Famous Names?

I think I once told you about my love of these delightful chocolate liqueurs from the company of Elizabeth Shaw. Well I'm not writing about those tonight!
Tonight, I want to pay tribute to my very good friend KV Explorer, he's a famous name in his own right , and rightly so. On the Egypt forums of TripAdvisor, he dispenses timely and sometimes fascinating advice, while imparting an impression of someone who is rather daunting, and sometimes quite cutting with his comments. Nevertheless, he is a good friend to have, and is really as soft as clarts. (I am constantly in trouble for using colloquialisms like 'clarts', so......clarts is a word meaning mud, as in "Your wellies are all clarty!")

My current project (the new shady roof for our terrace) would have been impossible without his generous birthday present to me last April, of a large assortment of screws. So, when it's finished, I can tell future guests that the famous KV Explorer was partly responsible for their comfortable surroundings! I don't mind being known as a 'Name Dropper'!

However, as KV himself will surely testify, "You can never have too many screws!" And, of course, neither can you have too many sizes of screws. As I have found to my great annoyance, out of all the different size and type of screws I have collected or had donated, I didn't have the very ones of which I need about 100 or so. They are for screwing bracing pieces of timber onto the hidden side of the plywood which will eventually provide the actual shade of our new shady roof.

The hardware man in the next street (a lovely shop, which looks as if it goes on indefinitely, with alleyways through stacks of shelving and cupboards) doesn't stock much in the way of cross-head screws. That's why I've been bringing my own from Geordieland and commandeering stock from 'the rich and famous'. But there's no time this time! I want this job finished before our next guests arrive. (Yes, we do have some guests booked in, and we've just taken another booking from a couple whom we were recommended to by some past American guests. So there!) So I needed to find the right ones here in Luxor.

Here's the place where all your dreams can come true! That's if you're a sad old fogey like me, anyway.

I don't know what the shop is called, but it's downstairs from the Horus Hotel, just behind the Temple. As you pass down the aisle in the last picture, you can see small 'rooms' built out of even more shelving! It's the original Aladdin's Cave, I'm certain. If you click on the pictures and then click again, you can use your cursor and magnifier to look about the shelves and inspect some of his stock. From model torsos for hanging clothes on, to six inch shackles and nice big steel hooks. I have been intrigued by the other hardware shop, as I told you, but this one takes the biscuit! They even have real 'Pozidriv' screws, for Heaven's sake, and roofing screws with the built-in drill bit ends. There was an ordinary Egyptian bloke in there, galabiya and headscarf type, buying four nuts and bolts which were about 8 inches long by roughly an inch and a quarter diameter! What on earth was he going to use them for?

Anyway, it's my new 'favourite shop'. It's owned and run by an old gent who is the third generation of his family to be there. He has only daughters who aren't interested in the business.

Perhaps I can persuade him to adopt me?