Hypothetically Existent

Existential angst in science occurs more often
than scientists admit actually happens. 

 

It Was Forty Years Ago Today

That I was at this festival, for the second time.
Being there proved to me how much getting out
of Gainsborough, the place I was raised,
 was much easier than getting Gainsborough out of my head.
It was not like the 1960's, where if you could remember 
being there then it was a false memory. I remember the event,
the drugs, the music, the bootlegs, the Grateful dead T shirts
the barely alive sense of being there, because being alive 
meant feeling tense, and for three days I felt no tension.    

 

Consistency Inc

I won't be seeing 'the ABBAtars',
the computerised version of ABBA,
approved by the band themselves,
if they appear anywhere near me,
they don't need my admiration.

Though I shall respect how the project(ion)
has raised the profile of the band
whilst leaving them to their privacy.

But on my own I shall wonder,
how an intelligent computer
would analyse this spectacle?
From one machine to another
I can only imagine the joy
in the infinite consistency
each saw mirrored in the other.  

More Or Less (1)

It is less that
'brevity is the soul of wit'
and more that, online at least,
brevity is the soul of engagement. 

Seriously, Don't Stop Laughing

Whether Kierkegaard also cried tears
for what the world should have been
remains open to debate....

 

Irony vs Nuance

American always understood irony,
it goes with accepting manifest destiny
with all the slavery and displacement
of the native tribes that followed
from that implacable self belief.

What Americans find harder to embrace
is all the nuance and detail in their history.... 

The Next To Go ?

According to media reports there are now less
than 20 known wild examples of this species,
the vaquita porpoise, with an unknown number.
  in captivity, who presumably don't breed
as easily there as they once did
in their natural habitat.
 There is an online campaign
to save them from the illegal gill nets
they so easily get caught in.
Find the campaign here.
By supporting this campaign
You may well save other species too.
  

 

Only Another Two Years To Wait ?

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II
has just celebrated 'seventy years
as the monarch of the United Kingdom',
'Head of The Commonwealth'
and the holding of many other titles
she has accrued over the decades.

Now all that is left for her to do is live
just a little over two years longer,
for hers to be the longest reign in the history of world.
Then she will have ruled longer
than Louis XIV of France (1638-1715).
The Sun King had a good head start on her,
he was on the throne from the age of  five.

However much anyone might want her
to break this record, they should remember
what it will cost those 'rules' over,
watching her declining health,
accepting her increasing immobility,
and seeing how rule by an ailing figurehead 
feeds into creating a new failing nation. 

Who really wants all the badly made decisions,
the broken checks and balances on political power,
and leadership by the best mediocrity
that money can buy which will come
with such a Faustian longevity?

People who want her to break the record
for ruling for the longest time in the world
should realise that eighty short years after his rule
the dynasty of Charles XIV was over;
Executions of the powerful became popular.
France became a violent republic....

Just When I Thought I Had Heard The Ultimate

The reality of how dictatorships
try to cheat reality has undone me again.

It seems that whenever President Putin
goes abroad, he has his own special WC,
less out some strange extreme of privacy
that has become an extreme of vanity,
and more because if any foreign powers
got his stools then they would analyse them
as the only guides for what they could not get,
by any other means, the state of his health.

I would not be surprised
that when Putin is in Russia
every stool was stored and analysed,
but the result kept as a secret,
from even the president,
who, like Stalin before him,
would punish his doctors
for not telling him
what he want to hear.

Work, Life, Balance

Covid has shaken up how society works,
never more so than with paid labour,
which when it is computer based
can be done anywhere there is the power,
the wifi, and the internet security.

Working from home,
well away from the boss,
is very attractive to many;
attractive to everyone except
the boss with no underlings
in his now self emptying building
which has less future the more
his workers work well from home
and make sure the work is done.

But never mind 'working from home'
what I want to see is greater social visibility
for long term non-work from home
where the unemployed don't even need
a boss who is based in some central office.

All the unemployed need to be justified,
by being paid well to do less
than history would credit possible,
for them to be creative, and live contentedly. 

Holiday Diary - Last Day

Friday May 8th The alarm on my smart phone went off at 23.45, I had not slept even when Anthony suggested I should. I could not stop myself feeling watchful. I quietly dressed and made sure that I had everything packed. I was outside the hotel for 23.55, where I waited in the sodium lighting with my chit from the hotel in my hand, my luggage held tight by the handles in the other hand. The taxi was white and it arrived across the road just after midnight. I got in the rear seat where I was dimly aware of  a young man driving and his wife was sat beside him, their conversation sounded like some minor disagreement in which neither cared whether won the argument as long as they had the last word. I enjoyed the late night light show the city had to offer. The journey took over in thirty five mins, I had expected it to take an hour. My luggage went through the security x-ray machine first thing as I entered at arrivals. I offered to show him my papers but he waved them away, suggesting 'Later other policemen will want to see them, not me'.

  The departures hall was pleasant, with some traditional decoration in the stonework of the walls. From the information on the electronic screen there were perhaps only a few more than a dozen planes departing that day. It was quiet, I looked at the post cards, saw that some of them were rather good but there was no way of buying any of them at that time of day. I settled into my half read/half dipped into book 'Bowie, Bolan, and The Brooklyn Boy' -Tony Visconti and read solidly from the start of the book and re-read passages I had skimmed before, until near 3am, occasionally moving seat to give myself exercise. 

  When I approached one policeman he waved at the check in desk where there looked like there might be activity soon. There was; my boarding pass got stamped and the lower half of it was torn off. With the boarding pass stamped I went back to the policeman who saw all my documents and let me through to another two policeman who between them were thorough in checking my documents, Covid pass, passport, boarding pass, etc. I looked at the food store and wondered about what they served, decided it was junk, as was the contents of the duty free shops-no character in the goods at all. I did wonder are these goods chosen for their lack of character, as if one can never show too much contempt for a tourist?

  The departure was on time and undramatic. I slept through the emergency/life jacket instructions and woke half way through the three hour flight. To amuse myself and tune out of the noises being made around me I tried to photograph the mountains of Morocco from the air with my smart phone, I am used to taking several pictures of the same thing in the hope that one of them will be 'the one'. When I download this lot onto my laptop I somehow doubt any of them will be 'keepers' but taking them passed the time, and there is always the delete button.

  When the plane landed I thought that I would be delayed enough getting through airport security and passport checks etc that I would miss the first bus to leave the airport, which was I due to leave soon after my flight landed, but I was proved wrong. The queue at the bus was long enough that it's departure was delayed long enough for me to catch it, in spite of my online booking being for the next bus. 'Thumbs up to good timing' I thought. 

