A couple of days without posting as I was either on a futile roadtrip or working or groaning in the throes of a headache. To take these in order:
1. On Wednesday, the Gentleman Friend and I went down to Beirut to collect our passports following visa renewal. It took about 90 minutes to travel 30 km, but there it is, it’s been worse. Arrived to learn that it would take another 10 days, cutting uncomfortably close to our departure. Anyway. We strolled through Achrafieh, including some new bits we hadn’t seen yet (quiet residential areas, lower income and full of children playing and older people chatting and smoking on balconies) and ended up at Beyt, the cafe upstairs from Plan Bey on Armenia Street. Here I OD-ed on orange blossom water. Then we returned, another 90 minute journey, this time very hot indeed. I’d had a headache since the morning, which worsened back. The revalations about Trump’s genitalia came to my awareness on this day, undoubtedly worsening the headache. What is read cannot be unread.
2. So I couldn’t do any work that night, which was a problem since I had a very long (though not the longest) report due today (Friday). The headache continued the next day but I barrelled on with work. It’s a nutrition report from Pakistan, always a dispiriting subject, of which one of the most dispiriting findings was the belief of some parents snacks were health foods for toddlers. The food industry has a lot to answer for. I finished a first edit around midnight and the headache was gone, seemingly by brute force. However I have started keeping a headache diary since though these headaaches are rarely very bad, they do ruin my day and can’t be treated by your usual painkillers.
3. This point should be about groaning in the throes of a headache but of course that has already been addressed. Instead I will come up to this morning, Friday, when we left for Tripoli. The GF is currently at an informal school in the city centre. I was supposed to join him but instead am working in a very pleasant cafe. The Friday prayer has just ended and hundreds of men are leaving the mosque across the road. Coffee and kaak vendors have sprouted like mushrooms (ugh mustn’t think about mushrooms, once one of my favourite foods).