R - E - S - P - E - C - T

Some, unwanted, sad news today. One of our friends here in Luxor died yesterday. We only got to know the other day that she had cancer (it's not that long ago that we saw her, and then she looked and seemed as good as ever, no inkling that she was ill at all!) and then the dreaded email came this evening that she had died. She'd been back in England for only a short while. Ayisha; we'll miss her.
She was a woman for whom I had a great respect. She and I had some real ding-dongs about our differing theological stances (in writing, that is) as she was a staunch Muslima. She would have her say on the old "Egypt Search" forums, and oft times would cause quite a ruckus, as she wouldn't follow the normal Muslim way of believing that the stories of Muhammad's life should be taken as literal instructions for modern-day Muslim living. I often felt heart-sorry for her as other Muslim contributors would metaphorically rip her to shreds! Nevertheless, she was a woman who commanded respect, whilst being very normal and friendly in her personal circumstances, and Luxor life will be the worse for her passing.

R - E - S - P - E - C - T. That reminds me!

At the Nile Palace, the other night, a group passed us as we sat in our usual place I was sure that I recognised the face of one of them, and after a moment or two, I realised just who it was............Muddy Waters! Yes, that fabulous American Blues singer was here in Luxor. I felt like Victor Meldrew, in that I "couldn't believe it!" Here he is, singing one of his unforgettable numbers, with a little help from some of his friends:

On second thoughts, I realised that Muddy was wearing high heels and a dress! He'd either turned or it wasn't him. It was then that I realised that I'd been mistaken all along and it wasn't Muddy Waters at all, it was Aretha Franklin!!!! You remember her? She was out of this world! And now here she was, visiting Luxor at last. If Luxor's good enough for Aretha Franklin, then it's good enough for you, Dear Reader!!! Get onto EgyptAir today.

You can see the facial likeness, can't you? An easy mistake to  make, I'm sure you'll agree.

Goodnight.  

Back in Luxor nearly two weeks , now.

And not much to show for it either!

You know, of course Dear Reader, that I'm regularly driven to distraction by the vicissitudes apparent in our daily lives here in lovely Luxor? Well.........the other day, I just took a minute to get a snap of one of God's little creatures, who seemed perfectly happy to just sit there, on our washing line, not having a care in the world. It made me think!

That dragonfly (is that what it is?) will never know the rage which certain Egyptian "workmen" (and I use the word VERY loosely) can engender in a simple, peace loving Englishman!

You'll remember the "tilers"? I came across a couple of pictures which I had taken of them before I realised just how utterly useless they really were. Here they are; exposing them to the small world of my Dear Readers may be cathartic for me!

They aren't very far from my mind at present, as I've spent time every day since our return in the guest bathroom busying myself in re-grouting the tiles. "Straightforward", I can hear you saying, "what's the old curmudgeon complaining about now?" Ahhh, but you don't know what I know, Mr Clever Dick!

Ever heard of tile spacers?

That's them, little plastic jobbies which fit in between the tiles, so that they're evenly spaced and nice to look at, not to mention that they make grouting easier too. Well......(again, I'm beginning to sound like an old gossip!) Egyptian tilers don't use spacers of any description, they just bang them up against each other and then rub cement into the joints (which are sometimes almost non-existent!

Our cement grouting has turned a very dark shade of grey, which looks just awful! So, I've brought some white grout from Englandland to try to improve the look of it. What a job, I'm sick of it! All the joints are covered over with the new stuff, but it's very thin, seeing as the old stuff is as hard as bell-metal and won't rake out, and I've yet to clean it all up so that it looks tidy, I hope I don't rub through the thin layer, or I'll go crackers!!! Then there's the broken tiles to try and sort out one way or another, and to re-grout the floor with some black grout which I've also brought from our other home.

Other than my trials, there's not much to report on in Luxor at the moment. We've still been having power cuts, usually twice a day for about an hour to an hour and a a half. We try to arrange it so that we can either go to bed or go out when it goes off. Thankfully the temperature is coming down from what it was, so it's not really as bad as it was.

On our little trips out, I noticed the framework which is in place for the next set of solar panels to grace our public buildings:

This set can be seen from Ibn Khaled El Walid Street, just past the Iberotel travelling towards Awameya, and on the left. Let's hope that these ones will be fitted and commissioned by professionals, and that the wiring will be properly insulated from the extreme heat of the Egyptian sun.

I noticed, and snapped, a sad sight in the tourist bazaar as I strolled through there the other day on my way to the baker's:

This was once the Oum Kolthoum Coffeeshop, right in the middle of the souk, a favourite place for guides to bring their groups for a shisha and a coke (and a large lump of commission). We used to like to watch it and the busy market from the terrace of the Jamboree Restaurant, which is just above here. A great many of the shops and stalls in the bazaar are now closed altogether, it's depressing walking through there!

But.......I heard, from my tame travel agent, that there were 32 cruise boats working on the Nile the other week! And...... they were all at at least 60% of capacity! Now that has to be better news, eh?

We'll see what the winter season brings, and keep our fingers crossed!

All right then, but just a few.

Actually, along with the days out in Number One Son's car, we also had a couple of journeys out using our old peoples' bus passes! One was to Tynemouth and the other was to South Shields, Tynemouth took and hour and fifty minutes and South Shields only about 55 minutes. I thoroughly enjoyed both trips, but Freda wasn't too struck on the rattly buses. It was interesting seeing housing estates and their residents, which we would normally by-pass, and also seeing just how many public houses had been closed due (mainly) to the smoking ban! I was astonished to notice so many new housing developments, some of the styles were lovely. The journeys were fascinating if, like me, you fancy yourself as an amateur anthropologist.

