After the Goldrush?

I'm sure that many of my loyal readers (probably all 7 of you!) can remember the iconic song from the pen of Neil Young, and if you're British you'll possibly remember the version by the NE group "Prelude" even better. (The attractive female lead lived just a few doors away from our friends the Dixons, at Low Fell!)

Well, we aren't actually having a "Goldrush" here in Luxor, but tourism in general has certainly picked up, at last! It's great to see the long, long Pasha Runs of calleches winding their traffic-stalling way through the town again. Even if some of the drivers are only about 8 years old and hardly any carriages display licence plates, it's an indication of something good happening.

We have had the best month (as far as letting out the apartment goes) that we've had for ages; four lots of guests in five weeks! Mind you, it hasn't come without associated extra expense. We've had to replace both of our 50 litre water heaters, a thermostatic shower valve and now a hand basin and mixer tap are due to arrive in the next few days as well. And that's without the new decorative additions! (You can see them on the "personally guided tour" section of the Blog, by clicking on it in the column to the right on this page.) We'll obviously never get rich while my beloved keeps spending every penny we get! (Mind, she would just point to my small collection of melodeons, and I'd be forced to shut up!)  (Editor Freda's comment:- IT IS NOT SMALL!)

Meanwhile, we met up with a friend from before the revolution yesterday. We haven't seen, or heard from, her for absolutely ages, so it was a real pleasure to see her again. Funnily enough, I was trawling through the Blog's ancillary pages yesterday morning, and found that she had sent a Blog comment last summer, which I hadn't even seen. I posted it, anyway, and thought to myself, "The poor girl will have thought that I'd fallen out with her or something, for not publishing her comment." Thankfully she hadn't, and we had a wonderful couple of hours, just catching up and drinking tea at the Winter Palace.

I don't think that I told you about last week's mirage, did I? Well, it was exclusive to Our Luxor, not the sort of thing that ordinary tourists see much of!

Had the table been too close to the fountain (at the extreme right of the picture)? No, it was actually bone dry! It was the type of mirage that we expect the poor, parched and half starved explorer, or soldier to see when lost in the desert! "Water, please, give me water!!!"

Another image from our roof terrace:

I'd just vacuumed the mats and hung them over the parapet, in order to vacuum and wash the floor tiles, when I saw this cheeky little monkey gathering soft furnishing for his/her nest. "Only the best camel hair!" I can just hear the conversation between him/her and their neighbour!!
Not on my watch, matey! Shoo!

If you're really unfortunate, Dear Reader, I might post another short Blog in the near future! But for the moment, au revoir.

Clearing up the collapsed building.

Well, in the tragedy of the four storey building collapse, over the road to us, it seems that a very unlucky German tourist was killed, and two little Egyptian girls from the same family also lost their lives. I haven't been able to ascertain the progress, or otherwise, of the other 13 casualties. Let's all hope and pray for their eventual full recovery.

The clearing up operations have been fascinating to watch, especially the skill of the plant operator who was driving the 360 degree machine with the big toothed shovel on the end of its extending arm. He was magic! I took a load of videos of his work, but I'll just show you a few short clips, to try to impress upon you his ingenuity and skill.

To increase the reach of his machine, he built up an operating platform from the rubble, and then either drove the wheeled machine onto it, or dug the bucket into the rubble and used it to pull the machine up to the higher level. It was great to watch.

Please forgive me for the chuckling on this next one, but I was astonished that the people were still in the houses next door, seeing as the machine was knocking stuff down within an inch of their single-leaf mud-brick walls. It struck me as resembling a Harold Lloyd or Oliver and Hardy movie; if only the little fellah in my video had scratched his head, it would have finished the scene off perfectly!

It has almost all gone now, so much so that it has become a carpark and a new place to dump rubbish, what a surprise!

But, as we all know by now, every cloud has a silver lining! The other day, I noticed four men (well dressed!) nosing about in the main street, and then they came into our little cul-de-sac, they had folders in their hands, the equivalent of clip-boards at home!!! Within a minute or so, they were accosted by our neighbours, of course. It transpires that they were "on the hunt" for mud-brick buildings in poor condition. Old Mr (Uncle Bagheeri) Mohamed's building, next door to ours, is such a building. They told Adam (coffee-shop Adam) that it will be knocked down after 10 days! I'm so pleased that old Bagheeri is no longer alive to see it, it would have broken his heart. Perhaps this new initiative will save some lives in the long run, but where are the displaced residents going to go in the meantime? That's the burning question of the day here in La La Luxor Land!

I'll keep you in the picture, Dear Reader, you know you can always rely on your roving Luxor reporter for the truth!

TTFN.

Shocking Catastrophe in Luxor Last Night!

Hello, this is your (mostly absent) roving reporter from Luxor here. I just thought that you may be interested to hear about last night's main news item here in Luxor.

I don't know just how many of you took any notice of the building opposite our's, over the school yard. It was a very old, mudbrick, building of 4 storeys, with a tilted summer house type of structure on the roof and a fancy design to the front-facing wall top, which all looked quite quaint. Well, it's not there any more, none of it!

I used to have some good pictures of it, as I found it a very interesting doorway into the past history of our area. But I fear they may be lost forever, as they're stuck in a laptop which I cannot get to turn on any more! I found only one photo' with it in, which was taken from on top of our roof when it was being altered, and it's not very good, but will have to do.

At about 6 o'clock, we hadn't been very long back from meeting with two very good friends at the Nile Palace for tea and chat, followed by a bout of shopping, when I heard a roar like thunder, lasting about 4 seconds, very loud! Almost instinctively, I ran outside to be met with a towering wall of choking, impenetrable dust. It was obvious what had happened, but all was lost in the acrid cloud. As it slowly started to clear, we could see people out on the balconies opposite, the building adjoining the old collapsed one. They were screaming with shock and fear for their own building collapsing with them in it. It was truly awful! Of course, their building, although joined to the old one, was made of the more modern type of construction, with a reinforced concrete frame and they were actually safe, thank heaven.

At first (as I was sure that the building was more or less abandoned apart from the ground floor which contained an engineers workshop, with lathes and other machines) I was not overly afraid of a massive loss of life, but then I realised that in the narrow streets around it , there could have been (and probably were) pedestrians etc who would have been crushed by the brickwork filling the street adjacent to the, now disappeared, old building.

As the thick wall of dust became able to be seen through, the scale of the devastation was apparent. Men were clambering over the rubble, picking up anything they could shift in an attempt to reach anyone who could possibly be trapped beneath the debris. Panic and confusion reigned!

Nothing changed in this scene of horror for quite a while, even when the police and fire brigade arrived it looked as if no-one could gain any sort of control over what was happening. I eventually ventured out, to get some bread and a length of curtain pole, and passed at least 25 ambulances waiting on Yuseff Hassan Street; all was still in a state of confusion, with the added complication of half of Luxor's population crammed into the small area to see the disaster unfolding.

I spoke to many of our neighbours and acquaintances as I picked my way through the crowd. One, made the point that the hated former Governor of  Luxor, Samir Farag, had been right after all, when he commanded that so many of the old mud-brick houses should all be pulled down!

I had the camera out on our roof terrace, but it was black dark, and none of the video or pictures were worth looking at. However, I took these two this morning, just to give you an idea of what occurred. The emergency services were there until maybe 3am with heavy machines, clearing the streets.

Four storeys collapsed into a pile of mud-brick and old timber in a matter of seconds, and with apparent loss of life and serious injury. What a sad return to Luxor for us, and an extremely sad beginning of 2019 for many Luxor natives!

I'll see you again, goodbye.