A Series of Unrelated Photos (Part 3)

Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

It’s a beautiful day today. Sun is shining, skies are blue. Scarves are too hot, a coat is nearly too much. Sunglasses are needed. Birds are singing, crowds thronging, babies squatting with split trousers, dogs in summer booties, veggie vendors out in multitudes. December? Nay, I believe we must have accidentally fallen into a wormhole and ended up in May sometime. After November’s grim awfulness, today is lovely.

I took a lot of pictures. Let me show you some of them.

We set out for a long walk up to Julu lu for lunch, after a maddening morning when the coffee grinder suddenly wheezed to a halt after producing perhaps a teaspoon of usable coffee. I had to run out to Starbucks at 7am, which is not really my life’s ambition of a Sunday morning.  Lunch was better.

We sat here, upstairs at the lovely Nepali Kitchen by the window overlooking someone’s very white fluttery laundry, where we had saag paneer and spicy spuds and parathas and whatnot. It was a long, slow meal, with thoughts and discussions of running away to Syria or Uruguay being tossed back and forth.

Out in the streets, much was afoot. There were pyrotechnics on the center line of Julu lu near Xiangyang for someone’s wedding, annoying the cars trying to actually drive down Julu.

There was a row of child sized chairs all pretty in the sunlight.

There was generic but sincere holiday festivity in the air.

There were winter boots on sale.

In addition to the festivities (both sonorous and otherwise) and the footwear, our neighbourhood was teeming. The veggie sellers were out in droves, there were animals everywhere, both dead and alive, and if alive then frustratingly tethered. Laundry was airing for good health. Unlike in Turkey, China likes fresh air. In Turkey, fresh air will surely kill you but Chinese air apparently does the opposite.

Unrelated to the theme of the lovely sunny day was the 666 massage parlour. I hear they give brimstone foot rubs.

And finally, in a tangent pertaining to my blasted novella, it’s Hector Lakemonster’s birthday today.  He’s 42 in human years, or 36 by water monster calculation. He’s still waiting to see what the intuitive goats have in store for him.