April 5th (2020)

April 5th

Last night I was so tired that I slept very early, about 10pm. The result is me being wide awake at 4.15am, ‘in the wee small hours of the morning’ as Frank Sinatra (1955) sang. 

I realise that The Beatles (on their Sgt. Pepper’s album, 1967) described just how I feel right now.....

Nothing to do to save his life call his wife in

Nothing to say but what a day how's your boy been

Nothing to do it's up to you

I've got nothing to say but it's okay

Good morning, good morning......

It is 6am, and I am hungry. I cook three eggs with soya oil and garlic in the wok, but not one egg remains whole. The wok sticks, and needs to be tempered properly. I sprinkle dried thyme, salt and white pepper onto the eggs to give them a lift. I have the eggs with the pork and mushroom pate, on bread, and two small Cambodian bananas. Then, back to bed. I’m feeling woozy now. No, not Plastic Man’s sidekick.

Lunch is two banana sandwiches (totalling five small bananas in all), and a mug of milk.

What an exciting day it is. This afternoon really does feel like the ‘Lazy Sunday Afternoon, The Small Faces sang...

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I've got no mind to worry

I close my eyes and drift away-a

It’s 4.47pm and I’ve made a mug of tea, Lipton’s. Now I remember that I have no biscuits., ho hum, it really is just tea time.

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

(Henry James from his 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady.)

I remember, it was the 1950s. I was seven, or eight or even nine. For a few years we, as a family,  lived on Bremnar’s Farm, Essex, England. It was an ‘apple farm’, my father was a tractor driver, while my mother was a housekeeper to Lord and Lady Bremnar. Every weekday, Lady Bremnar would made tea for me while I waited to see my mother after school. I was invited into their spacious, Aga warmed kitchen and fed all sorts of delicious cakes, and tea held in a delicate bone china cup. There was little doubt that Lady Bremnar treated me like her surrogate grandson. When the afternoons were light she would take me around their huge multi-acre apple orchards teaching me pruning and grafting. I remember her giving me a small pair of pruning scissors, which I kept in the small wicker basket she had also presented me. We would walk through the apple orchard like Piglet and Pooh in E. H. Shepard‘s Winnie the Pooh illustrations, quite oblivious to the world outside. 

It was then, living on that farm, that I met my first Chinese person. In fact my first foreigner, certainly my first Asian.  Mai Ling had been Lady Bremnar’s mother’s maid in Hong Kong, and spoke very good English. Silk worms had followed them on their migration out of Hong Kong, so it was my introduction to them too. It was a very fortunate childhood. Through most of it I lived on farms of one sort or another, but that Bremnar’s farm is special to me. It gave me an education I would not have got elsewhere. I even learned how to write my name in Chinese. But forgot over the years.

There is a knock, knock, knocking on my wee small door. Well actually it’s a normal size door but there is a knock, knock, knock. It’s Kosal (Som) handing me a TV tray of wonderful Colors of Cambodia home cooked food. Curtesy, no doubt, of Phany. I have rice, duck salad, chicken soup, some lime and some chilli. I am practically in tears. They are so thoughtful, it is amazing. I eat. My mind and body luxuriate in the tastefulness of the food and of the kind thought behind it. I am indebted. This gift is a reaffirmation of the goodness of humanity, and these Young Adults at Colors of Cambodia continue the humanitarian spirit in which this charity was founded.

Today’s spend is $2 on laundry.

 Tomorrow I hunt for dhal, to cook for lunch. I shall step out of Colors of Cambodia with my Dhal net and my best Dhal gun. I shall hunt the blighter down, so help me I shall.