April 27th (2020)

 

April 27th
5.50am
And I am awake.

The small ‘Yellow Bananas’ I had bought from Asia Market, have gotten old very quickly. They are not sweet, and taste somewhat like the wild, uncultivated, bananas we find in Malaysia. So breakfast is a banana sandwich without the banana. I suppose, a butter sandwich, to which I add a dusting of sugar, and this takes me right back to my youth. This is what we did when we had no homemade jam or marmalade. In my early days we never bought jam. It was just too expensive. My family would pick fruits and mother would make jam out of them. But when there were no conserves, we had sugar sandwiches, sometimes without the butter. Bananas were in very short supply because of the rationing which had continued into the 1950s and, in the wilds of Essex, bananas were rarely seen until much later. I grew into my early teens without ever seeing a real banana, and yet I know live (when I can get back there) in a the country famed for the origin of bananas.

From the age of six, until thirteen, our lives revolved around various Essex farms.The first was an Apple Farm, cultivating hundreds of acres of differing types of apple from ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ to ‘Granny Smith’s’ and a whole load of others along the way. The second was a Mushroom Farm, growing mushrooms in long dark ‘sheds’. There, I was taught to hold a ‘broken’ shotgun and to shoot. The third, and last, was mostly an arable farm, but with a sideline of rearing horses. It was there that I learned to take care of horses, to ride, and how to be a ‘beater’ at a ‘Pheasant Shoot’. Which is, basically, awaiting orders, then making a disturbance with a stick, beating bushes, so that the in-season pheasants would be ‘raised’ (flushed out/made to fly) towards those ‘shooters’ holding shotguns. Ah, an eventful youth.

Today at the Travel Agent, it was explained that I do need to get an extension to my visa. I can stay, for the time being. Agents are frequently updated with the latest visa requirement so I will just have to wait and see what happens. Patience, some say, is a virtue.

The students must have liked yesterday’s Bak Kuet Teh, as the pot was empty and washed by this morning, when I looked.

Lunch is the infamous Korean Pot Noodle with cut cucumber and tomato mixed in. It’s okay.

This afternoon’s talk went well, I think. We continued the idea of ‘Abstraction’, with a video overview of the subject. After questions we continued with a brief video, from the Tate Gallery, about female artists. This led to a discussion about the ‘Art World’, its dominance by Western art, and how Galleries and Auction Houses have rigged the art ‘game’.

Dinner, and I am back to eating Cheddar cheese and tomato sandwiches, even though the bread is getting stale, and has air pocket holes in, making it difficult to spread the hard butter.

Today’s spend is....
Thai Huot Market...Pure Sugar, Chicken Egg Banana; Dasani Water x2; Aquarius Isotonic Drink; Coca Cola Coffee; Schweppes Tonic Water, Arla Burger Slices Cheddar Taste and Dutchie Mixed Fruit Yogurt x2.
Total $8.60.