To download, click the one that suits you and depending on which browser you use, the file will automatically download. Either it will arrive as an image inside your browser, or as a JPG file. From your browser, save the file with the same filename to the location where your desktop images are stored. If you received a file, just move it to the appropriate directory. Once done, change your preferences to select the calendar pic as your desktop image.
So. In a nutshell, I went to the States to attend a landscape photography workshop. The workshop's leader is acknowledged as one of America's great photographers and I think that initially, we were all a little in awe of this big name.
The reality didn't turn out quite that way. I should have guessed it wouldn't be as I hoped when just before I left, an e-mail arrived telling me that I would need XXX's latest book, signed copies of which were available for just $125 at the workshop and included a limited edition print.
Reluctantly, I signed-off on the book deal.
The e-mail also offered me a set of DVDs for only $700-odd which would help me make much better prints. I made excuses about having to travel so far and begged-off. Just as well as it turned out; I didn't need five days of "tuition" to give me a clear idea of just how little useful information I might have gleaned from them.
Photographically, our days were well structured; up early shoot the sunrise, breakfast, group meeting (in the local park), lunch, more group chatter and finally, sunset photography. Cool. I'd been pretty desperate to see the area and was getting that in spades. What was missing was any meaningful engagement regarding how to actually shoot the photographs I wanted.
With the assistance of some very helpful and interested co-workshoppers, I managed to overcome my issues and shot some (for me) great photographs. Meanwhile, the money making continued unabated.
We were offered signed prints, folios, individual tuition and every shade in between. Since getting home, I've had at least three e-mails offering some kind of advice, guidance or canned review of my work. The guy is a successful photographer, but his teaching methods leave a great deal to be desired and being constantly railroaded into spending more money with him made me unrepentantly irritated.
If you are planning a similar trip in the future, let me know and I will happily share more experiences than are possible to relate here.
I've posted a major update with some of these images on my Web site, as well as the book on Issuu if you'd like to see more.
Down here on the Southern Tip, we grumble about our idle and corrupt government a lot. And with good reason most of the time.
There's just one thing we should be grateful for. I'll explain.
When I left my workshop in Page, I headed north east to see some of the south west's other important landscapes. My trip took me from Arizona, into Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.
Everywhere were signs of the economic collapse. Buildings shut, houses boarded up, doors nailed shut, businesses gone.
Poverty and desperation.
I won't dwell on it; the UK wasn't much different.
The legislation dates back to Trevor Manuel's time, but the act which prevented our otherwise venal banks from being involved in lending to people, institutions and other banks which had no chance of repaying those loans, has saved a great deal of our (financial) bacon. We might huff and puff, but right now, the Rand is almost too strong and South Africa looks more even attractive as a haven from an economic landscape that trends more parlous day-by-day.
Four weeks, 30,000km and the bank manager is back at the door again. That wheedling tone I've come to know so well.
Hey! Take a hike; tell someone who cares.
I went to America to study with an acclaimed landscape photographer. When I've got the time, I'll tell you all the skinder. Until then, you'll have to content yourselves with a few of the the pictures; remember each is worth a thousand words, or according to the bank weenie who just left, a thousand Rand.
It's very much a first pass through the almost 5000 photographs I came back with; a quick glimpse. There's plenty more to come.
That's a new header pic too.
So, the book is here: at Issuu as usual.
And yes, there hasn't been an April or May calendar. A thousand apologies and I promise to post June's shortly.
Finally, the Brits finally took a tiny step towards political sanity and now have a dual political leadership. For their sake, let's hope it works; it going to be a tough and very, very bumpy ride.
More shortly. Ta ta.
Not a foul murder, nor a fowl murder. This was 100% fish.
But it was murder nonetheless.
I’ll explain. We’ve been on the west coast for a few days. Our kids bought us a weekend in Paternoster for Xmas and as we were going that far, decided to add a couple of days and wander farther north.
I won’t dwell on Paternoster, save to say that if you haven’t been there yet, you should. For two reasons; one it is a tiny village on a spectacular stretch of coast. The second reason? Most of Cape Town is in the process of discovering the place and pretty soon, it will be overrun with thousands of rarely used holiday homes, just like Langebaan. The latter has transitioned from quiet lagoon village with a boat club, to wall-to-wall video shops, pizza dens and weekends of the city’s upwardly mobile blue collar folk. Don’t go there.
Do go to Paternoster though. Treat yourself to cold beer and seafood at the Strandloper. Read. Sleep late. Chill. Then go home.
Don’t get smart like us and decide to head north to Elands Bay, discover it doesn’t fit into the schema you had in mind. Don’t pay the R25 fee and take the country’s only unpaved toll road to Lamberts Bay.
