Kathryn Freeman's Blog, page 22

What I’ve learnt this week: it’s possible to fall in love with an inanimate object

Or I could have called this: it’s dangerous to listen to your children

Regular visitors to this blog (go on, I know there are a couple of you) will remember that back in the beginning of August my family visited Thailand. While we were there we had a ride on an elephant and started to fall in love with the creatures. How can you not? Those huge wide bodies (trust me, when your legs are splayed across them they feel very, very wide!), the cute eyes, the long flexible trunk, the tufts of hair. This is Coco, who was kind enough to let us on his back.

Buoyed up by our adventure, we wanted to take an elephant home with us. Not a real one mind you, we weren’t that love struck, but a wooden one to remember our holiday by. We started off looking at lovely small elephants (and bought the first, below) but then our sons pointed to the larger sized ones. ‘Go big, go bold.’ Like fools, we listened.

At the Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok, we met and fell in love with this fella.

Could we take him with us on the plane? At 70kg and 80cm x 80 cm x 45 cm wide, the answer was no. Could they ship him to us? In Thailand nothing is too much trouble (especially when they see a big sale) so within minutes a beaming representative from a shipping company was telling us, no problem. That’s when we started handing over money. As much to ship Coco (named after the elephant we met) as it was to buy him, but we still figured he was worth it. It would take 30 days, the man said.

Thirty days came and went, with no word. Would Coco ever make it home? Then an email from the shipping company. They’d calculated that with docking tax, customs tax and probably an elephant tax for all I know (none of which were included in the original quote), it was cheaper to fly Coco to England.  So now it was going to cost us twice as much to get Coco home as it had to buy him. I bet he didn’t even get a window seat.

But yesterday, he arrived! And here he is, happy in his new home (yes, you can see him grinning, if you look hard enough).

 

How can you put a price on love?

And how can I stop my family constantly making jokes about the elephant in the room?!

 

What I’ve learnt over the years about cricket: a female perspective

An over in cricket it 6 balls. Forty overs is a flipping long time to watch a side bat, and then you have another forty overs to watch them field. If your family play football, it takes up 90 minutes of your Saturday. If your family play cricket, it takes up the whole day.


There are lots of cricketing terms used, but only if you play the game do you really understand what on earth they mean. It doesn’t matter how many times I ask my boys about fielding positions such as the on side (also known as the leg side as it’s the side where the batsmen’s legs are…), the off side (opposite to the on side), covers (nothing to do with the bed, but a position helpfully noted as being between point and mid-off), silly mid-on (where you stand closer to the batsman than usual which, if you ask me, is pretty daft because that ball is hit hard), I still can’t picture them. I think I’ve sussed cow corner though – when a batsman takes a huge swipe and it actually connects, that’s where you don’t want to be sitting.

Bowling a Chinaman and a Chinese cut have nothing to do with cricket in the Far East. A Chinese cut is where the batsman goes to hit the ball, misses most of it but gets an inside edge that spins back and almost hits his stumps. As for a Chinaman, I could write the definition (a left-handed bowler bowling wrist spin ie left arm unorthodox) but it will probably mean as much to you as it does to me.


No batsman is ever out lbw – at least not in their own minds.


The cricket ball is really hard, and the sight of it coming near your loved one’s head can make it very difficult to watch. Thankfully the kids were brought up to wear helmets, but my husband wasn’t and still refuses to wear one. Of course all of them wear a box, because men take far more care of the soft parts between their legs than they do the soft matter between their ears. Cricketers have been using boxes for two hundred years, but only started wearing helmets in the 1970’s.


Cricket equipment takes over the house. What with pads, helmets, gloves, thigh guards and bats, when you have three males playing cricket, you might as well forget all thoughts of having a tidy house.

Cricket is social, and it’s the banter both on and off the field that will have the players looking forward to the next season. Strangely, so will I, because going to watch my family play cricket is a great excuse to sit in the sun and do nothing. And when they score runs and take wickets it can be really quite exciting, honest.

Next week, an update on the Bangkok elephant saga. It doesn’t get more thrilling than this…

What I’ve learnt this week: 4th September 2014

Thailand was fantastic – exotic, beautiful, exciting – but there really is no place like home. The English countryside in late summer is peaceful, soothing, like a cosy blanket. That being said, I’m already planning my next holiday. It’s easier to appreciate what you have when you take a break from it now and again. And of course there’s also the weather…

When your teenager tells you Ikea have put the holes in the wrong place in the flat pack he’s constructing, don’t believe him. My son was adamant he was right – until we tried putting the top onto the bottom and realised actually, maybe Ikea did have a point. Still, with only one wrong step out of 54, he has now been officially promoted to chief flat pack putter upper. Needless to say, he’s delighted.

My summer will always be dominated by cricket. With three males in my household all playing the game, it’s hardly surprising, but the time I spend watching a small red ball being thrown against a lump of wood has gradually increased over the years. Colts cricket ended when the summer holidays began, but adult cricket, which they now all play, carries on into September. How great is that? And when they’re not playing cricket, they’re watching it either live or on the television. And even when I drag them out for a walk to a pub it seems I can’t escape. This pub in Hambledon is opposite a cricket ground known as the ‘cradle of cricket.’ It’s claimed many of the rules still in today’s game were dreamt up in this pub over two hundred years ago. With terms like bowling maidens over, standing at long leg or silly mid off and wrong ‘uns or googlys, I can believe them.

Maybe next week I’ll tell you the things I’ve learnt about cricket – bet you can’t wait eh?!

What I learnt about buying in Thailand

With the exception of food, pretty much everything else you buy is open to negotiation. We were recommended to go with half of the initial offer price, but some people are natural negotiators…and some like me, aren’t. I did get into the swing of it though, to the extreme that I ended up walking away when I couldn’t get the lady down to 80 baht for a lovely owl for my mum-in-law. It was only when the family pointed out that I was arguing over the difference of less than 50p that I sheepishly went back and handed her the 100 baht she wanted.

At the Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok, you can buy almost anything. From a puppy to a pineapple, a CD to a carved crocodile, a bag to a bath. It’s haphazardly organised into different sections (arts and crafts, clothing, household and food), some inside, some outside, but by the time you’ve wandered down one aisle you’re totally lost. It’s like making your way through a shopping maze in a sauna. It’s claimed to be the largest market in the world and certainly my boys hope they never have to go to anything larger, ever.

  

I couldn’t stop buying things that were pink. Shoes, necklaces, bags, blouses…I was like a moth to a flame. Then again, I think I also bought some things that were green, and blue and silver. And please forgive the photo of the book. I didn’t actually buy that in Thailand – but it is pink.

Elephants can become addictive. I started off buying one cute wooden elephant. How could I refuse? But then I thought it would be good to have a partner for it. Perhaps one with a bit of sparkle. After that, the hunt was on and no shop selling wooden elephants was left unturned. Even the boys started looking out for one, which is why we ended up making a second purchase rather larger than the first (second photo and no, he’s not got a bandage on his nose, that’s his wooden tusks!). He was so large that we had to ship him home. The cost of that, plus the duty we’ll have to pay and the fumigation was more the flipping elephant. And we’ve not heard a dicky bird from the shipping company since we came home.  But I have faith – and when he makes it to our house I’ll post a photo of him in situ.