Here come the Rozzers
Wandering the streets of Cairo was quite tricky. Mainly because it was tricky to avoid the Tourist police on most street corners. They hide in their little houses. Luckily graffitti artists often leave warnings for the tourists. This one helped me disguise myself as a local before I was Policed
Egyptian guide: We will go to Bomay’s pillau
Clearly I was misunderstanding what my Egyptian guide was telling me, though visiting Bombay’s pillau in Alexandria did sound rather facinating. The sign at the Sarapeiona temple we visited cleared-up the mystery. The Sarapeona temple was built by Hadrian in the second century, the same Hadrian that walled-out the Scotttish from England. Unfortunately those darned Christians destroyed this non-christian the temple in the 4th century…. the pillar remained standing
Pompey’s pillar
No rice. No connection to the Indian city.
Ceasars son-in-law, Pompey, had a history of disputes with Ceasar. Pompey travelled to Alexandria hoping to find refuge with the Egyptians. Upon arrival Pompey was beheaded by Ptolemy XIII as un unsolicited favour to Ceasar. Ceasar didn’t approve. Subsequent tourists looking for Pompey’s tomb mistakenly named the pillar in the Sarapeiona temple after him. The name remained with the pillar.
I’ve been lured away to stay with a friend’s family in Cairo. How lucky is that?
There will be sunshine on sand, pyramids, sweat, bizarreness in bazaars, bobbing on boats, the grandest of floppy hats and the lovely Egyptian people.
Sand maybe getting into crevices, interferring with normal blog posting services, friction and chaffing. Please be patient, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause
(Sax warning)
Madness sang night boat to Cairo
6am Heathrow Terminal 1 is quiet. A young couple and myself eating breakfast in the ‘Ristorante pizzeria cafe bar’. I choose the vegetarian breakfast omelette, testing the viability of a possible new years resolution, it tastes good
My day has already involved an exploding movement-sensitive light as I left the Wendy house. It rained glass upon me. Luckily I had my hood-up against the rain and didn’t get sprayed with glass. In the Reading rail-air bus terminal I met an elderly Australian gent. He looked at my fake Australian zebra skin hat with no comment while he bemoaned the rain outside and having to visit Britain (Wales) to see his terminally ill mother.
No queues at checkin or security clearance. SWEET
The customs officer said ‘Cairo is too far north for that hat’ We laughed
In a mock Bavarian village nestling in the Cascade mountains there is an store that specialises in selling Australian goods. I purchased a fake Zebra skin cowboy hat that kept the sun from my neck in the Nevada desert and New York. The Australian Zebra skin hat will be joining Eric and I in the Egyptian desert next week.
Todays texts:
Friend in Cairo: How do you fancy camping overnight in the Desert next Thursday? Tents and drinks provided.
Wendy: YES PLEASE!
Words of wisdom from an almost stranger*. in this case a girl on the commuter train to London Paddington:
don’t wear Ecco shoes, they’ll make you look like a really boring old person
I would have followed this advice
except
Ooops! it’s toooooo late
I picked up these little green dudes in a sale, as preparation for my upcoming HOLIDAY in CAIRO. They have the phrase ‘pat pending’ on the sole. Just like the wacky races character. I love that! The garish green is pretty darn cool too, for a wrinkly, if this is what boring old people wear, then so be it.
On Holiday! Out in the country! Sheep, cows, fields, tractors, all the advantages of rural living. Anything could happen…
The farmers boys sang in the country
Questions have been asked.
The anwers are mostly: YES, Hooray! Holiday in September.
This holiday is a secret mission. I can divulge it will be near Cornwall with the aid of mud, dirt, earth and soil. Though not necesssarily in that order or spelking. Blog posts will be coded. Blog post codes will protect the anonymity of people I meet, tail and snoop around.
The Wendy House alert level has been raised to amber. Over excitement is setting in with
I’ll send you some blog post cards with the blog post codes
wish me luck
x
The natural harbour at Falmouth is one of the cheapest places to store large, unused, container ships.
We counted 7 of these large automotive carrier ships stored in the tiny, otherwise picturesque, Falmouth harbour. The ships are waiting for the automotive industry to either come out of recession or decide to send them to the scrap yard.
At Pendennis castle, a wedding party finished their breakfast then photographic sessions in time for the bride to be whisked away by the whirling winds of passion and tears of happiness mixed with the rain. Beautiful. A groom tackling a kilt would have added a cherry to my experiential cake.
