Lonely, busy days...

 Yes, the days are lonely but full, which is why I don't get to write much now in this journal. Now it is soon two months since everything closed down...
I am approaching the last chapters in the memoir I have been writing about my life in Mali. It is going to be hard, because I will have to write about Keita's last days and death, so I am procrastinating... Have spoken to my great friend Kathy about the subject of procrastination. She is an artist- and another dear  friend, Lucy,  is a writer. They both agree that procrastination is the scourge of the creative process, but it is inevitable and everyone knows it and does it.
I know I have to sit down to write, and in fact I know I will enjoy it once I start, but I find what ever reason at hand NOT to do it. I found myself dusting behind the books on the book shelves yesterday. I then phoned Kathy and she said she had just been cleaning out the toothbrush holders.

 Boris has just announced some relaxation of the confinement rules. We are now allowed to go walking with ONE friend not from our household, as long as that person stays two metres away. Well, so what? Surely all single householders have been doing that anyway? I have often walked with friends at a distance, here below is dear David. If I hadn't done that I would probably have gone potty by now- or MORE potty.

I am  also attempting to reach out to rather ambitious new  horizons, and this includes learning Arabic with Youssouf- below-  who sends me  weekly lessons from Timbuktu. The projects still go on in both Djenne and Timbuktu under my distant direction and I have, optimistically, booked my flight for Bamako on the 8th of July. On the way I will pop into Amsterdam to see my dear friend Birgit, who was so important to the hotel and figures prominently in my memoir...

 The Malian official figures for Corona virus deaths stands at 39 this morning. But how accurate is that? Extremely hard to tell. I had a chilling message from Babou at the Djenne Manuscript Library yesterday which told me there were a lot of unexplained deaths in Djenne...


And what else? I continue to explore my new passion: cooking but sadly there is a  lack of people to feed here now...and to impress...nevertheless on the weekends I  treat myself to something special:
 The below is a couple of little octopus I picked up at the fish mongers in Golborne Road to prepare Leonardo's Sicilian grandmother's splendid recipe.  A scary thing to prepare an octopus of course. It looks at one quite accusingly as one is about to slice it up...