So many Ideas, So little time, even on Thai Time

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Gonna lose me ranking at this rate.

So much travelling around this past week, not seen the desk or the 43 posts I have almost ready to publish.  Looking back on them, I thought I  had it in the bag for the next few months.  Not to be.

Have been to Bangkok twice, Pattaya, and back and only one stop at my favorite stop. Khunsarai!  The stop last night was abysmal and most of us stayed on the bus looking out the window and the dingy piles of boxed cakes, dried fruits, dirty fridges and un-smiling staff.  Prachuab Khir Khan was the city closest to it and I am praying it is shut down before my next trip.  Only smile raised was seeing Wicked Divings signs on the walls there.  Staff obviously used the time wisely, realising that most westerners would skip the food, wander round and eventually see their signs.

Ideas have never been a problem, time is the thing.  Time is whats needed to inject humour... hours sitting at the bar drinking chang, chatting and thinking.  Even on Thai time there arn't enough hours in the day, I try grabbing a Thai 5 minutes (between one and 2 hours) and thats not enough.

Most of the memoirs I noticed are totally out of order and I may just have to lump them into 4 groups and let them go.  Please, more pics from France, Biking days, Thai life and HBC and thanks for the support.

So Thai time.  Worked out a rough formula at the weekend when Peter said he would be along shortly!

5 mins on Thai Time is about 1 - 2 hours normally.  As in I will be there in 5 minutes.

10 mins, 2 - 4 hours

Shortly - if I have time much later on.

Later.  No way Jose

First night in Bangkok and the worlds gone mad.

Only my first ever night in Bangkok stuck in the memory.  It was election USA night 2000, but other than something of that magnitude taking place I would never even have remembered the month and maybe not the year.   I just remember the captain saying that by the time we arrived in Bangkok we would know who the next President would be!!!!

 France had been my home for the previous 7 months, but much as I loved it, the work was seasonal, and had dried up 3 weeks earlier. Most of my friends and workmates had headed back to the UK leaving me alone on a campsite in Biot near Antibes, it flooded badly and this drove me to the local travel agent in Antibes.

I entered the shop with the intention of asking for a ticket to Grenoble so I could look for work in the Ski Stations there in the winter.  As I waited my turn though, I noticed a 90 day return ticket to Thailand that was about 450 quid back then... cheap.  I then asked when the flight left and the woman told me in two days time and said she would hold it for me for an hour if I wanted to think about it.

I did think.  I walked outside into the rain, thought and made the decision that changed the direction of my life even more.  I was outside less than one minute, went back in, asked about visa on arrival etc, bought it and I was off.  Totally into the unknown.

And so it was, three days later I landed in the hot mid afternoon heat of Bangkok.  Lonely planet in hand I left the Arrivals lounge of Don Muang Airport and set off for my first battle with the taxis of Bangkok... all of which I have subsequently lost.  Got one for a few hundred baht.... a bargain I thought after 7 months in France.  The driver could not find the place I was staying at which was a fairly well hidden Youth Hostel, but  luckily I had the Royal Household and Rama 5 Statue on my small map, caught sight of it and got out.  The Hostel was on Phitsanulok about 1km walk away... much easier than directing a taxi driver in that madness.

My first steps in Bangkok were taken here.

I stayed at the Hostel as never fancied the scene on Khao San Road.  I went there a few times to meet a friend who had also made her way here, didn't like it and the only other time I went there was in later years when a mate wanted  a burger from the newly opened Burger King.  If ever there was an enclave of non-Thainess in Thailand, this had to be it.   But, each to their own and many seemed happy, adorning themselves with henna and real tatoos.  Must also be the hair extension capital of the Asia by the look of it... maybe I was old even back then.

My abiding memory of that first night though was my first shower.  It wasn't the introduction to thai plumbing, though that was also quite something when confronted for the first time with electrical installations being mounted next to running showers.  It was the speed of the sunset that surprised me.

I went in to the shower and it was broad daylight in the bedroom, came out and it was pitch black night.  It was like the sun had been switched off and I was even wondering if I had miss remembered what I had done in there.  Had I grouted a wall, re-washered all the leaking taps, cleaned up after the previous resident.  Nope, thats how quick it gets dark in these parts.

