January 2015

Andrea T Edwards

Celebrating Great Memories

We’re in Thailand celebrating the fact we’ve been married 10 years. Yep 10 years, a decade! While most couples tend to celebrate their marriage– and all it entails – Steve and I find it impossible to move beyond remembering our truly sensational wedding in Koh Samui, 10 years ago – which is why we’re back in Thailand now. We love this country. More than 60 people braved the journey for our nuptials (from all over the world with only a couple of months’ notice) and we still laugh about it – a lot. That’s a successful wedding in my mind. This is dawn Jan 16th On our big day, there were no meringues, no bridesmaids, no groomsmen or anything weddingy really – although  we had a lot of flowers, a lot, hey it’s Thailand after all – and instead it was just a bunch of people hanging out for more than 10 days, building up to the big festivities on the 15thof January 2005. I was also very un-bride-like. Shit, I didn’t even organise it. Steve did. Definitely not much of a bride me, but then I expect it comes down to the fact I never ever thought I’d actually get married. So when I did, it had to be unconventional, it just had to be. We achieved that. The memories we talk about, apart from the people who came, are along these lines Everyone started arriving from the 9th of January and we landed on the 10th– still drunk from a brunch in Singapore. Our packing was atrocious! Each day we had new arrivals which meant new party pals every evening, always starting in the Coral Bay Bar and finishing with ridiculousness on our villa deck. New friendships were formed throughout this time, so the wedding became about all of us. I really liked that The day before the wedding, we had to meet the lovely ladies at the resort for final detail confirmation. It went SO well… “excuse me while I go vomit.” Classy. But that was the week we were having – partying into the wee small hours of the morning. Then again, Steve had organised everything anyway, may as well let him keep going while I have a heave… The bucks/hens night started with go-karting. All was going well until two cars flipped. There was silence as we all wondered what the hell was going on, and as my panic built thinking Steve was hurt because I could see his shirt from the other side of the track, it turns out our friend Tony had broken his back! FUCK!! The drama was terrible and poor Tony and Jane endured a very long hospital stay in Koh Samui. The good news is Tony was up and walking pretty soon after and is now a proud Daddy of two (with Jane). It definitely wasn’t a funny memory but we’re so glad it turned out well for them. Whose idea was it to go go-karting anyway? Crazy shit in this part of the world. Never again After the ambulance headed off, a rather sombre group split into boys and girls – except Adrian, he stayed with the girls – and after the boys had enough of being told how handsome they were and playing connect four with the local gals, we ended up merging parties and dancing up a storm. It was a cracking night, concluding in a naked duck race on our deck. I will not reveal the second naked person, but the Welsh guy we met at the bar was the first to clench a coin in his arse cheeks, all encouraged by his wife. I don’t encourage Steve to do such things Then the day arrived and our transport was an elephant, and while entertaining for everyone else, getting on that bloody thing while wearing a Kebaya, and with a fear of heights thrown in the mix, was not a lot of fun for me. Then people started handing their children to us, so here we are, shitting ourselves, and people give us responsibility for the most precious humans in their lives. Not to forget the crowd on arrival, which was not just the wedding guests. A huge crowd of strangers turned up, taking photos, and all I could focus on was this one rather rotund chap, in black speedos, with a photography vest on (and nothing else) and a rather unfortunate case of body moles. He wasn’t pretty and he took all of my focus away from the crowd. I was totally relieved to get off that bloody beast I tell ya Then we had a ceremony with eight Buddhist monks. The head honcho was awesome, but as he splashed us with water, Steve and I broke into giggles and couldn’t stop, but you know what stopped it? We had to go to each Monk and give them an offering on our knees. We did this on wooden planks and it was bloody excruciating! Yeah, we weren’t laughing then We had another ceremony after that – can’t remember why – then it was all in the ocean for a group photo and cosmos all round. At this point, we lost three people on the beach (drunk) and in hindsight, cosmopolitans may not have been the best idea, especially when drinking them by the jug. Coming back to that later Food is always important when entertaining anyone from Asia – we discovered that early when hosting our first BBQ in Singapore. The mantra is food now, drinks irrelevant. I know, different right? Steve and I were offered first place in line, but as we’d rather keep drinking, we offered first dibs to our Singaporean friends, who jumped at the offer. By the time we got there, all Suckling Pig had been devoured. Steve had a moment of remorse at that point Elspeth meets her first Lady Boy The evening entertainment was a Transvestite Cabaret. We were asked what rules we wanted – i.e. how far

