It’s finally winter in Istanbul. The heating was on all day today, and even the window was closed for a good long time. Outside, the air feel properly wintery, whether or not the sun is out. The forecast says it might fall to -7 in the coming days, but I’m sceptical, as the forecast has […]
Thoughts consolidating
My thoughts and opinions about Trump’s deplatforming are slowly consolidating, developing vague outlines. I had a vague feeling that there was something not right, but there is also so much schadenfreude, that it’s hard to think through how. But there is a feeling of an establishment mob to counter the more violent, unruly neo-Nazi mob […]
Closing up
Good morning, happy new year all. It poured with rain this morning. Last night, at midnight, the church bells rang out and I could hear the sound of fireworks and people cheering. For myself, I clicked send on a particularly troublesome document, so celebrated in style. I was asleep for what was truly on my […]
Deal done
I had a bad night last night, very anxious, and slept poorly. At some point during the night I became convinced that a piece of paint was going to fall off from ceiling onto the GF’s head, so when he came to bed I warned him anxiously. Then, I worried about why our visas are […]
Plague island
That’s the European headline papers in the UK have picked up on, understandably. There is quite the fog of uncertainty about this new variant. My own current understanding is that: Viruses mutate all the time of course, and there is a new variant. It is appearing often enough in testing that it appears to be […]
Tier 4
London went into Tier 4 lockdown last night and there does seem to be a great deal of anger. I wonder if we are reaching a point where it will break. I’m sure much of the anger is at “cancelling Christmas” but much of it is, correctly, directed at Boris and his government. Everyone could […]
Year of sadness
I listened to a podcast on the coronavirus response in the UK. It went through aspects of the pandemic response over the last nearly-year, and asked if it was inevitable that things would be this bad. The answer, inevitably, was no. They summed it at the end: an unserious prime minister, a weak centre, good […]
Quest for a pepper grinder
Yesterday was Monday I’m told, but I feel quite out of time, as though the week has been going on for a very long time. It turns out taking my weekend on Friday didn’t actually feel much like the weekeend, or maybe it did and in that case it should be Friday tomorrow, but it […]
Day the second
We didn’t go for a stroll after all, as it felt rather odd and unethical to be out when it was forbidden to actual Turks. Instead I did a good bit of work, and we did some planning for the flat (including a pinterest board (!)), ate biscuits with our tea and turned the heating […]
The virtues of lockdown
I have been mulling for some time now, perhaps since the start of the pandemic, on the moral attached to being in lockdown. The GF and I were talking about it this morning, of how locking down, of shutting down, was given a sort of moral weight, and more a political weight: we care for […]