Daily Post
WEDNESDAY JULY 8, 2008
From: Francis Connor, Sataheep, Thailand
My Dear Simone,
firstly, the idea of luncheon together this week is hugely appealing and I would be available on Friday. How about The Bay at 1pm? Secondly, my wonderful chef Aek recently served me a fish he buys from the local market called Tuptim. I've never had it before and it is truly delicious. You must try it, perhaps here, cooked by Aek next time you visit.
Hi Francis, Friday's fine, see you there. And re Tuptim, I'm surprised you've lived in Thailand so long and never had it before (your life is too sheltered - all those chefs and servants). Tuptim is easily the most common fish in rural Thailand. It's actually a Tilapia, originally from Egypt and for 2000 years the principal fish of the Nile. Now it's being bred anywhere vaguely tropical, from Jamaica to Japan, particularly in Southern China. In Thailand the King proposed a further development of the fish to make it more fleshy and raise its nutritional value. Ten years of cross-breeding produced the Tuptim. In the countryside they usually lay it in bright sunlight for 12 hours to 'bind' the meat before frying it in a shallow pan and serving it with Thai salad. I had it this way at Bangkok airport just last week for a mere 110 baht (£1.80). Delicious! The fish's name is said to mean 'pink ruby' though the dictionary offers other translations too - 'permangranate', for instance, which is a salty bleaching agent, and pomegranate (the fruit). At a pinch it could also be translated as 'shagging Tim' since the word 'tup' by itself can mean copulate.
TUESDAY JULY 8, 2008
From: Simon White, London, UK
Had a very good day at Henley and Ian Morton was charming, though a little worried about Allan rushing in and out of the changing rooms with his camera and handing personal cards to all pretty oarsmen. I've booked the knife for 16th August.
This is a fortnight later than I'd hoped because I'm due to driving down to Figeac, near Cahors, by the 5th September and then on to Carcassone and Cannes. (This whilst the decorators are here). Then in November to Thailand.
Great! So we're finally going to see you here. I'm sure you'll have no problem leaving for France on the 5th - keyhole surgery is amazing, I was on the plane to London just three weeks after my op. Figeac and Cahors are great wine places. Pre-phylloxera, Cahors made wine by boiling the grapes before pressing to make the juice stronger. They made a wine so dark it was known as 'black' rather than red and it could take up to a hundred years in the bottle to reach its best. Nowadays they make it softer and quicker maturing but back in the 70s I managed to get hold of a couple of bottles of the pre-pylloxera stuff - not particularly soft even after a hundred years but remarkable tasting, and as black as night. In the 15th Century the Russian Orthodox Church adopted Cahors 'black' as their communion wine. Very canny! Even I would have mumbled an occasional amen in return for a good slug of it.
MONDAY JULY 7, 2008
From: Andy Sharpe, Trenton, New Jersey, USA
Hey Simon - a month or so ago when you had your gall bladder out you told us you wouldn't be able to eat anything fatty ever again. How are you finding it? I'm interested because I had my gall bladder out a year ago and they told me the same thing but I've not changed my diet at all and I feel just fine.
Thank-you Andy for enquiring about my health. I'm now totally recovered, though there was a bad period just after the operation. When he let me go home the surgeon warned me not to drink any alcohol for a couple of weeks. So I didn't. And I didn't feel good. I went for a check-up from my regular doctor who took some blood and sent it for testing. The long and the short of it was that my blood alcohol level was dangerously low. He wanted to keep me in hospital for a day or two and put me on a whiskey drip but when I promised to up my intake of wine and calvados he agreed to let me go home. Since then things have been fine. Like you I haven't found the need to change my diet at all, though to be honest I haven't yet dived into a kilo of foie gras. Maybe I'll do that tonight.
SUNDAY JULY 6, 2008
From: Muir Vidler, London, UK
It was very nice to see you... good to bat a couple of ideas around for 'the book'... we could be a good partnership... as you pointed out, because we are not such an obvious
pairing... part travel, part reportage, part diary sounds like a good
cocktail to me...
