I forgot to mention yesterday the ridiculous ad that was played before the film. It was for toilet paper, and clearly a struggle in a society where lotas and hand-held bidets are the default and toilet paper is regarded with some disgust. So they went for toilet paper for drying to avoid humidity around the bum. Quite ridiculous and frankly unethical in this day and age.
Today I had a number of small errands of which two were failures (one at the bank where I ddin’t have the right docs and one to a nearby art gallery which was closed despite the biennale) and the rest successes. I went to visit an aunt who spoke at great length about various travails and has a strong self-perception of being one who doesn’t talk much. Still, quite fond of her. The house she lives in is rather sad: it’s one of the mansions that my grandmother and her sisters inherited and it was the one with a functioning swimming pool and a sunken living room in gleaming white marble and a private gym and a circular two-floor library with a brass spiral staircase. That was in the good days; now it’s part mausoleum, part junk yard and part eternal building site, with not even much grandeur left to fade.
Then to buy some cloth to replicate my travel trousers, which developed some very large holes recently (hopefully after the last time I wore them, though I fear not), and to the framer where I wanted to get one of the few paintings in the house that I don’t dislike reframed.
And now back.