The news came and I leave for London on Saturday. Accountant dealings slightly calmed yesterday’s rage but was fanned again during my visit to his office. I had to take my father (he is, I hasten to add, a family accountant) who had contacts in the appropriate department to connect to the accountant. Throughout the […]
Fury
Was sent into a blind fury today by my long-time accountant after discovering a significant liability he had be dealing with through the ostrich school of accountancy: put it in a filing cabinet and hope it’s forgotten. I have my theory as to how this happened and it’s not a flattering one to him – […]
Afternoon with a toddler
And a very pleasant afternoon it was too, with my nephew and his parents, though I slightly overstayed my welcome due to not realising that the car was waiting to take me home. His favourite game is to take his stuffed cat and fling it in air shouting ‘flying cat!’. He has finally agreed to […]
Not maternal
My little nephew, ZZZ, arrived from Karachi yesterday. He lives in Lahore but my sister-in-law had taken him to see his grandparents so this was the first I’d seen him since arriving from KL. He is very sweet, nearly two. I do still get a pang sometimes that my mother never saw him, but these […]
Old friends
Dinner with old schoolfriends last night – more than 20 years after O’levels. One actress, one doctor, one art historian/ teacher, one businesswoman, one housewife, one office drone and two editors. Of these, three were unmarried, two were married but childless, one had only one child. Unsurprisingly, there was much bitterness expended at the older […]
Still waiting
The news from London remains bad, but then one hardly expects it to improve. The numbers, both meaningless and significant, which one followed obsessively as they rose, are now to be abandoned as they rocket through the stratosphere. May one never need to hear of them again. Another death I waited for came in the […]
Village stop
I’m back in Lahore. My father and I drove back this morning, stopping en route at the farm near Chakwal to inspect the damage done by the windstorms to the almond groves (significant) and to discuss the next crop (daal) for the fields. It was all very green thanks to the rain. The Salt Range […]
Putt
A gorgeous dinner today at The Charsi Tikka. Charsi means dope smoker and this was apt as successive waves of hash smoke swept over us and the cooks and waiters were alike clearly under the influence. THere was a group of extremely rowdy and loud children that had us in a terrible mood to begin […]
Weather
Another cool, windy, rainy day yesterday. We drove out to Islamabad in the late afternoon and the light became very beautiful as evening fell. Evenings are one of the things I miss living in Malaysia – you don’t have that still time before darkness falls. Anyhow, there was a diffuse pink light in the west, […]
Early morning nihari
Woke up early and went to the Walled City with my sister visiting from Islamabad. We arrived at around 6.30 or so, when few were out and the streets were still piled with the rubbish from the day before. The driver dropped us off at the Sheranwala gate instead of Lohari gate as we’d asked […]