blog

Estrangement

I read the first part of Camus’s L’Étranger before going to bed last night and it made for strange dreams. The first was one which felt joyful: the GF, my siblings and I were visiting Paris and the Seine ran through a deep forested ravine, and the metro system was a series of small planes […]

Lockdown

Over dinner last night I mentioned to the GF that rumour has it a lockdown is imminent. After dinner I put the dishes in the dishwasher and went for a shower. Came out to learn that a lockdown has been announced: weeknight curfews and weekend lockdown. Not too onerous still, but I hope this is […]

Goodbye sunshine

After a warm, sunny long weekend, today the clouds have returned. It is grey and heavy outside, befitting Turkey’s coronavirus figures, speeding towards the top of the global charts. It would be quite something if the GF and I were to have stayed in both the best and the worst places to be during this […]

Kitchen connections

I was very grumpy indeed this morning as there was no water in the taps when I woke up, so that I had to use mineral water even to wash hands and brush teeth and perform the most basic ablutions. The water didn’t return till the stroke of 11, so I assume it was a […]

Up the Bosphorus

The GF got a fuller quota of sleep today, so after lunch we took the Metro towards the Bosphorus coast to find out how easy it is to get to Bebek by public transport instead of braving the ugly weekend traffic on the coastal road. It turns out easy and very pleasant indeed, and it […]

Far better

I started reading The Time Regulation Institute a couple of days ago, and as always my habit of going from lowly genre to quality literature pays off. It is such a pleasure to read something of quality, and later it will be a pleasure to read something with an entirely different appeal. This is a […]

Silver fish man

Another piece of my childhood fell away today, with Diego Maradona’s death. Other pieces had fallen before: Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze; some are still around: Madonna, Imran Khan (for all he is), Miandad, Viv Richards. What a legend that man was, I knew no other footballer’s name, but I knew him and his face and […]

Some progress

For the last little while the GF and I have been banging our heads against various forms of bureaucracy, most recently the bank – our ATM cards are blocked, can only be unblocked by telephone, to use the telephone service we need a telephone pin, the pin is sent to our registered phone number, we’ve […]