Less snooker related behaviour today and got a good balance with activities, relaxing and having fun. I managed another trip to the gym, which I do need as am eating big meals here and not doing all that much moving around. The gym is small, but as with the last time I went there I was sharing the space with a young, handsome couple. The female half of the couple resembles a young Amanda Peet and I spent most of the time thinking that if my girlfriend was to unfortunately die during this holiday (or to fall asleep for long enough for me to sneak off) then I might seek succour in the arms of this stranger. Though I would also require her boyfriend to die or sleep as well and for the young woman to drink some kind of love potion which would make disgusting old troll men attractive to her. It was largely a fantasy and one that best remained in my head so that no one would know of my imaginary betrayal (apart from Jesus, who is so used to this kind of stuff from me that I imagine he has tuned out by now). There is a sheet to sign in and out of the gym and after I'd finished I went to confirm that I had gone (though the gym is small so I'd have to have been hiding very well to still be there). I noticed there was a box for the gym user to put their age. I hadn't bothered, but the couple both had. He was 27 and she was 19. I felt doubly disgusting for my unfaithful and potentially murderous imagination. I was only two years younger than both of these people combined. I am really old.
Yet evenso I managed to feel faintly disgusted at this 27 year old man for having such a young girlfriend. Which is admirable double standards. Especially given that the age gap between me and my girlfriend is larger. I am a screwed up idiot, but at least I can laugh at myself. And that's pretty much all I can manage, so hopefully the double death + potion thing won't actually happen. Though I suppose I can pretend it is grief not decrepitude that has made me fail to perform. But not too sad to give it a go. Grief can do strange things to a man.
Anyway it was good to know that I am not the only man in the world plagued by such disgraceful thoughts. Today I was reading the new collection from one of my favourite authors Jonathan Ames. It's called "The Double Life is Twice as Good" and weirdly the front cover is of Ames having a boxing match against himself. And doubly weird is when he took up amateur boxing he called himself "The Herring Wonder". Odd how things echo each other and link up. I love his honesty and his work was a big influence on my own writing style and my decision to make "How Not To Grow Up" so warts and all. There are plenty of things to like and dislike about Ames, but he is pretty candid about all of them, which makes the negative things turn into a positive. You should really read all his stuff. He's very funny on top of it all. You should try and watch "Bored To Death" the TV show he writes, which is also excellent. I am his biggest UK fan for sure and yet when I emailed him to complain that the opening short story in this book called "Bored to Death" which was the inspiration for the series has been released as a separate book which was a bit of a rip off -it makes it really look like the book of the series, but it's just this one short short story- he didn't reply. Perhaps he thought I was somehow taking the piss, with my surname being Herring. Or perhaps he just doesn't care about his fans. I am sure he googles himself and should know about how much I have bigged him up in the past. Anyway - buy all his books apart from the rip off "Bored to Death" one which you won't need if you have the Double Life one anyway.
It was the first properly hot day today, but we'd booked ourselves in for a Thai Cookery class at the hotel, so had to look out at the blue sky and sunshine whilst we were inside learning. It felt like being at school in the summer. We were the only two people who had booked the course for today which was great for us and we were shown how to make Thai soup and green curry and chicken noodles. Even better we then got to eat all this stuff too. The man claimed that usually eight or ten people come along and looked a bit wounded that it was just us today, but I wondered if we were actually the first people ever to express an interest in taking part. This seemed to be confirmed when nobody could work out how to get the gas oven working. They turned knobs, but no gas was coming out. I thought it might all end before it began. But then the man who looked most like the regular chef came in and found the valve that turned it on.
Even with the sun beating down on the beach I am glad we'd elected to do something a bit different for the middle part of the day. It didn't involve quite as much hands-on cooking as I had imagined, though we did a bit of stirring and pouring. It was interesting to see how these dishes went together and to get to taste the difference that adding coconut milk or basil leaves made to the dishes. If we can get the ingredients together back home then I'd love to try to make this stuff ourselves. But maybe it won't taste so good when the sun isn't shining or there aren't nice Thai men helping us to get it right.
We were so stuffed that we didn't have any dinner tonight, but at least got an afternoon basking in the sun and reading short stories from a writer even more perverted than me.