And especially don’t think that despite Lamberts Bay being a fishing town, that you will get wonderful seafood.
There are several seafood establishments in town. There is the Kreef House, a rock lobster (crayfish) emporium, where the focus is on crustacea. The Kreefhuis (Crayfish House) is where some years ago, Laura stopped eating crayfish, after a long (and losing) tussle with two tails in a thermidor sauce. But that’s another story.
The second is the famous Muisbosskerm, a buffet eatery, where vast volume is reputed to substitute for quality.
The third choice is Isabella’s. It’s on the wharf, in the harbour. Next to the potato chip factory, which makes this tale even more odd.
Hungry, we turned-up about a quarter of an hour early and got shown our terrace table immediately. With a more than passable bottle of Alto Rouge in front of us, we set about selecting supper from a menu that included pasta, pizza, fish, steak, chicken and a whole lot more besides. Stupidly, we were mesmerised by the couple at the next table wolfing down prawn cocktails and fell for that. To follow? Mrs P opted for two crayfish tails and after being offered the catch of the day, I opted for kingklip instead.
I could barely see my prawn cocktail for the tears in my eyes. I have no idea what had been done to these doubtless wonderfully tasty crustaceans in the kitchen, but none of it was good. Mrs P thinks that hey had been frozen and thawed once to often (once is enough). I wasn’t so certain and remain convinced that instead of being steamed, boiled or even nuked they had been tossed into the deep fryer for about 30 seconds. The DPS (dreadful pink sauce) that coated them seemed to have had a similar genesis.
As I said before, we were hungry and after all, this was just a minor slip wasn’t it? We ate almost all of the wretched sea beetles. The uneaten evinced no more than a sniff from our waitress.
Main course!
Di’s crayfish were tiny and were doubtless illegal when caught. The law requires the body of the cray to be not less than 80mm, so that they can grow big and tasty. Catch anything smaller and it must go back into the briny. These didn’t.
They were visually awful and I watched Mrs P struggle to hide her disappointment. Like the prawns, these chaps had clearly been in the deep fryer way too long and were served au natural. No lemon butter. No garlic butter, just two dried out tails amid an ocean of chips.
My kingklip was actually the catch of the day, which Ms Waitress has made the mistake of telling me was called plop, or thud or something similar. She said it was “just like kingklip.” Except that it wasn’t.
Beneath its oil sodden several day old crust, was a travesty; greasy, cold and grey. I have no doubt that in the correct hands, this fish might have been a delight. Unfortunately, there were no able hands at work in this eatery, just clumsy feet, which is what I surmised had been used to prepare and cook my meal. It was truly vile.
I also had a mountain of chips, except that they weren’t. They were oven chips, made with reconstituted potato and a few bits that had been swept off the floor for flavour and interest.
You may recall that this restaurant is within 50 metres of Lamberts Bay’s chip factory. But here they serve oven chips?
Puhleese.
We opted not to complain as it seemed so pointless, paid an excessive bill and quickly scarpered back to our self-catering apartment for cheese sandwiches, made with good old Woolies’ cheddar and excellent wholewheat bread from the Spar. While munching on something edible, we laughed at just how bad this experience had been; in spectacular contrast to some of the hovels and dives we've eaten in on our travels in recent years. This one was way, way out on its own.
To quote Morecambe and Wise, I should have written in the guest book; “I’ll will certainly tell my friends.” I really will.
I wish I'd taken a photograph of the establishment, in case one day you forget and find yourself there by mistake.
Anyway, we made up for our disappointment with fish and slap tjips* at the famous f&c shop in Malmesbury on the way home ;-)
* literally soggy chips - a South Africanism that is hard to beat
Being goaded is really bad for me.
Over an unexpected lunch with some visitors from a far-off land yesterday, one of the guests quizzed me about how I saw the upcoming UK elections. Not once. Several times.
Rarely short of an opinion, I started explaining that I don’t live there and that it didn’t matter anyway, as the two major protagonists were identical, save for the colour of their pyjamas.
I don’t live in England and haven’t done so for more than three decades. But that doesn’t preclude me:
a) from reading, listening and forming opinions
b) from thinking that a somwehat similar situation is rapidly emerging (for markedly different reasons) here in South Africa, my adopted home. I think the UK press has just branded our situation “organised kleptocracy”
So, here goes. The England I left in the mid-'70s was run by a pathetic bunch of over-weening toadies, who had mired the country in currency crises, three day weeks, struggles against the trade unions and desperation to recover from two awful wars in less than thirty years.
So, what has changed?
Objectively quite a lot, but really not so much.
