Ham Diaries Day7 SHR
# Water has been restored to the Inn much to the relief of us all. Apparently the over zealous chickens had pecked through a pipe. I would like to see one of these tungsten beaked birds.
# After a full week I have realised breakfast is included in my daily rate. I shall take breakfast on the balcony from now on.
# Saw a mother and son I know from Australia, they both having mild learning dissabilities, the mother about 60 and son around 35. Whenever asked at home what they were up to the reply was always the same. "Saving to go to Bali. We are going to Bali". Well much to my delight and surprise, they're here. Obvious targets for the piranha's of Kuta they have paid way to much for some items they have bought. Went shopping for a few hours with them to offer some bargaining tips.
# There may be an infinate number of me and an infinate number of you having an infinate number experiences on an infinate number of worlds. Read a little in the afternoon.
# Saw performing monkey. Found it difficult not to react.
# Spent pleasent evening with a couple of young travelers on the balcony enjoying a Bintang. Reciaved an uninvited but none the less welcomed foot massage.
Flower Pot Man
He wore a flower pot hat on his head and in not much more than a raspy hum he would continualy sing, an ever present rolled cigarette
stuck to the corner of his mouth jerking up and down, conducting him along the gangs of Kuta.
He held a small metal gaff as might a snake wrangler, picking up the rubbish of others and deftly hooking it over his shoulder into a large cane basket he had strapped to his thin shoulders. To fill this vessel he carted upon his back would take a full day prospecting the vacant lots and grimey sidewalks of the coastal laneways.A piece of plastic here, a can there, a soft drink bottle. If he should spy such a great treasure as a beer bottle he would skip to it quickly save it disappeared into thin air and rob him of its meagre reward. The resulting return from this cargo barely enough for a room, a meal and his one small luxury, rolled cigarettes. Still he sang.
Few new who this jolly little chap was and fewer cared to know, he was camouflaged behind his grubby occupation, hidden from others by their own refuse. But he seemed to care little for the social simplicities of names and introductions as he scurried and skipped about his solitary toil of filling his basket.
Once I saw him squatting in the heat of the day under the shade of a small tree, his eyes fixed to the distance away from his tireless ground survey, and I wondered what he wondered under his flower pot hat.Perhaps he wondered if his life may have been a little different if it weren't for the likes of me and others intruding on mass into his Bali. Maybe he would have been a fisherman or farmer or some other such earthy earner. If he did it was lost to me. He rose to continue his pursuit of wasted objects, a new song softly eminating from his lips.
We passed each other many times the other day as we navigated our serparate ways through the lanes and alleys of Kuta and beyond, he in search of glinting glass and I in search of glinting characters like himself. The last time I saw him I was seated on the kerbside smoking a cigarette musing over the life of the flower pot man, and as I sat there watching him I realised something, a soft little song was leaking out from the corners of my mouth. I watched him and continued to sing.
Cheers
Ham