On a Falmouth street an elderly gentleman caught me gazing into his front garden, admiring the plants.
He came out and apologised that his wife, who maintained the garden, wasn’t available to give me a tour of the tiny garden and name specific plants.
Spotty dog and I then accompanied him on his walk down a steep hill to the dentist. On the walk he told us how his house was once a Quaker school and brief histories of several other houses on the street.
Cornish folk are extremely personable.
Cornish bus drivers would check when people got on their buses that they knew where to get off and how to get back.
The passengers slept thought the journey while the buses dodged the plants which grabbed at them from the side of the high hedgerows encroaching from either side of single-lane roads.
The locals on Helston bowling green persistently tried to get Spotty dog and myself to join them because they needed what they called ‘young-blood’ especially that of ladies. Spotty dog and myself managed to escape with all our own blood before the games ended
Beach hut anyone?
Delivered, installed, then removed at no extra cost.
Holiday warning! Cornwall here we come!
With my
figure hugging fab frocks,
I’ll be wandering over the rocks on the coast.
There will also be the standard Wendy, none-rock chic, outbreaks of:
Excitedness levels are already Amber. OH!
HIF: Did you enjoy your holiday in Italy?
Wendy: yes
HIF: are you all fresco’d out?
Wendy: yes
The Piccolomini library in Siena was outstanding, fabulous books, floor tiles, wall frescos, ceiling frescos, quiet ambience, excellent lighting and virtually no other visitors.
The driver smokes a short filterless cigarette, awaits a passenger.
Not any passenger.
Not Flat Eric.
A passenger from a windowless room.
We passby, missing the passenger emerge, missing the small car leave.
Stylish wheels in Florence with low environmental impact enable the locals to surrepticiously pass by large and well protected
glass
Bangladeshi restaurant in Earley, Reading.
Dressed in white shirts and black neatly ironed trousers the Garden of Gulab staff welcomed me into their restaurant and were able to find a table for one in the crowded restaurant. The customers looked and sounded pale skinned English, the staff looked and sounded more Asian.
My choice was a Balti. I love Balti’s, ever since I started eating them in the mid 1980s in a local Birmingham Sparkbrook restaurant on Ladypool Road. The Ladypool road restaurant I used had no flatware and the staff would treat you as if you were an irritant if you had the afrontery to insult their food by asking for flatware. I learned to eat my food properly, with my fingers.
It’s not easy.
In the Garden of Gulab I ate my meal with my fingers leaving the impressive, superfluous, traditional English flatware untouched. In Birmingham I was given a thick soft damp heated flanel to clean my hands after the meal. In the Garden of Gulab I was given an individually plastic-wrapped disposable wet-paper-wipe. Functionally sufficient yet lacking the touch of quality that I had learned to enjoy. The food was excellent if disappointingly mild compared to my Birminghan experiences. The balti arrived in an ordinary metal dish, not the sizzling hot Balti bowl that it had been cooked in.
Mumzie doesn’t like Indian food, I think she’d thoroughly enjoy this place and the food.
The waiter bought a complimentary small brandy to my table explaining it was because I had finished my main meal quickly.
Excellent English-i-fied version of an Indian restaurant and charming staff.
What is the best 45th birthday present for a Wendy? A four day weekend in Siena with spottydog as
Excitedness levels have already reached amber. Spotty dog has cunningly avoided booking through the recently defunct XL, travelling at ridiculous hours of the day, waiting at transport interchanges for silly, silly, times and other such icky nonsense.
Excellence
included multiple boob-topped churches, deserted dawns shared with the departed, livingly sociable sunsets announced by rather flat church bells, mules trains, smiling old people, sculpted young people, versataile windmills, stylish alleys often containing sleek kitties, oodles of sunshine, beer and clear blues.
On top of all these standard Greek holiday experiences I learned about the real sailing motoring experience from a chain-smoking German skipper in the company of a pack of youngsters. I learned real sailing involved:
<list-overdose event warning>
Below is a list of the stuff that GAP recommended that I pack where the ticks (US = check mark) indicate how many of an item I carried. Items not actively used during the holiday are struck-through:
Striking holiday characteristics hidden in the above list include my:
<list-overdose temporarily suspended>
t may be in the park, but e is defintiely in the Greek Island beach disco bar.
In a disco infected bar on Santorini one of the pack commented on the extensive evidence of e-nhancements:
Poodle: I can’t believe all the boob jobs around here, its increadible!
