Sat on the beach at sunset and there were a couple of guys in a fishing boat out on the gulf:

Driving through Petchaburi and we see a cluster of temples on top of a hill. The main entrance offered a long climb to the top; not my idea of fun at all. But round the back there was a cable car which was much more to my liking. The cable car entrance hall was delicately carved to portray activities typically undertaken by pious monks:

Those who have been here from the start (probably only me), may recall that my very first post was a small homage (French pronunciation please) to my coffee machine.

The machine has made the occasional appearance over the years; as has my need for coffee on a daily basis. Sadly, the recently reported coffee embargo was preceded by the demise of my beautiful machine. Nothing terminal, but it had been spurting water from various orifices (as you do) at an increasing rate over the past couple of months; and it got to the stage that it was emptying the contents of the boiler over the kitchen floor before I could extract a cup of coffee out of it. It was taken out of commission and we had to make daily excursions to coffee purveying establishments to feed my need.

I have had the machine for nearly ten years, and she who must be obeyed suggested it was time for a new one. A tempting idea, but the current machine cost me 28,000 baht ten years ago; and was bought at a time when I was earning big bucks in Bangkok and such a sum was affordable. Now I survive on a sterling based pension which is currently worth 7/10ths of fuck all, and I have therefore no interest in splashing out on a new coffee machine.

Anyway, Pavoni coffee machines are large lumps of metal held together by bolts and washers. Replace the washers and the machine should last longer than I will. So I ordered a spares pack from a very efficient outlet in Glasgow, and a package of parts arrived this morning. Spanners in hand, and hammer within reach, I set to work to strip down the machine.

From the instructions on the web, it all sounded reasonably straight forward; but when parts have been living in close proximity for ten years, and subject to daily deluges of boiling water, then they are rather reluctant to be parted. Still, after four or five hours of tinkering, I had the beast in bits.

Being of the male gender, naturally I suffer during illness more than a female would; it’s just one of the burdens of being a man. And I feel the need to share my suffering by frequent low moaning, the occasional forced cough and with an expression of pain written across my classically rugged features at all times; the objective of course being sympathy.

And I have been moaning, coughing and grimacing my way into sympathy over the last week, fuelled by a persistent and unpleasant combination of sore throat, headache and fever. Just nasty enough to stop me doing the things I want to do; and refusing to morph into something else and then disappear.

Drove by a field of flowers. My love of nature immediately enabled me to identify them as yellow flowers, but their exact name escapes me for the moment.

Anyway, she who must be obeyed wanted to take some pretty pictures of them, so I joined in; although I found the abandoned concrete structures more appealing than the flowers.

Having cash in the camera gear kitty has turned me into an eBay legacy lens junkie. The potential for sticking alternative lenses onto the front of my GF1 is much larger than I realised, and I spent too much time every day researching the possibilities, and stopping myself from bidding on impossibly expensive Leica rangefinder lenses.

I have already acquired the quite beautiful Contax 45mm, have taken nearly five hundred photos with it, and been very impressed.

She who must be obeyed has an extended family that I cannot fathom. I can recognise her parents and siblings, but beyond that there is massive collection of uncles, aunts, granddads and grannies; whose place in the family tree I do not understand. But I find that a smile and a wai keeps me out of trouble.

Last weekend we made a trip to visit a granddad who is a monk, living in a temple near Samut Somewhere. I think he is a proper Granddad because my mother-in-law turned up and claimed he was her father. Mother-in-law’s mother also came along and, such is my general state of confusion regarding my wife’s family, it was only this morning that I realised that grannie and granddad must have been married at some point; which rather explains why he ran away and joined the monk-hood.

After much bowing and chatting and food consumption, it was off to stay the night with another granny whose lineage was obscure, but whose suitability for accommodation was not in any doubt because she owned a resort. She also turned out to be a hell of a cook and we dined very well before retiring to our cabin in the woods. The best feature of the cabin was the toilet/shower which was open to the elements. There is nothing finer than reading the news on your iPad whilst sitting on the toilet and listening to the forest reverberating around you. She who must be obeyed was not so sure, particularly when it got dark, and I was required to stand guard in case a passing moth assaulted her while she was cleaning her teeth.

The worst feature of the cabin was the bed. She who must be obeyed likes a hard bed. Took me a while to get used to the idea; but now I am also of the opinion that a mattress should be just short of being concrete. But the bed in the cabin was like reinforced concrete with extra hard bits and we spent a restless night. It was only around dawn that extreme tiredness forced me into sleep; and I was then immediately woken up by my wife who told me we had to go and see the monk being fed.

WTF?

So I was dragged out of bed and down to the edge of the river where a lone monk could be seen paddling upstream. Apparently he does this at around 0600 every day. If only he could do it at around 0930 I would be much more enthusiastic about watching him.