Dig! Do you remember sweeping me off my feet and transporting me to Cairo, all in a sparkling moment? Do you remember how amazing that was? And how, when we there touching 40C, you whispered to me 'Let's find the spice market! I think it's just down there!' then led me blindly round the streets of the abattoir in the afternoon sun for three hours, putting me a whisker away from a coma! Do you remember that?
Well, sexy wife Grit says it's time to repay your romantic gesture!
Because, darling Dig, so accustomed are you to first class travel and business lounges all around the globe that I think you need a change of place, a new scene, a fresh outlook to spur you on. And just as you lifted me from my life in fields, or covered in paint and glue and arguing about wiggly eyes, then I must transport you away from the first class lounge where there is free wine and free food!
But forgive me, because my circumstances are a little more constrained than yours. From my budget I have to buy lentils, yellow paint and glow-in-the-dark frogs. But we've vowed to give each other as much trouble and grief as a human being can muster, and all for the rest of our lives, so I think I'd better get on with it and let you have it.
Because I have booked a four day stay, for all of us, with a bunch of home educators in Norfolk. At Pontins.
Showing posts with label Cairo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cairo. Show all posts
Friday, 29 August 2008
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
The sensible thing
Dig does the manly sensible thing and hires a driver and guide. This is possibly to get Grit off the streets altogether and thus protect the citizens of Cairo from another impromptu bit of theatre.
Hiring someone who actually knows where they are going, and how to get there quickly, might also be something to do with Dig preserving his reputation as a man about the world, capable of striding about in a commanding way, and seeing these:
We have to think of the alternative. Can you imagine coming back from Cairo and being asked the question, Did you see the pyramids? And answering, No. We got lost and couldn't find them.
Hiring someone who actually knows where they are going, and how to get there quickly, might also be something to do with Dig preserving his reputation as a man about the world, capable of striding about in a commanding way, and seeing these:
We have to think of the alternative. Can you imagine coming back from Cairo and being asked the question, Did you see the pyramids? And answering, No. We got lost and couldn't find them.
Monday, 11 August 2008
Grit's travel tips for a day out in Cairo
1. Learn Arabic. You can do this at home, alone, which is probably best, because you need to choke out shkyrakyrakshryakakak-aka-aka-ak without spitting at anyone. Being alone also has the added advantage that there is no-one around to tell you your aka-aka-ak has all gone wrong, when it sounds perfectly good to me.
Grit has three Arabic words at her disposal now, none of which have been in any way useful, except to cause Dig embarrassment. I try a modest shukran to the hotel driver, which I hope seems polite and respectful. I get a slight puzzled expression in return. I probably called him old goat or offered my body for five dollars. I promise myself I will borrow the Teach Yourself Arabic audio course again from the library. I think am stressing it all wrong.
2. Buy the services of a guide to do the meet and greet and get you to the hotel. Seriously. Cairo is a place where a meet and greet got us to the hotel in 40 minutes instead of our usual 5 hours and an argument with a taxi driver where he wins. And would we have found that hotel in that web of streets, elevated on a fifth floor above the thousands of shops selling everything from Singer sewing machine parts, beads and bread, to shoes, clay pots and fan belts? All on a threading alleyway off the Talaat Harb? I don't think so. This hotel doesn't even have a street level sign. It is however, wonderful*.
4. Wear shoes that cover your feet. And you can see why.
5. Take a sun hat. And do not go out in the midday sun. Otherwise you get heatstroke. And this is how it happens.
At about midday and after two hours walking through Cairo you might whimper 'I feel a bit hot'. Dig of course will take no notice of such feminine vapours. He will continue to stride about in a manly way like Bulldog Drummond, shouting in a commanding voice, 'Next we need to find the spice market!' He then proceeds to get hopelessly lost in the tangle of market streets up old Cairo, and Grit starts swearing blind she just saw that old man again sitting on the car tyres by the abattoir because he is looking at her intently, following her with his eyes, and is also frowning in bemusement. This is a look I've seen before on the faces of people who are experiencing a procession of matching triplets wearing similar dresses and identical hairstyles. So now I know we've walked past him three different ways in the last half hour.
With heatstroke, you might feel your body take a drastic turn for the worse at about 3pm when suddenly you feel you are no longer sweating. The effect on Grit is alarming. She starts running around in circles shouting 'I'm not sweating! I'M NOT SWEATING! I must have shade!'