The rest of the first night was just normal stuff, 100's of mosquito bites, beer chang and sangsong hangovers and the food.  Great as it was I just fancied something Western that first night so ordered a beef salad!!!  It was impossible to taste if there was any salad in it... the chillies burned away at least half my taste buds.  Beef ... who knows, perhaps those pieces of leather were the beef, I never got past the first mouthful.  Wimping our of this I then had the all day breakfast of rubber egg, bouncy ball sausage, brittle bacon with sweet bread bun.  Tea was nice enough though and it soothed some of the burning sensation.

I have enjoyed exploring the food here down the years as much as I enjoyed the places and people... which is a lot.

Thai wife 100baht to the good. Khee Niao falang licks wounds.

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Despite having 43 part finished posts in the draft bank I have no time to edit and post a proper one under the terms of my bet back in england... So have lost out today to the missus who is now 100 baht to the good and hoping to double it at the card school.

8 years she has had me for and we still get along and are best of friends.  Pity we fight like cat and dog when we are working.  She learnt all her english from me and can put Gordon Ramsey to shame when she is bollocking me in the kitchen.  F*&king Idiot Falang is her term of endearment of the moment for me!  Lucky she stops at this really with all them knives about.

For all the complaining I hear about thai wifes and girlfriends being money mad, I have never seen this in Duang and when I met her I was sleeping rough on the floor of the diveshop as I was too tight to part with money for a room and living in the shop gave us chance to pick up more customers for the boats.

Yorkshire folk are "careful" with their money and she realises this and has always earnt her own.  Tony is now growing up in a good environment.... we keep the Gordon Ramseyism confined to his school times and it's all smiles and pies when he comes home in the afternoon.

Pitty I am busy today as I have just had tons of ideas for a post.  C'est La Vie the 100's gone and now so am I.

Happy days,.... still.

He who dares... the eternal optimist

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Is the glass half full or half empty?

I've always been an optimist.. maybe a moaning shouting and cursing one, but an optimist none the less.   Never have I felt that "shit just happens".  It happens and it's how you react to it that makes the difference.   The sooner I make a move, the sooner the shit either stops happening, goes away altogether (however slowly) or the process of recovering from the shit that has happened gets underway and  the recovery process begins.

Last years tax bill was, well, enough to have many leaving Land of Smiles looking for well paid work in the West.  With a few mental calculations, I decided to stop drinking and open the shop for breakfast, this amount would more than cover the bill I reckoned.  Problem resolved and happy life resumed within the day... or two.  Deciding to stop drinking also lead to improvements in quality, extended the range and brought about a chance to expand in a way I could never have done on my own, from our original premises.

It's just a chance, but that is as much as I have ever needed.  Forget luck, prayers and karma, I learnt to take my chances well, as they don't come about often enough in life.  This is especially true for working class, overweight pie makers.

Forget business leaders, one of Del Boys corniest catch phrases sums it up in a nut shell.  He who dares, wins!  Whilst obviously lifted from the SAS motto "Who Dares Wins", his cheerful optimism and ability to keep going when all seems lost, is a lesson to us all.

Here's Uncle Albert doing an impression of Del Boy's famous phrase and almost copping and unfortunate one.  For my friend Linda who is studying cockney slang, Del's last sentence "about them syrups he flogged me" uses Syrup = syrup of figs = wigs.  Great hearing a South African English teacher talking slang.

Further thanks to Oscar Wilde for the following.  Great thanks actually as it was Giles Brandreth who I remember hear saying it on Countdown all those years ago!! Pseud or what?


Between the optimist & pessimist, the difference is drole. 
The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist the hole

Typing this blog has raised my awareness of being static for 6 years and I am starting to feel that change could be in the air... very exciting it is as well.  When that next chance comes, will I be brave enough to take it?

Ditch that desk job and head for the sun.. (Get me out of here, I'm a Pieman)

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Harrogate Borough Council.. how did that happen? Part one.

Did I always have a pie shop... No, I spent lots of time in them in various parts of the world, but it was never my career.  Yes I did actually have a career in Local Government.

I spent 10 years to the day working for Harrogate Borough Council.  I had slipped in the back door really as I had been a complete drop out for the first 12 years after leaving school.  1989 saw me in a suit for the first time in my working life and I didn't think it would last...... it didn't, but I really enjoyed it for the 10 years I was there.

