Daily Mud - Dancing shoes not required

Chums who know me well will attest to the fact that I’ve never been a clubber. Dancing is not my thing. Not so much rhythmic movement as early-onset dementia. Think Prescott playing football. But I had a good case of ‘disco leg’ onsite yesterday. After a week of high tides in the afternoon – learning #46: digging underwater doesn’t work, and you can’t see where your feet are – and conducting my own research on Thursday, your correspondent finally got back into the mud yesterday. Arguably for a three hour digging session the pacing was wrong. So by the time 6pm arrived, and I’m willing the Imam’s evening call to prayer to crank up which doubles as my end-of-school bell, the spirit was willing but the body was wilting and wobbling. A bit like peat cutting in Ireland, this solid sticky clay (under a few inches of liquid mud) lends itself to being carved up into blocks and thrown onto hillocks. Rationally, of course, it should be easy to cut smaller blocks to time the arrival of exhaustion at dusk. So late in the day heaving the clay blocks out of the channel that's being created, the legs started to shake, from a lack of stamina and sugar. The hillock of mud I wanted to add to was 20 feet away. And every so often the 15kg block of clay decided not to leave the blade of the shovel but cling on like an AIG director to his bonus, so the digger is sudden yanked like a little old lady walking a husky. Trying. But progress nonetheless, and it was very satisfying to leave the site and be able to see change.

The session was interrupted by the arrival of Bang Don’s children. They are sweet, and are getting the idea that very simple Thai, all ahead slow, is sometimes understood by the bizarre, digging falang, but normal childspeak doesn’t stand a chance. They wanted to play with my camera, which is child/beer/mud/shock & awe proof, so I lent it to them. Actually, getting someone else to take pictures is always interesting, for their differing perspective. And this time was no different. Having taken 30 pictures of their nostrils, they then posed for each other dancing inside my carefully roped off control plots, and standing on the hillock I was busting my barnacles to make bigger. More communication needed: zero dancing is just fine.