Sprinting past a Coca cola seller who has large blocks of broken ice in baskets by the heavy traffic, Grit then screeches to a halt and grabs one of these ice blocks under the startled gaze of the street seller who probably thinks this strange European is trying to half-inch his can of Coke. She then proceeds to slap that ice straight to her face. Rubbing the ice block methodically around her face, over her head, round her neck and down her front she then intones That feels good, that feels good, before Dig drags her off to stand under a fan in a bag shop. Here I continue rubbing the ice block over my entire body because the alternative is a coma. When I get to the last palm-size bit, I shove it into the left cup of my bra, reasoning this is nearest cup to my heart and I have to stop the cardiac arrest. Fortunately I seem to get away with this bizarre exhibition, which says something about the behaviour the gentle folk of Cairo expect from their foreign visitors.
6. Locate the free water. All around Cairo there are drums of water, provided free for drinking. Alongside these drums will be a couple of plastic cups. The idea is that you help yourself to water, return the cup and move on, refreshed.
Well, obviously, do not drink the water because as a soft-bellied, non-Cairoan, you will die. What you do is push in front of everyone else in the queue for the free water, fill your cup and throw it at yourself, head first, working the entire way down to the feet. This is mildy embarrassing for Dig, but I say the ice was only a partial solution because have you thought how you are going to get my stiff dead body down from the fifth floor? I have now given this serious thought and there is no way they can do it without propping me up in the lift or lowering me out the window on a rope. In preference to that I am going to shower. Now. Admittedly this looks a bit like Grit trying to import the wet T-shirt competition inappropriately into a land where the ladies mostly wear black bags and I could possibly be arrested, but like I said, this is an emergency.
7. Get a room with air con. I apologise to the environment, but I need to bring my body temperature down now about fifteen degrees. Remember only a few hours ago, in the market near the abattoir, that fabric conditioner looked like a viable, thirst-quenching, cocktail.
8. Carry around an assortment of currency. This is great. I love this about travel. Dig carries around US dollars, Euro, UK sterling, plus assortments from Aus, China, and today, Egypt. Because you never know. There might just be a man who owns a perfume shop round the next corner.
9. Obsessively keep all small change, probably where Dig keeps his. Down his underpants. Because when you have a fifty pound note and the bottle of water you are dribbling over costs one pound fifty the street trader will laugh in your face and hold up his fingers at your nose. Then you'd better come up with one pound fifty or you are going to die. Either that or you have to wrestle him to the ground and rob him, or just hand over the entire fifty pound note and walk away holding that luxurious bottle of ice cool drinking water! And now you can bet Grit is more sorry than she ever thought possible that she gave the fifty piastres to the children as play money.
10. Gather local maps of Cairo because the Lonely Planet maps are crap. On the third trip past the abattoir Dig is all but kicking the Lonely Planet into the gutter. Apparently the map has no landmarks! The scale is wrong! The streets are not listed! Dig, I say, some of these streets are the width of a line of wool, of course they are not going to be on the map. Give it here. I need to put it on my head to get some shade.
11. Never believe anything you are told by anyone. We say to a passer by, 'Hey! Thanks for the offer of a business card and we will be back tomorrow, but could you just tell us where is the Restaurant Taboula?' And he will shrug his shoulders like 'Are you foolish? Everyone knows where that place is! It is first right!' And then you will discover it is nowhere near the first right, it is several blocks away. You will wander round for the next hour until you are late for your reservation and they have given your table to a man who can suck smoke through something that looks like a candlestick.
12. Get religion before you cross the road. You will need a God on your side.
Now I don't know about you but I was brought up to believe the safe way to cross the road was to wait for a gap in the traffic, look both ways and step cautiously across. NO. That is WRONG. The way to cross the road is to step out into MOVING TRAFFIC and those vehicles will FLOW ROUND YOU. Dig says Look! They are crossing the road by stepping off the kerb into a stream of traffic going at 40mph! Why can't we? He says just use the locals as human shields. No Dig NO. Because Dig, WE ARE GOING TO DIE. And then let's see you explain that to the children.
