Just a glimpse...

[J.R.]

JR, can you use your modship powers and either delete Philip's post, or meddle with it to make it sound like complete hell? Go on, you know you want to...

As much as I'd like to, I feel it might just be exceeding my invested powers.

Maybe if you had a word with Lord Peter Meddlesome.....

[Ajarn Philip]

I'm crying with pity....

Yup, life's a beach...

[Ajarn Philip]

Today's glimpse - well, yesterday's actually...

A friend lives in a little street in town with a Thai family restaurant at the end. Mother regularly trots up and down the street delivering orders. My pal fancied a burger yesterday, and Mrs Mum turned up a while later with a cheeseburger. Friend pointed out the error, and Mum replied "No hab burger." Friend took the cheese off the burger and said "What's that then?"

"Cheeseburger, no cheese," said Mum.

He swears it's true.

I'm not convinced!

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Sorry to inflict this nasty little tale on you, but I need to get it all off my chest, and it might prove a useful warning for the unsuspecting tourist.

…

I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose,
Drinking fresh mango juice.
Goldfish shoals, nibbling at my toes,
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun,
Fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun.

xxxxxxx

[lonelymom]

Today's glimpse - well, yesterday's actually...

A friend lives in a little street in town with a Thai family restaurant at the end. Mother regularly trots up and down the street delivering orders. My pal fancied a burger yesterday, and Mrs Mum turned up a while later with a cheeseburger. Friend pointed out the error, and Mum replied "No hab burger." Friend took the cheese off the burger and said "What's that then?"

"Cheeseburger, no cheese," said Mum.

He swears it's true.

I'm not convinced!

[kerrensimmonds]

When are you going to write a book, Phil?

[Ajarn Philip]

The little story about the cheeseburger, no cheese found its way onto the local forum, prompting a reply from an expat who had ordered a coffee without cream. The waitress replied, "Sorry, no hab cream, can hab coffee without milk?"

[jhopgood]

This reminds me of a menu in a restaurant in Panama where the most of the Sweets list was populated with a series of puddings entitled

Aplepay (which when said aloud sounds as Apple Pie with an emphasis on the first p)

Thus you could have

Aplepay de manzana (apple)
Aplepay de melocoton (peach)
Aplepay de cereza (cherry)

You get the idea.

Your tale actually sounds like something out of Peter Sellars' "Balham - Gateway to the South." where he goes through the whole menu and everything is off.
When he complains he is told "Well it does you good to get out occasionally!"

[Angela Woodford]

Sorry to inflict this nasty little tale on you, but I need to get it all off my chest, and it might prove a useful warning for the unsuspecting tourist.

Over the last few months we’ve (Mrs Ajarn and I) got into the habit of popping down to Hat Sai Noi on the motorcy first thing in the morning 2-3 days a week. Bit of a nuisance, but the doctor said I needed to get some exercise....

Into the water then. Flat, calm, ideal for swimming . Of course, it’s all pretty boring out there. I’m floating on my back (recovering from the exercise…) a perfectly blue sky unbroken by the slightest wisp of cloud. This morning, though, there was a sliver of moon visible over the shoreline...

Mrs Ajarn is sitting there doing her ‘cottage’ (took me a year to work out this meant cross-stitch). Bless her, I know how much she loves these little jaunts to the seaside. She wraps up quite well, but I suppose the breeze can be a bit chilly for her – funny, aren’t they, these Thai folk? Every now and then I hear her mutter away cheerfully something about ‘see-dum’, which is probably something spicy she’s considering having for breakfast.

Mrs Ajarn asks if I want to go home yet, but I’m a sensitive and thoughtful farang husband, and I know she really wants to stay a while longer....

Oh Philip! Splendid writing! I've got to it a bit late - please excuse this. How well you are doing with this arduous exercise business! It must be awful, yet you are facing the ordeal of swimming at the beach with admirable determination.

"Doctor's orders" though! Well done.

What really catches my admiration however, is the calm, forward-thinking of Mrs Ajarn. Mrs Ajarn is cool. She knows that the only way to be sure of getting one's needlework in on time is to apply oneself with regularity and dedication. Then one doesn't fall behind.

Mrs Ajarn is not romping at the water's edge in a teeny-tiny tropical-print bikini. She is not applying luxury sun oil costing £££s per drop, neither laughing and chatting about your exercise prowess to a girlfriend on her mobile. No! She stitches diligently at her needlework; the cottage is making steady progress, and it's not remotely approaching handing-in time. Way to do it.

Others with less foresight will be sitting up all night, sobbing in fear and despair, wailing that "they'll never have it done by morning" stitch stitch stitch and (pang of fear) what about that Below Standard awaiting them? Not Mrs Ajarn.

The cottage sounds splendid. I bet any of us Hertford Girls will award her a deserved Commendation. Who knows, you may win The Bookends for proud display at Maison Underwood!

