Racing Snails

On the phone this morning, Nek demanded more money so he could buy the glass for the iron-framed windows. I said that was the reason you needed more money on Sunday. He said the paint is running out. I said buy more. Krub, he said, but didn't.

Chang Poon's name is Nun, so if it's not too late to change the cast list that's what he'll be from now on. While the boys and girls slept, Nun finished the frames for the french windows:

and the iron windows in back:

He too was waiting for the money to buy the glass. I said get it off Nek, he's had 62,000. Nek apparently told him it was all gone, so I suggested he borrow it off some other sucker, the wife, the wife's uncle, I don't care, I'm fresh out. Upstairs the outside of the windows had been painted, black in front, as I said, black in back, as I didn't, matt where I'd asked for glossy, badly.

My arrival -- I won't say galvanized, but stirred, as one might stir thick soup, some activity. Desultory scraping of walls, but come 4 o'clock they all piled on the pavement outside, ready to call two-and-a-half hours a day. I objected, so they did a bit more incompetent painting of the front shutter and then drove off in this season's worst downpour, most of them exposed to the elements on the back of the pickup truck. Serve them right.

And thank God for it, because it allowed me to identify a couple of leaks that can now be plugged. (Let's face it, I'm going to have to stay at the old house another week, hopefully for a week's rent only, though we shan't tell Nek that). The intersection floods knee-deep but in my courtyard it all runs off like a dream. Outside, I bought a climber with indigo flowers from a jolly toothless woman -- all toothless people look jolly -- who was sheltering from the rain there, for 100 baht. She identified herself as a gardener, so I said come back in about three weeks and we'll do business like nobody's business.

Then of course I hit my head on the ill-painted shutter. Slapstick is a cold version of pastoral.