It's been a pretty eventful month. It started in Istanbul, continued in KL, and ended in Kuching, Sarawak, aka Home.

Istanbul remained fascinating right to the end. In fact, staying there was one of the most interesting things we've done in a long while. Not that what we did in England and on the Isle of Man wasn't interesting -- it certainly was. But Istanbul scratched that itch for the unfamiliar that had really been building up in us over this long period of travel inactivity. (Istanbul also remained consistently delicious -- in fact there's now quite a bit of repair work needed on account of all that deliciousness...)









It was also really good to spend a little time in KL, another of our much-loved former homes.





And it's really great to be back in Kuching, despite incidents and inevitable changes.

Nigel, meanwhile, started May with improvement, crashed again just before we left Turkey, did spectacularly well in KL, and is doing OK but not quite as well in Kuching. So there's still something of a rollercoaster element to that story. But hopefully we can monitor things a bit better now we're back on home territory.

As we made plans to return, we were very much looking forward to experiencing something approximating "normality" here in Kuching, because we never really have... In the latter part of 2019, we were setting up home, and dealing with the mixed bag of circumstances that process entailed. And then it was pandemic-time...

And it still is pandemic-time, of course. So "normality" is not going to be quite what it might have been previously. But the current situation is certainly way more relaxing than that sucky "new normal" we had to deal with for so long.

There's a LOT more buzz around the place than when we left.

And it does feel as though we have a lot more freedom, although we obviously still try to exercise it with caution. It's really easy to find places to eat outside here, for a start. And people wear masks inside (that's the law -- but people actually obey it...), so we feel a little safer than we often did in other places. On the other hand, we're now free not to wear masks outside. We do continue to wear them, actually, in the busy streets, following the lead of the rest of the population. But once we're away from people, we're able to take the face-blankets off. Which is really great, as that was once of the most trying aspects of last year. The vast majority of our steps last year were steps-done-in-masks. In addition to all this, we ticked off our second covid booster at the end of last week.

Of course, this positive vibe can always go into reverse. Our R rate is rather higher than we would ideally want to see it (0.95); we've got the big Gawai celebration this week, which will impact case numbers for sure; and you never know what other crap is lurking around the corner...

But for the minute, let's take what's good: We got back safely; Nigel is at least better than he was; this is a lovely place to be; and we have more scope to enjoy it than we've had for a long, long time.

What else? Well, along with 18 PT posts this month, The Velvet Cushion has also picked up the pace a bit: Two language log entries (on achieving a 1,000-day streak on Duolingo and on attempting to learn Turkish); four discussions of Istanbul-oriented material (Orhan Pamuk's memoir-cum-history, Istanbul: Memories and the City; Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express in comparative translation; A Case for Zeki Demirbilek by Su Torhan; and Snow on the Bosphorus by Celil Oker); plus a dip into Sally Rooney's Normal People.

And amid the unremitting avalanche of horror that constitutes our newsfeeds at the moment -- killing, and more killing, and food shortages, and sickness, and terrible ineptitude everywhere -- there was one item I found myself stirred by. That was New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's commencement speech to Harvard a few days ago.

Now, I know there are plenty of questions over Ardern's achievements in office so far. I'm not an uncritical admirer. But this is that rare thing -- a politician's speech that's really worth reading in full...

There are many fine elements, but I particularly liked the way she refers to "the space between difference and division", and the need to work to reclaim it, by making "a choice to treat difference with empathy and kindness".

If only there were more of the world's politicians projecting that message...