  It was only in Belfast, two hours later, that life became familiar and uneventful, the slow blur of events that I recognised from before the time away.

Holiday Diary - Day Eight

  Thursday May 7th The best breakfast yet, and the best views out over the valley to the blue hazed hills beyond, to go with our food. The best coffee too. We both had thirds from the flask. The choice of what to put on our bread and pancakes included home made Tahini, something I liked but I would never have thought of it as a breakfast spread, and home made marmalade. It was worth taking a long time over our food. There was no drama with our packing this time, nothing seemed lost and everything was checked twice before our walk into town to get money to pay the hotel bill. 

  The town is too small to have a hole-in-the-wall banking facility, so we got a ticket and joined the queue of about ten people at the recessed entrance of the local post office, where whilst he was waiting Anthony checked just how much money he had on him. He decided that it seemed like enough to pay the hotel bill, so we risked it and left the queue, nobody wanted Anthony's ticket. To be clear, everybody in the queue looked a bit dejected. We admired the articulated lorry/trailer that was the mobile eye clinic that had parked locally, and the many brightly coloured doors, all in different colours. At my suggestion we briefly looked in on the souk. After admiring the goat who quietly bleated at the back of the covered concrete square that passed for the vegetable market I discover that it is hat buying time again. 

  Anthony knows me by now, I admire what is in front of me and make a bee line for the clothes stall to find the coloured hats with desert designs on them, camels, towers, and similar visuals. To reduce his sense of impatience or discomfort with me he helps me choose the right hat faster, if he says that a hat is 'Lurid' then I know it is the hat for me. Purchase made we walk back to the hotel, paid the bill and exchange last pleasantries, and get in the now comfortably laden car. Our first task was to patiently negotiate the bunged market day traffic where there were laden lorries and vans going in both directions down the narrow street. 

  We threaded our way back through Paradise Valley which remained as stunning as the first time we passed through it. For my seeing the valley from the opposite side of the car to yesterday the views were different. E.g. in the cafe next to the shallow stream the cafe owner had put different coloured plastic tables and chairs in the stream so that customers could cool their feet in the water whilst eating. I enjoyed seeing that simple thoughtfulness, a lot. Anthony made our exit at a different point from where he entered the valley yesterday. to take us through a different part of Tiznit, to make for the vastness of Central Agadir. 

  Between Tiznit and Agadir the traffic was light, the travelling seemed easy. There were no cairns at the side of the road. The ribbon development also seemed much reduced. Agadir came into view quite slowly, but it got bigger and bigger, and bigger again, until it seemed HUGE to me. It was, by far, the biggest place we had visited in Morocco. From the outskirts of the city, where the kings name was imprinted into the side of the biggest hill to the centre took at least an hour of our travel time and it probably took nearer ninety minutes. But I enjoyed how we alternately hurtled and crawled along multi-lane roads and traffic light systems, as if we were a car-shaped pinball in a pinball machine. Anthony somehow knew which lane to be in, and stopped about four times to ask for directions, each time he asked we did not know how many more times we would have to ask, but we felt that we were getting closer, according to the rough map we had.

   The hotel Anthony had read up about was called Hotel Kalam and I spotted it after about the fourth time of Anthony asking for directions and those directions getting him closer along the wide roads of fast moving traffic, but not at the place itself. We retraced our way back along very few of the roads in attempting to find the hotel, except for very short runs where we could see that we had missed our turn or we went twice around roundabout. If our map was rather limited, then the passers by who Anthony asked served us much better.

 Settling in was easy, and a relief though there was a sense of 'journey's end approaching' between us. After settling in our first task was to find the hole in the wall from which to draw money, that proved easy though with the road repairs and remaking the pavements that was going on I had to really watch where I put my feet, awkward when there was also so much to see around me. Since my flight left before dawn I had to ask the the desk at the entrance to book a taxi. Anthony had no reason to drive me there when he did not know the way, disliked driving at night, and needed his sleep, and taxis were cheap. So I counted the money on me and they booked my taxi, they were surprised at the time I chose. I had a feeling that I would not be able to sleep before the taxi took me away so I asked for a midnight taxi even though it was well ahead of when I expected to leave. They wanted me to leave 2 am or 3 am, but I insisted on midnight. Apart from anything else I wanted Anthony to not be disturbed by my departure.

  That fixed we were free for the afternoon. So we were free to look for coffee and cake. Soon we,found a very modern, very clean, looking coffee house with a choice of tempting looking cakes. The interior architecture of the coffee shop was what drew us in, along with the rare looking cacti in boxes all around the edge of the canopied space. Anthony took softwood cuttings of a couple of the plants, who knows? They might take and have a life i France.

  After a few photo opportunities and some other minor fooling around we walked back towards the hotel, which was only ten minutes walk down the street, but very slowly. With the pavements as uneven as they were concentration was required.

  Anthony suggested we go to the pool in the hotel. My swimming trunks found their use for the only time they would this holiday, Anthony wore his underpants and we were tow of very few people lounging and splashing about. The water was pleasantly cool, I swam several ten metre lengths of the pool and Anthony took some time in the water too. I don't know when I last swam in an artificial pool, but it was never anything like this, where the air was as warm as anyone could want and the palm trees gave us their shadow to cool ourselves under.

  More packing and repacking in the early evening and then we set to read quietly, and wait until dinner, where unlike previous places we had stayed we did not know where we were going to eat in advance. Darkness was in the air when we went to look for a restaurant and when Anthony could see where we should go, then it was across a broad, busy, and seriously dug up, road. He went ahead and did not see me trip and fall headlong, as I followed. I  broke my fall with my left forearm and feared for my glasses being broke but nothing like that happened. No real damage done, beyond sensing my own fragility afresh, in a minor way. 

  The meal was great, a Mozzarella cheese salad, the first proper green salad we had  found in our travels, where one of the standard warnings was 'Beware of the salads' because they may or may not have been properly washed before being presented. It did not not matter one jot or mouthful to us that the cheese that was called Mozarella was surely not what the Italians had in mind when they coined the name of the cheese. It was not made from buffalo's milk, more surprising was to see our green salad garnished with very long, very thin, strips of cucumber peel. That was a bit of recycling to admire.  

  We had to leave the restaurant by 9 pm, which we did and I was much more careful walking back. But then I could see there was no urgency in getting back. Anthony and I were in our beds in the dark for ten, I had set the alarm on my smart phone, a function that I did not know it had until I went through it's list of functions. I was not going to sleep anyway, knowing that when the alarm went off I would be getting up and going out, and informally at least it was the end of the holiday. 

For the last day of this Holiday Memoir please click here. 

