An ordinary life in an extra-ordinary place
Archive for February, 2010
Polo is a hard sport, played usually by hard men. It is fast, dangerous and requires considerable aggression. The players wear stern expressions and their firm-set mouths are the source of regular expletives in both Spanish and English. The polo field is not a place for the faint-hearted.
So what happens when you run a ladies tournament as happened last weekend at Polo Escape? Well, first of all there was no bad language. In fact the ladies were unfailingly polite to each other.
“I’m so sorry, did I get in your way?’
“Gosh, did I just stove in the skull of your pony with my mallet?”
And they appeared to be generally enjoying the experience a whole lot more. As a photographer, this made the capture of expressions much more rewarding, as there was some variation compared to the “I’m going to rip out your eyes and eat them” look that is universally employed by the men. Some examples:
As for the actual polo, well they played almost as vigorously as the men. I have more than a few photos illustrating this, but in deference to Pete’s request not to publish “a gazillion pictures of some four-legged creatures who think they’re immune to fucking gravity”, here a just a handful:
But don’t think that’s the end of it, there’s another tournament starting tomorrow….
Ladies polo tournament time again, and once again there are not enough lady players to make up four teams, so each team is allowed one Argentinian professional to help them out. Last year, the macho gauchos entered into the spirit of the occasion:
This year there was no sign of wigs or balloons. “We don’t like to do it”, confided one of the gauchos. Dressing up as ladies, even as a joke, is clearly contrary to the manly Argentinian polo player image. Shame, I think they looked rather cute.
Fede made a small gesture of gender differentiation with a discarded baggage sticker:
Although this hardly matches his effort of last year:
But on the last day, a gaucho broke ranks and made a, not very convincing, attempt at female impersonation:
Clearly, he had no idea about hair care and had to be attended to by one of his teammates.
How he giggled with delight when he went on to win the Miss Shiny Hair competition:
Although I think he would have won more convincingly with a couple of balloons up his jumper.
Hello; have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you? Really?
Don’t know where the week went. First off, I was totally knackered after travelling and photographing and posting and generally doing stuff. Plus staying up too late with she who must be obeyed as she attended to her ever-expanding farm and pet empires on Facebook. Plus assorted chores that you wouldn’t want to know about (fixing a toilet roll holder, for example), none of which offered sufficient comedic content to make them worth writing about. And then it was she who must be obeyed’s two day “weekend”; can’t remember what we did but it took up the time. Oh, and I went windsurfing briefly which totally destroyed my body the following morning.
And now I have just returned from 3 days of shooting polo, with 2,500 photos to process before the next tournament starts in four days time; so I am exhausted again. Feel a little like this guy….
…who was meant to be photographing his wife playing polo and fell asleep instead. Still, as he was shooting with a Nikon that is probably the best thing to do (oh, you bitch).
Sorry for the interruption, some sort of normal service may now be resumed; but first I need to sleep.
It’s very rare that I have a problem with the food in Thailand. She who must be obeyed is less fortunate, entirely due to her insistence in eating dishes which are so spicy that people on adjoining tables having watering eyes and hacking coughs. One taste of her choice and my mouth is in ruins for hours, I don’t know how she does it. But I do know there is often a price to pay when the evil foodstuffs make their way through her digestive system.
Last night she disappeared into the toilet for at least half an hour. This is not unusual, she takes the laptop and often gets carried away with some cow raising issues in Farmville, or similar nonsense. But last night she emerged looking a little weak and said “I wouldn’t go in there for an hour or so”. Luckily, I never got the chance to challenge her warning, because she was back in the room of fumes on a regular basis for the next couple of hours. By bedtime she was looking a little sad.
I had an unopened packet of Imodium, emergency rations which I took to India but never needed; so she took one of those and prepared to take her aching tummy to bed. But one final laptop session and she suddenly took her ailing body into the kitchen and came back chewing something.
What are you eating?
Chocolate!!
Chocolate???
Mmmm, M&Ms.
Why? You are sick, you should not be eating anything.
It said in the internet that it would help (which means end of argument because it must be true).
Chocolate and Imodium, an interesting combination with which to assault the digestive tract.
Of course, this morning she felt fine, just to annoy me. I got my own back by eating the remainder of the rather substantial bag of M&Ms. Now I am feeling a little queasy; maybe I should eat some more.
So here we are, February 1st, and my WordPress statistics tell me that Pattaya Days had more than 6,000 visits last month; smashing the previous record of 5,000 by, well, 1,000.
So, well done you lot and thanks for visiting. Clearly the process of not posting for a week works well. Maybe I should try not posting for two weeks; or as some may be thinking, for ever.
Anyway, the not so good news for you; I have at least seven days of polo shooting coming up this month which means an inevitable deluge of horsey shots. Also, my “exciting things happening in Pattaya this month” calendar, which is never exactly stuffed, is depressingly empty. Never mind, something will turn up.
So please keep the comments coming. Apart from Walter, he can fuck off.
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