I keep forgetting to post this:
Our Address is
11/22 Moo 1 Floraville
T. Sanpuloei
A. Doi Saket
J. Chiang Mai
50220 Thailand

though all mail sent to Sarn is redirected!!

Christmas 2007

December 23 Almost the first day there has been any time to sit down and think-let alone write since this was started!!
It is election day in Thailand; so we are in Sawanhkalok for 24 hours. No-one wants to leave Chiang Mai-though Elodie’s school is closed for a week ‘due to the large numbers of foreign students and teachers’! Good excuse. Indeed the school is so full of ‘half children’ as to cause everyone to exclaim. 3 or 4 in every class of 20. K wonders why I don’t want to talk to the Dads! I said for the same reason you are not talking to their Mums. E is planning her 6th birthday party…K says no one will come..Thais are so terrified of anyone they don’t know….remember the stories about people coming to the house and standing 30 yards away and shouting in case you thought they had come to rob you! So we may have to have it in school……or maybe in Wales again!
However she loves her school and has simply bounded into it without any problems-which is fairly remarkable! She is full of confidence and fun and sits surrounded by little boys who do errands for her and marvel at her name….there will no doubt be trouble in 7 years or so!
And so, yes, here we are 8 or 9 years on and Elodie’s 6th Christmas! Even managed to write a letter to Santa Claus this year: Please can I have some pretty shoes! Is that all? Well on Father’s Day earlier in the month she made me a sweet card. Then she got grumpy and told K she was not going to give it to me. She did. Half an hour later she says I think on Daddy Day you should give me a present. What do you want? A computer of my own!! Ahem!!

So our wonky eyes are pretty much sorted thanks to Gillian Adams but we have some clear problems, still, with other parts of anatomy! And somehow in spite of riots, fights, tears, departures we have survived it all.

We had good months in Wales while E had her friends and the school that she loves there too; Eventually we decided that Gwynedd Council were incapable of running a school, so we left the prawns, lobsters, and our beautiful garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetables for the Orient!!
So now we are in Chiang Mai at last in the house of amazing space and beauty that K has designed and built.

Of course having built it we have scarcely a bean to furnish it….but bit by bit! I rather revel in the light bright rooms with no furniture. I think we are living in a 1960s Godard movie! But then so is M.Sarkozy-though sadly not Mr.Brown!
Anyway we have a house full of flowers as the Chiang Mai flower market produces huge bunches of Roses and Gladioli, Lilies and Chrysanthemums at 50p a bunch and we have ‘The Pot Noodle Garden’ all grassed, hedged and flowered in 3 days-just add hot water! K has had all the bathrooms retiled-at builders expense and all doors and windows refurbished-half the flooring replaced and it is now nearly inhabitable. Next month we will have a bed and a kitchen!
I crashed the car spectacularly—not many countries place unlighted, unsigned, concrete tank defences in the middle of the town’s main 4 lane drag!—so we have another of those, too. As E said..Oh Dear..Car has broken its nose! Yes, and quite a lot of its innards, also, I have often wondered , given the senseless way in which Thais drive, why I saw so few accidents. Went to the Body Shop—so many wrecks it will take them 3 months to mend the Toyota—of course they clear them up at top speed as the are an eyesore.. I crashed the car at 23.00-by 23.10 it was on the recovery truck! It appears that only when you have grieving relatives hugging corpses in the highway it takes longer. And here comes New Year with its usual complement of 2000 deaths! Unfortunately this one has a CD player so we have to listen to Mr Daddy LongLegs and Mr FloppyFly all the way to school.

It has been a year of such difficulty with E’s eyes, schools and decisions about where it is best to be…that I am glad it is over. Anyway decisions made…..and we just need to go back for the wonderful event of Alice and Rhodri’s marriage in June!

Before we left the seaside we were eating rather well!! Now we are on a diet of Chinese Vegetarian food, which is not so good! They are still trying to make bean curd look like duck.

At The Beginning

So here we have another new life!
The voice of the village poet is silenced and we have moved to Lanna, another old kingdom. The Rose of the North, as the town is also known, does not look that blooming-too many cars, too much smoke. But we have built a house and E has a new school. So we will see what happens. I was always impatient. Now, as I get older, more so! I suppose it is a desire to see her grown up and happy before I am no longer here.