Marlboro man

The oddest relative (OR) turned up today, unavoidably, and wearing a Marlboro Man hat. He is making cheese: cheddar, emmenthal, jarlsberg, monterey jack, all that. He has also bought a house, though not the one he wanted because his son inexplicably refused to take out a loan for it.

Superhot

A day spent working while Lahore goes through a heatwave, or summer as we also call it. Around 45 degrees, with loadshedding at 1 hour off 2 hours on – not that it’s so predictable, of course. Meanwhile the election here is also feeling imminent, and the word on the street is that fuel for […]

News from London

Not from the GF, but of an election called. I have no idea whether to vote Labour or Lib Dem this time and am inclined not to vote at all. And from Pakistan the usual breastbeating about the poor boy beaten to death by fellow students for blasphemy. Of course most of the breastbeating is […]

ROAR

A ROAR of rage at work today – the usual annoyance about having to make changes to a document that had been finalised and approved, making it about 11 more drafts of the document than I was contracted to do. Work generally has stepped up. Another ROAR of rage when I was reminded that to […]

Terrible

Another day without posting. Travelling has turned this fragile still-new routine upside down. On Saturday I went to visit an old friend and her mother. The friend and I were very close at school. We were almost neighbours and had a long-running carpool. Then something happened and for some reason we were no longer close […]

Brief absconding

Several days without posting! And I only remembered during the night. There was more to write of, too, during the past few days, though of course that is related to my failure to post. A brief summary of the past days: 12 April: Finished work early, took the day to do some present shopping. A […]

Toy shopping

Went to Toys R Us and despite the soothing cadences of In Our Time talking about Seneca it was the usual nightmare. Toy shops are filthy places, full of filthy customers and disgusting cheap gendered plastic, a environmental catastrophe for which one is expected to pay through the nose. For one who values value for […]

Gifts

It seems likely I am, after all, going to Lahore this week. My brother suggested the services of his travel agent, I scoffed internally (who ever heard of a travel agent who was useful for anything at all), and twenty minutes later the fellow came back with a seat that was Rs 15,000 less than […]

Drive

Out of curiosity I cracked open an energy drink – one of those narrow macho looking cans with Fast and Furious writing in neon colours. (Looking at the can it is, in fact, called Drive, #DRIVEM7ASPAR, whatever the latter means). Good lord. What a foul thing. I took a single sip and poured it down […]