Then, life was pretty much hand to mouth. Education was still what it said it was, unemployment was far from the EU’s comfortable 3-4% , there were West Indians driving our buses (to great outcry) and steam engines had just been retired from hauling our trains. Today, convergent politics rule the roost and you can be as convinced as anyone that an incoming Conservative government might deliver on all of your personal ideas and pecadillos, but the truth is that they will be as useless as the smug, self-serving bunch they unseat.
They‘re completely useless too. But you know that already, or you wouldn’t be thinking about voting against them would you?
Think about it. Jamie Oliver (bless him, he really should have got a knighthood instead of some weaselly footballer, or yet another economic carpetbagger) has almost broken himself and his family to try and feed the nations children properly. Who listens?
To quote Pete and Dud’s infamous alter egos, “I’ll tell you who fucking listens. Fucking no-one. That’s who fucking listens.”
Out on a limb and rapidly sawing off his sole means of support, Jamie has been lifting the curtain on children who prefer Turkey Twizzlers and McShite to real food. How so? Dumb government. Government ruled by bean counters and liberals who believe that the previous generation of under educated parents now have passing grades in bringing up kids and who are standing in the middle of the road, waving the savagely ill-informed and unemployable past in the name of expediency.
They’re wankers. How dare they do this and compromise the lives of successive generations of kids?
Let’s go back to the sixties for a moment. For me, it meant leaving school, learning about sex (yay!), watching Pink Floyd, John Mayall (with Eric Clapton) and the Who at clubs all within the radius of a a 10p bus ride. Further education was a chore and like so many of my peers, I fiddled at it, too young to be bothered and way too immature to be successful.
Despite that, I still learned a shit-load of stuff. Stuff I’d find a need for time and again as I (finally) grew and matured into adulthood. Stuff I still implicitly understand and use to this day.
So, the 60s were good for a casual fuck, general knowledge, great music and what else?
Well, Bernard Cockerell invented the hovercraft. The government of the day couldn’t see the benefits of his coffee tin, hubcap and vacuum cleaner invention and in the end, he took it to America, where insight and success was waiting.
Frank Whittle’s jet engine was from a slightly earlier era, but much of that invention ended-up overseas in the ‘60s too.
In the ‘60s, the awful Harold Wilson killed TSR2, while there was already one flying, two more ready for flight test and components to build several more aircraft in stock. Wilson’s ghastly government parlayed a superior (even at that stage) aircraft aircraft away and committed to the less-than-satisfactory American F-111. In the fullness of time, the RAF got neither, making their task even more difficult.
And so it has gone on. Decade after decade, compromising and frittering the nations’ assets and great ideas away for zero measurable gain.
Today, prostrated in front of the resurgent Asian nations, government is powerless, it’s debt is largely owned by its former commonwealth, its power negated by years of liberalism, sub-standard education and a total lack of grasp of what the fuck is going on.
Still. The Brits are a nation of fighters. They are ready with their fists at football games, more than ready to stand up for the downtrodden and admirably committed to equality.
So, just in case you all want something to fight about, here’s a couple of ideas:
Firstly, don’t vote for the awful, reprehensible and expenses-grubbing Labour or Conservative parties in the (as yet) unannounced election. Do what your parents didn’t have the balls to do and vote for another party. How about a vote for the LibDems?
Don’t worry, they won’t win, but the landscape of British politics might be changed for ever. And, if it is, the LibDems will hold the balance of power and become the kingmakers. And, if they have any guts, maybe they’ll also demand the winners of the election get some sense into decision-making and governance.
Next, demand change.
Demand that your kids come out of school with an education. Demand that O levels are a norm and not an achievement. Demand that universities only accept kids with real passes, not mathematically (read cosmetically) adjusted A levels.
Demand that the police stop making excuses for not answering a call out because they are so worn down and exhausted by the weight of paperwork, legislation and political correctness. A work load that hands the advantage in almost every situation to the perpetrator isn’t much use to the wronged man in the street.
Demand real public services. Getting your rubbish collected fortnightly to save money equals one step back down the civilisation ladder. Afterwards, political apologies for mis-reading the situation will be little comfort while you are having rats eat your arses while you’re shitting your backsides off with choleral diarrohea. I keep asking why government doesn’t reduce the size of the public service to cut costs, but no-one answers.
etc. etc. etc.
Shit, are you still at it?
Yup. Nearly finished.
Demand to know why industry is on its knees and large areas of the country’s industrial heartland are now black zones, where unemployment is legion and the streets run with feral, drug sniffing, knife wielding gangs. Meanwhile Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese factories are overflowing with orders.
While you are at it, demand a decison (one way or the other) to the whole EU issue.
Then why not ask why the country is full of immigrants for whom you have no care or responsibility, yet you are required to support them with your taxes? Why aren't there some entry requirements for these people? Why isn't a command of English, acceptance of the nations' Christian preference and swearing allegiance to the flag mandatory too?