A serious bike accident had seen me in traction, hospital, pot leg for nearly 3 years and someone had thought to re-train me, teach me to type and put me on an IT course.  I often felt some rich tycoons were behind it for a bet. Pehaps they were training a monkey in another part of the country and matching its progress against mine.  It did feel very strange moving into this lifestyle, maybe too strange and that is perhaps why I never totally managed it.

So, before they would let me do the course I had to pass Pitman level three typing and have therefore been a touch typist since pretty much day one.  Great having me on the course, not only was I the only man on the course, I also had the longest hair as I was becoming a bit of a yetti by this time.

The beard went and the hair... bit by bit and each week they insisted on another 6 inches or so of it being removed.

All this was 1984 - 1988 just as the PC was launched.  By shear massive luck I was at the cutting edge of Computer Technology and employable!!   Even with the 12 years of diverse manual jobs, un-employment and time in hospital.  Add to this my Sole C.S.E. (2) in Maths and it is amazing I had a career at all.

I always like to say (true) that Rodney from only Fools and Horses is much better qualified than me, and his CV was more impressive as well.  This is by far and away my favourite watch... Films, TV internet anything, there is nothing I enjoy more that this.  There will be plenty of references from it!

Local Government was going through a great upheaval at this time.  They really threw off a lot of the grey staid image they had and I worked under some very innovative Managers.  Changes in Policy brought in a new Director, new younger managers and me.  I just hung on in there, recognised that changes was coming, embraced it and just clung on for the ride.

We were moved out of enormous impersonal buildings back into the hearts of the Estates and expected to get to know residents and listen.  The days of pushing buttons and sending out endless letters had just ended and we were to visit, visit visit,  talk, listen adapt.  I enjoyed it and found it much easier to talk with people than to hide in an office issuing  letters.  So I started to get more excercise.

There was also a fantastic Social scene at  the Department of Health and Housing,  we were genuinly friends, cared about each other, socialised, argued about football and, horror of horrors, drank beer.  Great times and great people.

Early Essays! - Education system fails young pieman. Or did it?

Almost the end of the first month and I appear to be 4 posts up!

I am also realising that reading bloggs is something we like to do in work time.  Looking at statistics, reads or hits go right down on Saturday and only come back up a tad on a Sunday.  Monday and Tuesday are the best days so will work around this.

Anyway, whats sparked the bet and is now surprising a few folks back home is that I have never actually written anything longer than an IOU, Sick Notes at school, (Dear Teacher, Steven was sick yesterday... signed... his dad!)  short begging letters, legal aid declarations, or facebook posts in my life.  I felt I had at least as exciting a life as anybody I had met and wanted to get some notes, (these are rough notes and I'll try to do something with them next year) down and learn what to me is new technology.

I have been googling the English Qualification I failed miserably at school.  It was based on submitting 12 essays over a 2 year period, which was obviously too much for me at the time... or too boring.  So I was Ungraded and the few marks I got would not have given me a level 4 anyway.  

GCSE Grade	O Level Grade			CSE Grade
	Pre-1975 (numeric)	Pre-1975 (alphabetic)	1975 onwards
A*/A	1	A	A	1
	2	B
B	3	C	B
	4
C	5	D	C
	6	E
D	7	F	D	2
E	8	G	E	3
F			U (ungraded)	4
G	9	H		5
U (unclassified)				U (ungraded)

Graph highlighting the dismal failure of the School's ability to teach me anything. (I'm bottom right box)

So what happened?

Most essays we were given were on terminally boring subjects which probably warranted, at most, a sentence along the lines of  "Why are we writing about this Shit?:"  So we had 2 years to kill and a variety of methods of dodging it. 

In the unlikely event that I could be persuaded to write anything at all, I could turn any subject given into one about motorbikes.  The one I remember was "A Country Walk"  which elicited an opening sentence by me along the lines of... "As me and Mike were walking in the countryside, we found two motorbikes in the hedge....."  There then followed high speed tales based on our love of the Isle of Man TT, which his father took us to when we were younger.

Most got sent back failed or 4 - 5 grades.. not that I was worried. I was so bad that they didn't even try to beat English into me, which again was strange considering the times and some of the nut cases we had for teachers back then.   Leads me again to Fools and Horses where their old headmaster "Bend over Benson" is sent to Broadmore criminally insane prison.   They are worried he is behind a  mysterious school reunion.

Only found one clip, but if you get chance, watch the whole episode.

