The sun is growing warmer now, though the nights and mornings are cold. By cold, I mean Australian cold, which to a person from Northern Europe might seem positively balmy. Still, most mornings find a white glaze of frost upon the grass. The rooms in this house are chilly and the insulation value of the cladding is virtually zero, so it is not uncommon to find inside and outside temperatures virtually the same in the early dawn.

Thinking of cold means thinking of its opposite. The three weeks spent in Thailand were very hot indeed, with little respite outside the evenings and mornings. Cloudy skies kept the mercury lower too, though only by a couple of degrees. It is little wonder (though not necessarily good policy) that Thai's are busy air-conditioning everything. I was grateful for it but also wondered, often aloud, whether getting used to the heat and humidity, aided by electric fans, wasn't a better long-term solution. A lot has changed in my 20-year absence.

One evening Ann's family and I went to a lovely al fresco restaurant on the banks of the Chayo Praya. The air from the river was cooling and the place was buzzing with diners. This photo is a memento of that time.

perched in the hand
they preen and flash and sing,
too late for the sky

I do not aim my last post in the manner of a misanthrope, but rather in exasperation at the age of excess we find ourselves in. I can think of no real good that a disproportionate life may be lead into, though I am sure that the reader can find exceptions. In that case, I will provide the rule. And so...

In what kind of world does a majority group of elected politicians, in this case, the US Congress, seriously propose taking health care away from over 20 million people in order to give tax cuts to the top 1%? Well, it must be this one. The United States might not be the best example, but is it not supposed to be a shining one? The same country feels that it's fine for its citizens to be armed, even heavily armed. Freedom and liberty are touted as the justifications (surely a strange distortion of these noble ideals) whilst the profits gained by the manufacturers and the political power wielded by the NRA remain murkily in the background.

I think that there was probably a time in recent history when there was a sufficiency of things. Houses were modest but adequate, meals were nutritious and homemade, families had a single TV and hi-fi, kids shared bedrooms, the locals schools were just fine, aspirations were set lower, within reasonable bounds. This age in Australia was probably in the 1960's and 1970's. Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan came along with a host of policies to liberalise economies. Life became more competitive and aspirations grew vastly. Inequality began to increase and is now the serious issue that it is.

I have been blessed to have been sheltered from the worst ravages of this storm, this strange mania. Public sector pay may not match the private sector, but the tradeoff is greater security. Young people these days face a far more fragmented job market and may be forced to take several part time jobs, without any real security nor any obvious material benefit to compensate.

It is not so far from the world we are in now to the kind of laissez-faire realm of Victorian England. In Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit (one of my current books) the gap between rich and poor is stark. The poor really are poor, there is little or no welfare and the political class talk high-mindedly about free enterprise and hard work. Those who do work the hardest and longest do so for a pittance. Let's not fall so far that we need another Dickens to remind us of the costs.

Fun times for children at the factory.

This is a short filibuster (surely some oxymoron? - ed.) against avarice and its near cousin, affluence. The warnings against avarice go back to ancient times and cross many different cultures and religions. Too much of a good thing and the desire to have more it, which seems almost axiomatic, is likely to be visited by disaster. There is a pretty strong case that this is so. How much deception, how many murders, what quantity of theft, bribery, false witness, how many wars, are the result of avarice?

Affluence may strike you as but a pale shadow of avarice, but the former is the fertile ground for the latter to grow in. Today we have too much of everything except those qualities that add genuine value to life. I don't need to be swatting at you from a pulpit to extol the likely benefit that healthy doses of patience, forebearance, generosity, kindness and the like can have. Nor is there anything wrong with being humble,though the excesses of hubris and narcissism that inform the modern sensibility make that seem positively Dickensian. I am tired of the flagrant exhibitionism, unwarranted celebrity and self-infatuated dullardry of the times. The genuinely talented, noteworthy and hard-working get swallowed up in a sea of mediocrity, a sea that has no event horizon.

Does this all sound a little like jealousy? Maybe.

One unmissable aspect of being in Thailand has been the collective grief for the former monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Public and private buildings have been festooned with black and white bunting, small sanctuaries devoted to the man have been set up in shopping centres, train stations, photographs are everywhere.

