All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Wonderful strange stories from around the world

Where is this...Things are looking up?

It was the last day of term, 1971. My hair was a meter long. My tutor said, "You look like a damned Hottentot, and if you insist on becoming a musician, you'll probably marry one and end up living in an attic."

He was damn nearly right too. I did become a musician, and I married one, but we ended up living in the back of a car. But things are looking up. I now live between a slum and a disaster.

The slum is Klong, and the disaster is Sukit - a road which must surely hold more treasure beneath it than ancient Rome, for it's been excavated more times than most archaeological sites in history. The Soi that connects these distinctive headlines is disheveled, safe, and a cauldron of pleasing chaos.

The landscape around here changes every five minutes. Yet, some buildings, like the 17-floor concrete carcass next to my block, are in a permanent state of semi-abandonment. It took the locals two years to figure out firstly, what the hell it was, and secondly, how you get into the damn thing?

We asked the builders, who didn't know, who went to find the architects, who weren't even there. Then the builders asked us if we had any money . . .

Meanwhile, a Himalayan pile of refuse has risen over the year as the workers threw all their rubble, offal, and flotsams of snot over the wall. Around here, it's called recycling. We have inherited this squalid disgrace, which, naturally, is completely ignored by everyone except the rats - who think it's Las Vegas.

Wearing expensive shades, they lie on their backs, bloated with toxic waste, and look slightly guilty - as though astonished by their own abundance. Even the local dogs are embarrassed to be seen with them.

For the rest of us, it seems impractical to be uncivilized here, for there is an instinctive humanity in this hard-working neighborhood - a vital philosophy of getting ahead and getting along. Relationships around here are amicable, but have purpose, and you'll find yourself pulped into fiction if you don't contribute one way or the other. Your money or your manners - preferably both - and we'll all get along just fine.

There are apartments full of foreigners living a cocktail of realities. There are thugs, drunks, losers, survivors, dreamers, talkers, and moneymakers. There are keen teachers, busy business types, laid-back architects, and those who appear to have spent the last seven nights outdoors in a wheelbarrow.

There are also those who come and go, speak fluent bratpack, and are so relaxed they can't even get out of their own way.

Last night I sat talking to two guys in one of the local bars. We were a confederacy of strangers. After drinking a goon of panther pee each, and about to start on the second calabash of palm wine, I discovered that one of them was making 250,000 Baht a month as a salesman for computerized weaponry. The other guy, who had a face like a party balloon with a slow leak, didn't make any money at all - but just managed to maintain a ridiculous grin. Every time he wanted another drink, he simply yelled, "Nurse!" and they came running. What a brilliant idea.

He had all these pills in his shirt pocket. I asked him what they were for. "They make greyhounds incredibly happy for just a few moments," he explained. Oh.

Suddenly, late last night, one pathetic light bulb blinked on, then off, high up in the dormant concrete shell next door. Then early this morning, there was an excited shout from the street: "Hey! It's been called a hotel!"

Wow! Sometimes truth can come at you from completely the wrong direction. My dear, by lunch there'd even be talk of guests . . .

Right not, we're negotiating with Christo to come and wrap the refuse dump in white silk - as a sculpture, as a monument, as . . . as . . . as possibly another hotel. But the squatters are not interested. A spokesgerm for the rats said they are demanding pink silk, fresh refuse, new Raybans, and a little female rat action after dark. We're working on it.

By Roger Beaumont

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