June 12th
89 days here
I am awake at 7am, or thereabouts.
I am lazy today. And for no particular reason. I just am.
One hour plods along after another. I shower and perform my ablutions as if in a dream.
I have been loaned a small toaster. I say small because the one I use at home is a four-slice toaster, this is the regular two-slice. Nevertheless I am grateful. Bread metamorphoses into toast. Toast (and I say that proudly) Blackberry jam and Irish butter is my breakfast, accompanied by (and this spoils it somewhat) Lipton Yellow tea. Ah well, you can’t have everything, not if you are the son of an acting Sergeant Major turned tractor driver, you can’t. Okay, don’t get me started about class warfare.
What happens to the morning. Ah! question mark. I post my morning Blogger blog, and then, and then, blank.
I rest.
I am brought food for my luncheon. It is a very nice braised pork with preserved vegetables and rice. Yes, I am looked after by these very kind young folk and,whoever it is cooking (probably Phany), does it so well.
The afternoon leads to this evening.
Firstly I am disturbed by Kosal a knock, knock, knocking on my not so wee small door. He hands me a canvas bag full of heaviness. I look. Green heaviness, round, green heaviness with the distinct roundness and pittedness of oranges. But you cannot call round green things 'orange’, that just does not seem quite right. So it was a bag full of greens. Hmm but that also is not quite right, because, generally speaking, ‘greens’ are the vegetables that children dread. ‘Eat up your greens dear’ (shan’t!). Then all I can say is that I was handed a canvas bag full of spherical, green, possibly citrus type perhaps fruits, and leave it at that. I have no idea if they are ripe.
Secondly, there is a daintier knock, almost sotto voce. I struggle to wear a towel (it is better than wearing nothing when answering a door to an unknown dainty knocker - no jokes about knockers, dainty or otherwise, please).
It is a small boy with a small white plate. He smiles, is polite and proffers the plate on which is cooked meat (possibly beef, or buffalo) and some leafy greens. Now, this is what I meant earlier about greens, these are greens, these green leaves containing healthy things like Calcium, Iron, Vitamin B-6. No sooner had I closed the door to the diminutive charming boy, locked the door than, mysteriously, the contents of the plate have vanished. It is a strange world.
I make ‘Red’ coffee because I didn’t buy any coca cola for this evening. I drink said coffee and my ‘Project’ hasn’t started yet. Ho Hum. Cold fridge-water it is then. Tonight we finish Jack London’s ‘Call of the Wild’. And I am sad to finish such a well written book.
It is strange to use the internet, hand phone, WhatsApp and YouTube to teach. I sit alone here, They sit in their multiple alonenessess and come together through cyberspace to interact. It takes me back to those days over half a century ago, with me in a red telephone box inserting four old copper pennies for a phone call to my best mate. That call could last forever, me in my rectangular space at the end of a lane, often in the dark, and he lolling at home on his mother’s home telephone. It was a similar interaction, but speech rather than GIFs and JPGs, video and typing, but nevertheless distant and yet oddly engaged.
No spend today (phew) but given, very kindly, two meals.
89 days here
I am awake at 7am, or thereabouts.
I am lazy today. And for no particular reason. I just am.
One hour plods along after another. I shower and perform my ablutions as if in a dream.
I have been loaned a small toaster. I say small because the one I use at home is a four-slice toaster, this is the regular two-slice. Nevertheless I am grateful. Bread metamorphoses into toast. Toast (and I say that proudly) Blackberry jam and Irish butter is my breakfast, accompanied by (and this spoils it somewhat) Lipton Yellow tea. Ah well, you can’t have everything, not if you are the son of an acting Sergeant Major turned tractor driver, you can’t. Okay, don’t get me started about class warfare.
What happens to the morning. Ah! question mark. I post my morning Blogger blog, and then, and then, blank.
I rest.
I am brought food for my luncheon. It is a very nice braised pork with preserved vegetables and rice. Yes, I am looked after by these very kind young folk and,whoever it is cooking (probably Phany), does it so well.
The afternoon leads to this evening.
Firstly I am disturbed by Kosal a knock, knock, knocking on my not so wee small door. He hands me a canvas bag full of heaviness. I look. Green heaviness, round, green heaviness with the distinct roundness and pittedness of oranges. But you cannot call round green things 'orange’, that just does not seem quite right. So it was a bag full of greens. Hmm but that also is not quite right, because, generally speaking, ‘greens’ are the vegetables that children dread. ‘Eat up your greens dear’ (shan’t!). Then all I can say is that I was handed a canvas bag full of spherical, green, possibly citrus type perhaps fruits, and leave it at that. I have no idea if they are ripe.
Secondly, there is a daintier knock, almost sotto voce. I struggle to wear a towel (it is better than wearing nothing when answering a door to an unknown dainty knocker - no jokes about knockers, dainty or otherwise, please).
It is a small boy with a small white plate. He smiles, is polite and proffers the plate on which is cooked meat (possibly beef, or buffalo) and some leafy greens. Now, this is what I meant earlier about greens, these are greens, these green leaves containing healthy things like Calcium, Iron, Vitamin B-6. No sooner had I closed the door to the diminutive charming boy, locked the door than, mysteriously, the contents of the plate have vanished. It is a strange world.
I make ‘Red’ coffee because I didn’t buy any coca cola for this evening. I drink said coffee and my ‘Project’ hasn’t started yet. Ho Hum. Cold fridge-water it is then. Tonight we finish Jack London’s ‘Call of the Wild’. And I am sad to finish such a well written book.
It is strange to use the internet, hand phone, WhatsApp and YouTube to teach. I sit alone here, They sit in their multiple alonenessess and come together through cyberspace to interact. It takes me back to those days over half a century ago, with me in a red telephone box inserting four old copper pennies for a phone call to my best mate. That call could last forever, me in my rectangular space at the end of a lane, often in the dark, and he lolling at home on his mother’s home telephone. It was a similar interaction, but speech rather than GIFs and JPGs, video and typing, but nevertheless distant and yet oddly engaged.
No spend today (phew) but given, very kindly, two meals.
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