13. Do not take a photograph in the Cairo Museum. Not under any circumstances. Not even if you are talked into it by Dig, who wants to see if you can get away with it. You can't. You will be caught by a guard and marched into a corner where your phone is taken off you while you make pathetic grovelly noises and say it was all his fault. Then with a mean look that very severe guard will hand your phone back to you and somehow contrive to leave his palm open to indicate that a fifty pound note will do nicely, thank you very much. But then you scarper. Because where I come from matey, bribing a policeman is a pretty big deal, and a much bigger crime than taking a photograph in the Cairo Museum.
14. This is not so much of a suggestion, more of a plea, particularly to the ladeez. And I get so worked up about this subject I could write a book about it. Please cover yourselves up if you are in a land where the women do not show their backsides, bra straps, burnt wobbly bits at the tops of their thighs, naked backs down to buttock level, near naked breasts and underarms. Please show modesty. (Smearing ice over your entire body in a handbag shop is, of course, an exception.)
* The Talisman, Hotel de charme, 39 Talaat Harb Street.
Grit has three Arabic words at her disposal now, none of which have been in any way useful, except to cause Dig embarrassment. I try a modest shukran to the hotel driver, which I hope seems polite and respectful. I get a slight puzzled expression in return. I probably called him old goat or offered my body for five dollars. I promise myself I will borrow the Teach Yourself Arabic audio course again from the library. I think am stressing it all wrong.
2. Buy the services of a guide to do the meet and greet and get you to the hotel. Seriously. Cairo is a place where a meet and greet got us to the hotel in 40 minutes instead of our usual 5 hours and an argument with a taxi driver where he wins. And would we have found that hotel in that web of streets, elevated on a fifth floor above the thousands of shops selling everything from Singer sewing machine parts, beads and bread, to shoes, clay pots and fan belts? All on a threading alleyway off the Talaat Harb? I don't think so. This hotel doesn't even have a street level sign. It is however, wonderful*.
3. Smile. This is very nice. It doesn't seem to make any difference to anything, but everyone smiles back and that is very nice too. Grit smiles a lot. The people we meet in Egypt are very friendly and constantly just want us to step inside their shop to take a business card. I can honestly say I smiled a lot in the perfume shop. Dig didn't smile at all. Grumpy Dig! And look! The Egyptians are so lovely I am even smiling while handing over a large sum of money for a bottle of flower essence and such lovely smile-inducing perfume bottles!
4. Wear shoes that cover your feet. And you can see why.
5. Take a sun hat. And do not go out in the midday sun. Otherwise you get heatstroke. And this is how it happens.
At about midday and after two hours walking through Cairo you might whimper 'I feel a bit hot'. Dig of course will take no notice of such feminine vapours. He will continue to stride about in a manly way like Bulldog Drummond, shouting in a commanding voice, 'Next we need to find the spice market!' He then proceeds to get hopelessly lost in the tangle of market streets up old Cairo, and Grit starts swearing blind she just saw that old man again sitting on the car tyres by the abattoir because he is looking at her intently, following her with his eyes, and is also frowning in bemusement. This is a look I've seen before on the faces of people who are experiencing a procession of matching triplets wearing similar dresses and identical hairstyles. So now I know we've walked past him three different ways in the last half hour.
With heatstroke, you might feel your body take a drastic turn for the worse at about 3pm when suddenly you feel you are no longer sweating. The effect on Grit is alarming. She starts running around in circles shouting 'I'm not sweating! I'M NOT SWEATING! I must have shade!'
Sprinting past a Coca cola seller who has large blocks of broken ice in baskets by the heavy traffic, Grit then screeches to a halt and grabs one of these ice blocks under the startled gaze of the street seller who probably thinks this strange European is trying to half-inch his can of Coke. She then proceeds to slap that ice straight to her face. Rubbing the ice block methodically around her face, over her head, round her neck and down her front she then intones That feels good, that feels good, before Dig drags her off to stand under a fan in a bag shop. Here I continue rubbing the ice block over my entire body because the alternative is a coma. When I get to the last palm-size bit, I shove it into the left cup of my bra, reasoning this is nearest cup to my heart and I have to stop the cardiac arrest. Fortunately I seem to get away with this bizarre exhibition, which says something about the behaviour the gentle folk of Cairo expect from their foreign visitors.
6. Locate the free water. All around Cairo there are drums of water, provided free for drinking. Alongside these drums will be a couple of plastic cups. The idea is that you help yourself to water, return the cup and move on, refreshed.
