The back still quite painful, but shifted a little so that it no longer feels tight and seized up, but does feel more painful. Despite more stabby pain this felt like a positive development somehow. A day of small annoyances otherwise, some at work (a bad edit of something I’d written), some from myself (realising […]
Disaster strikes
Did something to my back this morning and am now feeling quite miserable. It’s hard to stand up, especially from sitting. It’s sure to be temporary, but very dispiriting and it was truly unsettling to try to stand up and feel that my lower body is unable to support me. We had someone over for […]
Best UN day
The best UN day is undoubtedly World Steelpan Day, even though it refers to the music rather than the cooking implement. I particularly like the creativity with which it is linked to the achievement of the SDGs.
Pill bugs
Also known, according to Wikipedia, as roly polies, woodlice, slater bugs, cheesy bugs, sowbugs, doodlebugs, butcher boys, cellar bugs, carpenters, bed pissers, closed pork, parson’s pigs, bench biters, chiggy pigs, chuckie pigs, little pigs, potato bugs and gramersows, a list which one might reasonably be sceptical about, but in any event the scientific name for […]
Crack in the pan
I remember now why I stopped writing this blog. The day to day was too tedious to record, while the interesting was too interesting to bother with opening up my laptop and writing about it. So, today, a cracked earthenware oven dish. It didn’t even crack today, that was a few weeks ago, but today […]
Dates that matter
Happy new year to all, and I’m back. Dates never mattered to me – not birthdays, not death days, not holidays or any other sort. Then my mother died and one date loomed above all others, and other dates started mattering because she was not there for them, or I knew exactly how many she […]
Business style
Now this is what I call a dunning letter from an accountant, received by someone of my acquaintance and passed on to me for my delectation. My UK accountant could learn a lesson or two. Dear Sisters, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for the opportunity to assist with your 2023 tax filings. It […]
Strawberries in winter
A good article on changing seasons, or rather on unchanging seasons, and on the harms of 24/7 convenience stores. We eat our strawberries, not knowing where they came from or at what cost, but they do taste nice. And if they spoil, we throw them out and buy more. Indeed, the increasingly superficial celebration of […]
Mall aesthetic
Today we decided to go and explore the Camlica mosque, the immense structure built on a hill on the Asian side, dominating that view. It required a ferry to Uskudar and then a metro and then a climb up a hill past a place where we had lunch (kuru fasulye) and up through a large […]
Climb down jump off
Having bashed through an obscene amount of work the last few days, and missed more deadlines than I probably have in years, today was, finally, a quieter day. Well, I say quieter as I did finish an article and then go off with the GF to run a series of errands, most of which had […]