Diary of Lisa Taylor, reluctantly 42 (and a half)

Or.. 'f.ck me I'm forty.. two.. and a half', though can look 38 on a - not so deluded - good day. Or 'How to reconcile a well experienced mind trapped in a still - but for how long? – youthful body.' Don't have the 30somethings angst/problems, neither have the resigned (?) ageing baby-boomers in safe family territory outlook yet. Here's how I cope, one day all sexy women will get old... but never invisible. © Lisa Taylor 2005/6/7/8/9. Jeez.. so much for the 42 and-a-half delusion

Thursday, December 23, 2010

18 December - Egypt & Dead

Hey back from egypt and avoided lots of airport snow chaos. Lucky for once.

It was pretty darn interesting there, I recommend it, but you can save it for when you're a pensioner as doesn't require any stress to visit what Luxor/Aswan/Abu Simbel have to offer. Though somehow I never feel totally comfortable in countries where they don't drink. Now, as you know, I hardly do (hence lack of great stories from mad nights out), so am not actually missing the alcohol itself, but I miss the easy going nature of bars and people who are out having fun. In muslim countries even when the locals are nice to you (and they were in Egypt), very smiley and soooo good looking some of the men, you just feel an edge. I can't describe it, but the fact that you don't see a woman drive a car (no way, remember we were not in Cairo) or a woman serving you in a shop, and conversely all you see is tons of blokes milling about and all they do for recreation is smoke a pipe in a café' where only men are milling about having a pipe ... I don't know... It makes you walk past fast, because you feell like a gawker if you linger and look, whereas in any other place you'd stop, have a coffee, chill and mingle with them but clearly it's not encouraged in muslim countries so you feel conspicuous for being johnny foreigner and as a girl you think 'what do you think of me? Should I be at home where your wife is?' and you can't kiss your boyfriend in the street as it would seem rubbing it in somehow so you feel... circumspect at all times. You end up missing advertising billboards even!

Been to precious few places like this, Zanzibar comes to mind or Morocco, but Toph tells me how much he hated being in Saudi Arabia for work once. There the difference you feel in the air is to the max. Egypt is quite liberal by comparison but maybe more so in Cairo. In sleepy Luxor and Aswan is a bit like Greece or Sicily in 1935 I guess, blokes out and about and women at home with the kitchen/kids. No feminism evident at all, though am sure there are women doctors and so on. But they'd make more money by selling drinks to the locals via levy/taxes and could plow it back since it seems still a pretty poor country. It would take a few decades before it turns in to a problem and you get girls falling about in the street or kids knifing each other in housing estates no?

But the history/architecture is amazing - I loved that most old temples have roofs - in seismic Italy nothing is left with a roof fore example - though there's an element of spare/spartan theme park. What's real and what is not? It all kind of looks like Vegas in a sense. I kept touching surfaces of temples and thinking ok this is 4,000 years old that I'm touching. But you don't feel any connections. What it must be like for the locals I don't know. If you're in Rome, in a temple or a catacomb or other, there's still a link to a current religion, whereas here, none of the current Egyptians can link to people who believed in gods with bird heads or that the sun went under the flat earth west of the Nile and came back out of the flat earth east of the Nile.

Anyway, apparently we missed Camilla visiting lady Mubarak the day before and we missed Naomi Campbell's wedding to russian billionaire at the nearby Hilton though quick internet search reveals nothing of the latter nuptials.

Hotel good, heated outdoor pool definitely the winning trick there since sun is only warm 10 to 3pm. Only one minor celeb spied and he's not really, Dr Brian Cox who does those science programs on TV. Yeah ok, that's not much.

One recommendation: don't pick interconnecting rooms in a hotel if on holiday with boyf and his mother. Means boyf thinks his mother can hear every word and sound so er... yeah.. get my drift...? Though I had as stinking cold throughout and he should have just worried my nose sounds were going to disturb her and not much else.

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