  

Holiday Diary - Day Seven

  Wednesday May  6th Last day in Sidi Ifni and our breakfast was excellent, crepe with bananas and chocolate sauce was the first course. There was plenty of bread to put in our bag for later as well as toast and marmalade which was very good. Given how oranges are abundant in Morocco I wondered why marmalade was not served more often, why it was not a speciality of the place. Anthony was dressed to impress in varying shades of green, dark green silk shirt, light green waistcoat. The bill was eventually presented to Anthony. I went up to the room, I could add nothing by hanging around, though I caught Rolando's eye, when he had appeared again. He explained he was taking a bus to Marrakesh later, we could only imagine the heat and noise of a bus bus that full, including children, on an hot day, and wish him well with that. H seemed pleased at the idea...

  I felt a mild numbness at us leaving, which oddly made packing, and making sure we left nothing behind, seem more efficient. I gave Anthony space on his own to pack and from the distance I kept Anthony seemed fine about packing too. But then there became the problem of where he had put the car keys 'so that he would not lose them'. Where ever they were for forty five minutes he could not find them either. The bags were by the car, the car was locked, the room was searched three times, separately, by both of us, along with checking the table we ate our breakfast at, and underneath the table. the search did give me the opportunity to steal the odd postcard. Eventually the keys were discovered in the top right pocket of the waistcoat that he was wearing, where he had put them 'for safe keeping' all along. I'd swear there is something subconscious about the process of losing/hiding the keys but the 'sub' part of the subconscious means I should not, and won't, ask about it. The relief of being able to leave over-rode any thoughts of recriminations about the delay.

   In retracing our journey back to Tiznit we passed Mirleft along with many more small settlements which would be called 'ribbon development' in County Down, where I come from. I was struck again by the character of the vernacular architecture, the mosque is always the one building with a tower among so many low level buildings. On seeing so many mosques here I admired them for the simplicity and elegance of their architecture, and the way the colours they were painted give them all a variety I know the church buildings at home lacked. Where whether church or mosque, they have to be the tallest buildings in the settlement. I used to believe that their height was a matter of status. Now I realise that whilst religious buildings are high status places, the point of the tower was always that it was an echo chamber for amplifying the sound of the call to worship; the taller the tower the further the sound made from the top carries. It is surprisingly easy to conflate height, size, and status, whether with humans or with buildings.

  There seemed to be an oddly similar height/status principle at work with many of the newly built ribbon settlements that were built close to the road. The fronts of the houses were two or more storeys high, but the rooms built in a square behind the frontage would be only one storey high, and there would be clusters of such buildings, built together. I had no idea why this was done. My best guess was that if the owners got settled and had established their trade and lives there, then they could extend the property upwards by building another floor, but on starter incomes/bases life on the ground floor was all they could afford. 

  We stopped in Tiznit to have a freshly squeezed orange juice at a breakfast bar and look at the map/check our route. I took what will probably be my favourite picture of the week, of a German Shepherd dog resting in the shade of a bicycle where both dog and bike were part of some vending spot where newspapers were sold to passers by who stopped at the traffic island they were stopped. We left Tiznit with the city walls to our right, where I glimpsed the entrance to a souk. For a micro-second I wished the car could be stopped and we could investigate what was on sale/for show in there. I do feel that the life on foot seems to be the life in scale with awareness.

  I had no clue that even as I glimpsed the souk entrance that we drove past, for just one second, there was a dazzling full awareness slow car journey ahead, which would be well in scale which would leave us lost for words of awe and wonder. But the big challenge before that was the negotiate the outskirts of Agadir, for us to get on the road for Immouzer Dess Ida Outane.

  Agadir seemed huge, but then were plunged into what seemed like the centre of it, all high rise smoked glass fronted buildings that gave off strange abstract impressions as they reflected light off each other, and reflected the multi-coloured skyscrapers nearby. With views like that I did not mind one or two missed turnings and brief reversals to find the turning and the lane we were meant to be in, and had just missed. When we got to the coast road away going away from Agadir we felt calmer.

  It was on the coast road out that I had my check shirt opportunity, Anthony wanted a pee, and stopped so that I could investigate a rummage market, to give him time alone. By the time he went up the steps I had found the loose fitting checked shirt that was obviously the best, he paid the stall holder the loose change that it cost and i put it on over my T shirt. We were away again.     

   The entrance to Paradise Valley was low key but well signed. After that the scenery slowly seemed to get more and more immersive, until it was as if we were both on a slowly enveloping LSD trip through the landscape of the valley, Like an LSD trip we were travelling at two speeds at once, one speed was the speed the car was doing conveying us along the road, the other speed was the was seemingly slower and to do with how we took in the trees, the narrow road, unchanged in twenty five years,, the streams and the traffic going as slowly as we were going from in the other direction. For maybe five hours we were wowed and wowed again by the constant variations of rock texture, dead and living trees, and the occasional steam, with the occasional surreal looking shop on the end of the bend of a road in the middle of nowhere that sold honey and pottery. The goods outside of the shop were perfectly safe from thieves, and they were arranged as if the scene was a living postcard that you would store as a memory, the image was one that you could not take away in an intact physical version of it-putting a border around it would shrink it to nothing.

  Lunch was like previous lunches, except that nobody passed us this time whereas with previous lunches we were in more populated places and were happy to be waved at by passing strangers. After we reached the last big peak the bends in the road became fewer, the road became straighter. This was how I knew that we were on the last part of our journey for the day. By 4 pm we were in Immouzer Dess Ida Outane, a small one street town which for us arriving at it in the peak afternoon heat was quiet. Seeing the three dogs keep watch on the wall as we entered the town seemed symbolic. It was the height of activity. 

  Our hotel was special to Anthony. He had been here twenty five years earlier, and I could see why he wanted me to experience it; the gardens were extensive, very lush and semi-wild. One thing Anthony and both agree on is that neat and tidy gardens are dead gardens, and the extended planting around this hotel, which must have stretched to an acre or two, was the second great immersive experience of the day.

  After settling in and seeing a little of the gardens I went into the town with my camera, more doors of Morocco, rusty doors, painted doors, security doors-who knew that the doors that lock on the back of articulated lorries could be deployed to make businesses secure? When I returned to the hotel gardens I did the full tour of them and found Anthony at the far end, where he was admiring the scent of the one of the two types of lavender there.  

  The rooms in this hotel were more modern and less personal than in previous hotels, but the hotel was cool and spacious overall. The nearest there was old fashioned character was the various rugs scattered on the floor before the stairs up to our room, though the paintings on the walls ascending the stairs were interestingly gnomic, full of symbols that may or may not meant something serious. 

