[Because the older version of this blog has become unreachable, I am retrieving at least occasional posts from it that I see people trying to click on. This is one from October 2008.]
As promised, here’s an update on the corner shop. It’s something like 21 months since it began its painfully slow rise from the dead. Like the June deadline before it, the September deadline has come and gone.
A new bulletin has appeared in the window:
I don’t know if it’s significant, but Chie has moved to the front of the list of signatories, and she and Rod have been joined by Ron. I’ve not yet met Chie, and Ron is probably the older man I’ve seen about the place fairly regularly, though given the amount of time that’s passed, it’s quite possible that our prospective storekeepers have a baby or even two. Oddly à propos, Penny and I were talking to an old friend last night who has transformed from a leftist university student into a property developer, and he evoked for us the agonies caused by paperwork sitting for weeks, even months on a desk somewhere in a bureaucracy waiting for someone to pass it on for gazetting. It sounds as if our ever closer but never quite here corner shop may have had its share of such experiences
The back yard has been opened up and is in the process of being paved, or perhaps built on.
And here’s a bonus photo, found in my phone, of a plastic omelette as seen at Narita Airport. Mmmmm!
Me fail? I fly! 