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 […]
Ending
I redid much of The Astrolabe today and am generally happy if not enthusiastic about it. The one major bit that remains is the very ending. I know where it finishes and what I would like to convey but it’s not particularly striking or interesting, and perhaps a bit abrupt. Hopefully it’ll just come to […]
House on Jalan Pimping
I have just woken up in a house on Jalan Pimping which, despite its name, is a quiet, wealthy street in Ampang, with largish houses set along the lines of one of KL’s many low hills. It is the home of a friend and we are staying here after having moved out from our KLCC […]
The last of them
I read an extract from Zora Neale Hurston’s oral history of the last survivor of the Middle Passage. It is profoundly sad. The only such voice that I know of. To think it has never been published.
Bumdhamaka
We have booked our return to London, on 28 May, a day that will live for me always. It is what I privately call bum dhamaka day, on which twenty years ago when the mountain turned white in Chaghai, when Pakistan tested the bomb some days after India’s test. It felt like such a betrayal. […]
Shit holes
I am amazed at the fuss about Trump calling the non-white world a shit hole. It is not as though the US and Americans generally do not consider us shit holes for not being American, whether or not their own ancestors are originally from those shit holes. Moreover, it is hardly the vilest thing that […]
Gift
A late gift arrived this morning, so still technically yesterday in the US, with the Alabama election result. The Democrat narrowly beat the accused child molester and racist Republican. Phew. We went for dinner to Sushi Azabu last night. We’ve been there many times, so I wondered if it was a cop out, but as […]
Golden sparrow
A couple of fairly busy days at work, so consequentially little to write about. Today I finally managed to complete and send what I had hoped to – an education report that I think is not too shabby, a presentation based on the report, and some academic editing. And some press materials for which the […]
Just recompense
I read an article (www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/uncounted-civilian-casualties-iraq-airstrikes.html) this morning, about the civilian casualties of the coalition air strikes on ISIS. An impressive piece of journalism. One thing that struck me was how compensation has a different value for givers and receivers. My email-to-post is doing me well, but I am yet to figure out (a) paragraph breaks […]
Gilead on its way
Finished The Handmaid’s Tale last night. After a circular path towards TV series-dom it ended as the book did. The final episode was very good, a reversion to the earlier ones after a few which did the backstory thing that caused the middle bit to sag. The worst of these was the backstory of how […]