Enough of this tittle-tattle, what about meeting famous people? (You don't ask.) That's what happened to us on another of our little outings. We had a lovely ride up the coast, nosing around here and there, not doing anything in particular. We ended up in Alnwick, where there's the famed "Alnwick Garden" with the worlds biggest tree-house restaurant (or so I'm led to believe) and it's very own "Poison Garden"! (Maybe a bit worrying, that?) The "County Market Town" of Alnwick also has a few interesting shops, not least one or two charity shops with decent stuff for sale. I think it was the "British Heart Foundation" one where we spied a pretty frying pan, but at just about the same time as a rather pretty young thing who was awaiting her purchase of one of those awful green (with a gold edge) coffee sets from the 70's. "Yes, it is rather pretty, isn't it?" she uttered as I quickly laid my hand upon it! "That's that Michelle Dockery woman, off the telly." I said in a hushed voice to Freda. "I'm sure."

 Of course Freda wasn't convinced, I think she's been reading too many of my "Famous People" Blogs of past times! (Mick McManus, him out of "Friends" etc. remember Dear Reader?)  Never mind, we exchanged a few more words with "Michelle" as we, too, waited for her coffee set to be individually wrapped, before paying for the pan and departing. I did wonder why a high-flying television and film star would be shopping for 70's crockery in a charity shop in Alnwick, but????

Lo and behold! We were there on one of the days during the famous Alnwick International Music Festival. There were folky type performers from all over! We happened to catch some American dancers known as "The Cripple Creek Cloggers", mind you, they weren't clog dancing as we would recognise it. Then we noticed some very colourful outfits gathering in the crowd. I want to say "obviously Polish" but really, I think it was just that they looked like I "imagined" Polish dancers to look like. In the event; they actually were Polish, and very good to watch too! Here's a snippet:

I couldn't help but think that Christopher Lee (in his Count Dracula role) would have loved to be among those jolly maidens on a dark and misty night!!!!

We also had a run up to the seaside town of Seahouses and further again to Bamburgh, where they have a beautiful medieval castle:

To the right of the castle, in this first picture, is the sea. The second one is taken from the landward side, where the sea lies behind the castle. It's very big!

You'll remember how I'm always on about the annual Stick Dancing (or Fighting?) Festival which is held in our main street here in Luxor? Well, I'd love to see these chaps joining in one year, eh?

We caught them one Sunday at a little village called Winchcombe, when we were visiting some dear old friends in Cheltenham. The song I know to this tune is called "Donkey Riding". I could have watched them all day long!

While we were down that way, I took a fair few pictures (as you can imagine!). Let's have a look, firstly at one or two of the vehicles which took my fancy. (I know, I know; this is getting to be a habit. But I just can't help it! RIGHT?)

How about this barmy V8 tricycle? (The driver was a little old lady, honestly!!!)

Any of the next three would be more to my liking, though:

This Neoplan coach would have kept me driving them, instead of retiring I think. It's what the Chinese ones on Egypt are copied from. I snapped it in Stow-On-Wold. It must be the best part of half a million quid's worth!

This next one would suit me the next time I meet Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary in Downton Abbey).

The next one looks as if it's ready for the desert around Luxor, but actually it was standing in a car park on the banks of the River Avon at Stratford-upon-Avon, You know? Where the real Shakespeare came from. (As opposed to our dear Luxor friend Mr Jadallah, more generally known as Shakespeare the felucca captain.)

You'll be pleased to know that the next one is the last vehicle for today!

We captured this one on the beach car park at Alnmouth, on the Northumberland coast. It really has seen some desert action; it had stickers on from Zimbabwe and all sorts of other African places, as well as some in South America. What a mobile home!

Mind you; I'd hate to have to man-handle either of those spare wheels down, or more especially, back up!

Back to our trip to Cheltenham, Freda got so tired of me looking at and taking pictures of different Land Rovers and the like that she had me locked up for a while, just so that she could have a rest from them and use the camera herself. What a cruel wife I have!!!!

Anyway, now we're back here in sunny old Luxor. We've been back now for four days and we've already had two meals from Mr Adam's wife! On Wednesday she did us chicken with the usual batatas, onion and tomatoes etc, preceded by her lovely larks tongue soup, and tonight she did beef kofta with sort of chipped potatoes (but nicer) and spaghetti (which I wouldn't normally touch with a barge-pole). The final verdict was that I think it might have been the best meal she's ever cooked for us! (We've managed to save some for tomorrow, as well!)

Oooh, nearly forgot! After watching the Polish dancers at Alnwick, we headed towards Bamburgh on what used to be The Great North Road (or the old A1, now I think the A167?) To get out of the town we had to pass the entrance to Alnwick castle, home of the fabled Percy family. As we approached, I noticed the building opposite was covered in snow! And there were people about wearing top coats and mufflers (scarves) and gloves. Queer, or what? When we also noticed three vintage cars parked outside of the castle entrance, it suddenly clicked that a film of some sort was being made. This was confirmed later, when we read that scenes for Downton Abbey were being filmed in Alnwick over a few days. So, it really was Michelle Dockery after all. Poor girl looked so thin, they mustn't have a catering van on the set.

Well, other than telling you that the K'Archer vacuum repair went swimmingly, and that we've been busying away like beavers cleaning here there and everywhere, I've not much else to report, as yet.

But watch this space. 

Please Sir, can I have some more?

I'm going to post some more pictures with explanations in the near future, maybe a day or two. But, in the meantime, you could do worse than check out our new website for the "Our Luxor" Guest Apartment.

Here it is http://ourluxor.weebly.com/

If you like, you could let me know what you think of it by using the 'Contact' form on the site. (Any constructive criticism is always welcome.)

Bye for just now.