  The setting for dinner was perfect, candles and a white table cloth, white cloth napkins, and a from inside the dining room a view over the declining light over the valley that was wonderful. Alas the meal did not deliver in the same way. The vegetable soup was thin, the vegetable tagine was okay and perfectly textured but, oddly, it lacked spices. But with a perfect french apple tart for pudding we had no reason to with-hold praise for the food. Our waiter wanted to like us, or wanted us to like him, I don't know which. Anthony laughed when on our own he called the waiter 'the retainer', which as night staff he as, and I asked is he wrinkled? He told us stories of bee keeping and collecting/selling honey for it's medicinal properties, of his work as experimental scientist, and near the end of the meal he showed and gave Anthony something that he was clearly personally invested in, his own formula hair restorer. The waiter had even thought of airport security, the bottle it was in fitted well into one of the liquids security bags.      

  I was slow to go to sleep, I needed more distance from Anthony that I could have in the room. In the morning I woke him up with my snoring, so he woke me up. Still, we have had this agenda of snoring/being unsettled with sleep for most of the thirty years we have known each other. 

For day 8 of this Holiday Memoir please click here.  

Holiday Diary - Day Six

Tuesday May 5th Breakfast was served slowly this morning. Somehow, our pancakes never did arrive. But the flat bread, butter, apricot jam and two milky coffees for Anthony and one black coffee for me were enough. Post breakfast we took a walk around the town to find the post office so that we could take some money out from a hole in the wall and post our postcards. With Ramadan shutting everything down and leaving so few people about to ask we did not find it. Rolando got his lift to the local Plage, which was twenty mins drive out of town. From the distance of the road La Plage looked like a miniature version of the Welsh village of Port Merion, varying shades of white and shadows all in a small block. We could tell were houses that were close together, but together they also seemed most undistinguished.  

  There had to be drama with our generosity. The road directly to La Plage was to be found down a invisible left turn, that naturally Anthony could not see from the being in the drivers seat. For not seeing the invisible turning we parked around the other side, took the long way to the beach, where the buildings in front of the beach were were frankly tatty, even the dogs looked as if they had been to better places. Anthony walked back to the car and drove around the other side whilst Rolando and I were to wait for him. Except that after waiting a while we walked back along the road in the heat to look for Anthony since he seemed to be taking some time. We walked as far as we could and did not see him anywhere. We walked back to where Anthony was meant to be and there he was. The arch on the beach was just like all stone arches are, I photographed it but more as a record than a picture with an aesthetic to it. Roland walked along the beach to the arch, he was going to walk back to Sidi Ifni. I returned to Anthony and we drove away.

  On our own and in the car, we returned to Sidi Ifni and found two post offices, one with a cash point to get money which seemed to have no post box and another more central to the town where we found a post box to post our cards in. If the postal service is as efficient as the french postal service, the french being the former colonists, then the cards should arrive promptly.

  The drive around the port side, a little way out of the town, pleased Anthony enormously after the confusion and blandness of La Plage. Seeing the five horses reined on a line between two vehicles reminded us of how this is a landscape where travel is the point of it; settling is the exception even though settling has become the norm for many.

  Anthony slept in the afternoon. So did Sidi Ifni from what I saw of it as I walked around. Though I did find some sort of activity in the local market, people were congregating to drink and chat in one crowded cafe. But there were no other stalls, stalls for goods, open. Still when places are shut, whether for the day or for Ramadan, the more photogenic they are the more they tempt visiting guests with cameras to get them out and snap away. 

A closed town is a town that does not mind it's doorways being photographed. There were plenty of doors that made ready made attractive pictures, even as my memory went back to dentist I went to as a teenager, Mr Taylor, and the poster 'the doors of Dublin that he put on the ceiling to distract children he was treating, whilst he did things to their teeth. Harder to photograph was the combined effects of the flat roofs which Anthony described and being 'Like something Paul Klee would have drawn inspiration from', as if Klee had come here for his holidays and come away with news ideas.  

  Night number two for eating at our hotel. We face the same dilemma that we faced before. What is there on the menu that we would find interesting that we have not already had once? Anthony had the right idea, a chat with the hotelier about the different things they could do with different vegetables. So along came aubergine caviar, a cucumber tomato and lettuce salad, and four rather filling vegetable pancakes. All rather splendid. No pudding looked like arriving so we left. Rolando appeared late at the table next to ours, sun burnt but happy from his long walk back from where we had left him late this morning.

  Anthony returned to his book, I completed another postcard and set out in the dusk to walk to the post office. Ramadan was truly over, women and children were out together walking the streets and men filled the cafes having their mint tea or soft drinks, the television screens set to news in the background. All television news channels look the same after a while, ticker tape headlines across the bottom of the screen, bright synthetic colours behind the soberly dressed presenter, and overlapping boxes with the latest written information in them above the moving ticker tape. Misinformation overload.

  The souk/market was fully open too. I bought another hat that I did not need there, but the colours on it-green gold and white against black-were perfect, after finding yet another post box to put a card in. Meanwhile in 'The Holy City' a  display  of  women's  underwear in the biggest, newest, shop window  in  the town  gets  the (all  male)  councillors  hot  under  the collective collar. But they find that there is nothing they  can  do  about  it.  It  read  like  my memories of where I grew up, false/mock outrage, social stasis, reactions but also a sense of values being frozen, of change achieved through denial of change. 

For Day 7 of this Holiday Memoir please click here.

Holiday Diary - Day Five

 Monday May 4th A minor kerfuffle over breakfast; our host did not ask what we wanted and gave us too much. More than that, with the strength of the coffee being as weak as it was Anthony wanted his made with milk. Getting the attendant's attention without being made to feel demanding was slow work, I think that on that day she was bored with being a hoteliers wife. But it gave us time to stash the food we could not eat in our bag. Three quarters of our Berber eggs went into the delicious Moroccan flatbread and the flatbread went into the bags that airports insist that liquids go in to go through security. Those bags fitted neatly in my handbag.   

  Packing up time, time to refill our suitcases and bags and not leave anything behind. In this respect losing the pyjamas was the loss we could live with and the warning we needed. We had packed and we were both in the car, when I said 'I am going to check the room again'. I did and I found nothing that we had left behind, but I did not know what I was to look for; Anthony did know what to look for-his credit cards. When they were not in any of the pockets of the light waistcoat he was wearing I went to check the shelf that he suggested. There were the two credit cards, in a small black folder on a shelf that was painted black. Panic well managed, we set off for Sidi Ifni via Tiznit.

  The first surprise was discussing the weather with a bored policeman on the first serious roundabout we came to, the second, milder, surprise was taking a wrong turning soon after chatting about the weather. But one of the better points about making your mistakes with travel, and choosing a direction, is making your mistakes early, it minimises the seriousness of the delay you have doubling back. 

