I Know Wot I Likes And I Likes Wot I Know.

This is adding up to be the worst week of the year so far.  Why I hear you ask?  (Okay, nobody asked, but it sounds good).  This week has seen the demise of an old friend, who was very close to me and to whom I have at times, been very closely attached.  Yes, I am talking about my belt.

Now I know there are a few of you out there scratching your heads wondering why I am so upset about my belt.  Well, to elucidate.

This belt has been with me longer than my husband, over 20 years.  Yes I know that I am a very sad person for having a belt for that long, but I don't wear belts very often.  It has cinched my waist through fat and thin, or rather thin and fat and it has never let me down.

I realised that things were getting terminal recently, as it was looking very frayed (rather like me), but I held on in the hopes that I would get a few more years wear out of it.  Last Sunday, at the Plaza Athenee, it finally snapped.  And I did too.  I cried!

Alan laughed of course, lets face it, who wouldn't?  But when he realised just how deeply upset I was, he put aside his doubts as to my sanity, and took me in his arms and said, "Do you see the belt as a metaphor for your life?"  See, that is why I love the man, he got it right the first time.  After many years of doing its best, my belt just unravelled, broken down by the passing years into something that nobody but the one who loved it, would notice.  If that isn't a metaphor for a menopausal woman, I don't know what is.

Well, I am NOT going to cast my belt aside.  I will try and fix it, and if I can't do it, I'll take it to a man on the street.  I'm going to keep my belt, no matter how old, broken or unattractive others may think it.  It means something to me, and that is all that really matters in the end.  I just hope Alan feels the same about me!!!

Then today I got the sad news that another much cherished love, has only a month to go.

The Jim Thompson Cafe in Central World, is to close next month.  Yes, I can hear you all gasping with horror (or maybe that's me wheezing over the keyboard)!

For those of you outside of BKK, I know you are scratching your head once more, asking yourself if I really have forgotten to take my hormones again.  Well you see, Jim Thompson's Cafe is my favourite eating place in BKK, and has been since I lived here.  There are other branches, but this was the most convenient for me and the staff know me.  I go in alone usually, but always carrying a book.  Yes I do have a favoured table, but once in a while, some bugger gets there before me, so I shoot them a dirty look and sit elsewhere.  I just love, love LOVE my lunches there.

Jim Thompson serves my favourite Thai dish, Guay Tiew Phad Kee Mao Gai (nah, I can't pronounce it either!).  Just imagine.  Savoury chunks of chicken served with delicious fat noodles, mingled with lovely crisp veggies, swamped with diced and sliced chillies and sprinkled with peppercorns.

This dish is HOT!  After the first mouthful, my nose starts to run and to such an extent, my pocket sized paper hankies are incapable of stemming the tide.  I have to use those huge absorbent paper napkins they set on the table.  Oh the painful bliss of it.
Of course I have my Diet Coke to accompany it.  They know that I don't like it poured, so they set the can down on the table.  Well, truth to tell, they know my order and will often just ask me if that is what I am having.  Hey, why waste time looking at the menu when you know, right?

Jim Thompson Cafe behind Alan's office

There is a branch of Jim Thompson's cafe behind Alan's office.  I used to eat there at least once a week with a friend, often spending up to 4 hours there with her.  They also got to know me.  Once, when we had friends over from Singapore, we all went there for a meal.  I went straight to the toilet when we arrived, whilst they sat with Alan to order their drinks and look at the menu.  When I arrived at the table they were all laughing.  Apparently when they ordered the drinks, Alan said something to the effect of, 'my wife will order something when she gets to the table', to which the waitress replied, "Oh, she'll have the Diet Coke, not opened".

Oh Jake, remember when you visited us in Singapore and I took you for a Mango Frost, the loveliest of lovely drinks, served at a cafe (well, booth with seating) just off Orchard Road?  The man taking the order said something along the lines of, "When we see her coming along the road we say, here comes Miss Mango Frost"!!!  Actually, I was so mortified by that moniker, I never went back.  Well, not to that branch anyway!

Er, should I also tell you about our favourite Chinese restaurant in Singapore's Chinatown?  They know my exact order and just recite it to me at the table (chicken fried rice, spring onion pancakes and a cold Diet Coke, in case you are interested).  In my defence, they also know Alan's order too.

Now at this point, I now you have all got your autism spectrum reader out, plotting my place along it, but I'll tell you what, I am not the only person so fixed in their routines.  My friend, er.. let's call him Barrington, is worse than I.  His routine on his day off, is executed with military precision.  He goes to the same mall, visits the two bookshops, goes to the same restaurant and orders the same meal and drink (down to the number of those drinks he has).  He then goes to the supermarket in the mall, buys his groceries and walks home.  Every week.  Every day off.  The only exception is if there is a film he wants to see and then he'll simply add it to the queue.  And woe betide anyone who tries to break that routine.  I dared suggest a slight change to his routine, to visit a shop, and he couldn't make it.  On my second visit to his Monday restaurant, Barrington told me what my order was going to be.  Oh yes, he has it BAD!  Yes you know who you are Barrington, and we love you despite your weird ways!

Come on, a lot of us have a touch of Barrington in us, just take a moment to think about it.

Well, I have certainly digressed!  Back to Jim Thompson and the shocking news that just kept on coming.

No more wet-nosed joy!!!

Not only did the waitress have to break the bad news to me about the closure (she actually patted my arm when I expressed my dismay), but then she had to tell me the really terrible news, they have taken my favourite dish off the menu!  "Don't worry" she said "they still have your other favourite, chicken with cashew nuts".  Oh my God, she even knows my back up dish!

Well, when she came back to my table with my drink, I told her just how much I loved the noodles, so off she went to the kitchen and out came the chef.  I praised her for cooking the best dish in Thailand and then just asked her outright something I have longed to do for years, I asked her if she could teach the dish to me.  Yes!  She is willing to come to my apartment and show me how its done.  HURRAH!!  It turns out that she used to live and work as a maid on the road we live on, now isn't that a cosmic coincidence.

So the week rolls on, and as I hitch up my jeans and dig a bit of recalcitrant cashew nut from between my teeth, I wonder what the next piece of earth shattering news will be.