July 7th (2020)

 

7th July

Day 115

I awake at 6am, after sleeping last night at 11pm.

It’s 8am

I have showered and made breakfast…...3 fried eggs (with a little salt), 2 slices of bread fried with garlic and 2 tomatoes diced with Mexican spices, and that Red coffee stuff.

I've written a little of my latest Sugar and Andrew short story. It is a re-writing of my epic sojourn diary fictionalized. It's what I had intended to do, and now seems like a good time to do that. Will it become a book? We shall see. But today, after effectively working for 4 days, I am tired.

I've been told that I can submit my just completed Sugar & Andrew short, so fingers crossed for that. It's raining now so the internet is a bit slow. I'll submit tomorrow.

I wasn't going to have lunch because I had such a good breakfast, but by 5pm I was hungry, so I made a quick veggie curry and ate it with bread. What an exciting life. Now, I think that I'm ready to finish that curry, maybe have it on buttered toast. Before, when I didn't have chappati or Roti paratha to hand, I'd make toast and have with curry. I prefer bread to rice.

It seems a little strange to say, but I'll say it anyway. I didn't go out today, I didn't even go downstairs. I shuffled between the bedroom (where I spend most of my time)  the room next door without an air con and the bathroom which is, in essence, a shower room. But, as I say mostly I dwell in the room which is dominated by the bed in which I sleep alone. Hark, I hear violins. Life is incomprehensibly strange.

Siem Reap, when I do go out, as I will tomorrow, seems to be dominated by people in their twenties and thirties - young, and I'll say that again, young attractive people but nevertheless young. Cormac McCarthy may well have written his novel's title about Siem Reap, as this is no country for old men. Not unless those old men have a particular, or is that peculiar, predilection for the extremely young and, from what I can see, innocent too. 

Now this is no cultural blindness on my behalf, no orientalist projection of demureness, however these young people project the sort of innocence rarely found in the West. It is a different culture dripping with tradition and respect, trying to ease itself into a world where these things are at odds with a consumerist materialist society which is currently being devastated by a pandemic.

So I'll go out tomorrow.