  Anthony spoke of the 'Leopard skin hills' as a way of describing the stunning effect of the dark of the many trees dotted against the light coloured clay of the many small mountains/big hills that we saw as Anthony drove slowly. The sheer scale of the scenery as Anthony negotiated with so many hairpin bends where the roads were narrow wowed us to silence when the CD player was not on.

  The CD player was definitely off when we arrived in Tiznit; it was huge city that seemed to build up from nothing, Anthony drove along six lane highways that went on for miles with sky scraper sized buildings with big gaps between them either side. One of the skyscrapers even had the graffiti of a a single glamorous female figure on the side, all umpteen floors the height of it. If I had to guess I'd say that the image was pro-government propaganda, nothing that height and size could be attributed to the political opposition. The activity on the roads and at the side of the roads, people driving or waiting for buses at bus stops, was dwarfed by the sheer scale of the place, which also made what human activity there was seem slow and inconsequential.

  Getting out of Tiznit the right way proved to be easy, the signs for Sidi Ifni were obvious. Many of the roads that we travelled on before the road into Tiznit were narrow and bendy. One of the common feature of these roads was seeing little piles of stones every few miles. Who made these these cairns and why they remained there remained unknown. On the roads out of Tiznit there were no such cairns. The road we were on was too new and the character of it was not yet formed, maybe it never will be. The signs at the side of the road giving directions in Moroccan were interesting mysteries to me.  

  We parked and drank some water by another dead and rather photogenic olive tree, cue the getting out of cameras and working out from which angle the tree looked best. With this light everything looks wonderful, but we will only know what is good when we see them full size on the laptop for the first time. Soon after we found what seemed to be a coast road which had more character. What we saw looked like a bigger version of Ireland, but there were still no cairns. We passed near an abandoned settlement called Mirleft. My immediate reaction was one of sadness. We had seen lots of Moroccan housing in the three days of being here. I admired the simplicity of it and the way it fitted in with the landscape. Most housing was a box with turrets on the the corners, set in a hillside. Often there were clusters of boxes, a small community with the houses painted different bright pastel colours, blues, reds and yellows. Sometimes what you would see would be strips of different colours melting into the hillside with windows in the strips of colour that to those with active imaginations could look like eyes. Mirleft was half-built estate the 'sea' side of the road that we passed through in that style community. But half the buildings were only half painted and the windows left an impression of emptiness. It was some time after Mirleft that we stopped to lick up our first hitch-hiker, we had seen a quite a few but had not stopped because of time or the way the back seat of the car had been filled. He was on his way to Sidi Ifni and got out first thing after being quiet, Anthony spoke french and he spoke Berber. I spoke only English and had the most reason to be quiet.

  With Ramadan still on, the seaside town of Sidi Ifni was hot, tired looking, and it seemed unfairly shut down. We found the hotel easily once we found the boat that was the public landmark close to it. We had more water and a late lunch of leftovers from breakfast on the roof of the hotel, where we were not the only guest taking in the views. There was a German/Lithuanian gentleman called Rolando was also resting after his travels. I found some tangerines from a small corner of my suitcase which I had almost forgotten about, only the skins looked tired. Anthony enjoyed them along with the last of the strawberries he had bought several days before which had become mildly alcoholic. 

  With the sound of the Atlantic Ocean washing over us and the birds arguing all day long in the decorative palms to the front and left of the hotel, settling into our room was easy. The sight of the sea was more difficult, since Anthony had been here twenty five years ago developers had built another hotel in front of our hotel, which was the original beach front building.

  Anthony rested all afternoon. Were there any pleasure to be gained from seeing shops and fronts that are shut and inactive until Ramadan ends, another twenty four hours away? I think there was, I found it in the murals of the local school which are there all year round. I have seen several modern looking supermarkets, both here and in Tafraout, and I have not gone into them. I did not with the one I saw here because, well, I might enjoy the air conditioning but there is nothing I want to buy in them and they seem oddly luxurious and alien to the area given the friendly down at heel character I have seen everywhere else. I was already an alien as a tourist, I would more of an alien for going in to browse. 

  Our evening meal was in the hotel and it was light and splendid. No vegetable soup for starter, but spicy carrots and roast potatoes with other veg for the main course, and two slices of freshly made sponge cake for pudding. Rolando introduced himself again, more fully this time. Anthony chatted with him most, and tested out the levels of outrage Rolando would accept with his (Anthony's comments on eating meat. I said little and maybe pushed Anthony to say more but even in language I do understand I often find I have little to say with people I don't know. The two slices of freshly baked sponge cake/pudding would benefited greatly from some orange juice and/or a little grated bitter chocolate over it, but it was still good without.

  We walked a little and looked at the other eateries nearby, which all looked out on to the Atlantic and discovered that what they had in location they lacked in menu. They were all serving pizzas and other more downmarket touristy fare. But who knows what thy would serve when there were more customers to serve? We were there well before the height of the season.

  In the comfort of our rooms we read until bedtime I could get used to a single bad again if I had to, and having Patrick McCabe, or at least his book 'The Holy City', for company was fine with me. There is something about small town mistrust and optimism in small town Ireland that seems very familiar to me. Maybe it is the male characters who are drawn up as insecure sexual fantasists for whom anything female could be sex, clothing, talk, whatever, when most things are not intimate or sexual. Anthony is reading another, more emotionally mature book that I also brought with me, like the Patrick McCabe book, it was found for nearly nothing in a County Down charity shop, His book was 'H Is For Hawk' by Helen MacDonald. It is a book that I remembered the title of, from it being read on Radio 4 when it won prizes several years ago, and I remember the readings having an effect on me, but, like many such books, I have forgotten what it was actually about. 

For day 6 of this Holiday Memoir please click here. 

Holiday Diary - Day Four

 

Sunday May 3rd Up at 8.30 Another full breakfast, coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice, Moroccan flatbread served with jams-strawberry or fig, or honey. when the Berber scrambled eggs appeared they went into more flatbread which went into the bag for lunch. Anthony had a milky coffee-the strength of the coffee suited milk for him.

  We were handed back our passports after handing them over to reception when we arrived. It was only much later that I found out why they needed the passport. In the passport is a stamp from passport security and a hand-written ten digit number written over the stamp. That number is what the hoteliers have to fill in on a form they are given, to account for our whereabouts to the police. We were then asked how long we intended to stay and would we settle our bill in advance, Anthony said that we are staying one more night and he sought to settle the bill, even though there was a degree of not knowing what was going on between the hotelier and his wife who was the one asking us to settle the bill early.

