Bangkok Old Hand by Collin Piprell

Author:Collin Piprell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-04-22T07:00:00+00:00

14 SPACE INVADERS

This story appeared in the Bangkok Post in 1987. As it turned out, France reconsidered, and the "space invaders" never appeared. Not yet they haven't, anyway.

The other day I was thinking of penning an immortal word or two before breakfast. Birds twittered and chirped as I sat at my study window overlooking the lush green of the temple grounds across the way.

Suddenly, birdsong and tranquil reverie were blasted into shards by deafeningly amplified exhortations to buy somebody's fresh fruit. In the lane outside, there cruised a little pickup truck piled high with papayas and guavas. How could the vendor afford such a high-powered public address system, if his fruit was going as cheaply as he claimed? And why did none of my neighbours run out to strangle him? These were a couple of the questions that exercised my mind that morning.

Sure, these people have to make a living. But do they have to use such an obtrusive means of doing so? Okay, so it only lasted a few minutes, and those words I was thinking of penning would've had even less to offer posterity than those I set to this page now. But a rare mood had been broken. Besides, I might've been a sick baby, wide awake now and entertaining a family of nine. Or I might have had a hangover.

Other hawkers frequent the lane outside. A tinkle of bells heralds the ice-cream man. There's the klack-klack- klack of the couple with a bicycle cart who sell noodles in the evening, one member of the partnership pedalling, the other riding pillion, rapping out a simple tattoo with two bamboo sticks. There's the funny hee-haw horn of the sweets salesman. Occasionally a knife-and-tool sharpener trundles through, treating us to his sing-song refrain. I can enjoy all of these sounds as part of the ambience of the neighbourhood. These are things even the birds can get down and jam with.

It's modern technology that's the problem. Here are a few more contrasts collected from the lane outside my house.

• Cheerful snatches of song as a woman dips rainwater from a big earthenware jar for her morning ablutions. ROCK AND ROLL FROM THE 50-MEGATON STEREO SPEAKERS SOME MUSIC LOVER HAS HAD INSTALLED IN HIS CAR.

I've always admired the generosity of those who buy expensive stereo equipment and then want to share their music with everyone. On the other hand, sometimes you aren't in the mood for music, especially when you're caught between two minstrel disk jockeys, and enjoying the stereo effect of Damp Banana on one side and the Heavy Metal Mothers on the other.

• The group in the little house down the way which

gets together Friday nights to drink Mekhong whiskey and play Thai music on traditional instruments. THE SON OF THE POLICEMAN IN THE BIG HOUSE ACROSS THE LANE WHO HAS REGULAR AND MUCH-NEEDED POP- MUSIC BAND PRACTICE OUTSIDE IN THE COURTYARD.

Everything is amplified to coffee-shop decibel levels. I can't even go to the police — they are the police.

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