blog

The wrong war

To nobody’s surprise, Labour has lost the Hartlepool by election to the Tories. I see plenty of recriminations between the Corbynite and the Starmer wings of the party, and the usual recriminations and disbelief that working class voters vote against their interests, but it feels like fighting the wrong war. It seems to me that […]

Ups and downs

I woke up with a headache after a disturbed sleep and had the sort of day where I kept drinking water hoping to wash away the headache to no avail. I did get started on work at least, and did a few chaptres of the book I am to finalise, and also learned that a […]

Missing landlords past

This evening we got a message in Turkish on the WhatsApp group for our building – there was water leaking from our flat, it was urgent. We dashed over, and of course were completely incapable of understanding where the water was coming from, or of understanding the neighbour who reported it. Fortunately it was the […]

A struggle

I am finding work a struggle these days. It is certainly a cycle I go through every now and then, and it can be quite soul crushing. This was supposed to be a working weekend as I have some stuff due tomorrow and much to catch up on, but I managed almost nothing. Very frustrating […]

Poison for dinner

Last night I nearly poisoned us both. I was experimenting with mahlep, a Turkish spice and misread a Google Translate version of a recipe and put in 2 tb instead of what I assume was supposed to be 2 tsp. It tasted rather strongly of bitter almonds, so I looked it up online to learn […]

Day 1

it is Day 1 of Turkey’s Ramazan lockdown. While the streets feel fairly deserted, it’s by no means the ghost town we heard of last year, with dolphins swimming in the Golden Horn etc. Was it like this then, and am I just used to this business of shutting down a city of millions for […]

Tedious slate

I was sent an email to vote in my university alumni elections, and what a tedious slate it was. Quite dispiritng. This was for the board of overseers and the governors of the alumni association, and almost all were excruciating. As usual, the only non-Americans were investment bankers and the like, no wonder I’ve almost […]