We're ending September in Kuching, as we have ended the previous four months. We hadn't envisaged having such an uninterrupted block of time here (we've not even spent one night away since we returned at the end of May). The original plan had been to take off to Sabah for a while in August. But all the shenanigans of last month made us reconsider, and as next month will now see us embarking on another bigger trip, it seemed a bit extravagant to be heading off twice.



But it has actually been very good to really dig ourselves back into Kuching. Since our return, the city has been in non-stop celebration mode, and September has proved no exception, with the Mooncake Festival running over several evenings, and a huge gathering of Muslim communities marking the Prophet's birthday. Maybe we're still experiencing a post-covid bounce, as the intensity of events is unprecedented, I think.

And, apart from a couple of blippy days at the beginning of the month, when we were plagued by smoke and noise, it has been a very pleasant period.



We haven't gone far at all. Just to Stutong Market, and across the river a couple of times, to enjoy the (miraculously still open) pedestrian bridge, and to look for crocodiles (we didn't spot any, but it was still a really lovely dawn trip). It's fruit season, and Nigel learnt how to get down and dirty with a durian. And we visited three exhibitions and a temple (you probably saw the movie).

Thanks to the encouragement of the Writing Support Group run by a friend, I've also this month -- albeit tentatively and dubiously -- picked up a writing project I started and stopped in 2021 (I'm sure you can think of the reasons that year for both the brave beginning and the sad petering out...). We'll see how it goes.


And -- of course -- it has been a wonderful food month. Cafes, both traditional and modern, continue to play a disproportionate role in our lives.

I'm unapologetic about this. This piece by Chris Arnade reminded me today that a "food culture" is a really important bit of social cohesion. I won't get into the argument that prompted his article (how there can even BE an argument about whether French food is better than American food I fail to imagine, but then I'm European by origin, and horribly biased). But I think the points he makes (and I should add that he is American himself) are really good.

This, for example: "Food in the US ... is still largely a utilitarian and transactional thing -- something necessary to get enough calories, hopefully tasty ones, to stop being hungry and keep working. That’s very different from most of the world which views meals as a social occasion that’s far more than about getting fed."

Outside America, continues Arnade, most of the world regards food as "a way of life not a means to calories". And that's so true of Kuching. You can get talking to ANYONE by asking about favourite dishes and eating places. Everyone always has his/her comparison tables and maps (best laksa here, best kolo mee there, and so on...) ready in the forefront of the brain. People are knowledgeable about ingredients and processes and sources. They constantly recommend places, and take each other to the ones they like best. Food here is NOTHING if not a way of life...

Malaysia does not feature on Arnade's "Where People Spend the Most Time Eating and Drinking" chart, but I bet it would be way up there...



Turning to reading. This is also a way of life, as far as I'm concerned, but see the ErrantScience cartoon here to get a sense of how well that's working out...

This month's book list has taken me, via what seems like a wildly swerving route, to Autumn by Ali Smith (appropriately and beautifully elegiac); The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman (I totally understand why he's so popular); The Mother Sun by Sui Annukka (further interesting stuff on Sri Lanka, after Maali Almeida last month); and The Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (the last of the Neapolitan Novels, which I started last year).

I've also had a Venice splurge (purely because we're scheduled to change trains in Venice sometime towards the end of November...). So I've cantered through The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins (exuberantly Gothic, and goes well with A Haunting in Venice, the latest Kenneth Branagh movie, which we saw last week); Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon (nicely downbeat ending); The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton (critics seem to diss it, but I found it insightful and poignant); and Watermark by Joseph Brodsky (a fascinating patchwork of ideas and cultures).

Also on The Velvet Cushion is a new language post, which uses bamboo tubes and pingpong balls to explain why I've done so little language-learning of late... And -- dah-DAH -- I've posted on Vintage Travel (after a gap of two years). Admittedly, the post strains that blog's remit a little... But take a look. It's a piece I wrote in 2011, called My Bildungsroman of books, and it's a kind of long farewell to books I have known over the years.


So there we are. September. Three quarters of the year gone by. If we're spared, as Dad used to say, the end of next month should find us on the Isle of Man. May it be.