Feeling a little under the weather today, though this might be the power of persuasion, as my hostess is currently languishing on a sofa with a terrible cold or perhaps incipient flu. Hoping I don’t catch it, with my return to Istanbul imminent, but what can one do? The only positive to come out of […]
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Wet dog morning
This was the first morning that I went out onto the heath for my exercising and it was pouring with rain. I didn’t have even a yoga mat so resigned myself to pushups etc in the wet grass and optimistically pictured myself like a grunting marine in a training montage. The reality was less inspiring […]
Family matters
Went to a family gathering today, a not altogether successful one, which was a shame as its design was proposed by me. Elderly relative 1 wanted to meet elderly relative 2; 2 didn’t want to hop on the train to visit 1, while 1 is not able to climb the stairs to 2. Moreover, Sunday […]
Pachinko
Read The Pachinko Parlour, which had been lingering for a couple of days despite being short enough to read in an hour. Quite good, though I preferred the other book recently recommended to me, about the laundries. This one had a pair of very good grandparents, Korean-Japanese, and some of the least appetising food I’ve […]
The ways of fruit
Is fruit a snack, a meal or a dessert? In my mind definitely a dessert and I rarely think of it as something to eat between meals and almost never for breakfast. Struck me this time when in the UK where the people I am staying with definitely think of it as the first two, […]
Crick in the neck
Something of a rite of passage today as I injured myself whilst doing crunches on the heath. Nothing particularly terrible, just a pulled muscle in the back of my neck/shoulder, but an affront nonetheless. I do feel since I’ve started this whole regular workout business I feel every ache and pain more than I ever […]
Shared experiences
I have just returned from the second play that I have left during the interval. The last one was Macbeth in Malaysia, uncut and performed in full, very poorly, with some nods to Chinese opera. It was dire and, at the interval, the GF and I realised that we were only two hours in and […]
Start of the return
Today, early in the morning, the GF left for Nairobi, marking the beginning of our return to Istanbul. I’m not exactly aching to get back to the city, but it will be nice to be back in our own space. This trip has had rather too much of being with other people, more than I’m […]
Facing west
Profoundly unimpressed by Tan Twan Eng’s The gift of rain. I read his second and more famous novel shortly before going to Malaysia and didn’t care for it but remember almost nothing of it, while this one, his first, is excruciating. It’s very much a first novel, for one: he’s lovingly put everything he wanted […]
Going east
A trip east, to Dalston to meet someone for coffee, and what a delight it was to be in that part of town. Such a different atmosphere to genteel Hampstead, with a street market going on, people bustling and talking, an hundred accents and clothes from all over, noise and litter and vibrancy. Coffee was […]