1. One orders a goose a month ago in all good faith that it will be there at the appointed time. One rings on the day to check that everything is in order and what does one get? The news that they have a cooked Turkey for one together with gravy. That's Thailand whatever is promised take with a pinch of salt.
2. Fortunately we had been in a small German shop the previous day and noticed that they sold geese, and they still had one. Raymond was brought home and defrosted in the bath. Despite Jingle Bells and Dreaming of a White Christmas, there has been no evidence of queues. Usual heavy traffic and bustle, but no queues.
3. The gym remained to be accomplished on Christmas Eve. The joints decided they had had enough after the preceding days exertions.
4. Kaaren's driver has a wife who was expecting a baby at 10p.m. yesterday evening. Another Thai custom. The pregnant woman is given a time slot to have the baby. Natural childbirth does not seem to occur here.
5. The meeting with Jaap was interesting. Not one, two or even three but eleven of them. The mother, the brother and family, the sister and a cousin all meeting in Bangkok to spend Christmas. China meets Holland with a small interference from England. The calvalcade including the wheelchaired sister are off to the beach on Wednesday.
6. The Christmas meal was good - no feeling of overeating. Just right. The East Grinstead monopoly gift went down well, so well that Kaaren was envious. I have made a promise to buy one for her on my return.
7. The watching. A DVD entitled the Mighty Heart was harrowing to watch. A kidnapped journalist Danny Pearl who was beheaded and cut into ten pieces in Pakistan in 2002.
8. The tailor has the correct measurements. I made sure I delivered them as soon as I could. He had already worked out that they were incorrect.
Faraway
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I've been thinking about the statement 'I want one cooked turkey, please'. Inside the balloon which is attached to the speaker's head are the words 'I want a whole turkey, cooked, cleaned of parts which I don't want, sufficiently big to provide a main meal for five people and pickings for those five people over the following day or two'. Inside the listener's balloon are the words 'I want a turkey meal on a plate with gravy'. Oh, how much we rely on shared assumptions, on context, for the transmission of our meanings. So much is unsaid.
And now I think of the use of 'picture' as in the sentence 'OK, I've got the picture'.
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