Who amongst you can now remember "The Crazy World of Arthur Brown"' 50 or so years farther on? I can. He was a bit of a one-hit-wonder with his record of the same title as this post, well the first word, anyway. I drew back our livingroom curtains, the other night, to be panicked by the following sight:
You can see why, can't you, Dear Reader? I really thought that the whole of the rooftop flat opposite was going up in flames! The roof is just made of plywood sheets with a thin layer of sand and cement over the top, you can see the light shining through the gap between the boards and the mudbrick wall at about two o'clock in the picture.
However, after coming into my senses once again, I did notice the man of the house, with a feather fan in his right hand. He was fanning the flames whilst also fanning away the smoke. Have you sussed it yet? That's right, he was doing the manly thing which men do all over the world; being in charge of the barbecue!!! (Which was out of my line of sight, below the wall of the tiny balcony outside of their front door.) His little wife kept appearing at the door, wafting her hand in front of her face, as if to say "Get back in the house you, and let me do it for heaven's sake!!" Panic over.
(Now then, how's this for a link?)
Arthur Brown's FIRE!! was rubbish, as is this following picture;
I was on my way to the bakery, when I heard a wagon coming up behind me very slowly. As he passed me by, I did notice that the driver had a couple of bags (goodies saved from the bins, no doubt) on the passenger seat next to him. I don't know what sort of goodies he had saved, but they involved having the driver's cab literally swarming with flies! I couldn't have stood it, I readily admit.
When he had passed by, I realised why he was driving so gingerly (Colloquialism: gingerly = with extreme care) the wagon had no tailboard, and bouncing about the uneven back streets of Luxor would have had a significant portion of his load back on the ground!
I don't actually know what happens to the rubbish which the Amoun men collect. I have seen some rubbish on boats crossing the river to the West Bank, with young boys having a final sort through it before it gets there, where there are smallish trucks waiting to load it up once it arrives. I'd hate to think that it just gets dumped out in the desert somewhere; I have seen rubbish dumped out there, but it's always been specialist rubbish, like pieces of shoes or old bones from a butcher, but not household waste and the like.
Then, whilst "teaing" at the Nile Palace, we noticed this:
It's a relatively large rubbish boat! But this one isn't crossing over, it's travelling North, down the river, To who knows where?
Here's another good link:
Whilst mentioning the Nile Palace and rubbish, what's the problem in this picture?
Now then, you all know how we love the Nile Palace (as well as the Winter Palace, which we'll come to on another day.) But everywhere has its problems. The biggest problem is the "Egyptian"! The Steigenberger Nile Palace is not a new hotel any more, but although it is still very well-kept, it has had to have quite a lot of refurbishment done over the years. Not least having the outside wrought-ironwork painted. Have you seen the problem yet?
Counting from the left, look carefully at the iron uprights numbers 2 and 3, especially at the collars near the bottom, which are supposed to represent mounting plinths. All they need is to be tapped down into place with a hammer to look right, but they've been left like that since the hotel was built (along with a great many more!). That's what I mean by the "Egyptian"; they honestly don't notice such things. Anything so out of place would normally drive us crazy (well, it would, and does, me) but they just pass them by! I cannot figure it out.
Another bit of rubbish is our Internet connection, look at this:
The graph shows the upload and download speeds attained by our Etisalat mobile internet connection. As you can plainly see, it's normally working at about zero kilobites per second (actually point something or other) and then suddenly leaps up to thousands of kbps, but just for a second or so. I'm getting really sick of waiting and waiting for pages to load.
Egypt? Huh!!!!!
Then, today, whilst I was getting the bread and Freda was waiting outside the bakery, she was almost knocked over by an idiot with a baby camel! It seemed like he was showing it off to the locals and putting his hand out for money. (Rather like some of the tomb and temple Guardians who point to an obelisk, say "obelisk" and then put their hands out fpr a tip!) It wasn't until I'd re-emerged from the bakery that I realised what the camel man was actually about. Have a look at the picture below, and see if you can guess.
The clue is in the contraption on the camel's back, which resembles an open book. That's right, Dear Reader; it contains an open Koran! I've got to say that it rather took me by surprise that a demonstrably devout Muslim would allow a Koran to be in such close proximity to such a filthy beast, as Muslims are usually so protective of their "Book", but, you live and learn, eh? Money talks!
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