I knew it was coming, just not sure when; “it” being the blessing of our new house by monks.

It had been mentioned in passing, along with a proposal that assorted men of the orange cloth should descend upon my shiny new car and splodge gold leaf and lettering all over the inside. “That is not happening” I replied with a firmness that normally do not have the courage to muster. “How about they put the markings on the bonnet, it will wash off?”, suggested my wife. There should have been a “probably” somewhere in that sentence and the request was also denied. However I knew I could not keep a monk house visitation at bay for ever.

Ask me what type of emporium I most enjoy wandering around (but why would you?), and you would probably expect me to say “camera shop”. And you would be wrong. Camera shops are for descending upon when your latest gear lust has reached fever pitch and you walk in, buy the unnecessary gadget, and walk out again. Some enjoyment can be had in mocking the potential choices of others; “Canon 7D2? Five years of development and this is all they can come up with? Are you retarded”? But this can get you assaulted so best just to give a mocking glance and then leave.

No, for a really pleasurable browsing experience, give me a hardware shop (used to be a lingerie store, but lust changes with age). Hardware shops are stuffed full of merchandise, most of which I do not understand, but all of which I covet. Only yesterday I found myself among cement mixers (which I definitely do not have a need for) and discovered “a thing” which was not a cement mixer but looked more like a mobile pizza oven with extra slats. It’s purpose will always remain unclear, but I felt a deep yearning to own it. Fortunately, she who must be obeyed was with me and so one of her “why on earth did I marry you” looks was enough to scotch the idea when I raised it.

It is hard to engineer a trip to a hardware shop without having an excuse to go there, but fortunately I am always in need of something. Popular items include screws, rawlplugs, tape and assorted small tools. Very rarely do I need something I have not previously purchased, even rarer am I purchasing something that I bought before and consumed. I just loose stuff.

Need a screw of a certain size? I am sure I used to have some but I can’t find them so off to buy some more. While I am in the shop, let’s buy another screwdriver because I keep losing the one I have; and so on. The reason for this constant accumulation of hardware is because my storage system for these items is not a system but two boxes into which everything is thrown. Having two boxes instead of one was a stroke of genius idiocy; because raking through one box cannot ensure you will find your missing tool; it might be in the second box (or on a shelf, or on the floor, or in a sock drawer where I left it for safe keeping after some botched household project). After failing to find what I am looking for; I abandon whatever it was I was planning to do and wait for my next store visit to buy another one; by which time I will have lost interest in the project. Not much home improvement gets done in our house.

The move to our new home prompted a change. We have less storage space than in our previous abode and my sparkly new store room was soon full to the ceiling; and finding that elusive tool was as difficult as ever. Time for a fresh approach.

With a stroke of lateral thinking that I consider worthy of the Nobel prize for tools storage; I picked up some stackable plastic bins from Home Pro and migrated the mess from my black hole boxes such that each bin contained only type of tool! How revolutionary is that?! There is now a box full of spanners, a box full of Allen keys, a box full of pliers etc. So when I need a spanner, I pick up the spanner box and choose one (then find it is not available and go and buy another).

This is an excellent system; but it does reveal the true horror of some of my past practices. I haven’t dared count the Allen keys; but there must be more than a hundred. I have counted the screwdriver and there are 53….

Being Buddhist, she who must be obeyed is loath to kill things (although she has no qualms about consuming vast quantities of meat that others have killed on her behalf). She was therefore very sad when she removed a snail from a window yesterday and, instead of throwing it on the grass as intended, it bounced off the ledge of the pool and into the water. She was quick to rescue it, but the impact and water ingestion did it no good and it was lying dead on the grass this morning.

Naturally I was sympathetic; suggesting it might have survived if she had given it mouth to mouth resuscitation. I also lightened the mood by calling her “the Pattaya snail murderer”; albeit in an affectionate tone.

As for myself, I was able to boost my karma points considerably this morning when I did my daily clean-out of the swimming pool catch-basket which contained the usual collection of leaves, plus a wee beastie which was struggling in the water. I lifted it out and put it on a branch to dry, and it obliged me by sitting there long enough for a photo before buggering off; giving me a wave of thanks as it did so (possibly).

Feeling very righteous, much more so than the snail exterminator sat next to me.

Having purchased our new house, we drew up a list of the things we wanted to change. At the top of the list was the kitchen, and this photo of the original may explain why:

Had one of my regular weird conversations with my wife this morning. She was eating a banana and proclaimed:

“This tastes like a teenage girl”.

“What do you mean?”

(Exasperated by my stupidity) “this tastes like a teenage girl!”

“In what way?”

“Too young and immature. Should taste like a woman of twenty who has learned how to be leelah”.

Leelah is wife-speak for someone (or a cat) that faffs around wasting time rather than getting things done. I am leelah frequently.

The acquisition of a house with a garden has prompted the purchase of a number of vital home-owning related accessories. There are the usual basics: a spade, a hoe and a trowel, plus a massive pruning device which is probably intended for castrating elephants but works equally well on substantial branches. I was not allowed a wheelbarrow because we don’t need one (fortunately the “need” argument is not applied to camera gear), and a ride-on lawn mower would have been over the top for our small patch of grass (and anyway there is man who comes and cuts it twice a week). But I did manage to pop this into the shopping trolley:

More than a year ago, Olympus announced a 40-150mm F2.8 lens. I immediately lusted after it. My favourite sports lens was the amazing Canon 300mm F2.8; and here was something for Micro Four Thirds with the same effective focal length with greatly reduced bulk and hopefully greatly reduced price. There was even a video showing a pre-production version:

I watched the video several times and waited for the lens to arrive in the shops.

Our Sundays have a new agenda; and it is giving me blisters.

First stop is the plant market on Sukhumvit Road next to the abysmal Mini Siam. I have lived here more than ten years and was never aware there was such a thing as a plant market on the weekends; but now it is part of our life. As she who must be obeyed is involved, the shopping has a predictable flow to it. We agree what parts of the garden at to receive our horticultural attention and what sort of plants we are looking for. Then we walk round the whole damn market; buying things that have no relation to our original purpose. Only once we are loaded down with irrelevancies does she declare that we have not addressed our shopping needs, but it is getting hot, so we will “come back next week”. Which we do, and repeat the tragic cycle.

We were given a couple of golden bamboo plants as a present a week or so ago. I declared an interest in acquiring some more; but was over-ruled by management on the grounds that the bamboo would spread itself everywhere anyway. Needless to say we then went and bought some more bamboo today.

“I thought you said we shouldn’t buy any more.” “Why not, it’s pretty.”

So we came home and now we have the makings of a bamboo grove in a year or so:

Have not taken my camera out much in the past few months, moving house is very disruptive. But I do drag it out on occasions to snap the many and varied visitors to our garden. This fine specimen was lurking over our entrance gate this morning;