  The day does not feel like a Sunday, it feels like a day outside of any everyday framework  of time that I know of. This is partly helped by how we have arrived whilst Ramadan is still on, and the level of activity in the town is subdued to help people cope with the all day fast that everyone observes. But for us there was something to do, Anthony wanted to buy a rug as a hanging rather than for the floor, and he knew where and from whom to buy it from.

  One of the signs in the town that we passed said something in French which I took to be 'Art Exhibition open today' and mentally I had been dismissive of it, this town did not feel like the sort of place that would support much in the way of art. But it was open and the art in it was the traditional art of carpets, a much under-appreciated form of domestic art. And then there is the art of selling carpets.   

  Buying a rug from a Moroccan rug dealer is a slow but definite process. The customer comes into the shop half-knowing what they want, what they can carry, and the sort of colours and weight of rug they were looking for, but not knowing what to expect. We were ushered into the main rug room and shown at least half a dozen rugs, the sight of which prompted Antony to get out the measurements he had taken so that we could guess the size of what was in front of us and compare it with the measurements he had. Then the the young man who had hustled us and deserted us when we refused his choice of hotel appeared and served us hot sweet mint tea. More deliberations and I put my tea down to photograph some of the most interesting looking rugs whilst Anthony narrowed his choices to a few. Since he told me where the rug was to hang then the final choice of colour and weight was an easy one. But we had gone to the carpet shop before finding to the hole in the wall....  

  Anthony and I set off for a cash point where I used my debit card to get 2000 dirhams from the hole in the wall, 700 of which will be used to buy the rug Anthony chose. Success, for now anyway. It may be possible to get more than 2000 dirhams from the machine we do not test the machine to find out how much we can get per day. Wandering around after the carpet purchase we discovered one of the notable, and perhaps admirable, shortages in the town was the lack of choice of postcards to buy. But we found one shop that had enough cards with enough designs that we liked for us to get a few. I should have pressed Anthony to get us to get more, after all one point is clear about this holiday-whatever our itinerary is we are not going to return to the same places twice. We are spending two nights in the same place so that Anthony can rest from driving every other day since we may well be retracing certain journeys. 

  With Anthony's  rug safe in the boot of the car we sped off for lunch in the nearby rocks for which the town is famous, just a short journey out of the town. It was nice to see motor- cyclists not wearing helmets wave at us as they slowly drove past, we felt like we were in a landscape, part of something bigger than ourselves. The drive was as hallucinatory as yesterday's drive, though it was much shorter.

  Some of the trees seem to grow directly out of the rocks, though we don't go up close to them to see where the tree roots wen. Lunch was leftovers from breakfast plus the radishes I brought with me. Finding the width of road to turn around on and go back took us further into the wilds, which I had no problems with. With the windows down to displace the heat each view seemed better than the last. We did turn round and return to the town, where in the afternoon sun everything seemed sleepy. Anthony slept too, I went out for a walk on my own and took my camera with me. I took very few pictures, mostly of dogs asleep on the pavement which I took to be a sign of the depth of ease around the town. I preferred to believe that image over the vague sense I had of the men of the town being watchful of me as I walked around on my own. If they wanted to help me buy something, to get rid of me, I would not know how to communicate with them.        

 Anthony was rested when I returned, so it was the obvious time to start writing postcards to the folks back home. What we wrote will surely be like many of the photographs we have taken; the words will be a border around what we feel in the same way that a photo has edges, edges that shrink the content therein.

  It is still Ramadan, so evening activity in the town is limited, so we were surprised that when we went out to find a lace to eat we found it easily enough, but even more surprised it was the same place as made our last night's meal only we were eating it on their premises rather than our hotelier presenting it on their own balcony. One enquiry that produced a dead-end response was about quality alcohol free beers. This is a relatively new area of sales in many Western supermarkets and I wondered whether ordinary Muslims might have been curious about them; it seems not-they seemed to remain caught up with the binary argument beer=alcohol=what westerners want to drink. Their idea of a refreshing non-alcoholic drink remains to be strong mint tea with sugar.  

  I chose badly with the meal. I misread the menu and got the meatballs tagine and I did not need that much meat, it made the meal 'heavy'. Anthony could rightly look at me in a mildly chiding way for my lack of forethought. Sat outside the restaurant, we could watch the local cats and dogs play in the evening light as it slowly faded and the strange pointed lights on the street lights alternately coloured red and green. I liked how these animals adapted with passing strangers as if they always had right of place.  We had a short walk to the edge of the town only to realise how shut down the place was, still Ramadan has two days left to run.

For day 5 of this Holiday Memoir please click here.

Holiday Diary - Day Three

 Saturday May 2nd awake at 8.30 am. Up in our Taroudant hotel for 9 to receive the full Moroccan breakfast, eggs poached over a bed of tomatoes and onion, coffee, orange juice, fruit jam, flatbread, two sorts of pancakes, and butter. We were pleasantly stuffed, and hid some of the flatbread and egg in our bag, to have for lunch much later. This taking food away for later would become something we did at every breakfast. I am still not quite prepared for travel, I thought we were staying at this hotel another day but we went out to find a hole-in-the-wall bank from which to extract dirhams with which Anthony was going to pay the hotel bill. He packed and instructed me to pack and in the process I left my pyjamas behind, I had put them under a cover before breakfast and forget they were there after, when I came to pack. We were four hours on the road away from Taroudant before I realised where the pyjamas were. it was a small loss; I hope the hotel owner got the wear out of them, they were plain and a nice blue/grey colour. 

  We were on the road from 10 am to 4 pm, winding our way through the foothills of the Anti-Atlas mountains where as we drove we passed many small communities which consisted of a few people, more goats and sheep than people, and even people camping in the desert who often had motorbikes.  The most notable thing was seeing so little rubbish at the side of the roads, because we went on roads that few people travelled on. For lunch we had the flat breads and the Berber eggs from breakfast and the radishes that I'd bought in Tesco's on the Thursday, in the shade of a tree. They tasted fine. The mountains were hallucinatory in their continuous vastness. When we discussed what colours the mountains were we disagreed.  Anthony's glasses have a react-a-light tint on them and my glasses are plain. The colour palate for the mountains, were I to attempt to paint them, was green-grey, yellow-grey, and brown-grey with some black for where the sun created deep shadows.

  We arrived in Tafraout not at all tired, because Anthony had driven slowly so that we were safe for other drivers whilst we took in the scenery which blew away any sense . Reality arrived with a bang when the first person in Tafraout to meet us was a tout, a driven young man who wanted to direct us to a hotel owned by one of his friends because he thought that was where we should stay. He took us to the hotel, and when we smiled and said 'No thanks' to owner of the hotel who understood that we'd been brought there, the tout zoomed off leaving us to guess which way was back into town and admire the huge rocks which are a feature of the local landscape.

