Haranguers and Mash

I couldn’t settle and had a bad night’s sleep, possibly because I was watching clips of the hilarious Mash Report until very late.

At the gym I’ve joined there is a trainer called Gimo, whose name I presume is not a prerequisite to work there. I’m trying to follow a specific programme so I enlist Gimo’s help in the weights section to navigate around the muscle maniacs and give him cash to say thanks. I’d vaguely said I’d be there late Saturday morning, not needing to feel locked into a specific timeslot. When I woke up there was an annoying text exchange about the other trainer at the gym who’d come to work instead of him and laying it on thick that he’d traipsed in anyway for my benefit. He was expecting me to scramble there as soon as I could, but that hadn’t been necessary when we parted the previous evening. This reminded me that despite the shared language (albeit foisted upon native Mozambicans by the Portuguese) there is so much cultural difference in logic between a Brit and a Mozambican. Similar languages do not always help bridge this barrier.

Later I was hassled by the landlady of my apartment about a curtain pole that fell down in my absence. I told her I was out and when I returned a tradesman, Chico, was waiting by the entrance to take measurements and mess around with tools.

There’s something about Liberians and their use of social media. Of the various countries I’ve visited for work it’s Liberians who contact me most often with random messages. Robertson, the brother of a project partner, has asked me for a recommendation letter, although I’ve never met the guy and didn’t particularly view his brother through a positive lens. I’m having to palm him off on colleagues in Liberia.

I’m increasingly believing I’d make a good hermit.

In the evening I batch cooked lentils in anticipation of the next phase of clean eating. It is mind-numbingly dull but I can see and feel the results, so I’m sticking with it.

I think it’s been a good few years since a roof-themed blip, and this weather-beaten number caught my eye today.