Jet Setting

Caught up in a flurry of preparation and movement, we have deposited one niece in Melaka, where we are at the moment for Hari Raya Haji, more commonly known as Eid Al Adha. The other two nieces are back with their parents in Singapore, but they’ll be dropped off with us, back at the Mansion, or the airport (I’m not sure), tomorrow and then it’s off to the rainy city and Paris and London for a month. I get tired just thinking about it.

But I enjoyed prayers here at the little mosque today – twice, in fact. Once for Haji, and then for the usual Friday Prayers. Last time I was here Fuad and I attended prayers at the rather grand state mosque, a fine building but perhaps a bit over-elevated for the likes of me.

Finished Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein this morning, before going to the mosque, leaving Victor expiring in the desolate cold of an ice-packed northern sea – one of the best bits of the novel – and the monster planning his (the monster’s) funeral pyre in the same location. Great stuff! Now embarking on Ackroyd’s new version of the myth, which will be my reading on the long flight to Europe. Ackroyd begins with Victor meeting Percy Shelley at Oxford. Again, great stuff, or it certainly looks that way. Some learned cove on the book jacket compares it to Hawksmoor and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. Hope he’s right!