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decreaseI wrote these incidents in the order in which they returned to my mind, not in the order in which they happened.
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Friday, 26th August 2005
Never a Frown With Phantom Brown (apologies to The Stranglers)
What do you do when you are in a place where there is not a lot that is interesting to do during the day? You engage in the interesting things, right? Then you find a few less interesting things, and work your way through them? Probably right.
But then, 2 hours, 17 minutes and a few odd seconds after awakening, you have run out of anything at all that is even vaguely interesting. You know how many steps there are to get into the village’s temple [9], you can recognise each of the monks at a glance, you have closely inspected all 3 of the temple’s statues, you know where the village reservoir is located [that way, you won’t stumble into it on a dark night], you can find your way to the houses of the poo-yai baan [village head-man] and all of the Tambon’s elected officials [just in case you need a “get out of gaol card”], you shared a bottle of lao-kao [raw spirit] with said politicians last night, you got all of the local policemen drunk the night before at the outrageous cost of 500 Baht – 2 large bottles of local whisky and a few big bottles of cola – and so you sit there in the lounge area and wonder whether the wife would be amenable to a roll under the mosquito net.
No such luck, the family is in and out of the place all of the time, the tit-feeding gathering will probably be starting soon, and the Brown Phantom has been seen in the kitchen. That’s my wife’s father. He’s an interesting old guy, never has a lot to say, but when he says something, people all listen and take notice.
I call him the Brown Phantom because of all the times that I have seen him, he has been dressed in brown all but 4 or 5 of those times. The other colour that he favours is khaki, but there is the occasional green shirt to be seen [maybe that was a gift?].
Besides being a tacit type of man, he tends to move slowly, which is reasonable and understandable for a man who is 80 years of age, and this tendency lends a silence to his step, so despite the colour of his skin, he isn’t the Golden Ghost, he’s the Brown Phantom, and he appears and disappears as the fancy takes him.
Seriously, he can be nowhere in sight, and then appear through the gate in the courtyard fence without warning. Likewise, he seems to be able to disappear at will, and with no warning. Maybe he is so good at that because he draws very little attention to himself, and he can sidle in or out as he pleases.
His wife does all of the gardening, he takes care of the chickens, and sometimes the chickens take care of what is in the garden. If they eat bugs, that’s good; if they scratch up seedlings, that’s bad.
So there I was, with nothing better to do than scratch my balls to annoy my wife, and I spied a chicken fluttering over the mesh fence into the enclosed garden [enclosed to keep out the destructive chickens], so I saw an opportunity to do a good turn for the mother-in-law, and get the chicken out before it could cause any serious havoc.
One of my purchases in the Amphur Town was a slingshot [for my 8 year-old son, of course, why would a grown man like me want one?], and I decided that this might be the ticket to discourage the trespassing hen. Also, the kitchen window was perfectly placed to allow a shot from the lounge area. The front drive is the source of gravel – ammunition – and I set up my position in an easy chair. The kitchen window is shuttered, not glazed, there was no fear of breakage, so I took the tension on the elastic, and aimed. And the Brown Phantom appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and lounge area!
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. I threw the slingshot back into the suitcase and decided that there was a pressing matter in the garden that required immediate attention... I hurried out, chased the wandering fowl out of the enclosed garden area, and headed on down to check on the fuk tong [pumpkin] patch. The fuk tong vines were growing well, but had not yet flowered.
Talk about being bored witless! I wanted to go somewhere, do something, but where and what? This was in the time that I had set aside to do some touring in the north as well as visit a friend who lives in Nowheresville, Chaiyaphum, but my step-daughter had totally killed that ambition a few days earlier.
In a couple of enormous leaps of Thai logic, my 15 year-old stepdaughter had been placed in the driver’s seat of the family ute, and told to drive into town to collect her mother and step-father. This fair maiden [OK, not fair of complexion, somewhat dusky] has no driver’s licence. That’s the first leap of logic. About 20 metres from the start of her journey, she steers the side of the ute into one of the concrete power-poles. 15 YOA, unlicenced, and unsupervised – what did they expect? The second leap of logic was that I [10 kilometres away, in town at the time, remember] was to blame because she was going to collect me. As a result, the family’s chariot was not available; it was in the panel shop for the remainder of the time that I was to be in Thailand.
So that’s why I never got to Chiang Mai province. I was, effectively, confined to barracks for five days.
And so it happened that on that Saturday night, there was the social highlight of the week for a large number of residents of the village, held in the home of my wife’s parents. This was the playing of a 2-disc VCD version of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, dubbed in Thai. I used this opportunity to take the little boy for a walk around the block to the local shop [such as it is] and drink a few bottles of bia chang with the mosquitoes.
The next day, I walked to the main road [actually, it is a very minor road, but when compared to other roads in the area, it can be called the main road] and waited for a passing saamlor to take me into the amphur town and the internet café, where I discovered a fine example of the good taste to be found all over Thailand. But that’s another story for another day.
End of part 4
(To be continued)
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