Then press the 'hash' key??????????

I suppose that it's to do with me being an 'Oldie', but I thought that 'hash' was something to eat which was made of corned-beef, onion and potatoes! HASH? Lo and behold, they mean 'the key with the cross-hatching symbol', you know, criss-cross lines; the method beloved of artists, whose medium is the pen and ink, to create areas of shade or darker colour. The picture below (found via 'Wikipedia') shows hatching and cross-hatching. 

Not that it's of any real consequence, mind you, but I don't agree with all this messing about with English. If you want to describe something which is new, or at least innovative, then make up your own words rather than try to change the meaning of words already in use, and understood to mean something entirely different to that to which you're referring!!!! There's enough of THAT sort of thing around already, thank you.

Sorry about that, it has nothing whatsoever to do with tonight's Blog other than I was thinking of it as a bit of a hash, in that it's a mix-up of several different things, like a corned-beef hash, in fact! RANT OVER.

Now then, "Hello, my name's Edward and I'm a smoker!" That's how the alcoholics do it at 'Alcoholics Anonymous', isn't it? As many of you know, I promised Freda that I'd chuck smoking when we moved to Luxor and I have, to all intents and purposes. It's just that people keep offering me a cigarette, and seeing as I still enjoy the odd one or two, I usually take them! So, I also accepted a real Cuban cigar when it was offered.

Yes, that's right 'ROMEO Y JULIETA' and underneath it says Habana Cuba.
According to our friends at Wiki, they're made by the state owned company, and are hand-rolled. (Although I shouldn't think that they're still rolled on the thighs of dusky maidens!) It seems that they cost over $6 each, rather more pricey than the Castellas which I used to smoke when I was a youth. It'll do for the Winter Palace one evening. (As the saying in Geordieland goes: "It's nee gud bein poor and luckin poor!")

Poor people often have to 'make do and mend', and we've been practising it for years! I love to root around in second-hand shops and jumble sales and the like, other people's rubbish fascinates me. So, we are frequent visitors to the Second-Hand-Man up off New TV Street, as I'm sure I've told you before, Dear Reader. (Do keep up!)

This week, he had a selection of newly acquired goodies for us to peruse. Of course Madame Farida is the haggler, not me. When she got about 25 or 30 feet away from the shop entrance, the man was calling her back with the promise that he'd take her offer after all! Actually, he squeezed another 20le out of her for the delivery, but that was OK. Here are our two latest bargains:

The table is destined for the Guest Apartment, after being rubbed down and re-varnished, while the mirror has gone up in our bedroom, replacing a smaller one. We really like them both!

Something we DON'T like, is being over-run with dickie birds! While we were sitting on the small terrace at the Nile Palace, we couldn't escape them:

Neither could we cannot escape them at home! They won't leave Freda's Hibiscus alone.

The last one, with the yellow breast, is really beautiful; and I'm not a Twitcher by any standards. Just across the way a little, one of our neighbours has recently started to keep pigeons:

It mystifies me, just how he keeps them safe from the local cats. But they mustn't like the way he looks after them! (More of which in a minute!)

We have an 'up-lighter' on the roof terrace with a 500 Watt bulb, it's quite bright! The halogen bulbs are Chinese, of course, and don't last all that long, but they're cheap, so we cannot really complain. It went off the other day, after Freda had complained about having to shoo away two of our neighbour's pigeons, who were perched on the lamp. They also perch on top of the A/C unit, and drop their droppings there! (But I have a cunning plan for that.)

I went to change the bulb, and look at what I found............

That's right, the cheeky little feathered beggars were building a nest in our lamp as they were obviously wanting to run away from our cruel neighbour!  I was astonished at their choice of nest-building material, it was nearly all bits of binding wire, with a safety pin thrown in for good measure!

Anyway, I've evicted them!

This next picture might appeal to the small number of folk who are familiar with the names 'Eric Olthwaite' and 'Howard Moleson' (him of 'a new Spear and Jackson' fame). It's of a 'Lovely Shovel' which we just happened to find in the middle of the road on Sharia Karnak, near to the 'Egyptian Exchange'.

Finally, we (Luxor, that is) have been inundated with tourists this past couple of weeks, the only drawback being that they have been nearly all Egyptian tourists, who won't spend a penny where a halfpenny will do! I took the following snap at the Nile Palace, just to prove to you that some Muslim women can and do go into the swimming pool fully clothed.

Mind you, they were certainly enjoying their swimming. It just goes to show, doesn't it?