Encore

After my last blogpost, some of you out there may have concluded that I had reached the end of my Egypt posts. I am sorry to disappoint you because here's another Egypt post containing eight more of the photographs I took.

I suspected that the top picture - of an Egyptian policeman  in The Valley of the Kings would prove especially appealing to any gay gentlemen who happen to visit this blog.

Below this marvellous block statue of Yamunedjeh caught my eye in Luxor Museum. He was a royal herald to Thuthmosis III who was reigning Egypt in 1450 BC...

Above, at Karnak Temple In Luxor, I spotted that cheeky sparrow having a rest on one of the criosphinxes. Below - tourists are circling the statue of a scarab beetle for good luck.

Above, Egyptian humour on a Nile ferryboat at Luxor. Below, the sign on a very famous tomb. Tutankhamun means living image of the god Amun.

Above I spotted this shop sign in Edfu. It will amuse some football,fans because Mo Salah is the name of Egypt's greatest ever player. Below - one of the most incredible things I saw in Egypt. It is the Nileometer on Elephantine Island, Aswan. The carved lines on that flight of very ancient stone steps were for marking annual flood levels. Flooding heralded fertility with more bountiful harvests to follow and thereby tax levels in Ancient Egypt could be adjusted up or down.

22/3/56

If he had lived, my younger brother Simon would have been seventy years old today - but he died on July 19th 2022 at the age of 67. I wrote a poem in his memory on the evening of his passing. Let me share it with you again...

⦿

Song for Simon

No more

Wood pigeons cooing

Morse coded messages

From the ridge tiles

Nor painted ladies

Shimmying through open windows -

Fluttering like tiny Bhutanese prayer flags.

No more the dark two a.m.

Wondering who I am

Recalling paths unfollowed,

Regrets twinkling

Like distant stars.

No more struggling for breath

Or cowering in the shade of death.

It’s over.

No more plans

And no more schemes,

No more

Elusive butterfly dreams.

Your words are destined to stay unsaid

Now that you have joined the dead.

    No more…

No more.

⦿

Looking back almost four years now... His was not the happiest of lives. He lived in the shadows of who he might have been.  His mind was significantly affected by smoking weed and cannabis resin. Always a cigarette smoker. at times he also drank too much and his attitude to the world and people  beyond his door was filled with scorn because Simon always knew best. I was often the convenient recipient of his venom.

He made my mother's life a misery. He kept returning to her like a bad penny. She was often afraid of him and his weird moods. He could be very aggressive and said horrible things to her. Sometimes she barricaded her bedroom door - wedging a chair against the door handle in case he came into her bedroom in the middle of the night. But she was his mother and in spite of everything she was there for him. She considered it her maternal duty.

For about seven years - between the ages of 28 and 35, Simon had a relationship with a local woman called Linda. Shirley and I liked her a lot. Linda was the best thing that ever happened to Simon. They bought a little house together in Hornsea on the North Sea coast and for a while he seemed like a changed man. I might even dare to say that he was happy... briefly.

But then the nastiness started up again. This time targeted not  at my mother but at Linda. She also became afraid of him and very sadly, they split up. The little house was  sold and despite my protestations, Simon moved back in with my mother. 

She should have been living out her days as a merry widow but instead my monstrous brother was back to torment her, belittle her, criticise her cooking, yell at her, steal her money. It was awful and during that time she would often come over to Sheffield to stay with us. We gave her sanctuary and she could sleep peacefully in her bed before the inevitable journeys back home.

In spite of undiagnosed mental health issues and to his credit, Simon managed to earn wages throughout his troubled life. He was rarely out of work and eight months before his death through cancer, he was still working with a contractor who serviced the water infrastructure - maintaining small underground reservoirs and associated piping for example.

Sadly, he had already offloaded his cherished guitars. In his prime he was a great guitar player. Much better and more dedicated than me. He had real talent and patience when it came to strumming or picking but typically he cut away the rope that connected him with that joy.

