A bit of shopping

Last night my host and I went shopping for me and I returned with three new kameezes, and narrowly left behind one more. I had realised, you see, that of the seven kameezes I had to wear to work, three were plain white, which was a bit much. Got home and realised that I’d spent […]

Natural history

I met a friend for breakfast at a boulangerie yesterday. This actually did have very good bread and even pastries – how Pakistan has changed. Of course they were very expensive, at least by local standards, but the croissants were flaky and buttery and the scrambled eggs were proper scrambled eggs and the pomegranate juice […]

Young and beautiful

Last night I went to an Auratnaak performance along with a couple of others, one of whom had been involved in the past. It took place in a small room in G-8, the room painted with truck art on the walls. I am rather suspicious about truck art now — that said, I’ve just bought […]

Grumpy

Second day in the enclave. I am slightly grumpy today as the stir of excitement of meeting others I knew, and reminiscences, faded. Now it’s to work, to navigate all the inconveniences of working for a large organisation, and several months ahead of it. The office has a cafeteria which serves a fairly mediocre lunch […]

First day in the enclave

It was my first day at work and the office is in the Diplomatic Enclave, so it is barred off from the rest of the world. No one can enter without special permission and when I arrived in the morning the permission had not arrived so I kicked my heels for about half an hour, […]

Changing times

This afternoon I went with a friend to Daachi, which is a (now) long-running artisan/ craft fair that has become one of the city’s main events. It has a mixture of artisans from all over the country, including from some very poor and remote areas, and others who are less marginalised: older men and women […]

Poison in the air

Here I am, in Lahore. Just before I left the startling news arrived that the seller had accepted the offer (we had assumed he would want to bargain). So I left the house for the last time. It was not the house I grew up in, nor was I born there (as the GF was, […]

Countryside cousins

We took the train to Tring, in Herfordshire, where some of the Gentleman Friend’s relatives have moved to a toll house on the Grand Union Canal. It’s a very picturesque house, quite large, with a little toll room and some pretty outbuildings and a large pond where the previous owner kept some rather grotesque carp. […]

Midnight detective

In the afternoon I went to finally order my glasses. Due to my high prescription I need to get quite small glasses, which don’t seem to be all that common these days, so the final shortlist came down to a couple of adult pairs that looked as close to my old pair (thick black plastic […]