The Chronicles of Riddup Riddup

The delicate ecological balance of the earth tips this way, tips that way.

Slight changes in pH of rainwater or vodka, of the dust in our crop-DDTers, of the level of methane exiting cows' bums, of the algal blooms in watercourses, carbon-pencils in the hands of bipedal carbon-based lifeforms, the bleaching of white whales, shifting the El Kabong effect, rat urine on the top of Coke cans, etc, etc...

You know, the stuff the doom and gloom merchants toss at us every generation to make us fear, tremble and buy more useless flu vaccines and Donald Rumsfeld happy.

When I was young, we were not going to make it out of the 60's 70's because of the bomb and pollution and Gough Whitlam and long-haired men in floral bell-bottoms passing you a joint or several... Actually I am not sure we did. This all might be a drug-addled hallucination and I might still be at University, back (or presently!) in 1976!

But seriously... Pollution. Climate Damage. Disaster. No, laughing matters. (oops a comma slipped in there!)


When the balance tips too far one way, some of the inhabitants of Gaia are going to suffer. The creatures which act as the canaries in the coal-mines for imminent environmental armageddon, such as say, canaries in coal-mines, we just don't see hanging round the coffee machine any more. It is the Silent Spring we all feared.

Or the silent drainage ditches and fetid waterfalls and rain-soaked pathways at night in your typical Thailand beach-side Resort and Spa where typically E@L is forced to accommodate himself for the arduous demands of his, phew, tough employment contract.


Frogs. No silence here.

When frog numbers thin out, when they croak it as it were, the end is nigh, as it were. Frog scarcity is the black swan that should tip the point of our crowd wisdom into snap-out-of-it mode. They can only last so long in boiling water, right? And we are in it with them on this crumbling planet, in it up to our thick, chinless, green-skinned, warty (speak for yourself!) necks.

The problem in Hua Hin? World environment is looking like lasting until the Sun goes red dwarf, if the frog population here is anything to go by.

Bloody riddupy things are driving me cray-zeeee with their incessant brdl-brdl-brrdliing... Great choruses of bass profundo, tenor and alto croaks - c.f. Beckett's Watt for an actual(?) frog sonata - the toadular and frogular lepping beasts are bu-bu-bu-burping away all night just outside my door.

They certainly don't sound anything like the little wooden frog things carried and abused by those (allegedly) hill-tribes women, those terrors of capitalistic persistency in stupid jingly hats, garlanded in cheap beads and with trays of unspeakably horrible hill-tribe manufactured trinkets to sell at you in Thai markets. I can pick those fakes amphibian vibrations easily. When the women run a short stout stick across the corrugations on the back of the pseudo-frog to generate a brdl-brdl-brdl-brrrdling sound it is just so unrealistic. Seriously. Those tourist trap toys sound nothing like the REAL frogs outside my hotel door, ho ho, don't you worry about that!

But tonight, I was lying down for my rest at last, after a weary day - most importantly eating fistfuls of the most amazing almond and raisin cookies ever, at the Dusit Resort - during which day I was stabbing large needles in the general direction of olives that had been hidden inside chicken breasts (don't ask, it's a living), when not trying to chat up the girls from the other companies that is... tonight those amphibial sleep interrupters outside were just driving me up the peach-coloured walls...

Their racket was almost making the room quake. Frog noises high, frog noises low. Fast frog noises, slow frog noises. Moist frog noises, dry frog noises. GIANT frog noises, small frog noises. For Chrissake, how many frogs ARE there outside my door? All the bloody frogs in Thailand, and then some, it sounds like!

Picking up an empty plastic bottle (fruit-flavored yoghurt drink, what I tipple as a night-cap, religiously) I opened the door to threaten the wee beasties with a thumping, and a yelling at...

"You bloody frogs are keeping me awake! Roll on Climate Change if it will shut you buggers uuuuu........p????" I screamed as I opened the door, only to be confronted by...



"Hill-Tribes Women" in the Hua Hin Nightmarket - Photo? - Yi sip baht, yi sip baht, her, me, same-same.

E@L