We’ve been back for a
couple of days now, but I’m behind with the blogging, because there was one
casualty of the trip – the screen of my laptop. It must have got bumped or
shaken on the flight, but I didn’t notice anything untoward at the time. I
haven’t lost the data, so I’m beginning to be mildly pleased at the prospect of
a new laptop. Anyway, here’s my second Egyptian instalment.
The Egyptians are
obviously aiming at slightly higher end tourism, and they keep this place
really clean and well cared for. There’s only a little of the Middle Eastern /
Asian failing of building something rather swish and then failing to maintain
it in any way. It’s pretty international – we ate teppanyaki one night - but
you’re still clearly in Egypt.
It’s been cloudier today
so not quite as hot on the beach, but the evening is much warmer and we had a
little walk, and I noticed a trend for Egyptian pop songs to use tunes from
European classical music – I heard one clearly based on Fur Elise and a real
oddity based on Orff’s O Fortuna. There was even a dramatic anthem, with an
opening based on Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathrustra. It’s quite a strange sound
because the tune is overlaid by Arabic wailing, and so to begin with I thought
I was just imagining hearing Beethoven.
The Kobo E readers the
children gave us for Christmas are a great success. The only difficulty I’ve
encountered was that I couldn’t make out the maps in the copy of Antony
Beevor’s “Stalingrad”, which I borrowed
from the library. It really benefited from concentrated reading – at home,
reading in short spells, I’d have constantly been having to look back to remind
myself who Schmidt or Chuikov was – but the maps would have been a great help,
I’m sure.
It felt slightly odd to be
reading about Stalingrad while surrounded by Russians, or Ukrainians, I can’t
tell the difference. But they are instantly recognisable as one or the other.
They’re usually very badly dressed and the women have badly coloured hair. To
protect the dyed hair from the sun they wear headscarves, but there’s nothing
stylish about them – they all succeed in looking like those statues of “The
factory worker (holding hammer aloft) and the collective farm worker
(brandishing sickle)” which seemed to be everywhere when we went to Russia in 1972.
The pretty women tend to spend a lot of time having their photographs taken in
soft porn poses, and all seem to favour thongs, whatever sex or figure. A woman
with the figure of a shot putter run to fat, in a diamante thong, will stick in
my memory for ever.
One of the tour boats is
rigged up to look rather like a Nile barge, curved with thick, heavy posts
shaped a little like lotus stems and flowers fore and aft. It makes me think of
Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, but there aren’t any rowers, just an engine – a bit
disappointing. And it doesn’t seem to have perfumed sails, either.
We’ve got a routine of
going into a café for a drink and a sandwich for Phil, otherwise he goes all
weak and weedy, and using our phones to check emails and the news. We seem to have
missed some bad weather. But the exciting thing was getting an email from our
older grandson – how quickly they grow up!
It was nice to hear from him and be able to reply – I always send the
postcards, but we usually get home before it arrives.
We came down to earth with
a bump, arriving home! Waiting for the minibus to take us to the car, the cold
was awful, and by the time I’d scraped the snow off the car, I could have cried
at the pain in my hands. Then when we got home, the flat was freezing. But it is
nice to be home again and to see everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment