We are winding down at work now, or rather I am, as everyone else who is actually employed here remains at full tilt. This is undoubtedly the nicest thing about consultancy work, any feeling of being trapped lasts only until the end of the project and then I can safely return to fearing I’ll never find work again.
I got home in the dark: it was cold and rainy, and when I checked the weather it was colder and wetter than London. Happily the air quality was the same (for all of the UK’s breast-beating about pollution, relative to the megacities of Asia, it’s the purest mountain air). My hosts had returned from a family wedding in Karachi and were both clearly delighted to be back. One had disappeared into his study and was playing the electric guitar as a soothing device after too much time spent with relatives, while the other was just relieved to have made it out without being murdered by a meth head. Such is life in Karachi.
I have booked a haircut for Friday, after which I’ll leave for Lahore. I’m not confident that the haircut will actually happen, as she is perhaps the flakiest person I’ve ever met in a lifetime of flakes, but fortunately I have a backup.