I've got these feet, see?

I feel as if that should be the title of a poem by that girl, Pan Ayres? Or possibly the refrain in another comic song by the fabulous Victoria Wood.

Sadly, it's neither; it's me, I've got these feet, see?

I'm slowly coming to the belief that being in Egypt has caused me this grief, as it's only since I came here on a semi-permanent basis that they've been any trouble at all, apart from the odd eruption of the old 'Athlete's' foot. (I thought it was leprosy, when I first had it!)

If you've ever been to Egypt, and have any interest in people-watching, then I'm positive that you'll have noticed that a great proportion of Egyptian men walk as if their feet are causing them pain with every step! I'd noticed this for years, and simply put it down to some widely distributed congenital problem, perhaps caused by generations of their forebears tramping barefoot over hot sand, or maybe something to do with their modern version of 'seven-league-boots'; the cheap and nasty winkle-pickers which so many Egyptian men now wear! Even smart and well dressed men, hotel managers, lawyers and the like wear them. Even though they're a foot longer than the feet inside; they can't be comfortable or good for the overall health of the feet constrained inside them!

I've been designing again, furniture this time, and I needed a 30-60-90 degree set square to aid my technical drawing. Off I toddled to the 'school furnishing' shop over the road, better known locally as the 'Islamic Library'. Actually it's neither really, it's just a stationery shop, but being in a Muslim country where very few people read anything other than the Quran; that's mainly what they sell. Except, that is; when the new school year is about to begin!!! It was packed to the door! Trendy, giggly schoolgirls buying their next years textbooks; harassed, fully veiled mothers, with three kids in tow, wanting the right textbooks for three different year groups. illiterate fathers with their 'princess' of a little daughter, whom they want to have a better chance than they had. (Or they possibly want to be able to make her a better marriage prospect, who knows?)

And then along comes the daft tourist looking for an equally daft set-square, among all this pandemonium! To cut a long story short (honestly!), I'll get to the point very soon! I sat for a while with this Bedlam going on around me, until the rotund little shop owner finally got to me, and asked me to come back after one hour. I duly did so, and waited in the maelstrom again, only to notice a man's feet!

Or, perhaps more correctly, his heels!

How do you walk around with hard, cracked skin like that on your feet? It just has to be very painful, surely? Does the 'Laboratoire Garnier', for instance, sell some horribly expensive (but magic) cure, I wonder. Perhaps with added "make-up-the-name-of-an-ingredient-to-suit"? (Pentapeptides, possibly?) I doubt it, somehow!

My feet used to be a delight to behold. And no, I'm not boasting, they really were! But look at this one now, it's OK, it's clean!

Apart from the 'unresolved pain', which has plagued me for the past three years, on and off, it seems that I now have arthritis! The big toe joint has swollen to such an extent that it's shoving the other toes out of place. The latest one to be painful is the second smallest one, at times, I feel like cutting them all off!

But then, I wouldn't be able to walk around and see exciting things like this:

That's right, playmates; it's an MAN six-wheeled artic unit (more properly called a 'prime mover' I believe), and brand new, at that. Isn't it lovely?

Neither would I have been able to update you on the 'ripping-up' of the pavement on Youseff Hassan Street! How about this:

To this:

It didn't take long, eh? Just shows that Egyptians can really 'get cracking' when there is a need! (But it's still illegal, and therefore may be subject to being broken up again in the future, who knows, who cares? Maybe even "Who Dares, Wins"!)

I see that Tesco's Luxor shop is having a bit of competition:

Serious competition is now underway between the real supermarkets in Luxor, and about time too! With the opening of 'Ragab and Sons' further down TV St than Kheir Zaman, I see that prices are changing. The one that I noticed was that of porridge! The German imported stuff (Hahne) has dropped from 16.75le (in one shop a few weeks before we had our holiday) to 10.95le. That's worth saving, in anybody's money!

I think that's all I have for you just now, unless one of you is a 'twitcher', and can identify these birds of prey for me? They (three of them) often hover around over the Etap hotel, where I took these pics. One of them was chasing one of the big black and grey crow things the other day.

On looking more closely, these might be of the same bird! I was trying to snap the three of them together, but they wouldn't pose for me.

See you soon. xx