Though I stopped loving him decades before he became a human skeleton, I am proud to say that I was there for him at the end. It is what my parents would have wanted.

As folk will often say tritely when death occurs... he is at peace now.

Cruising

Shirley and I had never been on any kind of cruise before and we had always spurned the idea of "all inclusive" holidays. So booking a Nile cruise aboard the "Al Horeya" was something of a departure for us. We fancied Egypt but not the idea of making independent arrangements as we have so often done in the past.

All cruise boats on The Nile look similar. They need to fit through the locks at Esna and they need to pass under bridges. Our boat had five decks with the top one being a lounge area complete with a bar,  a small swimming pool and two little jacuzzi pools. I swam in the pool twice.

Our cabin (Number 420) was on the fourth deck and we were pretty happy with it. The twin beds that butted up with each other were spacious and the pure white Egyptian cotton bedding was smooth and clean. The little bathroom was perfectly serviceable and the hot water supply was reliable. There was a narrow Juliet balcony overlooking the river. The only thing I did not appreciate was that there was a locked connecting door to our neighbours' cabin. Fortunately the couple next door were as quiet as us. The majority of cabins did not have that issue.

Fourth floor housekeeping was undertaken by two young men - Mustafa and Mahmoud who were always smiley and always there. They kept sculpting our towels. See below...

Most passengers ate down on Deck 2 where the Lazeeza restaurant was located. Here breakfast and lunch were buffet affairs. For evening meals there was waiter service.

We were very happy with the food choices and at lunch and dinner there was always something different on the menu. At breakfast I had a freshly made omelette every day after watching it being made by happy Mohamed in his tall toque blanche.

One lunchtime Shirley and I raved about the spinach tagine and I even got the recipe from the head chef. He seemed delighted to be asked.

There were 140 passengers on the boat and eighty two members of staff. We found them all to be diligent, welcoming and smiley. By the way - there were no women in the staff team with only one working woman on board - our holiday rep from Shropshire - Katie. She was very nice and had a fine singing voice too.

We found ourselves conversing at length with several other couples on our boat and this was an enjoyable part of the experience. There were some very nice people but one or two whose main topic of conversation was themselves - where they had been, what they had achieved, what they thought. Once stung, you made a point of avoiding these windbags. There were two widows sharing a cabin, a brother chaperoning his disabled brother and two pairs of gay men who were very comfortable with the holiday experience even though homosexuality is still highly stigmatized in Egypt.

There was a lovely, relaxed atmosphere on board and if someone had said to me - this is how the rest of your life will be from now on, I would not have minded.

Cruising along The Nile with a G&T in your hand. There are far worse things you could spend your remaining time doing.

Faces

 As someone who sees the world in pictures, I often wish that there were no barriers to taking photographs of people's faces. It's tricky territory. But every face hides a lifetime of experiences, achievements and disappointments. Sometimes faces speak more of a foreign country than sights - such as those that The Nile reveals when you are cruising upon it.

In Egypt, I managed to capture a few faces. Current faces in addition to the many faces we saw in tombs and on the walls of temples. At Edfu, I gave the man at the top fifty Egyptian pounds for his image which seemed to disgruntle him. Fifty Egyptian pounds is about seventy pence in British money or $1 US.

This second portrait is of Fatma - our lovely Nubian guide on Elephantine Island, Aswan. She kindly agreed to my request and I said that the reason I wished to take her photo was because she had a nice face.

I spotted this mural on Elephantine Island. I guess that she is also a Nubian woman. The same artist had decorated some other walls in the neighbourhood.

Ayman was our onboard Egyptologist. He knew a lot and was certainly blessed with the gift of the gab but he didn't seem to understand that what people sometimes require is peace and quiet and time to absorb what they are seeing.

This lad was steering our "felucca" sailing boat across The Nile and was happy to pose when I asked him.

