Stories · from the sittings

What owners said when the week was on paper.

These are sittings we actually held. The shops are named in the way their owners allowed. Nobody was asked for a score.

I brought the passbook and the names of the vegetable sellers I still owed. Malee put the next thirty days on one page. I had blamed a slow week at the stall. The page showed the ice man and the stall fee landing on the same Monday.

Siriporn Kaewsai · Food stall, fresh market, Mueang Narathiwat · Opening Cash Review

The first reserve figure felt high for a small holding, and I said so at the second sitting. We lowered the weekly amount and gave the build six more weeks. I still think the opening figure was stiff. The revised one carried the house through the last two wet months without a trip to the co-op for a bridge.

Wichai Sae-lim · Rubber smallholding, Ra-ngae · Seasonal Reserve Plan

Deposits arrive the week a wedding is booked. The balance arrives after the fitting, often three weeks later. The calendar put those balances on the same weeks the fabric shop expects cash. I stopped paying the fabric shop from whatever was in the tin.

Anong Deeprasert · Tailor, wedding and school orders · Collection and Payment Calendar

When the boats stay in, the counter is quiet and the suppliers are not. Three weeks on the sheet fell under the floor I had named, which for me is the wage packet plus the shop rent. We delayed one net shipment and asked two boat owners who usually pay late to settle a week earlier. One of them did. That week cleared the floor. The other two weeks we covered from the envelope we had started in the drier weather.

Kittisak Bunma · Fishing-gear shop, Tak Bai road · Thirteen-Week Cash Position

They came to the shop because I will not leave the till on a Saturday. Carrying the supplier files down from the upstairs room was a nuisance. The position itself I could read the first time, which is more than I can say for the yearly papers my cousin sends from his bookkeeping desk.

Suda Rattanapong · Neighbourhood grocery, Mueang Narathiwat · Thirteen-Week Cash Position

The grocery and the week after Songkran

Suda Rattanapong’s shop sells rice, oil, and the ordinary goods of a neighbourhood street in Mueang Narathiwat. In the fortnight before Songkran she takes extra sacks because households buy ahead. Her supplier of rice and oil lets the extra stock go out on the usual credit, and he likes to be settled in the quiet week that follows the holiday.

The first draft of her thirteen-week position showed that week closing under the floor she had named: wages for two helpers plus the stall-related costs she still pays even when the street is empty of visitors. The festival week itself looked generous. She had planned to mend the upstairs shutter with part of it.

At the second sitting she moved the shutter repair to a later week and put a named envelope aside for the supplier from the festival takings. The supplier was paid on his day. The helpers were paid on theirs. She still thinks carrying the files downstairs was a bother, and she has said she would rather we kept a spare tray by the till next time. The sheet, she kept on the counter under the passbook.

A reserve aimed at the late rains

Wichai Sae-lim taps rubber with his brother outside Ra-ngae. August had been a run of dry enough days, and the middleman had paid within the week. A cousin suggested a new pump. Wichai came for a seasonal reserve plan because December of the year before had stopped the knives for long stretches, while the pickup instalment continued.

The first target we wrote was the instalment, the household rice and fuel, and his cash floor, divided across the drier weeks still left. He called the weekly amount stiff, and he was right that the house account could not spare it without skipping a payment to the middleman’s fuel. At the second sitting the build was lengthened and the weekly sum lowered. The pump waited.

He did not enjoy the first figure, and he has not pretended to. The envelope from the revised plan was what he used when the bark stayed wet. He did not ask the co-op for a bridge that season. The sitting did not make the rain shorter. It made the instalment date visible while the cups were still filling.

See the sittings behind these stories