my 48th birthday
i started the day in birmingham with mum and the kids and then took six or seven hours to get back down to copinger close. sumbla rang to wish me a happy birthday and we had a long chat. a great start to the year which inshallah will be both happy and productive for all of us
the kids had visited dad on a couple of occasions and i spent some time with him before he went to bradford. all his children have seen him now but we were all worried that it might be for the last time. he has lost a great deal of weight and is very weak but still spent at least an hour and a half talking to me passionately about allama mashriqi and the khaksar movement. his expression of the social ideals of that movement and its leader must have contributed to how i see the world. his habit of treasuring those books is now echoed in how i approach the work of my guru christopher alexander
i told him he was also ultimately responsible for my habit of pointing out shit when i saw it being perpetrated in front of me and for that i would always be grateful to him
i was looking at his hands and realised thats where mine and noe's come from.