Well, obviously, do not drink the water because as a soft-bellied, non-Cairoan, you will die. What you do is push in front of everyone else in the queue for the free water, fill your cup and throw it at yourself, head first, working the entire way down to the feet. This is mildy embarrassing for Dig, but I say the ice was only a partial solution because have you thought how you are going to get my stiff dead body down from the fifth floor? I have now given this serious thought and there is no way they can do it without propping me up in the lift or lowering me out the window on a rope. In preference to that I am going to shower. Now. Admittedly this looks a bit like Grit trying to import the wet T-shirt competition inappropriately into a land where the ladies mostly wear black bags and I could possibly be arrested, but like I said, this is an emergency.
7. Get a room with air con. I apologise to the environment, but I need to bring my body temperature down now about fifteen degrees. Remember only a few hours ago, in the market near the abattoir, that fabric conditioner looked like a viable, thirst-quenching, cocktail.
8. Carry around an assortment of currency. This is great. I love this about travel. Dig carries around US dollars, Euro, UK sterling, plus assortments from Aus, China, and today, Egypt. Because you never know. There might just be a man who owns a perfume shop round the next corner.
9. Obsessively keep all small change, probably where Dig keeps his. Down his underpants. Because when you have a fifty pound note and the bottle of water you are dribbling over costs one pound fifty the street trader will laugh in your face and hold up his fingers at your nose. Then you'd better come up with one pound fifty or you are going to die. Either that or you have to wrestle him to the ground and rob him, or just hand over the entire fifty pound note and walk away holding that luxurious bottle of ice cool drinking water! And now you can bet Grit is more sorry than she ever thought possible that she gave the fifty piastres to the children as play money.
10. Gather local maps of Cairo because the Lonely Planet maps are crap. On the third trip past the abattoir Dig is all but kicking the Lonely Planet into the gutter. Apparently the map has no landmarks! The scale is wrong! The streets are not listed! Dig, I say, some of these streets are the width of a line of wool, of course they are not going to be on the map. Give it here. I need to put it on my head to get some shade.
11. Never believe anything you are told by anyone. We say to a passer by, 'Hey! Thanks for the offer of a business card and we will be back tomorrow, but could you just tell us where is the Restaurant Taboula?' And he will shrug his shoulders like 'Are you foolish? Everyone knows where that place is! It is first right!' And then you will discover it is nowhere near the first right, it is several blocks away. You will wander round for the next hour until you are late for your reservation and they have given your table to a man who can suck smoke through something that looks like a candlestick.
12. Get religion before you cross the road. You will need a God on your side.
Now I don't know about you but I was brought up to believe the safe way to cross the road was to wait for a gap in the traffic, look both ways and step cautiously across. NO. That is WRONG. The way to cross the road is to step out into MOVING TRAFFIC and those vehicles will FLOW ROUND YOU. Dig says Look! They are crossing the road by stepping off the kerb into a stream of traffic going at 40mph! Why can't we? He says just use the locals as human shields. No Dig NO. Because Dig, WE ARE GOING TO DIE. And then let's see you explain that to the children.
13. Do not take a photograph in the Cairo Museum. Not under any circumstances. Not even if you are talked into it by Dig, who wants to see if you can get away with it. You can't. You will be caught by a guard and marched into a corner where your phone is taken off you while you make pathetic grovelly noises and say it was all his fault. Then with a mean look that very severe guard will hand your phone back to you and somehow contrive to leave his palm open to indicate that a fifty pound note will do nicely, thank you very much. But then you scarper. Because where I come from matey, bribing a policeman is a pretty big deal, and a much bigger crime than taking a photograph in the Cairo Museum.
14. This is not so much of a suggestion, more of a plea, particularly to the ladeez. And I get so worked up about this subject I could write a book about it. Please cover yourselves up if you are in a land where the women do not show their backsides, bra straps, burnt wobbly bits at the tops of their thighs, naked backs down to buttock level, near naked breasts and underarms. Please show modesty. (Smearing ice over your entire body in a handbag shop is, of course, an exception.)
* The Talisman, Hotel de charme, 39 Talaat Harb Street.
Sunday, 10 August 2008
On the road to Cairo
Everything went to plan, of course.
