Bakery

Beyond the steam rising from the first coffee of the day they patchwork sky of pale blues and cloud variations from fluffy to watch out, a welcome start to the day after a week of overcast skies and gloom. The temperature has dropped since yesterday, noticeably, the dregs of the second cup showing that there's a squall of cloud forming, already hiding Yangminshan and moving south, gathering the skyline into its embrace, the sky beginning to glow with the threat of a thunderstorm, 101 and the surrounding high rooftops fading blue tinged against this background, distances gone, hills already receded into memory, dulled greens in the foreground mutating into blue grey silhouettes upon the brightening background, darker cloud drifting with threats beneath, the summit of 101 gone now, definition departed into outlines. The walk also receding I make another coffee, watching the light outside, not so bad, I do like a thunderstorm and this is a good platform to watch from...

Today's valiant attempts to avoid the news foundering upon the sound of the local news playing Drumpf's latest news conference, the fughed up sounds issuing from his mouth shattering with their usual cognitive dissonance upon my hearing, dragging me from the anticipation of the storm as I inform the screen of my opinion of him while, as if to mock my opinions, its focus shifts towards the UK and the halfarsed besuited weasels of the Tory party, vacuous soundbites in lieu of plans, mealy mouthed platitudes ringing hollow as their plans to exclude the “low wage low skilled” workers who are keeping the country moving, supporting the dead weight of those “wealth makers” who are holed up somewhere waiting for the storm to pass, has the home secretary slithered out from under her rock I wonder. There must be something karmic at work here, the shit to hit the fan when we're in the midst of a populist pandemic; Drumpf and Xi attempting to rewrite recent history, Modi attempting to recreate the chaos of partition, Putin hiding, Johnson and his Brexshit cronies showing their inabilities on an almost daily basis... rant over, breathe...

A brightening sky, a small walk, off to buy some lunch, passing another enormous queue for masks, this one 83 paces long, and then begin to wonder if the weather is going to hold for a while, if there's going to be time before rain starts, if it starts, but speckles begin falling, as if to mock me, every time I move towards a hill a small shower arrives, shrug and set off to the flat it stops, detour to another walk, rain. Who the gods would kill...anyway, after the fifth or sixth attempt to outwit the local weather god I give up, reach the flat just as the the skyline disappears into the curtain of rain falling torrential and dark..

The photo is of a small bakery which sells only four product, five if you include soya milk, which I don't. You can get a variant upon nan bread, baked as you watch in a flaming barrel, just like on the streets of Kolkata, a green onion cake, red bean cake or sesame cake. And that's it. But what a place...