Home again, and with pictures.

Well, the trip Marrakech and various other places through Morocco has drawn to an end and I find myself once again with a cat in my lap in sunny Kentford. I managed to get a lot of writing done while I was there, which I will posting throughout the course of the week, and an astonishing amount of pictures – ranging in quality from good to ‘fecking-awesome’.

Doubtless I’ll mention it again as I type, but I just wanted to say that Riad Marrakech Rouge is possibly the best hostel I have ever been to.  If you like the pictures below and fancy visiting Morocco then get in touch with these guys – I promise you won’t regret it.

Right… on with the barrage of pictures!

Mint tea at the hostel

Start with the important things – tea! The tea in Morocco is of the mint variety and whilst I am assured it’s incredible, I can’t say I share the enthusiasm, being a long time hater of mentha requienii. Don’t get me wrong, I could drink it when it was served without sugar – high praise indeed – however I much preferred the spicy coffee, something I normally detest.

Dad's sunglasses from 1989

In 2007 I drove up to Scotland, lost my sunglasses and grabbed Dad’s old ones off the kitchen table. They had been there for a good long while – after purchasing them in 1989, they were finally retired from his service in around 2001. They have been with me ever since, despite the fact S- believes them to be the most hideous things ever created by human hands. I love them. Here the are on a table in Place D’Jeema El Fna.

Speaking of which… here are some photos from Marrakech’s main market place.

Orange Juice Stand

The Place D’Jeema El Fna was filled with juice stands like this one – they don’t look all that impressive during the day, but at night….

Place D'Jeema El Fna after dark

Motorbike at Place D'Jeema El Fna

Place D'Jeema El Fna from a cafe terrace

More of the orange stalls

Food stalls

Food stalls close up

Situated off this incredible hive of activity – fortune tellers, henna artists, men with monkeys and snake charmers – you will find the souks. These are even more insane than Place D’Jeema El Fna. I have never, in my life, been anywhere louder.

The shopkeepers sales tactics are wonderfully simplistic – yell cultural references/insults as loudly as you can, then ask way over the odds for your goods. It is up to the tourists to haggle their way to a decent price, usually only a third of what they initially ask for.

TOP FIVE SALES TACTICS

1. “Gavin and Stacey, what is occurring?” How this man could possibly have known about Gavin and Stacey is beyond me. It’s such a peculiarly English cultural nod.
2. “Take care of your child, Mister. You get good baby.” Needless to say that after this particular heckle, S- stopped walking around with an arm protectively around my waist.
3. “You are starving.” This is a common call from outside the food stalls and there are numerous variations – usually directed at men, informing them they look scrawny.
4. “Thinner than Starvin’ Marvin.” Similar to above, but as the Southpark reference took my back to my youth, this appears to have made the list.
5. “You play games like the Jew.” This comment was spat at us by a man trying to sell carpets. The more times S- said no, the more violent the insults became until this little gem was hurled in our direction. Tom Lehrer’s National Brotherhood Week* song is indeed correct – apparently everyone does hate the Jews.

A wall of old cameras in one of the Souks

A real Aladdin's cave of things

Herbalist and natural remedy doctor

Still at the herbalists

Examples of wool in the souks

Some of the leather shoes on offer

I’ll be posting more pictures over the next few days, as well as a few things I wrote whilst I was there – stay tuned!

*If you don’t know this song, shame on you. I demand you go to youtube right now and search for it.

…Freecycle

IMPORTANT: I would like it noted, at this point, that I have consumed half a bottle of red wine. This post may, as a result, be rambling and incoherent.

So, I joined freecycle, hoping to get my grubby mits on a sewing machine that could automatically make button holes. I hate doing them by hand – they inevitably end up looking like something from Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and take forever. I only like sewing on my incredibly pretty machine anyway, so switching to a needle and thread for the most mind-numbingly dull job on the planet was never going to go down well. But back on topic… freecycle…

So far I’ve been offered all manner of things, including a boy cat with the following qualities:

“He is a very independent sole and only once a fuss on his terms.”

So he finished being a fuss and is now a fish? Talented Tom.

