Holiday Diary - Morocco April/May 2024 - Part One

Monday April 29th. After last night's argument where I was at fault to the point where I was not allowed to help recover all seemed clear, the usual warm morning greetings. Breakfast was one and a half pan raisin and proper strong coffee, a very French breakfast. We were packed, the packing checked, and the suitcases and hand luggage in the car, and the car on the road out of Caylus, for 10 am. First stop Caussade, where Anthony stopped at his opticians to check when his next eye test was, not for a few months. He had hoped it as sooner. I looked at the bric-a-brac stall on the market market, and was happy that the one stall was all I had time to look at. 

Everything went smoothly after that until we got to boarding the plane. Anthony had no problems with the motorway tolls or the parking, where the care was to be left whilst we were away. We had no problems with the tram and bus to the airport. In the airport Anthony insisted on a coffee and slice of lime tart. He thought we were still in good time, though I would have not been so sanguine about the flight times. We got through security fine, together and apart. Me taking the lead. Ryanair boarding procedures are a subject for complaint all to themselves, as anyone who as put the word Ryanair into google will find for themselves. Yes, they are cheap if you book early enough, but I wonder how cheap they should be to justify a boarding process where those taking the flight are made to queue, repeatedly at different intervals to no obvious use or advantage. I have experienced this enough recently for it to remind me of some of the infant school trips I remember which were said to be about visiting a particular place but were more about the teacher's fear of disorder getting there to the point where the pupils collectively regretted leaving the classroom, and were not allowed to say so; it would have sounded too much like an adult response to being treated like a child.

The problem we had was Ryanair falsely reinforcing an old regulation of theirs where the feet of Anthony's suitcase made it fit awkwardly within the measure they used, but the body of the suitcase was well within limits. Anthony paid the eighty euro 'fine' for 'over-sized locker luggage'. He was not the only one to be made to pay and have his luggage put in the hold. He was more angry at the young female stewardess who feigned being harassed better than he could calmly stand his ground and insist he could keep his luggage for the overhead locker. Eighty euros poorer but knowing the stewardess had Anthony over a barrel we boarded. My book for the flight was 'Confessions of a Fallen Angel' by Ronan O'Brien. It described a Irish 1980's maladjusted childhood. It was easy to read, the main area where it diverged from my expectations was that the lead character was heterosexual and having no difficulty getting girls to like him, or dump him. He keeps getting dreams where people he likes die in oddly accidental looking circumstances. And the dreams come true. I got a third of the way through the book before we landed at Menara Airport, close to Marrakesh.

The airport was all on one floor unlike, say, Dublin airport or Toulouse Blagnac. It was also bigger than we, particularly Anthony, expected. The height of the airport ceiling being the height of some lavish palace the airport seemed to be designed  to  overwhelm  the  plebs.  The queues that we had  join  and  get  out  of  to  have  our passports checked were several and long. This gave me the opportunity to repeatedly contemplate the  message on the moving advertising hoarding   'Experience  Your Senses'. 

I was glad  when I  had  something  to  do, like look for the conveyor where Anthony's luggage  was,  to collect it. I was aware of my wanting  to 'Mother' Anthony but I was equally aware  that he  was tired and stressed and that part of what I had  to do was look out for what was meant to be happening next in this vast open space. We got out with our sense of  ourselves  and each other intact, but not knowing how close we might have come to the sense of us both feeling less intact.

Out in the open air just outside the airport we looked for a man holding a sign with Anthony's name on it, or said sign on a board. The smart young man who was our taxi driver into the centre of Marrakesh that afternoon was walking with his shoe laces undone, holding his 'Anthony' sign up with one hand, and holding his smart phone with the other. He was pleased to see us, and said that he had recognised Anthony via an image of him that was on whatsapp which confused me. I did not know that Anthony was on whatsapp, though he has a distinct and characterful presence  via his own website. I was struck by the question with partnerships/buddy ships how much do partners tell each other about their online adventures? It is on a par with recounting dreams, in both the activity is non-corporeal. In the taxi we sped away from Menara Airport and towards our hotel, pre-booked for two nights by Anthony.

Twenty minutes later we were dropped off with our luggage in one corner of Marrakesh central market square and the direction in which to find our hotel was pointed out to us with not much more clarity then the next few yards direction about where to go. We had no clear sense of how far down it was, where to turn off, etc. We walked for more than ten minutes down a crowded alley market place, down which motorbikes and cyclists weaved in and out between a constant flow of people, and clearly stoned men offered us dubious directions until we eventually located the left turn that after a couple more turns got us to our hotel, the Hotel Tamazouzt.

Find Part Two of this diary here.