The Ange shake

Yesterday while she was with the Ukrainian leader, Angela Merkel was filmed doing one of those dehydration/low blood sugar shakes. Hers was quite vigorous and I wanted to reach into the screen and placate her with some Apfelstrudel.

I was doing an Angela shake by the time I emerged from the apartment around lunchtime to seek food. I’d been working all morning on some documents we’re preparing for a board meeting next week, and my South-African-version-of-Weetabix clearly hadn’t contained many slow release carbs. I loaded up at one of my usual café spots.

Although I think there has been a general movement towards ‘sprucing up’ central areas of Maputo since the first time I visited in 2004, it’s still easy to stumble on patches of random dereliction such as this.

As I lay in bed I’m trying to memorise the Portuguese verb to shake: sacudir.