This young man was on security duty by The Avenue of The Sphinxes in Luxor. Naturally, he needed a hundred pounds after snapping a picture of an old Yorkshire couple in their sun hats with Luxor Temple looming behind them - like the perfect backdrop for Verdi's "Aida"...

By the way, the tall obelisk on the left was meant to be balanced with a similar granite needle on the right but it was stolen by France in the nineteenth century and re-erected in Paris at Le Place de la Concorde. In my humble opinion, they should give it back. 

Sideshow

Not many rivers flow from south to north. The Nile is the most significant river on that small list. It has two sources. The Blue Nile rises in the mountains of Ethiopia. The White Nile begins its journey in Africa's great lakes region. These two parent rivers meet in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

Then the great river flows north to Aswan which is southern Egypt's most significant city. Moving further north it is about 140 miles to Luxor which in ancient times was known as Thebes. This was the very cradle of Egyptian civilisation - an economic and cultural awakening that endured for three thousand years.

It hardly ever rains in central Egypt. Without The Nile, Egypt would have been an inhospitable and barren desert. The river brought the means to exist and prosper. To this day, The Nile nourishes the land to both east and west, forming green strips of agricultural land. Even in ancient times, Egyptians knew how to divert river water - building canals and irrigation ditches. All wealth grew out of The Nile.

Unlike Steve Reed who cruised from Cairo to Aswan in 2019, Shirley and I drifted from Luxor to Aswan and back again. The banks of The Nile were like a sideshow or even a slideshow sliding by. You never knew what you might see.

Sometimes people waved. Here a fishing boat. There a mosque and the muezzin calling  believers to prayer. Here a woman washing pots. There an egret flashing white  in front of dense date palms. Ruins. A remote railway station. A white 4X4 vehicle on a beach. And all the while - The Nile flowing northwards like an everlasting dream.

Messaging

Hieroglyphs were everywhere. Carved into temple walls. Lining the subterranean tombs in The Valley of the Kings. Painted on coffins. Carved into statuettes. Engraved  upon jewellery. Not artwork or mere decoration but messages to gods and to educated people and to those who would follow later. Everything you saw meant something.

Most ancient Egyptians were illiterate. They tilled the soil, fished in the river, harvested crops or responded to the commands of their superiors. Royal families operated at an entirely different level. After all, they were themselves god-like.

Ordinary people were generally excluded from the main temple sites which were reserved for the priesthood and obviously the blessed rulers with their families and entourages.

None of this is new to you. In the western world, Egyptian iconography been familiar for decades. We may not know what it all means but we have seen it. Some of us have long known of the principal Egyptian gods: Ra, Osiris, Anubis, Isis, Amun and  Horus - the falcon god.

Ancient Egypt coloured both the Greek and Roman worlds. Those invaders marvelled at what had been achieved in The Land of the Pharaohs over countless centuries and sought to adopt that knowledge, attach themselves to that wonderment.

And always the symbolism, the hieroglyphs. With this blogpost there are just a few examples of random images of messaging I  chose to photograph - speaking to us from three or four thousand years ago.

Mind blowing.

Amenhotep

Seen just yesterday morning in Luxor Museum. It is the magnificent granite crowned head of King Amenhotep III. Once it was attached to a colossal statue that was one of many that decorated his funeral temple on the west bank of The Nile opposite Luxor. He inhabited the New Kingdom of Egypt some 3350 years ago and was the ruling pharaoh for forty five years.  Tutankhamun was his grandson.

His reign marked a time of exceptional prosperity and grandeur, during which Egypt reached the height of its artistic and international influence, making him one of ancient Egypt's greatest pharaohs. He was also one of the few pharaohs worshipped as a deity during his lifetime.

What a remarkable privilege it was to be in the very room where that beautifully carved granite head now resides. It might have been machine-made just last year but it was expertly hand-carved, smoothed and polished over a thousand years before those three wise men allegedly arrived in Bethlehem.

