It was Jinnah’s birthday on 25 December, much to the relief of Pakistani Christians as this means that they can have Christmas off without the mullahs screeching blue murder. This was doing the rounds on social media – a celebration of his birthday somewhere or the other. One understands the ‘get me out of here’ […]
Everything is open
Everything is open, I don’t understand how lockdown works. Well, I suppose it means there are fewer people out, which is certainly a good thing in a pandemic. But even the famous fish sandwich on the Golden Horn was open, and the famous fish sandwich man was there. We popped into the flat and saw […]
Plague island
That’s the European headline papers in the UK have picked up on, understandably. There is quite the fog of uncertainty about this new variant. My own current understanding is that: Viruses mutate all the time of course, and there is a new variant. It is appearing often enough in testing that it appears to be […]
This cursed year
I had rolled my eyes at all the tedious platitudes about 2020, ugh, don’tcha know, but this is bringing me around to that view. I was just saying to the GF last night, sunnily, that the silver lining in this year’s turmoil has been that at least we hadn’t heard a peep from Ed Sheeran […]
New plans
Our architect sent over three new proposed plans and, rather to our surprise, they are quite promising and have several ideas for how to redo the flat effectively. So a very good start, and we will ask her to make a few changes, consult the engineers as required, and hopefully, kick it all off. Less […]
Hazards of work
I am doing a rather urgent bit of editing, and came across the following in the list of references. Catching things like this is why they pay me the big bucks.
A curious fact
I have just learned that one of JRR Tolkien’s first illustrators for The Lord of the Rings was someone by the name of Ingahild Grathmer, an illustrator better known under her real name, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.
Day the second
We didn’t go for a stroll after all, as it felt rather odd and unethical to be out when it was forbidden to actual Turks. Instead I did a good bit of work, and we did some planning for the flat (including a pinterest board (!)), ate biscuits with our tea and turned the heating […]
Cold feet again
My feet were cold in bed last night, signalling the true start of winter. The next dismal stage is undoubtedly chillblains, which I seem unable to prevent.
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 […]