  We chose the Hotel Amis. The hotel was central to the town, the room had character, and it was close to the balcony from which we could watch the central crossroads through which all the traffic in the town had to pass, to go anywhere. Most important was the 'feel' of the hotel, which was friendly, like it's name. The minor downside of the room was that the light switching was odd, but easily adapted with. Settling in the room felt light, easy.

  Our evening meal was a splendid spread consumed on a table on the balcony. Vegetable soup, dates, olives, and flat bread, beef tagine for me, vegetable tagine with added prunes and almonds for Anthony, and a light fruit salad to finish, which was more of an artwork with food than a course in itself. It was separate pieces of orange and banana soaked in honey artfully displayed on a black plate. Anthony encouraged me to try the beef tagine to have something different to him, and tasted a little of the beef, then said 'It tastes like dead animal'. 

 For the second time I heard the evening Muezzine, the Muslim call to prayer that is broadcast six times a day. The first time I heard it I thought it sounded like it was performed live and debated this with Anthony. The second time it sounds more like a recording and the melody in the announcement reminds me of some of the more 'bigging up' style announcements that wrestlers used to get from announcers in the ring gave as the wrestlers approached the ring with a slight 'electronic tone' added to it, to modernise it.

  Latest reading; 'The Holy City' by Patrick McCabe who I listened to quite closely when he recently appeared on Radio 4 to promote his latest book. He claimed with some immodesty that he was not comfortable with the style of writing that he was self evidently thoroughly in control of. Anthony is reading 'H is for Hawk' - Helen MacDonald. He was pleased I had brought it with me, I had no expectations. What I knew most was that Radio 4 had guided both of us towards many good books over many decades.

For Day 4 of this Holiday Diary please click here.

Holiday Diary - The First Two Days

Thursday 30th April, left home on the 2.15 pm bus. On the bus looked at my shoes which were scuffed, with laces that were frayed at the ends-that was something I could have fixed at home if I'd been observant enough. An afternoon in Belfast where there is nothing much that I have to do and the only activity I can do is shop. But what do I need? The best buy was the reduced price pan loaf, sandwich filler, and two packets of radishes. It is not always the case that the healthier shopping is cheaper shopping, but in this instance it is. Browsing the Oxfam bookshop I bought as travel reading 'Bowie, Bolan, and The Brooklyn Boy'-Tony Visconti, Published in 2008, it won't cover the last two Bowie albums, about which I would like to know more about than the rest of Bowie's work, but never mind.  

  7.30 pm at the Aircoach stop, The bus left on time and was surprisingly comfortable, the lighting was subdued which was good. The coach was by no means full, though there was some faffing about from some customers who did not know whether to get on or not. Dipping into the Tony Visconti book, I was surprised at him producing Manfred Mann in the 1960's. Slept a little, well closed my eyes to what was around me, on the coach. 

  In the airport for 9.15 pm, I like airports at night, they are quiet spaces and I can use quiet even if I'd like darkness as well when I can't have it. I had plenty of time to dip in the new book, make my Tesco loaf sandwiches and dip into my garlic leaf salad and my cheesy pasta with the well travelled plastic fork. The economy is still downsizing here, More franchise shops are leaving the airport, MacDonald's is the latest to go, does that mean the airport is going upmarket? I still want W.H. Smiths to return to Arrivals as well as there being at least three branches of it in Departures.

  To sleep for gone 11 in a place on my own in a quiet corner of the airport. 

Friday May 1st Awake at 4 am, Well half awake, first thing was to have an early breakfast of sandwiches, steal a few of the bags they leave for passengers to put liquids in, and get rid of the last of the soured milk from about my person before approaching fast track security with my luggage tightly packed and my passport and boarding pass in my hand. 'You are a bit early' they said as they let me through.

  Had a caffeine pill to be more awake. It is less I might sleep more that I won't be alert when I would be better being more alert, The point was proved when after what seemed like a long wait, there was movement at the check out desk which spread around the seats as the staff checked our documents. 'Have you filled in your Passenger Locator Form?' I was asked and for a moment I thought I had not, until I went through all the pieces of paper and there the right piece of paper was-in front of me and the steward who had asked me. That it did not look like the EU version of my memory was what threw me into doubt.

  The plane came in and taxied up to it's parking spot late, we were late boarding and late lifting off by about 25 mins, I was at the rear of the plane at the window seat that I usually get. Next to me were two elderly ladies, ahead of me and behind were families with some quite vocal children. The plane was bunged, full, with maybe one seat left unoccupied. I don't remember seeing the safety drill. I slept through it, and slept through quite a lot more of the activity around me as well. Many might say that sleeping in airports etc is an odd routine, but it balances out well when through sleep on the flight I can ignore what other passengers are doing around me.

  Surprisingly, we arrived at Agadir El-Massira International Airport on time. I left by the rear of the plane, earlier than many. As we spilled out onto the tarmac, into the bright sun, the first thing that happened was that the passenger locator forms were collected from us by a female Ryanair member of staff. Then we queued to get into the airport, and passport control. There were one queue with maybe eight booths in a semi circle, each with a uniformed gentleman in them. One by one we approached the uniforms in the booths and were 'processed', I could not remember the name of the hotel I was going to stay at when I was asked. I resorted to being as literal as possible, and said that the name of the hotel was on the form that I had just handed over. Having grudgingly said that my passport photo did look like me I was let through.

  There was Anthony, in arrivals, looking thin and excited to see me. His first comment was 'What is in the extra bag?' my reply was 'The coat you said I did not need to bring', as if to say 'You were right; I don't need it'. But the reason I wore it in Belfast, and packed it, was for the several pockets in the jacket that closed securely or had zips in them. Those pockets helped me feel that I was less likely to lose anything. They worked; I lost nothing though I had to check what was in what pocket to find it all. 

  The first contact with normality was a policeman in the airport car park who wanted to fine Anthony 400 Dirhams for leaving his car windows down and his car unlocked. Anthony got chatting with the policeman and claimed to be elderly, poor sighted, and generally lacking, whilst showing a certain wit about being that way. His charm worked; no fine was asked for or paid. The space around the car park was landscaped with huge palms and giant cacti, all o them eight foot or higher tall. It looked incredible.

  Away from the airport car park was the first of many signs of the poverty of Morocco, the ribbon development left half finished of a few houses and a shop every few miles, each settlement with a flash of colour in the one shop there coming from the goods on open display, where the goods with the colour are the items that don't sell. The people, or what I could see of them as we drove past, seemed either defeated or quiet because of the heat. We could not tell whether they were defeated or sun shy as we passed at speed. The first stop was for a drink of water and to take photos of a photogenic looking dead olive tree.