Egypt... so many stories, so many puzzles, so much magnificence... and through it all ran The Nile.

Silenced

 

This blogpost was composed several hours ago. I scheduled its publication to happen at 11.30pm on Monday night.

You see, we are not sleeping in our own bed tonight. Instead, we should be nicely tucked up in the Ibis Budget Hotel at Manchester Airport. At 9.00am on Tuesday morning we will take off for Luxor, Egypt. 

Staying in the airport hotel meant we did not have to get up in the middle of the night, drive for an hour and park the car before heading to Terminal 2. Just too much stress.

I have no intention of blogging again until Wednesday, March 18th and will be absent from all my usual haunts in Blogland.

This means that authors of the blogs I habitually visit will be able to relax. You can let your guards down with regard to spelling, grammar, right wing remarks and seedy reminiscences. Think of it as a kind of holiday. No Yorkshire Pudding for nine days. Whoo-hoo!

Shirley and I have never been on a cruise before. The idea of those huge cruise ships is quite appalling to us. Our River Nile cruise should be rather different with just seventy cabins and no pesky children.

Two nights in Luxor before journeying up The Nile to Aswan. It is a pretty standard itinerary for Nile cruises. Along the way we are going to see several temples and ancient tombs. On our very first morning we will be heading to The Valley of the Kings  where I hope to stand where Howard Carter famously stood in November 1922  -  inside The Tomb of Tutankhamen - the boy king.

There are two possible flies in the ointment. Firstly the possible repercussions of the Netanyahu-Trump  war upon Iran. Hopefully, Egypt will remain unaffected but you never know. Secondly, toothache is stirring in my skull and it is too late to seek intervention by a dentist. I have some oil of cloves, some cottonwool pads  and some hope that the pain will creep back into its lair. Bugger it!

More

All right. Let's see more pictures from yesterday's trip to Kingston-upon-Hull - or Hull as it is more commonly called. Not only does it stand on the north shore of the River Humber, it also spans The River Hull. That is a much smaller river that drains south from The Yorkshire Wolds, dividing the city of Hull in half. Sometimes at Hull City matches, a chant goes up..."East Hull Tigers!" with the response following, "West Hull Tigers!" as different Hullensians reveal their territorial loyalties.

Hull is in my bones. It is where I went to school between the ages of eleven and fifteen. It is where I first  saw Jethro Tull and Free and Genesis and The Moody Blues and  Donovan and Nothineverappens - a Hull band that you have probably never heard of. It is where I first fell in love and where I saw my first rugby league games and also became a lifelong fan of  Hull City - a football team I have supported for over sixty years now. And Mum would travel into Hull by public bus sometimes and bring back cream meringues and coconut mushrooms and salted peanuts and new pairs of underpants and Hull was proud and wonderful.

Hull is where my brother Simon died in a hospice and it is where my father was cremated. It is where I was the best man at Lee Dalley's wedding when I was only sixteen and it is where I almost saw The Beatles in concert at the age of twelve... but my parents vetoed the idea. It is where I played rugby for Hull Schoolboys and where I had my front teeth knocked out in a cricket match when I was fourteen.

Yes. Hull is in my bones. That's for sure.

The Emigrants statue on Hull's waterfront with "The Deep" aquarium beyond.

Before yesterday, I realised that I would have a problem taking my backpack into Hull City's home ground - The MKM Stadium. Nowadays, there are strict rules about what you can and  cannot take into a football stadium and the searching of bags has become commonplace.

Philip Larkin again

Unfortunately, there is no longer a left luggage facility at Hull's Paragon Station so where could I leave my bag - containing my camera, my steel water flask, my books and my heroin syringe? After all, I did not want these items to be confiscated.

