Flooding is in the news again. Hasn’t reached my little corner of Siam yet, because the Mekong River has been throttled by Chinese-owned hydro-electric dams in Laos for many years. There were pretty serious floods here about ten years back, when the water rose up to the back wall of our land, and it was like the sea out there. Expensive strengthening of the wall and the deck has kept the waters at a distance since then (wry humour emoticon).
Bangkok is a major flooding disaster waiting to happen. Less than a century ago, it was basically a canal city, sort of like Venice but made of wood. The canals have been progressively filled with concrete as footings for shopping malls, but nobody thought this was a bad idea, except the thousands of people who lost their homes and businesses. So the Chao Phraya River (a mighty, mighty waterway) overfills, with no run-off canals to take the load. Massive work has been done upriver (as in many parts of Thailand) under the Old King to mitigate the problem, but the Thais have always had the slenderest grasp on what to do with that wet stuff that falls from the sky. Drains in roadways are rare, and generally safely above puddle level. Drainage as part of road construction seems to be rocket science. Roads going through rice fields (which is most of them) aren’t constructed with hardcore, let alone drainage, so potholes the size of sinkholes keep appearing, to the puzzlement of local authorities, who send out somebody with a bucket of grit.
When the floods hit here, the houses at the end of our road were up to their knees in water. The locals cheerfully fished from their windows, kids learned to swim, or at least splash, and Thai life went on with its usual good humour. It’s been raining here for two days non-stop, so who knows? The tides they are a’changing.
Hope you’ll be alright, man.
Thank you. But the Thais can cope with anything – if they had the tea towel equivalent of that British wartime morale booster, it would be HAVE A LAUGH CARRY ON. You have to love a people whose national footwear is the flip-flop and wear plastic bags on their heads when it rains.
The best videos of the floods happening now are on social media (“so-shun” as it’s known), so not shareable. Just imagine a lot of rooftops in vast areas of water.
I took my Dad for a ride on the Sky Train in Bangkok a while back (when he was alive, conveniently), and as we looked out at the city of sky scrapers and towering apartment buildings and glittering malls, I told him that none of what he saw – aside from the occasional temple – existed when he was born. Made us think, dinnit?
Fingers crossed for you. We also have a mighty river that floods (the Tweed) and further south, Wilson’s, Richmond, Brunswick and Clarence Rivers. The state is still clearing up after the 2022 floods.
The aboriginals knew, though, which is why they always lived on higher ground. They looked on sardonically as the Anglos insisted on building cities on flood plains and nostalgically named the rivers after rivers back home.
Nobody can do sardo like an abbo.
T.O. too
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rainfall-flood-toronto-record-1.7266064
Good luck with the next few weeks!
It sounds all rather nightmarish sitting here in the dry hills of Stockholm. But I enjoyed reading your description of how the Thais cope so cheerily with situation.
Fingers crossed it gets no worse!
[insert video of A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall here -ed]
Best of luck old chap.
While I’m here: what exactly are galoshes anyway? And why are they plural? You never hear someone talk about putting on a pair of galoshes, do you. Makes you think, eh?
As that wise man Paul Jennings once wrote, ‘Galoshlessness is foolishness when sharply slants the sleet.’
What was Darbyshire’s take?
More like ‘Galoshlessness is fossilisied fish hooks’, Jennings. You do talk the most frightful bish. Anyway, give me a hit on that ozard bong before Old Wilkie smells it.
Galoshes only exist in the plural. If you lose one, there’s no way to get it back, because English doesn’t have the words to say “Has anyone seen my left galosh?”
On a tangent; Cows. Cows are female beasts of many species, like whales. But the things we see standing around in fields aren’t whales. So what are they?
No so. A Galosh in the singular was a Russian anti-ballistic missile.
Galoshes. Trousers. Shorts. Pants. Glasses. Yet neither gloves nor socks.
Trousers are often a trouser in the fustier sort of gents’ outfitters. For a deranged analysis of the difference between the two take a look at this. And I thought I was a world-class pedant…
https://grammarbeast.com/trouser-vs-trousers/
If you – clearly no stranger to fusty gents’ outfitters – accept “trouser”, you must perforce accept “pant”, and “short”. This nonsense has to stop.
“Jean” is used in fashion garment circles, too. The singular forms of jean and trouser are for inside leg enthusiasts in the rag trade, not for punters. Does sir dress to the left or the right?
Does sir want a belt in the back?
Why, you … for two cents I’d …
All this is assumption. Why can you not have a galosh? You talk bollock and will cause a shenanigan with such talks.
I don’t agree he talk bollock. I think he cut through the nonsenses like a scissor.
Instead of galoshes why not try pattens?
I withdraw the assumption! The last thing I want is to cause shenanigii.
@mikethep
The Eastern bloc’s missile names all seemed to lack the inherent jollity and romance of their Western counterparts.
