Lights and lipstick

Sorry for the absence of crass analogies giving ill-informed, trite analysis of the geopolitical currents affecting 21st century Asia in this posting. They’ll be back soon, I’m sure. In the meantime, some random observations.


Smoke gets in your eyes

Diwali is fun.
(a) You get to eat lots of sweets.
(b) The streets are full of rather beautiful enormous homemade paper lanterns with pretty patterns and lovely tassles and things. They make things like Blackpool Illuminations look rather crappy. Although that’s not too hard.
(c) I actually enjoyed the fireworks. I’d not really enjoyed fireworks since about 1987, when I realised that the fireworks at the Bournville Village Fete were exactly the same as the previous four years. These ones were good, though, because I live on the fourteenth floor and many of them exploded about fifty feet away, level with my window. It’s a much better view.


Mata Sari

We drove down Pathe Bapurao Marg, a.k.a. Falkland Road, on Saturday afternoon. Sadly there were no sheep or unexploded ordnance or commemorative plates featuring tin-pot foreign generals being gonked on the bonce by old iron women. There were, however, lots of ladies of the night, even though it was about two o’clock in the afternoon. It’s tempting to make some lame and tenuous reference to the name of the road and the nice lady that it inevitably brings to mind: as the man said, when England was the whore of the world, Margaret was her madam. (Enough wussy pinko politics – Ed.)


Looking for a nicer slicer

Why can’t anyone sell me thick-sliced bread? Why so thin? Have they actually tried making sandwiches with several ingredients all rammed in and then putting them in the fridge overnight and then taking them to work in my bag and then trying to eat them with these tiny thin slices without it all falling apart?

I mean I can get unsliced bread from the posh delis but sliced bread, as somebody once pointed out, is one of the best things, well, ever. But only when it doesn't come apart in your hands and leave you with egg mayonnaise and bits of tomato all over your shirt. Come on bakers, get some nicer slicers.