I Lost!

Big Jim very kindly offered to pay the Mercy Center 10,000 baht if I continued to quit smoking for another year, well I was on 3 packs a day, now none, I stopped as a very good friend of ours died, Steve Blumenthal, so to raise money to help the orphanage he supported in his life time, The Mercy Center, I stopped smoking, so every year Big Jim made a contribution on the anniversary of his death on December 14th, well I must admit that whilst playing with the trains I have had the occasional pipe of Erinmore, so I will donate the agreed 10,000 baht to the orphanage on Monday, but big hearted Jim has also given me his 10,000 baht to donate regardless, what a kind chap he is, on to the gift wrapping shop above, I purchased a few items at the Friday market for Diana's Christmas presents, (I can not say what they are as Diana reads the blog!), so I took them to the shop above to have them wrapped, it is a Kodak shop a short walk from Friendship on the other side of the road,

imagine my surprise when I walked in to see a nicely maintained marine aquarium,

it contained fish and invertebrates, it looked really nice, as I have mentioned before fish keeping out here is very popular,

if you want to find the shop this is the view looking back to Friendship and the Decorm furniture shop,

so now our tree has a few presents around it, also Diana disappeared for a little while at the Market and returned with a wrapped present for me,

the blue one on the right,

then on to Saturday evening, Phil called round with a bit more time and a recovery from his trip around Thailand, he also has a interest in model railways so he is looking at a Clan class locomotive, we had just been looking at it working, we both commented on how detailed the locomotive was compared to a few years ago,

Diana was in the kitchen, this week she had decided to make fish and chips,

Mark called in,

along with Big Jim,

only a few of us this week, but our efforts to save the world were valiant neither the less, from the potentialities of CERN, to how to boil the perfect egg, then we got serious and on to the jokes, like this one,

when Leroy goes to church and says,

"Preacher, I need you to pray for my hearing."

the preacher puts one finger in Leroy's ear, and he places the other hand on top of Leroy's head and prays and prays and prays; he prays a blue streak for Leroy, after a few minutes, the Preacher removes his hands, stands back and asks,

"Leroy, how is your hearing now?"

Leroy says, "I don't know, Reverend; it ain't till next Wednesday!" Boom Boom!

it was now past midnight, a pleasant evening indeed, so we said our farewells and it was off to bed.