Yesterday I went to a conference where perhaps the highlight was one that almost no one actually knew about: that one of the virtual attendees forgot to turn off their camera and turned up wearing only a towel, and that too on their head. Fortunately for this person, only a limited number of people actually saw them. A second highlight was an uninvited attendee (not virtual), a quiet and curious individual who sat in the back and watched, causing befuddlement among those who noticed. This latter group did not include me, but I heard about it afterwards.
Today, the second day of the conference, I decided to work from home – an error since actually I did a great deal of work yesterday, only half-listening to what was going on, and occasionally taking notes. At lunchtime I made my usual stroll down to the markaz but didn’t feel like having lunch or tea so bought some groceries and parched corn for a lunchtime snack, and returned. Along the way a family of indigents asked for money, and I gave them the rather expensive apples I had bought, but felt not at all pleased with my munificence, as I carried away with me the parched corn, a large bag of bananas, a bag of daal, a dozen eggs, a pot of expensive yoghurt and a container of milk ditto, not to mention a fair bit of cash and a good birthright. At least I gave them apples instead of the parched corn, and I suppose it is to my limited credit that I didn’t even think about it. I should have given half the bananas, at least.
I’m not sure if parched corn is the right word. It’s a street snack you get all over Pakistan, usually sold by Pathans pushing handcarts. They roast a mix of corn kernels (some into hard crisp kernels, some into soft chewy ones) and pre-cooked black chickpeas in a bowl sand and salt over a wood fire. You can also get corn on the cob, peanuts or other nuts, caramel corn kernels or nut brittles.
The election is less than 10 days away now. I’ve more or less decided my vote: I’m going to hold my nose and vote Labour, I think. I am very upset about the anti-Semitism business, and I think it’s appalling. But the Conservatives are even worse, and rather more brazen, about their Islamophobia, and no one seems to worry about that, no doubt because Muslims are rather hard to love (fair enough, I daresay, in this age). With no Remainer pact in my constituency, I have to vote for the Remainer candidate with the greatest chance so as to not split the vote and let the Tories in. (A little group of them canvassed us just before I left – they didn’t see me, otherwise I’m sure they’d not have bothered, but did impose their Etonian plum on the GF). So Tulip it is, and she at least seems a decent type and is a Remainer. For now. I might change my mind again before the 12th.
With Trump in the UK, one can only hope that he does something hideous to Boris’s chances.
What a depressing election. It really felt like a democracy-is-dead sort of election, we are going through the motions. It’s not unfamiliar to me, but the motions in this UK election are imbued with a fetishistic attachment to democracy which feels less honest than the simpler rigged elections I happily spoilt my ballot for in the past.