I stumbled across a website called "Stasher" that provides a useful service across the globe. It lists trusted businesses where you can leave bags securely - from large suitcases to small backpacks. You pay a relatively small fee and then the name and exact address of the business is provided via e-mail. I left my backpack at  the "Upper Cutz" barbershop just a stone's throw from Hull's main railway station and collected it on my way back from the game. The arrangement worked perfectly.

View of Hull Marina from the new footbridge

Hull

Detail of a family statue on the Humber riverfront

It remembers European emigrants who passed through Hull before 

boarding trains to Liverpool and then ships to North America.

A lunchtime kick off at The MKM Stadium in Hull today. It's annoying how Sky Sports and other commercial broadcasters dictate when so many football matches will kick off just to please their schedules. What about the fans?

Today Hull City were playing a less well-known London club - Millwall. Their fans would have had to set off to Hull at the crack of dawn. But with the usual 3pm kick off time they could have left London much later.

I travelled over to Hull by train. Normally, I drive but today, as well as seeing the match, I fancied a stroll around the centre of the first city I ever knew - my home city. Hull sits on the north shore of The Humber estuary and has long been associated with the sea.

I wanted to take pictures of a mural near the city centre - painted in memory of a local working class heroine - Lillian Bilocca. Spurred into action by the Hull triple trawler tragedy of 1968 which claimed 58 lives, she led a direct action campaign to prevent undermanned trawlers from putting to sea and gathered 10,000 signatures for a petition (the Fishermen's Charter) to Harold Wilson's government to strengthen safety legislation. She threatened to picket Wilson's house if he did not take action.

In the end, the key requests were implemented and necessary legislation was passed. Apart from anything else, the story proves that protest really can work and bring about meaningful change. Lillian was just a humble fisheries worker until the trawler tragedies roused her into action.

I walked to Hull Marina where major improvements are still underway to connect the Humber riverfront and the historical old town area with the modern city centre. I saw many eating places and wondered  how many people regularly go out to eat these days?  Restaurants, cafes and pubs need customers.

By the way, our lads somehow managed to lose today's match even though we were the better team. I caught a late train back to Sheffield but before that I took a few pictures of a statue of one of Hull's most famous adopted sons - the poet, Philip Larkin. It stands within the precincts of Paragon Station - as though Larkin is hurrying to catch a train.

Characters

It was "World Book Day" this week. All across the British Isles primary school children dressed up as characters from children's books. It is all meant to be about encouraging the reading habit. I certainly hope it helps. Equally, I hope that no one ever comes up with the idea of a World Smartphone Day.

Even two year old Margot was expected to join in. It was encouraged by the nursery school she attends three days a week. Of course Phoebe was all excited about the dressing up opportunity.

Margot went as Betty O'Barley from "The Scarecrows' Wedding" by Julia Donaldson and Phoebe dressed up as Funnybones from "Funnybones" by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. In the picture, Phoebe is holding the mask that her clever mama made for her.

I was thinking who might I dress up as for World Book Day next year? It is a toss up between Heathcliff from "Wuthering Heights" and Robinson Crusoe. As you might imagine, I have got ideas for several regular blog visitors too.

Meike Riley will be Maria from "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers" by Maria von Trapp. Keith Kline (Red) will be John Thornton from "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London and Glaswegian Jack Haggerty will be "The Man in The Iron Mask" by Alexander Dumas. I have other ideas for Andrew in Melbourne and Nurse Pixie in Edmonton for example but for reasons of civility I have decided not to share them!

Who would you be?

Springtime

All over the northern hemisphere, we are noting the tell tale signs of Spring ousting the dark days of Winter. The southern hemisphere stole away our light, our colour and our joy but now we are retrieving what was lost as their early autumn heralds their winter.

Today I did not wear a coat as I ventured into the city centre to visit two bookshops. I was looking for any novel by James Kelman having enjoyed "Dirt Road" so much. Though this mission was unsuccessful I did manage to buy four other books - "Cuddy" by Benjamin Myers, "The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields, "Walking the Rivelin" by Sue Shaw and Keith Kendall and "BOSH! More Plants" by my only born son and his old school friend Henry Firth.