Squirrel is safely in Wales. Shark and Tiger can't wait for me and Dig to be out the house, and Northumberland's finest babysitter, Aunty Dee, who drives at ten miles an hour, was predictably late arriving last night. That gave me time to clean the floors and stock the fridge. Now it's easy to pretend we always live with this level of cleanliness and this many peas. I've drawn all the maps neatly for her, including all ten roundabouts, the junction, and the free car park. With those I hope she can safely take the hands of the remaining twins and arrive at the lake on time tomorrow for Shark's sailing, and arrive unflustered at the art gallery for Tiger.
And I have even packed a bag.
This is a bag my mother used to unkindly call the rent collector's bag. I salvaged it from an antique shop in Suffolk at the cost of a fiver about twenty years ago. My mother is probably right. But I hope in this vintage / retro world of ours it looks like the sort of first-class bag to travel with.
The first thing to go wrong is the train to Heathrow. The one that was to serve as a getaway vehicle for me and Dig. That was foolish of us. Trains in Britain don't seem to run on weekends and holidays and most days because of a strange thing called engineering works. This is something I have never understood, because when applied to railways the engineering doesn't work. Especially on Sundays. Dig decides to take the car, which means the additional job of unloading the garbage, orange peel, biscuit crumbs and rotten potato which has somehow crept in there, because otherwise I worry that Heathrow car park staff might think it has been abandoned and have it towed away.
But then I start to experience some real delights. And it is the Business Lounge at Terminal 5. Where there is soft furnishing, quiet atmosphere and free food. Free food. FREE FOOD. AND FREE WINE.
Grit's world meets Dig's world. Grit's world is, quite frankly, horrible. In Grit's world, nothing works. Things break down, explode, die. People shout and cry and are sick down your leg on Christmas eve. Grit listens to screaming for an hour and a half because she is the worst and most evil person in the entire world. And what has she done? She wants to do to you the worst torture in the world. She wants to comb your hair.
When Grit's world is filled with so much screaming you think there can't be any more screams left anywhere, Grit descends into undignified scrambling and manhandling of kids, sometimes away from each other before they remove eyeballs altogether, or away from doors, windows and cars where they are just about to set to with fists, feet, and a stuffed puffin.
In Grit's world, you see, nothing gets better. It just gets worse. She electrocutes herself at midnight, plunges the house into darkness, is alone and defeated with three kids who in exactly eight hours will kill in the competition to open the packet of Cheerios first, and when she realises the full horror of this unfolding drama, there seems nothing else to do but lie flat on the kitchen floor and bawl.
But Dig's world. Dig's world. Here everything is elegant and quiet and works. Here you are made to feel special. This is a world which doesn't break down. And if it does, there are people to fix it. Here we are trusted to know what to do. If I don't, someone will save me, and leap to my aid, and discreetly cover my hesitancy, and everything will be alright, and everything will be safe. And here there are no triplets. Here I don't have to supervise the handling of tomato sauce. No-one will shout to a waiting group of parents at the park that mummy's bum will not fit into a wet suit even if she got one elephant sized. No. This is an adult world. And it is elegant.
It would be wonderful if Grit could live this dream. But within two minutes Grit's world intrudes. She clamps her hand to her mouth and shouts out 'I have to ring Aunty Dee! I forgot to tell her that the boiler will break down and she needs to relight it by climbing under the eaves and when she goes under the eaves she must not step back because the toilet waste pipe is propped up on a CD case'.
Squirrel is safely in Wales. Shark and Tiger can't wait for me and Dig to be out the house, and Northumberland's finest babysitter, Aunty Dee, who drives at ten miles an hour, was predictably late arriving last night. That gave me time to clean the floors and stock the fridge. Now it's easy to pretend we always live with this level of cleanliness and this many peas. I've drawn all the maps neatly for her, including all ten roundabouts, the junction, and the free car park. With those I hope she can safely take the hands of the remaining twins and arrive at the lake on time tomorrow for Shark's sailing, and arrive unflustered at the art gallery for Tiger.
And I have even packed a bag.
This is a bag my mother used to unkindly call the rent collector's bag. I salvaged it from an antique shop in Suffolk at the cost of a fiver about twenty years ago. My mother is probably right. But I hope in this vintage / retro world of ours it looks like the sort of first-class bag to travel with.