I can hardly wait for Mark Reading!

[Fjgrogan]

It took me a bit of backtracking to realise that Mrs Ajarn's 'cottage' is in fact cross stitch. Now I shall let you into a secret - having loathed needlework at school, but nevertheless been pleased that I could do it when it was a financial necessity - ie for producing school tunics etc when the girls were in primary school - in much later years I developed a bit of an obsession with cross stitch. I used to spend a fortune on various cross stitch magazines, many of which I still have. One in particular I bought for certain designs, only to discover many months later that it also contained an illustration of a sampler designed by one Katharine Dobson, commemorating the various aspects of her life thus far, up until (from already-proven faulty memory only) possibly the silver wedding of herself and her husband John. At this moment I have said magazines littered in piles all over the living room floor because I have been searching for one particular design for a card for a friend. No doubt I shall soon come across Kate's sampler picture too. I wonder, Katharine, are you still cross-stitching? I have never aspired to designing, but I do copy slavishly the published designs of others - my preference being for celtic knotwork designs. Just occasionally I have collaborated with younger daughter Kirri who does glass painting in celtic designs.

[Katharine]

Frances, you are right that sampler was stitched for our silver wedding in 1995. It is up on the wall here in Wales. There are two photos, one showing graph paper, coloured pens and a cup of tea at the planning stage and one the completed masterpiece. I decided to show our life by way of the flags of the various places we had lived - no really simple flags like France! The easiest was England, others were Ghana, Pakistan, Sabah (that had a mountain on it), Brunei (that was a beast to stitch - see http://flagspot.net/flags/bn.html) Sarawak and Wales. The day I gave it to John, he had no idea I was making it, his comment was nearly his last ever - “Well I’ve obviously done the world tour - do I get a T-shirt?”

I had several pictures published over the years, this one was in either Needlecraft or Crossstitching I think. Another of mine, taken from a photo, was a picture of a hornbill, that was Letter of the Month in Crossstitching. The last I had published was in about 2001, it was a wedding sampler for Cara, Jo’s sister.

Now I don’t do very much cross stitch, I prefer more freestyle embroidery. I have just finished an ecclesiastical stole that my sister commissioned in memory of my nephew who committed suicide last year. That was in goldwork, not my favourite to stitch, but she is very pleased with it. That had an air of School Needlework about it - I had a deadline for it and beat it by less than 24 hours!

[englishangel]

I took up crossstitching in the US where it is very big. I started when "my" baseball team were doing very well and I would settle down with a 'bit' of baseball on TV, a couple of beers and a bag of 'chips' (crisps) not the little indicvidual bags you get here but a bag bigger than those kettle chip you can buy. I soon decided that was NOT good for the waistline, and took up cross-stitching to keep my fingers out of the bag. Once the offspring could stay up after 7.30 however this all went by the wayside and now of course the bl**dy PC takes precedence. However lovely daughter has picked up the mantle and has finished pieces I started but never finished and does her own as gifts for friends. Trouble is the stretching and framing costs even more than the fabric and threads.

[Fjgrogan]

I have a framed version of the Apache Marriage Blessing, which I took months to produce before Kirri's wedding, and paid a fortune to have professionally framed. The marriage ended in divorce and I claimed back my handiwork, which is now stuffed in the gap alongside my wardrobe. Maria stated unequivocally that she did not want it when she got married - perhaps she felt there was a curse on it?! It seems a pity to part with it to a stranger - perhaps I should save it for one of my grandchildren? It can become an unused family heirloom, rather like the handknitted lacy christening robe which I made for Kirri, aged 6 months, and has been languishing in a carrier bag ever since!

[NEILL THE NOTORIOUS]

I don't know whether it is the effect of living in Thailand, but The Blessed Anne always seems to need "Occupation", this can be Ironing, Hoovering, Floor Poloshing, Cross-stitch -------
She has never, in 34 years, actually SAID to me -- "The Devil finds work for idle hands to do" -- and if she did, I would hesitate to point out that it should be "Work to do, for idle hands" but I get the Idea.-- I must enquire the translation of "see dum"

BTW I have a first edition of "Three men" but was there a dog," to say nothing of ? " in Arjan's encounter ? (again " of which to say nothing" ) Englishangel lurks !!!

[lonelymom]

BTW I have a first edition of "Three men" but was there a dog," to say nothing of ? " in Arjan's encounter ? (again " of which to say nothing" ) Englishangel lurks !!!

You've completely lost me there, Neill. I can't make out what that is supposed to mean.

But you have reminded me of a 'conversation' I was having with my 18 year-old half-sister the other day. I was taking the mick out of her for something by email, and she said 'I'm cool allow'. I had to ask her if that was actually meant to be a sentence or just three words that she had thrown together! Apparently it was a sentence...