instead

i could be in Delhi at my grandad's place where my mum's turning 53 over home-made posto and maacher jhaal. true, she is quite teary eyed on her first birthday without her mum to bless her. true, delhi is at 46 degrees and has dust devils blowing on the steel roads. but i'd rather be there right now, and give her the orchids myself, instead of making my cousin write out my cheeky message to her on a card.

i could be daydreaming and reading-writing sitting on the riverside parapet at rogers-stirkharbour studio, or further upstream, near riverside studios, where you rarely get disturbed by passers by. i could be drinking a mango fruit slush from plum, and producing gems, probably never to be published, but still.

i could be walking hand in hand in regents park with the sweetest boy in the world, planning little trips and big expenses, teasing him until the green grey eyes widen in shock and exasperation, and then i could give in and be the sweet little woman again. in fact, i could be cooking and cleaning at home waiting for him to finish work (even though i didn't go to LSE and SPA and a bunch of expensive conferences to turn into a plump and happy houseywife, sigh). I could be doing this for some of the time though, no?

I'm sitting in an overcooled office, which is no doubt adding to the general climate change quotient, while the streets of london are baked by an uncharacteristic, unlatitudinal heatwave. I'm trying to document a day's worth of site visits, details of which are already slipping from memory thanks to the delicious weekend that went in between. I'm doing work for work's sake, commissioned by silly nitwitted clients who have no clue. I could be doing all those other things, and i'm in an office doing work that's mostly pointless and very tedious, instead.