The sun makes everything  seem  incredibly photogenic, even the things we saw were not as photogenic as when we  looked  at  them. How much the sun shows up well in the photos remains to be seen, but whether the photos seem sunny or not the foothills to the mountains seem epic.

  Our first proper stop point was the town of Taroudant, a small city with thick walls around it. Anthony had stayed there the night before. 

The town had a large market which was close to our hotel, which amazed me when I saw it. All the rooms were off a central two storey high central courtyard with plants the height of the courtyard growing from each corner.

  The cat that stretched out on the chaise long outside out room looked very comfy. I had not eaten since breakfast when I had my sandwiches after getting through security at gone five in the morning. I had a bad headache and an upset tummy. I felt better after being sick though I still felt tired.

 Because we were there during Ramadan our meal was going to be served at 9 pm, after sundown, so Anthony took me for a walk in the early evening. He knew I'd want to see what was in the town even if everything was closing or already shut because it was end of the day for trading. We went through dirt track streets which were colourful and packed on both sides of with shops of varying quality and riches. On the dirt tracks there was every form of transport, vans with goods in them for the shops, cars, lots of young men on motorcycles, more young men on electric bicycles and ordinary bicycles, lots of well covered women on bicycles, pedestrians, and most surprising to me horses and traps carrying goods and people. They were all moving with great precision around and in front of each other as if they were choreographed that way, and did the same movements daily. With the sight of carts and horses I half thought of the old Steptoe and Son joke about saving the horse shit for the roses. I had collected horse droppings left by passing horses at home, when the horse riding school met in public, for my peach coloured rose. But roses have not yet featured anywhere that I have seen, and horse riding schools seemed to be several worlds away.    

  At our hotel we were the only ones to eat. My headache wore off rapidly with the food, first course a vegetable soup, second course more vegetables, third course an aubergine dish/a spinach dish-very good, fourth course couscous vegetables and mutton with a spicy sauce, fifth and last course fruit salad with avocados in it-definitely a positive addition and something to try at home. serving it all took a leisurely two and half hours, between 9 and 11.30. Whilst we were eating the background music was saxophone versions of popular songs by Whitney Houston and the like, they were surprisingly good. Also as we ate huge flowers fell off the trees in the courtyard fell on the central table in front of us, adding drama to the scene. The hotel cat greeted us whilst we ate too. It had got up off it's chaise long, outside our room.

  After Anthony invited me to sleep next to him in the double bed I was tired and yet unable to go to sleep beside him. I chose to sleep in one of the single beds, where fairly soon I slept much better. The last day had felt like nearer two days long than one, the time had worked out with it.

Saturday May 2nd awake at 8.30 am. Up for 9 to receive the full Moroccan breakfast eggs poached over a bed of tomatoes and onion, coffee, orange juice, fruit jam, flatbread, two sorts of pancakes, and butter. We were pleasantly stuffed, and hid some of the flatbread and egg in our bag, to have for lunch much later. This taking food away for later would become something we did at every breakfast. I am still not quite prepared for travel, I thought we were staying at this hotel another day but we went out to find a hole-in-the-wall bank from which to extract dirhams with which Anthony was going to pay the hotel bill. He packed and instructed me to pack and in the process I left my pyjamas behind, I had put them under a cover before breakfast and forget they were there after, when I came to pack. We were four hours on the road away from Taroudant before I realised where the pyjamas were. it was a small loss; I hope the hotel owner got the wear out of them, they were plain and a nice blue/grey colour. 

  We were on the road from 10 am to 4 pm, winding our way through the foothills of the Anti-Atlas mountains where as we drove we passed many small communities which consisted of a few people, more goats and sheep than people, and even people camping in the desert who often had motorbikes.  The most notable thing was seeing so little rubbish at the side of the roads, because we went on roads that few people travelled on. For lunch we had the flat breads and the Berber eggs from breakfast and the radishes that I'd bought in Tesco's on the Thursday, in the shade of a tree. They tasted fine. The mountains were hallucinatory in their continuous vastness. When we discussed what colours the mountains were we disagreed.  Anthony's glasses have a react-a-light tint on them and my glasses are plain. The colour palate for the mountains, were I to attempt to paint them, was green-grey, yellow-grey, and brown-grey with some black for where the sun created deep shadows.

  We arrived in Tafraout not at all tired, because Anthony had driven slowly so that we were safe for other drivers whilst we took in the scenery which blew away any sense . Reality arrived with a bang when the first person in Tafraout to meet us was a tout, a driven young man who wanted to direct us to a hotel owned by one of his friends because he thought that was where we should stay. He took us to the hotel, and when we smiled and said 'No thanks' to owner of the hotel who understood that we'd been brought there, the tout zoomed off leaving us to guess which way was back into town and admire the huge rocks which are a feature of the local landscape.

  We chose the Hotel Amis. The hotel was central to the town, the room had character, and it was close to the balcony from which we could watch the central crossroads through which all the traffic in the town had to pass, to go anywhere. Most important was the 'feel' of the hotel, which was friendly, like it's name. The minor downside of the room was that the light switching was odd, but easily adapted with. Settling in the room felt light, easy.

  Our evening meal was a splendid spread consumed on a table on the balcony. Vegetable soup, dates, olives, and flat bread, beef tagine for me, vegetable tagine with added prunes and almonds for Anthony, and a light fruit salad to finish, which was more of an artwork with food than a course in itself. It was separate pieces of orange and banana soaked in honey artfully displayed on a black plate. Anthony encouraged me to try the beef tagine to have something different to him, and tasted a little of the beef, then said 'It tastes like dead animal'. 

 For the second time I heard the evening Muezzine, the Muslim call to prayer that is broadcast six times a day. The first time I heard it I thought it sounded like it was performed live and debated this with Anthony. The second time it sounds more like a recording and the melody in the announcement reminds me of some of the more 'bigging up' style announcements that wrestlers used to get from announcers in the ring gave as the wrestlers approached the ring with a slight 'electronic tone' added to it, to modernise it.

  Latest reading; 'The Holy City' by Patrick McCabe who I listened to quite closely when he recently appeared on Radio 4 to promote his latest book. He claimed with some immodesty that he was not comfortable with the style of writing that he was self evidently thoroughly in control of. Anthony is reading 'H is for Hawk' - Helen MacDonald. He was pleased I had brought it with me, I had no expectations. What I knew most was that Radio 4 had guided both of us towards many good books over many decades.

Please find Day 3 of this diary here.