Demand honesty, integrity and judgement from your leaders. Politics isn’t about making the soft decisions so that you can protect your voter base. It’s about the hard decisions that are critically important to the nation, irrespective of the hurt feelings of a few poorly educated voters who can’t see the wood for their own personal trees.
Christ. Why is this so hard?
Because the wankers don’t get it. That’s why.
They fiddled and liberalised instead of making sure they protected innovation, industry and the currency. Now it’s your turn. Take away the power. Take away the expenses and the backhanders and demand that the politicians of tomorrow do their bloody jobs.
One last thing.
Some of you will remember Colt Ventilation in Surbiton. It was 1968 and England was deep in economic depression. Five secretaries started a campaign called “I’m backing Britain”. Here’s a link.
I think that maybe it’s time has come again, except that this time, it’s about much, much more than lofty ideals.
To download, click the one that suits you and depending on which browser you use, the file will automatically download. Either it will arrive as an image inside your browser, or as a JPG file. From your browser, save the file with the same filename to the location where your desktop images are stored. If you received a file, just move it to the appropriate directory. Once done, change your preferences to select the calendar pic as your desktop image.
I received an e-mail this week from a former South African friend who now lives in Sydney. Unusually for him, he'd sent me one of those e-mails about South Africa; filled with incidents about how bad things are in the medical system, scandal with Durban's public transport (news to me, but true nonetheless) and how lunatic it all is here. I was tempted to bin the whole thing; not that it wasn't true, but once in a while I feel that the right of reply is with me, especially if you'd just heard some of the best minds in the land talking about the way they see things.
First a quick recap - although it's hardly necessary for those of us that live here.
Since 1994, the government has filled key positions with its own cadres (read toadies), irrespective of their ability to do the job. The only requirement was/remains a dedication to the party.
In parallel, entirely predictably and in order to make this policy possible, the former incumbents have been encouraged to leave or retire, often with a nice golden handshake (taxpayers' money) to help them on their respective ways.
The end result is that many vital parts of South Africa's infrastructure are poorly managed, run, funded and stopped/abandoned. Budgets are unspent because the decision makers are incapable of doing their jobs and projects are simply halted pending a decision of some kind. Rates remain uncollected and municipal services are undelivered for exactly the same reason. At the other end of the scale, tenders are awarded against a background of such venality and corruption that in any sane society, the police would be sweeping the perpetrators up with a broom.
Not here. If found with your hands in the till, you are likely to be lauded by every sphere of government and might even get a cabinet post when the gravy train next stops and the passengers vacate their golden thrones and BMWs, pockets filled to bursting with taxpayers' cash.
Under Mbeki, the Stalinist centralisation of the government created stasis at every level and the public sector slowed perceptibly.
Zuma promises change. He promises anything that you ask him for. He promises whatever he feels like because he has neither the skills, backing, support, or intention to deliver.
Now to the nub of the matter; in a lecture at UCT's Summer School last week, IDASA's Judith September said that the country's biggest single problem was leadership. An opinion that is increasingly hard to gainsay.
In another series of lectures, judge Dennis Davis spoke about fifteen years of social democracy and the constitutional court. He and his co-lecturers which included Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke, highlighted many of the (Mbeki) government's failures and how they dealt with them in the country's highest court. As most of these socio-economic cases were brought by poor, homeless, or service-deprived people and communities, the court's judgments are beginning to provide the man in the street and his legal team with a set of jurisprudential tools of extraordinary reach and if correctly handled, power.
Of course, the costs are high, but it seems that there are a number of NGOs with the funding to support such high profile and vitally important cases.
FYI, the biggest triumph was that of the Treatment Action Campaign v the government, in respect of the free issue of anti retro-virals for HIV and AIDS sufferers. Other cases have considered water, electricity and other service supplies as well as land encroachment. The point made by lecturer, SC Gil Marcus was that timing is critical; pick the issue, ensure that the areas that surround the case are in lockstep and the case becomes winnable.
In the case of the TAC, the legal team stalled many requests and took several years to select exactly the right case to proceed with; until ARVs had been made available, then only after ARVs had been approved for use, when the price of ARVs had fallen and so on. At each stage, an objection and a barrier to win had been removed. And win they did.
Sadly, many people died while the waiting continued, but that should prove to be a small price to pay for the hundreds of thousands who will eventually be saved by the victory.
During question time on Tuesday evening, the issue of education was raised. With the appalling and continually declining matric results having been just published, it was a topic on many people's minds. Marcus wouldn't be drawn on if and when a case might appear in the constitutional court; he just smiled and reminded us of the (admittedly painful) selection process that preceeded success in the TAC's case.
'nuff said, I think.
