7.58N 98.23E

Wednesday 5/12/2012

All is very nearly well.

Bow thrusters, multifunction display, AIS, Tack-Tick, loo, shower drain, generator water intake, tachometer, most of the laptops, outboards are all working, at least for now. The only things left are the macerator (which we won’t use until Turkey) and the horn (which C doesn’t want anyway).

The weather is much drier now and all the boy racers from the King’s Cup Regatta are coming back with their toys broken, so we still can’t get the rest fixed.

We went shopping and I took the view that there was little point in going half-way round the world only to eat stuff we could buy in a Wimbledon supermarket. So I bought a ‘black chicken’

(see attachment)

Clare was unimpressed, more so to find it still had its feet and head on. She looked it up and found it was also called a ‘silkie’ and was rather tough and gamey; they make chicken soup out of them.

It’s now in the freezer and I suspect will join the list of delicacies we’ve never actually eaten, along with monkey brains, sheep’s eyes and camel’s testicles. All the meat is black though oddly, not the bones. I would guess it’s an aberrant haemoglobin though why the bones are exempt is beyond me.

I had my hair cut yesterday and although the archetypal ‘hairdresser’ refused to serve me because I hadn’t booked, a nice girl said she’d do it. At first she said I had ‘small’ hair which I let by, at the end she said I must be very careful because I had ‘thin’ hair, I’m not quite sure how I can be careful with my hair unless she means not too much Sikaflex; I think she meant ‘fine’ but thought she might be offended if I corrected her.

K

The black chicken gives me the creeps. It is supposed to be nourishing for invalids but I can’t face cooking it.

Keith’s R/B ratio [repair/breakage] is now well over one and he has changed from Eeyore to Tigger. I did buy him a useful present. We lost a gas cylinder [probably nicked] and I persuaded the person in the chandlery who sold us a new one to deliver it to the boat already filled. At £200 it is the most expensive thing we have bought in Thailand.

The lads who have done most of the work are very quick and really know what they are doing. Like all workers they turn up randomly but you can’t have everything.

Sadly I have discovered that cycling is a killer for my leg. Specially up even a tiny hill. It has taken me nearly a week of idly sitting around to recover.

This means that Keith has to take the laundry and go to chandleries while I sit on a sun lounger at the pool so not all bad.

C