Dawn broke and shed its watery light across the fields and the first rays of the sun broke through the tiny cracks in the window shutters of the bedroom casting a deep golden spotlight on the far wall. Small specs of dust floated silently in the beam of light and the geckos scurried back to their sleeping holes in the gaps between the wall and ceiling. I slumbered in a half sleep and listened to the sounds of another day in the village. The distant chatter from the kitchen, the motorbike along the lane with dogs running behind barking and marking their territory, or wanting to play, I don't know which. There's the call of the rooster, a duck quacking in the next field and the low bellow of the water buffalo. Now the twitter of birds revelling in the cool dewy morning swooping on the abundant insects in the rice fields. I was in a dream state happy within my soul where I was flying high and my eyes could clearly see the village below, yet someone was shouting;
'Tirak'. It was Khamma in a familiar yet unusual tone echoing off the tiles in the living room. The harsh and piercing syllables interrupted only by the sound of a door opening.
She continued to invade my dream, 'Tirak! Get up we meet my cousin to go to Ubon for table. Breakfast ready.'
There goes my lazy day, it was 7.30am and we are off again.
I showered and shaved as if my life depended on it, quickly found a clean T shirt and presented myself in the kitchen Thai. Breakfast was rice and eggs with selected pastes of fish, chillis and other Thai delights ranging in spice heat content from 'hot' to 'too hot for farang by far'!
Apparently Khamma's cousin was coming round in the pick up at 8am to take us to a particular shop in Ubon where Khamma had seen a beautiful table, but as she delightfully put it, 'Oh, expensive, Tirak. Sorry but I think expensive. What you think?'. Well until I could see it I couldn't think, but I knew Khamma's psychology was working very hard at this early hour and I felt I was being painfully, even unfairly in my drowsy state of mind, manipulated to a position where I knew there was only going to be one outcome.
I waited patiently and on the stroke of 10am the cousin arrived. On Thai time again, well it was Saturday (as if that makes a difference). So without further delay we jumped into the Toyota pick up and drove the half hour to Ubon. The table was still in the shop with big discounts draped all over it and hungry staff eager to please and to sell something on this slow, hot, baking hot Saturday morning. It was a one horse race because this table was the furniture makers equivalent of a Michelin 4 star restaurant. It was a round table with an inlaid marble base and a turntable in the middle in the Chinese style which makes handing round the food much more civilised. The six chairs were each inlaid with a marble 'eye' that is great fun when you shine a light through it. The deal was quickly done and the excitement and celebration that followed was enthusiastic, and that was just from the staff in the shop. I joined in by buying a wooden reclining chair, at which point I was elevated into celebrity class by the staff and received a plastic clock for my extravagance.
With the table and chairs safely loaded onto the pick up we drove away waving to all the staff promising to visit again. Foolishly I thought we would be going home and was beginning to plan my afternoon of reading David Guterson's unbelievably good book 'Snow Falling on Cedars', when I realised we were driving in the opposite direction. We were going to visit Khamma's aunt apparently to give her an invitation to a wedding. Khamma's niece is getting married on 1 March and it is the biggest wedding I have ever known. There are apparently 1,000 people invited, I'll write that again 'one thousand'. I don't know 1,000 people well enough to invite to anything let alone a wedding. I digress because this has to be reported on later. But we arrived at Khamma's aunt's place, and I would dearly love to have written 'house', but I can't, because there wasn't one! Well technically that's not true because they are building a new one and it is about one fifth finished. They are living in the yard. Kitchen, sitting room, bathroom and bedrooms and TV right in the middle of the yard with electricity cables running precariously from extension box to extension box and covered in mud and dust. At least the sun was shining. I would have reached for my phone to contact the UK's Channel 4 TV programme 'Grand Designs' if I had had it with me.
More out of sympathy to get Khamma's aunt out of the 'house' we ended up going to a restaurant and along the way apparently inviting more family to come and join, at my expense of course. In the end we had to put together 4 tables to seat the 12 guests at this impromptu dinner of mouth watering Thai cuisine at its best.
We eventually left the restaurant but we couldn't let the opportunity to visit Big C pass by. Actually I could but I had no say in the matter. So after buying enough washing powder to do a week's washing for the 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles based in Afghanistan I declared 'enough' and we started for home.
We arrived back at Owerrrouse and lovingly assembled the new addition in its prime position in the dining room. But news travels fast in Thamuang and in no time at all there was a steady stream of neighbours calling in to see what the fuss was about. Mostly the reaction was 'WOW' but the impact of the table on the family was to rearrange the dining arrangements from the kitchen Thai to the dining room. A meal of chicken and rice was quickly put together so we could christen the table and celebrate with a 'Chok Dee' toast in the new wine glasses Bell bought from Big C.
We sat around the table all evening chatting and joking. Bell stole my chair and watched TV, but at last I could indulge in a few pages from Mr Guterson's book before drifting to sleep trying to work out if Kabou had murdered Carl, or if the racial prejudice of post war US was looking for a scapegoat.
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