Last night I finished up The Good Place, a rather surprisingly good show with a remarkable number of surprising twists. Set in an afterlife that seems straight from the Middle American dream, with some glorious subversions and excellent characters. It was an interesting case study in how one is, as a viewer, ready to accept […]
Reality striking
Reality struck today as I realised that I must go to Islamabad for work tomorrow and then stay there for the next month at least, going into the office almost daily. I had managed to avert my eyes from this unfortunate reality, but there it is. I’m off tomorrow. This morning I made a quick […]
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 […]
On the fritz
I’ve been on the fritz for a couple of days, throwing mini strops, mostly silently, like a well-bottled beverage. One little eruption actually took place on Metafilter, where there has been a longrunning pair of threads on the site’s white middleclass American orientation and the moderators having only one solution: applying copious amounts of goodwill. […]
Seven forms of disappointment (at least)
SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES We watched the final episode last night, one of millions watching it as it was aired. Something I have not done for other than sport or politics in a long time, perhaps ever. It was truly terrible. I have always been a hate-watcher of GoT, but this was shameful and […]
Up and up
We went up to the top of the pyramid to the yellow Spanish church. There was a good view of Cholula all around, and even the volcano’s outline appeared through the haze, startlingly tall for something that is invisible for most of the day. An open space on the San Pedro side was divided in […]
Betrayal
SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES SEASON 8 EPISODE 3 So we watched the big battle last night, the one that took 55 days of filming in cold rain and more special effects than one can shake a stick at. Unfortunately the latter rather lost their impact as our TV, which is small and not the […]
Joining the wave
In the mid-morning we went out for lunch and walked past makeshift roofed veranda outside someone’s house with a table and a pan set up outside and a handwritten sign saying ‘pulque, michelada’. The food looked delicious so we decided to eat there. It turned out to be excellent: a couple of quesedillas filled with […]
Change of weather
A cyclone grazed the country and cold southerlies began to blow. The temperature dropped 10 degrees or more, the skies turned steel grey and it poured with rain all day long. We went out with the Doyenne to get some groceries from a magnificient city centre warehousey sort of place and then drove a bit […]