Friday 31 March 2017

We Had Decided To Spend The Day On The Beach,

at first we thought of going to the island Koh Larn,


 but as it had been raining for the past few days we decided on Jomtien instead, but first breakfast, home grown mushrooms on toast,

 10 minutes later,

 and we had parked up,

 and were admiring the view,

 looking to our right,

 and left along the beach,

  Diana is in there some where,

 and there she is chatting to Mum,

 we ordered our drinks, 

 a coffee for myself,

  and a cold coconut for Diana,

 it was getting late in the afternoon, so we fancied a snack,

  first to arrive prawn tempura,

 I had brought along a book to read, the hero of the “The Keys of Egypt” is Jean-François Champollion, a child prodigy born in the French town of Figeac in 1790, by the age of twelve, having already mastered Latin and Greek, he was studying Hebrew, Arabic, Syrian and Chaldean, His interest in hieroglyphs was sparked by a meeting with the mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, who explained to Champollion that nobody could read the script that adorned his collection of Egyptian ornaments, the pre-teen genius declared that one day he would decipher their meaning, the book is an incredibly good read, just one of the many misconceptions about Egyptology laid bare is in fact the Rosetta Stone did little to decipher hieroglyphs, the slab contains the same inscription repeated three times, in Greek, hieroglyphs and demotic (a more cursive variation of hieroglyphs), initially there was great optimism that the comprehensible Greek inscription could be used to unravel the principles of hieroglyphs, but scholars did not know which bits of Greek corresponded to which bits of hieroglyphs, and worse still they did not know the language of the ancient Egyptians and so they were not in a position to pronounce any Egyptian words, the stone was not the ‘key’ they had hoped for, although Champollion did decipher it, it was not the leap that many think it to be,

  then Diana's food arrived chicken with rice and an egg, some time later the lady that served us asked to be paid, which was a bit strange as normally payment is made when you leave the beach, but she told us rain was on the way, sure enough the islands and coastline in the distance started to be obscured by rain, we made a dash for the motorcycle and home arriving only slightly damp, Mark called by for a chat, then after saying farewell,

 it was time for our evening meal, and this was mine black bread with tuna topped with cucumber and wait for it, home grown tomatoes! Barry called round later for a glass or two, after he left it was feet up,

for the 2010 version of True Grit, which was quite enjoyable and with that we were off to bed.


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