The first thing to go wrong is the train to Heathrow. The one that was to serve as a getaway vehicle for me and Dig. That was foolish of us. Trains in Britain don't seem to run on weekends and holidays and most days because of a strange thing called engineering works. This is something I have never understood, because when applied to railways the engineering doesn't work. Especially on Sundays. Dig decides to take the car, which means the additional job of unloading the garbage, orange peel, biscuit crumbs and rotten potato which has somehow crept in there, because otherwise I worry that Heathrow car park staff might think it has been abandoned and have it towed away.
But then I start to experience some real delights. And it is the Business Lounge at Terminal 5. Where there is soft furnishing, quiet atmosphere and free food. Free food. FREE FOOD. AND FREE WINE.
Grit's world meets Dig's world. Grit's world is, quite frankly, horrible. In Grit's world, nothing works. Things break down, explode, die. People shout and cry and are sick down your leg on Christmas eve. Grit listens to screaming for an hour and a half because she is the worst and most evil person in the entire world. And what has she done? She wants to do to you the worst torture in the world. She wants to comb your hair.
When Grit's world is filled with so much screaming you think there can't be any more screams left anywhere, Grit descends into undignified scrambling and manhandling of kids, sometimes away from each other before they remove eyeballs altogether, or away from doors, windows and cars where they are just about to set to with fists, feet, and a stuffed puffin.
In Grit's world, you see, nothing gets better. It just gets worse. She electrocutes herself at midnight, plunges the house into darkness, is alone and defeated with three kids who in exactly eight hours will kill in the competition to open the packet of Cheerios first, and when she realises the full horror of this unfolding drama, there seems nothing else to do but lie flat on the kitchen floor and bawl.
But Dig's world. Dig's world. Here everything is elegant and quiet and works. Here you are made to feel special. This is a world which doesn't break down. And if it does, there are people to fix it. Here we are trusted to know what to do. If I don't, someone will save me, and leap to my aid, and discreetly cover my hesitancy, and everything will be alright, and everything will be safe. And here there are no triplets. Here I don't have to supervise the handling of tomato sauce. No-one will shout to a waiting group of parents at the park that mummy's bum will not fit into a wet suit even if she got one elephant sized. No. This is an adult world. And it is elegant.
It would be wonderful if Grit could live this dream. But within two minutes Grit's world intrudes. She clamps her hand to her mouth and shouts out 'I have to ring Aunty Dee! I forgot to tell her that the boiler will break down and she needs to relight it by climbing under the eaves and when she goes under the eaves she must not step back because the toilet waste pipe is propped up on a CD case'.
Friday, 8 August 2008
Priorities
Here's the plan.
Tomorrow we all drive to Wales to drop off Squirrel for her adventure holiday week, then we come home, by which time Aunty Dee will have arrived.
On Sunday morning, Aunty Dee takes over the management of Shark and Squirrel, then me and Dig leave on the train to get to Heathrow and on to Cairo in the afternoon.
That sounds very well worked out. Except at this point, with less than 24 hours before Squirrel is thrown out onto a Welsh mountain, I haven't located or packed a thing for her. The list is quite exhaustive, requiring multiple pairs of trainers for wet and dry activities, trousers suitable for all weathers, long socks and short socks, and tee-shirts with varying sleeve lengths.
Neither have I stocked up on any essentials for tomorrow's journey, like fruity buns, apple juice and 4-hour CD stories for the car. That means trips to the Co-op and library. Tomorrow, Aunty Dee will be two hours late because she drives everywhere at ten miles an hour, even on the A1. And I have nothing suitable for a first-class return journey from Cairo apart from a pair of torn jeans, so fit in a shopping trip. I could, of course, wear the jeans anyway and hope they make me look like a rock chick and not a freeloading bag lady. And I have yet to leave a full fridge, maps and instructions for Monday. On Monday Tiger is booked into an all day workshop at the art gallery and Shark starts her stage two sailing course at the lake. Aunty Dee, who drives everywhere at ten miles an hour, has to get them there. On time.
But then I spot that today there is a very good workshop on insects over at a local country park. The wardens there are excellent and can tell us all about Carabus violaceus if we accidentally stand on one. If I pick Squirrel up from her final kayak session I could just make that, and then we can learn all about beetles and bugs and slugs and slow worms and this will be very good for home education.
I tell Dig we are now out until tea time, and he asks, what about the packing? What about Wales? What about Aunty Dee? What about Cairo? Dig, I say, everything will be alright. Trust me. At this point, what could possibly go wrong?