So, it is far from ideal, but we have an active, powerful and committed judiciary. In the face of such sloth and mendacity at the levers of power, one now has to ask whether the nation has the will to use it.
Davis said that we all sit on our thumbs and don't complain enough. I'd go along with that.
The Julia Child cooking saga continues downstairs. Today, Mrs P prepares coq au vin for lunch. The house is full of wonderful aromas, redolent of red wine and herbs. I can hardly wait...
I did and it was totally fab. More thank yous ;-)
It's taken me a while, but I've finally got 'round to posting some of the photographs from Marrakech and Cairo on Flickr. If you are interested, you can click through from here.
To download, click the one that suits you and depending on which browser you use, the file will automatically download. Either it will arrive as an image inside your browser, or as a JPG file. From your browser, save the file with the same filename to the location where your desktop images are stored. If you received a file, just move it to the appropriate directory. Once done, change your preferences to select the calendar pic as your desktop image.
Seth Godin; marketer, lecturer and commentator, recently wrote:
"Organisations thrive on their ability to allow individuals to remain faceless. It permits them to act badly, not in the interest of their customers."
Yup. That’s it.
In South Africa, we have spokespeople who speak for ministers, PR people that speak for managers and call centres that are supposed to assist. Whatever; it’s the same result in the end - no action and even less accountability.
In the previous post, I wrote about Egypt and the people we met. To a man (and woman) those that had bothered to stop and think about the littering all said, or hinted at he same thing; as a race of people, the Egyptians like to break the rules.
The level of delinquency is shocking, the roads complete anarchy. With a government long past caring about accusations of corruption and laziness, survival inevitably means joining in the trash-tossing, or succumb to some awful stress-related heart failure or early death.
What a choice. The government should be doing the job we elected them to do.
Are you listening Jake, or concentrating more on getting married again?.
Not that I am one to make New Year resolutions, but I did decide some weeks ago that my .com Web site was a sad effort at a photo gallery and while only a few months old, in desperate need of a facelift.
Well, it’s done. paulperton.com is now a super big screen photo gallery, with some of my better photographs. There are galleries for urban, landscape, travel, abstract and black and white pics. Even so, it’s not complete and I’m sure to take some pics down and post others, but for now, this is it.
Please be aware that the new site requires quite lot of bandwidth, so if you are on a dial-up, or have a connection made with wet string, sorry, but this isn’t for you. For the rest of you, please click the link above, visit and enjoy.
But first; travel regularly and once in a while, you will find yourself on a flight from hell. Our first FFH for a while came on Friday 18 December, travelling EgyptAir to Cairo en route to spend Xmas with our kids.
We checked in hours early. This is now an everyday necessity; a precaution precipitated by an earlier than necessary hop from Cape Town, in an attempt to avoid missing our outbound plane. Why so? SA’s permanently and seemingly incurably tardy internal flights and no promise of better performance anywhere near the horizon.
Johannesburg and a brief digression if I may; going through the heretofore impressive security, prior to boarding, we follow an African man, who having had his bag x-rayed, is found to be carrying a large assortment of after shave, skin cream, deodorant, shower gel and who knows what else. While collecting my own bag, it was easy to listen to his interaction with the security official, who was pointing out to him that he couldn’t take all of those things onto a plane.
Unperturbed, he offered; “Can I put something in there” (the bag) to the security officer.
“I can’t the boss is watching,” was the reply.
He was still wrangling when we left for passport control, where I spotted what seemed from his uniform to be an officer and related the story to him.
The dispute was still under way and I pointed out the man. The officer seemed to be very reluctant to take any action, beyond “I will look it.” At that point I gave up.
From that minor hiccough, I should have guessed what was coming; the FFH.
We had checked-in to be told by the EgyptAir ground staff that it was impossible to be seated together as the plane was full. Huh?
Still, there was no point in arguing. We boarded amidst a bewildering crush of ethnicities. Seat 24D (mine) was inhabited by a man I would have sworn was Fawlty Towers’ waiter, Manuel; this man I was to discover as devoid of intelligence as his TV doppelganger.
Manuel moved to his own seat (24E) reluctantly. There was a blanket on my seat, but no pillow. “I’ll ask for one once we’ve taken off,” I thought.
Scheduled to take off shortly before 10 p.m., the EgyptAir flight was almost half an hour late getting airborne. Now the norm; no explanation was given for the delay.
Meanwhile, Manuel had taken up conversation with his other neighbour in seat 24F; a student from Belgium if I overheard him correctly. Manuel talked and talked and talked, which I decided I could easily fend off with my iPod and headphones, once we were aloft. The problem was his arms and hands which at turns drummed and flapped so enthusiastically in time with his chatter that I was worried that when we arrived in our hotel, Mrs P would ask where I’d gotten all the bruises from.