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Andrea T Edwards

What a Great Start to the Year, Not

I love this time of year. Everyone spends time looking back, reflecting on the year that was and getting ready to embrace the year ahead. I love the sharing – it’s inspiring to hear from those close to me how far they’ve come and I love hearing about everyone’s achievements, no matter how small. For me I’d say last year both sucked and was brilliant too, but I also appreciate that a lot of dear people went through some really REALLY tough times. I hope the sun shines more this year for those who didn’t enjoy 2014.   However it wasn’t a great year for our world and the one thing that struck me during last year is how heavy and fucked up everything seemed to be – the emergence of ISIS, brutal beheadings and teenage girls running off to be ISIS brides – god, join a rock group if you want to be a rebel girls. And then we have school girls being abducted (we couldn’t possibly educate our girls – where’s the benefit in that?), the Palestine/Israel bullshit, crashed-planes-lost-planes-blown-up-planes, the continuing nuclear fallout in Japan, the apathy of the masses towards our environment and the extinction threat that comes with it (palm oil to name one), the filth in our oceans and a blasé attitude towards keeping our world clean, all religious fundamentalists – including ones with white faces – spouting their bullshit and representing no one (seriously, I wish you’d all just fuck off and die), the Taliban killing school kids in Pakistan (more fuckers!), the human tragedies in the Philippines and other developing countries, sometimes due to violent weather, but more often than not because corrupt governments/businesses are pillaging the earth for short term profit, but hey, don’t worry about that village at the bottom of the mountain you’re deforesting or the fact everyone is killed by a mudslide, which is definitely the fault of weather and not you, no, no, no – those trees sure were handy keeping that soil in place before the rain huh? Those corrupt fuckers can fuck off with the fundamentalists!   I could obviously go on and on – there’s enough fuckwits for a 1,000 pages – but in 2014 it seemed bad shit was going on everywhere and it sucked. Are humans seriously incapable of learning that none of this gets us anywhere? Surely it’s time for those of us who DO want peace to stand up to the fuckers that are constantly bringing the world down? I hate the fear it all generates and I always feel such a heaviness in my body when the world goes through its cycles of grief and disaster, war and savagery – you?   So I’ve been hoping 2015 could be a different year, a calmer year, a nicer year.     And what a great start. Two armed fuckwits decide to go into a magazine and blow away people for drawing cartoons. Awesome. Sure these guys push the boundaries with their ideas (and long may cartoonists do so) but its cartoons – bloody cartoons!!! We’ve seen an interesting show of unity – does it help? I don’t know – but I know many of us are pondering the events in Paris in different ways.   For me, this attack felt absolutely bloody pathetic on the part of those who did the act. Are you fucking kidding me? People who made the world laugh deserve to be shot for drawing pictures of your prophet? Haven’t you seen how much love the Jews, Christians, Jesus, etc… get from these guys as well? You’re not fucking special here. I’ve often wondered if Jesus came back to earth and I had the opportunity to ask him “so mate, what do you think of what has been built and done in your name?” I expect he’d be rather pissed with us. I reckon Mohammad would be pretty pissed too.   We’re not getting anywhere here my extremist friends, nowhere at all. This massacre makes you look like completely fucking ridiculous morons, and you’re recruiting people to your cause? Why the fuck would anyone want to be part of this? Maybe your recruitment is targeted to those with absolutely no sense of humour at all? Wow, don’t sign me up, then again, I’m a woman, why the hell would I want to be anywhere near you anyway.   This isn’t about religion, it’s about being complete fuckwits. All of my Muslim friends smile, laugh and enjoy a joke. You guys aren’t Muslims. But them, this isn’t about religion is it? That’s just a cover story that gets the world riled up and the bait is being taken… that shits me too. The anti-immigration march in Germany shows me you’re succeeding. Don’t we all get the fact that we need each other right now? Mother Earth is going to kick our arses very VERY soon in a BIG way. It’s coming. Isn’t that a better priority to be focused on? One that will require all of us to be united?   In “Holidays in Hell” (old book, GREAT read) P. J. O’Rourke is at a born again Christian retreat in the US and he makes the observation that went something along the lines of this: “if there really was a god I think he’d give us bigger bums to sit on and smaller brains to think with.” In the case of the guys terrorising our world right now, I wished they’d take this on board, and instead of what they’re doing, change tactics and sit around boring each other to death instead. In god’s name. Seriously. What sort of a monster do you think god is?   So to all people with ridiculous ideas that are fucking up our world – why don’t you all fuck off and leave us alone? There’s a very large population getting really really fucked off with you guys these days and soon we might even do something serious about it. For

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