Tomorrow we all drive to Wales to drop off Squirrel for her adventure holiday week, then we come home, by which time Aunty Dee will have arrived.
On Sunday morning, Aunty Dee takes over the management of Shark and Squirrel, then me and Dig leave on the train to get to Heathrow and on to Cairo in the afternoon.
That sounds very well worked out. Except at this point, with less than 24 hours before Squirrel is thrown out onto a Welsh mountain, I haven't located or packed a thing for her. The list is quite exhaustive, requiring multiple pairs of trainers for wet and dry activities, trousers suitable for all weathers, long socks and short socks, and tee-shirts with varying sleeve lengths.
Neither have I stocked up on any essentials for tomorrow's journey, like fruity buns, apple juice and 4-hour CD stories for the car. That means trips to the Co-op and library. Tomorrow, Aunty Dee will be two hours late because she drives everywhere at ten miles an hour, even on the A1. And I have nothing suitable for a first-class return journey from Cairo apart from a pair of torn jeans, so fit in a shopping trip. I could, of course, wear the jeans anyway and hope they make me look like a rock chick and not a freeloading bag lady. And I have yet to leave a full fridge, maps and instructions for Monday. On Monday Tiger is booked into an all day workshop at the art gallery and Shark starts her stage two sailing course at the lake. Aunty Dee, who drives everywhere at ten miles an hour, has to get them there. On time.
But then I spot that today there is a very good workshop on insects over at a local country park. The wardens there are excellent and can tell us all about Carabus violaceus if we accidentally stand on one. If I pick Squirrel up from her final kayak session I could just make that, and then we can learn all about beetles and bugs and slugs and slow worms and this will be very good for home education.
I tell Dig we are now out until tea time, and he asks, what about the packing? What about Wales? What about Aunty Dee? What about Cairo? Dig, I say, everything will be alright. Trust me. At this point, what could possibly go wrong?
Friday, 1 August 2008
Organise the diary, Grit
Is it August 1st? Good, because this afternoon Oo from Dubai arrives to stay. I can now legitimately embark on three riotous days of girly living. That means handbag disaster, cosmetics expenditure and bathroom squealing. All of those I hope to be doing shortly.
But this is a busy day for other reasons, so better leave time for some planning. Like this morning, when Dig cruises past the PGL For Sale website and clicks the Go button. Within twenty minutes Squirrel is booked into another week of a boarding adventure holiday in Wales. That's lucky. She can't do the coming week because Monday to Friday I am ferrying her backwards and forwards to the lake where she is on a paddle sports course, learning how to throw herself in from a kayak. When she does go to Wales we'd better make that Saturday dash and book another Travelodge a week later. My confirming our attendance at the local bat walk pales in comparison.
As it does against Dig reemerging from his office to say that now he has got Squirrel in Wales, he has also contrived to get Aunty Dee down from Northumberland to look after Tiger and Shark, because he has booked flights for the both of us to escape on a two-day visit to Cairo, return first class.
He only slightly mars that last dramatic gesture by saying he needs to use some air miles and Cairo is off season at 40 degrees centigrade, so the hotel is cheap.
Grit is now occupied with the diary, humbly apologising to the environment and will be found later today in the bathroom, squealing.
But this is a busy day for other reasons, so better leave time for some planning. Like this morning, when Dig cruises past the PGL For Sale website and clicks the Go button. Within twenty minutes Squirrel is booked into another week of a boarding adventure holiday in Wales. That's lucky. She can't do the coming week because Monday to Friday I am ferrying her backwards and forwards to the lake where she is on a paddle sports course, learning how to throw herself in from a kayak. When she does go to Wales we'd better make that Saturday dash and book another Travelodge a week later. My confirming our attendance at the local bat walk pales in comparison.
As it does against Dig reemerging from his office to say that now he has got Squirrel in Wales, he has also contrived to get Aunty Dee down from Northumberland to look after Tiger and Shark, because he has booked flights for the both of us to escape on a two-day visit to Cairo, return first class.
He only slightly mars that last dramatic gesture by saying he needs to use some air miles and Cairo is off season at 40 degrees centigrade, so the hotel is cheap.
Grit is now occupied with the diary, humbly apologising to the environment and will be found later today in the bathroom, squealing.
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