Takeoff; the fully laden and quite ancient Airbus lumbered into Jozi’s evening sky. Manuel helped it aloft with some additional flapping, for which I’m certain the aircrew was very grateful.
A couple of kilometres out of Jan Smuts, Johannesburg International, OR Tambo, the aeroplane did it’s auto pilot thing and in the middle of climbing, throttled back alarmingly. A similar occurrence on a Europe-bound Airbus earlier in the year had me scuttling for and cleaning-up in the loo as the seat belt lights went off. I found out later that this is a new Airbus fuel saving prank and in common use. As usual, the fare payers in the soiled underwear are the last to be told.
Back to the Cairo express.
Manuel settled. His Belgian chat buddy was feigning sleep to make him STFU and so he turned to the pages of the broadsheet Al Ahran. I heard the engines throttle back even more as he started on the sports section; he was creating massive additional updraft for the plane as he flapped and folded every few seconds.
I got up and politely asked the stewardess for a pillow. “If I can find one. There was one on your seat.”
“No there wasn’t or I wouldn’t be standing here now, would I?”
“Humph.”
Of course, it never arrived.
I tried again an hour or so later with a senior steward. Same promise, similar response.
Drinks. “Aaah yes. I will numb myself with several glasses of Scottish communion wine and pretend Manuel doesn’t exist.
Nope. EgyptAir is as dry as the desert it serves.
Bugger.
“I’ll read a while.”
Can’t do that. The lights would be switched off soon to allow passengers to sleep and it was clear that the centre section of the plane had been fitted with new LED reading lights. I switched mine on and it lit up the Belgian chap in seat 24F. Having shut Manuel up, he was now genuinely asleep. The spill light falling on my book would make a Toc-H candle seem bright.
OK then, I’ll watch the film.
Nope to that too. There are no seat back screens, just central screens of such antiquity that the movie characters are all pale and blurry, like faded Polaroids. Everything had Arabic sub-titles and I decided that watching a faint two hour Disney cartoon with Arabic flashing on and off wasn’t what I had in mind for a fun filled Friday night.
Meanwhile, the paper reading was proceeding at such a pace next door that Manuel had gotten all hot and bothered. He called the same air hostess that had been visibly absent seeking my pillow for more than an hour. “There’s no condition!” He flapped and wailed sweatily.
Her Cleopatra-d eyes (thick black make up, like two slitty buttonholes with upturned edges) gazed bovinely at him; “The plane is full.” And that, was the end of that.
In his defence, I do have to say that it was uncomfortably warm and on the sole occasion I headed for the toilets, found an oasis of cool. Aah yes, the toilets; the exact place you don’t want 300-odd passengers hanging about and basking in cool comfort. Bah.
The food arrived; “Beef or fish?”
“Beef.”
It was now almost midnight and as is so often the case on these flights, all you really want is sleep, but can’t because the tray table is open and the aluminium foiled substance you were given masquerading as a meal still hasn’t been removed. Nor will it be for another hour...
Manuel flipped, flapped and wailed all night. Every time I managed to shut him out of my consciousness, he writhed-up in his seat again, as though he had sat on a dildo that was hidden in the seat squab. Perhaps it was the cobra he had secreted in his pocket. I didn’t know, nor did I care much.
At 04:15 the lights went on. We were due to land at 05:30 and the rules said that we needed breakfast first. Another meal - more execrable stuff in aluminium - and we finally were on the ground in one piece and for once, on time.
“Goodbye and thank you for flying EgyptAir” said buttonhole eyes as we got off. I confess to having been at a loss for a riposte.
Actually, we were only in Cairo en route to Marrakech, where we had a week of timeshare swap booked for Xmas. Laura and Julian were due to fly in from London, arriving about an hour after we arrived.
As usual, things didn’t go entirely to plan.
First-up, we had the best part of a day to sightsee in Cairo (we went to the central bazaar - more of that later) and the following morning had a 03:00 alarm call and an 03:45 pick up for the 07:10 flight across the very top of Africa to Casablanca. From there, it was just a thirty minute flight to Makkarech. The airport was surprisingly busy as we arrived somewhat before 5 a.m. and booked in, only to be told that he flight was delayed by two hours. By way of compensation, the Royal Air Maroc check-in clerk gave us each a voucher for coffee and a sandwich at the airline’s favourite cafe in the departure lounge and accompanied it with a warning that the cafe didn’t open until 06:30. We had to be boarding our 07:00 flight by then.
Sigh.
The flight across Africa’s giant shoulders was wonderful, with bright sunshine and views as far as the eye could see. The flight arrived very late, but it didn’t matter, as we still had several hours to wait in Marrakech for our kids’ flight to arrive, before we could proceed to the hotel.