Two books were liberated from the Oxfam book shop on Glossop Road and two from the Orchard Square branch of "Waterstones".

How lovely it was to be out there in the sunshine and people's hearts seemed to be lifted. You could sense it in the air.

As I am always looking out for striking photo opportunities, I regret not stopping on Surrey Street to pull my camera out of my backpack. There was a street musician sitting in the sunshine with The Central Library behind him. He was playing his shiny saxophone with his eyes closed, lost in the music, lost in the springtime air. Silly old me.

Yesterday I had an appointment at The Royal Hallamshire Hospital - to be precise the Dermatology Department. I met three lovely women - Kelly the receptionist, Nina the nurse and Indira the consultant. What I have got on my left temple is a benign keratinous growth that looks exactly like a Kellogg's rice krispie. At least that is what I have told Little Miss Curious - our Phoebe. The krispie will be "scraped" away under local anaesthetic soon after we return from our holiday in Egypt.

After the appointment, I walked down to Ecclesall Road via The Botanical Gardens. On this particular passing visit, I noticed that the dormant crocuses had now burst through. Some people were sitting on the grass, talking or reading or just enjoying being outside under a blue sky. I think this activity is called "chillaxing".

It is a nice way to greet the springtime. All pictures shown here are from yesterday.

The same reader

Churchill

Because the British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, did not dance perfectly  to Trump's tune with regard to the current and rather frightening  military activity in Iran, Trump said that Sir Keir was no Winston Churchill, alluding to this country's famous wartime leader.

Well I doubt that Trump is reading this blogpost because he doesn't read anything  but if I am mistaken Mr T, I have got news for you. You are no Abraham Lincoln! In fact you are no Barack Obama, no Martin Luther King Jr, no Franklin D, Roosevelt, no George S. Patton! In fact you are no James Buchanan, no Andrew Johnson and what is more you are no Warner Brothers' Porky Pig! Apologies to Porky.

It is exceedingly difficult for any other political leaders in the western world to manage healthy relationships with Trump because he is a playground bully without discretion  or a recognisable moral compass. Thus far, other leaders have been obliged to kowtow to Trump because of America's economic and military power. However, it is obvious that they all detest him and privately mock him.

You have to draw the line somewhere and that is what Sir Keir Starmer did. After all, the joint Israeli and American onslaught upon Iran was not agreed with other nations and it is in clear breach of international law. Why should other western leaders be expected to just tag along like obedient puppies?

Many commentators believe that the lead puppeteer is Netanyahu here and he is looking to devastate and degrade Iran with zero concern for the Iranian people. Is that the way to a lasting peace? More likely Netanyahu and Orange Blob are creating a legacy of death and destruction that will return to haunt their countries in the decades ahead. Bullets and bombs are not the way. Discussions, economic sanctions, patience, intelligence and persistence - that's always the way you do it in the end.

And anyway, let's get back to this Winston Churchill fellow. He was by no means perfect either. There were views he held and things  he  did that  were really quite appalling and ironically rather Trumpian.

He was a racist and an Islamaphobe. He called Indians "beastly" and opposed Indian independence in the late 1940s. He used troops to crush legitimate strike action by coal miners and in 1915 he championed the disastrous World War I Gallipoli campaign that resulted in huge casualty numbers. There are many other mistakes and character failings I could highlight including his dependence upon alcohol, his sexism and his upper class arrogance.

Although he proved himself to be a good wartime leader, he was decisively voted out of office by the British people as soon as World War II ended.

Of course Trump does not know Churchill's flipside because he never reads anything. He prefers a view of world history that is cartoonish. Personally, I prefer the dignity and decency of a man like Sir Keir Starmer and yes, Trump is thankfully right that Sir Keir is no Winston Churchill. In plenty of respects, he is better than that and obviously better than Trump too.