Cooler weather now but incensed at avoidable tragedy in Nigeria, reading Burroughs and watching a family

Yesterday was scorching hot and we actually had an e mail at work detailing that we could "dress down", reminding us that we should drink plenty of fluids and asking that we monitor the temperature in our offices as there are apparently legal limits to how hot it can be in an office....

Thankfully today there's still good weather but there are more breezes and it's not so brain-fryingly hot....

Sad to read in the Nigerian newspapers today of a collapsed building in Ebute Metta in Lagos in which twelve people were killed. Two things that incensed me were- first, the fact that the developer had apparently been given permission for a two storey building but had ended up building a four storey building; and second, the fact that the rescue efforts were hampered by the absence of the necessary heavy equipment needed to rescue those trapped in the rubble. In the end, equipment was borrowed from a construction company........the lack of value attached to human lives in Nigeria still haunts me....

And in a reminder that accidents happen everywhere, 25 people were taken to hospital after one of the game rides at Alton Towers, a major theme park here, malfunctioned. I've always been wary of these fairground rides- call it my Naija unsophisticated naivete- but the thought of being hurled high up into the sky by a contraption is one that I'm uncomfortable with. Now, now, I can hear you snigger- but you fly so often in planes- I know- it's perverse and illogical but it's me.

I finished Augusten Burroughs' Sellevision yesterday and I found it quite funny, in direct contrast to his two previous books- Dry and Running With Scissors which were touted as being very funny but which I struggled to finish.

Last night, having a drink in the bar with friends, there was this very interesting family-Grandfather, father and son and a rather glamorous woman of a certain age who I assume was wife/mother- they seemed to be Greek or Turkish and the two older men click-clacked on their worry beads the whole time they were there. Father, brash and successful in his sleek blazer and large gold watch downed Scotch after Scotch to the irritation of distinguished, dignified, grey-haired grandfather who vociferously upbraided him in their language. Wife and son, disinterestedly flicked through what looked like brochures for one of the local universities, as their husband and father scowled in resentment at his father's chastisement. With the scowl on his face, I imagined I could see him as a little boy being chastised like this by his father and putting on the very same scowl, which education, money and success could not erase.....