Or, as it is officially known, the Pattaya International Stock Show.

There is a veneer of respectability. Assorted livestock parade in the display ring, and judges from overseas choose the winner (I have no idea what makes a winning cow).

Not just a grammatical disaster; but if you are going to sell a bag using the sales pitch that the customer is someone who cares about the environment by not using plastic bags, don’t sell it wrapped in plastic…

I have received a mail from purecontent.com. They apparently are not impressed with the quality of the content on this site and have made me the following offer:

We would like to offer you some free of charge, unique content in the

form of a guest post written specifically for your site. This is a

genuine offer that could help both our sites, so if you are

interested, please read on . . .

I believe it was Oscar Wilde that said “a gentleman should have a story about a gearbox, a lady should be unaware of the existence of such things”. Being a gentleman, I have such a story; but I have already told it; so my offer to clear the air after the previous rather unsettling post, with a rambling tale about cogs will have to be rescinded. But the gearbox story reminded me of my car building days; so that will have to do in an attempt to clear the air of any whiff of femininity.

My performance car owning enterprises have followed the well-known cycle: death of a relative- fast road car- racing car - financial ruin. The first cycle started in my late teens. While other boys were sticking photos of suspiciously buxom women into suspiciously sticky scrapbooks; my scrapbook contained nothing but glue and press cuttings about the Lotus 7. It was the car of my dreams and would always remain a dream because the price of ownership was five times my annual salary, and I expected that nobody would be prepared to give me a mortgage. Then my great aunt died.

Her name was Helen and was, according to the rest of the family, a total bitch. I rarely met her because my parents refused to visit. The feelings of hatred were obviously mutual because when Helen died she excluded her immediate family and left all her cash to the children of the families she hated so much. This was an excellent plan because I was one of the beneficiaries. Unfortunately I would not be allowed to benefit until I was twenty one; which gave me time to think about what to do with the money. “Save up for when you meet a nice girl and want to buy a house” was my mother’s advice. “Enjoy yourself while you are young” was my father’s offering; while both of them silently wished they had been nicer to aunt Helen. I never normally listened to my father; but as I was rather hoping to meet a girl who wasn’t nice, I decided to follow his direction. Which is why, two weeks after my twenty first birthday, a van from the Team Lotus factory emptied a Lotus 7 in component form onto the driveway.

The component form status was just a ruse to avoid purchase tax. To ensure no tax would be paid, Lotus were not allowed to provide construction instructions. So instead they provided a smartly bound manual containing details on how to disassemble the car. “Just read it from the back”, said the delivery driver with a wink; so I did and the Lotus was on the road after a weekend of relaxed building.

Not content to just provide spurious titles for posts, I feel a need to offer content that interests more than the gadget-loving males who currently frequent these pages (and if you are not a gadget-loving male, what the hell are you doing here?).

I am afforded an opportunity by my attendance at the infamous Kai Yang polo trophy match. The trophy itself is a construct of rare beauty. A rubber chicken was acquired, a pole was stuck up its backside, and a local chrome shop was told to “chrome this”. And they did:

You may not have noticed, but yesterday marked the third anniversary of this illustrious organ. 1,230 posts, 4,391 comments; and a massive rise in readership from two to slightly more than two. It’s been a heady rush of a ride (not really).

Should have marked it with an article of stunning insight and wit; but was too busy processing bloody photos of horses; and owners of said horses have just booked me for another event starting today; so there will be horse photo processing for a while; which is a shame because I have a potentially interesting new project which I want to get started on.

She who must be obeyed was setting up a stool for an afternoon of photographing her sister. The cats, being cats, could not resist checking out the stool, and she who must be obeyed could not resist snapping them.

A couple of days since my last post, mainly because I have been busy with the latest Angry Birds Rio, up to seventh place in the world rankings for a while one of my personal charity projects which I don’t like to talk about; I just like helping other people with no benefit to myself. But how the hell do you get three stars on that last puzzle?

Back to the real world and I boot my computer into my newly installed Windows 7 where it helpfully tells me that it cannot start Windows and will now try to repair. This is much better than the blue screen of death offered by Windows XP; but the end result looks like it could be similar (i.e. a new install) when I am told that it is unable to repair whatever is broken. Then it tells me that it will try and restore to an earlier version, and it manages that, although I am then left with several hours of work reinstalling all the updates, virus scans and Total War: Shogun which I had laboured over only the previous day.

The good - The Promise, six hours of television in four parts. A story which switches between modern day Israel and Israel at the time of the second world war when the Brits were in charge. Based on historical events, it is a tale of British incompetence, Jewish aggression and Palestinian suicide bombers. Nobody wins, although you do end up with a better understanding of the events that underpin the current mess. The Israelis have condemned it, which is sufficient recommendation.