Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

recycling truck. It was humiliating having to queue up there with our garbage. It was just one of the growing number of things I didn’t like about our life. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful for the opportunity to move to the backwoods marshes of Maprao but, purely for my own entertainment, I’d put together a list of my top unfavorite things about my new home.
1. Power cuts
2. The constant smell of drying squid
3. Neighbors with nothing intelligent to discuss
4. The thud of coconuts falling from trees in search of a head
5. A shallow sea so warm it breeds Jurassic life-forms
6. The drone of passing fishing boats at three a.m.
7. The close proximity of reptiles
8. No telephone line so no Internet
9. No nightlife (no daylife either)
10. Garbage from all the so-called high-class resorts being washed up on our beach.
    The original list ran to sixty items but I didn’t want to look like a bitch so I parsed it down.
    My household duties were laid out on a roster. The seafood invariably came to me, caught by neighbors along the bay upon which we lived. For vegetables, until I could convince the chickens to lay off my vegetable garden, I had to go to Pak Nam. Pak Nam, our nearest ‘town’ (sorry, I chuckled then), is ten kilometers from us over the Lang Suan river bridge. It’s such a dinky place it’s like driving a Humvee through LEGOland. One-man footpaths crowd in on you from both sides. Blind people on motorcycles and bicycles pop out of unseen side streets like computer game antagonists forcing you to swerve out of their way. Vendors push carts in front of you just for the fun of it. And Burmese, more Burmese than you can shake a cheroot at, all walking in the road as if they don’t have pavements in Burma: girls with ghostly powder-caked faces and boys with long checked tablecloths hanging from their waists. At last count there were two million of them loose in our country, all probably powdered and table-clothed and walking in the road.
    The heart of this annoying hamlet is the 7-Eleven. It’s a bustling hub of Slurpee buying, exotic magazine browsing and self-watching in the CCTV screen above the counter. Local teenagers hang out in front on their motorcycles until seven p.m., sometimes eight p.m., largely because it’s one of the few places still lit after dark. If the 7-Eleven is too exciting for you, there’s always the post office. The concept of queuing, introduced to the rest of Thailand in the mid-1980 s , has yet to make it to the Pak Nam P.O. Elderly ladies in floppy sun hats assume you’re standing behind another customer because you’re fascinated by the curvature of their shoulder blades. They smile at you, these old biddies, and step up to the counter in front of you. And they get served. But even at its busiest you will see no more than six customers jockeying for position. Our P.O. box is number two, which shows you how much correspondence passes in and out of Pak Nam. I imagine they merely lost the key to number one.
    Along the street there is a small photocopy shop which specializes in gray, fluffy versions of your original. The manager puts on her shoes whenever a customer enters the shop. Next to that is a Chinese pharmacy which allows you to sample medications right there in the shop. They’ll give you a cup of iced tea if a pill needs to be washed down, and privacy if you need to apply cream to a delicate spot. There’s a hairdresser’s with a photograph in the window that gives the false impression that Julia Roberts is a patron, and no fewer than four traditional barbershops. As this is Thailand, there are numerous food stalls and seven restaurants which all have the belief that unpainted gray wood, Happy New Year banners and glamor calendars are an acceptable style of decoration in the food and beverage industry. Despite two small establishments masquerading as coffee shops, you can’t get a decent cup of coffee or an edible cake in Pak Nam. Not that you could park anywhere long enough to eat one. The spaces not taken by motorcycles and bicycles and handcarts are occupied by trucks delivering exciting goods you never actually see on sale in the shops. On very special days in Pak Nam, the intriguing odor from the fish factories squats on the town like an unwashed swabbing mop. This, is our nearest town. Have I made my point yet?
    I often complained that I had the raw end of the sausage at our place as, apart from regular shopping trips into this metropolis, I was obviously