9.8.14

The Break in at No 125

Last night Namwan and I were both sitting on the kitchen patio surfing the web as our WiFi system is down and we get a good connection on the phones on the patio. Namwan had to go to the bedroom for something and as she opened the door, she was confronted by a strange man: someone had just walked into our house and had been wandering around. Namwan ran away immediately, sensible girl and shouted to me, My dear, someone’s broken into our house. At this stage I didn’t know what had happened so I ran into the house, Namwan had run outside to alert her parents and sisters and I armed myself and went in search of the burglar. I didn’t find him: he had run into the bedroom and opened and jumped out of a window. Was I ready to belt him with my metal shafted spade, I don’t know! I asked Namwan why she thought we had had a burglar when nothing seems to have gone missing and she explained that she had been two feet away from the small man in a green tee shirt. She had met him! Well, lots of milling around and I took off in the car to look for him … what and who I was looking for I had no idea! I found no one. A while later someone said that there were four young men on two motorbikes who had been interested in our house just before Namwan found the burglar. Then a little while later they came back: one motorbike with two or three men on it rode slowly past the house again but I was not there to chase them or I would have! We went to the next village along to see if there were people there who might have seen or heard about the likely lads … nothing and no one about. We bumped into Namwan’s brother in the village and she went and talked to him. In the meantime I said, although mother and sister are at home, I don’t like it that our phones and my laptop are on the settee and our front door is unlocked. I went back and tidied up! As I was returning to the village I spotted lights approaching through the trees so I stopped the car, left the engine running, turned out the lights and waited. A car went past, I turned my face to remain anonymous. Then a motor bike. The bike beeped its horn twice: a warning to the car driver that he had spotted me? After all, they had been to my house and must recognise the car! I let them go for 5 … 10 seconds then turned round and followed them. I spotted them at the far side of the village and increased my speed enormously to make sure I didn’t lose them: car in front, bike behind. Suddenly I was on them: I was going so fast and the bike was in the middle of the road that I had to slam on the brakes to avoid the possibility of running them over … much as I might have felt that that might not be such a bad thing! The tyres squealed, the boys must have been terrified! I easily kept up with the bike: light blue football shirt with number 13 in pillion position and a dark green tee shirt driving. I was making so sure that nothing bad happened that I didn’t make a note of their number plate! Then something flew off the bike and landed on the road in front of me. Something small and brown … they slowed a little and indicated left. I slowed and let them pull away a little as I knew I could catch them on the open road at any time. They stopped about 200 metres ahead of me and their car turned round to face me as I turned round to see what they had thrown or dropped. It took me about 10 seconds to find a baseball cap in the road … brown … small. I took it and drove off. I went back to the village where Namwan was and told her about the cap I was holding and football shirt number 13. By now everyone seemed to have worked out who these loafers were and a little later an uncle called the police who said they didn’t recognise the name they had been given but would check in the morning. I said I want to go and talk to the boy … Namwan said her brother and others would do that, if not the police! So we all milled around a bit more and as the loafers realised that I had got some evidence against them, they were probably not feeling so smart. However, at some stage in the evening, someone had met the boys and they had talked about going somewhere to pick up a knife or a gun! Scary stuff. Thailand is a peaceful place and when someone does something like this, the whole community gets involved. No one likes this kind of thing even though we think nothing was stolen and no one got hurt. I was happy to have found and chased them and to have given them pause for thought. I just hope it all ends here! DW

6.8.14

Kitchen Towel Mayhem

This is what happens when a young dog and a young cat are left alone with some paper towels ...

UPDATE

They did it again last night: half a roll but much more mess. Then I left them alone to drink my coffee and eat my yoghurt only for Namwan to come and tell me 10 eggs had crashed mysteriously to the floor.

It turns out Pongo chased and killed a chicken the other day ... crikey! She's a Beagle and that habit can't be broken I think.

DW

space ... there's nothing to it

I read yesterday about a space craft flying four billion miles in ten years to rendezvous with a comet. Here are my thoughts on that.



forgive the typo in that second screenshot.

DW