And still many hours to go. I woke up early, around five, as I have been in recent days, and then had a phone meeting about a bit of work that remains very fuzzy and unclear and is due very soon. Then there was some frenzied packing – frenzied largely because I did a wash yesterday and then it started pouring with rain so there was no chance of hanging them up to dry outside, and the drier in the flat wasn’t connected to electricity, so I had to resort to, first, turning on the air conditioner overnight and then frantically apply a hairdryer to them. They were still a bit damp, and will probably stink when they emerge from the suitcase.
Then the very long journey began – first a long drive to the airport (everywhere seems to take longer to reach than it should in San Jose), then the flight to Mexico City where I am now. I can report that the airport here (which I have now flown in or out of four times so far) remains one of the worst ever, though strangely functional for all that. The taco restaurant which is supposed to be excellent remains elusive – I couldn’t find it – and they do that annoying thing here where if you have an international connection you have to go through Immigration and Customs. The former with its very, very long queues, the latter where you have to take your suitcase from one conveyer and drop it off at another unattended one, so who knows it might have been to the trash compactor. And then the very long wait began. I found the airport lounges by memory alone as they were not signposted and was turned away from one as I didn’t have a reservation (who knew?) so settled for the same one that I used on a previous trip. That one closed at 10 (and my card’s lounge allowance also expired then) but the staff, after apparently dropping some heavy hints that I missed, kindly escorted me to one of the 24 hour lounges where, fortunately, my card access also works. This one is much nicer, though one entire wall is covered by four large television screens, combining to show an absolutely immense game of football.
I am finding it very hard indeed to do the work I am supposed to on this flight. My brain is a little too fuzzy to deal with a fuzzy work assignment, yet I am uneasily aware that I should finish it as quickly as possible and that it should be possible to finish it, it’s not very complicated at all. But the brain is too fuzzy, so perhaps I’ll give up for now and try in the morning when I arrive in Montreal.
I finished the new Phillip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth. It was very good, though I think not as good as La Belle Sauvage. SPOILERS FOLLOW.
beware
beware
beware
beware
I am rather repelled by some of the relationship stuff. I don’t really see any reason for Malcolm and Lyra to fall in love, it’s completely unjustified, and it’s hard to forget that in the previous book he was 11 and she was an infant whom he was caring for. It feels a bit creepy and forced, and the delight I took in Malcolm’s care for Lyra, a boy looking after a baby, in the last book has been tainted. Second, Malcolm seems to have become a cold-blooded killer ninja at some point. What the fuck? And third, Pullman repeats a couple of times that the young antagonist Olivier Bonneville (who, perhaps, will turn out to be Lyra’s once-mentioned vanished brother) craves a certain sort of attention from older men, which just felt, well, ew. I thought that the attempted gang rape was, well, it was surprisingly well-handled considering how gratuitous it was. I don’t think it should have been there, but it was well done regardless. So, mixed feelings about that one. Generally there were a few too many set pieces put in for didactic purposes. Some worked – the rescue of migrants from the sea, for instance, was superb. Others didn’t really for me, such as the political machinations in the Vatican or Malcolm’s heroics. The magic infringing upon the world was very good, though not quite as magical (perhaps because there’s more of it, and spread throughout the book) as in La Belle Sauvage. So, I would say, 3.5 stars.
spoilers end
spoilers end
spoilers end
spoilers end
The other story I read on the plane was The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley. It was creepy and horrific, a very good example of the new weird, but I couldn’t help but wonder – have I read this before? It is somehow very familiar. But would I have forgotten reading it?