairs verandah to bring in the cushions and, like a captain on the bridge of his ship, stare anxiously out into the tempest. Then there’s a bang and a flash of light. It could have been lightening, but no it was far too low down... perhaps the electric wires for the wooden house which are strung along the fence at the side and cobbled together with tape. Strange though because the lights are still on in the wooden house, so maybe it hasn’t blown completely.

Morning comes too soon when a mobile phone rings jarringly beside the bed. When we don’t get up, it rings again five minutes later. I finally wake feeling hot and clammy. It’s four in the morning.

‘Nao, nao,’ says Cat. How can she possibly be cold!

‘I forgot to kill the chicken,’ she says, and uncoils off the bed. I lie in the dark listening to the sounds of terminal squawking from successive quarters of the garden.

Soon Cat’s back in the room, telling me to get up, quick, quick. ‘We go market,’ she says. I groan in response. ‘No problem,’ she says. ‘I can drive the pickup to market, if you like.’

But it’s a new pickup and she’s never driven before, so it is a problem and I don't like, so I’m going to have to get up and take her into town.

We go downstairs and Cat unceremoniously wakes Nan who’s asleep in a bundle on the floor. We all stumble outside into a dark world that’s damp and dripping. I can’t see a thing through misted windows but somehow manage to back the big vehicle out through the gate.

First stop is to collect Cat’s helper, Naam, a university student who lives nearby. We drive to the house but the bamboo gate is shut and the place is in darkness. Cat calls loudly and eventually Naam appears.

We drive to Sangkha along puddled, rutted roads, the CD playing nineties romantic ballads at full belt. It’s still pitch black when we get there but the market is as busy as I’ve seen it, jammed with pickups and scurrying figures bearing early morning burdens.

I’m left in the pickup while Cat and her two porters disappear, taking with them half my pension. I’m almost dozing off when a motorcycle appears and stops next to the pickup. How could he carry so much stuff… he’s got vegetables and things across the handlebars, between his knees and piled up behind him. Now he’s gesturing at me through the window. Then I grasp what’s going on… looks like Cat’s bought all this food for the party. Just as we’ve just finished loading it into the back of the pickup, the three shoppers reappear.

Next stop is Daeng’s house where it seems we’re picking up some pork. But it transpires that it isn’t just some pork… it’s a whole pig which is subtly different. Fortunately it’s not an intact pig, though the head stares accusingly at me when I open the lid of a big stainless pot and look inside.

Back home, I drive the pickup to the bottom of the garden and leave them all to unload the booty. Cat’s there as colonel in chief, directing a major logistics operation… there’s teams of ladies peeling vegetables, cleaning, scraping, squatting, chatting, laughing, getting ready for the celebration and the big feast.

I’m now up on my verandah overlooking all this activity and I decide to take a telephoto picture for the record. It’s still only 7.00 am but it feels like mid-afternoon.

The new digital camera flashes unnecessary and so I sit down to try to switch it off. For this modest automatic, the instructions book runs to 185 densely packed pages. It’s one of the least amusing books I’ve ever read, though the safety instructions do give some light relief.

‘Seek medical attention immediately if a memory card is accidentally swallowed.’ What do you do if it was swallowed with malice aforethought?

And, ‘If the camera emits smoke, stop using the camera immediately.’ I thought all the malfunction indicators were on the LCD display!

I bet the camera’ll know our house party's a unique and special occasion. My other Pentax jammed half way through the raising of the first post ritual for our big house four years ago. These are automatic cameras you see and they can sense a special occasion and foul up deliberately, just to provoke me… to make me say something stupid like, ‘they don’t make them like they used to, now do they!’

Mini-Cameras - The Last Rant!

The Japanese are small people which is perhaps why they're so good at miniaturisation. From transistor radios to the Sony Walkman and now digital cameras, they've got putting a quart into a pint pot down to a fine art. But is small always beautiful in all things, as the slower Schumacher (who founded The Soil Association) suggested in his book, so well anticipating the 'sufficiency economy', the new Thai government's controversial economic philosophy. ("Small is Beautiful", E.F Schumacher.)

Yes, I'm talking about my new digital camera again. To make it ever smaller, they've dispensed with a view finder and you need a separate battery charger and card reader. As a result, you have to carry with you a whole bundle of extra rubbish to use the thing.

This picture shows all the stuff my new camera came with which'll have me grumbling until the cows come home. Call that miniaturisation?

An MGB? That is the Question!

On this blog, while talking about my trip back to England, a number of times I've mentioned my MGB. A couple of people have asked me what an MGB is and, in a state of mild shock, I feel I should therefore bring light to some dark corners of the world. The MGB is one of England's greatest sports cars and I have owned the one shown here since the late eighties. They are cramped, noisy, draughty, smelly cars and not that fast... indeed they are thoroughly English and I love them.

My 'B' was bearing me swiftly through the Wiltshire countryside from Petersfield to Taunton to see Mike and Tamsyn when I saw a dramatic swathe of red poppies betwixt corn and woodland. I screeched to a halt to test my new Olympus digital camera and, I think, came up with at least one decent result. When zooming in on a distant subject, composing carefully and steadily is crucial, but the faintness of the LCD display meant that I just had to click and click blindly, hoping that I'd get something half decent. I also took a shot at the 'B' which was a hell of a lot easier.

These pics cost me a fair bit of money as they meant I couldn't return the camera by availing myself of Jessops' return policy as the camera was no longer in 'unused condition'. Funny that! Can only virgins be virginal?

I hope these pics were worth the expense. I do still have the camera though... at least I did have. Cat's got it now!