Falling fowl

A few days ago Leigh and I agreed to meet for food this evening. I have a pathological dislike of making advance restaurant bookings as the thought of pinning down a time to eat a particular cuisine whilst separated by Perspex barriers and fluorescent tape on the floor entirely disinterests me, even with 50% off. With the cabin fever caused by living and working in the same room, I want to be flexible and outdoors as much as possible. However I now see this attitude doesn’t help when even typical takeaway burger joints are booked up, as appears to be the case. Leigh arrived at our designated meeting spot, reporting gargantuan queues outside Wagamama. A quick snatch of some miso soup or spicy teriyaki wouldn’t be possible. This is all excellent for the restaurant trade but bad news for peeps who want to grab and run to a bench without identifying the 15-minute slot within which they’re going to be hungry. We eventually found a burrito place with spare tables, snaffled the food within five minutes and then strolled the streets.

With my colleague based in Niassa in northern Mozambique, I’m having to draft a security plan to dictate what we would do in an emergency if the radical insurgency affecting coastal areas was to spread further inland. It feels very abstract writing such documents from the UK. I really would like to return to Mozambique soon to feel the connection to our work, and I might prefer to take my chances with an insurgency over interminable limbo.