Wendy: you mean like that girl in the sequinned bikini?
Poodle: Yes, and that girl, and that one, and…
The disco smelt of e-strogen affilitated enhancements and the bar music played ‘…you are just a sexy girl, nothing but a sexy girl…’
Poodle and my un-enhanced selves looked beautiful in our simple gently curved, gravity aligned, purity.
7am on our non-sailing day on Ios while the rest of the crew slept I found some deliciously freshly baked pain au chocolate in the port Bakery. The merchandising of bakery goods at this early (late?) hour implies some party island requirements.
All day large ferries docked in the harbour and hundreds of young adults with backpacks and wheely-suitcases rolled on and off.
After mooring we grabbed our towels and wash bags and trooped off to the public showers. We took turns using the showers for 3 Euros a turn. It felt sooooooooo luxurious washing the crystalised Aegean salt from skin and hair in a room large enough to be able to wave your arms around, a classic shower requirement. No longer did I feel like a walking emery board or look like I suffered from all over body dandruff.
Real sailing experience #4: wearing white hides the cumulative sea-salt crystals
Over dinner we consulted with our cruise director (weather forcast) and persuaded Afghan to let us stay a second day and night on Ios. No-one wanted a repeat rinse in the washing machine…..
We arrived in Ios exhausted. The skipper explained we could not use the showers or do ‘number twos’ while in the harbour because Greek boat effluence is ejected directly into the harbour. The small island harbours would quickly become noticably fowled if all the moored boat-crews used soap-suds and did our poos in it. Afghan suggested that we could
‘get a free coffee when paying a couple of Euros to use toilets in the local hostelrys’
[seadog laughter] Ha HA HA HA!’
real sailing experience #3: do not poo in the loo of a boat moored in a Greek harbour
After introductions Afghan told us that the weather forecast was too rough to complete a sail to the next Island, even Ferry’s were being cancelled due to the seasonally characteristic high winds known as the meltemi. While clearly a good decision given the high waves, this was a damping suprise to the whole pack. Afghan explained using essential information omitted from the promotional material, girls are in control:
‘mother nature is our cruise director’
‘the Aegean is a bitch’
[seadog laughter] Ha HA HA HA!’
real sailing experience #1: be prepared not to sail.
The pack spent the first afternoon on-land bonding at a beach-side disco-Taverna called JoJo’s; drinking beer, dancing, talking, reading books, sunbathing, sketching, meeting other tourists, swimming and making cell-phone calls/texts.
In subsequent blog posts my companions on our recent Aegean odyssey are represented by canines to allow your imagination to create scenes potentially more bizarre than the actual events. Meet the pack arranged in order of sailing experience:
Inside Jojo before setting sail: 
Not a euphemism for light sabres. 
Also known in the US as ‘Energy bars’. Not a way of describing the throughput of electricity to an electronic device.
High sugar-content (energy) biscuits in a bar shape marketed in the US as a lifestyle accessory for highly active people (Walkers, cyclists, etc). Similar products in the UK appear to be marketed as breakfast bars and stocked next to the breakfast cereals in supermarkets. I suspect they are breakfast replacements for fast-moving executives, children and aspiring anorexics.
I’m trying a few as possible lifestyle accessories for my GREEK SAILING HOLIDAY. Huuuuurrrraaaahhhhh!
A local Holland and Barratt shop lured me in with this ‘Love bar’. I subsequently discovered that the advertising is naughty because Gillian McKieth cannot legally call herself a Doctor in the UK. Her Dr. qualification is reportedly from a correspondence course with a non-acredited US University. The Guardian reported on her naughty non-truths and misleading product information back in 2007. In 2008 she’s still using the title Dr. on product packaging and making questionable claims about their ‘health’ impact…
The travel company has provided a trip dossier that includes a very specific pre-holiday check-list on what to pack! Useful and appealing to my listophilia:
I’m a tad concerned about the lack of underwear and nightwear worn by my fellow passengers, self, and the skipper. Publically displayed jiggly-bits can put one off one’s beer or book. The lack of ’dressing’ requirements for evenings in the Taverna, or Temple visiting, is also a tiny disappointment. Luckily for the male guests there are no requirements to bring skirts or dresses. All the listed gear fits into this holdall with space to spare, for an unlisted skirt, underwear, binoculars and possibly a pretty dress. I’m still waiting for my promised paper airline ticket to arrive…