Hi Muir - after we spoke I talked with my literary agent who was absolutely, utterly, supremely negative in that extraordinary English way I've spent forty years having to put up with in the music business: "Won't work - can't be done - won't sell - totally not worth doing". He had an explanation of course - it's because there are already so many travel books that bookstores HAVE to put on their shelves that there's no room for more. Every bookstore MUST stock the "Lonely Planet" books, MUST stock the "Rough Guides", MUST stock the "Eyewitness Travel Guides" etc. And when they've put all these books about all the different countries onto the shelves there's no room to squeeze any more books between them. "So forget it", was his message and I left feeling a touch depressed. But really, what he'd told me (though he didn't realise it) was that travel books have become the pop records of the book industry. It was always like that in the music business. Every shop had to stock the Top 40 so how could they find room for new artists? And of course we - the managers - solved that problem week after week and got new artists into the charts despite the dreary pessisim of all those miserable people at record companies. From what my agent told me it seems travel books have never before been so popular - nor more boringly formularised. There's obviously a need for something fresh and different and what we're planning could be perfect. A bit more focussing perhaps, then we should get on with it. And with photos like yours how can it fail.
Sharon Osbourne by Muir Vidler
SATURDAY JULY 5, 2008
From: Danny Jamieson, Vancouver, BC, Canada
A long time back I remember you talking about what books you'd been reading - a strange bunch if I recall correctly - and I thought it was time for another update. Myself I've just finished Barrack Obama's book about his father which I found dull rather than inspiring. I thought back to that wonderful play John Mortimer wrote - "A Voyage Round Father" - more insightful, more amusing, more revelatory. If only America could import its presidents from Britain. Anyway Simon... read any good books lately?
Not many! I don't much like fiction, just factual stuff, memoirs, autobiography. Though that's not altogether true because I enjoy reading fiction in Thai. Not sure why. Perhaps because I read slower in Thai and the story helps pull me through the book whereas if I want facts I prefer to gobble them up fast in English. Currently I have two books by my bed. In Thai, The Remains of The Day by that strange Japanese man who writes in English, Kazuo Ishi Wotsit. Since what he produces is already the fruit of two cultures it seems reasonable enough to read it in a third, and in Thai it works rather well - I can't imagine it would be as good in English. Next to that is "Quicksands", a book by my favourite writer of English, Sybille Bedford. Second time of reading and still stunning. Written when she was almost blind at 93 and as witty and youthful and sharp (though not hopeful) as something written by a thirty-year-old.
FRIDAY JULY 4, 2008
From: Anthony Anderman, Singapore
Thanks for coming down to see us last night. If the meal was a bit casual I trust at least the wine made up for it. Sorry about the karaoke. Hope you made your flight.
Anthony - the meal was ridiculous, probably the biggest collection of seafood I've ever had put in front of me, but the karaoke, as always, was the worst possible way to end an evening. Since other people had to be considered, you're forgiven. I shouldn't really be so snooty about it, the last time I was in Singapore I was in a karaoke bar too, though not on purpose - I was looking for somewhere else and wandered into the karaoke bar by mistake and there singing his balls off was Jerome Walton who used to be the Pink Floyd's tour accountant. The end result was an all night bar crawl during which we somehow got emeshed with an exceedingly posh Thai girl (the daughter of a Thai general) who ran all the Thai hookers in Singapore. They're given official licences by the Singapore government to come and 'hook' within the law for a three year period on the condition they'll never enter Singapore again afterwards. Odd place isn't it - Puritan yet pragmatic - which is one more reason why I think your project will do well.
THURSDAY JULY 3, 2008
From: Gordon Torrance, Jakarta, Indonesia
Yesterday, reading your website and pondering on the delights of a kiss with Mr Soonsiri, I realised it's been a long time since we've been in touch. So how are you? Last time we met you looked very different. A lifetime of eating and drinking, I suppose. Anyway, just to remind you of what was, here's a picture I took of you in my flat in 1976.
Hi Gordon, I remember your flat well - in Manchester Square - grand but ragged round the edges, untidy, with lots of things lying around, most of them applicants for that pop group you endlessly planned to launch but never quite did. (I always presumed it wasn't really meant for launching, just for auditioning.) Anyway, good to hear from you. Actually I was in Jakarta recently but had no idea you were there. Never mind! We've done quite well not seeing each other for thirty years - should manage another thirty OK, don't you think?
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