The five p.m. take-off time came and went and no word from Royal Air Maroc (RAM) as to where our half hour hop to Marrakech might be. The flight eventually took off two hours later and only after a huge altercation in Casablanca’s departure lounge between a lone RAM manager and some seriously disgruntled passengers who had flown in from Bankok. Carried out in French, the gist of the argument was that RAM had a number of flights grounded in Europe (hopefully because of the weather and not mechanical problems) and our plane had yet to arrive.
The passengers were complaining about not being informed and demanded a flight immediatemment. The yelling was pure Gallic farce and provided a degree of light entertainment on an otherwise dull afternoon.
To cut quite a long story short, a Marrakech-bound plane suddenly appeared to be waiting on the tarmac and we all made a run for it, grabbing whatever seats and luggage space was available. Security? What security, this was important stuff!
A half an hour later we landed at our destination. And miracle of miracles, our luggage appeared on the conveyor minutes later.
It was now close to 21:00 and we were told that our kids’ flight was delayed. Then minutes later, cancelled. No other information was forthcoming from EasyJet’s slothful French-speaking staff.
Curiously, we had been getting SMS messages from the kids until about 19:00 and then we told by the phone system that their phones were switched off - a fair indicator that they were probably airborne after all. We decided to head for the hotel and sent an SMS into the ether regarding their final destination, should their plane arrive after all.
As it happened, their flight was airborne, which speaks volumes for EasyJet. They finally managed to find a taxi and made it to our hotel close to midnight; about an hour and a half after us.
For most travellers, Marrakech was immortalised by Graham Nash’s song and it is difficult to imagine the city they saw four decades ago. Today, the old city is as it was centuries ago, with its huge souq, open air Djemaa el-Fna square, coffee, spices and Morrocan food on every corner. There are beggars, scroungers, people with tame monkeys, snake charmers and just about everything else. They will all do the most extraordinary things for a dollar.
The new part of the city is largely modern France with palpable Arabic overtones. it is clean, well thought out with broad avenues and squares, built for a relaxed lifestyle. It is a place where anyone looking for a hint of the European lifestyle in North Africa could settle. While generally dry, the new city has many cafes where beer and wine are available and the Pertons spent many happy hours watching the passing parade.
The city is also predominantly Islamic and the ubiquitous call to prayer echoes into every corner of the city from the hundreds of mosques that form an integral part of the city’s fabric.
In our Marrakech week we walked about 80km, wandered the alleyways and streets, watched the people go about their daily business, ate, drank and celebrated Xmas with a wonderful dinner in an arabic restaurant. The last afternoon in town, Julian and I made the mistake of taking on the souq unaccompanied and quickly realised that getting badly lost was just the next corner away. We retraced our footsteps a kilometre or so and were very grateful to see the city wall and it’s gate appear as if from nowhere. Take the advice of the guide book; don’t try it unaccompanied.
All in all, we had a fab time.
Sunday 27th and all too soon, it was time to leave. Laura headed back to London and work and the three of us left for Casablanca and Cairo. RAM almost managed to get both flights out on time.
Our brief stopover in Cairo on the outbound journey had left us with a feeling that the city had been given an unfair reputation. We'd seen a dusty city, bustling and full of intrigue and activity. Our hotel in the Zamalek district gave us easy access to shops, restaurants and taxis to get around in. We were looking forward hugely to a longer stay.
That stay put us into a hotel at Giza; 20km out of town, near to the pyramids. The transfer from airport to hotel was a revelation; suddenly the city we had glimpsed so briefly and liked was transformed into a dusty rubbish dump.
The dust is understandable, as the Sahara is at the city's doorstep and Egypt’s famous winds must lift millions of tonnes from the desert into Cairo's streets annually.
Impossible to excuse is the welter of litter that is everywhere. The locals toss cigarette butts and fast food containers with equal abandon. And meantime, the local authority either leaves it where it fell, or sweeps it into huge mounds and leaves it. In a week, we see not a single street cleaner, mechanised, or manual.
Between the dust and the filth, the city exists. Elegant restaurants, their tables robed in the finest of Egyptian linen napery, close their doors on the mess and immerse guests to a totally different world, where fine food and fine wine help one forget the squalor outside.
I suppose as a resident, you see so little of the mess between home, car, car park and work/restaurant that you might try to convince yourself that it doesn’t even exist. I suspect that few succeed and when asked about the detritus, the locals just shrug resignedly.