And so it was, failed, was allowed to fail and we were all happy.  There were so many of us I think they were happy that we bunked off to go working on farms, working on the Grouse Moors (where I got my love of walking from) and going fishing.  Looking back we were almost angelic compared to what you read now about youngsters bunking off, doing drugs, muggings etc.  We did our fare share of fighting and low level nuisance, but never muggings, stealing etc.

Quite the polite little petty criminals we were...  Oh and we owned small motorbikes from aged 12 onwards, stashed in various places to avoid parental disapproval... but that's for another day.

Happy Sunday to my depleted followers!

Bikers, the route to Thailand starts here.

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To go with my memoires, background.  I had an urge to drop out of the system at an early age and never fought it.  Just followed my heart at 15, left school, bought a bike, managed to avoid getting pulled before my 16th birthday and we were off.  Not yet looked back.

Bikers Under lying everything since I left School in 1977 are my biker mates, most of who own bikes that bigger, faster and more expensive than anything we could have imagined back in 1977.  Those first few years it was on on FS 1Es AP 50s, Gilerras,  then later 250cc Superdreams, X7's YD250's and my one bike which served me well for 2 yeas and did over 25,000 MILES... my old KH250.  We were just all loners or one or two mates for the first 3 years, biking mainly for high speed thrills....  on a Suzuki AP50!

Where it all started to get serious, was the Highland Laddie Public House in Ripon, North Yorkshire.  Back in 1980 then a few mates of mine from school turned up outside this pub one evening as I was having a beer.  We went on a night ride to a a nightspot 20 miles away where they played "our \music" and had groups on etc.   From that day on, we never looked back... we biked built bikes, repaired bikes, chopped bikes, squatted, fought, drank, raced, crashed, married, divorced, lived basically all the while in our bike group.

People came and went, we lost some great friends along the way, Fat Dave tragically and ironically in a car crash.  I notice happily with facebook that he gets his share of mentions still and in many ways he is still part of us.   We lost a few to alcohol and drugs, but none to prison or serious crime.  None of the backbone of the group anyway.

That year, we managed to get a few of us together to drive to Lands End and back.  Riotous drunking binge lasting two weeks and getting boozier as we hit Dorset (my birthplace) and Cornwall where we discovered scrupy cider.  Riding just got harder.

On the first night of the first holiday, which this was, an event happend that set the course for the next 35 years.  A horse ate the side of my tent, almost ruining it and leaving us to bodge as we went.  From then on we always slept in bus shelters, woods, bandstands, multi storey car-parks, train stations squats etc.  I'll do a chapter on them with pics later.

KH250 1980 near Plymouth

We travelled a lot all our adult lives and especially when we were young (18 - lats 20's) our weekend drinking binges we held in various parts of the UK with occasional excursions into Europe.  For some reason there was always a barn dance somewhere between Thirsk and Scarborough on a Friday night and our meeting up point was usually Helmsley or Sutton Bank.. if you are familiar.

Bizarre range of bands we saw back then, ranging from Shaq Attack, Matchbox (without the 20), Edison lighthouse, Motorhead, Thin Lizzy etc.  Then it was on to Scarborough where there was once a Punk Rock nightclub called the Taboo on Huntriss row.  Great weekends often sleeping rough or just drinking through the night.

We are all still mates to this day and I watch their bike building exploits on facebook and am happy that some of them have good businesses doing the things we loved doing.  Canal Road Motorcycles been just one of them, still very active on the scene

Regarding bikes, there was a definite split down the years, with some of us moving onto faster and sportier bikes (Streetfighters types as below)

and some moving onto Harley Davidson's and extreme custom bikes and low riders.  Still all hung out together it's just that we arrived at our destinations differently.. some looking cool and some looking thrilled and pouring out tales of missed cars and tractors, tank slappers (severe front wheel wobbles) gravel and oil patches in the road, wheelies and hitting 180MPH (allegedly) down some B road that had the bike airborne for half the ride.

How exciting that was in 1982, to be loose in Europe with all that cheap booze and few, if any, regulations.
Few pics back then as only had cheap film cameras and any spare cash we had went on drink and "enlightening" ourselves!!

I managed to date this one to 1998 as we had gone the the Isle of Man TT that year to see the return of Norton to racing.  Trevor Nation and Joey Dunlop on board from what I remember.