In Pakistan small businesses sprout like mushrooms.  Every patch of public land – every street corner, every piece of pavement, every bit of waste ground – can become a business, given an entrepreneurial Pakistani and a few basic supplies.  Mochis (cobblers) set up their stalls everywhere, with little more than a couple of tins of polish, a brush or two, and a needle and thread.  Subzi-wallahs (vegetable sellers) collect a few wooden boxes, fill them with peaches and cauliflowers and tomatoes, and make a living from it.  Even hairdressers rig up a canopy under a tree, affix a mirror to the tree trunk, find a chair, and bingo – a business is born.

This morning I got my hair cut under a tree.  The barber, a pleasant guy from Gujranwala, chatted amicably about Pakistan, the UK, and the price of tomatoes while he snipped and trimmed.  A Pashtun man from Dir wandered over and sat down to listen to what we had to say, before saying that I was their “mehman” (guest) and would be welcome any time to visit his family.

On the downside, cars kept stopping to have a good laugh at the foreigner getting his hair cut under a tree.  On the upside, though, I got to tell two Pakistani men how much I respected and liked their country, how much I want there to be peace and prosperity in Pakistan, and also a haircut.  All for 40p.  Not a bad way to spend half an hour.

Bougainvillea plants are found everywhere in Pakistan.  They grow prolifically, clambering up walls and hedges like enthusiastic children, their green shoots reaching upwards and eventually exploding in a cascade of paper-thin flowers.  In the midst of the dust and grime of Pakistani streets their exuberant colours come as a relief, a reminder of freshness and vitality in otherwise drab places.

This one is doing its best to climb across a roll of barbed wire.  The juxtaposition of the beauty of the flower and the harsh reminder of the lawlessness of Pakistan struck me as I walked around our house, reminding me that beauty is possible even in the middle of difficulty.

The monsoon arrived late this year.  Since we landed in Pakistan it rained continuously for three whole days.  Being English, I am used to above-average levels of precipitation – in fact I quite like it, and usually prefer it to hot, sunny weather – but three days of rain without a single break was a bit much, even for me.

It was certainly “a bit much” for Pakistan.  The north of the country is mountainous, and local drainage systems are unable to cope with the amount of rain that fell in the last few days.  Drains overflowed, rivers swelled, and all of that water, millions and millions of gallons of it, rushed downhill.  The result was predictable: widespread flooding across the north of the country.  As of this morning over 100 people have been killed and thousands more made homeless.  In some areas entire streets are underwater, entire neighbourhoods swamped by the foaming torrent.

As always, it is the poor that suffer the most.  The areas in which they can afford to live are those most susceptible to flooding – the land there is cheap for a reason! – and so they are washed out of their homes, their livelihoods disappearing downstream.

This is a turbulent land.