Today is my mother’s birthday. Had she lived she would have been 59. It’s always a difficult day, more so than her deathday.
Last day
I leave in the morning. Went for lunch to Rok, a Scandinavian restaurant, where the soused mackerel and aebleskiver were exemplary but the rest ranged from decent to peculiar. The latter was a curiously tough beef sirloin and we couldn’t work out whether it was deliberately so or just a poor joint. Then another look […]
Day after
There is general exhaustion and relief that that, at least, is all over. Today work began again, for both the Gentleman Friend and myself. I took to it more easily: redoing someone else’s work on an annual report (I’d written it in earlier years, but couldn’t this year), and completing a deprivation analysis. Tonight we […]
Funeral
The funeral is over. There was no hot water, so my shower was icy cold on a grey rainy day. I went to the church where I helped to greet those who came, monitored and paid off the trumpeter. Then followed the coffin. Then sat through the service. Then accompanied the family to the crematorium. […]
East
East End for lunch yesterday, to Som Saa, a Thai restaurant that used to be a pop up under some arches and is now a proper restaurant on Commercial Street. It remains one of my favourite Thai restaurants anywhere, getting the vigour and freshness of real Thai food. Then to Whitechapel Gallery for the last […]
Still waiting
The news from London remains bad, but then one hardly expects it to improve. The numbers, both meaningless and significant, which one followed obsessively as they rose, are now to be abandoned as they rocket through the stratosphere. May one never need to hear of them again. Another death I waited for came in the […]
ROAR
A ROAR of rage at work today – the usual annoyance about having to make changes to a document that had been finalised and approved, making it about 11 more drafts of the document than I was contracted to do. Work generally has stepped up. Another ROAR of rage when I was reminded that to […]
Gifts
It seems likely I am, after all, going to Lahore this week. My brother suggested the services of his travel agent, I scoffed internally (who ever heard of a travel agent who was useful for anything at all), and twenty minutes later the fellow came back with a seat that was Rs 15,000 less than […]
Drive
Out of curiosity I cracked open an energy drink – one of those narrow macho looking cans with Fast and Furious writing in neon colours. (Looking at the can it is, in fact, called Drive, #DRIVEM7ASPAR, whatever the latter means). Good lord. What a foul thing. I took a single sip and poured it down […]
Return to Lahore?
I’m mulling it while the GF is in London. My father would be delighted to have me back, and of course I can work anywhere in the world where I have an internet connection. Tickets aren’t cheap at the moment, though and it’s not impossible I’ll also go to London, whether from Lahore or here. […]