The death of the English language aside though, I love the idea of freecycle. Being offered things you need and getting rid of those you don’t is a genius way of recycling. And it’s inspired me…

Here, for your reading pleasure, are my top 5 Cambridgeshire/National ‘green’ websites in Top of the Pops style decending numerical order.

5: http://www.freecycle.org/ – People post things they don’t want any more. You post things you’d like. People drive around and collect various items from one another and everyone gets what they need for free! Hooray for recycling!

4:  http://www.tregothnan.co.uk/ – In my dream world, all of what I consume would be grown in my wonderful little island nation. Until I found this site, I always thought that tea would be the one thing we could never produce ourselves but happily, Cornwall proved me wrong.

3:  http://www.frugal.org.uk/ -  This is a great site with lots of helpful tips on how you can save money without sacrificing your current lifestyle too much.

2/1: I couldn’t decide between:

http://www.christmashill.co.uk/ and http://readitswapit.co.uk/

Christmas Hill sells what is easily the best meat I’ve ever tasted and costs no more that the supermarket equivalent. Considering it’s all free range and rare-breed, that’s saying something. Even the mince I had tasted like sirloin – absolutely delicious.

Read It Swap It is a great way of getting rid of books and getting new ones for free. Working in a similar way to Freecycle, you post the titles you don’t want anymore and a list of the books you’d like, then you request swaps from other users. I like to think of it as a really big library where you get your books by post – very good fun, and a great way of finding new titles you wouldn’t normally read.

Whilst most of these sites have become favourites due to my fiscal restraints, they’re all pretty eco-friendly and if you’re trying to save the planet, are a great place to start

Any suggestions for other good sites are more than welcome – I check my comments rather obsessively and will repost them as they come

Normal, non-environmental broadcast will resume when I’m slightly less pickled.

Cup of Tea

I’ve been watching ‘The Secret Millionaire’ today.

It’s not what I’d normally pick from the 4oD catalogue, but I’ve run out of episodes of ‘Time Team’ so I thought I’d have a go at something from the ‘most popular’ list instead. The show was actually pretty moving in places and it’s amazing the amount of determination which goes into running the nation’s charity sector.  One woman had even mortgaged her own house twice in order to help the ‘last wishes’ group she ran  – that’s beyond dedication, and it puts my own paltry efforts to shame.*

The thing I found most interesting though, was the way in which people interacted. The millionaire subject of the show was a cockney man – unwilling and uncomfortable when it came to expressing his emotions. Every time anyone opened up to him, he would instinctively reach for the PG Tips as a momentary distraction. I’ve noticed that I do the same – as soon as things become socially uncomfortable, my immediate reaction is to ‘put the kettle on’. I suspect a wide number of others do the same.

It’s an interesting national character trait – the need to fiddle with the paraphernalia associated with a cuppa when things become awkward. And it isn’t the drink itself which acts as a liquid shield, it’s the time that its preparation lends us. As we faff around in the kitchen – pulling out teapots and cups, sugar and milk – we are acting, yet we also have the time to decide how we feel about what has just been said, what has just taken place. We’re stalling, I suppose – trying to buy ourselves more time to decide what we believe will be the best course of action.

The familiar act of making tea is perhaps another reason we rush out to make a brew when things get tough. Making a cup of tea is something most of us do many times a day and the routine of it is something we know in a suddenly unfamiliar world. It is a constant – something which remains unchanged by what has just happened.

Whilst I think the ritual of preparation is perhaps the most important element of the drink in a crisis, this survey shows that the chemical make-up of the tea plant is also an important element. For me, a cup of steaming hot tea is a sort of life-preserve. I cling to it, both hands wrapped around the mug so that its heat seeps into my fingers. It’s both comforting, and I draw a sense of strength and constancy from it.

I wonder what happens in coffee-drinking nations when something bad happens… I wonder if percolating brings as big a sense of relief…

*I do volunteer, going on home visits for a local charity – Cam Sight – as well as helping out with bowling for the blind. It’s a really good group – very worth getting in touch with if you’re in the local area.