Loretta & I. Friday, December 13 th – 2024 Criss-crossed by the mesh screen over my apartment window – Osaka parts its bleary eyes and wakes, stirring to a wide azure sky which stretches from the jagged incisors of Nara’s mountains to the Yodo river’s floodplains far in the north. Children pacing clumsily to school with their yellow safety hats bobbing like rubber ducks in a brook, elderly folks stopping in doorways to chatter through blue surgical masks and sighing “Samui naaaa…”, as if some long-revered mantra. A hot black coffee is my companion to sip at as I regard these fleeting scenes of neighbourhood life from my high-rise castle. It’s a Friday, and I have to work. But the thought of that is utterly trivial in my mind, driven to inconsequence by the thrill that builds in my chest at the reminder of the biggest event of the year – the company Christmas party on Sunday! The chance to dress to the nines in polished dress shoes and an elegant tie, to chink glass upon glass of...