If you had to get vaporized by an ICBM surely better it be a Cruise with its delightful connotations of drinking cocktails at the captain’s table) than a Scud (suggestive of an especially unpleasant STD)
You should take a look at the list of NATO names for Russian military aircraft some time. Would you rather be vaporised by a Fishpot or a Flogger? Or come to that a Bison or a Badger?
Floggers would obviously go down well with Tory MPs (and even more so amongst former Tory MPs as there are suddenly far more of them)
Whales are fish. They don’t have legs and they live in the sea. What more evidence do these so-called scientists need?
yes, but… well no they’re not fish, are they? So they have that in common with their ruminatory field-based cousins in the ‘Not Fish’ genus. But the question remains; what actually are cows? So far all we have established is that they’re not fish.
Animal, mineral or vegetable?
You might have a point, I’ve never seen Battered Whale on any Fish & Chip shop menu.
You can get Findus frozen whale in Norwegian corner shops. You’d have yo do your own battering though.
You say “all” we have established is that they’re not fish, but I think that’s an excellent start.
Indeed. Let’s have a brew and apply for funding to further our research.
Lady Bulls? Sounds like something you’d find in a Thai bar.
HPS will be along shortly to protest that he has no knowledge of such things
*blinks*
Cows are female bovids. Simples Shirley?
Yeah no. “The Bovidae comprise the biological family of cloven-hoofed, ruminant mammals that includes cattle, yaks, bison, buffalo, antelopes (including goat-antelopes), sheep and goats. A member of this family is called a bovid.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovidae
So unless you’re driving by a farm in rural England and your daughter excitedly shouts “Look, Daddy! Goat-antelopes!,” then no.
There might be an outside chance I’m right when I say that some of the world’s major religions, like Hindi and Pakistani, believe cows are sacred gods and that we were made in their image and that they (cows, still) are omnipotent and interventionist.
Hmm not sure about that. As the great theologian Nick Cave once put it: I don’t believe in an interventionist cow, but I know, darling, that you moo.
Been in Bgk quite a few times and was always amused by the way it always
seemed to bucket down rain at 4 o’clock every afternoon
Alas, they stopped that tradition when the Old King died, along with other marks of respect.
I guess that also means the hookers in the Soi Cowboy have stopped performing. the “flag salute”
I have no idea.
So I’m no nearer to completing my understanding of this – what I naïvely* assumed was a simple one – subject. Thanks a bunch.
*TIL (as the kids say) what that crazy symbol above the “i” in “naïvely” is. Email me if you’d like to know too.
“Naïvely” looks wrong doesn’t it? It’s a weird word, a bit like “liaise”.
I’ll stop here, I’m just rambling.
It’s the Afterword way, MC…
A thread about HP’s damp garden gets to umlauts (is it an umlaut? Dunno) via galoshes, a trouser, names of missiles, the mystery of cows, ‘flag salutes’ and Findus frozen whale.
Just a normal day at the AW then.
… and long may they continue.
@chiz
Given your name features so prominently in his works, I find it extraordinary you forgot our collective tip of the AW hat to the late Anthony Buckeridge
That’s Jennings. I’m Molesworth.
I’m not a fule so I didn’t kno that
Keep those flip flops ( thongs down here) by the door in case a quick escape is needed. I don’t suppose you have a tinnie ( small simple water craft made of steel ) ?
Junior’s abode has commenced some landscaping. The builders excavated down to the yellow grey clay and dug some trenches , ironically for stormwater pipes. The disturbance of that ground caused all the water on harder ground to head to softer ground. As a result some bogs have appeared, one attempting to consume the landscaper’s dingo ( no- a small stand on earth moving vehicle) so in the torrential rain he and I were fashioning makeshift bridges with rope and leftover lumber from the build.
Water eh ! Cant live with it, can’t live without it.
Dingo is also a wild dog, a door bell, dingleberry, and an indentation in a car’s bodywork resulting from a minor collision. The richness of ocker vocabulary!
“Tinnie” is of course a can of beer as well, but it can also mean tinnitus, “very small”, ten of something, a tennis racket or ball, medicine (from “tincture”), and tent.
Yikes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/18/flooding-small-businesses-closing
Yes. Towns like Lismore in NSW are almost nothing but small businesses. This is a long read, but worth it – the chaos and the long-term damage are devastating.
https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2022/lismore-flooding/
What a story. And graphically shown in a way only the internet can. Even if the warning systems had been upgraded in time, and evacuations handled as efficiently as possible, the result would have still been disaster.
Quite so. You will know the feeling, but sitting here safe from anything except a 1-in-100,000-years flood (that will probably arrive next year), I can’t imagine a life where the trauma resurfaces every time there’s a heavy rainstorm.
That’s quite a read @mikethep