Irretrievable

I have bought myself a white board, after seeing one at Mum's shop which I liked. She bought her board with football gambling winnings - oops, with spare money which just happened to find its way into her back pocket.

Thai shopowners can carry thousands of baht around with them at any time. Maybe they worry that if they leave the shop's float in the drawer it will disappear. If her shop runs out of change, then Mum pulls out a huge wad from her back pocket. Ah...there's power.

At Mum's shop, the board gets plenty of use. I use it to teach English to her teenage son, Som. I write words in English to show him how they are spelt, and compose simple exercises on the board.

Som, who has a beautiful hand in English, complains that my English hand-writing is barely legible.

These days, I explain, I almost never pick up a pen. But once my hand-writing in English was as beautiful as his is now. It had to be: back when I was at school, if I made too many mistakes on a page, I had to throw it out and start again. I couldn't type assignments on a computer and print them out the way young ones can today.

Sometimes I wonder what a hand-writing expert would make of my odd script. 'Gay,' I suspect he's say, in a one-word solemn verdict on what my writing revealed about my character.

'Is there any hope?' the judge asks.

'Just as he can't change his writing style, he can't change himself,' he'd say with a resigned look.

Som himself has now become a teacher, after one of the international students who interviewed Mum for an assignment this week asked Som to teach him Thai. The student now turns up after his university classes have ended, and over a beer asks Som to teach him how to speak.

'Som is teaching him Thai, and gets to pick up English at the same time,' said Mum approvingly.

I bought my white board, which comes with a black Texta pen and eraser, because I want to learn how to write Thai. On the bus, in eateries, at Mum's shop itself, I often find myself tracing the outline of Thai letters with my finger. That's too easy: much harder is when you actually write the characters. I have discovered my ability to memorise and reproduce simple shapes on the board is limited.

Our ability to write in our own language appears deeply ingrained. If I didn't know how to write English automatically, at my age learning it would be a struggle.

Learning how to write the Thai alphabet is also a challenge. Today, boyfriend Maiyuu helped. I asked him to write the letters on the board as if he was scribbling a note to someone.

I want to know how to do it the casual rather than the formal way first. Then when I have mastered the basics of scribble, I shall turn to getting all those little curves and squiggles write.

I mean, right.