An Amazon package (two pairs of silk toe socks suitable as liners) arrived later than expected and I went off to Queensway to find myself a Cantonese roast duck from Gold Mine. There was a very long queue but a Chinese briskness to getting people in and out, so it wasn’t more than a 20 […]
Four votes
I met a longstanding client for lunch at the British Library. I’ve worked with him for years now, but this is the first time we met. He studies Ethiopia and was lamenting that he had to redo bits of his recently-completed monograph after the political changes in the country, with Abiy taking power. Fortunately none […]
Desi boy problems
A Pakistani man of my acquaintance has covered himself in inglory by passing a #MeToo protest on his way into a premiere and shouting out ‘I support harassment of women!’ It’s an example of where everyone knows he didn’t really mean it being an educated upper-class urban Pakistani man, educated at public school and abroad […]
Flying away
I had a very vivid dream last night that the Gentleman Friend and I were in Somalia. It reminded me greatly of East Timor in the dream because of the low level of development, but it was definitely itself, with people we met and stayed with who were whole and vivid individuals with histories behind […]
Flying fox
I went for an unproductive yet reviving trip to the centre of town, hoping to try on some shoes and trousers before ordering them online, but didn’t find them. It was reviving as it was the first in a while I’d had time to myself, and a desi meal albeit South Indian (from Saravana Bhavan) […]
Blimp overhead
Yesterday was Friday and after lunch the Gentleman Friend and I went to Westminster. On the way out of the house I glanced at the news to see his press conference with Teresa May had begun and he claimed that the awful interview he’d given the previous night (of which audio recording was online), was […]
Barnsley’s finest
I have a huge amount of work to do, so of course the right thing to do was to suggest that the Gentleman Friend, who was planning to go out to dinner with a friend for the latter’s birthday, instead invite him over and I would make dinner for them. So he did, and instead […]
Home
We watched the football yesterday, and English went through to the semi-finals. I was not particularly interested in Sweden winning so it was easier to support England than usual, however I become increasingly discomforted by all the talk of football coming home, and the fact that all the teams remaining are European. France, Belgium and […]
Glum meal
We strolled once more through Cricklewood on our way westwards towards Willesden, there to have dinner with a couple of our acquaintance and their children. It was not the most enlivening meal, as one of the children was recently diagnosed with a congenital condition that will require major surgery, as well as a less major […]
Aging
Annihilation is one of the words I find impossible to spell (I wonder which commonly known words are the hardest?), and also the name of the film the GF and I watched last night. I had read the book by Jeff VanderMeer and enjoyed its hallucinogenic lunacy. The image of the upside-down tower stayed with […]