Anyway, Alison had the three scrolls framed when we returned to Edinburgh. They now adorn my study here in Gisbyland.
Cairo. The summer of 2002. Late morning. After a fascinating couple of hours spent in the gloom of the Egyptian Museum, we emerge blinking into the sunshine. While we stand there wondering where to go next, a skinny Egyptian guy approaches us. He happens to look a lot like Alison’s older brother. “Wanna buy some papyrus?” he asks. He’s carrying a papyrus scroll which he opens up to shows us. Alison is hooked. “Okay, let’s have a look,” she says. The skinny guy indicates that we should follow him. He leads us down from the museum to a main road. There are eight lanes of fairly fast moving bumper-to-bumper traffic. It’s a daunting sight. Suddenly, he plunges into the traffic. “Walk like an Egyptian,” he shouts with his back to us. We hurry to catch up with him. We copy his confident zig-zagging, skirting the oncoming vehicles by mere fractions of an inch. We reach the other side of the road, unscathed and oddly exhilarated. Further along the road, the skinny guy takes us down some steps and into a papyrus shop. He leaves us there to go look for more potential customers. We spend a while in the shop. Alison purchases three papyrus scrolls of different sizes. When we come back up the steps, we decide to walk like an Egyptian again. And again. And again. Crossing and re-crossing the road, experiencing a buzz every time. Until we figure it’s time to behave ourselves.
Anyway, Alison had the three scrolls framed when we returned to Edinburgh. They now adorn my study here in Gisbyland.
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Seeing all those photos of the flooded Basilica in Venice has reminded me of the time Alison and I met Elvis in Piazza San Marco. It was a Saturday night. We were coming out of Caffè Florian after a nightcap and heading back to our apartment when we were stopped by a thirtysomething American man who looked awfully like Elvis: the same thick, swept-back, jet-black hair, the same chubby face and sallow skin. He also sounded awfully like Elvis, his words tumbling out from somewhere at the back of his throat.
“Pardonmesirandmaam, can you tell me if that there building is a church?” he asked, pointing to the floodlit Basilica behind us. “Yes, it is,” we replied in unison. “Saint Mark’s Basilica,” added Alison. “Me and the family are staying just round the corner,” explained Elvis, “and I have to make sure the family goes to Mass tomorrow morning. So do you know if this Basilica does Mass… Catholic Mass?” Alison looked to me for an answer; brought up Catholic, supposedly I knew about that sort of thing. “Yes, it does,” I said. I remembered reading a notice outside the Basilica about the Mass services. “But you’ll have to get there early. People will be queuing up from first thing.” “That’s no problem, sir,” smiled Elvis. “Thankyouverymuch. Thankyouverymuch.” “Where are you from?” Alison asked as he turned to go. “Memphis, Tennessee, ma’am.” Spooky. “We’re from Scotland.” “Scaatland. Yeah, I was there once a long time ago. But it was only a stopover at some airport.” Even spookier. It was bitterly cold outside when I went to bed last night. After switching off the lights downstairs in my cosy, warm house, I stopped for a moment in the kitchen to gaze up at the full moon and was suddenly transfixed by vivid memories of going to bed on similarly freezing nights during my childhood.
Although we lived in a newly built house, the only source of heat was the coal-fire in the living room, the concept of central heating in Council homes not even having been dreamt of in the 1950’s. Because they ate up electricity, and in turn devoured Dad’s wages, electric fires and heaters weren’t used in any of the other rooms – and definitely not in the bedrooms. For a time, we kids shared two double-beds in the biggest bedroom. Getting ready for bed on winter nights was always a bit of a ritual for us. The first part of the ritual concerned the hot water bottles. They weren’t pukka hot water bottles, of course, but old lemonade bottles filled with scalding water from the kettle. And they had to be filled very slowly lest they cracked open. How we all managed to escape serious injury from them I’ll never know. Once the bottles were slipped under the covers into the middle of the beds, the next part of the ritual was to get undressed in front of the coal-fire and then dressed in our nightclothes, over the top of which we’d put on old jumpers and the like. By that time, the bottles would have warmed the beds a little and were sufficiently cooled down to let us put our feet on them without being burned. And so to bed. Our slumbers would be interrupted at regular intervals as, one by one, the bottles rolled to the bottom of the bed, eventually slipping out of the covers and clunking to the floor. There would be a more welcome interruption later on when Dad sneaked into the bedroom with an armful of heavy coats that he would place on top of our sleeping forms. Whatever else those freezing nights did for our childhood psyche, they helped to form a bond between us, a bond of hardship that would never be broken. |
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