We Had A Great Day,

around midday,

 two technicians arrived from I guess Samsung or their representatives who looked at our television made a note of the vertical lines that have appeared on the screen and took it away for repair, so we decided to pop over to the weekend plant market, to find it if you are leaving Pattaya to go to Bangkok as you pass the Bangkok Pattaya hospital on your left take the next 'U' turn and the market will be on the left, there is lots of parking space behind it, we are in the car park looking towards the Bangkok Pattaya hospital,

 so into the market we went,

 way too colourful to be true,

 as was this orchid,

 but these insectivorous plants were real, 

 as were these,

 roses still seem to be in season,

 if you visit here there are about 3 or 4 walkways like this, depending on how many traders arrive for the weekend,

 with all manner of plants for sale,

 like these cacti, 60 baht each or two for 100 baht,

 there are also stalls selling handicrafts,

like these mini fish traps,

 we bought a fresh papaya to snack on over the weekend,

 the large trees that are for sale at one end of the market making a nice sunshade for a few ZZZZ's,

 there are of course lots of small fruit trees for sale,

 although we have been here many times before,

 we have never seen fruits like these,

 otatheite apple, I looked the English name up, but I am not sure that the English name is correct as it took me here and I am not sure if these are them,

 a couple of happy garden ornaments,

 we bought a couple of bunches of cut orchids for our table when we have lunch tomorrow,

 as always I was tempted to buy a orchid or two,

 but settled on a cactus, 

 well three of them instead,

 a quick look at one of the waterlily stalls and one of the aquatic outlets,

 and past the tubular bells stall,

 I always think that theses flowers are made of wax,

 they are called Frangipani,

or sometimes Plumeria, talking to Thai friends about them they are considered to be unlucky for you if they grow inside the land that you own as your home, but are considered 'safe' if planted outside the dwelling area, I do not know why, but it could be that they are rather similar to Euphorbia, in that contact with the sap may irritate eyes and skin, so they should not be grown near the house,

 another look at some orchids,

 this one nearly came home with us, but I resisted,

then home, we were now without a television, but as luck would have it there was a really old one in a cupboard under the outside stairs, it was as heavy as a sack of cement, the screen or I should say tube looked like a 1950s goldfish bowl it was that curved after looking at our flat screen, but we finally placed it on the stand, talk about covered in dust, about 10 years worth, so a quick clean up, well not that much as I still did not know if it would work, then the job of trying to get it to work sans the remote control started, the remote was lost in the seeds of time, try as I might I could not get the thing to work, sometimes I could see the picture, but no sound or vice versa, there were three different sets of red/white/yellow sockets on the back of the television, AV 1, AV 2, AV 3, but no one set seemed to work, the left of the set of three would produce a picture but no sound, then switching to the next set sound but no picture and so on, by now my back was aching as the afternoon wore on, my right hand had developed the shakes, dust from the television was sticking to my forehead as I was sweating so much, the same sweat trickling into my eyes, rubbing them made things even worse, I was also hamstrung in that I was using one hand to push the cable into the back of the DVD player whilst using the other hand to hold the front of the player and manoeuvre the torch to see what I was doing, after what seemed like an eternity, but was in fact only a few hours, suddenly it all worked, we could watch TMN cable and our BluRays/DVDs, I collapsed on to the sofa just as the leg cramps started to make themselves felt, Diana had been ironing in the other room, seeing me recovering she brought me a coffee, then after all of my blood, sweat, tears, shakes and back pain said the words that I will always remember,


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 'not much of a picture is it?'

 moving on, after a shower it was time for our evening bar-b-q, for our starter turkey and sweetcorn soup,

Diana decided on one of the fish we had caught earlier in the week, for myself as we still had a couple of burgers left from last week I decided on those,

 time to light the barby, lots of smoke,

 but it soon caught,

 and as the flames died down,

 on with Diana's fish and the garlic bread,

 eyes down and tuck in,

 next on with the burgers,

and here they are, with fried onions,

 delicious!

 as was Diana's fish,

 Diana took this selfie, notice my new best friend, the barrel of wine on the window shelf, the great thing is it keeps filling up!

 for dessert we had chocolate cake and home made creme caramel,

followed by one, or maybe a few more Irish coffees, I had downloaded about 30 Rolling Stones hits and 20 or so from the Shadows onto my telephone, so we listened to all of them plus many more, after retiring inside one episode of Prime Suspect and we were off to bed.