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The Girl From Mars
Meeting Ash at the Blues Brothers Bar
Yesterday I was reading Cathy Rentzenbrink’s excellent book, Write it all Down. She suggested writing your own Desert Island Disc list, as a way to trigger memories for a memoir. The list she gave as an example included the song by Ash, Girl From Mars. It immediately brought back memories from a certain time, long ago…
…An overnight bus from Bangkok plus a sea spangled ferry ride and we finally arrived to kick back on the Thai island of Ko Samui. We rented a small cabin with a porch right on the beach and breathed in the tropical sunshine. We did the usual tourist thing — hanging out on the beach, catching up on a year’s worth of reading, and sizzling in the sea when the heat got too much. Evenings were spent in the hammock on the porch, drinking the last of the duty frees, or walking into the small town to promenade along the neon strip, lined with bars, restaurants and cafes.
Somewhere around this time we got word that ‘diet pills’ could be bought at the local pharmacies. No questions just bhat. Diet pills is a throw back term first coined in the West when they were issued over the drugstore counters in every small town and city, but were actually pure amphetamine sulphate. I guess, South East Asia was their last hiding place.
