When It Rains It Rains!

we waited in all morning, but it just poured down, finally stopping at about 2 in the afternoon, then it was down to town to pay the balance of my air ticket, I had the guy there check again if any seats had become available over night as I wanted to fly back earlier, but no joy, still fully booked,

after paying for the ticket it was to the permanent fruit market in Pattaya Tai,

I am on the temple side of the road looking towards Second road, and looking towards Friendship and Third road,

this is a strange addition to a shop, the structure goes up a couple of extra floors, at first it looks like extra living space, but then on closer inspection it is hollow, it is just a huge sign,

if you look carefully you can just about see Diana buying some fruit outside two of Pattaya Tai's many gold shops, it is strange out here, it seems anyone can pitch up a stall outside any shop, even 7-11's making it difficult for customers to see your goods, I have never found out if these stalls pay the shop owner or just use the space for free,

custard apples, huge lychee's and some Langsat (Longkorng),

it was then off to Friendship to buy the ingredients for Diana to make chicken casserole, potatoes, onions, leeks, carrots, spices, etc,

all set and ready to cook,

after a couple of hours cooking Diana de-boned the chicken,

the wine we had was Le Rovole, I could not find the vineyard it comes from, but it was Italian, on the front of the bottle it had in fine print Vino Da Tavola, it means table wine, but the classification means that it falls outside of appellation or denomination, meaning that wine growers can experiment with various grape combinations but the wine is not recognized by the control board, so, you can get total plonk or in some cases an extremely nice wine, in this case it was the latter rather than the former,

Diana is getting more and more confident with her cooking, another romantic candle lit evening for two, later we watched a really good western, Once Upon A Time In The West (C'era una volta il West), although a old movie, it was made in 1968, it has everything going for it, and a great cast, Fonda, Bronson, Robards and Cardinale, and some great lines, the following when Bronson hands his friend Robards over to the town sheriff,

Bronson: "this ones worth 5,000"

Robards: "Judas was happy with 4,970 less"

if you have not seen it yet try to! I think some of the cords played by Bronson as the harmonica man were used by a group called Supertramp in the opening of one of their songs, School, from the album Crime of the Century,

I almost think that Robards kept in the same character mode when a couple of years later he made the much underestimated movie The Ballad Of Cable Houge in 1970, it for me was so good I have ordered a copy so I can watch it again, many thanks to Mark for tracking it down and thanks in advance for Phil who I hope will bring it over from the UK.