Monday 11 April 2011

Let's do that, one more time

We're close to the day we leave Hong Kong, and head back to England. I hear you had the scorcher, the one that comes round every year to mark out the end of winter and the promise of coming summer, the one that will be disappointingly washed by rain.

But here I feel the pressure of time. The clock ticks round and round; everything must be done, all at once, and sometimes twice in one day. Like today. We stumble from one Indian restaurant in the backstreets of Wan Chai to the next Indian restaurant in the backstreets of Mong Kok. To mark the separation of the two, we visit our favourite parlor to lick our favourite ice creams, then tour the markets where last time we said, Next time, we'll buy that, and bargain him down to twenty.

Over the first round of saag paneer we join Ditta and the Pitcher to say, See you later and let's tour the rocks sometime again. Over the second round of saag paneer we join Dig and the Aristocrat; they talk about summer cruises circling Asia while the little grits contemplate dinner with a strong sense of deja vu.

It all makes for a late, late night, and a happy repeating of time with indulgence of green, perfect frozen wildberries, and junk shopping in now familiar places, with all the familiar faces.