Ferried by a series of minibuses, we see the pyramids, sphinx, Egypt Museum, Saqqara and on a separate day trip to Alexandria, many other sites of antiquity. With the exception of Alex’ Pompei’s Pillar, which is displayed in a protected park area with many other relics, every single site of massive national importance is decrepit, un-loved, un-managed, graffiti-d and sinking in litter, camel, horse and donkey shite. Unlicensed, aggressive hawkers set on the visitors to each and every site, with the sole objective of selling them some kind of China-made tat. Casting a glance at one of these bandits will bring demands for money and woe betide you if you even think about pointing your camera in their direction. Photographs start at US$1 each.
I suppose that is OK if you are travelling with pounds, dollars or euros in your pocket, but for the 1:5 Rand traveller, that’s a no-no. It’s tiring and made worse by a complete ignorance of “no”.
One scheduled stop was the Egypt Museum. We arrived in our minibus and immediately found ourselves in amongst thousands of other coach-ferried visitors. The queue snaked into the museum and through the inevitable security screening - they are at every site and bleep mournfully at one’s passing, but evince no response from the multitude of AK47-toting Tourist Police sitting idly, smoking and watching through dull, uninterested eyes.
The museum is home to some of the world’s major relics, including much of the Tutankhamun haul. We enter and see crypts, mummies and statues in various cases. In the main, they are filthy and poorly, or totally unlit. The halls they are exhibited in have probably not seen any kind of maintenance or even a lick of paint for decades and the light fittings on the ceilings were probably out of date in the fifties when they were first installed.
Much worse, there is tourist graffiti on just about everything.
The Tutankhamun room is an area at the rear of the first floor, sandwiched between large showcases containing the lad’s many giant sarcophagi. The small available entrance space for visitors is clogged with hundreds of tourists, all on a strict timetable from their tour guide. Entry to the glass walled room is watched over by an inert guard and an equally dull woman who vaguely flap their hands at visitors as they pass. There are hundreds of people inside and it is impossible to see anything.
We enter and the press gets worse and worse. More and more time conscious people squeeze in, watched but unmanaged by the unmoving and disinterested security officials. We decide to give up on seeing Tut’s 11kg headgear as the tourists are twenty deep around the display and still more people are squeezing in.
We find some space close to the farthest wall and wait. It is clear that mass panic is close as one woman with a baby yells in English “Please move forward, go out.” But no-one can move as the press of bodies is so great.
The fear is palpable and I wonder how long it will be before the shoving starts. Fortunately, we are reasonably safe against the wall, with no-one behind us, but that just means it will take longer for us to get out.
Still more people are being herded in by the guards and now finally, people are able to exit as the masses that were waiting to get in have succeeded and the space they left outside means we can exit. It’s very dangerous and doubtless due to totally shambolic management. The overcrowding, danger and laissez faire attitude is something we will see in many other places in and around Cairo.
Upside to our visit? We watched the evening sound and light show at the pyramids; fantastic entertainment and well worth the cost. The narrative describes the history of the pyramids and sphinx, while music and lights play their role in a true experience.
The history comes at you like a tsunami; the guides talk and talk and talk and talk. You get to tune in or out as it suits. The tour we booked covered most of the major sites and several other excursions were available for the cost of (relatively) few Rand extra. On our last full day, we went to the ancient site at Saqqara, saw the pyramids there, the statue of Ramses II and a lot of the desert. We also saw the main bazaar in the city centre; a must for any traveller, but make sure your tat deflectors are set on high and content yourself with the views rather than the commerce.
The final stop of the tour and a definite highlight was the Pharoanic Village; a promised pastiche of ancient scenes re-enacted by professional actors and scale models of antiques and antiquities.
I always felt that Jozi’s Gold Reef City was a bit of a take-on, but the Pharoanic Village has world class awfulness down pat.
Intended to be seen from barges with seats for visitiors, we were asked to make the tour on foot because the level of the Nile is so low. We saw a replica of this temple and that house. We saw pretend metalworkers idly tapping at bits of copper, wine making, beer making, papyrus making and bread making. In between each group of pretends we were herded into a little sales area, where it was possible to buy tat related to the exhibits. Then it was on to the next pastiche, including a scale model of Tutankhamun’s tomb and his various assets. We finally made a break for freedom as we left the Islamic museum and the Nasser displays loomed ahead.
The whole place is so badly run-down that the fibreglass shows through the paint on the walls, chairs, tables, cables and light fittings are falling off/over and the inevitable litter is everywhere.
It was truly awful, awful, awful.
And now, it’s just the two of us. Julian has left for the airport and we have the lumps in our throats we always have when our kids leave for what they now call home. We leave in a few hours for Jozi and Cape Town. This trip to Egypt is especially poignant; the general lack of government commitment, interest, activity and care is what we are now seeing become the norm in South Africa. In so many ways it reminds us of why we have more reluctance to return than is comfortable.
As if we needed reminding; it’s also why our kids left in the first place.
