This place makes the more impoverished of Dagenham's council estates look like a civilized supper in the Penrith village tearooms, the Edinburgh schemes a spring afternoon sculling a tranquil tack on lake Windermere, and a certain corner on Lafayette and Monroe an affable game of croquet on great auntie Sheila's award winning lawn.
Isaan tills a furrow way below the conventional working sector, and it does so with minimal effort and zero scruples. These people, I have come to deduce, simply do.not.give.a.FUCK, and they couldn't be prouder of their social status.
A gentleman who I consider to be one of the less feral members of my immediate locale was present when I journied to the local boozer Saturday last. But foregoing his usual genial greeting, he ignored my entrance and continued to pour vast amounts of highly concentrated intoxicants down his gullet with great vengeance and furious anger.
His mission, which he had clearly accepted, was to getting absolutely fucking shit-faced.
Such assignments aren't without their adverse affects and upon finishing the contents of his bottle he began to hold an aggressive heart to heart with the empty shot glass which now stood barren before him.
"You're a fucking kunt!" he essentially roared at the innocent receptacle.
Now I wasn't sure if the glass was a kunt because it had slowly eroded his soul or because it was empty, but either way, the facts remained the same; this particular vessel was, at present, the focal point of a lunatic's wrath of retribution. He clearly wanted it dead.
Before he could launch into a final cacophony of expletives and end the existence of the glass by repeatedly ramming it against his forehead, his worried wife and mother arrived at the shop and attempted to usher him home. They obviously couldn't move him. He was now immersed like a fucking scuba diver in a bottle of beer Archa, and had no inclination whatsoever to go home and 'gin khao'. But credit where credit's due, his mother was a feisty little fucker and insisted he followed them back home, this instance.
He subsequently got up and fell over. This man was unable to walk.
Expectant eyes breached my private space where I sat pretending to be invisible, obviously doing a shit job at it, and I eventually resigned myself to the fact that this gentleman's form of transportation back to his dwellings would come courtesy of my shoulder.
Up he went and off we plodded. Fortunately his home was only 100 or so metres from the shop and some 30 seconds later we entered the house.
I slung him down on a mattress which was parked by the front door and took in my surroundings:
The house turned out to be a glorified shed which was apparently deemed fit to accommodate 10 or so people.
To my left, a gentleman who literally appeared to be rotting, sat rocking on the floor in state of profound psychosis.
Next to him, an elderly couple who each in turn bared their decayed teeth at me, a gesture I wasn't able to translate - did they want to eat me, or were they simply saying hello.
In the middle of the room, a new born baby crying for nobody in particular and being comforted by the same person.
On the far right, a trio of teenagers smoking, drinking, playing cards.
I looked at my acquaintance who was already submerged in a deep, drunken slumber, dribble sourcing from the corner of his mouth and trickling into a slowly expanding pool on the bed sheet, and just about wept.