We've been having one of those weeks. One of those when nothing is quite what you expected. The awaited delivery of the two new cookers for the Juniper Tree kitchens started well. The Home Pro people know us well now and they arrived even earlier than expected with 2 new, shiny cookers on board.
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| Right said Fred! |
It had taken a few false starts to get sufficiently big cables fitted for the higher power electric ovens, but we got there in the end! It was as we assembled the ovens that we hit a snag. There were no metal grids for pans to sit on over the gas rings! We searched inside and outside the cookers, the packaging and everywhere possible. In the end, Joan was dispatched to Home Pro to sort out the problem.
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| Pizza No 1 |
The first offering was pizza, very apt as the cookers are made in Italy. Within days the cakes, bread and other more tricky cookery was at a standard of excellence difficult to match anywhere.
Since I last posted all the broken stuff has been repaired or replaced, hopefully there will be some money left to pay the builder for the new houses when the time comes!
A friend, Katrin, from our house group at Church has volunteered to come in one day a week to give Joan and I a day off, whilst Simon and Melanie are away. Last Tuesday was our first opportunity to get a proper day out for while and so we went to the Zoo!
Chester Zoo has always been a favourite day out in the Peagam household and whilst we didn't expect something as polished, we were delighted with the whole experience.I can't post all the pictures I took but below is a fair sample of some of the highlights. The Pandas, Elephants and Hippo's probably take 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in our personal hit parade; but Mr & Mrs P don't agree on the order.
I haven't labelled all of them--make up your own!
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| Open wide please! |
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| Thank you! |
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| Board Meeting? |
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| It's always Christmas in the penguin house! |
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| Aquarium Building |
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| Giant? Don't get us started on the the Galapagos stories! |
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| No, it is meant to be here, you can hire them on the lake by the aquarium. |
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| Sadly too far away but I still like the fuzzy monster! |
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| You have to aerate the aquarium water somehow |
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| Said to be the longest Aquarium tunnel in the world. |
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| It could be Chester if it wasn't so warm! |
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| I've used jubilee clips for some strange jobs, but this........ |
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| 2" from a hippo's jaws is safe... .......but watch the slope! |
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| Graphic design in every sense! |
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| The rest of the poster about the A.I. process would get the blog banned! |
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| A little man sticks a bit of black insulation tape over your flash, so pics are not so good..... |
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| The sign on this open gate reads Do not enter(It is the gate to the tigers enclosure!) Really...... |
The next big adventure of the week was a visit from the Border Police. We saw 2 ladies, one in combat fatigues heading for our office the other day. You immediately think, "What have we done wrong?", immigration regulations are very tight. It quickly became clear that she came in peace! What she wanted was some volunteers to help her "class" of new recruits, practise their conversational English. What she overlooked at that point was that she had a class of 154 students! I had already said it would be fine, so there was no going back.
We dragooned guests, church friends and our house group in and by Friday we had a team of 13 aged from 60+ down to 16. There were 2 others, not on the picture who came for the morning, even though they were flying out of Thailand that afternoon!
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| Front Right: Thai Police teacher; the rest didn't say no quickly enough 
The class of 2013
Above is one of the 13 groups who circulated around the teachers practising saying, "ello, ello, ello! What's going on ere? etc....
We had cobbled together some resources based on a borrowed text book and all did our best to get them all to speak. Football, Man U, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur seemed to be best known and would produce a lively response.
One recruit was about 6'4"; I've never seen a Thai that tall. He had the best English of the lot and he gave a very heartfelt vote of thanks. The Police also made a kind donation to the Juniper Tree, which is even better!
That brings me on to the new houses here. The roof tiles are nearly finished, the internal walls are up, plumbing and wiring are going in. It will not be too long before they start plastering and rendering and then the end really will be in sight!
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One sad last thing. Our handyman was overjoyed to get his brand-new Mazda, pick-up truck the other day. A contra-temps with a vehicle coming the other way resulted in this:
Only 22 Km on the clock..........
Still, no one was hurt. Must go now, I can feel the pull of a certain establishment that needs our patronage.
2 comments:
Caption for sideways view of Hippo:
"The mother-in-law". For those old enough to remember, this is a reference back to Reggie Perrin's thoughts whenever his mother-in-law was mentioned (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin).
Cheers Dave!
I thought of "Mud, Mud, glorious mud...."
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