Ann wanted to pay her respects to the late King whilst we were there, and we had planned to join the throng at the Grand Palace waiting for admission to the pre-funeral chamber. I bought a black shirt for the occasion and, late one afternoon, we made our way to the adjoining park, through security checkpoints and into the queue. By great good luck, the line was only a couple of hundred people (only weeks before it had stretched for hundreds of metres) and it was a mere 20 minutes before we were ushered into the small room that contained the closed sarcophagus of Rama IX. A prostration later and we were leaving. It was very efficiently and respectfully handled. I am glad that I went.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej was clearly a much-loved King. There is one photo of him that captures the kind of tenderness that he felt for his people and they for him. It is reproduced below.



In preparation for the solemn event.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post how much I enjoyed reading through The Bangkok Post during our trip to Thailand. Produced in broadsheet form, the pages bend and fold in their own peculiar way, something that it not shared with the tabloid. It was during these reading sessions that I became more acquainted with Thai politics and current affairs. Politics in the Kingdom is an opaque matter, for even Ann is unable to articulate a clear position and Thai's seem reluctant to talk about it.

The Government which arose from the military coup of some three years ago is headed by the former General (now PM) Prayut Chan-o-cha. The regime goes by the name, National Council For Peace and Order, which makes no pretence of being faintly democratic. There is little doubt that the Government has worked earnestly towards solving some of Thailand's problems, but it seems unlikely to me that military men are the best equipped to do so.

A few weeks ago the Prime Minister issued four questions for general discussion in Thailand and they have been widely discussed, though also widely ridiculed. It should come as no surprise that if a question is asked with an answer already in mind, then the exercise is largely moot.

You can judge for yourself.

1. Do you think the next election will bring a government with good governance?

2. What should be done if it fails to do so?

3. Elections are an important element of democracy. Is it right to (give importance to) elections alone without consideration for the country’s future such as national strategy and reform?

4. Do you think political groups with inappropriate behaviour deserve a chance to run in elections? If they are elected, who should solve the problem and how?

I am coming into one of those periods of my life politely called a crossroad. This is the place where one has choices to make which will redound for a decade or more. Not making a choice is a choice in itself and so, the crossroad must be negotiated in one way or another. Put simply, this house is too little for two adults and two children, where the latter are male and female and teenage and not related by birth. Should Ann come through the complicated PR process unscathed, then we are hopeful of bringing her daughter JJ here to live.

So there are some decisions to make over the short term. Do we get a bigger house a little further down the mountain, together with a new mortgage. In that case, I will have to find some paid work to do to ameliorate the repayments, not easy when you are the wrong end of your fifties. Or, perhaps, I could build a small dwelling (read, a room) that would accommodate one of the kids, probably Tom. Or maybe put a little caravan in place for the same purpose, subject to NSW regulation, of course.

I know that Ann would like a clean move, for lots of reasons, so that option is the first cab off the rank. I am loath to get a new mortgage but I may have little choice in the matter, ultimately. Ann likes to say that you can never know what is around the corner, which I know to be true, even if I don't like it. Sitting with uncertainty is difficult, but it must be done.

It is hard to miss temples in Thailand, and perhaps even harder to miss Buddha images, statues, iconography, paintings etc. It is a Buddhist country, after all, and even though some farang like to point out inconsistencies in word and deed (absurd, if you think about it), religious practice informs most days in ways that the outsider might miss.

I have Ann to thank for immersing me more deeply in some of the daily rituals, such as giving food to monks in the morning, making sacred offerings at temples and shrines, visiting different and sometimes obscure parts of temples and so forth. As a foreigner alone in Thailand, I would not have participated for fear of making an error, but when your wife is Thai....

One morning we drove into town (in Petchabun) to buy the daily papers. We pulled over at the newsagent and before I could grab the Bangkok Post from the stand, Ann had me on my knees with a floral offering in hand for a passing monk. The pavement had been set up with rugs for the occasion. It's one of those times you are momentarily thrown by a sudden diversion from routine, though I am guessing Ann had planned it out and just not told me. It pays to be a mind reader, though I am not one.