Protests in the UK, Lebanon, Ecuador, Iraq, Haiti, Chile, Spain, Hong Kong and I’m sure other places that haven’t yet crossed my radar. It feels a precarious moment.
Change of weather
Yesterday I woke to find the weather had changed (as I type this I realise that there is at least one, possibly two other blog posts with the same title, so clearly I often find this worthy of remark. Shows how uninteresting this blog is, really). It was grey and windy and wet, and when […]
The other kind of howling
And, meanwhile, American politics has taken my attention again, after I had happily relinquished it for a few weeks. Trump is being impeached for asking the Ukrainian president to, effectively, investigate a political opponent in return for access. Yesterday he doubled down on this on live television, saying that damn right the Ukrainians should investigate […]
Bidding
We put in an informal bid for the land we liked. It’s far lower than the seller is asking, but it’s what we can currently afford. The chances are that he’ll say no, in which case we will see how regretful we are. And if he says yes, we will consider whether to move on […]
Appalling, terrifying
The UK government, that is. Really, really worrying.
Armadillo in the sky
Last night, as I was finishing up some billing and drinking tea in the porch, there was a crash in the undergrowth just in front of me. An armadillo appeared to have plummetted from the sky. It collected itself and bustled away, leaving me wondering if it was what had been scrambling on the roof […]
Two American novels
I read, over the past few days, two classic American novels: My Antonia by Willa Cather and
We can’t breathe
Today is the global climate protest. Very proud indeed that 29 cities in Pakistan are taking part, so there are many quite small (by local standards) and insignificant towns involved. Admittedly, the protests are small and many, many people are uninterested, but perhaps it’s a start. A relative is deeply involved in the arrangements, of […]
Three days of sun
It has been bright for three successive days, and though I understand this is normal for September, it feels out of the ordinary after the week and a half of rain since we arrived in Puerto Viejo. My towel actually dries when I hang it out after a shower. Delightful. Two upcoming bits of work […]
The most beautiful there is
Urdu poetry is the most beautiful there is for me; strange, given that I am much more at home in English, read much more in English, yet Urdu goes to the heart like nothing else. I remember the pang of pride I felt at my Ivy League university when I was introduced to an extremely […]